Blanche: Hell Difficulty Part Four

Right out of the gate, Blanche rolled Flesh Spawners and their pups in the Outer Steppes, ugh. Now I wouldn't mind fighting those things if Blanche happened to hit them in the Plains of Despair or the City of the Damned, since I wouldn't have much of a choice while pushing on to the next waypoint. However, I really did not want to face them in the very first area given that they could easily reappear later when Blanche was still far away from saving her forward progress. Therefore I rerolled the map to get rid of them, only to find the Flesh Spawners again. And again. And again, and again, and again. Blanche rolled them *SEVEN* times in a row before finally getting a non-Flesh Spawner map, good grief! There are six possible enemy types in the Outer Steppes and the game selects three of them at random each time, making the odds of any one enemy showing up a straight 50/50 dice roll. On the final map that I did use, Blanche fought against Venom Lords, Doom Knights, and Corpulents. They were all melee monsters and none of them were Cold Immune - easy pickings.

The Plains of Despair kept the Corpulents while rotating in two fresh faces: Burning Soul gloams and Doom Caster finger mages. This created an area where most of the opposition was ranged in nature, though the finger mages were mostly irrelevant while the Burning Souls were potentially deadly. Those invisible things were the definition of a glass cannon threat, dying in one or two casts of Ice Blast while also dealing heavy damage in the process. It was almost impossible to avoid their Lightning attacks given the speed of the projectile and the way that the monsters shot them while invisible. They hurt a lot even with Blanche's maxed lightning resistance and I can recall many deaths taking place when I brought team variants through this place and players were caught unaware of the threat. Nevertheless, I still preferred this monster draw to rolling any of the spawning creatures who would have dragged out the time commitment. Izual appeared about two-thirds of the way through the Plains and died really fast, barely lasting longer than a Corpulent boss. We had come a long way from Normal difficulty where he was a beefy tank that took several minutes to knock down.

I was hoping that Blanche's luck would continue in the City of the Damned. She saw a couple of the bigheaded Damned monsters at first, so far so good, but then turned around one of the building corners only to find:

Yeah, well, I guess that figured. These were Stygian Hags which had all sorts of features that Blanche didn't want to see: Cold Immune, high health, and breeders of their Stygian Dog pups which were themselves also Cold Immune. The spawnlings had 3600 HP and required 4-5 shots of Ice Blast to defeat while the mothers needed quadruple that amount in the 20-25 shot range. Technically I could have raced forward through the City to find its waypoint and then reroll the map afterwards, and yet that felt like it would be a sign of bad sportsmanship. I had already dodged the flesh spawners once, it was time for Blanche to prove that she could deal with this threat.

It turned out in practice that the Stygian Hags were difficult and annoying to defeat, while not being totally impossible. Blanche's Ice Blasts would whittle away at their health as Jarulf's lightning element magic (which they had zero resistance against) did much of the heavy lifting. This made the situation akin to the earlier gameplay back in Act One before Blanche had unlocked her cold sundering charm, though Blanche could deal at least some damage and provide vital crowd control in the form of her freezing. That was honestly the best way to handle the Stygian Hags: lock them up in frozen status where they couldn't breed their pups. On many occasions Blanche was able to pounce on an isolated Hag and stun it, then fire 25 Ice Blasts into its face until it died. Unfortunately the Hags liked to spit out pups into the path of the oncoming Ice Blasts to protect themselves from being frozen, and if the things could get out one pup, they would usually follow it with a dozen more. The worst part of the City came relatively early on when Blanche hit a double boss pack of Stygian Hags next to one another, Mana Burn / Magic Resistant / Stone Skin and then the more dangerous Extra Fast / Cursed customer pictured above. I had to retreat back into the Plains of Despair multiple times, pulling back individual Stygian Hag minions along the way, until finally both bosses and all their minions were slain. This area took longer than the Outer Steppes and the Plains of Despair combined but Blanche did defeat everything for her full clear.

I had enough time available to continue onwards into the River of Flame, one of my favorite parts of Diablo 2 from a visual perspective. Blanche found Urdars and Blood Maggots inhabitant the River right out of the gate, which was slightly annoying due to all of the little bugs that those maggots would breed. That left only the third enemy type:

Oh come on, seriously?! Yes, it was Grotesques and their flesh pups to round out the collection of opponents. Blanche's luck on the monster draws had been abysmal here: first the Flesh Spawners seven times in a row in the Outer Steppes that I skipped, then a clear Plains of Despair, but then more of the spawning monsters in the City of the Damned and the River of Flame. Three of the first four areas! I probably should have simply rolled a new map here using the City waypoint but I was in the middle of a gaming session and didn't want to save and reload. I definitely have a stubborn streak and I decided that I wasn't going to let those things push Blanche around. She had already shown that she could beat them in the City of the Damned and now she could do so again. I began working my way through the burning hot terrain, first confronting a Spectral Hit / Mana Burn / Extra Fast spawner boss which chased Blanche back to the entry staircase, then taking extra care with the Grotesque boss above that had the Extra Strong / Fanaticism combo. I was really happy with the tactics that Blanche used to defeat it, carefully pulling out nearly all of its minions one at a time for disposal and even managing to shoot down several of them at extreme range with Ice Blasts (the length of the full screen) while they were frozen so that they couldn't breed their pups.

It didn't take took long to find the Hellforge area along the usual side branch of the River architecture. Blanche was able to draw out a whole bunch of Urdars followed by Hephasto who she was able to confront by himself. The forge demon rolled a Fanaticism aura which was pretty scary, though his additional two traits of Cold Enchanted and Stone Skin didn't look that bad. Hephasto began by chasing after Blanche for quite some time, totally ignoring Jarulf in the process for whatever reason. Blanche was able to chill him right away and then I began kiting backwards across the cleared expanse of the River. Hmmm, I was hitting Hephasto a lot without killing him, in fact his healthbar was barely decreasing. Eventually he turned and swatted down Jarulf in two hits which was a bit concerning. Now the demon continued his pursuit of Blanche, taking advantage of his Fanaticism aura and the fact that Hephasto gets faster as his health decreases, until he was close enough to smack Blanche with his hammer. That's when I discovered two unpleasant facts. First, Hephasto's melee attack really, really hurt; Blanche's health orb dropped to 500-something HP and I immediately began drinking a red potion for recovery. The second realization was the fact that Hephasto chilled with his attack... which now made him faster than Blanche... which meant that she couldn't get away. A second hammer blow descended and that was that:

Nooooooo! After all of those close calls that Blanche had survived back in Act Three, I couldn't believe that Blanche suffered a death here against Hephasto. I simply did not think that he could kill Blanche in two hits, clearly I underestimated the amount of damage that he could deal. I'm struggling to put into words just how devastated I felt with Blanche losing her deathless streak here. It takes a ton of time to play these characters through all three difficulties and then even more time to write up the whole thing along the way. I really, really wanted to take Blanche through the whole game without dying and now I knew that I would probably never read any of the stuff that I had written about her ever again. Too painful to recall. I tried my best and I simply couldn't get it done.

When I looked back at this afterwards, I realized that I should have brought Blanche's health-boosting belt since there was essentially no fire element damage to worry about in the River of Flame. For that matter, when facing a dangerous foe like this, she really should have brought her amulet with 99 life on it instead of the +2 cold skills amulet she had been wearing. Those two items combined would have taken her to 1200 HP and that definitely would have been enough to survive another attack from Hephasto. I think he just barely had enough damage for the two-shot kill and I surely would have drunk a full rejuv if Blanche had been able to absorb a second blow without dying. I had also misread the danger level on Hephasto's boss abilities: the Cold Enchanted trait had been the real killer here. That trait had in fact made Hephasto Cold Immune (if only there had been a visual indicator of this!), without which he would have been dead in a dozen Ice Blasts and never survived long enough to get near Blanche. For that matter, without Cold Enchanted trait his attacks wouldn't have chilled Blanche and then she could have run away to safety. I needed to take anything with that boss ability much more seriously as a threat; the very similar experience with Maffer back in Act Three should have been a clue.

Well, I wasn't about to quit here, Blanche still had to avenge her death at the hands of Hephasto. She returned from a nearby town portal and recovered her body to get her gear back, then continued the fight with MUCH more caution. Unfortunately it still didn't go well and this boss confrontation continued to be a real mess. Blanche could stay ahead of Hephasto so long as she kept him chilled with her Ice Blasts. However, as soon as she missed some of her shots, the chilling effect would wear off and then the big demon would be able to close the gap and start wailing on Blanche. Taking even a single hit immediately placed Blanche in dire peril since once she was chilled herself, she would then be slower than Hephasto and unable to get away. I should have brought some thawing potions to remove the chill; I should have brought Jarulf to tank more hits and buy time for Blanche. I did neither of those things and the only recourse was to drink full rejuv after full rejuv in a battle that cost me nearly Blanche's entire belt. Since I knew Hephasto could kill Blanche in two hits, she had to drink a full rejuv after every hit taken, burning through the purples at an insane and unsustainable rate. It was honestly a miracle that Blanche didn't die here for a second time but mass-drinking full rejuvs can get you out of some ridiculous jams. Finally Hephasto collapsed and I could breathe a sigh of relief.

The cost had been severe though: my entire stock of full rejuvs was gone, completely wiped out. I usually hold 15 of them in stash and had used every single one during the battle against Hephasto. My morale as a player had also plummeted into the toilet as a result of suffering that death against the boss. I finished up the Hellforge quest (which dropped a middling Io rune) and then went through the motions of finishing the rest of the River of Flame. Fighting my way past more maggots and more Grotesques was about the last thing that I wanted to do but I owed it to Blanche to at least finish up with Act Four now that she had made it this far. She secured her way to the River of Flame waypoint and I stopped there to run the Chaos Sanctuary later that evening.

When I picked things back up again, Blanche had a new set of opponents to face during the short River maze sequence. It was certainly nice that the Grotesques and the maggots were gone, replaced with much easier Maw Fiends and Stranglers who perished immediately when touched by an Ice Blast. The Chaos Sanctuary always has the same three enemies inside, of course, and this Extra Strong / Fanaticism aura Venom Lord boss came racing out to greet Blanche upon her arrival. That thing had its cold resistance dropped all the way to the maximum of -100% by Blanche's Cold Mastery, however, which meant that it didn't last long against her spammed freezing spells. And the rest of the Chaos Sanctuary was like that as well, with the Storm Casters and Venom Lords and Doom Knights all collapsing into ashes before the power of Blanche's ice magic. Only the Oblivion Knights required some effort because they had natural cold immunity to go along with their curses. There was one running fight against a bunch of them just north of the pentagram where Blanche took a bunch of their colorful shots at once, knocking her down to 200 HP and forcing a full rejuv. Otherwise, the combat was nice and smooth for Blanche, plus it was... fun? Yeah, I was actually enjoying this, blasting apart demons with the strength of the Sorceress' cold tree spells. This was Diablo at its best as an action RPG.

Once the Sanctuary was cleared out, I decided to tackle the Infector first. When the outer seal failed to make the boss appear, I set up a town portal ahead of time and then had to bail through it upon popping the inner seal since the Infector and its minions were simply too fast. Blanche came back from the River of Flame waypoint and had no real problems fighting this group once she had the rest of the Sanctuary for retreat room, just kiting them backwards while enjoying how each minion died in four or five shots. De Seis was even easier, another boss with melee minions who lacked the speed and sturdiness of the Infector's lackeys. Then the Vizier and his Storm Caster minions spawned in between Blanche and the rest of the cathedral, so I lept through another town portal for safety and came back a second time from the River waypoint. Once Blanche had some actual space to move, the Vizier collapsed in mere seconds as well. Jarulf had even survived all of these fights to give an indication of how straightforward they had been.

To face Diablo himself, Blanche swapped out her +2 cold skills amulet for the Nozokan Relic, increasing her fire resistance to 82% to go along with 75% lightning resistance. When Big D appeared on the central pentagram, he already had a volley of Ice Blasts headed towards his ugly mug. Once the combat was underway, I had the same experience here as with the previous Act end bosses: Diablo's healthbar dropped incredibly fast, as it did for everything which was not Cold Immune. Diablo naturally has 50% cold resistance which meant he took full damage from every Ice Blast, about 4500 damage per shot, and his 114k HP didn't last long against that. Diablo chose to fire off several Lightning Breath of Doom attacks which gave Blanche ample opportunity to step aside and hit him with some more ice spells. I thought that Jarulf might actually survive despite the 10x damage bonus that Diablo gets against mercenaries. Sadly, Jarulf fell when he walked directly into another Flame Wave attack, though Diablo's healthbar had already fallen below the "D" in his name. It was over a few seconds later and the whole thing hadn't even lasted a single minute according to the in-game clock. Wow.

What I hadn't been expecting was the loot drops produced by the Lord of Terror. This was about to be one of the best hauls I've ever received from Diablo:

He dropped a Burning Essence of Terror (something I'm still not exactly sure what to do with), four rare items, and the unique Defender shield. That was Visceratuant, an item that I'd never seen before, which had a bunch of defensive modifiers along with +1 Sorceress skill levels! It was pretty amusing that this dropped specifically for Blanche and with a Strength requirement of only 38, I did think about going back to reset her stats and place an additional 100 points into Vitality. But no, there were too many good stats on Blanche's current Spirit shield to make swapping worthwhile, since it provided +2 skills instead of +1 skills along with extra resistances and 33% faster cast. It's another good example of how the Spirit runeword is too powerful and crowds out virtually all other competing options. I did snap this zoomed-in screenshot of Blanche wearing the shield since it looked pretty cool though.

Even more interesting was one of the rare items that Diablo dropped, this pictured rare coronet. The new helmet was... absolutely incredible! It had +2 to Sorceress skill levels, a minor boost of 8 additional life, and then 13% resist all - everything that Blanche could possibly want was on this coronet! Then the gameplay decided to play a cruel joke by making this unbelievable item Ethereal in nature, meaning that it could never be repaired and would eventually break from use. I guess I just had to socket a Zod rune in there with the socket quest, heh. Nevertheless, Blanche only needed to make it through one more Act and there was a good chance that she could make it through Act Five before the durability wore out. That actually sounded like a fun challenge to try! I had been feeling quite bleak about this character when Blanche suffered that death and was planning on wrapping things up after defeating Diablo. But after having enjoyed the Chaos Sanctuary a lot and then receiving these insane items drops that seemed perfectly tailored for Blanche... well, it was almost like Diablo's gameplay was reaching out and patting me on the shoulder, telling me not to give up. I know that doesn't make sense and it was all random numbers operating in the background, but we humans are not perfectly rational creatures, and that's how I felt in the moment.

So therefore Blanche's journey will continue as I try to finish things up with the final Act. I didn't think much of interest would happen in Act Four and then it proved to be way more interesting that I wanted. Let's hope for smoother sailing in clearing out the final portions of the game!