Blanche: Nightmare Difficulty Part One

Blanche wasn't quite there yet but the Stealth runeword had still shaved off another frame from her casting animation and taken her down to 9 frames per spell. That's very fast indeed and she started to feel like a machine gunner mowing down the monsters as they raced towards her. Blanche could stroll into a fallen or carver camp and spew out Ice Bolts in every direction, each of which would defeat one of the little buggers if they happened to touch it. Her clear pace was very fast in advancing through the Stony Field and Underground Passage to the Dark Wood. That was where she faced her most dangerous opponent yet, as Treehead Woodfist and his minions were literally right next to the Underground Passage exit and came charging after Blanche before she had even registered their presence. Treehead was Cold Enchanted in addition to his permanent Extra Strong / Extra Fast which meant that he took about triple the shots that would otherwise have been required. Jarulf fell quickly and Blanche had to run in circles around the Underground Passage cave mouth while shooting Ice Bolts behind her at the big brute. Not exactly fun stuff but she did defeat the boss without further trouble.

The rest of the Dark Wood was uneventful as Blanche methodically exterminated about a hundred carvers and their shamans. Tristram was unusual in having no bosses at all located along the outer edges of the town, then Griswold plus another boss and double champ packs hiding out in the central area near Cain's cage. I pulled out the bosses first and defeated them, followed by charging into the center to defeat a whole bunch of carver shaman champs hiding around the buildings. Blanche had seen an Amn rune drop in the process of fulfilling this quest sequence which allowed me to test my luck in the Horadric Cube:

Back in Act Five, Blanche had taken the first Crystal Sword that dropped and used her socket quest on it. That guaranteed it would roll with four sockets and allowed her to create a Spirit runeword. Two other Crystal Swords had dropped over the course of the Act, however, and I could use a Horadric Cube recipe to try and get the magic four sockets in them as well. Ort + Amn + a Perfect Amethyst will add sockets to a normal (white) weapon. The amount that appears is a straight dice roll from 1 to 6, with the weapon getting whatever the maximum number of sockets it can hold if it rolls higher than what's allowed. The Crystal Swords that are generated at an item level between 26 and 40 can have a maximum of four sockets, and this item level happens to correspond to Act Five Normal and early Act One Nightmare. The Cube recipe therefore had 50% odds to get the desired four sockets (on a roll of 4, 5, or 6) and then 1 in 6 odds to get one, two, or three sockets when used on those accumulated Crystal Swords. The Spirit runeword is too important for a casting character to roll the dice like this and potentially whiff on a bunch of coin flips which is why I typically just burn a socket quest reward for my solo characters. However, now I was trying to craft a second Spirit sword for my mercenary and it wasn't too big of a deal if Blanche failed this particular bit of RNG luck. I hit the Cube button and...

Success! I could have tried this Cube recipe another time if this attempt failed but I knew well from playing Civ games that failing a pair of 50/50 tosses of the dice is hardly unusual. Anyway, Jarulf now had his own Spirit runeword which had rolled slightly worse stats than the one that Blanche was using. His item had 2% less faster cast and a whole 1 point of mana fewer, heh. Unfortunately the bonuses to Vitality and mana were useless here (mercenaries benefit from additional life on items but do not have Vitality as a stat), however the real gain was the +2 to all skills. I checked and this item did bump up Jarulf's three lightning element skills by two points apiece. The Act Three mercenaries currently do benefit from equipment with +skills on it along with faster cast gear (they did not benefit from either prior to Diablo 2 Resurrected) which at least makes them somewhat viable as opposed to their prior utterly pathetic status. Jarulf wasn't exactly doing a whole lot at the moment, though his Lightning skill would occasionally roll high on damage and take out some carvers and his Static Field could be useful against bosses. The real test would come against Cold Immune targets against which Blanche was helpless until much later on when she could start using that cold sunder charm.

The following areas were nice and easy for Blanche as she continued spam-casting her Ice Bolts to great success. The Forgotten Tower was the most dangerous area in this portion of D2's gameplay, however fortunately it was another place with zero cold resistance whatsoever which meant that the goats and devilkin and ghosts inside didn't put up much of a threat. Ice Bolt was averaging about 240 base damage per shot, which became an effective 325 damage on average after factoring in Cold Mastery's bonus. Blanche could get off about three castings per second which translated into a pretty nasty monster steamroller for early Nightmare difficulty. None of the Tower floors had stairs traps, thankfully, and the only real dustup took place when this Fanaticism aura ghost boss appeared on the bottom level. Blanche retreated through the narrow doorway to the right and knnocked down the enemies when they tried to chase her; Jarulf foolishly stayed in the main room and forced a resurrection bill, blah. The Countess dropped a disappointing Ral rune to close out this quest, oh well.

The first floor of the Pit had exactly one difficult boss when Blanche turned around a blind corner and stumbled into an Extra Strong / Multishot archer. Blanche ate a full volley of arrows which made me wish that she had more than 530 HP; I gulped down a full rejuv for safety and took more care in downing the remainder of the boss mob. The Pit 2 was almost shockingly easy with both bosses situated down on the bottom level, allowing Blanche to make her way down there in safety and without ever getting swarmed. From there Blanche made her way into the Rogue Monastery where everything continued to be smooth sailing. She found herself facing lots of skeleton mages for whatever reason, rolling them again and again on the random monster draws, which were opponents that failed to achieve anything against Blanche's good resistances. Eventually Blanche ran across this:

The Gargoyle Traps were the only foes with complete cold immunity which brought Jarulf into the spotlight finally. He handled these things well on the rare occasions where they appeared, knocking them out quickly with his Lightning casts while Blanche stood around and tanked their fire shots. Bone Ash in the Cathedral was another boss who always rolls as Cold Immune and presented a slightly more dangerous opponent. I had Blanche run around and blast all of the other enemies in the small Cathedral, then brought Jarulf back to get the kill against the skeleton mage. I was having a lot of fun playing Blanche and therefore did the whole monastery from the Outer Cloister to Andariel in a single session which flew past in rapid fashion. Everything in the Catacombs went past in a blur as Blanche never ran into any real trouble spots, though I do recall the vampires on Cats 3 requiring more shots due to their higher health totals and innate cold resistance. The chilling effect from Ice Bolt continued to be highly useful against all melee enemies as it shut down the Arach spiders when they tried to group up against my Sorceress. The chill duration for that skill had been cut in half here in Nightmare but still had an ungoldly long 18 second duration thanks to having 23 points in a CLVL 1 skill.

There were more bosses than I was used to seeing on Cats 4 which nonetheless fell quickly to Blanche's ice magic. Andariel also has 50% cold resistance and a hefty life total for this portion of the gameplay which forced Blanche into playing ring around the rosie with the blood pool in the outer room. Jarulf died immediately as I knew he would (Andy's poison is brutal for the poor mercenaries) and then Blanche spent the next minute running and shooting around that pool as she wore down Andariel's health bar. It was all nice and routine without any real danger, followed by a trip to Act Two in the back of Warriv's caravan.

The Sewers was another area with very heavy fire resistance where the denizens lacked any protection against cold damage. All of those Burning Dead archers and mages didn't enjoy the freezing bullets that Blanche was firing off, not one bit! There were a good number of bosses to be found across the three subterranean floors, certainly far more bosses than Blanche had encountered in Normal difficulty, but again without anything really rising to the level of a real threat. Although Blanche would take some damage whenever she cleared out a nest of skeleton archers, those encounters would knock out something like 100-150 health from her nearly 600 HP total - not too scary. I was amused when a Dimensional Blade (the exceptional version of a Crystal Sword) dropped with exactly 4 sockets, heh. That would have been perfect for a Spirit runeword but I hardly needed a third version of the item so it was sold. When a two socket Serpentskin armor dropped a bit later, I was able to create a second Stealth armor using the superior base item type. Blanche swapped over to the new version for the minimal increase in defensive value and movement speed that it provided (her initial Stealth had been created with a Medium ring mail which carried a modest speed penalty). Radament had a lot of health and 60% base cold resistance which meant he took a little while to kill though again without really putting up too much of a challenge. Blanche did not have to retreat and pull the Radament minions away for safety, she could simply kill eveything in the room with the gold chest.

The outdoor desert areas were very easy for Blanche to navigate, though if you've ever read any of my previous Diablo 2 reports you surely know that by now. The deserts make it easy for any character to maneuver and the monster mixes in these regions (vultures, beetles, spear cats, insect swarms, maggots, etc.) lack any of the game's most dangerous opponents. Blanche was further aided by a total lack of any cold resistance in the outdoor areas, quite literally no cold resistance on anything at all outside of some modest resistance on Beetleburst and Dark Elder. The dusty waste terrain also allowed me to get a sense for how quickly Blanche was spamming out her Ice Bolts. I could visually track their path across the ground and see how closely they were grouped together. If you ever played Diablo 2, try comparing the visual spacing of these elemental bolts on a character with no faster casting gear versus one with 75% faster cast like Blanche. Cutting from the default 13 frames down to 9 frames per cast made a gigantic difference which resulted in Ice Bolts spraying in great waves across the sands.

The underground areas were a bit tougher, as always, largely due to the more cramped conditions inside. The Stony Tomb didn't present any problems but then the Halls of the Dead started introducing the greater mummies who were their usual pain in the rear. Blanche could kill their skeleton minions in two shots apiece and here on Nightmare difficulty they were still slow moving enough that she could race around them to blast down the Hollow Ones in the back. That kind of move is often suicidal on Hell difficulty and I suspected that I'd have to play safer once she reached that point. For now though, Blanche could continue running and gunning her way through these musty tombs. When a particularly large mob of enemies appeared, I would fight them through the safety of a doorway where they would get choked up on top of one another. Standard tactics, nothing to see here.

Blanche was the rare character who didn't mind navigating the Maggot Lair. In fact, her kit was unusually well suited to fighting through straight line corridors. The biggest weakness of Ice Bolt was its single-target nature which didn't matter in the narrow tunnels that could only present one foe at a time. Jarulf's spells also benefited from the tight quarters as he could cast Lightning down the length of each hallway. That was the spell that seemed to do the most damage since his level wasn't high enough for Charged Bolt to be effective and Jarulf wisely kept his distance from monsters most of the time. On the bottom level, Coldworm was once again Cold Immune and Blanche squished all of the other bugs before leaving the big worm to Jarulf's lightning damage. I had turned up a javelin with Prevent Monster Heal on it earlier and used it for the first time here, though I don't think it was really necessary. Jarulf was doing a fine job of handling the rare Cold Immune targets and hopefully he'd be able to take Blanche up to CLVL 75 when she could start sundering them with her gifted grand charm.

Nothing truly game-changing appeared on the item front while clearing out these parts of Act Two though Blanche did manage to make some modest equipment upgrades. After a series of gambles I was able to turn up a belt with 45 life and 28% fire resist, something that definitely could be bettered in time while still being a nice upgrade for the moment. I was also able to get a passable set of gloves with minor lightning and fire resistance after about a hundred gambles (still far short of what I wanted in that slot) and then an interesting pair of boots with 20% faster run and a whopping 39% lightning resistance. That was such a large boost to one resistance type that it might be worth keeping for the rest of Blanche's journey. By pure dumb luck, several of these items also added up to about 150% extra gold from monsters which had a noticeable effect on the gold piles dropping in combat. Although that's not a particularly useful affix in Diablo 2, it did mean more cash for additional pulls at the gambling slot machine.

The Claw Viper Temple is the only place in Nightmare Act Two that has any significant cold resistance, with the Claw Vipers having 40% protection and the Salamanders 70% resistance. This would have been a much bigger obstacle for any character build that didn't have Cold Mastery to rely upon, which worked magnificently against anything that lacked outright cold immunity. Let me provide some numbers here: Blanche's Ice Bolt was averaging 240 damage per casting and she would reach enough Cold Mastery for -100% enemy resistance by the end of the act. That translated into 480 average damage per shot against anything with no cold resistance. Now without the effects of Cold Mastery, the 70% resistance on the Salamaders would have cut that damage down to 480 * 0.3 = 144 damage and required about six castings per snake. However, the actual effect of Cold Mastery was to turn that +70% resistance into -30% resistance for effective damage of 240 * 1.3 = 310 damage per shot. Cold Mastery was literally more than doubling the damage that Blanche would have done here in comparison to something like Fire Mastery granting only a damage boost. And with her sundering charm in effect later on, Blanche would be able to cut through the resistance of literally anything to at least some degree - that was going to be fun to test out.

The snakes hit pretty hard in Diablo 2 but make up for it by being glass cannons. They collapsed quickly to Blanche's Ice Bolts and I was fortunate enough to draw a Claw Viper Temple that lacked any greater mummies. On the dangerous second floor, Blanche bizarrely rolled a setup that lacked any enemies at all aside from Fangskin and his minions. I had been creeping along the upper edge of the central altar and simply failed to find anything up there. I thought that I could race onto the platform only to get blocked by Fangy and friends as seen above; thankfully, Ice Bolt was up to the task of shooting them down before they managed to close to melee range and start causing real trouble.

The Palace floors were the first place where I felt that Blanche's Ice Bolt damage was beginning to fall off relative to monster health. There were a lot of high health targets across these four floors, such as the Invaders with 1400 HP and the Blunderbores with 1800 HP, which were each taking somewhere between four and six shots to defeat. While that was hardly the toughest path that I've endured over the years, it was still a noticeable shift from earlier when everything was falling in one or two Ice Bolts. Blanche's icy weapon of choice was a CLVL 1 skill so it was inevitable that it was going to start getting long in the tooth at some point, even with these monsters lacking any cold resistance. The Palace was also a bit tricky due to all of the skeleton archers hanging out down there. There was no way to clear them out without taking at least some hits while turning around blind corners and engaging in firing exchanges. Again, none of this was truly dangerous and I didn't have to mash the emergency full rejuv button at any point, however I did spend a lot of time drinking red potions to remove minor chip damage from arrows.

The Arcane Sanctuary was honestly easier to complete thanks to the straight pathways through the astral abyss. Much like the Maggot Lair, this was another area well suited to spamming Ice Bolts and Jarulf's Lightning with nowhere for the monsters to escape to safety. It was more fun than it probably should have been watching one goat pack after another run directly forward into a hail of Ice Bolts and perish. Enemy health totals were lower here and only the Ghoul Lord vampires with their 50% cold resistance lasted for more than a few seconds. Blanche found the Summoner at the end of the first quadrant she explored and got excited when he dropped a unique amulet! Sadly it was the Nokozan Relic which didn't have any +skills modifiers present, instead granting 50% fire resistance and +10% to maximum fire resist. I put that in stash for potential use against Diablo and continued my search for something with +1 Sorceress skills.

The Canyon of the Magi never seems to be dangerous until the monsters inside get juiced up with extra speed and damage on Hell difficulty. This was only Nightmare so Blanche bulldozered her way through the maggots and spear cats lurking around in the desert canyon. This time the True Tomb was in Tomb #5 and as usual I worked my way through the six False Tombs in clockwise fashion. I barely saw the vampires and ghosts on this occasion, instead getting lots of beetles and mummies and Gorebellies and, of course, the Unraveler / Burning Dead combo. They weren't quite as prevalent as in Normal difficulty where Blanche drew them in all seven tombs but there was still no shortage of the resurrectable foes to deal with. Unlike in the Halls of the Dead earlier, there were so many Burning Dead skeletons that Blanche fought most of them through doorways and didn't advance to face their Unraveler protectors until a path had been cleared out. The skeletons would die in two shots each and Blanche's cold damage caused their bodies to shatter 20% of the time. I would typically thin out the mob until there were only a handful of skeletons remaining and then go deal with the greater mummies in the back. Many times I would enter a big room full of monsters, then pull back through the doorway to fire Ice Bolt after Ice Bolt into the pursuing crowd as they shambled after Blanche. One thing I liked about Jarulf was that he was almost always smart enough to retreat back with Blanche. The Act Two mercenaries are much sturdier but also much dumber as they like to stand and die in hopeless fights when safety through a doorway is only a few feet away.

I didn't find Kaa's Tomb until the final False Tomb at the far right end of the Canyon. This one helpfully lacked any Unravelers so I knew that Kaa was present as soon as I spotted Burning Dead skeletons in one room. I think most players never clear out the False Tombs and therefore don't get to see Kaa but I enjoy taking down this boss and his many traits on each playthrough. The True Tomb did have Unravelers to contend with and it took a little over half an hour to clear the whole place out. There were about half a dozen bosses scattered around the tomb and I didn't find the Orifice chamber until the last room in the back corner. Blanche put the stupid Horadric staff together and prepared to face Duriel:

I was a bit worried about this guy since he had 75% cold resistance and a hefty 55,000 health on the second difficulty level. Blanche would have access to the far more damaging Ice Blast when she returned here in Hell difficulty but for the moment she was reliant on little old Ice Bolt. The fight went better than I expected, however, in part because Jarulf was able to get off several castings of Static Field and knock out a good chunck of Duriel's lifebar immediately. Jarulf died shortly thereafter, as I had known he would, but any speedup in cutting through the boss had been easily worth the upcoming resurrection bill. The rest of the battle consisted of Blanche running (not walking as I mostly do) and shooting Ice Bolts back over her shoulder while Duriel chased her in endless circles. She could rely on her 45% faster run speed from boots and Stealth armor which helped keep her ahead of the claws of the big bug. Faster casting gear also helped Blanche get off her Ice Bolts in speedy fashion which allowed her to stay out of melee range. This was mousework intensive as I had to do a lot of clicking for constant movement and casting, a bit like playing an AD carry back in League of Legends. Perfect reflexes would have allowed Blanche to dodge all danger, though instead she took occasional hits as my execusion slipped. Those never did more than 100 damage at a time however which gave me plenty of leeway to drink red potions and keep firing more Ice Bolts. The whole battle took about three minutes from start to finish and never resulted in any real danger, outside of poor Jarulf getting splatted at the outset.

That wrapped up the first half of Nightmare difficulty; so far, so good. It was basically smooth sailing the whole way for Blanche which was fun from a gameplay perspective if considerably less dramatic from a report-writing perspective. Should I have hoped for Blanche to find herself in deadlier situations to make the report more interesting? Heh. Time would tell what the last three Acts had in store for Blanche - stay tuned.