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Another new Diablo character, another quest that began with clubbing fallens to death in the Blood Moor. The default starting staff for the Sorceress class has +1 to Fire Bolt on it, not Ice Bolt, which meant that Blanche was forced to rely on her melee attack for the initial level of her journey. CLVL 2 allowed me to place a skill point into Ice Bolt and, uh, the immediate damage wasn't too impressive. Ice Bolt deals 3-5 damage at SLVL 1 and increases that damage by exactly one point for the first few skill levels, going to 4-6 damage for SLVL 2 and then 5-8 damage for SLVL 3 and so on. Even in Normal Act One, the easiest part of the whole game, that wasn't enough to get one-shot kills against many of the monsters like zombies and Gargantuan Beasts, though at least the fallens did always perish in a single shot. I also had to worry about running out of mana here in the early game; one of the biggest advantages of Ice Bolt is that it never increases in cost beyond the initial 3 mana, however even that much was enough to run Blanche's orb dry quickly when she had a mere 35 max mana!
Some of you might wonder why I would want to create yet another D2 character when I've played and written about so many of them for a game that's now hit 25 years of age. The most basic answer is that I find Diablo's gameplay to be relaxing, especially when starting out in the lower difficulties before Hell cranks everything up to serious mode. I will often turn on a podcast or a sports broadcast in the background and then zone out for an hour or two when there's nothing important to get done. The very fact that I've played this game so much is the reason why I can find it relaxing, not to mention that good old fashion demon slaying remains a lot of fun. I always take breaks from playing Diablo when it starts to get tedious, then always come back again after a while because there's always another character build that I want to try out. I'd been feeling that Diablo itch recently and Blanche was a perfect opportunity to scratch it.
Blanche's damage slowly increased over the next few areas as she continued to level up, and yet the overall pace of clearing out the monsters was very slow for this portion of the gameplay. I had to keep her melee attack enabled on left mouse button (rather than switching it over to "Throw" as I usually do for spellcasters) because it was still better to smack the fallens with Blanche's staff much of the time rather than try to Ice Bolt everything. When she hit CLVL 6, I could invest my first skill point into Ice Blast which is one of the synergy skills for Ice Bolt. Every point in Ice Blast increases the damage of Ice Bolt by 15% so it was a bit interesting trying to figure out whether to put skill points into the base skill or the percentage-based synergy scaling. For the moment the math lined up in favor of continuing to skill Ice Bolt itself, though the damage remained underwhelming at best. More points in Ice Bolt also increase the cold duration which is one of the longest chills in the game, however this didn't really matter when the enemies of Act One Normal had single digit HP totals. As for Ice Blast itself, Blanche would be using that skill eventually but not until much later when she reached Hell difficulty.
Coldcrow was a legitimately difficult opponent for Blanche who took some careful maneuvering to defeat. The archer boss always has the Cold Enchanted trait which gave her 75% cold resistance, causing Blanche's Ice Bolts to deal a piddly 2-4 damage per shot. Coldcrow also always appears with her minions in tow and chills the player with every arrow that hits. Fighting this opponent with no faster movement speed on boots, no faster hit recovery, and no faster cast gear was not a lot of fun. There wasn't much Blanche could do beyond tank a lot of the arrows and keep chugging red potions; I made it through this obstacle largely because the damage Coldcrow outputs is also very low. Blanche saved up 10k gold by the end of the Caves though which allowed me to return to town and refresh the shops until Akara offered a staff with +3 to Ice Bolt. This brought the skill up to SLVL 5+3 where it dealt, uh, 11-17 damage. But starting at SLVL 9, Ice Bolt would begin increasing its damage by *TWO* points per level up and then again at SLVL 17 it would increase to three points per skill level. That actually did make a difference since the scaling from synergy skills would boost that base damage by a lot.
Blanche gradually seemed to grow stronger over the course of Act One Normal as I kept investing more of those skill points into Ice Bolt. I was picking up the usual trash gear that drops in this part of the game and eventually found two things that were genuinely useful. One was a pair of faster cast gear, with 10% faster cast on a ring and another 10% on an amulet. Hitting 20% faster cast meant that Blanche's casting animation dropped from 13 frames to 11 frames, something that made her significantly quicker at getting those Ice Bolts out. A low-damage / mana-efficient spell like Ice Bolt very badly wants fast casting equipment so that it can be spammed frequently. Related to that, I also found some sapphire gem chips and stuffed them into a cap with two sockets, which granted Blanche 20 additional max mana. I didn't plan on investing any skill points into Energy for this character build since I knew the Spirit runeword would take care of mana issues later. That extra mana was extremely useful for the moment though as it took Blanche from 50 mana up to 70 mana. The mana regen rate in Diablo 2 is mostly based off the size of your mana orb (don't put more than one skill point into Warmth!) and this was enough to allow Blanche to switch over to full time Ice Bolt usage.
Things were pretty routine until Blanche reached the Pit 2 where she was confronted with a Cold Enchanted skeleton, who apparently had enough cold resistance to become Cold Immune! I had no obvious way to deal with this customer and simply ignored the skeleton boss for the moment, heading deeper onto the cramped floor of the Pit 2 where Blanche killed a bunch of carvers and their shamans. I slew every single other inhabitant of this dungeon before going back and meleeing the skeleton boss to death which required the drinking of a bunch of red potions. This never would have worked outside of Normal difficulty but of course Blanche will have lots of additional tools at her disposal by the time she comes back here.
The remainder of Act One was fairly uneventful. I remember that Blanche randomly ended up with "gain 1 mana per monster kill" on some part of her equipment, and that actually did something for once since she was killing carvers in a single slot. A lot of the other opponents took two Ice Bolts and I generally found myself casting the spell twice to make certain that Blanche's current foe perished. There isn't much that threatens the player in Act One Normal and even Pitspawn Fouldog also having 75% cold resistance wasn't enough to stop Blanche's march of progress to the bottom of the Rogue monastery. The toughest opponent turned out to be Bone Ash, of all things, since Cold Immune trait always makes him Cold Immune as well. Once again I cleared the whole Cathedral and then went back to bash Bone Ash with Blanche's staff. This took so long that I purchased an axe with some damage modifiers and put it on Blanche's alternate weapon tab to prevent a reoccurance in the future.
By the time that Blanche made it down to Cats 4, she was CLVL 16 with Ice Bolt sitting at 38-53 damage per casting from 11+3 skills points invested directly into the skill and then another 5 synergy points placed in Ice Blast. The chill length from the Ice Bolts was approaching 25 seconds of duration by this point, with none of the chill reduction that would take place on Nightmare or Hell difficulties, which essentially meant that foes were perma-slowed in any lengthy fight. Andariel had enough health and cold resistance to drag out the ending boss fight for about a minute, however she could never close into melee range against Blanche and that meant there was little danger here even if my Sorcie was poisoned a couple of times. On to Act Two.
The Sewers at the start of Act Two were more difficult than I expected, certainly harder than they had any real right to be given that this was Normal difficulty. Blanche could easily handle all the melee threats which were never able to reach her, however the Burning Dead Archers kept plugging her with shots despite my best efforts. This was early enough in the game that Blanche didn't have much in the way of fire resistance and with my Sorcie having less than 200 HP there wasn't much room for error. I think that another issue was a lack of faster movement speed on Blanche's boots, as getting up to 20% or 30% faster run makes it so much easier to step around incoming projectiles. This was an area where she had to drink a bunch of red potions to keep topping off health. Radament didn't pose much of a problem and I put the extra skill point into Frost Nova for prerequisite purposes.
The outdoor deserts were much easier, as they almost always are, and Blanche rolled through the next few areas without much of interest happening. The beetles and their Charged Bolt sparks were about the only thing that damaged her; I've noticed many times that the beetle lightning is more dangerous in Normal difficulty before the player has had the chance to stack lightning resistance. The vultures and crows and spear cats that made up the rest of the desert inhabitants were feeble opponents that collapsed as soon as they ran into an Ice Bolt. The underground areas were a bit more challenging due to the constrained movement in the various tombs, places where it was harder to avoid the beetle sparks and swarming undead. Greater mummies began appearing in the Halls of the Dead and they were as annoying as ever, with Blanche risking danger to run up into their faces for a series of Ice Bolt casts. At least the Maggot Lair was an easy fit for Blanche since her spells could fly straight down the corridors to take out the beetles and bugs up ahead. Thank goodness I didn't have to shepherd a skeleton army through those passages again! Unfortunately Coldworm at the end was Cold Immune as always:
Ice Bolt wasn't going to work against this opponent. It did work against everything else in the final chamber, however, so Blanche killed all of the other maggots and then switched over to whacking Coldworm with her axe on the other weapon slot. That was absolutely as ridiculous as it sounds but it did get the job done. There was nothing of note in the final remaining outdoor areas or the Ancient Tunnels, then Blanche killed a bunch of snakes in the Viper Temple. They're one of the few monsters to have cold resistance in Normal difficulty but it wasn't enough to make a difference here, with the snakes still dying in two shots of Ice Bolt. Claw Viper 2 was dominated not by Fangskin but by a big collection of Guardian greater mummies who were hanging out on the north side of the small room. I think there were four of them there and it took some work to drop their skeleton minions and then the greater mummies without waking up Fangskin. The snake boss was mild enough here on the lowest difficulty that Blanche shot it out with him from the ground floor instead of retreating to the safety of the raised platform.
The four floors of the Palace were easy enough that I didn't bother to take any screenshots. Next was the Arcane Sanctuary where the straight horizontal lines of the platforms worked to Blanche's advantage. Only the flying Apparitions could ignore the terrain and beeline straight for Blanche, everything else had to walk through a hail of Ice Bolts to approach her position. The goats and the ghosts both died in two shots of Ice Bolt while the vampires had 50% cold resistance and took double that effort, usually falling in four shots. None of this was especially tough to manage and it helped that the ghosts dropped a lot of mana potions to fuel more spellcasting. I had also upgraded Blanche's helmet by finding a new version with two sockets, then stuffing in a Flawed and Normal Sapphire for 40 additional max mana. This boosted her to roughly 120 mana and that was sufficient for now with Ice Bolt remaining at its fixed 3 mana cost.
Blanche had an easy time in the Canyon of the Magi where the spear cats and Crusher brutes don't get scary until juiced up with extra speed in Hell difficulty. Then she got down to the business of tackling the seven Tombs of Tal Rasha, starting with the six False Tombs before visiting the True Tomb in slot #1. The very first False Tomb had one of the circular entry areas with a group of Unraveler champs around the first corner. Blanche had zero room to operate with all of their skeleton minions chasing her around and the Unholy Bolts from those Unraveler champs hurt a lot. I ran in close to get the kill on one Unraveler and took a series of hits in quick succession; I saw Blanche's health orb read "18" for a split second before I mashed the full rejuv button, ouch! 
That was way too close and a sign not to take these areas too lightly even if it was Normal difficulty. Blanche's biggest weakness was the fact that Ice Bolt could only hit a single target at a time, with absolutely no area of effect damage whatsoever. She was easily overwhelmed by numbers and the Burning Dead skeletons always appeared in big groups.
Clearing out the remainder of the Tombs of Tal Rasha was a bit of grind despite this being Normal difficulty. The biggest annoyance was the fact that Blanche drew the Unraveler/Burning Dead combo in every single tomb, seven out of seven times - good grief! The player usually gets a break from them in at least one or two of the tombs, but nope, not this time. While the skeletons would always die to a single Ice Bolt casting and a decent number of their bodies shattered from the ice element damage, it was still tedious having to dig them out of every single tomb. (The Blizzard designers clearly didn't anticipate players clearing all of the False Tombs and I suspect the vast majority of them never bother.) Most of the non-Burning Dead opponents were dying in two shots of Ice Bolt, with the Unravelers typically requiring three. I didn't find Kaa's Tomb until the very last of the False Tombs where I had to shatter most of his skeleton minions before being able to close in for the finishing shots against Kaa himself.
Duriel was not a good opponent for Blanche. The big bug has a whopping 50% cold resistance and 4000 HP (a lot for this point in the gameplay) which meant that it took some time to whittle down his health. Blanche's Ice Bolt was hitting for about 90 damage per shot at this point which worked out to nearly 100 hits needed to get through that cold resistance. Duriel's Holy Freeze aura also slowed Blanche's movement and casting speed to a crawl, enough so that he kept getting in some charges against her no matter what I did. Those charges were smacking Blanche around for 30-40 damage apiece which forced me to keep drinking lots of red potions. I also ran and ran enough in this battle that Blanche's stamina began to run out; I had to make a trip back to town for restocking red potions as well as picking up a few of the little-utilized Stamina potions. There was no true chance of dying here but this still wasn't a lot of fun for Blanche and I was glad to see Duriel bite the dust. I think part of the issue was still being stuck on the default movement speed which made it hard to run away from Duriel. I gambled 100k worth of boots afterwards but without finding anything that had both faster run and some kind of resistances on it. Blanche would have to keep trying her luck with additional gambles, or else turn up a Tal rune for Stealth.
The first thing that I did in Act Three was head over to Asheara and find one of the Iron Wolves to hire. I was delighted to find that the random generator had rolled a Lightning Mage who went by the name of Jarulf; while any other mage would have functioned equally well, I have a soft spot for this little Easter Egg named after the creator of Jarulf's Guide for the original Diablo. The Act Three mercenaries are widely seen as the weakest of the four types (even after they received some buffs in Diablo 2 Resurrected) because they deal damage based on their spells and therefore don't scale in the same way that the other mercenaries can scale via high end gear. The Act Two mercenaries have innate auras to juice up the player's characters, plus they can offer Insight's Meditation aura (which the Rogues from Act One also get here in D2R), while the Barbarians from Act Five deal the most raw damage. That doesn't really leave much of a role for the Act Three mages, why is a major reason why I wanted to test one of them out with Blanche. Prove them all wrong, Jarulf!
For the moment, Jarulf was a helpful addition to the team who kicked in some extra damage without drawing too much attention to himself. I liked the fact that the Act Three mercenaries imitate the Act One rogues by largely staying out of trouble, preferring to remain at range as opposed to the Act Two mercenaries who are impossible to keep alive for long against major threats. Jarulf had three spells at his disposal: Charged Bolt, Lightning, and Static Field. All of them were sitting at low levels for the moment, especially Static Field which had a range of only a few yards, and Charged Bolt was effectively useless at the moment since the damage was so low. Lightning seemed to be the best choice at killing enemies as it could roll anywhere from 1-100 damage. Often the lightning bolts would roll low damage and do nothing, however at least some of the time they would roll on the high end and blast apart a line of fetishes. I hadn't collected any equipment ahead of time for Jarulf so he was making due with random garbage for the moment. This was also a blessing of sorts in disguise: the Act Three mercenaries do poorly in late game comparisons because their damage doesn't scale with their equipment... but conversely, not having gear for Jarulf also didn't hurt his damage! Ideally, I would get him a Spirit sword of his own along with a Lore helmet for some +skills additions to his damage. First I'd have to get those very items for Blanche though.
As far as the opponents that Blanche faced, there wasn't much worth discussing throughout the steamy jungle regions. These open areas presented little danger and simply stretched on and on, with most foes dying to two casts of Ice Bolt. Act Three Normal has extremely little in the way of cold resistance, only the vipers in a handful of the Kurast Temples and then the vampires having anything in the way of blocking cold damage. Everything else took full damage and perished quickly; the biggest weakness of Blanche's Ice Bolt skill remained its single target nature. That could be annoying when there were two dozen flayers on the screen at once. This being Normal difficulty though, nothing was especially scary, not even the undead dolls that kept blowing up in her face. They were one enemy where I wished that I had an Act Two mercenary to hide behind and take the hit for her.
I took my time and played out this part of Blanche's journey over a number of different sessions, not having the time for one of those marathon playthroughs where I invest four or five hours into Diablo 2 at once. Blanche reached CLVL 26 while she was exploring the Flayer Dungeon which was where she maxed out her investment into the Ice Bolt skill at SLVL 20+3. Along with some synergy points in Ice Blast and Frost Nova (for prerequisite purposes), the skill was dealing 91-115 damage per casting with a chill duration of 37 seconds. That chill effect was pretty helpful when it kicked it though virtually nothing lived long enough for it to matter. Most monsters at this stage of the game have somewhere between 50 and 150 HP and I could reliably down even the beefier foes in two shots. This made it easy to kill the Zealots before they could run back to their corrupted priests for healing; I knew it would get harder on the tougher difficulties but this worked for now. The Ruined Temple was a bit tricky because half a dozen enemy rogues were hiding out at the staircase to make a nuisance of themselves. Once Blanche defeated them, polishing off Sarina and the rest of the bunch was routine.
The snakes, on the other hand, had 80% cold resistance so this was not what I wanted to see upon entering one of the Kurast Temples:
Now that was one of the stairs traps that have made these little dungeons so infamous over the years, ugh! 
Blanche found herself strolling into four Serpent Magus champs, plus another half a dozen beetles, plus two contingents of corrupted rogue archers firing away from either side of the entrance. This was among the worst situations that I've seen and could very easily have resulted in a death if this wasn't Normal difficulty. As it was, Jarulf bit the farm for the first time while Blanche had to drink a full rejuv before she could manage to slay the bulk of this hostile force and then retreat through a town portal. Messy, messy stuff. At least this was the final of the six Kurast Temples so I'd had time to warm up as a player and I was on my guard, ready to react to unfair situations like this one. The enemy snakes were definitely the worst opponent to draw since each viper required four to five shots of Ice Bolt before they collapsed, made even worse when they rolled as bosses or champs as they did here.
The outdoor areas were less dangerous and Blanche didn't have any problems clearing out Travincal. The Zealots always died in two shots which made clearing a path to their Hierophants a cinch. For the Council members, Toorc's Ice Enchanted trait gave him 75% cold resistance and therefore he took by far the most time to defeat, needing something like 50-60 shots at a piddling 25 damage per Ice Bolt. I had to lure him away from the other Council members and kill him by the central platform, then the remaining Council members could be bum-rushed and defeated where they stood. Amusingly the Council dropped two different unique items at the same time, both of them sadly useless (Ichorsting the unique crossbow and Steelgoad the unique voulge). The Durance of Hate spawns at normal size here in Normal difficulty so it was easily full cleared, even if the undead dolls spawned on both of the two floors. On the bottom floor, Bremm rolled a Might aura which would have made him dangerous had this been on a tougher difficulty. Maffer wasn't a problem but then Wyand had about eight vampires hanging out in his room which put a bit of a pounding on Blanche. I drank red potions and cut them all down one at a time through the firestorm of Meteor spells.
There was a convenient skill shrine located near Mephisto's platform at the back of Durance 3 which I used for some additional damage against the boss. Mephisto was a ranged caster much like Blanche herself and the two of them both sat at long distance tossing spells at one another for several minutes. I kept Blanche far enough away that she wouldn't get hit by Mephisto's poison and could dodge the Charged Bolts without much effort, though despite my best efforts I did get nailed by the lightning and cold shot occasionally. While those things definitely hurt, there was always time to drink a red potion and recover HP before Mephisto's next followup spell. Things never became serious enough to require drinking a purple potion off belt and Blanche wore down Mephisto's healthbar over the course of about two minutes of firing Ice Bolts. This was a smoother boss fight than Duriel had been.
Act Four is known for its heavy fire and poison resistance, however it's not a total cakewalk for an ice Sorcie as there's some cold resistance on the Stygian Hag breeders along with the Doom Knight / Oblivion Knight pairings. Blanche had the bad luck to roll the breeding demons in all three of the initial outdoor areas, though at least it was better to have them here in Normal difficulty than in Nightmare or Hell. Their pups always died in a single Ice Bolt which was good to see and Blanche was able to keep their numbers from getting out of control even as she would have preferred a different monster mix. She also rolled leapers in the Outer Steppes as well, another monster known for being hostile to mages, argh! My reward for clearing these areas was an early drop of a Sol rune - excellent! Blanche now had a Sol rune but still hadn't turned up the Tal needed to make Stealth, heh. She found Izual in the back half of the Plains of Despair and emptied about six full mana orbs before he dropped. Izual's 75% cold resistance and 12,000 HP made him an exceptionally tanky opponent even if he couldn't do much of anything to hurt Blanche.
Blanche dodged more Grotesque breeders on the River of Flame but did roll Blood Maggots which functioned similarly. She did her best to smash the maggot eggs (which would die to a single Ice Bolt) but sometimes the game bugged out and the eggs couldn't be damaged or targeted until they hatched their litte bugs. There were also Urdars present who were highly noticeable for having 50% cold resistance, therefore requiring 4-5 shots instead of the 2 shots that everything else needed. The Hellforge was located near the entrance to the River and Hephasto turned out to struggle against the power of chilling damage. He rolled an ineffective Holy Fire aura and wound up being so slowed from Ice Bolt's cold effects that he couldn't touch Blanche. That guy was extremely dangerous in some earlier versions of Diablo 2 and just no longer seems to have the same juice. The Hellforge quest delivered an Ort rune - ha! That was a middling result but did provide the other half of the runeword needed for a Lore helmet. Thus Blanche dropped the double sapphire helmet that she had been wearing since early Act Two in favor of the pictured item above. Ice Bolt was up to 145 damage per shot; now I needed to work on her fire resistance.
The enemies in the Chaos Sanctuary are pretty weak against cold element and Blanche fared well here. Doom Knights and Storm Casters both died in two shots, and even the normally beefy Venom Lords also perished in two shots thanks to having zero protection against the cold. Oblivion Knights were annoying as always but couldn't do too much to threaten Blanche since their meat shields were falling so quickly. I was able to pop all of the seals without having to retreat backwards to safety, including the Infector's mob who trailed in piecemeal to be shot down by Ice Bolts in safety. The Vizier's mob appeared on top of poor Jarulf who was ripped apart in short order; he would have died anyway against Diablo though so this wasn't much of a loss. Speaking of which:
Diablo spent most of his duel with Blanche hanging out on the central pentagram. I was quite content to keep him up there as Blanche launched Ice Bolts from a distance, taking advantage of a mana regen shrine that had been located nearby. Ice Bolt's range extends for about the length of a full screen and this was more or less the maximum range at which Blanche could hit something. Diablo mixed up his various abilities, all of which were far enough away that Blanche could avoid taking full damage. She still only had about 30% fire resistance and I didn't want to find out what would happen from eating an entire Flave Wave or Lightning Breath of Doom. Most of the damage Blanche took came from Diablo's Flame Nova which is essentially undodgeable and took out 40-50 HP at a time from her health orb. Eventually Diablo made his way off the pentagram with about a quarter of his health remaining, then ran around in circles trying to hit Blanche. Once again the chilling effect from Ice Bolt was legitimately quite helpful as I continued pelting him with more spells. Blanche emerged victorious after about three minutes of combat; I never had to return to town for more potions but the supply had been getting low when Big D keeled over.
Act Five tends to be noticeably easier than Act Four, at least in Normal difficulty with none of the later guest monsters showing up. For an ice Sorcie like Blanche, nothing would appear with cold resistance until she reached the underground caverns halfway through the Act. The melee Baal minions and underground tentacle demons were both easy to defeat and went down in two shots of Ice Bolt; imps posed even less of a problem with sub-100 HP who would always die in a single casting. Blanche could spray the Ice Bolts all over the place and the imps would die whenever a cold shot touched them. The most interesting thing that happened in the Bloody Foothills was a series of useful runes dropping, a pair of Amn runes along with a Thul. Along with the Ral-Ort-Tal runes that the player always gets as a quest reward, Blanche had everything needed for a Spirit runeword except a Crystal Sword to drop the runes into. She had already found a magical Crystal Sword and another one that already had three sockets present (close but no cigar) and only needed the plain white version of the object.
Speak of the devil...
There it was, a Crystal Sword appearing from some random monster drop in the Arreat Plateau. When this particular sword drops in Act Four or Act Five Normal, it will always have a maximum of four possible sockets which makes it the perfect choice for the Spirit runeword with its low Strength requirement. I didn't try to mess around with the Horadric Cube recipe that can add sockets to an item, which would have had 50% odds to roll with the desired four sockets (along with 1 in 6 odds to roll each of one, two, or three sockets). No, I used the Larzuk quest reward immediately to make Spirit as this item was far too important for Blanche to mess around with a bad streak of RNG luck. As I've written a bunch of previous times, the Spirit runeword is way, way too good in terms of what it offers. There's literally everything possible here for a casting build: +2 to all skills, faster cast, faster hit recovery, a nice boost to health, and a massive increase in mana. The 111 mana on this item almost literally doubled Blanche's mana total! She had been drinking a lot of mana potions previously and now her mana problems were a thing of the past.
The actual damage on Ice Bolt went down slightly since Blanche was dropping her old staff with +3 Ice Bolt for the Spirit runeword with +2 to all skills. The skill now sat at 134-170 damage per casting and was about to get a big bonus from Cold Mastery when the skill unlocked at CLVL 30. Cold Mastery decreases the cold resistance of all opponents and more +skills gear would be super helpful for the mastery bonus even if it didn't help with Blanche's synergy skill points. This particular Spirit runeword had also rolled a nice result on the faster cast affix (the potential range is 25-35%) which boosted Blanche up to 53% total faster cast with the 20% she was getting from rings and amulet. This cut a frame off her casting rate down to 10 frames per cast which was clearly faster to see in practice; if Blanche could ever turn up another Tal rune for a Stealth armor, she could hit the next breakpoint at 63% faster cast for 9 frames per spell. And finally, moving from a two-handed staff to a one-handed sword also allowed Blanche to equip a shield with Perfect Diamonds in her other hand to solve her resistance woes for the moment. All four categories would hit the 75% resistance cap once Blanche received the quest reward scroll from Malah.
Long story short, the direct damage from Ice Bolt had stayed about the same but in every other possible aspect Blanche had gotten much stronger. 
The other big change in Act Five is that the player suddenly starts leveling at an incredible rate after having gained barely three levels across the entirety of Acts Three and Four. Blanche had already maxed out Ice Bolt so she was skilling Ice Blast for its synergy properties, pausing at CLVL 30 to drop a single skill point into the aforementioned Cold Mastery. That skill immediately went to SLVL 1+3 for -35% cold resistance applied against all monsters, effectively an increase in damage of 35% against anything with no resistance (yes, enemies will go into negative resistance territory in D2). Cold Mastery was even more useful against the foes that did have cold resistance, as the frozen ice monsters in the underground caves decreased from 75% resistance down to 40% resistance which more than doubled the damage dealt. (If Blanche dealt 100 damage per shot, she would increase from 25 damage to 60 damage in these situations.) It still took a lot of casts to defeat those things along with the pictured yetis since both monster types had high HP totals, however Blanche would have taken far longer without having Cold Mastery to fall back upon.
Most of the monsters weren't terribly dangerous for Blanche as she could down most targets before they could get close enough to hurt her. Ranged casters like the witches died very, very fast to Ice Bolts since they had low health totals and nonexistent cold resistance. The one monster type that always demands attention in Act Five are the minotaurs, and sure enough they were the scariest opponents for Blanche as well due to their fast movement and Frenzy attacks. Blanche fared better than most characters though since her Ice Bolts slowed whatever she hit, with the chill lasting a preposterously long amount of time here in Normal difficulty. Three shots would kill each minotaur and they could rarely reach her before she gunned them down. Blanche continued to level as she cleared out the ice caves as I kept placing her new skill points into Ice Blast; each synergy skill added 15% to Ice Bolt's base damage whereas Cold Mastery only decreased monster resistances by 5%. My plan was to max out Ice Blast as well as Ice Bolt, then focus on Cold Mastery in Nightmare as enemy resistances started climbing, then go back to more synergy points in Blizzard afterwards.
Nihlathak's Temple was rather dull here on the base difficulty with no guest monsters to spice things up. Blanche fought lots and lots of the Prowling Dead on each floor which I've always found to be one of the least dangerous enemy types. Even the guaranteed presence of minotaurs in the Halls of Anguish wasn't enough to make this area anything other than routine. Nihlathak on the bottom floor was fought at the furthest range that I could manage, just barely visible on screen, after luring out most of his minions for safe disposal. The damage radius on his Corpse Explosion skill was fairly small for the moment and Blanche managed to avoid taking any big hits. Of note in this area was finding a pair of Gem Shrines which allowed me to complete a three Diamond shield for 57% resist all at an early date. Then I started working on another version of the same shield for Jarulf which was better than anything I was likely to find him for a long time.
I started another gaming session at the beginning of the Glacial Trail and Blanche just went on cruise control, mowing down everything in her path without breaking a sweat. The Frozen Tundra was very heavy on imps and therefore a total joke, the Infernal Pit had more imps and those Overseer/melee minions which never seem to do anything, etc. Frozen Horrors in the Ancient's Way took about half a dozen shots each due to their cold resistance but were so slow that they never got anywhere near Blanche. Snapchip Shatter in the Icy Celler was a more interesting version of that enemy type since he's always Cold Enchanted and therefore Cold Immune. That was where Jarulf shined, pelting the boss with lightning spells and killing it without much trouble. Jarulf had done well against Frozenstein earlier on the Frozen River (another boss who's always Cold Immune) and I could only hope that the mercenary would continue to do this well in Nightmare difficulty.
The Ancients were a little bit weird in the sense that Madawc is usually the easiest member of the trio to kill, and yet Madawc was also the only one who had any cold resistance. This caused him to last the longest as Korlic went down rather quickly to volleys of Ice Bolts followed by Talic. Even though Madawc kept eating a face full of ice shards every time he stopped to throw his axes, his cold resistance caused him to outlive his comrades, at least for a few seconds. The Ancients did kill Jarulf but I'd been expecting that and could afford the resurrection bill. The Worldstone Keep went past in a blur as Blanche barreled her way through the three floors one after the other. This was all taking place in the same gaming session and she was clearing each floor in roughly five minutes on the in-game clock. I'm so used to playing hogtied variant characters that sometimes I forget how fast things can progress with a strong build. Blanche was hitting for about 200 damage per shot, not even counting the effects of Cold Mastery, and that was more than good enough for Normal difficulty. (If I'd been using Ice Blast instead, she would have been hitting for close to 500 damage per casting, heh.)
I took the time to clear out the side wings of the Throne of Destruction for safety's sake as always. The first two of Baal's bosses died right where they stood, Colenzo and Achmel blasted apart by cold volleys before they could find a proper footing. Blanche had to start retreating backwards for the remaining three bosses, kiting them back and relying on the extraordinarily long chilling effect from Ice Bolt to slow their progress as they tried to dine on her tasty flesh. This worked remarkably well as these melee-based opponents could never really close the distance with her. Jarulf lasted longer than I expected before biting the dust against Bartuc's mob and I didn't bother to revive him as I knew he would only fall again here. Ventar managed to chase Blanche back to the gateway in the back corner of that screenshot, and then Lister finally pushed Blanche all the way back into the maze. I knew that would happen since Lister and his minions are all heavily cold resistant and have massive HP totals for Normal difficulty. Blanche kept them slowed and emptied three mana orbs leading them on a merry game of chase before they were all dead.
I've never liked Baal as a final ending boss and this was another occasion where he failed to deliver a real fight. The Lord of Destruction is basically a coward and rarely engages in direct combat with the player; Blanche found him hiding out on the platform in the center of the Worldstone chamber. I started tossing Ice Bolts from the opposite side of the screen near the base of the bridge and Baal seemed content to stay in place, summoning his Festering Appendages and throwing out his Cold Wave but otherwise doing nothing. He also tried to use his infamous Orange shot but wasn't close enough to hit Blanche so all those fireworks did absolutely nothing. And... that was the whole fight. Baal never moved away from that spot, summoning his clone when he dropped low on health but never moving or teleporting away. I drank red and blue potions as needed and otherwise held down the right mouse button for about 90 seconds casting an unending stream of Ice Bolts. Baal died like a total putz and achieved nothing:
He didn't even have the decency to drop something useful for Blanche; I'd been searching for a pair of better gloves for a long time and of couse these rare gloves rolled as Ethereal, heh. (Not that the affixes on them were any good regardless!) For that matter, Blanche somehow still went the entirety of Normal difficulty without finding a single Tal rune, needing the quest reward Tal for her Spirit runeword. Yes, somehow I was able to make both Lore and Spirit before Stealth, go figure. I only found a single Ith rune the whole difficulty as well so no Cubing up into a Tal for Blanche either. Well, she'd sort that out soon enough in Nightmare difficulty.
That was a full clear of Normal difficulty, no deaths incurred, no areas skipped, all monsters slain. Now the real game could begin.
