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!