Nova: Normal Difficulty

This allowed Nova to start the game with SLVL 0+3 Fire Bolt which deals 6-9 damage per shot. That's enough damage to kill most of the starting monsters in a single hit and one nice property of Fire Bolt is that the mana cost never increases with more skill point investment, always exactly 2.5 mana per casting. Nova used Fire Bolt against everyting (she absoutely would not sully her hands in melee combat like some peasant!), even using her Town Portal tome to pop back into camp for a mana refill when she ran low. She quickly hit CLVL 2 and that's where the item fun began in earnest. I included a screenshot of Nova's stash showcasing all of the various items saved up there for her use. If you've played Diablo 2 a lot, you might recognize some of these unique and set items from their funky coloring as compared with the normal stuff. So as soon as she leveled up a single time, she reached the CLVL 2 requirement for her first set items:

Nova equipped two items from the Arctic Gear set, the Arctic Furs quilted armor and the Arctic Binding light belt. The quilted armor had 10% resist all along with a bunch of extra defense while the pictured light belt came with 40% cold resist and a two-piece set bonus of +5 Strength and 40% magic find. I actually had the Arctic Mitts light gauntlets as well, which had the same CLVL 2 item requirement, but couldn't put them on yet due to falling short of the 45 Strength requirement. Now these items are only useful by the standard of Normal difficulty since their stats were never updated when the Lord of Destruction expansion came out, however by the standards of the Normal difficulty Den of Evil? They were practically uber gear for dealing with fallens and zombies, heh. I had also purchased a two socket skull cap in the Rogue Camp and stuck two chipped rubies inside for +20 life, only waiting for CLVL 7 before I could pull the same trick again with flawed versions of the same gems. Nova quickly cleared out the Den of Evil as she looked to add more and more unique item goodies once her character level climbed high enough.

I was dumping all of my stat points into Strength during these first few levels, trying to reach 45 Strength as soon as possible since that's the requirement for light gauntlets. Nova would need that much Strength for a Spirit crystal sword eventually anyway, and I had good reason to want first the Arctic Mitts followed by an eventual Magefist in the gloves slot. The only other place where I would be investing stat points was into Vitality and her gear was covering for that weakness at the moment. Skill points were going entirely into prerequisite skills and otherwise being saved: one point into Fire Bolt, Warmth, Charged Bolt, and Frozen Armor (since I intended to use SLVL 1 Frozen Armor for its defensive freezing effect). I opted to place only the single skill point in Fire Bolt, even though I would need to max it eventually for its Fire Ball and Meteor synergies, because there were so many prerequisites that Nova would have to get out of the way: Inferno, Blaze, Fire Wall, Telekinesis, Lightning, and Chain Lightning. By holding Fire Bolt at SLVL 1+3, I could focus on maxing Fire Ball once it was available and use up these saved skill points on the pre-reqs. Could I make it up to CLVL 12 with only a low-level Fire Bolt though? Uh, yeah - it was Act One Normal! You can easily do this act with a naked punching character, I'm pretty sure that Nova could manage with her twinked gear.

The next upgrade took place at CLVL 7 where Nova reached a total of 45 Strength, 40 of that naturally and then another 5 Strength from the Arctic Gear set bonus. This allowed her to add the pictured Arctic Mitts for the third piece of the set for another +20 life (and a useless attack speed bonus), plus an additional 50 life (!) for completing three parts of the set. These gauntlets were therefore worth an additional 70 HP in total which more than doubled the health total on Nova and made up for the fact that she had been spending all her stat points in Strength rather than Vitality. Nova now had more health than was strictly needed so therefore I swapped out her previous double chipped ruby skull cap for a new helmet with double flawed sapphires, worth an additional 37 mana in total. This nearly doubled Nova's mana pool from 48 to 85 MP and went a long way to prevent her from running out of casting juice. Longtime D2 players know that increasing your total mana generally does more to increase mana regen than specifically itemizing the mana regen stat (by default it takes 2 minutes to regen the whole mana orb, regardless of the total mana pool, so having double total mana means double the mana regen). These item upgrades made Nova significantly safer while also allowing her to cast much more frequently.

I should also mention that Nova added the Hotspur unique boots at CLVL 5. They had no faster movement speed but provided a further 15 life, 45% fire resist, and +15% maximum fire resist which was all thematically appropriate for a hot Sorcie like Nova. She was actually capped on cold resistance at 75% and nearly capped on fire resistance (helpful against fallen shamans) despite being so early in the game. I was still full clearing each area with Nova and the clear pace was relatively slow since she was working off SLVL 1+3 Fire Bolt. Bishibosh was the toughest opponent in these early portions of Act One due to his fire immunity, forcing Nova to engage in melee combat like a dirty urchin. She did not like having to bash him with her staff, not one bit! The Mausoleum dropped the first bit of useful jewlery, an amulet with 10% faster cast and 5% lightning resistance, which was useful for cutting one frame off Nova's casting animation. She did have one point in Static Field and I used it against high HP targets like Griswold in Tristram, even though Static Field at SLVL 1 has a tiny radius and practically forced Nova to give her opponent a hug. I also accidentally clicked on Kashya in the Rogue Encampment and acquired an unwanted Rogue mercenary, who followed Nova around briefly before I was able to kill her off against a champ pack in the Dark Wood.

Working off low level Fire Bolt did start to get rather slow by the time that Nova reached the Black Marsh, with typical monsters requiring 2-3 shots and the rare bosses needing much more. There was a Fire Enchanted goat boss in Tristram who was taking about 2 damage per Fire Bolt which required Static Field to make any real progress and drove home this sandbagging. I was more than ready for Nova to reach CLVL 12 and unlike Fire Ball which would be the core skill for the entirety of her journey. She finally reached this milestone right after finishing the Hole and prior to entering the Forgotten Tower, with the explosive power of Fire Ball helping out substantially in the latter dungeon. I took the time to shop at Akara repeatedly until the vendor offered a staff with +3 Fire Ball on it, therefore immediately starting out with the skill at SLVL 1+3. Along with the initial synergy skill point from Fire Bolt, Nova was dealing 29-41 damage per fireball which was a rather large upgrade from the 7-10 damage previously done by Fire Bolt. Here in Normal difficulty where only the fallen shamans had any fire resistance, virtually everything died in one hit to Fire Ball which would continue getting pumped on each new level up.

CLVL 12 is also the point where the normal gems become available for use so I swapped out the previous helmet that Nova had been wearing for a new one with double Sapphires worth 48 additional max mana. She actually purchased a Mechanic's Cap of the Mind which came with a bonus +5 to Energy on it, which wouldn't have worked for a runeword but added a further 10 mana from the "Mind" suffix. Nova's damage output was further augmented when a ring dropped in the Pit with the "Apprentice" affix for 10% fast cast. She was working off 20% total faster cast with her amulet which was enough to cut the spellcasting frames from 13 to 11 and make a clear difference. After that, the rest of Act One was uneventful aside from one additional piece of gifted gear that unlocked at CLVL 15:

That was the Eye of Etlich, one of the many unique amulets in this game, which granted Nova her first +1 skills bonus. I had actually used the online gambling tool to secure Tarnhelm as well, the unique skull helm which also has +1 skills on it along with some extra magic find, however Nova needed her mana-granting cap too much to make the swap. Nova had invested zero stat points into Energy and would drop down to a mere 60 mana without the help from her headgear which clearly wasn't enough. Having +1 skills this early in the game was still really nice for Nova though, increasing Fire Ball to SLVL 5+4 by the time that she faced Andariel where the damage had reached 71-90 per shot. This was more than sufficient to blast through everything for the moment, very much including Andariel with her -50% fire resistance. Nova even unlocked her first gifted charm as well, a Russet Small Charm of Life with 6 life and 7% fire resistance on it. Only 14 more hand-me-down charms still waiting in stash for Nova's character level to scale upwards high enough to use them.

Act Two started with the Sewers which were annoying for the amount of fire resistance (if not fire immunity yet) on the Burning Dead skeletons. Outside of monsters who resisted fire damage, I was having a lot of fun with this character. Fire Ball has to be one of the most satisfying spells in the whole game, shooting out a blast that explodes for area damage when it lands and has no casting delay nonsense to worry about. (The main reason why I never played elemental Druids is all of the casting delays associated with their whole kit, blech!) The outdoor desert areas were routine and that was where Nova reached the next milestone of CLVL 18. Her final saved up skill points were dumped into the prerequisite skills of Chain Lightning and Fire Wall, along with an additional skill point into the most famous Sorceress skill of all: Teleport. The Diablo 2 version of Teleport has no cooldown whatsoever and can blink your character anywhere on screen at will, leading to unparalleled mobility and turning Enigma into the game's most desired runeword. I didn't use Teleport that much with Nova for the moment due to its cost of 23 mana here at SLVL 1+1 which took out a big chunk of her mana orb upon casting. Teleport would get easier and easier to use as the game went on, with the mana cost decreasing via +skills gear and Nova's own mana pool growing substantially larger. So I didn't use it a whole lot right now but it was still fun to break out whenever she needed to create additional distance for herself.

The Halls of the Dead was the first place where the greater mummies began showing up. My initial plan had been to leap over the heads of the skeleton minions with Teleport and then Fire Ball down the Hollow Ones at close range, however Teleport simply cost too much mana right now for this to be practical for Nova. Instead she simply blew up the skeletons in a couple quick casts of Fire Ball, then shot the greater mummies from range as soon as the path was unblocked. It was Normal difficulty after all and there wasn't much need for too many tactics, not with everything dying in one or two casts of Fire Ball. The three floors of the Halls of the Dead passed by quickly and Nova gained another level to CLVL 19 in the very last room where Bloodwitch was guarding the Horadric Cube. This was another big level because it unlocked the Leaf runeword, always the go-to offensive option for an early game fire Sorceress, with +3 to Warmth, +3 to Fire Bolt, and another +3 to all fire skills. I used Nova's prior non-magical staff with +3 Fire Ball on it, temporarily passing the item over to Doktor Faustus who used the Ral + Amn + Perfect Amethyst Cube recipe to add two sockets. The odds were 5/6 that the staff would get the desired two sockets and thankfully the 83% dice roll odds held true.

Nova therefore had an additional 3 points in all of her fire skills, not to mention 6 total bonus skill points in Warmth for 114% faster mana regeneration. Her main Fire Ball skill was now sitting at SLVL 8+7 and averaging more than 160 damage per shot, an insane amount of damage for Act Two Normal. This was sufficient to one-shot basically everything in the whole Act that wasn't a boss; try looking at the HP totals of the monsters over at the Amazon Basin sometime if you're ever curious, the Unravelers in the Tombs of Tal Rasha are the only normal opponent that crack 150 HP and that only barely at 156 health. Everything else has fewer total HP and they fell before Nova like grass in front of the lawn mower as she passed through the remaining desert areas. Nova also had now reached a high enough level to enable perfect gems and therefore she switched up her helmet one more time, placing two Perfect Sapphires into a full helm for 76 additional max mana. That was sufficient to get her up to roughly 150 mana which should be enough to tide her over until she could reach the Spirit runeword and its own huge bonus to mana.

The next few areas passed by uneventfully for Nova as the Fire Ball spell continued one-shotting all opposition. The Maggot Lair was a bit annoying without being too bad, the Claw Viper Temple saw Fangskin perish in three Fire Balls before the snake could close the distance with Nova, that sort of thing. Nova steadily worked her way through the four floors of the Palace and then continued into the Arcane Sanctuary where she amused herself by teleporting across the gaps in the void. The next event of consequence took place when Nova reached CLVL 23 and unlocked the level requirement for Magefist, the unique light gauntlet. This is one of the best items in the game for a fire-based casting character, even though it only has a normal type of gloves as the base item, thanks to carrying +1 to fire skills in an equipment slot that normally can't provide that benefit. Magefist also helpfully contains 20% faster cast and 25% faster mana regen (though the latter is less necessary for a Sorceress with Warmth) to make it a truly useful unique item.

If Nova was going to use Magefirst however, that meant dropping the Arctic Mitts that she had been wearing ever reached 45 Strength back in Act One. And if she was dropping those gloves from the Arctic set, that meant losing the 50 HP bonus from wearing three different set items and therefore there was little point in continuing to wear the Arctic Furs or Arctic Binding items either. I already had other unique items ready to take over these equipment slots, starting with the unique belt Nightsmoke. This was a very popular item in pre-expansion days, granting 10% resist all and 20 additional mana, plus the rare property of 50% of damage taken granting additional mana. In other words, getting hit for 20 damage would grant 10 mana back for free. For the main armor slot, I swapped Nova over to the unique ring mail named Darkglow which also had 10% resist all along with +5% to the maximum resistance of all four types. This item was probably about equally good as a standard Stealth armor, maybe even worse since Nova could have benefited from the faster cast and faster hit recovery on Stealth, however I had run Stealth on so many characters over the years that I wanted to try something different for a change. Plus Darkglow had a fashionable green color which made Nova look like a pretty cool customer.

The Canyon of the Magi was straightforward to complete and then Nova sprinted her way through the seven Tombs of Tal Rasha over the course of less than an hour of real-world time. Fire Ball had scaled all the way up to SLVL 12+8 where it dealt 227-258 damage per casting, an utterly bonkers amount for Act Two Normal, and Nova managed to find an additional Ring of the Apprentice to hit 40% faster cast and the 10 frame casting breakpoint (which requires 37% faster cast for a Sorcie). She was spitting out the fireballs at rapid speed now and decimating everything in sight, with even the Unravelers dying in a single blast. I especially loved teleporting over the heads of the Burning Dead skeletons to launch deadly explosions right into the faces of their greater mummy protectors, though the mana cost of Teleport was still a bit too high for me to do this that often. Nova's biggest weakness at the moment was probably her lack of faster hit recovery gear, as she would stop and pause for a sluggish 15 frames whenever she took a hit. I wasn't itemizing for this stat because a Spirit runeword would shortly solve that problem but Nova did end up tanking a decent number of blows because she was too slow at moving out of the way.

I was not concerned about Duriel as an opponent. Nova let him get close and then spam casted Static Field about half a dozen times before teleporting away. Here in Normal difficulty, there was no cap on how much damage Static Field could do and Duriel only had 20% lightning resistance to reduce its effectiveness. He quickly fell to about a quarter of his health remaining and then a series of Fire Ball casts sealed the deal. Nova will have a mercenary protector by the time that she makes it back here again in Nightmare which will remove the need for Nova herself to be the target.

Act Three meant trekking through miles of impassable jungle with Nova as the monsters continued to fall before the power of Fire Ball. None of these enemies had anything in the way of fire resistance or enough health to survive more than a single casting of the spell, with even the tanky foes like Bramble Hulks dying in one shot. Nova had been close to leveling against Duriel and reached CLVL 24 early in the Spider Forest where the next tier of spells unlocked. The biggest addition was the Meteor spell which would be the complimentary form of attack for Nova, dropping down from the skies to deal area damage wherever it landed. Even here with only a single skill point invested, Meteor still dealt more damage than Fire Ball to anything unlucky enough to get caught in the central blast radius. Those numbers can be a bit deceptive, however, since the Meteor projectile takes about 2-3 seconds before it lands and also suffers from a 1.2 second casting delay that can't be reduced in any way. Fire Ball deals its damage instantaneously and can be spammed with no casting delay at all which continued to make it my preferred spell of choice. If I'm being perfectly honest, I've never really liked Meteor as a spell that much in Diablo, just too much of a delay before it actually takes effect. Nova tried to get some practice in using it against really big mobs of opponents, though with everything still dying in one Fire Ball there wasn't much of a need for Meteor just yet.

Since Nova didn't have any saved up skill points, she wasn't able to add her other new CLVL 24 skill until she gained another level in the Flayer Jungle. This was Energy Shield, a passive skill that has one of the more unusual functions in D2's gameplay. Energy Shield absorbs damage of every type except poison (which it doesn't function against at all), taking some of the damage that would reduce the Sorceress' life and stealing it away from her mana orb instead. Here at SLVL 1+1, Energy Shield was absorbing 25% of the damage taken by Nova: if a monster hit for 100 damage, 75 damage would be taken from her HP pool and 25 damage would be directed over to her mana. That's not to say that Nova would lose 25 mana, however, since there's a multiplier effect of 194% which would translate that 25 damage into 25 * 1.94 = 48 mana lost. More skill points invested into Energy Shield increase the percentage of damage absorbed but do *NOT* lower that multiplier effect, which only goes down via a synergy with the Telekeneis skill. Therefore the player has to place real skill points (not just +skills gear) into Telekinesis to lower the multiplier effect which causes many people to skip Energy Shield entirely.

Even with these limitations, I thought that it was worthwhile to put a single skill point into Energy Shield. With some +skills gear, Nova could get the damage absorption effect up to about 50%, and while that would be taxing to her mana orb, better to have mana drain away than health. Apparently this effect can even be countered entirely by stacking a lot of "damage taken goes to mana" items, one of which Nova happened to be wearing in the form of her Nightsmoke belt. I had planned out her skill points and she would be able to start dropping a few points into Telekinesis after CLVL 80 to help out a bit, much much later on down the road.

CLVL 25 was also a milestone level because it reached the requirement to use a Spirit runeword, the equipment of choice for so many of my spellcasting characters. Even with access to the entire pool of normal and exceptional unique weapons via gambling, I still judged a Spirit sword to be the best option for Nova - that's how overpowered this thing is. Spirit grants essentially everything that a casting character would want: +2 to all skills, faster cast, faster hit recovery (a big deal), big boosts to health and mana, even some minor stuff like magic absorb and missile defense. Rather than making a new Spirit runeword, I had gone through the many different versions created by my past characters and simply borrowed the one with the best stat rolls, this particular one having previously belonged to Blanche. This was an excellent Spirit outcome for having 33% faster cast (the range is 25-35%) and 111 mana (range of 89-112), the former of which was enough to take Nova past the 63% faster cast break point and drop down to only 9 frames. She was now casting the Fire Balls very, very fast indeed. All of this was worth giving up the former Leaf staff even though it cost Fire Ball and Warmth 4 extra skill points (dropping from +6 to +2) and every other fire skill had a single skill point lost. Don't forget either that the Spirit sword only required one hand which allowed the use of a triple Diamond shield with 58% resist all. Now it hopefully makes sense why I had picked out that Darkglow armor earlier: along with the Hotspur boots, Nova could now boast of having 95% fire resistance! She could stand right in the face of those fetish shamans and laugh at their Inferno attacks.

Furthermore, because there was 111 mana on the Spirit runeword, Nova could drop the double Sapphire helmet that she had been wearing. I replaced it with this Tarnhelm which was the earliest place to get +1 skills in the helmet slot along with some additional gold from monsters and magic find. She wouldn't be using this item for long because better stuff in the helmet slot would open up soon, however Tarnhelm was great for the moment because it mostly offset the loss of the +3 fire skills from the former Leaf staff, replacing that item with +2 from Spirit and +1 from Tarnhelm. Even with Fire Ball dropping from SLVL 12+8 to 12+5, the damage was still a healthy 201-232 and the spell could be cast faster than ever before. Meanwhile, Nova had gained a net 50 HP, 35 mana, completely maxed out all of her resistances at numbers beyond the usual 75% cap, and gained enough faster hit recovery to drop from 15 frames to 9 frames. She was better, faster, and stronger in every way other than direct Fire Ball damage output.

As far as Act Three itself went, Nova had a fast and smooth progression forward with few interruptions along the way. Her biggest issue had been contending with Witch Doctor Endugu back before she had unlocked her Spirit equipment. Endugu always has Magic Resistant / Fire Enchanted traits to make him Fire Immune and Nova spent the better part of a minute slowly bashing him to death with her staff. I, uh, may have forgotten that she had access to Static Field which would have sped things up enormously. The Spirit runeword with its damage bonuses to melee combat would help if Nova found herself in that situation again and then she would have the physical damage of an Act Two mercenary early in Nightmare difficulty when fire immune enemies started showing up in real numbers.

Outside of that niche situation though, Nova flew right through the rest of the Act as I completed the whole thing in a mere two gaming sessions, from the outset to the Flayer Jungle waypoint and then from there to the finish. Everything just died so fast to Nova's spells, for example Stormtree and his slow-moving minions eating a single Meteor spell and then collapsing into stacks of lumber. Two of the Kurast Temple entrances were trapped and Nova never missed a beat, immediately shooting a Fire Ball into the monsters surrounding her and downing them in an instant. A stairs trap doesn't really matter if the enemies forming the trap die that quickly! I was also loving the ability to use Teleport throughout this Act, which was far more useful here than it had been back in Act Two. Nova could teleport across the jungle river segments even where there were no bridges, teleport across the gaps in the Kurast Sewers, teleport to the walkway surrounding Travincal, even teleport directly from Lower Kurast into the Kurast Bazaar rather than taking the usual bridge path. All of this was a whole lot of fun as I worked my way back into practice with using the spell's insane mobility.

None of the Council members caused problems since Nova simply killed them too quickly for them to do much of anything. For exmple, Toorc and Ismail had no fire resistance and perished in a mere four shots of Fire Ball; Geleb had a good bit of fire protection from his Fire Enchanted trait and lasted long enough to make Static Field worthwhile, then expired as well. Exploding dolls (which were present on both floors of the Durance) didn't do enough damage here on Normal difficulty to be truly concerning and I would be glad to have a mercenary protector before seeing them again. The Council members on Durance 3 fared no better than their brethren, then Mephisto did put up more of a fight for a change. Part of this was the need to get quite close to hit the Prime Evil with Static Field as it still had limited range with only SLVL 1+4 investment. The other issue was working around the effects of Energy Shield which I was still getting used to. Mephisto's lightning bolts and cold shots did a good bit of damage even with Nova's immense resistances which translated into big chunks taken out of her mana orb as well. I still needed to get better at drinking blue potions quickly to offset the mana loss upon taking hits. While Nova was never in real danger, this boss fight required some more effort on my part than the gravy run that constituted the rest of Act Three.

I knew that Act Four was going to be tougher due to how much fire resistance the monsters would be packing. In contast to the first three Acts where basically nothing resisted Nova's spells, even here in Normal difficulty there were lots of demons that had stiff protection against the flames. The Outer Steppes weren't too bad, though the Doom Casters had 40% fire resistance and the Cliff Lurkers had 60% fire resistance which raised both of them to 2-shot territory for Fire Ball. Then Nova entered the Plains of Despair where things were notably worse:

This area contained both Venom Lords (70% fire resistant) and Doom Knights (80% fire resist) who were the first enemies that could shrug off Nova's fire spells. The Venom Lords were the tougher of the pair despite having slightly lower fire resist, due to the fact that they had double the health and therefore required 4-5 shots on average to defeat. These monsters were sturdy enough that it was worthwhile to set up Meteor detonations whenever more than a few of them clumped together, taking advantage of the spell's area-of-effect properties. Nova could also still use Fire Ball and her very fast casting speed allowed her to down the Venom Lords in a burst of fire projectiles without too much trouble. The issue here was one of mana consumption: each Fire Ball required about 13 mana and needing 4-5 casts per Venom Lord ran her out of juice quickly. She was absoultely guzzling down the blue potions and often needed to return to town to purchase more of them. Finding and defeating Izual allowed Nova to invest two more skill points into Fire Ball, and along with leveling to CLVL 27 she had now replaced the three skill points that had been lost when switching away from the Leaf staff. This boosted Venom Lords into firm 4 shot territory which was a slight improvement.

I also highlighted another item that unlocked for Nova at CLVL 27. My many years of gambling amulets and circlets with past solo characters has left me with all sorts of random items, with the best of them saved in stash for some potential future character to use. Nova was that exact future character and she had the pick of the best stuff turned up by her predecessors including this very nice amulet. It retained the +1 skills from the Eye of Etlich and then added some decent resist all (which Nova didn't need at the moment) plus modest bonuses to Strength and Energy. This wasn't even the full story as that same CLVL 27 requirement applied to a trio of Large Charms which could now be placed in her inventory. She was adding charms with 15% poison resist (the maximum possible on a Large Charm), 15% lightning resist, and 14% cold resist. Nova was now hilariously overcapped on her resistances and I was getting ready to replace some of her gear with other benefits since she was well over 100% resist in all four categories.

The City of the Damned dropped all of the fire resistant enemies and was therefore much easier and faster for Nova to complete. The River of Flame had Pit Lords (not as bad as Venom Lords due to their lower HP) and then a whole bunch of Blood Maggots which turned out to be a great place for some Meteor spells. Hephasto proved to be highly vulnerable to Static Field and went down quickly, rolling a Conviction aura which did precisely nothing due to the ridiculous resistances that Nova was fielding. Her reward for defeating this boss was a big fat nothing as the Hellforge quest resulted in a Tir rune, heh. Hopefully Nova was saving up for a good roll on the Hell difficulty quest result. Then the Chaos Sanctuary was like a renewed version of the Plains of Despair, tons of Venom Lords and Doom Knights running around, this time with Oblivion Knight curses added to the mix. I found myself using Meteor more and more against these enemies and it was particularly great in the narrow passageways by the lava pools where the demons were forced to crowd together. Even in more open spaces, I was getting better at internalizing the Meteor timing window to bring the big rock down onto a mob of opponents.

The Vizier was actually tricky for once due to being innately Fire Immune. Nova bowled over his Storm Caster minions with fire damage and then zapped the Vizier down to minimal health remaining with Static Field. She meleed him to death with her Spirit sword for the little sliver of his healthbar remaining which was not something I wanted to make a habit of doing. De Seis and his minions fell quickly to Fire Ball and Meteor, then Nova kited backwards across a good chunk of the dark cathedral while leading the Infector and his Venom Lords. I kept dropping Meteors that they walked into and casting lots of Fire Balls until only the boss was left, then more Static Field and Fire Balls did him in. Diablo was a solid opponent roughly on the same level as Mephisto, losing most of his health to Static Field followed by Nova pelting him with Fire Balls at range. Diablo was also easy prey for Meteor if I cast it right when he was starting a Lightning Breath of Doom, though that could be slightly tough to time properly. The main thing I needed to remember was to keep chugging mana potions, both for spellcasting and to retain the protection of Energy Shield. Diablo dropped the Tannr Gorerod unique pike, something that might have been decent on an Act Two mercenary if I didn't have better unique items already lined up.

Things only became easier as Nova exited Act Four, AKA the Land of Endless Fire Resistance, and passed into the friendly domains of Act Five. With this being Normal difficulty, there were no guest monsters to worry about and Nova mowed down wave after wave of Enslaved, Death Maulers, and then Imp / Crusher Beast pairs. These were easy opponents with low health and zero fire resistance so they all wilted under single casts of Fire Ball without much need for more complex Meteor tactics. The arrival of Act Five also meant rapid leveling once again after the slow XP gain of the previous two Acts, and by happenstance Nova had a huge backlog of new equipment waiting in her stash that unlocked over the next few levels. The first of these was the Peasant Crown that had recently been used by Doktor Faustus, another helmet with +1 skills that had significantly more useful stats than the magic find on the prior Tarnhelm. More health and more mana from those Vitality / Energy stats were always useful and the extra movement speed plus life regen were also helpful utility stats. I found that I didn't have to keep drinking red potions to remove minor chip damage which was a nice timesaver.

The other item was something named Visceratuant, the unique defender shield which was apparently designed specifically for use by a Sorceress. This shield had no resistances on it whatsoever, which wouldn't be a good idea for Hell difficulty but worked just fine here where Nova had been massively over the resistance cap in everything. Even after removing the triple Diamond shield with 58% resist all, Nova was still sitting at or above 75% resist in all four categories. In exchange for trading away resistances that she didn't need, Nova picked up another skill point in everything along with... ummm... well, she did gain another +1 skills which was pretty awesome! So yeah, the other stats on this shield were garbage but it was still fun to get another item with more +skills stuff in a slot that usually can't provide that particular bonus until later in the gameplay.

By a total coincidence, the next level up to CLVL 29 unleashed a torrent of powerful new items for Nova:

The most important of these was located in the main armor slot where Nova could now wear the Skin of the Vipermagi, the unique serpentskin armor. Even though this is one of the earliest exceptional armors and has a low Strength requirement, it turns out to be a better choice for spellcasters than almost anything else in the game, only outdone by the absolute elite stuff like Enigma. Skin of the Vipermagi offers three extremely useful benefits: +1 to all skills, 30% faster cast, and then a big boost to resist all. The range for the resist all attribute runs from 20-35% and by complete coincidence I had rolled the absolute max value when gambling this item earlier, rolling a 16 on the 1 to 16 dice toss. Even the "magic damage reduced by 12" property was somewhat useful as it almostly completely negated the weak damage dealt by enemy imps when combined with Nova's high fire resistance. This was an item that Nova could wear for a very, very long time and be satisfied with it.

And on that same note of high fire resistance, Nova similarly replaced her old Hotfoot boots with the exceptional unique version of the same item. This was the Infernostride set of demonhide boots which also increased maximum fire resistance by 10% (slightly less than the +15% on Hotfoot) while also granting 20% faster movement speed and 30% fire resistance. The list of unique boots tends to be weaker than some of the other equipment slots in Diablo 2, especially for spellcasting characters, and this looked like the best option for the moment. I could definitely notice the extra movement speed on Nova since she went from no speed bonuses at all up to 35% when combining these boots with her Peasant Crown hat. Finally, there was one more item upgrade that unlocked here at CLVL 29 which I saved writing about for last:

It was the infamous Stone of Jordan, the best known item in the entire game from back in pre-expansion days. I had never seen a Stone appear even one time in all my years of playing Diablo 2 right up until I was able to gamble one using the new online gambling hack. The Stone of Jordan is still one of the best rings available for spellcasting characters thanks to its +1 skills (a property that rings normally don't have), 20 additional mana, and the big boost of increasing maximum mana by 25%. This was sufficient to take Nova's maximum mana pool from about 275 to 350 and would only continue to scale upwards over the course of the gameplay; I had no intention of ever removing this item from one of the ring slots. This item therefore meant lessened pressure on Nova as far as running out of mana (though she still needed lots and lots of blue potions), better value from Energy Shield, and of course an additional free point in every skill. Even when gigantic crowds of monsters showed up in the ice caverns as pictured above, Nova was able to blast right through them thanks to having skills juiced up far beyond where they were supposed to be.

I also need to mention Manald Heal which was the unique ring Nova was wearing in her other slot. Manald Heal was another one of the original unique rings; there were three of them in pre-expansion days and the player had to obtain each one in order before the next one could appear: the Nagelring, then Manald Heal, then the Stone of Jordan. Manald Heal was never a particularly desirable unique item as it contained mana steal, life regen, 20 flat max health, and then 20% faster mana regen. Everything there was "nice to have" without being great. But then D2R released a patch that buffed this item by adding the pictured 10% faster cast property, something that literally just happened as I'm writing this. Patch 3.3 added this buff to the item on 21 August 2026 and I gambled the item on the *EXACT* same day! I hadn't been trying to do so but it worked out that way by dumb luck, making me one of the first players in the world to use this new version of the item. The 10% faster cast made Manald Heal vastly more useful and I replaced a different 10% faster cast ring that Nova had been wearing which lacked the other unique properties on this ring.

This flurry of new items resulted in Nova blowing past the next spellcasting breakpoint at 63% faster cast; she was actually close (93% faster cast) to the following breakpoint at 105% faster cast. But this was still more than fast enough as Nova could now spam out Fire Balls at a 9 frame animation window, about 50% faster than the default 13 frame casting speed. And when she leveled again to CLVL 30, she could place a skill point in Fire Mastery for the first time:

Which instantly raised Fire Mastery to SLVL 1+8 where it granted 86% more damage to all fire skills! Nova had placed exactly one point into every fire skill aside from Enchant and Hydra and they were all getting fully 8 additional skill points for free: 2 from Spirit, 1 from Skin of the Vipermagi, 1 from the Peasant Crown, 1 from the Visceratuant shield, 1 from Magefist, 1 from the Stone of Jordan, and 1 from Nova's rare amulet. Her few non-fire skills received nearly the same benefit, a bonus of +7 total skills that lacked the fire-exclusive properties of Magefist. The resulting damage for the Fire Ball skill was absolutely ludicrous, well over 700 damage per shot on a fast-casting spell while still in Normal difficulty. Nova's damage on Fire Ball would continue scaling over the remainder of the Act and top 1000 damage per shot before its conclusion. Even the "super elite" bosses in this part of the gameplay barely had enough health to survive a single casting, such as Frozenstein having 2000 HP and Bonesaw Breaker running around with only 900 max health. Nova was completely and totally unleashed thanks to all of this gifted equipment and she utterly laid waste to the back half of Act Five.

So here's how everything went: see a monster, cast a Fire Ball, monster dies. There's little point in talking about any of the individual fights or opponents because they all collapsed equally quickly. Nihlathak? Nova blew up all of the minions near the entrance to his chamber and then teleported over the bodies straight onto the altar where she defeated the former townsperson in four shots. The Ancients? Nova only had to loop around the central pillars one time before Madawc (who has no fire resistance) was already dead followed by Talic and Korlic dropping during the second loop. The minotaurs in the Ancient's Way and the Worldstone Keep equally dropped in a single Fire Ball apiece which meant that they never had a chance to use their Frenzy attack and become dangerous. Bartuc, Ventar, Lister - they all perished immediately to Fire Balls and the occasional Meteor when they were clumped together. The hardest opponent during this whole sequence actually proved to be Colenzo since the fallen shaman boss was Fire Immune. Nova used Static Field to drop him to a sliver of health and then stabbed a few times with her Spirit sword to deal the last bit of damage.

And Baal was easy picking as well for my excessively twinked out Sorceress. Nova teleported next to Baal and Static Fielded him down to minimal health while he was still spouting his initial villain dialogue, then a series of fast casted Fire Balls did the rest. The whole thing took maybe 20 seconds to complete in what was probably the fastest kill of Baal that I've ever achieved. He dropped Endlesshail the unique double bow which is a pretty cool weapon though it did roll the minimum possible +3 to Strafe so it's probably not something that I would ever end up using, even if I do get around to creating a Bowazon one of these days. That brought an end to a thoroughly entertaining Normal difficulty where the main topic of interest was juggling all of the various unique and set items that Nova was unlocking as her character level increased. It should go without saying that Nova full cleared the whole game with all monsters slain and zero deaths, though if I hadn't been able to do that with all of this ridiculous equipment then something would have been very wrong with me. Next up will be Nightmare difficulty where I can start using the mercenary for the first time which should add its own new wrinkle to this character's gameplay. There was just one more thing to take care of first:

Nova was in the mood for a steak dinner - moooooooooooooooooo!