A Necromancer in Diablo II Resurrected

In thinking about my initial lack of enthusiasm for Diablo II Resurrected back during the beta, I suspected that part of my problem was that I went and played the same class in the same way as I generally have over the years, which contributing the the feeling of sameness.  So I decided for my first post-launch play through I would try something new.

Having watched Potshot play a Necromancer as part of our first group adventure in the game, I thought that might be a good place to start, so I rolled one up for myself.

And I managed to bumble my way through the first act doing my usual routine of just putting skill points wherever they might feel good.  I put some into skeletons, some into skeleton mages, some into teeth to give me a ranged attack, then put my stat points into making sure I had enough mana, and it kind of worked.

With my first follower mix

I died a few times in the first act, and the final boss, Andariel I struggled a bit.  And end of act boss should be a bit of a challenge, but the first act is kind of a warm up and I’ve always been able to slouch my way past her.

Go myself a little too deep into the fight

I had to make a few trips back to town through a portal, but eventually managed to finish her off and wrap up the act.

At Andariel’s throne

My normal mode of operation is to continue to half ass my way through Act II until I am facing Duriel at the end and then use my re-spec to fix my setup because he is usually too tough for whatever nonsense picks I have made.

My problem with talent trees, and especially the Diablo II talent tree, is that I see a smorgasbord of choices available and I want to serve myself up a little bit of everything.  I have some vision of flexibility, but anybody who crunches the numbers will tell me I am an idiot.  The game doesn’t care about flexibility, it cares about damage on target and killing mobs dead.

So when I looked up necromancer builds I found that going all-in on skeletons was the optimal path.  20 points into skeletons, which gets you 8 followers, and 20 points into skeleton mastery, which makes them tough and hit hard.  They have you put a point into golems early on, just to get something a bit tankie when you’re starting out, but after that it is all skeletons all the time until you’ve gone 40 points in.

Meanwhile, on the stats front, the guide was to put enough into strength to be able to wear gear you need, but otherwise to put everything into vitality so that your health is enough to survive.  As a side benefit, your stamina is also huge so you can go everywhere at a run when you get enough levels behind you.

So I went all-in as suggested and headed into the sewers of Lut Gholein with six skeletons, a golem, and my rogue archer from Act I and the results were… pretty funny.  The skeletons are all over the place, though they do try to go where you are going.  As a group they mobbed most everything that showed up and, when I lost one now and then I just raised a fresh skeleton from a corpse.  Ranament was no problem.

No match for Skeleton patrol

The main problem is that every time you start the game to play again you have to go out and find some corpses, which are required to raise skeletons.

My little army stormed the desert and made it through very well.  It is a little tough in tight corridors, as the skeletons follow you and won’t run ahead until they seem something to attack.  There are times when you have to act like a SWAT team with a no-knock warrant, kicking in the door to a room and rushing it to beat down anything that moves.

The most troublesome bit was probably the Arcane Sanctuary… Act II has the widest variety of locations, which is part of why it is my favorite… but that was largely due to pathing, skeletons lagging behind me, and the general narrowness of the ways through the zone.

All the melee is out in front for once

I did ignore the advice to get one of the Act II followers which have auras that can boost your skeleton army, but I had found a very nice bow for my rogue and she was killing it, so I stayed with her.

I managed to get through Duriel at the end of Act II in two passes, jumping back to town through a portal to restock my skeleton army.

Act III was a cake walk.  The paths are wide enough for skeletons to roam ahead and they just chewed up any mobs that happened by.  I had enough points in skeletons by the time I got to Mephisto to do him in one go without having to head back to town.  I was light on skeletons when I was done, but I was done.

Act IV saw me swarming through the first part pretty well.  When you’re going through as a single character the game tries to get you with the big “Ah ha! Here comes a pack of a dozen mobs! Fight for your life!” routine.  But by the time I was into Act IV I had 8 skeletons, a golem, my rogue, and a skeleton mage because I picked up a wand that gave me +1 to that skill, along with myself, which gave me a dozen on my own team as well, so the scrum was pretty even with me just needing to replace a skeleton now and then or summon a fresh golem.

You have an army? Hey, me too!

Pretty soon it was time to face Diablo.

That turned into a bit of a challenge.  Actually, the groups that came as I unlocked the five seals cost me some skeletons and a surprise attack actually brought me down.  But once the seals were undone and Diablo appeared, then the real challenge began.

Diablo had my number when it came to skeletons.  I would get on the floor with him and he’d do his big AOE attack and my rogue, my skeleton mage, and my golem would be down and my skeletons would all be fairly weak.  They would beat on him for a bit before dying off and I would have to run around and find more corpses.  That became the real issue for me, as corpses don’t last very long on the floor, so despite slaying hundred on the way in I was scrounging for corpses after expending three waves of skeletons.

I also decided to get in and do some damage of my own.  The wand I had, which gave me a skeleton mage, also gave me +3 to the spell Bone Spear.  And while my mana pool was pretty small, it isn’t a high cost spell, so I loaded up on mana potions and got in there with my skeletons to hit at the boss.

I finally brought him down with my seventh full wave of skeletons, five remaining alive when Diablo died.

Diablo defeated

I got the big pat on the back and collected my rewards and moved on to Act V.

Not being a huge fan of Act V, I was going to write this post ending with the death of Diablo.  And then me and my skeletons stormed through the final act in a single evening where I kept saying that I was going to stop at the next waypoint, but then the waypoint seemed awkwardly far from where I would need to go next, so I just kept rolling along until I was at the final waypoint in the Worldstone Keep.  And once you’re there you might as well finish the tour.

I had a bit of a problem with the last group that Baal summons before the final fight.  For whatever reason my skeletons were not biting very hard on that round, even with curse applied, which doubles their damage.  I had to get out the mana potions and Bone Spear again to push them along.

Then it was time for Baal.  I had no idea how this would go.  I went in, opened a portal to town, then headed straight at Baal, letting my skeletons get at him.  As with Diablo, my golem, rogue, and skeleton mage were having a tough time of it, but the skeletons seemed pretty durable.  By this point I was level 35 and had 20 points in skeletons and 15 points in skeletal mastery, so they were pretty tough.  They just were not doing much damage.

So when I lost the first wave of skeletons I went back to town, want to the first waypoint and scrounged some more mobs to rebuild my skeleton force.  Then, back in town, I filled up on more mana potions and went in to assist my skeletons with Bone Spear once more.

Facing Baal with Bone Spear

That seemed to tip the balance again and I only had to assemble one more pack of skeletons before I was able to bring Baal down and finish Act V.

Baal down with six skeletons, a golem, and my rogue still alive

Now, there was something odd with the fight in retrospective.  There was no second, fake Baal in the fight.  I don’t know if the fight is bugged, but I only had to chase down the one Baal, which made it go a lot more smoothly.  And, thinking on that, I recalled that Diablo had gone a bit soft as well, not putting up the bone prisons on the town portals like he used to.  Maybe they softened up normal mode because they were afraid kids these days couldn’t handle the truth as it was back in 2000.  Or maybe it is just bugged.

Either way I finished my first play through of Diablo II Resurrected.

There is something amusing about being Slayer Siddartha

On the way through I managed to collect a whole bunch of gear and gems and jewels and runes and what not such that I have already managed to fill up all three shared stash tabs, so I am going to have to make a storage mule or two after all.

I am on such a roll that I will have to jump in and see how I do on Nightmare mode.  I know I have played through Normal mode multiple times over the years, including my play through last year, but I cannot recall if I have ever finished on Nightmare.  We shall see.

Also, I once again forgot to do the cow level.  Still things to do.

A Costly Imperium Victory at FWST-8

The map in EVE Online currently shows one big hot spot if you go to statistics and click the option to show ships destroyed in the last 24 hours.

That big orange ball in Delve

Over at DOTLAN it shows the most violent null sec system of the last 24 hours to be FWST-8, where more than 10K ships were destroyed.

Delve is a dangerous place

Yesterday I mentioned the destruction that happened when the Imperium killed the first Keepstar that the invaders dropped in FWST-8 in NPC Delve.  I also mentioned that they dropped a second Keepstar that could be attacked shortly after that post went live.

NPC Delve and vicinity

Yesterday was the return to battle in FWST-8 as the Imperium once more went all in to defend Delve from the invaders.  Shortly after 17:00 UTC the Keepstar finished its deployment and went into its anchoring phase, during which there was a 15 minute window in which it could be simply blown up in one pass with no future timers.

With a days notice to prepare, both sides were ready to contest this 15 minute window.

I took a little break from work and joined in for the first wave of the attack, going with the Rokh fleet.  We were bridged in early, as FWST-8 is a single titan bridge from 1DQ1-A, the Imperium’s main staging and capital, and waited for the timer to count down.  Tom Flood gave us instructions and warped us on grid when the time was ripe.

Of course, there were many people in system, so time dilation was down to 10%.  The past official record for one battle, the one certified by Guinness, was 6,142 players in the battle at 9-4RP2, the infamous million dollar battle.  There is no doubt a methodology required to assess exactly how many players are in a system and connected and active, but I did see local well exceed that number early on.

6,446 in local

I am not sure if that qualifies for a record, but it was a lot of people.

With all those people and things slowed down, Imperium forces did not arrive on grid and put enough damage on the Keepstar until almost seven minutes had run off the clock.  While everything else runs at 10% speed, the actual time runs in real time, so a slip up can cost a lot of time on the clock.

Warp disruption bubbles drawing as we arrive on grid

I was in full “potato mode” with graphics turned down to keep my client from bogging down trying to draw everything in sight in high detail.

We successfully stopped the clock at about 8 minutes and kept fire on the Keepstar.  As long as the structure was getting enough damage the clock would stay frozen, so we could not slacken our pace.

The first pause point

The enemy was out in force as well and clustered around the Keepstar to defend it.  Our job was to shoot the structure, their job was to shoot us.  When we were blown up and ended up back in 1DQ1-A, we had to re-ship and get back in the fight.  In this way the Imperium kept cycling ships, ranging from frigates to dreadnoughts, into the fight as losses mounted.

After I lost my first Rokh, I stopped and went back to work, but the battle kept going.  I peeked in on the INN live stream of the battle every once in a while and saw the Jabber pings keep rolling by as more and more people got into fleets to attack the Keepstar.

Later, when I was done with work, I jumped back in.  One of the fleets we were using was made up of ratting doctrine ships, Myrmidons and Gnosis, which were thrown on grid at range to send their drones in to attack the structure as they tried to burn out of ranged to avoid retribution.  I threw an alt in to try that.

Gnosis on grid

That Gnosis did not last too long.  I had better luck with the Rokh, which required you to use a bookmark that put you 200km off the Keepstar, within range of the fit with the sensor booster running a targeting range script.

You had to land, align back out, lock up the structure, shoot, then warp off once the hostiles started to lock you up, a process easier said that done.  Each step of that could take minutes and it the bads started shooting at you, their guns would keep cycling while you sat there waiting for the server to pick up your command to warp off.  I died a few times for want of attention from the server.

Also, I learned the hard way not to accidentally click on an overview tab that has brackets on.

So much stuff on grid!

That locked up my client for a minute as it worked that out.  It was a good thing I was on a distant perch and not in range.  I might have been blown up before it drew all those brackets.

I had my main and my prime alt alternating with Rokhs.  Progress was being made on the Keepstar, but it was slow going.

As the day wore into evening at my end, the enemy switched up and sent their subcaps to our staging Fortizar in the system to bubble it up.  That was where we were bridging in, so warp disruption bubbles there would keep us from getting to the Keepstar.

Bubble battle at our Fortizar

That came scarily close to working.  Our fire on the Keepstar slackened enough that the timer started up again and two more minutes ran down before we got enough fresh ships back on grid to stop it again.

Second Pause Point

The grind went on.  As the hours went by people in Europe dropped out for the night as more people from the US joined in.  The total players in system began to sag.  The high water mark was not held for long, but it carried on close to 6,000 for quite some time.  As the evening turned to night that number dropped to just below 5,000 as sightseers and the tired left.  But the battle carried on.

My biggest mistake was accidentally warping straight to the Keepstar.  The server didn’t pick up my abort, but I managed to load high damage, short range ammo and get in quite a few hits before I was blown up.  I don’t think they expected that.

My pod on the structure after my Rokh died

After losing half a dozen Rokhs, I switched over to bombers.  There was a dedicated group throwing bombs from stealth bombers, good for 6K of damage each launch, while trying to stay alive.  You can uncloak, bomb, warp off, and cloak up again if your good and if the server picks up your commands.

It was then that the big panic of the night happened.  The enemy had brought in titans to kill our dreadnoughts faster.

Enemy titans arriving

We slipped again and the timer started counting down once more.  All bombers were ordered on grid to shoot their bombs and then use their torpedo launchers to get enough damage on the structure to stop the clock.

We managed it, with losses, but the clock was now down to under two and a half minutes.  Another slip and the Keepstar would likely be save.

The third pause

This was especially agonizing not only because hours had been spent on the attack, but we were also about 80% done.  We just had to stick it out.

The target remains

I could not however.  After about six hours of constant runs on the Keepstar it was getting late and I had work in the morning.  I called it a night at about the 90% mark, even as pings were going out for more people to join in.  I was in a bomber in system, so I warped off to a safe and then found I couldn’t safe log because the 15 minute timer was still running down… at 10% speed.  So I just cloaked up and left myself in space.  I left Jabber up as well and I saw the ping in the morning announcing that the Keepstar had been destroyed about an hour or so after I went to bed.

But the cost. My loss tally will be up significantly come the next weekly war summary.

The battle reports are all muddled due to so many groups showing up to fight or just gawk.  But it looks like the Imperium lost over 1.5 trillion ISK worth of ships, with more than 5,500 ships destroyed in the fight according to one battle report.

Battle report header

It also shows that we did that even as we were outnumbered.  It wasn’t us swarming a smaller group, but us throwing ourselves repeatedly against a larger force.  And, as with the last battle, the kill mail for the Keepstar itself went missing, so you can add 187 billion ISK to the attackers.  They also lost 3 titans getting to the battle.

The details from another battle report show the ships that were sacrificed in the fight.

The Imperium is Team 1 on this chart

One fleet running for a while was Asher handing out Vexors with drones for people to fly in and attack the Keepstar with.  You got your Vexor, insured it, got it into battle, got blown up, and collected some free insurance ISK.

Our foes are feeling pretty good about killing so many of our ships.  But that wasn’t the real point of the battle.  The point was to show how hard we will fight when then step into Delve.  A lot of hay has been made about “flood plains” and how we let Fountain and Querious go without throwing in for a big fight.

But now we’re in Delve and we are ready.  Some propaganda was immediately forthcoming.

Welcome to Delve

Now we are restocking our supplies and getting ourselves ready for the next round.  The invaders want to advance by dropping Keepstars rather than by attacking ours, no doubt thinking their superior numbers would make this a safe way to get into Delve.  Now they know they will have to commit to a huge fight with every step on that path.

I am sure both sides now are planning out next steps and digesting lessons learned.  A third Keepstar drop is expected.

Related items:

• INN – Live Blog of some of the battle
• INN Twitch – The 14+ hour continuous coverage of the battle
• Razorien – Screenshot gallery from the battle

A Tower Bash in Cache

The current Reavers deployment has has some stretched of inactivity.  We were delayed deploying due to a hurricane (other than Hilmar) bearing down on Asher, then he was away on vacation for a bit.  My main and my alt had been logged out in hostile space for a while now, though since WoW Classic has been getting most of my attention, I wasn’t complaining.

But Asher got back and settled and it was time to log back in late last week.  We had something to do, so we dropped our mobile depots to refit and get rolling.

Off with the cloak

The target picked was a simple one, another powered down POS sitting out in space.  Maybe somebody would come get us, alerted by our attack.  We formed up and flew out to the target system, M-MCP8 in Cache, only to find it somewhat more populated than expected.

The residents, Vindictive alliance, were out in force, with 50 or so appearing in local as we jumped into the system.  We had fewer than 30 ships in our fleet, but Asher figured we might get a fight so we warped on grid with the tower and started shooting.

Tower hits

As we slowly circled the tower, formed up and following Asher’s Legion, more people started piling into the system, and we saw local rise even further.  The newcomers appeared to be from Legacy coalition, with TEST making up the bulk of them in local.  Of course, with TEST in system, local began to come alive with chatter.  We kept on orbiting the tower, chipping away at it.

Following Asher

As it turned out, there was another operation going on parallel to ours.  A group from Legacy had been running ops into Vindictive space for a while now and had recently set the armor timer on an Astrahus in the system.

The timer was set to come out just a few minutes after we arrived.  So people were showing up to that party.

Our target was a remnant left behind by Dragon Empire, who now live up in Geminate, so were unlikely to run out to save an anchored by unfueled tower.  Likewise, nobody in system had anything to do with the tower, so no notifications were going to them.  They were content to focus on their own battle, ignoring the small fleet of Ishtars easily within dscan range, it being one of the smaller systems in the area.

A clump of Ishtars

The tower took a while.  Even a small faction tower has a lot of shield hit points, but we kept on flying around it, letting our drones to the work.  In local it sounded like things were not going well for the owners of the system.  There were recriminations and some mocking going on.  It seemed that the defense, a small Machariel fleet had been swept aside by Legacy Loki fleet.

At our end, we eventually cut through the shields and were able to get through the armor and structure layers rapidly.  Soon the tower blew up with a satisfying display.

Brewing up, ready to burst

By that point the fight over the Astrahus had been resolved.  The final timer had been set and Legacy had finished spewing in local and headed home.  We too headed for the exit, our own small mission complete.

The out gate

However, as we landed on the gate to P7-45V an Vindictive Machariel landed as well and jumped, no doubt hoping to get away ahead of us.  And his hope was not unwarranted.  Aggression timers were still live on some of the fleet.  I still had a few seconds remaining on my own timer as we saw him jump.  But the call went out to jump through and tackle him if we could.  We jumped as soon as we could… and it was just soon enough.  A bubble went up to keep him from warping off and we piled on.

Machariel getting ganked at the gate

He put on speed to get out of the bubble but had a web on him as well, so exploded well before he reached the edge.  The kill mail showed a modest fit for a Mach, and no implants in his pod, but a good solid kill.

Having already deployed around the gate with a bubble up, we hung around and camped the gate for a bit, and were rewarded with a few more kills and the locals attempted to move back and forth between the two systems.

We even got the Machariel pilot again trying to slip through in a Cormorant this time.

But such a gate camp is a temporary thing.  We were in the heart of their space and they were just standing down from a defense operation, so it seemed likely they could form up enough Machs to sends us running if they had the heart for it, so we moved on back to our own staging in their space, warping off to our safe spots to once again deploy out mobile depots, mount our cloaks, scoop the depots, and cloak up safely while out logoff timers ran down.

I am not sure how much heart Vindictive would have had though.  They withdrew from Winter Coalition the next day, no doubt due to the attention Legacy had been giving them.  We haven’t moved on yet though.  There were ops on over the weekend (which I missed) including another camp on that same gate which was fruitful yet again.  But it is possible we might pack up to hunt elsewhere soon.

The Rules for Rulers

In roaming YouTube the other day I came across this wonderfully simple and cynical look at political power and how to hold it.  A fine topic for a Sunday.

I initially clicked on it because I thought the author was “CCP Grey” and it had something to do with EVE Online.  While it may actually not relate directly to New Eden, it is still worth a watch. (I’d like to see somebody examine the keys to power in null sec empires though.)

The author has a number of other interesting videos also delivered in a soothing, well modulated tone.

Kunark is Coming November 15 and 16

The classic Norrath team and Daybreak seems to be up for the one-two punch.  This week we got announcements about the new expansions for EverQuest and EverQuest II on consecutive days.  More surprising though was the news that the expansions would launch on consecutive days as well.  Usually there is a week between the now traditional November expansion launches for the two titles, no doubt to give the combined classic Norrath team a chance to focus on one thing at a time.

Not this November.

First up, on Tuesday, November 15th, is the launch of the EverQuest II expansion Kunark Ascending.

Back to Kunark

The expansion promo reads:

Norrath remains in danger from Lanys T’Vyl and her pursuit of power! It is up to you to keep Lanys T’Vyl from acquiring the third and final Chaos Stone. Return to Kunark to stop Lanys from ushering in a new age of power. Will you stand against the Tenets of Hate? Adventures await you in Kunark Ascending, EverQuest II’s 13th expansion!

Features of the expansion are listed as:

• All new dungeons for Solo, Heroic, and Raid parties alike.
• 4 new Ascension classes available to all max level characters!
• Upgrade your epic weapon with all new Epic 2.0 Quests.
• Gear Up Your Mercenaries – With the new mercenary equipment feature you can now equip your favorite Mercenaries with gear to increase their power.
• New Wardrobe Tab – Free up space with the new Wardrobe tab. Any relevant items placed into the Wardrobe will be converted into appearances and won’t take up any inventory slots!

The expansion is now available for pre-order at the usual three price tiers:

Like Daybreak, I was able to re-use last year’s pricing graphic

Purchasing early will get you access to the expansion beta as well as the ability to use the level 100 character boost that comes each package.  And if you are an All Access subscriber… and who buys the expansions but doesn’t subscribe… you get 10% off of your purchase.

Then, planned for the very next day, Wednesday, November 16, 2016, is the EverQuest expansion Empires of Kunark.

Everybody loves Kunark

For the EverQuest return to Kunark the copy reads:

After decades if slumber, Imperator Tsaph Katta awakens and vows to reform the Combine Empire – the progenitors of much of the human race – by any means necessary. He will lead them into a renewed age of prosperity. Tsaph Katta focuses on rebuilding the coalition between the races of Norrath in order to cement his place in the annals of history as The Great Unifier. But not all are ready to bend to the will of Katta and his allies, least of all the current inhabitants of Kunark. Will a unified Norrath prevail, or will the Combine’s arrival in Kunark lead to a war of catastrophic proportions. Find out in Empires of Kunark, EverQuest’s 23rd expansion!

Features of the expansion are listed as:

• 7 Expansion Zones – Explore familiar and unfamiliar areas and learn what has changed since your last adventures in Kunark.
• Familiar Key Ring – Access to your familiars in one easy location! Store up to 10 familiars per character, with the ability to buy additional slots to handle all of your familiar storage.
• New Quests, Missions, and 8 Additional Raids
• New Collections – For those who love to find and seek, there will be 24 new Collections to complete.

As with its EverQuest II cousin, the expansion is available in three tiers, with various extra fluff for additional dollars, and is available for pre-order now:

Trying selling DLC for $140 and see how people react…

Unlike EverQuest II however, there is no beta access listed and the expansion does not come with a character boost.  You do, however, still get a 10% discount as an All Access subscriber and all previous expansions are included in the deal.

So that is Daybreak’s big Kunark plan for the classic Norrath part of the company.

Both titles are running pre-expansion in-game events to help you level up and gear up and otherwise get ready for the new content coming in November.