Doktor Faustus: Nightmare Difficulty Part One

In terms of gear, Faustus had been fortunate in his two hand slots. Unlocking Spirit this quickly was a major asset plus he had found that very nice codex with +3 Summon Tainted along with a pair of sockets that now held two Perfect Diamonds for 38% resist all. His equipment was more mediocre elsewhere, with Sander's Riprap for 40% faster movement speed in the boots slot and then some passable gloves and a belt with decent but not great resists. Both of them could be upgraded and I was rolling for those items since they were cheap gambles at under 10k per roll right now. A Stealth armor was similarly decent without fitting this character especially well; I was waiting for the Hel and Shael runes to drop to upgrade that into the Warlock-specific Authority runeword later on. Faustus also needed only a Sol rune to make a Lore helmet and he was still wearing a cap with two Flawed Rubies inside for lack of anything better, heh. His rings and amulet slots were the weakest items with two magical (blue) rings that had 22% lightning resist on one finger and something similar on the other hand. Those would be the target of later gambles once the cost of non-jewelry scaled up with Faustus' level.

Overall though, Faustus was in very good shape for this stage of the gameplay. 650 HP / 250 MP were both more than enough for a character who rarely took hits and didn't have to cast spells very often. His resists were looking good despite the Nightmare penalty, due at least in part to the Fire Resist aura provided by having at least one tainted summon on the board. I should have mentioned that before but the tainted provide additional fire resistance for themselves and the Warlock whenever they are in effect, right now a whopping 57% fire resistance for free that I was definitely factoring into Faustus' character build. He led three tainted summons out into the Blood Moor and found that they were still walloping the monsters lurking out there, taking a few more shots to defeat the zombies but still advancing quickly and without any issues. The increased monster stats from Nightmare difficulty weren't high enough to cause problems yet.

Since these early opponents were such easy pickings, Faustus could amuse himself by further experimenting with the Bind Demon skill. The Fallen in the Blood Moor were too difficult to bind since they died immediately when hit by the tainted, however the Fallen Shamans in the Den of Evil were sturdy enough that Faustus could grab one of them. The bound shaman was able to raise some Fallen corpses which also followed Faustus around, though this turned out to be less useful than I had been expecting. There was a limit to how many Fallen it would raise which seemed to be about five or six, and then the little things did not get teleported by Death Mark so Faustus had little control over what they did. They also didn't get boosted stats in any way so having a handful of Fallen running around dealing 25 damage per attack was honestly kind of sad. The shaman also rarely seemed to attack and therefore didn't make use of the giant bonus damage from Bind Demon which left me very disappointed overall. I ditched the shaman and actually had better results binding one of the little Fallen, which hit hilariously hard but had so little health that it soon perished.

I wanted to bind one of the corrupted rogue spears in the Cold Plains since they looked like they would deal a lot of damage while also being sturdy enough to survive for a while. However, there were almost none of this enemy type to be found in the outdoor area and I failed to capture any of them due to Faustus' tainted minions getting a little too overeager with their fireballs. Instead, the next demon that Faustus managed to seize was a Dark Ranger rogue archer from the Caves as pictured above. It was around this point that Faustus reached SLVL 8+2 on the Bind Demon skill which added the Extra Fast trait to his captured demon. That extra bonus made the bound creatures noticeably faster and I could actually see the two boss traits in effect if I chose the Unsummon command and hovered over the captured monster. This random rogue archer even gained the "Death Dancer" name as if it had become a boss under Faustus' control.

With that said though, I once again found the performance of this ranged archer demon to be underwhelming. You would think that this would be an awesome target to control with Bind Demon, a ranged attacker juiced up with Extra Strong and Extra Fast traits plus the bonus stats from the skill itself. But no, something was off here as the rogue archer simply didn't attack that much and didn't seem to deal that much damage when it did fire its bow. There must be some kind of nerf to ranged monsters under the hood of the Bind Demon skill because every guide online always suggests controlling various different melee demons, with the Venom Lords and a type of corrupted rogue spear (the Black Lancer) being the most popular choices since there are uber event versions of both of them with really high base stats. I've never seen anyone suggest using a ranged version of a demon for endgame stuff so there must be something going on to make these choices weaker than the melee demons.

For the moment though, Faustus was rolling along through the first half of Act One as he continued to test out different bound demons. Death Mark allowed his summons to focus on Blood Raven while ignoring her zombies, then the Caves and the Crypt / Mausoleum were quickly cleared out. Faustus managed to switch over to a bound Moon Clan goatman in the Stony Field who looked almost exactly like his own summoned goatman but hit much, much harder with the various Bind Demon bonuses. For that matter, I noticed that here in Nightmare difficulty the goatman summons had received a huge stat buff and were now dealing noticeably more damage than the tainted demons. I think that the goatman stats had to be suppressed in Normal because they unlocked at CLVL 1 and couldn't be too strong for the early game. Now that Faustus was in Nightmare though, their stats could be increased to be comparable with the tainted; if anything, this was an unfair comparison because the tainted had those extra skill points from Faustus' codex. As a result, I decided to swap over to a configuration of one goatman, one tainted, and the bound demon which seemed to work well. The goatman hit harder (and the bound goatman stronger yet) but the tainted still had the ranged advantage and used fire for its damage type so that Faustus wasn't stuck with an all-physical setup.

I had a couple of notable equipment items appear during these areas. There were two different pairs of boots that might see use later, one of which was the Sigon's Sabot set greaves which had 20% faster run and 40% cold resist, the other which was a rare set of boots with no faster movement but 35% cold resist, 28% fire resist, and 18% lightning resist. Neither was necessary for the moment and both required additional Strength beyond what Faustus had on his character build. I thought one of them might be very useful in Hell difficulty though, especially if Faustus invested the 150 Strength for a Spirit shield, so both went into stash for the moment. The other new item could be put to use immediately: a blue amulet happened to pop up as a Devil's Amulet, +1 to all Warlock skills! That was way better than the junk that Faustus had been using in the amulet slot and I happily made the switch, all of his summoning skills now having 3 total bonus skill points.

The Bind Demon skill gained an additional upgrade when Faustus reached his 10th skill point invested, now sitting at SLVL 10+3 with his shiny new amulet. The skill now allowed Faustus to bind champion opponents, the monsters that appear in groups of 2-4 and have significantly higher base stats than normal enemies. Here on Nightmare difficulty for example, champions have 250% more health, 56% more attack rating, and 75% more damage over their base counterparts. Obviously it was a huge advantage for Faustus to take control of a champion opponent rather than a normal monster since he would then be benefiting from its boosted stats. The biggest downside is that champs tend to be difficult to find: every time that a boss spawns in Diablo 2, there are 80% odds for it to be a normal boss (or "elite" in the official terminology) and 20% odds to roll a champ pack instead. This meant that champions for Faustus to control didn't come along very often, and then he had to hope that whatever champs did appear would happen to be demons since undead and animals didn't count for the skill.

However, when the conditions did line up properly, the results were downright awesome. There was a champion group of Misshapen in the Underground Passage and Faustus was able to yoink one of them with his Bind Demon spell before his other minions killed them all. The resulting demon rolled as a Berserker champion (who have lower HP in exchange for significantly higher base damage) that also was able to take advantage of the Extra Strong / Extra Fast traits, plus the other bonus stats from Bind Demon. This thing was a walking deathball that had to have been hitting for roughly 1000 damage at a time, though interestingly it only used its melee attack and didn't shoot any projectiles as the tainted monsters will do once they've taken damage. The bound Misshapen champ was slaying virtually everything in a single hit; Treehead Woodfist died so fast that I couldn't even get the screenshot. Griswold has about 11,000 HP in Tristram so he was able to stand a handful of blows, though I could visibly see the huge chunks that the demon was dealing to his lifebar whenever it attacked. This was scary stuff - I just had to make sure to keep the bound demon alive!

The next few areas sped past quickly as Faustus cleared from the Stony Field up through the Outer Cloister in one gaming session. There were Carvers everywhere in the Dark Wood but no need for Engorge shenanigans to clean up their corpses as Death Mark allowed Faustus' minions to eliminate their shamans in surgical fashion whenever they appeared. Death Mark was also great in the Forgotten Tower for teleporting the demons into each new room and around every blind corner so that Faustus himself wouldn't get targeted. There was only one place where Death Mark didn't work: coming down staircases, and there were two different stairs traps in this dungeon to contend with. The worst one took place on the third floor where there was a Ghost boss and its minions literally sitting on top of the stairs, which hit Faustus half a dozen times before he was able to walk through them (yes, you can walk right through the ghosts) to safety. Ugh, nothing to be done about that one and it was genuinely dangerous. The other stairs trap was on the bottom floor and this time Faustus had 0.5 seconds to react and Death Mark his minions into the path of another Ghost boss before getting jumped. The Countess was a breeze after that, dropping a useful Thul rune as a reward for Faustus' troubles.

Two more levels gained allowed Faustus to drop another two skill points into Bind Demon which now sat at SLVL 12+3. This qualified whatever demon was bound for a third boss affix, adding the Spectral Hit trait to the previous Extra Strong and Extra Fast. Spectral Hit was definitely less useful than these first two, adding a random elemental type of damage to each attack that landed, however it could be helpful for anything that rolled with double fire / physical immunities later on. I tested and confirmed that the previously bound Misshapen champion did not magically gain the Spectral Hit trait, Faustus would have to dismiss it and grab another demon to pick up this ability. Therefore that's what he did:

First Faustus found a Carver champion and bound it to confirm that the Spectral Hit affix was now in play, though that was only a temporary measure since Carvers have such low base stats. I was able to replace that shrimp with a much superior Dark Stalker corrupted rogue champ out in the Tamoe Highland which was exactly what Faustus wanted to have. This individual was extremely fast and hit very, very hard; I was even able to confirm that the Spectral Hit damage was taking place when I saw some lightning and cold graphical effects on her swing. Along with the trusty old goatman and tainted summons, this unholy trio absolutely tore their way through the Highlands and then the two levels of the Pit. They could walk right into the middle of the nastiest boss packs in this Act, a dozen archers firing together or a pack of snarling Yeti brutes, and the demon minions would barely take damage before laying out all opposition. I was constantly using Death Mark to reposition the trio wherever Faustus needed them to be, then tossing an Engorge buff onto the group once they claimed an initial body. Even though they didn't need the healing, the extra attack speed was handy for cutting through their foes faster and faster.

The Barracks and the three levels of the Jail similarly sped past at warp speed. Part of the problem with having this incredibly strong bound demon was that it was killing bosses almost too quickly; I barely managed to get a screenshot of the Smith before it went down and couldn't even manage that much with Pitspawn Fouldog. The biggest annoyance for Faustus was accidentally clicking on Kashya in the Rogue Encampment and then getting the quest reward Rogue mercenary. I spent the whole Cathedral running around trying to get the poor thing killed off and eventually had to desummon the goatman and tainted minions because they were slaying everything so fast that the mercenary wouldn't die. (Diablo 2 still doesn't have any option to dismiss a hireling, only replace them with a different mercenary type.) Things got more interesting on the first floor of the Catacombs where suddenly several new runes started dropping out of thin air:

It started with a Hel rune appearing while Faustus was halfway through the process of murdering the unfortunate rogue mercenary. That was a huge deal as it was the last missing piece needed for an Authority runeword, though for the moment I lacked an armor with three sockets to put the runeword together. Then three or four rooms later a Dol rune dropped out of nowhere, followed by a Sol rune appearing maybe 2 minutes later in real world time! This was one of those absolutely ridiculous runs of RNG luck as previously Faustus had a single Shael rune and nothing else higher than Amn, only to have Hel + Dol + Sol all appear in the blink of an eye. The Sol rune was immediately used for a Lore helmet which could conveniently be placed in a two-socket circlet that I'd been holding in stash while waiting on the rune to appear. Lore is a standard runeword for spellcasting classes and there were several nice bonuses here for Faustus, the +1 skills being the biggest but also the 30% lightning resistance and 10 Energy were solid perks. All of the Warlock abilities were now benefiting from 4 additional skill points and Faustus was a single armor item with three sockets away from adding another +2 skills to his equipment setup.

The remaining Catacombs were less noteworthy as nothing of interest dropped. The goatman and tained minions had only grown stronger from those extra skill points while the chained Dark Stalker continued one-shotting essentially everything in her path. There were multiple vampire boss packs down on Cats 3, one of which even had the dangerous Extra Fast / Cursed trait combo, only for none of it to matter. Faustus' current trio was way too strong for the enemies to handle and Faustus kept teleporting them into each new room which allowed him to remain completely safe. Thus far, the monster scaling was still proving inferior to the power of the Demon skill tree thanks to all the abilities getting souped up with those extra skill points.

Andariel did not break this trend. There were lots of Dark Ones and their shamans running around past the big entry doors that led into the final chamber, and I was doing my best to keep the demon minions from pulling aggro on Andariel herself. While I managed to get most of the little side wings cleared out, I wasn't able to keep them from luring out the main boss who began spitting poison everywhere. There was time enough for a quick Engorge heal to stabilize the health of Faustus' minions, then I moused over Andariel to grab the pictured screenshot... and then she was dead a split second later from the next hit of that bound Dark Stalker. Sheesh! I think that was three or four hits from the bound demon to take out Andy's whole lifebar, something like that. I'm struggling a bit to put into words how overpowered these enemies were once they had been captured with Bind Demon and turned against their foes. I know that I had been relentlessly pumping this skill on each level up and further accelerated its stats via +skills gear, but are you really supposed to be able to defeat the Act end bosses with this little effort?

Now that Faustus had reached an Act transition, I sent him back to Normal difficulty and farmed the shops in Lut Gholein until Fara offered a three socket Breast Plate for sale. Act Two Normal is the last place where the vendors will sell non-magical (white) items which can appear with sockets and it only took me about five minutes of running back and forth across town to turn up the base item needed for the runeword. This was my first time ever making this new recipe in Reign of the Warlock:

All eight classes in Diablo 2 have a runeword of this nature, an armor-based runeword that adds +2 skills for the class along with some minor other stats. Generally speaking the spellcasting classes have more difficult runewords of this type to make while the melee classes have easier ones, since they don't care as much about +skills items. The Warlock breaks this pattern by having the easiest such runeword of the whole bunch, needing only the modest Hel rune to complete it - compare that to needing Mal for the Druid's Rain or Gul for the Paladin's Principle! Anyway, while it was nice having 30% fire resistance for free on this runeword, the real benefit was another +2 to all Warlock skills. Now Faustus had +6 to all of his skills which caused those dinkly little one point skill investments into things like Blood Oath and Engorge to pack some real punch. Boosting these skills to SLVL 1+6 increased the life of the demon summons by 260% while Engorge now granted 21% attack speed and lasted for 23 seconds. The goatman summons were sitting at SLVL 9+6 with 1487 HP dealing 247-331 damage per hit. Summon Tainted had a further bonus from Faustus' codex for a total SLVL 9+9, with 1719 HP and dealing 280-348 fire damage. Uhhh, I don't think those things were going to be dying any time soon against Nightmare enemies that typically deal about 30-50 damage per hit.

The extra skill points had an even bigger effect on the Bind Demon skill. Faustus had just taken it to a base skill point investment of 15, with the extra skill points from gear resulting in a total of SLVL 15+6. This unlocked two different features: the chance to bind "elites" (AKA bosses) that didn't have to be champions thanks to spending 15 real skill points, as well as whatever demon was bound gaining its own aura to go along with Extra Strong / Extra Fast / Spectral Hit. There were no demon candidates for binding in the Sewers so before entering I had Faustus backtrack into the Act One Catacombs in search of a Tainted or Afflicted boss to bind. I didn't find anything on Cats 2 but Cats 3 had this lovely customer:

Bane Fester was an Afflicted boss that naturally had the Cursed and Multishot traits, not bad at all for something that Faustus stumbled across randomly. The upgraded Bind Demon skill now allowed Faustus to take control of this enemy as well, after which it gained an additional four boss traits: Extra Fast, Extra Strong, Spectral Hit, and Aura Enchanted. It looked pretty wild seeing a creature with six different boss traits on the interface (even Kaa has a maximum of five traits) plus bosses in Hell difficulty would bring along another trait for a total of seven. My understanding is that Cursed is generally seen as the best monster ability to capture since it can apply the Amplify Damage effect and therefore drop enemy physical resistance by 100%, super handy for cutting through the physical resistance in Hell difficulty. Multishot turned out to be less useful in practice: although the Afflicted boss would indeed shot out its triple lightning projectiles, they apparently didn't receive the Bind Demon bonus damage and therefore tickled the other monsters to minimal effect. Oh well, I certainly wasn't complaining.

Thus the boss affixes of the captured demon can vary quite a bit and players have an incentive to search out strong opponents to bring under their control. The other random element of this process is what aura happens to roll on the captured demon which can apparently pick from a wide range of different options. I had thought that the gameplay would only pick from the standard seven auras found on bosses: Might, Fanaticism, Conviction, Blessed Aim, Holy Fire / Freeze / Shock. Instead, this Afflicted boss popped up with a Vigor aura instead, the Paladin aura that adds to movement speed and stamina which I had earlier used on my Usain Bolter character. That was definitely not what I expected and Faustus really had no need for extra movement speed but sure, why not. Binding different demon bosses along the path of Faustus' journey and seeing what auras he rolled looked like it was going to be a lot of fun.

As for the enemies encountered during the first half of Act Two, they did not put up much in the way of resistance. Faustus' trio of demon summons had all been juiced up by those extra skill points and they continued to run roughshod over the mostly easy foes that crossed their paths. The Burning Dead skeletons in the Sewers were highly resistant to the fire element damage on the tained demon but fell readily to the physical damage from the goatman and bound Afflicted. Radament died before I could even capture him in a screenshot. The desert wastelands flew past in a breeze with little in the way of danger for Faustus. This picture above was noteworthy because it was the rare screenshot that captured both the triple Multishot projectiles from the bound Afflicted as well as the Cursed trait hitting the monsters. I found that the Cursed affix was rarely appearing and quickly realized what was happening: the Amplify damage effect only takes place after a Cursed boss deals damage to a target. And Faustus' bound demon was one-shotting nearly everything, therefore never applying its Cursed ability. Well, OK then, that certainly worked!

The underground areas in the Stony Tomb and the Halls of the Dead were a bit more interesting to traverse. Faustus continued to cast his minions past closed doors using Death Mark and that minimized most of the potential for danger on his part. The Halls of the Dead started featuring Hollow One greater mummies which were also handled via liberal use of Death Mark teleportion. It was almost always easier and faster to telekill the Hollow Ones in this fashion as opposed to spamming Engorge to clean up the skeleton bodies, though Faustus did make some use of Engorge for the minion healing and attack speed boost. Bloodwitch on the bottom floor had her always-present Extra Strong / Cursed traits and therefore would have been a fantastic opponent to bind, however unfortunately her spear cat monster type didn't qualify as a demon, ah well.

I still hadn't found a better demon boss to improve upon that Afflicted at the time that Faustus cleared the Maggot Lair, though I was keeping an eye out for anything that could potentially be bound. The captured demons keep their base stats which means that it's a good idea to keep replacing them periodically as the monster level scales upwards throughout the gameplay. Death Mark allowed the demons to be placed wherever Faustus wanted them, both used offensively against beetles and maggots up ahead or placed in front of Faustus himself to intercept charging opponents. Coldworm was another handy target for Death Mark and I instructed the demons minions to focus her first, leading to an easy fight with the big bug splatted before it could breed more minions.

The Far Oasis and Ancient Tunnels flew past quickly and without anything of interest taking place inside. I continued to be impressed at the strength of Faustus' summoned minions who were treating Nightmare difficulty as if it were still Normal difficulty. The Claw Viper Temple was the same story with the snakes inside getting pulverized by the demon trio of minions. On the cramped second floor, I sent Faustus along the northern edge of the platform where he quickly eliminated a pair of greater mummies along with their skeletons. Fangskin was hanging out at the bottom side of the altar with Cursed as his extra trait, something that would have been dangerous if Faustus hadn't blinked the bound Afflicted right on top of the viper for an instant telekill. Another fast and easy victory to lay claim to the Viper Amulet.

The four floors of the Palace were another place that was trivialized by the ability to teleport Faustus' demons behind every closed door and into every hidden room. I discovered that it was indeed possible to use Engorge on the monster corpses that fell in these invisible spaces, allowing Faustus to heal his minions even as they fought outside line of sight. I'm not sure that there was any conceivable way for Faustus to get himself into trouble when the monsters weren't even on the same screen as he was! When I grew bored, I could also send the demon minions directly into the teeth of the opposition as pictured above. They could absorb attacks from a full dozen enemies and barely get scratched on their healthbars, which then could receive further healing from Engorge if necessary. All of this continued to feel pretty broken; maybe it wasn't a good idea to give the goatman and tainted summons close to 1500 HP in mid-Nightmare difficulty, plus the ability to heal and teleport, and then let the Warlock summon an infinite amount of replacements as needed? Like I said before, the Necromancer can only wish that his summons could do this!

The Arcane Sanctuary also zoomed past in a blur without anything interesting taking place. The Summoner himself was located at the end of the first quadrant though Faustus dutifully cleared the other three as well for the full clear credit. I kept an eye out for a Hell Clan goat boss that might have interesting boss trait for binding but without seeing anything notable appear. This was followed by the Canyon of the Magi where there were lots of beetles and Crushers which would have been great targets for binding, if only they had been demons. I was further on the lookout for Gorebellies to bind in the Tombs of Tal Rasha since that Afflicted demon was starting to get a bit long in the tooth. I tried and failed to bind three different Gorebelly bosses since they had to take damage for Bind Demon to function and then the minions kept slaying them before the binding could take effect. However, I did manage to bind a Gorebelly champion in the second False Tomb:

That was Faustus' big pinheaded demon ally laying waste to the beetles around him, which unfortunately looked very similiar in coloring to the enemy Gorebellies also defending this tomb. As a bound champion, this demon didn't get to preserve the traits from capturing an enemy boss, however it did receive the Extra Strong / Extra Fast / Spectral Hit / Aura Enchanted combo and combined this together with the higher base stats of an Act Two monster with the Berserker class of champion. Apparently every champion turns into a Berserker when bound since I had yet to see anything else on the demons Faustus had captured. While it was a shame to lose the Cursed affix from the previous demon (and I guess Multishot), this Gorebelly rolled a far more useful aura in the form of Concentration. This Paladin aura gets less attention than Might and Fanaticism but it still adds significantly to the damage of friendly units affected by the aura, plus guarantees that they will hit at least 20% of their attacks no matter what. Furthermore, the previous Afflicted demon hadn't been a great monster type to make use of the stats from Bind Demon. Because the skill provides so much bonus damage, you really want something that closes to melee range and attacks quickly, not waste time shooting lightning bolts as the previous demon had done. This new pinhead demon definitely fit that criteria and was clearly doing more damage than ever with all of its various bonuses stacked up.

How much damage were we talking about? I had already observed that many, many of the enemy bosses seemed to be dying in a single hit whenever the bound demon targeted them. I was able to quantify the damage when I saw the new Gorebelly demon smack one of the Mummy Sarcophaguses in a False Tomb and take out about 90% of the thing's HP at once. Now the mummy makers are quite tanky and many of my variant builds have needed to wait until they stopped creating more mummies for lack of damage to defeat them directly. This Gorebelly demon though... well, I checked the Amazon Basin and the Mummy Sarcophaguses have 9200 HP in Nightmare difficulty so that mathed out to something like 8000+ damage in a single swing - urp! No wonder I was having so much trouble actually binding enemy bosses. As a result, the False Tombs also went by quickly between the demon minions trashing the monsters and Faustus constantly blinking them forward into each new room while he hung back in total safety. There were a handful of occasions where I had to spam-cast Engorge to clean up corpses on the ground, however mostly Death Mark sufficed to assassinate the Unravelers whenever they appeared. Kaa was hanging out in Tomb #5 and I was fortunate to get the screenshot of his boss traits before the demon crew tore him to pieces.

I wasn't worried about defeating Duriel since Faustus had an unlimited number of demon summons to throw at the big bug as needed. The more interesting question was whether the Gorebelly demon would be able to survive the combat since there would be no corpses present to use on Engorge healing. Faustus entered the orifice chamber with his minions in tow and then stepped off to the side to become a spectator in the battle as there wasn't a whole lot that I could do aside from replace fallen demons with fresh summons. Therefore I had plenty of opportunity to watch Duriel's lifebar closely and observe that the bound Gorebelly took out roughly 1/6th of the whole thing with each blow. Duriel has 56,000 HP and no physical resistance in Nightmare so yeah that was 8000-9000 damage per attack, sheesh! This trivialized the battle because even though the Berserker Gorebelly wasn't especially tanky and was clearly taking some damage from Duriel, it could easily last long enough to inflict half a dozen hits. Duriel was splattered a few seconds later with the Gorebelly's health still firmly in the green area.

I went gambling afterwards looking for better rings as I had been doing throughout Act Two, finally hitting on a keeper item: a rare ring with 30% lightning resistance, 17% poison resistance, 6 life, and 9 replenish life. While I don't value the life regen too highly, it's one of those things that's nice to have for healing away minor chip damage instead of needing to drink a constant flow of red potions. I still needed to find a ring upgrade for the other hand slot, and then I also wanted to improve the gloves and belt slots before switching over to permanent amulet / circlet gambles after hitting CLVL 60 when the odds for +skills affixes improved. Anyway, this was an incredibly easy pass through the first half of Nightmare difficulty and I was starting to think that there wouldn't be much challenge until Faustus reached Hell difficulty. He was still very much on cruise control and I expected that to continue for some time yet - this Warlock class is quite strong!