Blanche: Nightmare Difficulty Part Two

This was such a playable River of Flaw draw that I cleared out the rest of the place without running into any other memorable encounters. Then it was still just after 11:00 PM local time so I figured I might as well continue and wrap up the Act with the Chaos Sanctuary. The dark cathedral always has the same three enemies present, Venom Lords and Storm Casters and Doom Knight / Oblivion Knight pairs, all of which were straightforward opponents for Blanche. These were mostly melee foes (outside of the weak Storm Casters) and they all lacked cold resistance aside from 80% on the Oblivion Knights hiding in the back. Although I had to take their curses seriously, this genuinely was an easy area for Blanche and progress was much faster than it is normally for my solo characters.

I tackled De Seis first and his Fanaticism-boosted minions resulted in another death for Jarulf. Knowing that the mercenary would only fall again versus Diablo, I left him dead for the moment and mowed down the Doom Knights with a series of Ice Bolts before finishing off De Seis. The Infector was a potentially difficult opponent, made worse by him not triggering until hitting the seal in the back corner which blocked a retreat into the rest of the Sanctuary. Blanche was able to pick off about three of his minions one at a time by sniping them with long range Ice Bolts, then the Infector himself woke up and came racing after her with the rest of his buddies. I should have had a town portal set up ahead of time for safety; I failed to do this and Blanche was swarmed by half a dozen Venom Lords, only barely managing to wriggle free while drinking a full rejuv and then race into the clear. That was way too close and almost resulted in having to Save and Exit or suffer an outright death. Once Blanche was able to reach the more open space with the central pentagram to her back, she was able to pull out the Infector and his remaining minions in small groups and defeat them without further issue. The Vizier was tackled last and died in mere seconds; he's such a joke in the modern versions of Diablo 2.

This time Diablo did not stay on the central altar and instead chased after Blanche more aggressively. He was vulnerable to being chilled, of course, and that essentially shut down his melee attack which Blanche could always walk away from before the swinging animation finished. As a result, this boss fight turned into a ranged spellcasting duel between Blanche's Ice Bolt spam and Diablo's breath attacks. It was pretty easy to dodge the Flame Wave and the Lightning Breath of Doom, with Blanche primarily getting hit due to my overaggression as I tried to plug the big demon with a few more iceballs while he was locked in place. Blanche had loaded up on red potions before triggering the final seal and I slowly drank them over the course of the combat with Diablo, making sure never to let her health orb drop below the halfway point. The whole fighting went about as smoothly as I could have wanted and it took about three minutes of fighting with no close calls to down the Lord of Terror. Amusingly, Diablo's corpse shattered on death so there was none of the usual animation that plays out upon his defeat, heh.

Blanche had accumulated a lot of gold over the course of this session and I gambled a bunch of amulets afterwards, hoping to find something with +skills on it. She found a near keeper with 56 life, 23% fire resistance, 17% poison resistance... and +1 to Amazon skill levels, argh! That would have been awesome if it had been keyed to a Sorceress instead. While Blanche didn't find anything with +skills on it for a Sorcie, she did gamble a Prismatic Amulet of the Whale with 99 life and 17% resist all which was pretty darn good. She had been using the Nozokan Relic previously to hit 85% fire resistance but this amulet was definitely more useful and I made the swap. I planned to continue gambling amulets, surely something with +1 Sorcie skills or +2/3 Cold tree skills would show up sooner or later.

Act Five introduced the concept of guest monsters and immediately sent waves of Slinger spear cats against Blanche. There were only two monsters present in the Bloody Foothills, those spear cats along with Demon Imps for an all-ranged draw of opponents. These two monsters weren't really dangerous as their damage per spear and per fireball was too low to kill Blanche outright unless I did something truly idiotic. The constant damage from ranged attacks was definitely annoying though, forcing Blanche to drink lots and lots of red potions as she was always getting hit from across those trenches and barriers. Teleport would have been super useful here if it had been allowed by variant rule; I seem to be the only Sorceress player who doesn't run Teleport on every build. At the end of the area, Blanche fought Shenk from the other side of a barricade and easily cut down all of the overseer's minions. Then the Frigid Highlands proved to be extremely heavy on ranged opponents as well, packing tons of corrupted rogue archers along with these pictured Burning Dead skeleton archers to go along with imps and crusher beasts. It was one archer after another after another while clearing out these vast outdoor areas and that was really getting tiresome after the spear cat spam in the Bloody Foothills.

It was a relief when the Abbadon subdungeon popped up about halfway through the Frigid Highlands. Things had to be better down there, right?

Cold Immune witches?! Ummm, wait, that's not what I wanted! There were actually two different types of witches in this River of Flame redux, Hell Temptresses and Hell Witches, with the latter group being entirely Cold Immune. They would have been a joke if they lacked that protection, with a mere 1000 HP and no attacks beyond firing off their Blood Stars, but unfortunately Blanche was completely unable to hurt these things. I had to rely on Jarulf to kill them and he could be a bit fickle, sometimes wandering around in circles not doing anything while Blanche dodged the incoming attacks. I wouldn't be able to use that cold sundering charm until reaching CLVL 75 and that wasn't going to happen until well into Hell difficulty, which meant that Jarulf was going to have to pull his weight here. The mercenary did manage to get the job done, albeit at a much slower pace than Blanche herself could manage. It was pretty ridiculous how the Hell Temptresses would collapse in mere seconds followed by Blanche slowly walking around and waiting for Jarulf to use his lightning spells whenever their Hell Witch sisters appeared.

The Arreat Plateau dropped the skeleton archers in favor of skeleton mages, a much weaker monster type since their damage could be mitigated by Blanche's maxed resistances. Unfortunately the Arreat Plateau also had Night Clan goats hanging out inside which are apparently Cold Immune as well - ack! That wasn't what I wanted to see and Blanche had to slow down again and wait for Jarulf whenever they popped up. I was also forced to portal back to town to heal Jarulf whenever the pair encountered a goat boss pack, sometimes having to pull him back to safety repeatedly in order to avoid the big fat 25,000 gold resurrection fee. It was getting late and I only planned to continue this gaming session until finding the waypoint, which of course didn't appear until 95% of the Plateau was finished, sigh. I think this was the furthest back spot where the waypoint can appear. The Pit of Acheron subdungeon was nearby and it contained a bunch of imps along with Hell Clan goats... which were also Cold Immune! Oh come out, what the heck?! The Hell Witches were the only Cold Immune monster possible to find in Abbadon, then the two goat types were the only Cold Immune enemies in the Arreat Plateau and Acheron. My encounter luck was just dismal on this evening, though I guess I did avoid any of the minotaurs appearing. I still full cleared everything as Jarulf more than earned his paycheck on this night.

The only upside to the Arreat Plateau waypoint being located in the extreme back corner was a short jaunt into the ice caverns that make up the middle portion of Act Five. Blanche entered the Crystalline Passage and turned the first corner only to run into an Extra Fast / Spectral Hit minotaur boss. Those things are downright frightening when they have Extra Fast speed added onto their Frenzy ability, with the boss ripping right through the unfortunate Jarulf and then chasing after Blanche herself. Fortunately she ran into this boss when it was accompanied by only a single minion, as I frantically ran Blanche in tight circles near the entrance shooting off Ice Bolts over her back shoulder. Those things were insanely fast even with the chilling effect in place! Each hit from the minotaur boss could deal as much as 200 damage and I was very glad to have the extra health from Blanche's recent amulet. She managed to get the job done without needing any emergency purple potions, then revived Jarulf and carefully downed the rest of the Extra Fast minions. That was more excitement than I wanted from the first ten seconds of a new area!

The rest of the Crystalline Passage wasn't as bad, as non-boss minotaurs were more easily handled since they lacked that ridiculous speed boost. Blanche was luckier in terms of the monsters she faced here, dodging the Cold Immune ice monsters in favor of cold projectile skeleton mages and ghosts that were never able to close into melee range. It was only the minotaurs that were a source for concern, which was renewed when Blanche hit the champ pack pictured above near the conclusion of the area. These Blood Lords were nearly as fast as the earlier boss and there were four of them to deal with, once again tearing right through Jarulf and forcing Blanche to retreat across half the cavern while kiting backwards until they were all dead. Sheesh, those things HURT when they hit her!

I opted to do the Anya rescue quest next and descended down to the Frozen River. Unfortunately this area is extremely heavy on cold resistant monsters and there was a group of Cold Immune Sirens waiting right by the stairs. Blanche had barely made any progress exploring the cave when this Cursed / Holy Shock boss appeared along with her flying minions. Cursed wasn't actually that bad since the witches can innately apply Amplify Damage curse anyway, however half a dozen of these Cold Immune monsters appearing on top of one another was definite bad news. Blanche was useless here and I had to rely on Jarulf to kill everything with his lightning spells, which included paying for multiple resurrection bills despite my best efforts to pull the mercenary back to town when his health dropped low. It didn't really get easier over the rest of the Frozen River since the place was absolutely packed with the Cold Immune witches. Blanche would easily dispatch the other two monster types (Claw Vipers and more cold element skeleton mages), followed by standing around for lengthy periods until Jarulf deigned to cast Charged Bolt and Lightning. He was honestly handling them pretty well, it was simply tedious to need the mercenary to kill every single witch across the whole Frozen River.

Jarulf then refused to retreat properly against Frozenstein's mob of yetis at the conclusion of the cavern which cost me yet another resurrection bill. Good grief, he died enough times in the Frozen River that I barely turned a profit on gold during this gaming session - I needed that money for more gambling! Dying so many times somehow also resulted in a bizarre visual bug: Jarulf literally disappeared!

Only his sword and shield remained, hovering in mid-air from the disembodied figure. What in the world was going on here?! Frozenstein is always Cold Immune and therefore the noncorporeal Jarulf was the one to defeat the boss, the ghostly sword and shield combo emitting lightning bolts from this air. I had to stop this gaming session after finishing the Frozen River and the visual bug was resolved the next time that I started up D2 so this was a truly strange one-off experience.

I almost always devote a full gaming session to Nihlathak's Temple as it takes quite a while to full clear the place. The Prowling Dead in the entry area were easily shot down by Ice Bolts, with the skill now up to about 300 base damage / 700 damage against targets with no cold resistance. The player can get a wide range of possible enemies inside the temple thanks to having so many guest monsters; this time, Blanche found herself facing Night Lord minotaurs, Temple Guard baboons, and swarms of flayers. That was an interesting mix with the minotaurs being the most dangerous targets in every encounter but the huge numbers of flayers taking a while to cut through due to sheer weight of numbers. It took about half an hour to clear the first floor, followed by the Halls of Pain having even more flayers (this time the ranged version) along with Zealots and Hierophants. I was really sick of the little flayers by this point and drawing them on two large floors in a row became quite tedious. At least the Zealots weren't too bad, with Blanche able to blast through their health bars before they could retreat for healing from the Hierophants. These floors were a bit of a grind to complete, not helped by the omnipresent dull brown graphics everywhere. (I've written this in a bunch of reports and Act Five has some of the most bland environments to be found in this game.)

Blanche was ambushed when coming down the stairs to the Halls of Vaught, with almost two dozen witches and those melee Slayer critters swarming all over the central area. That's pretty rare for the Halls of Vaught as usually the player has more space to get started before the monsters start appearing on the bottom floor. The third enemy type was Tomb Vipers with their poison-element Bone Spears; thankfully their buggy poison has been fixed here in Diablo 2 Resurrected, instead of dealing thousands of damage in mere seconds as was the case in Lord of Destruction. Nihlathak was waiting at the end of the first quadrant that Blanche explored, drawing a useless Teleportation boss affix since he already has the innate ability to teleport. I tried my best to draw out his minions and did manage to get all but a handful, then stayed well away from the corpses on the ground while shooting max range Ice Bolts at the boss. Blanche was still tagged by a couple of Corpse Explosions but the damage was mitigated by having maxed out fire resistance and plenty of health. Nihlathak went down pretty quickly and with about as minimal danger as is possible for this encounter.

One side note on item drops: Blanche found a Grand Charm with +1 Barbarian Warcries on it, to go along with an earlier charm with +1 Assassin Shadow Disciplines. Sadly these were both useless for her and those two classes are my two least-favorite ones in Diablo 2, the only classes that I've never written about on my website (though I should do a Traps Assassin playthrough at some point). I looked at both skill trees and couldn't think of any character builds that I wanted to do which would use those charms, therefore leaving me with no choice but to sell them both. Why couldn't I have found a Grand Charm with +skills for some skill tree that I actually wanted to use, sigh. On the plus side, I did immediately find a Sol rune at the start of the next gaming session which allowed me to do this:

I could make the long-awaited Lore helmet for Jarulf as well and grant him an additional +1 to his lightning skills. I'd been sitting on an exceptional Casque helmet with two sockets for ages waiting on another Sol rune to drop, with this only being the second one of the whole run (the first having gone to Blanche's own Lore helmet). I stitched together two images demonstrating the impact of the +3 skills from Jarulf's Spirit and Lore runewords. Charged Bolt went from 21 bolts averaging 28 damage (588 total damage) to 24 bolts averaging 34 damage (816 total damage). Now obviously Jarulf wasn't going to hit with every single one of his Charged Bolts on each spellcast, however these numbers did help demonstrate what a big difference those additional skill points made. Together they added nearly 30% more damage and helped the mercenary eliminate the various Cold Immune targets that Blanche wasn't able to tackle herself.

With Nihlathak's Temple finished, it was back to slogging through the ice caverns to continue onwards. The Glacial Trail had some Cold Immune Frozen Creepers present, those shambling monsters made entirely out of ice. They were so slow that they didn't present any threat, however, and Jarulf was able to handle them without much trouble. There was one moment where he cornered himself against a boss and foolishly died but everything else passed without issue. The tiny Drifter Cavern was noticeably harder as there was a Cursed / Mana Burn minotaur boss encountered about halfway through the area which smashed its way through Jarulf and forced a long retreat from Blanche. I had to kite that thing all the way back to the entry stairs before it finally collapsed, whew. The rest of the Drifter Cavern was heavy on Afflicted demons who shot their lightning balls at Blanche; she cleared out the rest of this area before reviving Jarulf as there was nothing with cold immunity present.

It was nice to see the sunlight outside in the Frozen Tundra, or at least it was until a group of Cold Immune goats ambushed Blanche immediately upon exiting the caves. Those Death Clan goats were the only Cold Immune monster that can appear in the Frozen Tundra and Blanche was seemingly going out of her way to find targets that she couldn't damage. At least the imps and Baal minions that made up the other enemy types were easy pickings, though the need for Jarulf to slay every goat became tedious very quickly. Then there was the Infernal Pit subdungeon, and did Blanche manage to roll the only Cold Immune monster that can appear down there as well? Of course she did! That was Hell Witches and they weren't too bad to deal with given their low health, but like, seriously, come on game. Notably, Blanche turned up the set boots Sigon's Sabot which might be worth equipping later on for its 20% faster walk and 40% cold resist, given that she was going to get a big penalty to cold resistance when using her cold sunder charm. And Blanche also found Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest, the helmet item from the high end Sorceress-only set of gear. I had earlier found the Lidless Eye weapon with another character that had been sitting in stash for several years; maybe someday I'll get the remaining missing pieces and can actually use this stuff on a Sorcie build.

The Ancient's Way has exactly one enemy with cold immunity in Nightmare difficulty, Frozen Terrors, and well, the screenshot above speaks for itself. Somehow every boss in this area seemed to roll as a Frozen Terror as Blanche found herself confronting three such bosses and the pictured champion pack. These things were honestly not that bad and presented virtually no danger at all given their pathetic movement speed, it simply took a while for Jarulf to eliminate their health bars given Blanche's uselessness. His Static Field really helped a lot in knocking out the first half of their heath pools. Then the Icy Cellar subdungeon had more Frozen Terrors along with yetis and gloams, which could have been worse since no minotaurs showed up. That little cavern was packed with four bosses, the max possible for Nightmare difficulty, plus the always-present Snapchip Shatter... who was also Cold Immune by virtue of being a Frozen Terror. That final boss almost but not quite took down Jarulf, as the mercenary escaped death with a sliver of health remaining.

The Ancients weren't too bad with this character. Jarulf perished as quickly as I'd been expecting, then the three Barbarians began chasing Blanche as she ran loops around the central pillar. Madawc had 70% cold resistance but the other two Ancients have none at all which was nice to see. All three of them essentially ran in a straight line after Blanche who kept pausing to fire Ice Bolts back at them, then dashed away again before they could close the distance. None of the Ancients had particularly dangerous boss traits (I would have rerolled the fight if something like Cursed or Might aura had been present) and the only real danger here was misclicking on Blanche's path. Korlic and Talic both died first, due to their lack of cold resistance and more determined chasing pattern, then Blanche peppered Madawc with ice shots whenever he paused to throw his own axes. It only took about two minutes of real world time and a couple of red potions needed to top off HP, pretty straightforward stuff.

This was the conclusion of an extended gaming session so I spent the accumulated gold on more amulet gambles. About halfway through spending that money, Blanche managed to hit on an amulet with +skills:

It was a Freezing amulet with +2 sorcie cold skills, excellent! That wasn't the best possible result as the Glacial affix with +3 cold skills was also a possibility but I'd take it for right now. Ice Bolt increased to SLVL 20+5 once Blanche equipped the new item, with damage increasing from an average of 323 to 375. In practice the damage increase was even better than that though, as Cold Mastery also jumped up by two additional skill points and now sat at -140% monster resistance. Against non-resistant targets Ice Bolt was now averaging about 900 damage in practice, not bad for a CLVL 1 skill! Even a small amount of additional skill points made a big difference here since the low base damage of Ice Bolt was being multiplied by so many synergy skill points. The tradeoff was Blanche having to drop that very nice Prismatic Amulet of the Whale with 99 life and 17% resist all, something that definitely made a difference in her health orb. Resistances were still maxed out here in Nightmare but would become a problem again once Blanche made the transition to Hell.

Blanche ventured into the Worldstone Keep at the start of a new gaming session and immediately found herself confronted by Death Lord minotaurs. I quickly discovered to my horror that this specific kind of minotaur was apparently immune to all chilling effects - Blanche was unable to slow their movement or attack speed. Jarulf lasted about as long as you would imagine and then Blanche had the fun task of shooting down the remaining minotaurs at the staircase to avoid waking up anything else on the floor. I managed to pull that off and then cleared out some breathing room against the other irrelevant monsters (fetishes and Zealots/Hierophants) before having to tackle any minotaur bosses or champions. Worldstone 2 lacked minotaurs and was much easier as a result, very heavy on the pathetic Greater Hell Spawn demons along with Black Soul gloams. Then the minotaurs were back again on Worldstone 3 and Blanche found herself in the middle of a five alarm fire:

There were more Death Lord minotaurs sitting right at the staircase when Blanche descended, along with the minions for a minotaur boss. Jarulf died in about three seconds and then they were racing after Blanche herself, way too many to deal with and with no way to slow them down. I had no choice but to run deeper into the floor, one of the most dangerous possible things to do in Diablo 2, blindly waking even more monsters in the effort. I went to the south initially and portaled out of there with several minotaurs hot in pursuit. Blanche went back to the Worldstone 2 waypoint and came down the stairs again, this time running into the minotaur boss itself (Stone Skin / Cold Enchanted) and leading it to the east where there were even more minotaurs and a bunch of witches hanging out. That's where I took the above screenshot as Blanche circled around trying to make it back to her town portal; I drank five full rejuvs during this hairball but did get out safely. Now there was finally enough space cleared out at the entrance to proceed through the rest of the floor, cautiously eliminating everything north and west of the stairs before finally coming back to clear out the initial boss. This was tough, tough stuff and Blanche very easily could have met her demise here if I didn't have so much past experience with D2.

There were a bunch of Doom Knights waiting to ambush Blanche upon entry to the Throne of Destruction; I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at this point. She was able to shoot them down with Ice Bolts along with their Oblivion Knight companions, then deal with some extremely fast Assailant champions who were encountered right behind the staircase. The third enemy type on this floor was Horadrim Ancients and resulted in an interaction that I had never seen before: those greater mummies could actually revive the Doom Knights! I guess those things are technically undead, though it normally doesn't matter one way or another, and the Horadrim Ancients were able to bring them back to life. The animation was really weird too, with the Doom Knights moving while face-down on the floor like they were doing the worm, then suddenly standing upright again. I guess they don't have a revive animation since the developers didn't think about this interaction either. Bizarre stuff.

After clearing out the side wings it was time for the ending boss rush. Colenzo and Achmel were pretty easy for a Cold-based Sorceress, with Blanche able to keep defeating their minions until enough bodies shattered to target the bosses themselves. Blanche was able to pick off three of Bartuc's minions at long range with Ice Bolts before the boss himself activated, after which she pulled the remaining five enemies back towards the entrance and pelted them with Ice Bolts until they dropped. Ventar rolled Cursed for his bonus ability and that was very, very dangerous when paired with his natural Extra Fast. Even with the chilling effect from Ice Bolt, these demons were terribly fast and I had to lead them back into the maze of tunnels to split them up. After a bit of footwork, Blanche was able to get several minions isolated and downed them, then went back and picked off the rest in groups of one or two. There had been absolutely no way to stand and fight against this opponent. Lister was no slouch but his slow speed lacked the same threat that Ventar had posted. Blanche kited Lister and his minions back into the maze segments as well and never let them get into melee range as they ate enough Ice Bolts to make a snowman jealous.

Then, after all of those earlier threats, Baal was really, really easy. The Lord of Destruction was content to stand fixed in place at the opposite end of the screen, shooting his cold waves and his occasional orange shot while making no attempt to dodge Blanche's Ice Bolts or close into melee range. I pretty much stood in place holding down the right mouse button to keep spamming out more Ice Bolts and drank red potions as needed to keep topping off Blanche's health. Baal's clone hung out nearby but did precisely nothing other than create some flashy-looking spell effects. This battle didn't even last two minutes by the in-game clock and it was all over in a hurry:

That was honestly pathetic and it's a shame that Baal isn't a better final boss to cap out each difficulty. Diablo himself is a much better foe, Baal just has a ton of health to cut through. The boss dropped two unique item and a pair of set boots; this was Maelstrom the unique yew wand (which sadly is not a very good wand for a Necromancer) and good old Twitchthroe the unique studded leather. I used that armor on some characters in pre-expansion days but unfortunately Twiththroe isn't viable in modern Diablo 2 despite its cool green coloring. The set boots were Hsarus' Iron Heel which everyone who plays this game has seen a bunch of times, decent but not good enough to be a keeper with 20% faster walk and 25% fire resistance. Therefore none of these unique items were worth using for Blanche or saving in stash and all of them ended up getting sold, oh well.

Blanche finished Nightmare difficulty with all areas cleared, all monsters slain, and no deaths incurred. Things were about to get a lot harder in Hell difficulty, though she would now unlock Ice Blast to upgrade her own damage and add a freezing effect on the ice particles. I was having a lot of fun with this character and hopefully Blanche would be able to keep the good times rolling along. The ultimate fate of her journey still lay ahead.