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17-The Lord of Terror
No more talking. No more dialogue. No more Cain. It's time for the title bout.
Music-Mesa
Arty's a good baseline for the Diablo experience, followed by Vanir and Zoul. There hasn't been enough time to really develop characters between Mephisto and Diablo, so whatever worked then works now.
Near the end of the River of Flame, this angel stops us if we haven't broken that soulstone yet. Otherwise, he sees you're on the list and ushers us in.
Only by opening each of these seals can you clear your way to the final battle.
Yeah whatever Dungeon Maste-I mean random angel.
Yes. Diablo has his own Sanctuary, with blackjack and hookers.
Just gotta cross the moat. This part of the end always sucks because it's another maze and also a maze full of casters for extra fun dead-ending. There's quite a few monsters here as well. So many high-value targets, in fact, that people will actually clear this section out instead of teleporting directly to the inner sanctum. It's thankfully fairly short in case that's not your jam.
Music-Diablo
The Chaos Sanctuary has some weird design in that, it largely just looks like a ruined cathedral, if I was brushing aside the fact that outside is still very yellow. I think I like it but it honestly feels weird, probably because you can't convince me there's a rooftop here.
Here, however, is the final tier of Knights.
...Why do I have blue sparkles on my head? ...Wait, isn't that what I've been...uh oh.
Oblivion Knight | CR: *****
==Shoots Elemental Bolts
==Casts Bone Spirit and a wide variety of Necromancer Curses
==Doesn't melee attack
==Elemental Resistant
And these are what make the Chaos Sanctuary very dangerous. Nevermind the Bone Spirit, though it can be extremely difficult to avoid so it's free magic damage to you. These will spam Decrepify. You'll be hit with other curses such as Iron Maiden, (reverse thorns aura, deal damage get it back multiplied) Lower Resist, Life Tap, (hits on you grant lifegain) and good ol' Amplify Damage, but Decrep is definitely the most dangerous one because if you also eat a cold bolt from these knights you can get slowed to an utter crawl. That's because Decrepify is like Amplify Damage, but has less of an impact on your physical resist in exchange for also lowering your physical damage, and slowing you. They're really good at cursing you from off-screen as you're dealing with other monsters. I've shyed away from curses as Zoul because they were hella nerfed in PD2, but oh man some of them are extremely effective and now they're being used against you and did I mention you have no access to resistance or immunity from those curses? (Meanwhile a small handful of monsters are curse immune and I'm pretty sure Oblivion Knight is one of them.) So, the end of Act 4 is gonna be, I hope you can deal with going nowhere fast! Also don't use melee while Iron Maiden is on you unless you want to explode. Luckily physical damage isn't so high that getting Decrepify'd on top of that is a death sentence. ...I hope. For you.
I tend to do a full clear of Chaos Sanctuary. It's good experience, (as it's meant to be the end of D2, sans expansion) and drops here are pretty good. It's tough, but not so tough that sweeping for drops is a bad idea. That and I want to make sure every Oblivion Knight is dead so that I don't get interrupted by curses.
It's also a massive and impressive set piece for the end of the game. Story aside I think this is a good finisher to what was the game, and Act 4 can be a fun experience if nothing more because you get some real challenges and interesting obstacles. This impressive set piece in particular is the center of the sanctuary. Northwest, northeast, and southeast are where the 5 seals are located. They made 5. There's 3 directions. Doesn't make sense. Now's a good time to set up a portal here in case things go wrong.
Because each path of seals is guarded by a superunique that gets unleashed when you break the right seal.
Grand Vizier of Chaos | CR: **
==Superunique
==Extra Strong
==Fire Enchanted
==Casts Magic Missile
==Fire Immune
==Cold, Lightning Resistant
It's a blob of Finger Mages. Other than that, they're not particularly interesting. This is mainly due to the fact that they didn't have a lot of physical damage to begin with and their missiles deal mostly fire damage. Just run in and bop them.
Pictured here is how many Knights can show up in a blend of tiers (Doom and Oblivion) to be really terrifying. I think normally Oblivion Knight packs are just one Oblivion and the rest are Doom, so they aren't super scary, but on the other hand, because there's only one, you won't see a lot of curse roulette with them because only a handful of them will curse you and then go to shooting projectiles. Despite this I still think they're more dangerous than Abyss Knights, just, not by themselves.
Each seal requires clicking to unseal it, and they have very finicky collision. If you're clicking it and it's not popping, reposition yourself and try again. I'm saying this because this happens more times than it should.
In this path, we got:
Lord de Seis | CR: ***
==Superunique
==Has Fanaticism
==Extra Strong
==Shoots Elemental Bolts
==Casts Bone Spirit and a wide variety of Necromancer Curses
==Doesn't melee attack
==Elemental Resistant
It's a mob of these things! While that sounds really scary, it's still just one Oblivion Knight with Doom Knight escorts. That one knight is capable of getting a Decrep or Amplify off, but the Doom Knights aren't great melee monsters. We've seen much better, one of them's even in this very act, and that definitely lowers the threat rating of this superunique.
Get these last two seals and woah geeze.
Infector of Souls | CR: ****
==Superunique
==Extra Fast
==Spectral Hit
==Can cast Inferno
==Very Fire Resistant
Oooh boy these guys can be fast and if you let them surround you they can really tear you up. If there was ever a time to learn how to kite Megademons, or just unique minions in general, it's here. Don't get surrounded, and keep in mind that while minions will chase you even if the unique isn't, they do have a max range before they decide to get back with the group. It's not so small that you can't pick them off, but doing this does require practice. They're big angry fellas that will test your numbers. I suppose now's a better time than any to say that meat shields help a lot in scenarios like this.
We do need to kill each superunique that pops up by the way, in addition to touching seals. Once we kill Diablo's friends and mess with his seals,
The Sanctuary lights up. (I had to switch to Vanir for this effect it's not in Resurgence what the heck)
The ground quakes.
Not even death can save you from me.
And with one of the best entry lines I've ever heard,
there he is.
The mega mac daddy himself.
Diablo | CR: ****
==Act Boss
==Can Charge
==Casts Red Lightning, Cold Hand, Fire Nova, Firestorm, Firewall, and Bone Prison
==Elemental Resistant
There's a lot to this boss fight, but despite all of Diablo's tricks and very dangerous spells, once you mitigate the two nastiest things Diablo can do, he isn't particularly powerful...strangely enough. Let me put it to you this way: Duriel did more damage per melee swing than Diablo does with his baps. So how does Diablo compete?
The Red Lightning. Also the Firestorm.
Both of these do massive physical and elemental damage multiple times per second, and unresisted those spells will wipe you in the blink of an eye. Vanir has maxxed fire resist and 55 lightning resist, and that resist is enough to be able to eventually start running when Red Lightning is cast and avoid death. Zeal is probably not a great thing to use during this fight, but, PD2 does keep it at 3 swings per click in exchange for improving its damage and AR. Normally Zeal got more swings as you leveled it up, which meant you were locked in that animation for longer and longer. This meant you did not put that many points in Zeal if you wanted to use it.
If you had to pick one of these elemental types to try to mitigate, mitigate the lightning damage. The Red Lightning comes out extremely fast, is aimed at you (or whatever its target is) the entire time, and even with max lightning resist it will do heavy damage if you stand in it. (due to being part physical) Firestorm has a long windup and you can easily run aside to avoid it. Keep in mind though that Firestorm can be just as lethal, since it launches several erratic fire projectiles that leave trails of fire. The rest of the spells, and even the melee attacks, aren't particularly lethal, just damaging. If you have fire resist then you can eat the ~67 fire damage Fire Nova for free, which will definitely hit. Also, Diablo is very slow, so he has a veeeery hard time reaching you with the Charge. Firewall is just Firewall stuff.
The Cold Hand meanwhile can be difficult to avoid, and actually does magic damage and chill, not slow. ...Look, it's confusing. But it doesn't do mega damage, thankfully. But keep in mind you'll be chilled and that means it'll be harder to dodge Diablo's dangerous spells.
Finally, there's Bone Prison. If you have a portal up or you're spending time far away from Diablo, he may cast this, locking you and your portals in place with a prison of bone. You can easily break the bones, but remember to break them off your portal or open a new one in case you need to run back for whatever reason.
But yeah, while Diablo can put out better elemental damage than Mephisto can, he's largely in the same boat of resists heavily cutting down on his threat. Regardless, your first time around there's a pretty high chance you'll get blindsided by how much damage Red Lightning and Firestorm can do and die horribly. They're potent spells, and the Firestorm had to get nerfed, twice, because this game is so well programmed that every single hitbox of the Firestorm overlapped. You melted if you ate it point blank in early versions, basically. Now it's about as lethal as Red Lightning.
Chill has some effect, but it's inconsistent on what it does. Fire Nova is not a spell, it's an attack so it's affected. The Red Lightning? Not affected. Still, slowing down Diablo's already slow spells heavily cuts down on his offense.
Vanir has the defense for this fight. I just gotta know to run when I should be running. Offense however is a bit lacking, mainly because I'm relying on weapon damage and while cool, the sabre is...a sabre, a very cheap weapon you could find in the very beginning of the game. I could be using better, but I won't complain too hard. I'd rather have not enough damage but be able to do the fight, than have not enough defense and die before doing enough damage.
Besides, I've long since accepted that my Project Diablo 2 characters go slow. You know what they say: slow and steady wins the race. And near the end, Diablo decides he's done casting spells and just spends his last 25% of his life smacking me. Diablo's worst attack is smacking me.
The Bone Zone continues to be insurmountable. Part of me didn't want to do a summonmancer exactly because once I get a good stick and head for Necro, I stop thinking. Necros are a very good first choice class for that reason, you just need to not fall into the gotchas that any player of any class can fall into.
Nice roundstart Red Lightning ya jerk.
As you may imagine this fight is absolute pain for a summonmancer. In basegame, Zoul can be expected to be at a high enough level to get Summon Resist, which uhh, somewhat fixes this. It's worth putting 1 point into at least for now, but 28% less elemental damage doesn't do a whole lot for scenarios like this. Here, in PD2, we don't do that, because Summon Resist doesn't exist. Instead it's just start spawning corpses and start chugging mana potions. We're gonna go through a lot of them.
Ideally this fight goes on without Diablo ever deciding to hit us. I suppose, theoretically, you can get his attention and tank if you have dumped all your points in Vitality (which you can do as summonmancer) and got proper gear, but I don't summon bones to be their leader, and then I'd have to run from the Red Lightning which will definitely bring it into the face of my minions. The best case scenario is when your minions surround Diablo so that he can only blow up 1-2 at a time with each cast of Red Lightning or Firestorm. The worst case scenario is...that pic up there.
This is a sad fight for Arty, but not for her. Diablo's arena is actually really good for ranged characters because there's this big stupid pentagram in the way. Guess what Diablo's bad at doing? Correct. Closing distance. If he tries Charging he moves slow enough and has to travel so much distance around the pentagram that I can just run away to another part of the pentagram and continue shooting. He won't continue chasing after me, he stops at where I was and attacks the air. This is why Diablo's only 4 stars of challenge rating: this is too effective. Even moving's hard for Diablo apparently because in the 11 or so seconds it took me to spam Immolation Arrows until he went down, he cast uhh, Fire Nova, Firestorm, shuffled to the left a little bit, more timewasters of spells.
I basically never had a reason to move, because Firestorm does have this issue of being inaccurate at times and it can whiff completely if the individual bolts don't line up correctly. It's a crowd clearer, not, something to use on single targets unless you're point blank. The PK Thunder of Diablo...wait a sec.
Now it's time for the good stuff. The Chaos Sanctuary in Median XL.
For starters, these are much better resistances to have now. I'm lacking poison but from my experience, (that doesn't necessarily translate into MXL) I don't need to worry about poison resist at this point.
Second, I just now really noticed what this passive does, and passives that do the exact same thing but different elements on other trees that I can also grab. Way of the Spider specifically adds poison damage to my weapon and improves poison spell damage. I'm not a caster. I don't use spells. Later on I'll probably be putting these points into a different passive that adds better elemental damage to my weapon than poison, but for now this is working.
At around act 3 we can start seeing tier 2 items drop, which is like exceptionals, but in addition to the better numbers they will also tend to have more sockets. To explain what you do, you'll want to start swapping out your gear for gear with sockets. Any will do. Tier 1 items are really forgettable. The second best thing to have on gear is resist affixes but sockets are definitely the best thing to go for because any resists you don't get as affixes you can fix by socketing in the right gems and runes, which you can always just pop back out with a cheap cube recipe in MXL. The only exceptions to unsocketing are runeworded items, which can't be unsocketed, but there isn't a terrible lot to pick from anyway, and they have to compete with other gear, mainly uniques and, this. Gems give different bonuses based on the item type they're in. Runes, almost, do not, so you can put them in anything, for the most part.
If you've ever played Diablo III, then Median XL will, at random, cause a Treasure Goblin to spawn and run around for a while. It's a chance for you to kill it and get a goodie bag. MXL has several different ones, from the default goblin that'll just drop a lot of loot, to this Arcane Collector that will drop crafting materials like fruity pebbles for unique crafting and uptiering.
Yes they've been spawning the entire game and yes it took me until now to point it out. It's 4 mods of content.
Other than that, there hasn't been a whole lot changed. The Knights can still Decrepify but they're much more consistent with curses in that I'm pretty sure they only have Decrep. Also their Bone Spirit loses homing in exchange for leaving a damaging area upon hitting something. The elites are somewhat interesting: there's an invisible regurgitator that can cast Molten Boulder, (rock falls down and rolls around leaving fire) and a yellow finger mage that is really fast, but other than that the elites here didn't catch my attention.
The biggest change here are the superuniques guarding Diablo. They're all different. Maghda should be a familiar name to some. Here she's a superunique Vampire that can leave poison gnats where she moves and throw triple fireballs.
Iceclaw the Merciless will constantly summon skeletons. That's about it. I guess something happens if you get up close to him but uhh, nah, he's not really scary.
Ghom can shoot five poison bolts, create poison projectiles on your feet if you stand still, and create towers that'll shoot axes at you if you get close to them. He's also very slow.
Actually the superuniques are much easier in MXL, truth be told. They're more consistent and have game plans, sure, but they aren't particularly effective game plans. They're better, honestly, but, I'm not afraid.
Diablo is going to spawn in with an entourage of ladies in MXL, you know, like a smart person. They will mainly break away from the group and then fire either fire or poison projectiles at you. What's notable is that he has a super version of the Balrog slime time fire, that does very hefty fire damage! Pretty sure it actually does more damage than the Red Lightning, which he still does. Also still has Fire Nova and the Charge which, while he's faster now, is still one of the worst things Diablo can do. (I may be wrong about this, but previous versions of MXL had Diablo use that fire drench but also routinely summon more enemies to the fight. I honestly liked it a whole bunch so I'm a bit sad that's no longer the case.)
He's largely the same, actually. I think this is still a step up though because he's more consistent and does have a couple new tricks to keep people on their toes. I think the only thing he lost is the cold touch, but that's fine.
Well, let's see what the living blendtec total blender can do against Diablo.
Now, I do have to respect the big damage spells, despite my nice Life total. I'd rather not gamble on whether or not those can delete me if I turn my brain off.
We're also not that devastating against Diablo, but it's still more than enough to finish this fight in quick succession. The next step down from "kills instantly" is "kills quickly" so this isn't a problem. And besides, it can be solved simply by grabbing a better Warp Blade for Jane. On the downside we are locked into using Warp Blades to function. On the upside, there are very good ones we can just, make, if I need to. And I probably will soon.
Let's turn over t-what the?! This isn't fast! This isn't fast at all what happened?!
(Also these ES additions are very tanky, very strong boys.)
Ever since the beginning where we got our starter class set, you can really just turn your brain off for the first three acts of Eastern Sun. This is on purpose. There's plenty of time to acclimate to Eastern Sun, figure out what's good among the non-level 30 skills you have, and generally just have fun because while the game does have a couple of problem monsters, there isn't anything super lethal like in Median XL.
From my runs so for and from what I've been told in response to this question, that stops being the case in Act IV.
Several monsters start getting very durable. Fire Golems in particular. Monsters start hitting particularly hard as well. I have to rely on Plasma Rain because that's really the only spell that deals enough damage to take monsters down.
It's much, much worse for Bob. This is where going with a melee skill this entire time finally comes back to bite me in the ass. I can swing as fast as I want and stack as much damage as I want, I'm still solving problems one at a time. This is the bane of melee above all banes of melee: once the game starts throwing real meaty threats at you, you cannot keep up. This superunique mob and additions took like over a solid minute to kill. I have made terrible mistakes. My hope was that Rabies, a poison bite that spreads to nearby enemies would be good. It's not. It's really bad actually, at least in low levels. So I'm left in a bad spot. A bad, really slow spot. Winter Fury can't keep up unfortunately and that was always meant to be a backup support skill, not my main source of damage. There's definitely much better things to use here, but I wanted to do shapeshifting and, well, this is a really bad time to be exactly that, because the skills I can hope can crowd control? Level 30. I'm not level 30. Hell, Chaos Sanctuary's level is 28.
The only saving grace is that Bob has enough lifeleech and physical damage output to stay mostly intact throughout Act 4. That and one of the skills of Shapeshifting does have built-in Crushing Blow, which means swinging enough against single targets will bring them down. This still takes a while though because I have to one, hit, and two, proc crushing blow.
And all this is just before Chaos Sanctuary. Here's how life is like inside it.
First off, I am impressed that Eastern Sun has made a bigger middle finger to melee than basegame ever did. These Beholders. They shoot off poison novas and magic bolts. They're magic support demons which aren't too horrifying at range. Just, do NOT engage in melee.
This is what happens when you do! They'll do an attack that has a very high chance to hit, and if it does, you are hit with a HEAVY slow and HEAVY mana drain. Your mana goes bye-bye. You also get slowed to a crawl, so if you are unable to run away, or worse, there's other monsters, you'll probably die. They will actively avoid getting into melee range with you. Do not do melee in Eastern Sun. Please. Please do not.
Also, now's a good time to show off these goatman shamans that were added in Eastern Sun. They're notable here because they're very good at keeping their goats alive and they're a part of the Chaos Sanctuary, making them extremely annoying!
So while the monsters are now far more sturdier at least my defenses are holding. It's just making this act very slow to go through, but I think it's still going faster than, say, Act 3 on Project Diablo 2. Surely the superuniques won't be too bad right?
Well sure...if they were the same.
Guess who's baaaaack? King Leoric's here again. He, and his knights, benefit from his Might aura, meaning they all hit like dumpster trucks. That's bad news. Also, my damage sucks and these things have mondo health, and that's worse news. If I fight his knights with the Might aura, I'm probably super dead, so I have to kite them away from Leoric, one-two at a time, and deal with them then.
This goes as well as you can imagine. I have to bring my hireling back just to have a meat shield. They all poison on hit, and Leoric has a poison breath attack that, unlike normal, is the very lethal poison I don't want to get hit by. He also shoots Unholy Bolts for good measure. And of course he has Mana Burn. I had to duck into portals multiple times to keep me and my merc alive. Our damage is so piddly that we can't stay in combat.
I have to rely on cow balloons to remove aggro and break away as Bob. Bob has worse than piddly damage and has to rely entirely on hit procs, life leech, and meat shields to take these down. This is pain. And it's only the first superunique. I'm not having my damage resisted either, they just have that much health, because I'm still leeching enough Life off them to stay alive, provided I'm able to hit and not take too many hits.
Black Jade and the Hell Rockers are pretty similar to their Diablo II counterpart: the Succubus. Moves around, shoots magic bolts. Black Jade herself has Fanaticism as an aura, which speeds her and her allies up, and Multiple Shots, which adds two other projectiles to her shots. These monsters aren't extremely dangerous unless you set yourself where they can all shoot you. They are just really painful because they're really good at running away from melee. This takes a while.
The last superunique is Lachdanan, which is Extra Fast, Cursed, AND Aura Enchanted. He's also from Diablo I. So is Black Jade. Not too sure which aura Lachdanan has though. He's not too different from the superunique he replaces: he rushes in and smacks you down.
While Bob takes longer, Bob is considerably safer since he has minions to summon to take hits and can reliably leech off these monsters.
Greg's meatshield is good enough at her job that she kites everyone, and we can layer enough Plasma Rains on her to thin them down to nothing. That's the last superunique. Oh god, what did they do to Diablo?
...
Not much, actually.
You see, in Eastern Sun, the king's court is much more dangerous than the king himself. That's because all the ways to deal with Diablo still work, and you do not have to try to cap your resistances. You can absolutely struggle against the Diablo I bosses and then exhale as it's the same Diablo taste, except he can't hurt you anymore.
ES's Diablo also spawns with adds but they will definitely run towards me and away from Diablo so I don't really fear them. Diablo can't even really put a dent in me with his big spells either. It's bizarre. His friends can, but not he, in this mod. I'll never get over this.
I have chosen poorly making a melee Druid, but, there is a blessing in that, with the skills I have picked for Bob, I can kill bosses really easily.
And yes, this means I punch Diablo.
His corpse shattered though (which eats the entire death animation) so let's switch to Greg for the finishing touch.
Music-Diablo Dies
(Click here for the full animation.)
Eternal suffering would be too brief for you, Diablo!
Wait...you mean to tell me Diablo has been having his soulstone lodged in his head the entire time? Like a unicorn horn? ...That's stupid. Take it out of him, oh my god. Just, okay.
For Eastern Sun, Act 4's a good time to optimize. You've been getting these body parts to drop all the time and you've probably just been dumping them into your stockers without a thought in a world. They're used for tinkering.
You can slam those organs into your gear to give them minor bonuses but bonuses that take a lot, of organs, to cap. There is also no limit, (barring some bugs) and some of them are very handy to have, like hearts = more life, quills = less physical damage taken, and so on. Each monster drops different organs, which means if you want specific organs your best bet is to farm specific monsters, and turn on /players 8, because that's affected by player count last I checked.
Hope this helps you get past this hurdle, because Eastern Sun is a fun magical mod that is a roller coaster of challenge. See you here next difficulty!
Though my ancestors often struggled against the Three Evils and their minions, I've always lived a shut-in, scholarly life. I'm glad that my wisdom aided you.
Now, I wish to leave this place. Though Heaven's Gates are a marvel to behold, I hope I won't have to see them again for many, many years.
Please talk to Tyrael about leaving this place now!
Cain's demon bloodlust has finally been satisfied. It's over...
...why did we kill Diablo again?
No, really, why did we kill Diablo? Isn't th-
Diablo and Mephisto have been banished back into the Black Abyss that spawned them, and the corrupted Soulstones are no more.
However, while you were fighting here, Baal remained behind in the mortal realm, building an army of hellish minions. Now, Baal's army is searching for the Worldstone, the ancient source of all the Soulstones and their power, while leaving behind a wake of destruction. They have forged deeply into the Barbarian homelands, heading directly for the summit of Mount Arreat!
Baal knows, mortal hero! That is the very site of the blessed Worldstone!
Now, enter the portal I have opened for you. It will take you to the Barbarian city of Harrogath, the last bastion of Order on the slopes of Arreat.
Yeah. That right there. Baal. Cain sure did assume Baal was here, but it turns out nope, no he isn't. Baal's still in Sanctuary...and oops we kinda just left him there. ...Aaaand he knows the secret of Sanctuary.
For banishing evil, we have won an all-expenses paid vacation to Harrogath. Did I say vacation? I meant mandatory holiday.
But, what if you didn't have the expansion? Well, this cinematic plays after entering that red portal, expansion or not.
This is not a shocker, especially when Marius has been just ahead of us this entire time. It's also a final bullet point in why I think Marius is a useless and badly written character. Here he lies. He never scored. Good. Don't raise him back, not even for shits and giggles.
Everything I've said about this story last update and last cinematic applies here. This one's better at least in terms of dialogue, but I'm still wondering why Marius even exists except to be a deus ex machina. I guess it's a demon so that'd be a diaboli ex machina or something I don't speak latin. Like okay, if it wasn't for the fact that Marius is a plot device, I could accept him in my life, as the person who really doesn't want to be here and is getting pushed around by evil. If he had any sort of like, resolution, or I dunno, wants, desires, reasons for doing the things he does, I'd like him more. You get none of that though, and this story, pre-expansion, ends with a thud. A thud and fire, but still.
This is to say nothing about the weird semantics about Baal's soulstone and Baal's body, and...the worldstone.
...Except, how the hell is the game gonna tell its story without Marius???
Next time: We head...you know I don't know what direction we're heading anymore, but I guess it can be east if you try hard enough.