Toggle Background Color
18-War is ---- Heck
I don't know who named these cutscenes, but I can almost guarantee you it's not someone who saw the cutscenes, or even knew of the contents of said cutscenes before making the graphics.
Anyway, new act, new expansion, and most importantly, new budget for cinematics. If you brush aside the fact that the story portrayed by these cinematics is still really dumb they actually look really nice. Like, I will say what I will about Diablo but the shot of Baal's entire army is a really good one. Everything about that army is well animated. If I had to finger out a (very) late 90s computer game boasting cutting edge 3d graphics...and its name is not Final Fantasy VIII or IX, I'd point at these cinematics. It's a better fit anyway for that sort of demographic: the demographic hyper-obsessed with realistic graphics. Yes I know games like Deus Ex and Resident Evil exist. Can I name any others? No. I was busy being on the internet playing flash games at that time.
As a reminder, I didn't play Diablo II a whole lot when it first came out. If anything I was a turboscrub idiot child playing this game when it first came out. RPGs and numbers were still foreign concepts to me...don't ask me why that is when they thought I was very good with numbers as a child, and nowadays yeah I'm still alright with them. I'm pointing this out because it took me an embarrassing amount of time to ever reach this far in the game myself, playing a Necromancer who is trying to play the game with his minions by using a crossbow of all things. It worked, because adding poison damage works very well for normal.
Oh, the cinematic? Baal knocks on the door and the barbarians attempted to trick him by making the joke of sending one old man to tell Baal, and his entire posse, to get off his lawn. It was good, but not good enough to turn Baal away. Sorry Barbs! Better luck next time.
Music-Harrogath
We, may have fucked up.
I say this because of what we've been doing. We had been chasing Diablo this entire time well into Hell and we can finally say we did it, Sanctuary is safe.
Except the thing I was alluding to was that there's more than Diablo. Diablo is not the end-all-be-all, though I'm pretty sure there's been times where we and he think he is, but that's not the case. The Primes didn't just reconcile and talk about scawy stuff to feel like they're unstoppable. They had a plan. Diablo would go kick down the doors of Hell to get it back in line, and Mephisto and Baal would stick around here and put Sanctuary back in line, a place that hasn't wronged them recently but they've been very intimate with it, and its true nature. If you knew what the Primes knew about Sanctuary why wouldn't you want to take it over?
This next part is vague but I would like to believe Mephisto and Baal stuck together to A: get that worldstone, and B: make sure eachother did not have any ideas of hoarding it for themselves. We killed one of them, and the other Prime left Sanctuary. That just leaves Baal, an ancient evil having been granted a body of untold power and being left alone with every single demon still on Sanctuary.
This is why he has a massive army: not because he just has that many at his beck and call, but because who else are these demons going to answer to, and who's going to say no to Baal, especially this Baal?
The Prime Evil's greatest enemies isn't necessary mortals, or angels. It's themselves. We might have caused the worst case scenario, all because we have demon bloodlust. Thanks Cain. I'm blaming this on you.
Baal has laid waste to our mountain and its denizens. His minions continue to attack our town, while Qual-Kehk and his men have proven helpless to stop them. Baal is still out on the mountain looking for something -- but I know not what.
All of the Elders, save Nihlathak, sacrificed themselves to place a protective ward around Harrogath.
Some of us here, certainly Nihlathak, do not appreciate your presence. We are a proud people, and it is not easy for us to accept aid. I, however, am glad you are here.
If you need healing or a potion, please come to me. See Larzuk for weapons, armor, and repairs. Nihlathak, despite his disposition, may be of some assistance with other wares. Finally, Qual-Kehk, our Man-At-Arms, leads Harrogath's remaining forces against Baal.
So while it's a new act, we are, unfortunately, still trying to chase after big demons and kill them, failing to really stop them from doing anything. Business as usual in Sanctuary. If a demon doesn't want to die, you aren't catching them.
These Barbarians must indeed be the legendary guardians of Mount Arreat. They are a proud, hardy people. Don't expect to be greeted warmly -- strangers here rarely are.
Perhaps I can gain their trust. I'll spend some time with the townsfolk and try to understand them better. I'll let you know what I discover.
This is a thought Cain has that is playing in my head and I am stifling laughter thinking about a giant scroll nerd trying to get buddy buddy with a bunch of strong men. To be fair, Cain and the Horadrim is a big enough name that perhaps he might be successful.
Our first quest is not too far away. I do believe that getting the exclamation point requires you to talk to Malah first to get it to show up. Unfortunately, by doing this, I have eaten Larzuk's introduction, which I'm pretty sure is a bug, because you can do this in Act 1 and Act 1's smart enough to play both the intro message and the quest message.
I am Larzuk, the armorer. My ancestors were some of the finest craftsmen in Harrogath.
Regretfully, my supplies run lower with every passing day, yet the demons beyond the walls have not weakened.
I fear the time is near when I must put down my hammer and take up a sword, instead.
Larzuk is our repair vendor. And,
wastes no time in asking us to test our might.
As we speak, Harrogath is under siege by Baal's demons. Catapults rain death just outside the town walls.
Baal himself travels up the sacred mountain, having left in charge here one of his most vicious generals, Shenk the Overseer. A ruthless taskmaster, he lashes his own minions into suicidal frenzies on the battlefield.
If you wish to prove yourself to us, destroy the monster, Shenk, that commands those infernal catapults outside Harrogath. If you manage to do this, return to me.
The good news is, if we wanted to go demon slaying, they're here in ample supply. We even have high value targets to go after, and since most Barbarians measure everything in terms of strength, we'll get rewarded and this won't take long.
But before we go charging out of the fort, there's a couple other people to meet.
Why would you seek this place, stranger? Are you a vulture come to loot the bodies of our fallen warriors?
Regardless, this is no place to make a name for yourself. The mountain is ours to protect. It is only a matter of time before Hell's legions are routed.
This is Nihlathak. Nihlathak is a loser.
How much of a loser? Well, Harrogath right now is safe because all high-ranking Barbarians used themselves to fuel a Kurast-esque barrier to protect the stronghold from things like catapults and whatnot.
Cept Nihlathak. Nihlathak wussed out.
What a loser.
You have the look of a warrior...An extra soldier will be useful. But don't expect anyone to mourn if you get yourself killed.
Baal is true to his namesake. He has ravaged through our lands like a merciless plague.
The protective ward laid down by our lost Elders helps hold the evil at bay, but Baal's siege has taken its toll all the same.
Most of my men are now dead. Others are trapped in the mountain passes.
But I swear we are not beaten yet! We will fight to the end to protect this mountain!
And finally here's Qual-Kehk, commander in charge. I don't have a whole lot to say about him, but I do enjoy talking to him. In fact, all the town dialogue so far has been good, even Nihlathak's. It helps that there's more than just demon chasing to focus on, and Harrogath has quite a bit of lore to work with.
But enough about the town. There is a, uhh, very pressing matter to attend to outside of town. Not to mention the active war going on now. Time to stop being a bored moron kicking demon butts and start being a true hero.
...And kick demon butt.
Music-Siege
The siege must be stopped.
Luckily we don't have to travel far. Welcome to Act V. It's cheating in terms of act quality, but this is a fun ride.
An ally! Here, I'll help. Catch this fire.
Throughout the Bloody Foothills you'll see other barbarians going to town on the demons. They are outnumbered, but they will never stop. They are actually very sturdy...and also very ineffective against normal demons. One wonders if they actually kill anything or they just flail around intruders so hard they eventually get annoyed and leave. ...I get why they are ineffective, so that you can kill those demons instead, but I don't need experience that badly, and they'd still drop things.
...
Minion | CR: *
Oh there's a new demon there. Right. It's very plain. It's very forgettable. It makes sense for your basic infantry to be a very forgettable monster but around here after I've been through Hell and back I need more than just a body to be able to comment on anything. Regardless, they're in ample supply and they're relevant enough. For chaff.
You can actually find quite a few of these dingdongs around, and if you blow up their targets, they'll just waddle on forward until they find some other demon, and then sprint into their faces and repeat the cycle.
They are really good at catching hands though so that you can do things like, blow demons up without them ever hitting you. And that's good for matters like this monster.
Death Mauler | CR: ***
==Can shoot spikes from the ground
Ooooh I don't like these guys. Not that they're hard, but they're able to hit you from afar. They're, slow, and if you're moving they're not going to hit you, but they are able to support from afar, which is always dangerous.
Throughout the foothills you will see these catapults around.
Catapult | CR: **
==Launches elemental blasts
==Poison immune
Destroying these, do not stop the regular blasts you'll be subjected to in this area. It only gets slowed down. They do sufficient enough damage that you should not just stand there, but elemental resistance blunts them pretty well, and, the cold blasts do no damage and only chill.
Yes, you can just ignore them and move along. ...You can ignore a lot of the Bloody Foothills actually. It is a massive area, divided in half by a tight passage, and Overseer Shenk...which is a wonderful awe-inspiring name, is near the very end. This is a good place to run for experience, except, we don't need experience right now.
Keep to the middle of the map and, when you near the end, you'll be able to tell this ass from anywhere. ...I mean nevermind that the quest log notification will pop up once you're close.
Shenk the Overseer | CR: **
==Superunique
==Extra Strong
==Can cast Attract, Smite, Healing Vortex, and Minion Frenzy
Going back to Minions, they are very basic, unless, an Overseer like Shenk is with them. Then the Overseer can boost their stats considerably, heal them, and/or also turn them into suicide bombers, which are especially fun to deal with. They aren't the most terrifying support monster, not by a long shot, because the monsters they buff don't get a huge buff and are still chaff, and they themselves are turbochaff.
...Oh wait, this is a Superunique? With only Extra Strong? Pffft big whoop. Shenk's about the same as any Overseer. Just kite his minions away from him, tear them apart, and then tear the Overseer apart.
Music-Shenk Dies
(Click here for the full animation.)
Oops. Did I do that?
Shenk has an absolutely elaborate death animation and, who the frick is firing those? Us? Did all the demons think Shenk was an asshole and the moment we killed him they wanted revenge?
Walk past him and the next area is nice enough to have the waypoint right at the entrance. Let's brag about our accomplishment.
Music-Harrogath
As a token of my appreciation, I will craft sockets into an item of your choosing, and from now on, you'll get the best price for all my wares.
Larzuk gives us one of the best quest rewards in the game: free sockets on anything without them. Anything.
It's why I do not use it because it's way too valuable to just burn on whatever you're using. Whatever you use for this reward gets the maximum number of sockets it can have. This is dependant on, what it is, what tier it is, and its rarity. This is why you don't want to use it now: finding gear with max sockets can take a while, and it's much easier to find or buy the high tier white base and punch sockets with this quest reward than to try to roll an item with the sockets yourself. Your alternative to using this quest reward is a moderately expensive cube recipe that does not guarantee you'll get max sockets and only works with white items.
This meanwhile works on everything. Blues, yellows, and even greens, oranges, and golds will get sockets. Course, not as much. Blues will either get 1 or 2. The rest will have exactly one. I normally just use this to get ez-bake sockets on things I do not want to grind for, but you can also use this to punch a hole in a very good unique and then put a very good socketable in there. But I'm pretty sure the correct use case for this is taking the lucky white drop and putting sockets in it so you can get the high-grade runewords on it. Course, the runewords that fit the correct number of sockets, but...hmm.
So, what else is there to do around here?
As you journey up the mountain, keep your eyes open for my soldiers and bring them back to me if you can.
At this point, we can be trusted to handle any beefcakes we find tucked away. And sure enough we can. This quest is to go to the area we just left, find some prisoners, and spring them. Also straightforward, so, back out we go.
Music-Siege
If you're playing Median XL, Shenk drops this Mark of Infusion.
It allows you to take blue items and turn them into a new type of item: Honorific. It'll have no mods, minimal level requirement, and get double bonuses off any orbs we apply to it, making them ideal for creating patchup items...and only patchup items. Orbs do have this problem of being not fantastic and very spendy even when you double their effect. I feel like this gets brushed to the side a lot, because you could make honorifics, sure, or, you could just go grind for the uniques you want because you can effectively make and uptier any tiered unique. When we start getting unique mystic orbs, however, it might be worth considering...whenever that is.
Other than that, the experience is about the same. There's some new monsters and these siegebreakers here throw rocks but there isn't anything super scary. Our objective is to find wooden palisades just like this, bust the door down, and tell the barbarians inside to follow me. This will prompt a portal to appear out of nowhere and they just meander into it, being rescued.
Of course, make sure you actually go up to their face and tell them, "Hey you're free." You can break the door from afar, very easily I might add, and they will never budge. Never move. They're that stupid. What is wrong with these people?
...Oh there's new monsters? I suppose there are.
Demon Imp | CR: **
==Casts Teleport, Fireball
==Can teleport to towers and cast Inferno
Ugh, these things. We have had plenty of monsters that can be described as annoying gnats, but these take the crown. They have Teleport, and they use it pretty effectively to spread out and pelt fireballs at you, which don't do a terrible amount of damage but are very annoying. Also, if they teleport to a high spot, either a tower or something else, they cast Inferno instead...except their Inferno actually does reasonable damage. ...Which means what the fuck they could've fixed Fetish Shaman damage this entire time. God damn it. I guess this is to make up for the fact that once they start spraying you aren't stopping them because you won't be damaging them, you'll be damaging to the structure they're on, which thankfully if you break they die as well.
If that wasn't enough,
Demon Imp Hut | CR: *
==You'll never be free.
they have houses as well. Great.
Here's the other thing they can ride on.
Siege Beast | CR: *
==Yoshi, for imps.
So, the, Wendigo, standin? Actually no Wendigos are in this act. These things are just bad. Aimless as a spider, slow as a zombie, and not sporting any impressive damage, they're more mobile towers than an actual threat, provided there's an Imp around.
Around Act V you'll find these red portals that'll lead back to Hell and give you optional dungeons to do. Don't do them. They're massive time wasters. Same as most other side dungeons. They look neat though.
While you're told to rescue 15 barbs, there's only 3 boxes marked here, so you just gotta find 3 human jails in this...uhh, massive map. Not a problem if you have map reveal. As you can imagine, this took me a while every time I had to come here during Project Diablo 2.
In case it isn't obvious, I'm sitting here, wondering why that mod can't just allow me to not waste time.
Once we break open the last box, we can head back to town ourselves to get our prize. Unfortunately the next waypoint is not easy to find, so teleporting back is the way to go.
Music-Harrogath
If you wish, you may hire some of my mercenaries that you saved. And please...take this set of runes. I had been saving them for a socketed shield, but I think you'll make better use of them.
Be sure to set them in the right order for their fullest effect.
Qual-Kehk, thankful for us giving very tangible aid, gives us two things.
The first is three very specific runes, and the introduction to the concept of runewords.
He, doesn't tell you which friggin' order to put them in, and you get no info on what runewords are available in game. However, he does give you the runes for a very specific word: Ancients' Pledge.
Which is actually a very good early runeword, because it gives a wumbo amount of resistances and also gives a poor, but usable way to recover Mana. This runeword typically beats most rares you'll ever find at this point, because it's consistent, unlike rare shields.
Course, since you don't know which order to put these in and there's no takebacksies if you fuck up the order you probably won't get it...nevermind that you need, specifically, a 3-socket white shield, and nothing else. Look, this is strategy guide bait. Effective bait as well, which thankfully is answered by the site Arreat Summit. Still, though, what I'm saying is runewords are annoying.
Anyway, the second thing. We get access to our final mercenary.
Barbarian mercenaries, to their credit, are more proactive than Desert Guards, but for some reason, despite being a Barbarian, they cannot wield two weapons...even though hello, we just, SAW, Barbarians doing this! God. Whatever, you give them a sword and I guess they can at least wear Barbarian helmets. They are otherwise very boring, only having the skills Bash and Stun to differentiate them, and all those really do is just stun and/or knock back monsters. At the very least, because these are both skills that multiply weapon damage, you can get them to deal a decent amount...of weapon damage. Hey on the upside they have built in Deadly Strike! All of, 5%, but they can benefit from critical hits! Also they don't have hit animations, so they're functionally unable to be stunned. I guess what I'm trying to say is, they can do things and got the means to do those things, but they're not too far off from Iron Wolves in terms of viability. They can at least, tank, better than Iron Wolves, considerably so. I still wouldn't trust them to go into a horde of monsters and emerge alive, though.
And then there's our mods. Barbs here are unchanged except they get a unique aura called Rampage, which boosts damage and defense of everyone near him. Nifty! Do I use him over Rogue? Nope! I don't actually utilize weapon damage.
Here they have, more or less, the same thing as Resurgence, except instead it's just Might. I look at the army of physical damage dealers behind Zoul, look at the Barbarian I just hired for him, and go, "Yeah. This seems like a sound investment." The PD2 Barb also trades out Stun for Concentrate, which is normally a Paladin skill that is a simple swing with the added benefit of being uninterruptable. ...It's debatable how useful this is here but melee does splash here. Finally, giving them one-handed weapons here is not a bad idea, because they'll get a multiplier to the weapon's damage if you give them a chump weapon instead of a big stick. They can manage. (Also I'm pretty sure Desert Guards get this as well in PD2 but didn't comment on it. Actually I don't even know if this is a mod-only thing. Send help.)
These boys can use the big Barbarian toys, and you can get them either in defensive or offensive flavor. Because they get warcries, that actually makes them really desired, because you'll either have Battle Orders (multiplies max life and mana of all allies) or Ancient's Call. (new skill that lowers every resist of enemies but shares space with curses) Both of them can also give you Battle Command. (Boosts skill levels by 1 on all allies. ES buffs this to give a better boost.) Actually, I'm pretty sure this makes Barb mercs one of the best mercs to hire period, if you aren't a Barb yourself. Eastern Sun understands that the best use for a Barbarian that isn't a Sorceress is to make them the best support in the game.
Finally, there's MXL. Unlike the other hirelings, they have exactly one subclass, which makes my job easier but is a little disappointing. They're the tankiest of them all though, because they have that passive that locks you into melee skills only but then reduces all damage taken by a flat 20%. They can also lower incoming elemental damage and boost outgoing elemental damage of the party, and smash stuff with crowd-clearing melee attacks. They're pretty good!
With that, this update has gone on for long enough. Two quests already and there's only four more to go. Time to put on the brakes.
Next time: Nihlathak is a loser.