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14-The City Life
Now, she says I can get a free Iron Wolf, and I think Iron Wolves are stinky so I never do, but I'm pretty sure she is lying and there's no such thing as a free mercenary hire. Not like they cost an arm and a leg anyway, mercenary replacements are actually pretty cheap. It's the gearing and leveling you have to do for them that makes the prospect not appetizing.
Seeing as how I know what not getting to the point is, we'll see if you can do that, Alkor.
There is a very special book which you must find for me. It was written long ago by a sage known as Lam Esen, who studied Skatsimi magic and the effects of the Prime Evils on the mortal world. The Black Book was lost when the Children of Zakarum took over this land.
Now, you must reclaim it without delay! Its knowledge may aid us in this dark time ahead.
Okay sure that's pretty to the point.
Upon finishing the second quest, we get the third fourth quest: find a book. Since we're making headway into Kurast, Alkor's picking a good time to yell at us to find something for him. If you were wondering about the weird Skatsimi knife we found last update, this book will explain it...not to us, but, to Alkor. The knife is still very much a mcguffin.
There's actually a surprising amount of depth in the gossip about the Skatsim's relation to Zakarum, that I wish wasn't tucked away in gossip and didn't feel incidental. For example: the Assassin/Khral-Harzhek's code? Based on the Black Book's word. There's also notes about the Prime Evils in there as well. That book also holds signifigance to several NPCs in town. The good book of the old religion is hyped up to be very important, let alone useful for here and now. It's only frowned upon by Zakarum, you know, that religion that is now just Mephisto's plaything.
Music-Jungle
So why was the Skatsim religion supplanted and why is the Zakarum faith becoming just as maligned? I don't have a solid answer for the first question but I can explain the second.
Kurast is largely considered the magic capital of old Sanctuary, but Zakarum is based there. Churches praising the light are not resricted to any region of Sanctuary, but Zakarum was a church that had the bright idea of spreading the good word about the light to the rest of Sanctuary. As for its origins, well, some wise bum named Akarat who got sick of society saw a bright flash of light and ran with it. It sounded neat so it worked just fine. Buncha worldbuilding about his religion later, Akarat has a faith, and many followers.
They were the first of written history to do this, to go around Sanctuary and unite its people under the Zakarum faith. They failed horribly the first time because who they sent where basically grandpas armed with books and sticks.
The second time, realizing that Sanctuary is not a peaceful world but has many rigors and struggles with traveling about it, trained heavily armed knights to accompany the priests on their pilgrimage. Paladins. They made the missions successful...to the point where the people they met weren't fawning over the old man saying to praise the light, they're fawning over the trained knight looking and doing everything like a hero.
Zakarum became a household name, and yes, for a time, there was nothing wrong with it. The Zakarum even helped Tal Rasha bind the three, and because of that, Tal Rasha handed them Mephisto's Soulstone to safeguard. I'll give you a wild guess where the issue in this was. ...Unfortunately it really makes the sealing of Baal seem incidental, because if Baal didn't break his soulstone I'm pretty sure he too would've been placed underneath civilization ripe to corrupt. Later, the holy men would cross the twin seas, and start converting and settling that continent over there, with varying degrees of success. Regardless, modern civilization at that time knew one faith: Zakarum.
By this point, the image of the holy warrior protecting the faith is very old, very faded. Feeling like Zakarum's light was fading, they did a third round of conversion, with failures to convert to be met with violence.
You may be able to hazard another guess.
Nowadays, the name "Hand of Zakarum" refers to zealot inquisitors that will smash your face in if you don't convert to their perfect holy religion; or, something to loathe and dread. Many people left the faith at this time but didn't stop believing in the light. One of those being Khalim. Another being Vanir. I want to say faith is swinging back to magic but we're in the present age now, so I can't tell you right now.
What's important is, faith has just as much a presence in the game's setting as magic, but in exchange for faith, objectively, not regularly dooming the world like magic does, we don't get a lot of depth to religions like Zakarum. Did I mention Vanir was part of that faith and every chance to have interaction with him coming back to his completely degraded homeland has been passed up because Blizzard North just could not find the time to continue their writing?
I'm like, almost mad about that, to the point where I'll be visibly annoyed, but I do know the circumstances surrounding Diablo II and its, well, dubious writing that never really improved. I'll explain what I mean by that another day.
We've hit the level in Project Diablo 2 where our hireling aura turns on. Our starter Rogue? Gets Vigor. In a mod where I can't autopath my way to progress, I'll take the gimme merc allowing me to move much quicker if I stick with her. I dunno if I'll keep her, because there's a Might aura I can grab later, but she's definitely staying with Vanir.
Regardless, we are finally free of this accursed jungle.
Just gotta check in with the bouncers first.
Stormtree | CR: ***
==Superunique
==Extra Fast
==Lightning Enchanted
==Uses Frenzy
I mentioned the flaws of Bramble Demons. You'd think Extra Fast would fix it but what's twice the speed of really slow? Treehead Woodfist this isn't. By this point I imagine by now most people have gotten the blatant "don't use melee" signposting the game's been doing and have plenty of ways to deal with something awful to face up close. Or just stopped playing.
That superunique is always at the end of Flayer Jungle.
Music-Kurast Area
Get past him and we're finally here. Welcome to Kurast. For real.
I once made fun of Lut Gholein for looking massive in cinematics but is actually a tiny baby town in-game. This is not the case with Kurast. Kurast is MASSIVE. The rest of the act is in it. Technically speaking we've always been in Kurast, we've just been having a hard time telling jungle from ruin until now.
Now that we're in, uhh, "civilization", we can finally meet the "locals".
Zakarum Zealot | CR: *
Okay, I guess this counts as a human to kill. Brainwashed by an orb but it's close enough. The monster has, nothing going for it, save for something that I'll point out later. I guess they tell me to go away.
While I'm here, checking in on Median XL, it does something extremely cool: have the Zealots infight with Fetishes. I saw this the first time and loved it. 
I'm a sucker for infighting in video games and while it's a little clunky because Zealots will fight eachother as well, I love the concept of rolling in while a bunch of bored demons are distracted and going to town.
There's many buildings that we can actually go into. I don't think it's amazing though because most of them have nothing save for two specific things to find, and, when you're not in them, they're great at blocking the view. They are great set pieces, but some of them are so big and have exactly one entrance and nothing to do.
For a time it may have sound like I was liking Act 3. I like Act 3's visuals because of how many set pieces there are, and the fact that it does a good job at portraying a massive ruined cityscape. Gameplay wise though? It's a slog and a pain in the ass. Even more than Act 2. Each area in Kurast save for the last one is going to be huge, and the waypoint in each area is going to be somewhere in that massive space. This one here? Can be anywhere in the region. I don't need Lower Kurast's, I can skip it, but the other two I'm going to need at least one of.
So while I think Act 3's presentation only loses to one other act, I never want to play Act 3. I put gameplay over aesthetics as a matter of principal, and I'm the sort of person who thinks, "I don't care if you're daydreaming about being a barbarian contracting every jungle disease. I'm going so slow that I'm not doing the thing I find fun in this game: killing demons." From a, "Is this fun?" perspective, the answer is no. Fun is subjective, but when I say the game's appeal is killing demons, finding loot, and killing more demons, an act that is painful and grueling to play is counteractive to that fun.
This is a very nuanced line to draw though, admittedly. If Act 3 wasn't pain I would probably place it at top 1 or top 2, but that is because fun gameplay is a first priority to me. I'm old. Your typical fantasy enjoyer isn't, and will see different reasons to like Diablo 2. I just listed the one that's probably the most significant reason to enjoy it. If that's not your reason, then who knows, you might like Act 3. I may seriously scratch my head, but I'll respect you saying Act 3 isn't that bad. I can see the positive in it.
Just don't expect me to say green hell is better than sand hell or irish hell, or the other acts. I'll take the tombs and the vast desert over the jungle anyday.
Anyway, the Kurast Bazaar introduces a new enemy: the zealot's shaman.
Zakarum Priest | CR: ****
==Heals eachother and Zakarum Zealots
==Can cat Lightning Bolt, Blizzard, Teleport
You would think these would be the worst support monster, but strangely they're not. It's because they can't just tell you to 
and while they can heal others, they can't resurrect others. Even when they have a very potent spell in the form of Blizzard, they don't do the devastating damage that, say, a Fetish Shaman's Inferno can do. Don't get me wrong they're still dangerous and a pain in the butt in groups, but I've never dreaded them. I just loathe when I'm fighting monsters and then a Priest walks up and puts a Blizzard on me, which will be hard to move out of. Of course, the early tiers won't cast Blizzard, but we'll be seeing it this act.
In the Bazaar are these temple structures. There's 2 here and 2 in the next part of Kurast. What's not said is that the black book we're looking for is in one of these temples. To spoil the surprise, though, the book is always in the Ruined Temple, which is always found in the Bazaar. The locations of the temples in each area may be random, but the one the book is in is not. Don't go to the Disused Fane...unless you wanna grind I guess nothing's stoppin ya.
Each of these areas are, at least, very short.
Act 3 has many tiers of Vampire. The first one shows up here, and they all can cast Meteor. Meteor can do high damage if you stay in its explosion, but its casting is accompanied by a sound and visual cue of where it's about to hit. Unlike monsters, which will move mostly predictably, you can get out of the way of the incoming blast pretty easily.
But here it is. Book in hand, let's get our next quest reward.
...As for...what? What did you give me? Explain yourself.
Turns out, what he gives you is just 5 more stat points.
This is probably the worst quest reward. Not because it's worthless, but because you have to do it and get it to be optimal. It's not mandatory either. This is why Eastern Sun throws the tomb in a place you can't just easily get to, and tells you to get it later. It's all of 5 attribute points and I have already talked about how worthless 5 attribute points are in the grand scheme of things. I could make an argument for that life potion because Life is useful, but what I'm saying is this reward made me stop and realize, "The quests in Act 3 suck."
All of them are fetch quests. All of them effectively extend your stay in the worst act because they have rewards you can't just skip if you want to be optimal, save for Gidbinn. Hell, three of the quests in Act 3 are, effectively, the same quest. This means, by getting that book, we just have the main quest to go. This is making me miss Blood Raven.
I didn't say the phrase "shopping list" for nothi-...what is that?
No...
Music-Kurast Sewer
NO WHY IS THERE ANOTHER SEWER 
A shitty fantasy trope so nice the game does it twice. And I have bad news, it's even worse!
This might actually be the worst part of Act 3. Now, if you have map reveal and get lucky, you might get through the Sewers very quickly as you'll spawn close to the stairs down, like Bob did.
Or you can be unlucky like Arty, where the stairs down is going to be far away from where we enter. The Sewers is clossal, there's four entrances to it, and it connects the Kurast Bazaar with Upper Kurast. (For no reason other than convenience.) As you can imagine for Vanir and Zoul, who can't be pointed to the stairs, there's a chance to get lost in the sewers, and spend forever trying to find the hidden staircase.
Thankfully once you learn how the sewers work it's not that hidden. In the massive area you're looking for an alcove at the edge of the map. One of them is going to have the stairs down. Looking anywhere except the edges for that alcove is not productive, but there's no real rhyme or reason to where it shows up. It can be at any edge. This can take a while.
Furthermore while the sewers is really awful and random, the entrances to it are not. The two in the Bazaar will be in the center of the area and so will the two in the next area. Each entrance corresponds to a different corner you'll enter the sewers from. If you have map reveal, it's not a bad idea to try a different entrance if the one you picked did not put you anywhere near the stairs down.
Also you may have notice that's a group of Undead Fetishes.
And Arty can't help but crowd control. 
I've been dying a lot in Act 3. Relatively speaking of course. I'm going to admit that until this death, I didn't know what was going on with Undead Fetishes. And then someone shot me off screen.
Who is that, you may ask? Well, who fires unholy bolts?
They're here as weeeell! And guess what, Undead Fetishes count as undead and Greater Mummies can, as a matter of fact, revive them, despite them exploding. Fuck Greater Mummies but especially fuck this sewer level.
It flipflops between big confusing architecture to Greater Mummies shooting you from across streams. The other monsters pale in comparison to the Undead Fetishes and Greater Mummies.
If it's your first time, where you don't have knowledge of where the stairs can spawn, you can be here forever. You have to be here as well. The last Khalim organ is here. All this while the game is throwing two of its worst monsters at you, in a map that sucks to traverse and is unfriendly to melee. The Jungle? Flayer Dungeon? No honestly getting lost in the Sewers can be the worst time due to its sheer size and the fact that you have no idea where the stairs is at first. This is the lowest point of Act 3. At least the bottom floor of Flayer Dungeon has almost no monsters. This is made to completely and utterly waste your time if you don't know what you're doing.
And this is just the first level! What else is there?!
It's...
...actually nothing.
The only monsters that tend to spawn here are tentacle beasts and, I told you you can just not go to the edge of the water to not spawn them. The layout is fixed, little baby size, and the gold chest is unguarded. The worst this area can do is like I guess put a group of monsters in the way but they'll probably all be chumps.
In exchange for what is probably the worst map of the game, you are just handed the heart with no fuss. There's some other chests and loot as well, so it's really just an apology level. That's good, because this is the last time I ever want to be in a sewer, barring having to come back here again another 14 times.
Now's a good time for a break.
Oh that's right my breaks are regularly interrupted by old nerds.
Place it in the Horadric Cube along with Khalim's other relics - the Eye, the Brain, and the Flail.
Okay, this is what I draw the line. Not the "it's a heart that's where the courage lives 
" line. The fact that no matter what, Cain really wants to remind you how to fuse this thing together. I got very sick of hearing this the first time I played this game. This is the point where early me really wanted to put a sock in Cain. And now, this is the part where I finally just say bluntly, "Cain you are such a nerd. Do you ever live or do you only just read books? And if you say my hatred must be Mephisto's corruption so help me god,"
On the bright side though, with all 3 organs in our organ-touching hands, we just need the flail.
Luckily, it's right next to the compelling orb.
Next time: We go to a holy city and kill Mephisto.