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15-The Lord of Hatred

Music-Kurast


This is the home stretch, so let's check up on Vanir.

He and Zoul have been busy, and, thanks to a streak of lucky drops between the two, Vanir has something very powerful on him:



A completed set. I am actually quite fortunate to have all four pieces of Exodia drop between the two. (Eastern Sun doesn't count.) Most completed sets will give you an utter suite of mods, some tied to the item, some tied to the item if you have enough set pieces, and the rest granted by owning part or all of the whole set. The Angelic Set, specifically, is the Scimitar pictured, the armor, an amulet, and a ring.





It's a headache to keep track of and it's definitely different from basegame, so here's the list of what's relevant for having an Angelic set in PD2:

-Chance to cast Fist of the Heavens. It's low level, but it's a level 24 skill that we'll occasionally just do by swinging, for free, and we use Zeal. Furthermore, Fist of the Heavens is a top-tier skill in Diablo 2 versions that remove the cooldown off it, as it deals high lightning damage to whoever you target with it and then shoot everyone nearby with holy bolts for magic damage. This is not relevant, however, if you cast it off a weapon hit. Its crowd control potential is insane, and it's inherently just two damage types. Most vanilla-ish mods will remove the cooldown from Fist of the Heavens, and even Resurrected does this. Maybe in the future I'll be using this with Vanir, but for now, we'll see a preview of how ridiculous it is.
-Free resist. Always nice.
- Can't be frozen.
-A good chunk of magicfind.

So basically, Vanir will probably have no trouble with Mephisto. Even if the Angelic Set is pretty bottom tier when it comes to sets, it's still pretty powerful.



But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a new quest, even though we must do this quest to finish the 3rd, which we must do to finish the last.



But now the time has come to face those responsible for the evil that has stifled our land. You must destroy the High Council of Zakarum!

Long ago, these elders were charged with the stewardship of Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred, who was imprisoned within the Guardian Tower.

Through the generations, these pious men slowly fell more and more under the sway of Mephisto's malevolent power and the Council became an evil mockery of its former glory.

It is Mephisto's Hatred that has corrupted Zakarum and turned its devout followers into paranoid fanatics. That is why you must travel to the Temple City of Travincal and slay the Council.

Once they are gone, Mephisto's hold over this land and its people will be broken!

We're almost done, as our next obstacle is getting hyped up. You'll also find that, looking at the text for the 3rd quest, our last piece of the flail is, in the hands of said High Council.

Music-Kurast Area


All we gotta do is finish going up Kurast. As we've been making steady progress in the act, we've gone from out in the jungle sticks, to the huts and shacks of the commoners, to the nicer buildings of the mercents,



until here, where we're getting into the large brick and mortar structures of the artisocracy. Since we're about to enter Travincal, I do want to reiterate that I love these things as set pieces, though I do scratch my head a little bit at how much space is between all these buildings, and how it doesn't really look like a city but a sprawling mess of buildings. You know I guess cities back then can just have no city planning, but what I'm saying is I come from a family that loved SimCity, and seeing cities like this is triggering me on a personal level.



One last Causeway to go, which is another intermediate area with few monsters. The last two book temples are here, but I've already told you that the one you want has a fixed name way back there, so I tend to always ignore the Causeway. There's a better place to be right now,



and that's Travincal.



Sporting the highest tier of Zealots and Priests, some Vampires for good measure, and having a fixed design, Travincal sure can leave an impression. It's pretty, and difficult honestly, and we haven't even reached the hard part. I tend to remember Travincal because you get a pretty effective mix of spellcasting monsters. Meteors, Blizzards, and Lightning Bolts can all come at you at once if you don't pick your battles wisely.



Since its layout is fixed, the waypoint is always northwest, in this chamber. There's nothing of note southeast, and our destination is at the tippy top.

Now, while Travincal does have effective monster groups it is pretty short, so there isn't a whole lot to go through. So where's the High Council?



They're all in here. And if you were wondering where all the superuniques were in Act 3...well they're all in here.


Ismail Vilehand / Geleb Flamefinger / Toorc Icefist | CR: *****
==Superunqiues
==Ismail has Extra Fast and Cursed
==Geleb has Extra Strong and Fire Enchanted
==Toorc has Cold Enchanted and Stone Skin
==Casts Blizzshock, Hydra
==Can heal eachother and other Zakarum monsters

Finally, a real challenge.

First off, Council Members. Finding a non-Minion, non-Superunique Council Member is pretty rare but not impossible. They're all meant to be named and powerful, though, so it makes sense we hardly ever see any normal members. The non-named Council Members here are all minions, and I do believe each superunique comes with one or two Council Members as minions.

Second, they hit fairly hard. All of them.

Oh yeah, the Hydras do much, much more damage to any hirelings or minions you have, so if you were being a chill summonmancer your friends would die very quickly. In the past I thought that meant I would die immediately, but no bugs are just silly, all because they wanted to nerf Hydras for PvP. None the less, even though it's 3-4 Fire damage per bolt, Hydra castings summon 3 at a time, and they can summon a lot at once. Don't stand still.

Geleb in particular does heavy damage per melee attack with his bonuses, and the force lightning does around 15 lightning damage. Despite being called Blizzshock it is only lightning, and it is more of a lightning projectile than anything. Ismail can curse you to further amplify physical damage, and Toorc can lock you down with chill. If you face all three of these at once, you'll probably die horribly. They're very strong monster bases for where you are and they all compliment eachother.

...That and they were much more likely to heal in earlier versions. I mean you shouldn't leave them be because they can break the rule of superuniques never gaining life back, but it was very painful in the past.



So, if you're using minions, here's what you do: stay outside, wait for them to cast Hydra. Run in, pulling your minions in with you. They can't spam Hydras, thankfully, since it has a cooldown. It's important we keep Hydras out of this fight, because they will shred our minions, what with them having no resists and fun bugs.



Vanir is doing this fight incorrectly. He's kited two of them at once. He's cursed. He's standing in Hydra fire. He just doesn't care. That's the power of the Angelic Set baby.

If we do not have minions we care about, then this fight's different. Taking on all 3 at once is (usually apparently) a death sentence, so we're going to lure them out one at a time. Their fatal weakness is being confined to a brick house, with a tight doorway inside. Sure, they can cast Hydras from their house and have ranged projectiles, but if I'm ranged then I can shoot them, and if I'm melee I can stand right before the doorway so that one council member can only ever engage with me. What's even better is if one of them decides to leave the house, then I can kite him away from the others and pick him off. They're very dangerous together, but manageable apart.

All this said, though, across my 7 runs, the high council isn't particularly wont to engage me in melee, which is where they'd be the most dangerous. Some of them are perfectly content to sit on the sidelines and watch me go to town on them one at a time. So much for a council if the others will heckle one's dunking before regretting their life decisions when I get to them.



The Eastern Sun boys really don't care about things like damage, and can just sit in all this fire and elemental damage comfortably.



Chloe can just tactical CIA breach this house by throwing a bunch of spacetime knives and getting the council's attention. If they don't hit anything they'll start tearing up spacetime after a set distance, typically just out of your screen. Did I mention Wychwind is extremely powerful especially if you stack them on top of eachother?



Median XL changes them up a bit though, going from spamming hydras and having monster bonuses to each having their own aura and suite of spells of a certain element. It's why I'm getting pelted with cold spells from Toorc here.



But no seriously Travincal is a nice big open area, and once you get the council's attention, they'll start chasing you throughout it. If you get two superuniques simply wait until one decides to cast something and the other doesn't. They'll break their own group up eventually. ...Why did I rate them 5 stars when they have a cheese strat? Well it's typically because without the cheese strat this is one of the hardest fights in the game.

And why am I even calling it a cheese strat? This is playing the game correctly.



With the High Council dead, we have the Flail. You know what that means.



Place it into the Horadric Cube along with Khalim's relics - his Heart, his Brain, and his Eye. Then, transmute them to carry out Khalim's Will.

That's right. Cain dimension. Also because The Blackened Temple is a quest that is completed by talking to any NPC, we get a double dipping.



Diablo and Baal must be close to finding their brother, Mephisto, by now. You've no time to waste.

Part of why Cain gets on my nerves is because he can never just trust me to know what to do. He repeats himself way too often, and not just with this flail. He probably does this to everyone as well.



Ormus, tell me some good news.



You must reach him before his Brothers do and prevent them from releasing Hatred upon the world.

More than hatred already is released on the world?



And with this, we have our key to the act. We can now escape the jungle.

Oh and, because we made the flail, Cain has new dialogue, which means this is actually a triple-dip into the Cain Dimension. One that I dodged with Arty because I am sick of the Cain dimension, but here it is.

Masterfully done, hero! You have crafted Khalim's Will. Employ it to destroy the Compelling Orb and open the way to Mephisto.

May the true Light guide your way.



The Flail has to be equipped in your hot little hands. Luckily there's alternate weapon sets to help do this, and the flail has no level or stat requirements. That makes this an interesting prospect for early characters: you can go out of your way to make another flail and then keep one to use for early characters. It's pretty strong for early on.



Wait hold on. I'm not good at smashing orbs. Come on it's a flail I don't use those. Aaah. Unn.

Music-Comeplling Orb Destroyed

(Click here for the full animation.)

There we go. This bug is weird in that you're almost guaranteed to never break the orb on the first swing. You have to click it twice. Maybe even more.

Speaking of bugs, there's a fun exploit about Act 3 I finally get to bring up. You may have seen this act, hear me describe it, and go, "So you're telling me this is the part of the game that's not fun and no one wants to play."

Music-Kurast Sewer


In which case you'd be right. In multiplayer, players found a cool way to skip Act 3 entirely: just enter a party with a character well ahead of the game, have them set up a teleporter to the waypoint in Level 2 of the Durance of Hate, and then claim it yourself.

You just skipped 98% of Act 3.



Blizzard attempted to fix this by making you unable to enter the Durance of Hate at all until you completed the relevant quests, but guess how they did this. It wasn't by watching you make the flail and smash the orb. It was just checking to see if you have killed the High Council, which finishes the 5th quest.

And not even you. Just, did you start and finish that quest? If you did, then you can now enter the final dungeon. Blizzard sure is, uhh, good at fixes. It's not even limited to this game or Blizzard North. I remember plenty of fun patches in Blizzard's past being either very questionable design decisions, or easily bypassed fixes. Laziness is the undertone for either of those cases. I know it's programming and it's hard, but when it looks like they take the easy way out of problems on the regular, I and many people before me are gonna make fun of them for it.



As an aside, which is very unfortunate that I did not record this the first time around, is that once you smash the Compelling Orb, the Zealots will turn neutral and actively run away from you, wherever in the act they are. I never notice this because you would have to turn around and not get Act 3 out of the way. It's a very subtle change. You can also still kill them, for normal experience and drops.

(Also, here's our first instance of a monster bonus taking a resistance on a monster and turning it into an immunity. Hope you have other damage types!)



Anyway, Durance of Hate. I wanna like this area, but it's dark, it has confusing architecture, and the map has bizarre icons for walls and pits that, in very complicated floors, makes me think some parts of the walls are floors and vice versa. I don't hate it but it doesn't feel great to go through. It's 3 levels long. Basegame Durance is typically not terrifying. One just has to deal with the highest tiers of Vampires that'll show up here, and some fodder demons in the form of Mummies and Blunderbores. I'm told Undead Fetishes show up here as well, but I think they're fairly uncommon because I don't recall seeing any here.



Like all good act finishers, the Durance of Hate ends in a fixed floor.



And don't worry, there's more High Council in the back.


Bremm Sparkfist / Wyand Voidbringer / Maffer Dragonhand | CR: *****
==Superunqiues
==Bremm has Aura Enchanted and Lightning Enchanted. Which aura he gets is random.
==Wyand has Mana Burn and Teleportation.
==Maffer has Extra Fast and Extra Strong.
==Casts Blizzshock, Hydra
==Can heal eachother and other Zakarum monsters

It's round 2, with a fresh set of bonuses. Bremm and Maffer in particular can be scary, but unlike the first batch, which spawned together, this batch tends to not, which means all you need to worry about are the top-tier Vampires that spawn alongside them. The last floor is literally just the rest of the High Council and Blood Lords. What can be concerning then, is when one of the High Council spawns too close to Mephisto. They won't both just beeline to you, but you'll have to seperate them.



Bremm Sparkfist, specifically, has an extremely awful combination in getting an aura and being Lightning Enchanted. He's high enough level to get Conviction as an aura, and if he does, it lowers your resists and defense, making you take more elemental damage, in a final floor that's all about elemental spell damage. Here he just has Holy Shock, which is not great to see on a monster either, but is manageable.



Especially since Arty's high level enough to get something we have experience of: Immolation Arrow. Withersting has since been moved to her Rogue (which I forgot to res for this fight, mainly because I'm concerned for her dying again. The end of Act 3 is a rough patch for mercs.) and she's just using the strongest bow she can find. It's been working well, since, as ranged, we almost never care about silly things like hit checks against us.

The remaining council members tend to spawn in a way that each one is in their own quadrant of the map. This typically means you'll face one up front, and then another in one of the paths to the back of the level. There, you'll find,



You're too late HA HA HA HA HA HA
Mephisto | CR: ****
==Act Boss
==Casts Charged Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Poison Cloud, Iceball, Frost Nova, and Blizzard
==Elemental Resistant

...a confusing mesh of bones.

He's a proper caster boss, sporting many spells of many elements. Several of them are pretty potent as well. The Blizzard is especially dangerous because it does around 120 cold damage per hit, and it's Blizzard. Despite how heavy-hitting Mephisto is though, he's not as hard as other bosses because you can easily run away if he smacks you, and some of his spells do not do much damage. Charged Bolt is scary up close however, since each spark does somewhere from 1 to 90 lightning damage per hit, and he shoots like 10 of them at once. Eating all that point-blank would be a repeat of eating all of Andariel's Poison Spray point-blank.



Unfortuantely, we are STILL not at the point where we can reliably get our resistances up to the point where we can ignore more of this. 50 in eiher Cold or Lightning resistance is possible but not in both. Poison resist can be safely ignored though. The cloud isn't particularly lethal, neither is Frost Nova. Mephisto's most lethal spell is definitely Blizzard followed by Charged Bolt, so prioritizing cold resist is desirable, though what you can't get in cold resist you should get in lightning resist.

On the one hand, he hits like a truck and there's little levels can do to stop it. On the other, if you know what he can do and have picked out proper gear for the fight, his power drops hard, because if you live by elemental damage you die by elemental resistance. This is what makes Mephisto easier than Duriel: you can counter his strategy. That and because he's a caster monster he spends plenty of time faffing around and not spamming spells. It's only if he ever decides to cast Blizzard that you might be in trouble. Also, unlike Summoner, he doesn't have a particularly high chance to have meat shields...at all, because the only meat shields are going to be other caster monsters who also avoid getting in your face. So it's not too hard to kite Mephisto away from any monsters that are still in the back.



Also, the entire time I'm here, these ghosts just show up and try to bonk me on the hand. This isn't tied to Mephisto. This happens the entire time you're in this floor. Why? Because they don't want just want you to stand still and heal. Read: not have fun.

But anyway, Arty has a trump card in the form of being able to move until Mephisto throws something, shoot, and resume moving. This works because Immolation Arrow is that good. It doesn't take that many to kill Mephisto.



So let's move on to Zoul. Zoul and, well, most summonmancers at this point, should be focusing on one skill: Raise Skeleton Warrior. Once that's at 20, and it'll be near 20 at around this time, those Skeletons will be as strong as they can get. Something something Mephisto's middle name is "Crowd Control" but remember we can make more corpses and summon more golems and chug more mana potions. All Zoul has to do is shuffle around to not eat the piercing Lightning Bolt. Who needs resistance anyway? Not Zoul, that's for sure. Part of the reason why I haven't been explaining much about Zoul is because he hasn't really done much that's new. What he's done from Act 2 is still working.



Vanir has to stick his sword into this dervish of spells. But, remember, he has a set.



These are pretty sufficient resistances I might say. I also went and got life for him, so that we have enough bulk that we can just hold down the button for Zeal and chug healing potions until we outlast Mephisto.



I'm also just showing off this hat that dropped from Mephisto for posterity's sake.



Vanir is now crowned Savior of Zakarum.



To properly describe the experience for Chloe and Jane, I have to rewind back to the beginning of the Durance. Hey remember when I said I've been neglecting resistances?



This is my punishment. I somehow do not die here. But those Laments are partially invisible and will launch lightning projetiles that explode into charged bolts, doing a lot of damage unresisted. I have cold resist maxed, but not lightning resist. That's gonna be a problem.



The bottom floor is called the Seat of Hatred and has different uniques in place of the High Council. (though at least one of them is still here) For instance, this golem that likes to call down exploding rocks on us.



But here's another Elite you can find here: the Balrog. I love him, because he will call down fire to blast an area. I love him because that kinda reminds me of getting slimed on the Nickelodeon show of your choice.



Mephisto is still a caster boss. He just has a better suite of spells to select from: from the fan of glacial spikes here deleting my health to another spell that spawns rings of sparks, moving along where he aimed. Well I guess it is a good thing I did cap cold resist because I'd probably be super dead if I hadn't. Those spikes are hard to dodge.



(finally fixed the weird screenshots) Ah but Jane.



Jane's just gonna treat this boss fight like a damage race, and win it. You can't be terrified of Mephisto's spells if Mephisto never gets a chance to cast them.



...I then die to a souped-up Bramm Sparkfist.

Rest easy that this is the point where I finally fix my resists for these two.



That just leaves the Eastern Sun boys. Eastern Sun, aside from jacking up numbers, don't do much to change bosses. Also, our gear is still just maxing resists without me trying to. Eastern Sun gear is just built different, where the starter class set gives a large chunk of resists and then it's pretty easy to fill out the rest, because it definitely changes what affixes can show up when.



So I don't fear Mephisto. If anything, I can do what he does, but better, because Greg has gotten a spell called Plasma Rain.

I would like to say it's his ultimate spell, that it's unique to him, and it raises Barbarian from bottom tier to top tier.

But it's really just Blizzard, but lightning.

Yes. Eastern Sun is saying, "How to fix Barb: turn him into Sorc."



It's simpler with Bob. Do you remember that one of Bob's skills has built-in Crushing Blow and Open Wounds?



That means I can fist Mephisto.

Music-Mephisto Dies

(Click here for the full animation courtesy of Arty.)

Mephisto's Hatred was a poisonous void.

I think that's just the fart cloud he left for you.

Music-Kurast


Enter the Infernal Gate and kill the Lord of Terror before all is lost. Only then will our world be saved!

It's funny when you think about it. Mephisto is big: like, not just big in this game but big in the lore, and I don't just mean because he's a Prime Evil.



You must enter the Infernal Gate and stop Diablo once and for all.

At the end of the Sin War, the peace treaty was Mephisto's idea. The dynamic between the 3 Great Evils is that while Mephisto sure does hate everything, he tends to play the long game, actually showing interest in organizing armies and forcing his allies to work together and pitting his enemies against eachother. He doesn't just hate everything, he makes everyone hate everything as well, but if there's a bigger fish, Mephisto can orchestrate his minions to focus and take that fish down.



(swappin for the rest of these) To Mephisto, he sees Sanctuary as a sandbox of very radical and easily gaslighted societies. He loves that shit. It's the thing that keeps him focused when he would normally hate everyone and everything, including his own family, but most of all the angels and the light.



It makes sense that Mephisto would be able to sway mortals so easily. After all, his daughter created them. Nowadays he balances his war against the heavens with trying to figure out where the hell she is, which, so far, Inarius has provided no answers to, probably because he banished her twice and wanted to never see her again.



(This is a good line. )

Since Diablo IV is going to feature Lilith as the major antag, there's a lot of writing potential here: Everything that isn't mortal is never truly gone in the world of Diablo if she's any indication. Despite everything she still cares about her children, but ultimately she's still trying to do something that I think is a good trope to build a story around: end this eternal war. I'll go more into this later, but let's just say, she realized something that drove her to reject peace in the interest of making sure her half-angel half-demon children weren't eradicated if the Heavens or Hells ever found out about Sanctuary. (And to be fair, she was right in assuming all outside Sanctuary would see her creation as blasphemy.)

I mean she's still Lilith. She still hates, among other things, her dad, angels, jerks, I guess loneliness as well. The problem, and why she and Inarius did not stay together for long, is because that still holds true, even after they created a world with no equal before it, and a race with no equal before it either, if the Sin War and Diablo III are any indication. And now in Diablo IV, as angels and demons alike have left a very sour aftertaste to the denizens of Sanctuary, she's getting brought back again. Third time's the charm, hopefully, but, I'm imagining she has some not-great ideas for Sanctuary, what with the falling out and the wanting to use Nephalems to end the war, not for Hell, or Sanctuary, but for her.



If I were to compare Mephisto and his realms to any other fantasy setting, the Skaven from Warhammer are a good example. Like the rats, his demons and societies group together and unite just to kill eachother and eventually themselves before starting over again. It's a world of constant strife, struggle, and death, but it's something most demons relish. This is why, in terms of Burning Hells, his realm is regarded as its capital: because everyone's there and everyone's stabbing eachother.

(I forgot to grab Natalya's but that's because I couldn't find her oops.)

Word is spreading fast that you killed Mephisto. I'd be honored to fight beside you in Hell, but I've just received my mission orders.

I'll be travelling to the Barbarian lands of the North, but I can't tell you why. With luck, our paths will cross again. Farewell.

I say all this, and it's pretty easy for Mephisto to get dunked, because he's critically weak to elemental resists. He does have a melee attack but as you may imagine he's going to cast spells more often than not. This is difficult the first time around, but later, when we can cap resistances with relative ease, Mephisto will not be hard anymore. If anything we might still struggle with his council, but not him. So much for that Prime huh?

Not to mention that I'm skeptical if any writing ideas I brought up will get touched up on in the future. Look, I know better than to hope with Diablo. Those hopes got annihilated when III first came out, when I bought it on launch day. But, well, that's a story for another day. Or just in the somethingawful thread.



Oh well. Hey look shiny portal! Let's go into it and see what happens because an old man told us to! What can possibly go wrong?

Next time: We head east...TO HELL.