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How about a mini-update? Between sessions progressing Bassilus, I've been doing Chaos Sanctuary runs with Cythandria. And those runs add up. That is a level 92 hardcore character. She's been repeating the same run for quite a while; the River of Flame after the waypoint, the Chaos Sanctuary...

Congratulations on the Guardian! And don't worry abut this thread going fallow for too long. I've already started up my next character - my second shot at a necromancer, Bassilus. As a bit of a teaser ... it was buckler day in the Dark Wood.

Putting Smoke in an exceptional item ... for this build, that's not something to worry about. You don't have any multiplicative defense boosts, so you can't get enough defense to really matter anyway. Especially given your relatively low level; if the level ratio in the hit chance formula is...

Time for the final update of Galvarey's run. He may be the most blinged-out character I've ever built - is it enough to overcome the challenges this game imposes on a melee build? Well, I'm still clearing at players 5. That's a good sign. Though I forgot to turn off the auto-run I accidentally...

Huh. It sounds like the act boss anti-minion multipliers are working for you there. They take a fraction of damage from minion/mercenary attacks and deal multiplied damage to minions/mercenaries, which normally makes them big trouble for a summoner. And then you put in Iron Maiden. The damage to...

Act 3 starts nicely. I identify a random small charm in the Spider Forest, and ... Exactly what this character wants. It directly replaces my Ocher Small Charm of Life. Getting two high-quality affixes on the same charm is so good. But then, I reach the Flayer Jungle, and enter the Swampy Pit...

Time for the first Hell update from Galvarey. Two acts, this time. To start with, Galvarey needed a major gear update for Hell. Here's what I settled on: Angelic Wings -> Seraph's Hymn (amulet) Angelic Mantle -> Gloom (Kraken Shell) (armor) Angelic Halo -> Raven Frost (ring) Angelic Halo ->...

Galvarey has now made it through Nightmare difficulty. Five acts to go. Nightmare starts with a large-scale equipment swap. Angelic Sickle -> Ginther's Rift. Tarnhelm -> Stealskull. Sigon's Gage -> Immortal King's Forge. Sigon's Wrap -> Immortal King's Detail. Sigon's Sabot -> rare boots (30...

Last time, I teased my next character. And now, I've started playing him. Galvarey is a paladin, specifically a Holy Shock zealot. No flying hammers for me. I just really like how the melee paladin plays, with an interesting range of defensive tools and offensive tricks. Playing melee without a...

Telka enters act 5, and the game gets hard. She doesn't take damage very often - the Bloody Foothills is actually among the worst, with Quill Rats and their near-invisible projectiles - but many areas feature bulky cold-immune or freeze-immune enemies that take a long time to kill. After all...

So, back to Telka. Act 3 of Hell brings a new troublesome enemy type: dolls. I don't want those things to ever reach melee range of me. So, any area where they might show up - and in most of those, they did - I followed "decoy first" protocols. What's that? Before entering a room, cast a decoy...

After finding basically nothing in that act, I decided to do a few Chaos Sanctuary runs with my sorceress Cythandria (now level 91). On the second of three runs (enough to fill up the stash once): Yes, I am playing a paladin next after Telka's run finishes. And that's my favorite class. First...

And now, Hell act 2 in Telka's journey. Most of act 2 is pretty tame for this build. So many of the act's signature monsters just die to Freezing Arrow barrages with no fanfare. But I do run into a few tricky spots. The first one is a moment of panic in the Halls of the Dead; I find myself...

Well, here's Telka's trip through act 1 of Hell. Before continuing, I do a major equipment shuffle to get up to Hell resistance standards. Skin of the Vipermagi -> Smoke (Archon Plate), Raven Frost + Stone of Jordan -> Scintillating Ring of Perfection + Scintillating Ring of Accuracy. Plus a...

Indeed, it shouldn't be possible to gib an enemy with a dart. There's a specific mechanical reason: when damage brings a creature's hit points to sufficiently low levels (-10 for non-party creatures), a specific death type is applied based on the type of damage used. Exploded gibs for piercing...

Nothing sinister about the gap. I've just been spending my game time on other games - mostly Civ 6. And yes, Hell comes next. Then I might even go straight to the next character in the project. [Added in edit] I had a bit of a technical issue with my progression post; I couldn't find my flash...

Well, I'm back. Two years? My, how time flies when you're doing other things. Anyway, it's time to resume my D2 hardcore project right where it left off. Previous installment. As before, this project is on original D2:LoD. Patched as far as that game went before D2R, modded slightly to allow...

While I can't guarantee it'll work for you, here's what helped me complete a bunch of runs: themed parties, logged and later posted to the playthroughs forum at Beamdog. The very act of writing things down provides motivation to keep going, and the themes - sometimes mechanical, sometimes...

If you go south from the Nashkel mines, you hit the Cloud Peak mountains. Which is clearly where the population of winter wolves seen in the BG wilderness comes from. They can be found in AR5200, AR5300, AR5400, AR5500, and OH3000 at spawn points, and in AR5400 as a rest encounter. All of those...

Well, my next planned big run will be paladin-themed (actually a LG cleric->fighter dual as protagonist, but that's close enough). And they're not going to go shoplifting or robbing houses. Definitely going against my usual tendencies, but I can do self-imposed rules. When it comes to multiple...