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13-Heart of Darkness
Hey there, in today's update we're going t-
Music-Kurast
Place the Eye in the Horadric Cube along with Khalim's other relics - the Heart, the Brain, and the Flail.
Oh. Right. Cain's still here. Look, how do you know about this? I just found this in a chest a-
Know this, friend. The only way to gain entry to Mephisto's prison is to destroy the artifact known as the Compelling Orb.
Mephisto used this device to control the Zakarum Priests and their followers. The Orb can only be destroyed with an ancient flail imbued with the spirit of the one incorruptible priest.
Soon after his imprisonment, Mephisto worked his evil corruption on the Zakarum priesthood. All were turned to his dark ways, save one - Khalim, the Que-Hegan of the High Council.
Mephisto directed the other Council priests to slay and dismember Khalim and then scatter his remains across the Kingdom. The Priest Sankekur succeeded Khalim as Que-Hegan, eventually becoming the embodiment of Mephisto here on the mortal plane.
The corrupted High Council fashioned an Orb to control the rest of the Zakarum faithful and used their powers to hide the lair of their master from mortals.
Your task is to collect the scattered relics of Khalim - his Heart, his Brain, and his Eye. Then, using the Horadric Cube, transmute Khalim's Flail with his relics.
Once this is accomplished, you must destroy the Compelling Orb with Khalim's Will to open the way into the corrupt sanctum of Mephisto.
Cain, stop. I know about Mephisto. I'm going t-
CAIN PLEASE I'M JUST A PERSON PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT DEMONS.
...
Okay?
...I did it we're safe for now. I'm back in Kurast. Now, while the first quest had no quest giver, when you finish it or leave Spider Forest, this will set off Cain and he'll give you the quest for the act: we can't just walk to Mephisto because there's an orb in the way. It's a very ponderous orb you see, and it'll confuse us if we make our way to Travincal without a means to break it.
How do you beat a mcguffin? With another mcguffin, and Cain tells us to get the organs of...Zakarum's previous big cheese I guess, and just smash them into a flail and that should do the trick.
But our next stop isn't the next mcguffin. I'll admit, it took me an embarrassing amount of time to find where the blacksmith is in this act. How embarrassing? I only found her while recording for the LP. I didn't know where she was until then.
If memory serves me correctly, there is a holy Skatsimi blade that could revitalize the enchantment. The blade is called the Gidbinn.
Find it, and our sanctuary here will remain safe.
So, these docks have a magic shield...that I can't tell is there but you know what if it means we have a town then there's a barrier. You know what would really help that barrier? A knife.
Why is that holy knife important and capable of strengthening the "no demons allowed" sign we have propped up outside this camp? Wizard knife. The rest is just, "Well legend states it can so it must be something good." I mean, fine, I'll add that to the shopping list I have for the act.
So where is it? Back in...the jungle.
Music-Jungle
You know what, now's a good time as any to interject Jane and Chloe's adventures in the jungle. (...Also forgive me for these screenshots I recorded this act in the wrong resolution for Jane so I had to do things to fix it.)
For example: those Fetish blowgunners? Some of them can just shoot rockets from their blowguns. You'd think that would be terrifying...but strangely enough no they don't do that much damage. They just sound scary. I am saying this as someone who has bad resists as well.
Other than that I haven't made much mention of Median XL elites because there hasn't been any nasty ones outside of the lightning ghosts and greater mummies except with friends that turn them invincible.
There were these Broodmothers that was pretty much just a super maggot in that each one comes with many, many tiny jerks, that can stack on top of eachother like Wraiths can. Oh and I guess a spider that can terrify minions but Jane's orb minions aren't her damage source. They're her meat shields.
Speaking of skills, Jane's high enough level to get more swords. Fusillade creates a patch of blades, which will move to nearby targets, and anyone in the patch will get chopped up by blades for its duration. Yes. It's more blades. Look, Jane can't have enough. She really likes swords.
Meanwhile, Eastern Sun also hates the Jungle. Eastern Sun just hates irrelvant areas and that's fine by me.
So, instead of a useless dungeon by the Spider Forest waypoint, there's this tunnel instead.
It's pretty short, but it is full of various Fetish and Fetish accessories. Its main purpose is to take us straight to the next point of interest: the Flayer Jungle.
What's even better is, taking this passage also puts us right next to the object of our next quest. The Gidbinn will show up in a secluded area in the Flayer Jungle, which while normally you have to poke around in the Jungle to find, Eastern Sun is nice and straightforward.
However, when we try to take the Gidbinn, it bursts into flame! A trap!
...it's just a Fetish unique. Distinctly, this is not a superunique. It's just randomly rolled and, when you kill it, it drops the real Gidbinn. I think it's supposed to have minions but I didn't actually hover my cursor over it so for all I know it could've just been a champion. Either way, it spawns when we touch the fake Gidbinn.
This holy blade does not belong in the hands of the Zakarum.
Dunk it like every other Fetish in this awful jungle and the actual Gidbinn is yours.
I have no idea what the word Gidbinn even means and neither does Google. I would believe it's a nonsense word for a nonsense mcguffin.
It's really straightforward for someone like Greg or Bob or are thrown to it directly. What if you're another mod? Worse, what if you're in a mod without the luxury of mapreveal, or just in basegame?
Welcome to pain. Shown here is the Spider Lair, and then the map dead-ending on me. What is thankfully a mercy of this screenshot LP is you did not get to see me spending around 10 minutes running around, trying to find where the Flayer Jungle is from the Spider Forest, before finally accepting that I don't know Diablo 2's map generation, and while some times I'm fortunate enough to have the Flayer Jungle, the next important area, connect to the Spider Forest, sometimes I am not lucky, and I have to go to the Great Marsh.
I've already described how traversing the jungle is very grating and full of many dead-ends and time wasters. The Spider Forest, the Great Marsh, and the Flayer Jungle are all the same taste of jungle, smashed together in an amalgam mess of what is, effectively, a giant maze.
If you think it's interesting, Great Marsh has Zombies return. You know, those monsters in act 1 you probably saw as your first that loved to be so slow and mindless that they're just moving target practice.
But hey, Great Marsh is the first area you'll find new monsters, so,
Frog Demon | CR: **
==May hide in the water.
==Can shoot either a Fireball or Poison Spit.
Largely unremarkable aside from being able to surprise you. They aren't particularly fast nor dangerous. Unless it's the highest tier of frog, in which case it's poisonous and unfortunately it's the "their tap has a low chance but will lop off all your life slowly but surely" sort of poison. The Greater Mummy legacy lives on.
Willowisp | CR: ****
==Shoots Lightning Bolts
==Invisible while moving
It's those lightning spirits, except they show up in basegame now. They're known to be hard to track (but not impossible) while moving, and are capable of launching a bunch of lightning at you, especially in groups. At 1 to 40 lightning damage per bolt, you really don't want to eat a bunch of these and risk getting blasted. That can add up without resist. Fun fact, I almost forgot these first show up here because the first tier shows up, here, and in an optional dungeon, and that's it. They're quite rare.
There's another monster that shows up here but it is incredibly hard to find out in the wild. Oh it'll show up somewhere, but I have much better luck finding it later, so,
Tentacle Beast | CR: *
==Hides in the water
==Head spits poison
==Comes with tentacles, which die when the head dies
For being a massive monster with the ability to throw multiple attacks at once, it's very underwhelming and you can probably safely ignore it in all scenarios. If you're wondering why I think they're so rare, it's typically because I have to get close to them for them to pop up, and they are very beneath my notice in the first place.
As mentioned, you can largely sprint through the Great Marsh. It has a waypoint? Sure. It also has nothing else except that waypoint so you really can just ignore it. As for the Flayer Jungle, it has, Flayers, which are uptiered Fetishes. And Soul Killers, another tier of Fetishes in case you get bored of Flayers.
I've had plays where the Flayer Jungle spawns connected west of the Spider Forest and the Great Marsh spawn east. The only mercy of Great Marsh is that, since there's nothing of worth, you don't have to check both sides of the river you're going along, and just need to progress far enough to move to the next area.
I do, however, want the waypoint here. The area the waypoint is in, also has a complete time waster of an optional dungeon. Except it's even worse because of the correct dungeon it's mimicking already being a massive pain and generally a bad dungeon to go through.
Oh did I spoil Flayer Dungeon already? My bad.
The other enclosed area we need is going to have both the Gidbinn and the Flayer Dungeon entrance. I hope this is useful advice to you, because I've had a number of times greater than one where I find the Gidbinn, leave, and never find the staircase to the Flayer Dungeon. It's subtle man. Anyway, now's a good time to turn that in.
Trying to give this to Hratli will cause nothing to happen, and if we gossip, we get signposted to go to Ormus. Several gossip talks will urge you to go to him instead, including the quest log message. It's times like this where I wonder why there's even gossip about this, when, the game will tell me what to do pointblank already. I'd complain more but these pair of quests are really bad and would be worse without what signposting there is.
Now, after all these years, Ormus will once again use his powers to protect the innocent from the shadow. The spell that protects the dockside shall now be reinforced.
What does this entail, you may ask?
Why, slowly shuffling to a podium, placing the Gidbinn, and then encapsulating it in an orb.
Magic. Ain't gotta explain shit. Not to mention that this takes so long that I never wait for him to finish.
...Wait, where's our reward?
You gave me...
Oh. Joy. Another ring. To be fair this one's better, because unlike the ring from Akara, this ring is guaranteed to be rare and has a high item level compared to where we are. Even then, this one in particular only rolled one mod I may want. I have better rings already.
Median XL is instead going to throw a shrine at you.
...And I have no idea why, because they normally only drop considerably later in the mod, and they require scared items, or, what's considered tier 5, and sacreds don't drop until much later as well. So, pretend this doesn't exist for now. I'm going to. I don't even know why I'm given this now when I can't use it. I don't even want to think about it because it is very difficult to explain, both for me and Median XL.
Anyway, I found the Flayer Dungeon a while ago when I found the Gidbinn, so time to go in it.
Not because I want to.
Music-Kurast Sewer
So, let's explain the Flayer Dungeon. First off, it's dark as hell. Second, if you liked Tombs before, this isn't quite like Tombs but they also have a bunch of weird traps like spiky balls being tossed at you.
(Quick swap to Vanir here bcause Zoul went the entire dungeon without finding...)
Undead Fetish | CR: *****
==Moves fast.
==Has Deadly Strike.
==Explodes on death.
Zoul is fortunate enough to have minions to handle these. They're Fetishes, except they can't be revived and instead they explode, violently, when you kill them. Hey, can you teach me how you made a skeleton explode like a corpse someday?
But anyway, oh that explosion damage can be dangerous. It's purely physical, but it deals a portion of their max life as damage. The terror is not in getting caught in one of them, it's getting swarmed and then your only option is to detonate them on your face, which if you can't help but crowd control, will all blow up in your face. Also a fun bug occurs in that, Fetish can deal double damage with their attacks thank to having innate Deadly Strike. They can do this with the death explosion as well.
No, seriously, fuck that explosion. If they are in your face and you kill them you're getting hit by it. Which means, yep, one more middle finger to melee. It's saying something when PD2 nerfs it by making them drop an exploding totem instead that you have enough time to run away from.
Wraiths are here for good measure as well.
But the thing about Flayer Dungeon is it's strangely short for the first couple of levels. You can have a run where you only meet Fetishes and their Shamans and nothing else of note. This is not to imply you can be safe from Undead Fetishes. They'll show up later. But this dungeon can also feel short and forgettable.
...Then you hit the bottom.
It follows a simple concept. It's also a small floor. There are almost no monsters. The gold chest is either going to be in the center or in a corner. The game is going to attempt to make you go through the entire floor just to get to the gold chest.
It's a maze. The minimap is not very helpful either because of its confusing icons for doors and then blocked passages you can't go through. I hate this floor, and I hate the Flayer Dungeon.
Oh, but there is a superunique at the end.
Witch Doctor Endugu | CR: *****
==Superunique
==Magic Resistant
==Fire Enchanted
==Can revive dead Fetishes
==Doesn't Attack
==Leaves a Fetish on death
==Casts Speed Aura, Inferno
And of course it's a shaman. Luckily it doesn't get as much of a boost to its Inferno...but it's still very lethal. The explosion from Fire Enchanted is tame compared to Inferno. Also fun fact, Fetish Shamans will die twice, and roll loot twice: once for the Shaman up top, again for the Fetish below.
Also fun fact: old versions of this game had Fetish Shaman uniques spawn with other Fetish Shamans. This includes Endugu.
Did I mention Act 3 has a reputation for being the worst act in the game? Anyway, Endugu dies offscreen to skeletons because having meat shields sure does trivialize this thing that was made to shit on melee.
Let's just get this brain and get out of here.
This is most fortunate! Khalim's Brain knows Mephisto's weakness.
Place it in the Horadric Cube along with Khalim's other relics - the Eye, the Heart, and the Flail.
Cain. It's a brain out of a human. It's a dead organ. You did this with the eye as well. I'm not getting these for you to teach me what the human body does.
Well, at least with the brain we are done with the jungle. We just need to continue trekking northeast until we're finally at a much better place to be. For how much I hate the Kurast jungle, at least the way forward is always northeast, just, with many dead-ends in the way.
Next time: We enter Kurast proper.