After another long break from D2 I eventually came back, and started up a few 1.10 characters in the "new" ladder. I also put a few hours into AssIsGrass here and there. Here's some notes I took during her most recent journeys. Not all of it is in story format, but some is.
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Den of Evil: No particular problems
Blood Raven: Trying to work through Blood Raven's army was a pain, but liberal use of mind blast tended to bunch the mobs together enough that they could be worked around. This fight required many blues and BR had amassed a substantial army by the time it was over, but she eventually went down.
Cain: Getting through the Underground passage was interesting since there were 3 or 4 boss packs clustered together near the entrance area, but since a couple of them were archer packs and not that aggressive, she was able to split them up effectively and deal with them piecemeal. Treehead's pack split themselves up as well, so she didn't have too much problem with them despite losing half her life and all her mana on any hit. She did suffer one unexpected death dealing with a relatively innocous CE boss pack when she proved to be standing just inside the nova radius when the boss went down, rather than just outside as she had thought. She also cleared her way to the Outer Cloister, trying to level before tackling the Countess's Tower and its many potential stair traps.
Countess: There were indeed several stair traps in the tower, but AssIsGrass was able to either fight her way out, or navigate around, clear some maneuvering room, and come back for each of the first 4 levels. By the time she was ready to tackle the bottom floor, SmOcchi the Bare came along, looking for trouble. The assassin duo ventured into the Countess's lair, cleared the side chambers, and then crossed signals and wound up waking up too many monsters at once, including a moderately nasty goat boss pack. A couple deaths ensued, but soon enough the Countess was dead, dropping a Shael.
Barracks, Smith, Jail: Some new gear became available from another character who got deleted, so she made a couple changes. She switched her Sharkskin Belt of the Whale for one of Atlas, which cost her about a fifth of her total life but gave her more flexibility in other areas. It allowed her to unequip a ring she had been using for strength and mana and replace it with a second angelic halo for more badly needed AR. It also gave her enough strength to equip Lava Gout for the CTC Enchant -- more AR and fire damage to supplement her mainly physical (crushing blow) damage. Of course she had to give up her crafted knockback gloves to accomplish it, but the results seemed likely to be worth it. She still had chance to cause monster to flee on her armour for crowd control purposes.
This set up seemed to go pretty well, though losing 83 mana from the ring hurt. Some mana charms partially made up the difference but she was still drinking blues regularily -- though she had been doing that even with the mana ring anyhow. She tried using a Carrion Wind ring she had lying around from Slackers that no-one wanted, but it wasn't any more useful for AssIsGrass; she already has poison damage from Venom, the plague poppy died much too easily, and life steal isn't all that useful to her anyway.
The Smith didn't give AssIsGrass too much trouble, as he didn't have any really dangerous mods and her SM was up to the task of tanking him. Further into the jail, though, she did run into problems a couple times. A cold-enchanted archer pack managed to take her out once when her SM didn't engage promptly, and a lightning enchanted bone mage pack provided similar grief (it was also fanaticism-enchanted, which didn't help.) A multishot bone mage also gave her an instakill at one point. AssIsGrass has noticed that having -80 resists pretty much everywhere is a painful proposition, especially when one has only 400-odd life. Instakills abound. Nevertheless, she's convinced that BoS is still more useful to her at this point than Fade would be -- going from -80 to -40 or so wouldn't be as helpful as having quick enough feet to avoid getting shot in the first place. Something else she would like to have, but unfortunately doesn't, is faster hit recovery... which is not a good thing when she's already close to instakill territory to begin with.
Regardless, she did manage to gain a level and make it to the Inner Cloister with a bit of persistence. I think she can at least make it to Andy at this rate, and probably past her. She can probably make it as far as Temple of the Serpents without insurmountable trouble... though sparky beetles in the desert could be a big problem. But once we start getting to piercing attacks, I'm not sure what she will do. She'll have CoS, of course, which will be an enormous help... but the temple was a disaster last time around, and she'll have an even harder time this go-around. And Duriel, with a bunch of cold damage from HF, will probably be more than capable of smacking her around like a frozen hockey puck...
Inner Cloister to Andariel: AssIsGrass played some more with the Dark Ones, which kept fleeing to odd corners and coming back from inconvenient directions, at least until she managed to kill off the shamen and put them down for good. Still, they were manageable. She had to clear most of Cats 1 before she found the stairs, and about half of Cats 2 to find both the WP and the stairs down. A couple deaths were incurred, once to a surprise attack from a Tainted hiding around a corner, and once to a death nova from a CE Arach boss. In Cats 3, however, she met the most annoying boss of this part of her journey -- a Stone Skin Vampire boss. Her DS didn't really seem to make much of an impact, so she was forced to whittle away with the elemental damage component of her Blade Fury... which was fine so long as she got enough hits in to keep her Venom applied, but that wasn't necessarily the easiest thing in the world. The LCS said her hit percentage was somewhere around 64%, and Venom doesn't last very long, especially when (IIRC) Vampires are partially poison-resistant. If AssIsGrass meets a Phys/Poison Immune boss... she probably will have to park it. In any case, after several minutes of combat and several mana potions, she finally managed to dispatch the boss, and found the stairs down shortly afterward.
Andariel's antechamber didn't present any particular challenges; she was able to keep monsters together so her DS would blow up most of the Dark One corpses before they could be resurrected. Andariel herself was a manageable challenge as well; her poison attack was making fairly short work of AssIsGrass's shadow, but not so fast that blade fury wasn't making a noticeable dent in the meantime. BoS also meant that AssIsGrass was able to avoid enough of Andy's poison sprays that setting up for an attack run wasn't too hard. Soon enough, the Maiden of Pain went down, and AssIsGrass made her way to Lut Gholein.
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Den of Evil: No particular problems
Blood Raven: Trying to work through Blood Raven's army was a pain, but liberal use of mind blast tended to bunch the mobs together enough that they could be worked around. This fight required many blues and BR had amassed a substantial army by the time it was over, but she eventually went down.
Cain: Getting through the Underground passage was interesting since there were 3 or 4 boss packs clustered together near the entrance area, but since a couple of them were archer packs and not that aggressive, she was able to split them up effectively and deal with them piecemeal. Treehead's pack split themselves up as well, so she didn't have too much problem with them despite losing half her life and all her mana on any hit. She did suffer one unexpected death dealing with a relatively innocous CE boss pack when she proved to be standing just inside the nova radius when the boss went down, rather than just outside as she had thought. She also cleared her way to the Outer Cloister, trying to level before tackling the Countess's Tower and its many potential stair traps.
Countess: There were indeed several stair traps in the tower, but AssIsGrass was able to either fight her way out, or navigate around, clear some maneuvering room, and come back for each of the first 4 levels. By the time she was ready to tackle the bottom floor, SmOcchi the Bare came along, looking for trouble. The assassin duo ventured into the Countess's lair, cleared the side chambers, and then crossed signals and wound up waking up too many monsters at once, including a moderately nasty goat boss pack. A couple deaths ensued, but soon enough the Countess was dead, dropping a Shael.
Barracks, Smith, Jail: Some new gear became available from another character who got deleted, so she made a couple changes. She switched her Sharkskin Belt of the Whale for one of Atlas, which cost her about a fifth of her total life but gave her more flexibility in other areas. It allowed her to unequip a ring she had been using for strength and mana and replace it with a second angelic halo for more badly needed AR. It also gave her enough strength to equip Lava Gout for the CTC Enchant -- more AR and fire damage to supplement her mainly physical (crushing blow) damage. Of course she had to give up her crafted knockback gloves to accomplish it, but the results seemed likely to be worth it. She still had chance to cause monster to flee on her armour for crowd control purposes.
This set up seemed to go pretty well, though losing 83 mana from the ring hurt. Some mana charms partially made up the difference but she was still drinking blues regularily -- though she had been doing that even with the mana ring anyhow. She tried using a Carrion Wind ring she had lying around from Slackers that no-one wanted, but it wasn't any more useful for AssIsGrass; she already has poison damage from Venom, the plague poppy died much too easily, and life steal isn't all that useful to her anyway.
The Smith didn't give AssIsGrass too much trouble, as he didn't have any really dangerous mods and her SM was up to the task of tanking him. Further into the jail, though, she did run into problems a couple times. A cold-enchanted archer pack managed to take her out once when her SM didn't engage promptly, and a lightning enchanted bone mage pack provided similar grief (it was also fanaticism-enchanted, which didn't help.) A multishot bone mage also gave her an instakill at one point. AssIsGrass has noticed that having -80 resists pretty much everywhere is a painful proposition, especially when one has only 400-odd life. Instakills abound. Nevertheless, she's convinced that BoS is still more useful to her at this point than Fade would be -- going from -80 to -40 or so wouldn't be as helpful as having quick enough feet to avoid getting shot in the first place. Something else she would like to have, but unfortunately doesn't, is faster hit recovery... which is not a good thing when she's already close to instakill territory to begin with.
Regardless, she did manage to gain a level and make it to the Inner Cloister with a bit of persistence. I think she can at least make it to Andy at this rate, and probably past her. She can probably make it as far as Temple of the Serpents without insurmountable trouble... though sparky beetles in the desert could be a big problem. But once we start getting to piercing attacks, I'm not sure what she will do. She'll have CoS, of course, which will be an enormous help... but the temple was a disaster last time around, and she'll have an even harder time this go-around. And Duriel, with a bunch of cold damage from HF, will probably be more than capable of smacking her around like a frozen hockey puck...
Inner Cloister to Andariel: AssIsGrass played some more with the Dark Ones, which kept fleeing to odd corners and coming back from inconvenient directions, at least until she managed to kill off the shamen and put them down for good. Still, they were manageable. She had to clear most of Cats 1 before she found the stairs, and about half of Cats 2 to find both the WP and the stairs down. A couple deaths were incurred, once to a surprise attack from a Tainted hiding around a corner, and once to a death nova from a CE Arach boss. In Cats 3, however, she met the most annoying boss of this part of her journey -- a Stone Skin Vampire boss. Her DS didn't really seem to make much of an impact, so she was forced to whittle away with the elemental damage component of her Blade Fury... which was fine so long as she got enough hits in to keep her Venom applied, but that wasn't necessarily the easiest thing in the world. The LCS said her hit percentage was somewhere around 64%, and Venom doesn't last very long, especially when (IIRC) Vampires are partially poison-resistant. If AssIsGrass meets a Phys/Poison Immune boss... she probably will have to park it. In any case, after several minutes of combat and several mana potions, she finally managed to dispatch the boss, and found the stairs down shortly afterward.
Andariel's antechamber didn't present any particular challenges; she was able to keep monsters together so her DS would blow up most of the Dark One corpses before they could be resurrected. Andariel herself was a manageable challenge as well; her poison attack was making fairly short work of AssIsGrass's shadow, but not so fast that blade fury wasn't making a noticeable dent in the meantime. BoS also meant that AssIsGrass was able to avoid enough of Andy's poison sprays that setting up for an attack run wasn't too hard. Soon enough, the Maiden of Pain went down, and AssIsGrass made her way to Lut Gholein.
