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7-The Sewer Level
Welcome back. You know I have a confession to make, watching these cutscenes as a wee lad, who could not parse stories well enough to fully comprehend them, it completely eluded my knowledge that Marius was Marius.
No, as a kid I thought that was Deckard Cain.
Would've been cooler honestly, I mean think of it. Cain was captured and imprisoned and that's what Marius was at the moment we met him. This was before I saw the later cutscenes but instead of this being a pair of dorks going across the desert we're trying forever to chase after, this could've just been something that happened immediately before we started walking their path of darkness, tracing it to clean up the demon mess. I am very wrong. Despite this, even little child DarkMatt thought up a (subjectively) cooler hook than what was done.
Course I'm not a writer. I don't have the confidence to pen my imagination in ink because I had/have a crippling issue with being a perfectionist. An issue that so far I'm keeping under control, what with this LP, but I'm bringing this up because writing is hard. Making hooks like this on purpose is hard. I get that.
But I'll still fill up this space where I'm suppose to explain what happened in the cutscene with a shitpost and a single sentence. "Dark Wanderer crashes his whip in the desert, arrives at Mos Eisley anyway while Marius remembers he's a master nightmare haver and dreams up something completely and utterly irrelevant to him." Then the Dark Wanderer pats him on the head because he had a bad dream and says, "Yeah that guy. Let's say hi to him."
Music-Lut Gholein
The rest of this story unfolds here and now as we enter Lut Gholein. Tal Rasha is a very important person...I uhh think. I'll cover him later by the time we get to his crib. We're still needing the Dark Wanderer's autograph, and what better way to get it than by intercepting him?
So let's check in at the reception.
For some time now, we have been under siege by an evil power that I cannot identify. Strange... It all began when a Dark Wanderer came this way, looking for the Tomb of Tal Rasha. No one knows exactly where Tal Rasha, Keeper of Baal, is entombed, but it is certain to be far out in the desert.
Now, my people whisper tales of the dead rising from their tombs and horrible creatures lurking amongst the moonlit dunes. Even I have witnessed things which I cannot explain. I've ordered the port closed and all trade ships moored until I am sure that my city is safe.
Atma, the tavernkeeper, has an important mission for you. Go see her immediately. You'll find her on the other side of town.
Now, I must return to the palace. I apologize, but I can't invite you in. Things are... rather a mess right now.
Jerhyn oversees Sanct-Arabia and, unfortunately for him, the Dark Wanderer stayed the night here and now things are whack yo. We're on track. He directs us to the place all adventurers are to visit if there is ever a quest in need of completing.
I'm speaking, of course, about the bar. This place gets its own picture because it's an actual bar in this fantasy setting. Bars are wonderfully stereotypical and I love them. Find quests to do? Bar. Hear what other people are saying behind eachother's backs? Bar. Get shitfaced? Bar. Easiest way to form an adventuring party at the tabletop? Bar. You'll be pleased to know that this bar checks off all those boxes. Let's speak to the tavernkeeper.
Uhh, Jane, I know you're currently thinking about getting all the drinks, but someone's talking to you. Jane? ...Oh whatever.
In the sewers below our city, there lurks a horrid creature that hungers for human flesh. The creature has killed many, including my son and my husband.
If you destroy it, I will reward you. Please be careful though, that beast has taken enough from us already.
The sewer entrance is through the trap door just up the street.
Tada! New quest. New quest in the...
...let's meet the rest of the townsfolk!
Warriv is now successfully merchanting again. If we have saved anyone's life, (lihood) it's Warriv's. Oh Cain counts as well? No he doesn't. I didn't have to save him.
No. Really. I didn't have to. Something I couldn't really fit into the Act 1 updates but I did find out pre-LP and it did come up in the thread is that, you can just do none of the quests in Act 1. You can just go straight to Andariel and dunk her and then move on to the next act. This includes never going to Tristram. You may think you would be rid of Deckard Cain forever doing this. You aren't. When you leave for Lut Gholein, the Rogues, finally getting off their butts, make the trip to Tristram themselves and rescue Cain. He shows up here, and now you're stuck with him.
Honestly, I like that more, because it illustrates people other than me doing anything of note, and another stereotype of fantasy stories I'm bored of is when the entire story goes along only talking around my deeds, my accomplishments, to the point where everyone else just looks to be frankly useless cardboard cutouts of people.
...Course, if you go down this path, now Cain charges 100 gold for every item to identify, for the rest of the difficulty. It's only like a fantasy dollar it's not that much but it is annoying.
We can walk up to the palace already. And oh, this guard has a quest for us!
Just kidding. He instead has my favorite voice lines.
They are the fastest and most direct lines in the game and I love this guard for it.
You know, I used to be quite the scoundrel in my day. I led the fiercest group of bandits who ever terrorized these sands!
Nowadays, I run this here Inn and pretty much stay out of trouble.
My days of adventuring are behind me.
Elzix is a retired bandit, owner of a pegleg and a single eye, and our merchant/gambler for the act. He talks a lot about an inn, another wonderful fantasy stereotype, but with no visible inn building I'm pretty sure this is all in his head. He nor anyone else doesn't even describe it further, which further proves my point.
Well, I can tell you that it's got nothing to do with the local town guards... they're all in the palace for some reason.
Jerhyn hired me and my mercenaries to help keep the peace around here. We're not cheap, but we're the best this wasteland has to offer.
Greiz is our mercenary supplier for Act 2, and he doesn't beat around the bush. If we got the coin we can buy a new mercenary right now.
This, may have been a mistake for Jane I'm not too sure, but hey, shiny new merc. I can talk about the new ones now.
Traditionally, Desert Guards would supply you with the aura of your choice. Which aura they would provide also depends entirely on their subclass and the difficulty you hire them on. We only get Prayer (life regen) and Thorns (reflect damage back. doesn't suck unlike item thorns) for now. Later we can hire them with Defiance, (defense boost) Holy Freeze, (cold damage to weapon, also, ping everyone near you for cold 
) Blessed Aim, (more Attack Rating) and Might. (physical damage increase) Mods do not allow him to be the go-to choice in the game so plenty of different approaches have been done to rework him.
Auras are different but otherwise he's left alone. Now it's Cleansing, (shorter poison/curse duration) Defiance, Vulnerability, (enemies take more physical/magic damage) Thorns, Holy Freeze, and Might. Those last three only show up later, and LadyArty is already using the very good Rogue Scout, so the desert merc is no longer top 1 here.
Desert Guards only have Thorns, Blessed Aim, and Defiance. I'm gonna be real with you, I do not think of any of these auras unless I have my own army. Sure they can equip more spearlike objects but it's a melee mercenary, which leaves much to be desired since all his auras aren't great and mercenaries can do really dumb things at times involving particpating in this game.
I, honestly don't know. I mean, I do have the archived wiki. They have new skills and have access to better auras much later but said auras are also nerfed in effectiveness and you need to patch them with skill boosting items to fix this. Not to mention their auras available now are Defiance, Prayer, and Holy Fire. Leaves a lot to be desired when their Holy Fire is nerfed in a mod like Eastern Sun so it's pretty ineffective.
Being melee and being Median XL, they'll have three archetypes and most of them are melee. There's Exemplar which is focused on tanking and damaging, Shapeshifter in case you want a bad Druid buddy, and Fighter Mage...the one I should've taken because it spams a bunch of ice spells. 
My name is Drognan and I know what you're up against, my friend.
You ought to look over my inventory of items for trade.
Drognan is Lut Gholein's own lore guy. He's our magic item vendor and, because he's a wizard, it means he knows everything. More than Cain? ...I do not know the answer to that honestly.
Greiz seems to have this place locked down nice and tight. Not that I couldn't have done the same! I've proven my valor in combat plenty of times.
Here's Geglash, the city drunk. Contributions include simping for Barbarians, boasting, and nothing else. Real credit to the team.
Here's Fara. I hate Fara. Because they do absolutely nothing with her.
I mean there's plenty of dry writing and one-dimensional characterization in this game already, but I look at Fara and I only see a void. She's not even the stereotypical light-lover our player paladin is or even the "ooh I like barbs I'm young and innocent" blacksmith in the last act. Just, "Hello I'm from Zakarum. Goodbye." There was plenty you could've done with a lady paladin, (ladydin) most of the other NPCs talk about her as well in gossip, but she has NO characterization, other than she paladin and also our arms vender and repairer and healer. It doesn't help that her voice acting carries the same hollow tone, probably because she, too, is wondering what sort of character this is.
The shitty old man potion vendor Lysander has more going on. I can't tell you exactly why they, imo, dropped the ball the hardest with Fara, but if I had to look at the other lady characters in this game, it may just be because well-written women characters was an alien concept to video game writers at the time, especially in this neck of the woods.
Then there's...wait, that's everyone.
...
...Let's talk about mod changes!
These were available in Act 1 but it's about now that we're starting to get the money to afford them: Mystic Orbs. They allow us to apply extra modifiers to our gear at the cost of raising its level requirement by 4. We can apply as many as we have levels for but can't stack the same type of Mystic Orb more than 5 times. As Act 2 starts getting us the cash needed to get these, they'll be very important to grab to round out missing affixes on our gear. For example, I sure would like to have Jane get life back through thwacking things because she's prone to lose it going into mobs. That'll be what I grab for her later.
Orbs are seperated into four categories which determine what they can be applied to: armor, weapons, jewellry, and everything.
Resurgence ha-oh right. I need a thingy first before talking about them.
PD2? ....Eastern Sun?
Music-Sewers
...
I guess I'm going into the sewers.
Let me explain: I don't like sewers. You may have finished Act I and feel like you can tackle anything. Andariel is a pretty big accomplishment after all.
This place is going to temper your ego.
Burning Dead. They're a recolor of skeletons so I can't do a monster info bit again but if I could I'd be giving them many stars. That's because of their archers. They will, without fail, shoot fire arrows. And those fire arrows have a high chance to hit and deal a good deal of physical and fire damage. You can be facing some skeletons and then from the dark a volley of fire arrows light up. If you don't have good Defense/a shield, all of them will hit, and they will do substantial damage. I warned you before to treat ranged monsters with care. This is the first time where, if you pay them no mind, they will delete your life because we're still unable to put together substantial element resistance. Even the normal Burning Dead have a chance for extra fire damage.
Sand Raider | CR: **
==Adds fire/cold damage to attacks
Sand Raiders are the standin for Wendigos in this act. Of note, depending on the tier, they'll either add more fire or more cold to their attacks. One of these is more dangerous than the other. Thankfully this one chose fire. However, sluggish to move and lacking numbers and stats, they're not dangerous.
Mummy | CR: ***
==May poison on hit.
==Leaves a poison cloud on death.
If you did the Andariel fight by stacking poison resist these things aren't scary, but they don't mess around coming up to you and hitting you. There's a low chance they might poison you and while the poison damage isn't particularly fast, it's 46 over 16 seconds, which will be lost if you don't quaff an antidote. Luckily their death cloud isn't as lethal. It's just that they are particularly hard hitting.
But no the burning dead and the zombies that leave poison on death aren't why I hate the sewers. It's because I hate fantasy sewers.
What is a sewer? It's a water network meant to ferry waste out of towns and into processing facilities to dispose of said waste. Fantasy game sewers are never this. They're always dungeons.
Dungeons that tend to be, or at least feel, much larger than the cities they're in. (Lut Gholein in-game feeling much smaller than in-cinematics doesn't help.) Think about it. The sewers of Waterdeep, the sewers of Cyrodil, the sewers in Chrono Trigger's future, the Prontera Culvert, here. These aren't, modeled, or designed, to be actual sewers. If anything they're designed to be Minotaur's labyrinths, sprawling and twisting with no sense of architecture, and definitely no sense of waste disposal. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if they played Eye of the Beholder and thought wow sewers are like dungeons, after Eye of the Beholder said, "Where do we put a dungeon under a city? Oh it already exists! It's called the sewers!"
Also, video game sewers tend to also be waste free. Sewers stink. I dunno if you've heard. I've seen sewers in souls games and like okay, they do a good job showing that sewers are A: cramp as hell, and B: full of shit. They're still mazes, but I can let that slide. Why did it take Dark Souls to stop making sewers just, dungeons? What works are there that don't just cast a city's water network as a dungeon?
I'm mad at this because you don't just see sewers in the wild, much less go into them, and video games (also anime. Pokemon.) gave me a very wrong impression of what sewers are. When I finally, later, looked up videos of people exploring sewers, which is a pretty bad/illegal thing to do, I was expectedly disappointed.
Saber Cat | CR: *
==Moves fast
==Can block
==Attacks slow
Anyway, the sewers are 3 levels long and the waypoint's on the second level. Saber Cats join us for the last level, and they are hilariously incompetent. Fast, but not only do they have low health, they are hilariously slow to attack. Just walk away and they'll never hit you. They attack so slow you're likely to hit them before they ever hit you, even when they move considerably fast.
Burning Dead comes in mage form as well and always pick fire.
The only other thing to remark on is I hate the sewers, this sewers, because it can have really long dead-end branches and be confusing to navigate. It's worth noting the first level actually has two entrances. One is the trapdoor we took, but there's another by the city port we can take. I have no idea which one puts you closer to the exit. It's a coinflip.
Now, without further ado, let's introduce your new favorite reviver.
Radament | CR: *****
==Superunique
==Extra fast
==Has a chance to lethally poison on melee hit.
==Can do a poison breath attack.
==Casts Unholy Bolt
==Can revive any undead that's not a Greater Mummy or a champion/unique.
Radament is your introduction to Greater Mummies. Greater Mummies can do it all: threaten you at range, punish you for hanging around in melee, and revive literally any undead monster that isn't a champion, a unique, or another Greater Mummy. But most important, Greater Mummies will destroy you in melee if they get a chance to hit with their poison.
No. Not the piddly weak breath. The swing. It has a low percent chance to add HUNDREDS OF DAMAGE OF POISON over a long period of time. Here it's, uhhh, around two thousand, over 80 seconds. For the record, our max life is around a couple hundred. You can be maxxed on poison resist and it'll still do a colossal amount of damage. I have bad news for you: this is not exclusive to Radament. Every Greater Mummy can do this. If you are melee, exercise extreme caution, because unless you can quickly get the poison removed, you will have your life dropped to 1 and it'll stay there for a very long time. There's been plenty of ways for enemies in past versions of Diablo II to just annihilate your life out of nowhere. This is one of the unpatched ones. Enjoy!
Radament spawns with a pack of various Horror monsters. Horrors, being the last tier of Skeleton, hit fairly hard. While Radament can pick them back up, he has to coinflip on whether he'll fire a bolt or revive a skeleton or just waddle around. Everyone can bring down the mob faster than Radament can pick them back up.
Zoul's army is capable of getting through the mob, even as Radament is picking them back up. He's starting to hit that event horizon where the Skeletons start doing as much damage as, uhh, any PD2 hero can be expected to deal at this point, and there's multiple of them. This is the upside of playing summonmancer: while your minions are dumb, they are just as dangerous as you swinging a stick.
Also this skeleton eventually started distracting Radament and that helped the rest get through the mob and to its keeper. In exchange for successfully distracting Radament, the brave skeleton here eats the extra poison proc, and dies after a bit. Rest assured this poison will chump any minion it hits. We can't cure the poison anyway, so Greater Mummies are going to be annoyingly good at surprise-killing our bones.
Bob's cold aura continues to trivialize all matters involving melee. Now's a good time to mention an extra quirk of chill: if a monster takes cold damage or is currently chilled, they have a 20% chance to have their corpse shatter. This doesn't stop any on-death effects, but it will make them unable to be revived.
Oh yeah, also, Bob got a class amulet (there's also class-exclusive rings) that, among other things, grants "low chance to cast level 4 Amplify Damage on hit". "How the fuck did you get something like that already?", you may ask. It's Eastern Sun. I gambled for it.
Next you may ask, "How did you even get the money to gamble? For an amulet of all things?" well one the jewelry gamble prices in ES is heavily nerfed so that they're affordable.
Two, an ore dropped from Andariel.
We are not supposed to get ores this early. It happened anyway. The main reason why is because, Ores are our sources of Crystals, which are higher-tier gem-like socketables. That's not the point though. Every single ore will break down into these.
Which sells for yes amounts of cash. I get about a quarter of its value. I had five digits in gold before this. Now it multiplied by 10 and now I have six digits. More than enough to gamble for class amulets that'll give me something like this and double my physical damage.
Eastern Sun.
Greg's fight was largely unremarkable, so instead here's Thunder Wave in action.
Arty did something like Bob to get her hands on a better bow, and has enough levels to have an effective Exploding Arrow. It's like an infomercial where you have a problem with big stains, then Billie Mays shows up, uses Exploding Arrow, and the stains are perfectly gone. Exploding Arrow is a fun quirky skill in that it's in a category of skills in that, it's still an attack and it still rolls to hit. But, whatever it hits will cause an explosion regardless of hit or miss, and that will always hit.
So Radament's minions are no match. Radament falls shortly after.
But wait!
We just hit the jackpot. This is:
-A unique dropped.
-A unique dropped that we can use.
-A unique dropped that we can use that is a perfect fit for our build.
Gold items have this issue of being great, but not for your character, because it can be anything including things that do not mesh well at all. Withersting, here, gives a chance to cast Lower Resist, of all curses, on hit. It does exactly what it says on the tin and we use elemental damage. Withersting is normally unremarkable in vanilla. Resurgence, like other mods, finds ways to make uniques like Witherstring very intersting.
With this bow, Arty has become death incarnate. 
Chloe has access to Wychwind, which throws a knife, and on hit, about 1.5 seconds later, tears a hole in spacetime and constantly hits people in the black sparkles with magic damage. It's extremely powerful with the downsides of: they need to be in the rift, its actual hitboxes are wonky, and, you're physically vulnerable during its duration as it lowers your physical resist.
But there's no downside to spamming Wychwind, meaning you can stack rifts on top of eachother and destroy enemies really fast with this. For the right scenario, this will be our boss killer. Even better, there is no point to put in more than 1 point in Wychwind because all that does is lower the physical resist penalty and shoot up its mana cost. It's all based off weapon damage. We can even stand in it.
Finally, there's Jane. Radament in MXL summons minions instead of reviving them. It's effective, but doesn't solve the issue of, "He's gonna get distracted in melee if someone melees him." Can't death poison here either, I think.
Music-Radament Dies
(Click here for the full video.)
What a misguided monster.
Once killed, Radament gets like 50 Fist of the Heavens rained down on his head and his friends go bye bye. He also drops a Book of Skill. Does as it says. Get 1 free skill point.
Music-Lut Gholein
In addition to my undying gratitude, I have spoken on your behalf with the rest of the townspeople. The merchants have agreed to show their gratitude by offering their wares and services at lower rates.
Oh... Jerhyn wants to see you, too. You'll find him in front of the palace.
In exchange for getting revenge for a zombo eating someone's family, we get a markdown on prices in Act 2's shop. Handy. I never notice the difference but I guess I do have Mystic Oils to buy and that'll be useful.
Next time: Sick of Lut Gholein, we run off into the scorching hot hostile desert.
...
...
OH RIGHT THE SCROLL.
See, I'm allowed to forget about this because in ES and MXL, where, since you have the Horadric Cube already, the Horadric Scroll doesn't even drop. In fact, you don't even need it period. A piece of paper does not stop you from doing the main quest of Act 2, which is what we'll be doing next.
And one last thing before we go: we can talk to Jerhyn again.
Drognan and I have concluded that the Dark Wanderer who passed through here recently was Diablo, himself! Drognan believes that Diablo is searching the desert for the secret tomb where the great Horadric mage, Tal Rasha, keeps Baal imprisoned.
You must find Diablo and put an end to the terrible evil that has fallen upon our city. Drognan is wise and is sure to have some helpful advice for you as to how Tal Rasha's tomb may be found.
It may take you quite some time to find The Tomb. May you be ready when you do.
It turns out the Dark Wander is really Diabloooo! Aaaaaa! How shocking!
...
Act surprised.