key running and finding the organs

For the past few days, diablo has all but slipped away from my life thanks to some girl trouble.
But between te last couple of days, Nihlathak rewarded me with a couple of keys on separate occasions, so I thought let's do the Summoner with the other runs.
So the past few games, I create the game with my summonancer and join it with my IK barb... similar to all my recent Baal runs.
Only this time, I quickly run the summoner in the Arcane Sanctuary for Hate keys. Having never found one, I was a bit sceptical of getting any. Also, it's annoying doing these runs because of all the mana sucking ghosts who are immune to physical damage. Doing them with my summonancer is slow going because the pathways are very narrow, and even terror does not help clear them up. So a couple of runs I ran with both my summonancer and IK barb, the barb clearing the pesky PIs once the necro amped them.
However I now just jump over the ghosts and refill mana whenever hit by the ghosts. Runs are surprisingly quick this way.
Also, my luck with the Summoner turned and he dropped 2 Hate keys in one game and another one in the right next one.
Now equipped with the keys, I created a game and permed it by doing runs for the Summoner, Pindle, Nihli and Baal. Then I created the 3 portals in the same game.
The first opened to the lost sands and Duriel. He was easy. Going in with BOed summons and then with my barb, I decrepified him and put in a clay golem, and WWed with my barb until he dropped. This whole thing took under a minute... sweet! Baal's eye dropped.
Next I opened the portal to the furnace. Reaching Izual took a bit of time, but was no trouble in the end. Izual himself was not much more of a big deal than Duriel. Drcrep and summons kept him slow and busy and my barb's WW cut him down in a minute or so. Mephisto's brain dropped.
Next on the cards was Lilith in the Matron`s den, and she's supposed to be the toughest. Once I'd opened the first 2 portals, I was committed, as the next game could open any one of the 3 portals! So I bit the bullet and opened the portal. In I went with my summoner and barb. Slowly taking down the archers who were spammming freezing arrows on my skellies and turning them into ice lollies. Fortunately there were no oblivion knights, and the combo of skellies, amp and CE worked a charm. Finally madame Lilith appeared. She was nasty from the word go. It was all I could do to control 2 characters at the same time, cursing her with life tap so my barb wouldn't die while WWing, from her nasty poison attack. Her health went down by 30% or so. By then , my summons started dying out and my barb was running out of potions, not leeching back quickly enough from his WWs. In the fracas that followed, my barb and necro died multiple times, lost all full rejuv potions and shitloads of cash and experience. But no dice with Lilith, she always recovered health too quickly for me to do any significant and lasting damage to her.
I also tried replacing my barb with my windy bowazon and hammerdin, but both perished very very quickly. I needed a build with Crushing Blow or Open Wounds.
So I swapped my barb's armour for a Toothrow Sharktooth Armour and brought him back. I chose this armour for the 40% open wounds property. However my resists plummeted and poison resist went in the red.
Tried the same combination again, this time with a barb who kept on going down to zero health much quicker and dying more frequently. The summons seemed to go down even quicker than before! However, this time, the OW kicked in once in a while and Lilith's health used to go down, but never enough to kill her before all my necro`s summons and barb`s potions were done for.
By this time, I was running out of areas of the game to replenish my skellies. Finally I nipped into WS2 and got me a few burning souls and viper magi to accompany the skellies from act 1.
Went back into the den and hit Lilith with all I had. I kept my necro out of range of Lilith`s poison spray while summons distracted her. Also created a portal close by. Barb nipped in while summoner spammed decrepify, WWed a few times until open wounds kicked in and health ran down, ran back out through the portal to get healed, nipped back in and repeated the WWs. The difference here was getting the high HP summons from WS2 (I recommend this from experience... get 10-20 fresh summons from WS2/WS3/Throne, buff them up with BO and get them into the den). Before long, the open wounds had Lilith`s life down to a manageable level and a few of the skellies were still around. After the last healing trip to town and one last WW, Lilith finally went to sleep yea!! Here's the screenshot. Good work... that gives me all body parts. I'll open Uber Tristram only once I build up my smiter with CB/OW.

Maras and others

Found some nice stuff... mainly when I wasn't looking though :)
Baal hasn't dropped anything to write home about as yet. But along the way, there were some ok drops.


Baal drops a Boneflame - unique Succubus Skull - a nice Necro shrunken head. This one spawned with +3 skills and 26 resists to all.


Here's the Mara's Kaleidoscope I found... One with medium resists... they can go up to 30. But not bad at all! Some random monster in the river of flame dropped this one for me... I expected it to be the Mahim Oak or Nokozan Relic... boy was I surprised!


Pindle drops another rare Sacred Armour! Aargh!!!


And Baal drops a grand charm... That makes it 6 that I have found till now!

And the stragglers from last time

As always, Blogger stopped uploading screenshots after some time. These are the remainder of the screenshots.


Here's Baal spilling his guts out and dropping a unique wrist sword (jade talon) and mighty scepter (heaven's light I think)


Pindleskin drops unique vampirebone gloves (Dracul's Grasp)


A rare Corona.... Aargh!! I hate it when that happens!!

Latest runs and finds

Item running has never been this quick or this rewarding in experience!
Runs have been in 2 areas...
I run Baal with my necro summoner and my IK barb and when I get bored of that, I run Nihlathak with my summoner and hammerdin.

Baal runs have never been so quick for me... I used to do them with my summoner, and though the minions were really a piece of cake, getting to the throne of destruction as well as Baal himself were both really painfully slow. Not to mention souls in WSK2 were an ever present danger.

Things got quicker with my IK barb. He would rush through WSK 2 and 3, run to the throne and usually mow through the minions. Only annoying bit was getting mobbed with oblivion knights and getting hit with endless Iron Maiden, poison mages, souls zapping away sucking up mana etc. Otherwise a breeze right up to Baal. But Baal was a different kettle of fish. His irritating mana sucking blast was the most frustrating thing ever! And when he spews his clone... getting hammered with multiple ice wedges by 2 of them, getting knocked back, running out of mana and all that... it took absolutely bloody ages to get him down!

But now... I use my 2 laptops brilliantly! My barb pops down through the WSKs and to the throne, pops a TP, in goes my summoner (who is loaded with skellies thanks to a pindle run just before my barb starts). Warcries and my buffed up skellies start creating bodies for me to explode ad infinitum. With a BO buffed mana... my mana replenishes much faster than my corpse explosion or revives can take it down!!

So that takes care of the minions and any stray pesky undead that may have strayed into the throne with my barb.

Now Baal himself.
First my barb buffs everyone in the throne room with his warcries. Then my summoner and his army of skellies and all the surviving revives go into the WS chamber.
Summoner runs to Baal, casts decrepify, casts a clay golem and hotkeys back to decrep to refresh every 7 secs or so, when it runs out.
Then my barb gets into WS chamber, runs to Baal, WWs until he runs out of mana, then berzerks until baal is down to a sliver. this usually takes the better part of 10-15 secs. Then my barb runs to a place where neither his merc nor he can hurt or accidently kill Baal. My summoner then keeps his fingers closed and hopes that his merc gets the kill instead of one of the skellies or revives. That will get me a 650% mf instead of 550% :))

Finally Baal drops all crap... if I am lucky, only green breast plates :)

On to Nihlathak runs...
I create a game with my skelliemancer and join with my hammerdin who's got the WP to halls of Vaught (or was that pain... I forget).
Apparently there are only 3 possible maps for finding nihlathak's lair, and then once down there, there is a double eye pattern which will indicate exactly which one of the 4 arms of his lair he hides in! And until now, it's worked for me, so I am all for it!
I run with my hammerdin from the WP to the entrance down to Nihlathak. I usually just turn on holy shield and make a run for it without stopping. Then I make a TP and go in with my summoner. I take my hammerdin into town thru the portal so he doesn't get the Nihlathak quest... so he can go get Pindle if he so wishes. Apparently you can only get Nihlathak if you're nearby when he's killed. However because my summoner has already killed him, and he's the one who's created the game, my hammerdin's safe from losing his Pindle option anyway ;)
The only difficult part in killing Pindle is the tomb vipers. For a summoner, the only way to do it without hassle is to use CE and keep reviving your merc everytime he dies. It's too slow without him, and it's too limiting to deck him with DR gear, since I also use him in 100 other places.

When I reach Nihli... the first corpse comes almost immediately because the ice boars die really quickly, or if not... they swell up and explode rather soon. Then it is CE ad infinitum (with a couple of mana potions without the BO boost :))

Luck with Nihli? Until now... next to zero. Only once did he drop 2 keys. Otherwise he usually drops a medium pot of gold and dies without a whimper.

Anyway... enjoy the following screenshots...


A little charm I found... might be quite valuable as I understand it... however I find it quite handy anyway :)

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Baal dropped a unique ring. This one turned out to be dwarfstar or something spectacularly boring like that!


Pindle delivers a bonanza! He breaks years of drought and famine by dropping Natalya's claw and Frostwind in one go!!!! Way to go Pindleeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! you rock!! However he's back to his potion drops now.


Baal drops my third unique spiderweb sash... welcome to my stable Arachnid's mesh!


Baal drops a Spirit Ward - unique ward... probably the most rare uinque shield in the game (of course... Griswold's is the rarest set shield)


Baal drops a Demon's Arch... unique balrog spear. Look at the next screenshot...


If you look carefully at the middle of the weapon names highlighted by Alt... you'll see the ethereal nature of the weapon being toted on the cursor... the Demon's Arch in the previous screenprint turned out to be ethereal! Niiiiiice!