Aww, sad to see such an abrupt end.
Nikhil is still going strong. I actually meant to do a post about beating Act II the other day, but then I saw the request to roll a sorc and forgot.
The first half of Act II was still pretty easy, and then suddenly it was not. The Summoner gave me the first challenging fight, which I thought was a bit unusual. I almost never have trouble there. Then I had my first near-death experience in one of the false tombs with a pack of champion Unravellers. A decent life pool and a belt full of full rejuvenation potions kept the run alive.
Then it was on to Duriel. I had multiple failed attempts at him. First I kept it on /players 8. The merc got one-shot and I used half my potions before escaping. After wandering in the desert for a while to restock my rejuvenations, I tried again on /players 3, with a similar result. I ended up leaving it on /players 1 and I traded in my prayer merc for a defiance one, to give Duriel a better chance to miss. That did the trick. The merc still died, but by that time Duriel was at less than a quarter health and Nikhil was able to finish off the big slug.
Of course after all that trouble, Duriel dropped nothing useful, except some town portals, I guess.
Then it was on to Act III, accompanied by a new prayer merc, as I find them more useful most of the time. Act III was fairly easy and uneventful in comparison to II. There were only really two difficult enemies in the entire act. The first was this guy:
Originally he was surrounded by his minions and also by a Dark Lord boss and
his minions. The two packs probably took half an hour to clear, with lots of running away to portal back to the docks.
Sometime towards the end of Act III, I maxed out on the gold I have on hand and in stash so I gambled it all away, as is my custom. I didn't get much to show for it, but I did find the first unique item I can legally use:
For now, I like my current magic amulet (24% lightning resistance, 34% magic find), but I might switch to that at some point, especially if I find more light res somewhere else.
The second difficult fight was Mephisto. I ended up taking it back down to /players 1 again, but the prime evil was much easier than Duriel was. He had a better drop too, although nothing useful:
Now it's on to Act IV. I think I'm in decent shape so far with 599 life (and 809 stamina...), but I want to find more resists before taking on Diablo. I've lost more hardcore characters to the titular demon than to anyone else, and I want to be ready.
That's it for now for Nikhil the level 33 Barbarian and Gulzar the prayer mercenary, in the Pandemonium Fortress.