Nova: Hell Difficulty Part Two

The Great Marsh was more difficult because it had lots of Gloams flying about with their lightning attacks; I've explained before how their attacks had an undesirable interaction with Energy Shield that quickly drained away all of Nova's mana orb. While this wasn't exactly dangerous, it was certainly annoying! Chalan even managed to get popped at one point against a Gloam boss pack when he ate too many of their lightning blasts at once. The jungles had a layout where the Marsh was a lengthy dead end that went nowhere and Nova had to return to the Spider Forest to continue on to the Flayer Jungle. That was the first place where the little fetishes started appearing in big numbers; none of them were Fire Immune but unfortunately all of their shamans were. I did love having Teleport at the touch of a keystroke here so that Nova could bounce back and forth across the jungle river whenever she desird. This was also the place where Nova hit CLVL 80 and unlocked her final piece of gear:

This was one of the true gems from the online gambling tool, the unique spiderweb sash named Arachnid Mesh. This item is generally considered to be the best belt in the game for a spellcasting character, with +1 skills (the *ONLY* belt in all of Diablo 2 with this property), 20% faster cast rate, and an extra 5% additional max mana. I was uncertain about whether the "slows target by 10%" property applied to Nova's spellcasts because she was killing everything so quickly, however I'm pretty sure that it did in fact work with her Fire Ball and Meteor spells. Need to do some more testing there to be certain. Although this did mean that I was losing out on Nightsmoke's "50% of damage taken goes to mana" property which had been extremely useful, Arachnid Mesh was simply too good not to use it. Fire Ball was now dealing about 8700 damage per cast while using Nova's fire sundering setup, and over 9000 (heh) whenever she was able to switch back to the Harlequin Crest for another net +1 skills.

I do want to emphasize for anyone reading that the online gambling tool was not a free lunch when it came to finding uniques that had elite items as the base type. I had to spend a lot of time - a LOT of time - rolling new games and refreshing the tool until it finally had the unique spiderweb sash available to gamble. I've still only seen this item as a gambling option one time in several hundred uses of the gambling tool. (Some items pop up way more often than others based on a hidden logic to the gambling store; for example, I've been able to gamble the unique dusk shroud Ormus' Robes three times already and could have potentially gotten it a few more times, though so far I've rolled Ice Bolt, Telekinesis, and Nova as the three skills to get the +3 bonus.) I had even worse luck trying to find Hellwarden's Will despite the base item only being exceptional there. I spent something like three or four hours working with the gambling tool before it finally appeared shortly before Nova reached CLVL 75. If you're wondering why I never tried to find another version with 7% or 8% reduction reduction to enemy fire resistance, well, it was really hard to find even one copy of the item!

Nova had the new belt equipped by the time that she needed to tackle the two underground areas of the Flayer Jungle. I had looked at the monster list for the Flayer Dungeon over at the Amazon Basin and saw that only the flayer shamans would have fire immunity, therefore deciding to try this area without Nova's fire sundering equipment. To put it bluntly, this did not work: it was way too difficult trying to fight the huge number of flayers and soul killers without being able to touch their shamans and I soon abandoned this plan. It was safer and faster to stick with the fire sundering charm so that the shamans could be eliminated even if it meant a lower total damage output. I wasn't crazy to prefer Nova's default setup though because the extra HP on the Harlequin Crest went a long way towards making Nova safer. 1110 HP gave her a much bigger cusion than 985 HP when Hellwarden's Will was equipped.

This almost cost her in the Swampy Pit which was the first place where the undead exploding dolls appeared. I knew that those things were dangerous, I made sure to have Chalan tank them whenever they appeared, and even so, they nearly got Nova. There was exactly one moment where a small group of the dolls raced towards her and, instead of teleporting backwards to put Chalan into harm's way, I tapped the wrong key on my keyboard. By hitting "Q" instead of "E", Nova cast a Fire Ball... which instantly killed the undead critters... and caused them to detonate collectively. I saw a number that started with "100" on Nova's health globe in the split second before I mashed the full rejuv button (thus no screenshot) but she was that close to dying here; she would have been slain if she had been Cursed or if I didn't always make sure to walk around on full health and mana. The undead dolls were extraordinarily dangerous precisely because they turned Nova's own insane damage output against her. One-shotting them with a single Fire Ball was actually not a good thing here! I was even more cautious afterwards and didn't suffer any more close calls, but whew! That was not what I wanted to see.

I don't think Nova will be visiting any of the places where the exploding dolls hang out once she reaches the postgame.

I can't even put into words how quickly Stormtree disappeared at the gates of Kurast, one instant the big tree was there and the next instant it wasn't. Within Kurast, there was a surprising amount of fire immunity since the vultures and all of the zealot-type enemies had this property and forced the use of the sundering gear setup. At least I was able to get lots of practice in dropping Meteors on top of the buzzards and I found that Nova's extremely fast Fire Balls were able to finish off the Zakarumites before they could run away. The Kurast Bazaar had less fire immunity to worry about (the supposedly tanky Thrashers had zero fire resistance and burned like, well, giant walking trees!) and then it was time to deal with the first of the temple subdungeons. There was nothing too interesting in the Disused Fane and then the famous Ruined Temple was oddly empty, pretty much just Sarina and her crew of corrupted rogues without anything else. I tried to capture a screenshot of Sarina and failed to be an effective journalist here, I only know that she had a Blessed Aim aura from the little graphical effect. Anything that wasn't Fire Immune died so quickly to Nova that it was legitimately hard to document her journey at times.

The main question for the Kurast Sewers was whether or not the Undead Soul Killers would be present, and of course they were there when Nova arrived. None of the enemies in the Sewers are naturally Fire Immune so everything else was irrelevant, avoiding those death explosions was the whole ballgame for Nova. I was getting better at doing everything possible to avoid standing next to the dolls when they exploded, eventually realizing that it was actually better to let Nova get hit than to attack the dolls themselves. ONLY engage when they were safely tied up with Chalan at a distance. With due care, I managed to limit Nova's exposure to the point where she only tanked a single death explosion and therefore avoided another close call. She even found a really nice Large Charm inside this area: 19 life and 13% poison resist, a definite keeper even among Nova's collection of strong charms.

Upper Kurast was another outdoor area where nothing had fire immunity and Nova quickly dispatched the vultures and zealots and thorned hulks that called it home. Then I was able to capture the screenshot above of a rare fight on the tiny Kurast Causeway where there was a double Infidel boss causing trouble. Those things had high health and a good bit of fire resistance at 50% but that was nowhere near enough to make them safe against Nova. The remaining Kurast Temples were surprisingly easy, lacking stairs traps and with bosses spread out rather than clustered on top of one another. I was using Nova's sundering gear because there was one moster type in each temple that had fire immunity (mostly spiders and bats) and I couldn't afford to come down the stairs into a nasty situation without being able to damage one of the enemies. Everything was routine right up until entering the final temple in the Disused Reliquary which finally did have an ugly trap at the stairs. There were beetle champs here along with several of the Fire Immune bats which meant that the action started up immediately in a sardine can. Nova's damage output was high enough that she could slay all of the beetles in a few seconds and she didn't wind up needing any emergency full rejuvs to sort out this mess. I was glad that this was the only temple to have one of these deathtraps.

Travincal turned out to be very similar to Upper Kurast, with neither of the monster types having fire immunity and therefore everything dying quickly. Usually the vampires and the Hierophant / Zealot pairs are sufficient to pose a legit challenge, not this time though as Nova quickly cleared them all out. It was the Council that required a bit more work on her part since several of them were Fire Immune and they were hesitant to come out of the central building. Nova was able to pull out a few minions, followed by Geleb who took a ton of shots and could only be damaged at all due to the sundering charm. Static Field wasn't an option here either due to his lightning immunity. At least it did provide an opportunity to confirm that the 10% slowing effect from the Arachnid Mesh belt was indeed taking effect: Geleb was preposterously slow between Chalan's Holy Freeze and Kelpie Snare and getting pelted repeatedly with Fire Balls that had this extra effect. Toorc came out right on Geleb's heels and managed to down Chalan thanks to his Cursed trait, then Nova teleported into the building itself to defeat Ismail and the remaining Council members after popping back to town to revive her mercenary.

I found a Demonhead helmet in Travincal and therefore paused for a moment here to roll sockets into the item followed by re-rolling the Bulwark helmet for Chalan. Unfortunately Nova rolled another dud result: 4% lifesteal out of the possible 4-6% range and 11% physical resist on the 10-15% range. That was actually better than her previous Bulwark, which had the minimum roll in *BOTH* categories, but still bad enough that I knew I would need to try again later. Now that Chalan had a natural 48% resistance in each category from his base level, I did swap over to this new item for its lifesteal, physical resistance, and hefty life regen boost. I would continue to keep an eye out for additional elite helms that could roll with 3 sockets.

The Durance was another repeat of the Kurast Sewers: nothing with innate fire immunity, Nova hoping to avoid rolling the Undead Stygian Dolls, instead getting the dolls on both floors. I didn't think that I needed another hour of practicing against those skittering things but apparently the gameplay decided to give it to me. It was the same pattern yet again, cautiously approaching through every open doorway and then teleporting backwards whenever the undead dolls appeared, with the entire Durance handled about as smoothly as possible with minimal danger. At least I could tell that I had clearly gotten better at handling these things from seeing them literally every single place where they can possibly appear in Act Three. The most interesting detail about Durance 2 was the waypoint spawning incredibly close to the stairs down to Durance 3, literally one room away by Teleport. Here in Single Player, this dungeon map would not reroll unless I started a new game in Normal or Nightmare difficulty which would make Mephisto runs insanely easy to do; there are untold numbers of online players who would kill for this setup. I actually didn't plan to do Mephisto runs with Nova in the postgame but I figured I'd stay in Hell difficulty for now to at least keep the possibility alive.

On the final floor of Durance 3, Bremm appeared with Magic Resistant trait to make him heavily fire resistant although not outright immune. There's nothing on Durance 3 with fire immunity so Nova was using her Harlequin Crest setup, though I probably would have killed Bremm faster by using Hellwarden's Will since Bremm had to be 90% fire resistant. Bremm was strong enough to take down Chalan with him which was more than the other two Council members managed to do. There were double vampire bosses over by Maffer who required more effort than the unique boss himself, and then Wyand randomly happened to be both Fire and Lightning Immune which turned the combat into a slow stabbing match between Chalan and the corrupted priest. Mephisto's 75% lightning resistance made Static Field nearly useless and I concentrated on fire spells instead, using Chalan to lock the Prime Evil in place while Nova rained down Fire Balls and Meteors on his head. It took about 30 seconds to defeat the demon boss and Chalan was still standing with roughly half of his lifebar intact.

I was expecting Nova to find herself drowning in an endless sea of Fire Immune monsters upon reaching Act Four, only to be pleasantly surprised instead when the Outer Steppes avoided both Doom Knights and Venom Lords. Nova was able to use her non-sundering gear loadout which made short work of the enemies, including the Flesh Spawners and their pups. Those things were simply not an issue for Nova since they were always Cold Immune with zero fire resistance, dying in merely two casts of Fire Ball. What some of my other variant characters would have given for that kind of power! The Plains of Despair did add Doom Knights for one Fire Immune opponent and interestingly they functioned a bit like when Nova had encountered these same enemies back in Nightmare. Hitting them with their immunity sundered wasn't too different from facing them with high fire resistance and lower overall damage output back on the prior difficulty, though of course there were far more bosses to contend with. There was one guy who was vastly easier to kill here: Izual, who died perhaps 10 seconds after appearing on screen. His bonus skill points came close to maxing out Fire Mastery as Nova closed in on the final parts of her character build.

The City of the Damned also avoided having Pit Lords appear which meant another place with no Fire Immune monsters to deal with. This allowed Nova to clear the whole place out quickly, handling more of the breeding demons and some of the ranged Abyss Knights with their colorful projectiles without an issue. Those Pit Lords finally appeared on the River of Flame and yeah, they were pretty tough customers with 14,000 HP and innate fire immunity. Even with the sundering charm and Hellwarden's Will to cut them down to 89% fire resistance, that was a lot of Fire Ball shots at more than a dozen apiece needed to score kills. Nova could absolutely get this done, and it didn't even take much time given how fast she was casting, but she did drink a lot of mana potions. A new set item dropped here: Bane's Authority light belt which is a Warlock-based new set introduced along with the new class. With 20 life and 10% faster cast it would have been a decent belt earlier in the gameplay, though it naturally couldn't compare with Arachnid Mesh.

Hephasto rolled with Fire Enchanted trait which would have given him an immunity if Nova hadn't already been sundering enemy fire protection. This made him take much, much longer to defeat though the demon wasn't any kind of a threat once it had been slowed into oblivion by Chalan's Holy Freeze plus Kelpie Snare combo. The Hellforge quest reward dropped an Um rune which was an above-average result, a roll of 8 on the scale of 1 to 11 for the potential rune tiers (Hel to Gul), which I was pretty happy with. An Ist or Gul rune would have saved a lot of time in the upcoming postgame but I could hardly complain about this result.

The Chaos Sanctuary was both challenging and a lot of fun for Nova to tackle. Doom Knights and Venom Lords were BOTH naturally Fire Immune which forced her to spend a lot of time blasting away at them with Fire Ball and Meteor; this was one of the very rare occasions where Nova couldn't simply obliterate whatever was in front of her in mere seconds and required me to use more tactical positioning. Chalan was an absolute lifesaver but even he couldn't tank the giant mobs in the Sanctuary for too long, forcing me to hit and run at times (Teleporting backwards to pull Chalan out of dangerous situations) and then unloading on the non-Fire Immune Storm Casters and Oblivion Knights whenever they appeared. The combat raged back and forth across the length of the dark cathedral and required real skill to keep advancing safely. This was about the worst possible situation for an exclusively fire-based Sorcie (even the Oblivions had 60% fire resistance!) and Nova aced this test of her powers with flying colors.

The seal bosses were mostly short and sweet. The Vizier died in literally two seconds, faster than I could even get a screenshot of him - why does this boss only have 12k health in Hell difficulty?! De Seis might have been tougher if he had been able to get his Fanaticism aura into effect, however Nova bushwhacked all of the Doom Knight minions as they turned around a corner and dropped them before they could get anywhere close to her, then picked off the Oblivion Knight boss when he was left alone. The Infector was definitely the toughest of the bunch, largely because he spawned with Cursed as an extra trait which made it impossible for Chalan to tank more than a few seconds. Nova had to lure the Infector and his minions away to break up the Venom Lord swarm, eventually downing three of the minions near the lava pool and then getting the Infector when he was isolated, followed by clearing the curse in town then polishing off the remaining minions. And the Infector was far tougher than Diablo himself who died *INCREDIBLY* fast, so quickly that I only captured the single screenshot above of the boss fight. Diablo put Nova into a Bone Prison while she was hitting him with Static Field, then she cast Fire Balls while dropping a couple of Meteors and the Lord of Terror was gone in mere seconds. Sheesh! Big D only has 50% fire resistance (cut to 44% since Nova was still wearing Hellwarden's Will) and that was clearly not enough when dealing with Nova, heh.

Act Five opened with only two monsters in the Bloody Foothills, Slinger spear cats and the Enslaved. The Slingers were Fire Immune but had very low health at only 4000 apiece while the Enslaved were just sad, melee opponents with no abilities beyond walking up and slashing Nova. This area was an absolute joke in comparison to the Chaos Sanctuary. The Frigid Highlands continued onwards with double fire immunity, corrupted rogue Vile Archers and then the Demon Gremlin imps which meant more need for the fire sundering equipment. None of this was especially hard since both the rogue archers and imps had low health totals for this point in the gameplay, it was mostly just annoying that Nova was encountering so many monsters that had innate fire immunity. The inanimate doors and barricades were still easy to break down but unfortunately the towers were also Fire Immune and had more than 40,000 HP - I hated it when the imps teleported inside and forced them to be knocked down.

With the initial Act Five quests now complete, I paused for a moment to make some final upgrades to Chalan's setup. I had decided earlier that I was going to use a socket quest reward to place an Amn rune into his Kelpie Snare weapon, burning the Hell difficulty quest reward while still holding onto the Nightmare one for the moment. This is something that I would have done much earlier but I wanted to make sure that Kelpie Snare worked as advertised. I had been extremely pleased with Chalan's performance and therefore didn't feel bad about committing more resources into upgrading his build; the one thing that he had been lacking was lifesteal and this socketed rune mostly solved that weakness. He now had 11% lifesteal when combined with his Bulwark helmet (which I still needed to reroll again for better stats) which would work out to 4% after applying the Hell difficulty penalty. Along with the hefty 30 life regen on Bulwark, this would go a long way towards helping the mercenary survive longer.

On that same theme, if less effectively, I had also used the Horadric Cube recipe to upgrade the base item type of his armor. Shaftstop is the unique (exceptional) mesh armor which I was able to transform into an elite boneweave with Ko and Lem runes plus a Perfect Diamond. This nearly doubled the Defensive rating on the armor from 950 to 1829 which sounded like a great benefit, right? Unfortunately most of you reading this know that Defense is a nearly-useless stat in Diablo 2, thanks to the monsters getting insane bonuses to Attack Rating and so many enemy attacks having the Ignores Target Defense property. Still, higher Defense is better than nothing and this had a low investment cost for Nova since she randomly had 6 Ko runes and 5 Lem runes already saved in stash. So I went ahead and pimped out my mercenary's armor for the modest help it would provide, and I did notice that Chalan's survivability improved significantly afterwards. I think that was mostly due to having triple his previous lifesteal but hey, every little bit of defense helps.

The Arreat Plateau had an interesting opponent draw when Carvers and their shamans appeared as returning guest monsters. Surprisingly these things were not Fire Immune as they had been back in Act One; they still had heavy fire resistance but that didn't matter to Nova who gleefully pounded them with Fire Balls and took advantage of their paltry life totals. There was no need for Nature's Peace ring here to stop their resurrections, Nova was dropping the Carvers in a single Fire Ball and their shamans in two casts - they died too quickly to need the alternate ring. Since the other monsters on the Plateau also lacked fire immunity, Nova actually got to wear her green shako for a change, yay! That quickly ended in the Pit of Acheron subdungeon where the Balrogs were innately Fire Immune and required the sundering charm. They were a pain in the rear to deal with, especially when Balrog champs forced a battle on an exposed causeway with Hell Temptress witches firing away from both sides. I really hate this particular dungeon layout and longtime readers might remember that WillPower had an incredibly nasty fight in this same map position a number of years ago. Nova was an immeasurably strong character so this was more of a speed bump for her, but still: definitely annoying stuff.

By contrast, the ice caverns were easy, easy pickings for Nova. There's only a single monster type that can appear with fire immunity in the Crystalline Passage (the Succubus witches who were not present for Nova) and then nothing at all with innate fire immunity in the Frozen River. Nova absolutely torched both areas as a result, casting and casting and casting her fire magics with nothing to stand in her way. Oh, what's that? There were Physical Immune minotaurs inhabiting the Crystalline Passage? Nova DID NOT CARE, they only had 33% fire resistance which meant that they died before they could ever get their Frenzy attacks stacked up. Pew pew pew with Fire Ball, another group of dead bullheads. I honestly laughed out loud at how quickly Frozenstein died, he has no fire resistance and was eliminated by *ONE* Meteor cast. I tried to get a screenshot and couldn't do it, the yetis all perished too darn fast.

The Prowling Dead outside Nihlathak's Temple had no fire resistance and died in a single Fire Ball; fun to see that was still possible even this late in the gameplay. Pindleskin rolled Magic Resistant trait which made him Fire Immune, an annoyance since I had taken off the fire sundering gear setup due to Nihlathak's Temple having almost no enemies present with fire immunity. The undead boss then also had Lightning Resistant trait which negated Nova's backup lightning damage, sheesh! I had to swap back to the sundering items to defeat Pindleskin, then continued to equip the charm when it turned out that the Halls of Anguish were teeming with little Flayers. Those things are literally the only monster type that can appear on this floor with fire immunity - one out of the TEN possible options! - and Nova happened to draw them. Most of her time was spent killing the buggers since the skeletons and Death Brigadiers that constituted the other foes were a joke. Surely things were better on the next floor though, right? Nope: the Halls of Pain had Flayers for a second time, again rolling one of the only two Fire Immune enemy types possible on this floor out of ten potential options. The complementary enemies were also tougher on this floor since Nova had to face Hierophant / Zealot pairs. The lightning bolts and blizzard spells from the hostile spellcasters did a number of Nova's Energy Shield even if these monsters died readily to Fire Ball.

This was a noteworthy dungeon floor as Nova reached CLVL 83 and placed her final skill point in Fire Mastery to max out her build. She had a point in every skill in the Fire tree except Hydra and had maxed out Fire Bolt, Fire Ball, Meteor, and Fire Mastery. This meant SLVL 32 when using her sundering gear setup and SLVL 33 when she could afford to wear the Harlequin's Crest for an additional point in everything. Fire Ball damage was about 9400 with the former items and a little over 10,000 damage with the latter while Meteor had exceeded 20,000 damage with either itemization path. Sadly this was the absolute max as far as adding skill points into Nova's fire tree and any additional damage gains would have to come from finding more +skills items. Any future skill points would go into the Telekinesis skill (of all things) due to its synergy with Energy Shield to reduce the mana drain when getting hit.

The final floor of the Halls of Vaught had Flayers and their shamans yet again - seriously?! The odds of getting flayers three times in a row, when they were just about the only Fire Immune monster possible in Nihlathak's Temple, had to be some sort of cosmic joke played against Nova. She had killed them on the previous two floors though, she could certainly do so again. I guessed wrong three times in a row on where Nihlathak would be hiding, clearing out a nasty firing squad of witches in the back corner of one of the quadrants in the process, before finally finding him over in the west branch. Nova had a ready answer for this Corpse Explosion skill: the Nature's Peace ring, brought out again from stash for its "Slain Monsters Rest In Peace" property. This not only stops shamans and greater mummies from resurrecting their minions, it also prevents bodies from being exploded. I had a lot of fun here walking Nova right into the middle of Nihlathak's minions and knocking them down, seeing the little red skull animation appear over their corpses to indicate that they had been rendered inert. This didn't work perfectly as I've noted before with Nature's Peace: either the effect failed to trigger or Chalan landed a random kill because Nihlathak did detonate one body under Nova, wiping out her Energy Shield mana and dealing about 300 damage to Nova herself. This was one place where Energy Shield worked like a charm and did a great job softening the blow, then the minions were all down and Nova was teleporting into Nihlathak's face to finish the job. It was one of the most unique fights against this dangerous boss that I can remember.

I don't particularly like Nihlathak's Temple in terms of D2's design but on this occasion it had been highly rewarding for Nova from an item drop perspective. She found two Lum runes from various monsters and then a series of unique items, starting with the unique giant sword Kinemil's Awl which has mediocre stats but +6 to Holy Fire on it. I wished that I could somehow retroactively gift this item to poor WillPower who would have really liked those extra ranks of Holy Fire! Then later Nova found Ribcracker the unique quarterstaff, intended as a melee weapon for some bizarre reason, followed by Nihlathak himself dropping the unique gothic bow Goldstrike Arch. While Nova herself didn't want any of these items, it was rare even for her to find so many uniques in such a short span of time.

Nova picked things up again at the Glacial Trail which was almost absurdly easy for her to complete. There were Pit Vipers here and skeletons and those shambling ice monsters, all of which were melee aside from the Bone Spears on the vipers, all of which lacked fire immunity. I might have legitimately been able to close my eyes and clear this place with just the in-game sounds, it was that easy for her. The Drifter Cavern was at least slightly harder because it had a bunch of corrupted rogue archers present and necessitated dodging their arrows, while still not registering as anything scary. It was the Frozen Tundra that posed an actual challenge for once, as Nova rolled imps along with Crush Beasts who were both Fire Immune. The siege monsters were really annoying with a very beefy 21,000 HP total that necessitated more than 20 (!) Fire Ball shots to defeat whenever they showed up. The Inferno spell that the imps also liked to use from the top of the Crush Beasts or the various fortified towers would also drain Nova's mana orb in a second or two after getting the damage reflected by Energy Shield. So this area actually took a bit more time to fully clear and it wasn't the cakewalk that the previous ice caverns had been.

The monsters in the Infernal Pit subdungeon weren't interesting but Nova had a very noteworthy item drop appear inside: Ars Dul'Mephistos, the unique occult tome exclusively for a Warlock character. This is a really powerful offhand item with +2 to all skills, 20% faster cast, 30% faster hit recovery, 10% magic find, and the big unique bonus of -13% to enemy magic resistance. I had visions dancing in my head of building a new Warlock character around the Miasma skills where that decrease to enemy magic resistance would be fantastic. Then I spotted the gray coloring on the unique item: it was Ethereal and had only 11 durability, noooooooo! Well, I still saved it anyway for one of those extra Zod runes that were sure to turn up sooner or later, heh.

The Ancient's Way was another easy area where the only monsters that put up any fight were the quill rats. It could be hard to see them when they were hiding out in corners and there was one Cursed opponent who plugged Chalan full of quills and forced a resurrection bill. Everything else in this area was melee and non-Fire Immune so yeah, you can imagine how that went. Nova had another nice item find in the form of the belt from the Trang-Oul's Necromancer set, giving her 3 of the 5 items. She was getting close to completing that set, the Barbarian set, and the Sorceress one; hopefully one of them would complete in the postgame. Then the Icy Celler had a whole bunch of witches that Nova was able to snipe at long range, taking advantage of the way that Fire Ball travels about two screen lengths before detonating. I also had fun Teleporting over the witch projectiles into safe spaces whenever the incoming flak got too hot.

I try to take the Ancients seriously as opponents since several of my solo characters have died facing them, most recently poor Blanche who had a terrible draw on their random abilities. Nova made sure to prep the mountaintop summit with some extra potions and then checked to make sure that none of them had truly deadly abilities (no Cursed or Might/Fanaticism auras) before engaging. Nova had the massive advantage of Teleport on her side which allowed her to blink around the small arena and separate out the enemies, dragging Chalan along with every teleport. I was able to get Korlic and Madawc separated from Talic which was exactly what I wanted, Talic being the toughest of the three thanks to his fire immunity. Chalan was able to tag Korlic with Kelpie Snare to slow him to a crawl (though not apply Holy Freeze since Korlic was Cold Immune) and that cut the barbarian's damage output to virtually nothing. Nova quickly blasted her way through Korlic and then Madawc had even less fire resistance to fall in a matter of seconds. I was more careful with Talic because his fire immunity made him about 5x tankier for Nova; interestingly, Chalan was able to slow his attack speed but not his Whirlwind animation which apparently Holy Freeze and Kelpie Snare didn't work against. Nova unloaded five full mana potions into him from a safe distance and landed the kill, though unfortunately Talic took down Chalan at the same time just as his lifebar expired. That was sloppy of me, I should have teleported Chalan to safety and healed him, then returned to get a completely clean sweep of the Ancients. Oh well.

The first floor of the Worldstone Keep finally threw something at Nova that she hadn't seen before: Death Lord minotaurs who were also Fire Immune. Those things were definitely tough but not too bad so long as Nova made sure to stay behind the protection of Chalan's Holy Freeze aura. She was also helped by drawing only a single minotaur boss on this floor, all of the other bosses rolling instead as easily killed corrupted rogues or vampires. Worldstone 2 has ten different possible opponents, only one of them with fire immunity, so guess which enemies Nova drew? Yes, of course she ended up with the Fire Immune fetishes, though they were still fairly easy by virtue of being fetishes. The Greater Hell Spawn melee creatures that made up the rest of this group were an absolute joke, barely avoiding the indignity of dying in a single Fire Ball. Worldstone 3 finally allowed Nova to drop her fire sundering gear and proved to be even easier, with lots of lightning skeleton mages and those Rancid Defiler things that hide around in the corners doing absolutely nothing. Nova flew threw the place at breakneck speed.

The Throne of Destruction required additional care as the Death Lord minotaurs were back again, once more with their fire immunity. There was an ugly Death Lord boss over on the left side of the floor backed by ranged support from Hell Witches and their application of Cursed status managed to drop Chalan in some fierce fighting. Once all of the side wings were cleared out, Nova quickly fought her way through the resulting boss rush. Colenzo was actually harder than Achmel because the fallen shaman boss and his minions were all Fire Immune while the greater mummies fell readily to Meteor. Bartuc died insanely fast, way faster than I had been expecting, and I later spotted that Bartuc has zero fire resistance when checking the Amazon Basin. He was still the toughest boss of this bunch though because he randomly rolled Cursed trait which, as always, greatly increased the danger for Chalan and resulted in another mercenary death. By contrast, Chalan was able to stand and tank against the full Ventar mob without dropping into the red area on health. His Holy Freeze aura and Kelpie Snare slow really worked like a charm for posting up against this group of enemies. Chalan was mostly able to tank against Lister's crew, holding them for quite a while as Nova rained down extensive punishment into their fire immunity, though I did have to pull him back with Teleport twice for some healing potions. Only a single mercenary death against these enemies was excellent work and really highlighted how strong his equipment was proving to be.

Baal put up no fight whatsoever for Nova. The final boss has an absolute ton of health at 493,000 HP but only 50% resistance to all elements, making him easy prey for Static Field that quickly zapped him down to the halfway point. Then Nova laid on the Fire Balls and Meteors while Chalan held the boss in place, the two of them working perfectly in tandem to drain through the remaining lifebar on the Lord of Destruction. Baal seemed confused by this onslaught and didn't even bother to use his own Teleport ability or summon his clone. Nova simply stood in place and drank through four mana potions until Baal was dead less than a minute later. And that was that:

Nova completed the whole game across all three difficulty levels, with every area full cleared and all monsters slain. She never suffered any deaths or Save and Exit situations, which was a great relief to me because I would have been embarassed to take a death with a character build this overpowered. I was honestly stressing out that I'd mess up somewhere and look like a fool when I had to do the writeup, whew! This would be the end of the journey for most characters but of course Nova's whole purpose was exploring the postgame content. In a real sense, the training session was finished and the real game could now begin for Nova. This was going to be new territory for me and hopefully it will be interesting to read about as well - stay tuned! Nova was just getting started.