Maldar, the Magnificent

[MongoJerry]

MALDAR: ACT III, THE JUNGLE

When Maldar and Cain sailed into the harbor of Kurast, they could not believe their eyes. Each had visited Kurast years before when it was a mighty city, but now it had fallen almost entirely into ruin. The surrounding jungle had reclaimed much of the land, and the only signs that a once-proud city had once been there were the cracked stone buildings and monuments that could be seen dimly through the thick foliage. The ship's captain, Meshif, stared in disbelief at what had befallen his homeland. He begged Maldar to find out what had happened and stop whoever or whatever had caused such destruction and decay.

The ship pulled alongside a crumbling dock, and Hratli, a shopkeeper sorcerer who specialized in metalwork, met Maldar and Cain at the dock. Apparently, what was left of Kurast's population lacked any sort of leader and lived in a state of subdued anarchy. Hratli informed Maldar and Cain that most of Kurast had been overrun by the forces and evil influence of Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred. A magical ward had been placed on the dockside to keep it out of the influence of Mephisto, but Hratli wasn't sure how long it would last.

The dockside was populated by an enigmatic mix of mercenaries, glory-seekers, and hermits. Asheara led a band of mercenary mages that protected the dockside and occasionally went out into the nearest parts of the jungle to hunt demons. Of the population, she seemed the most sane, but she was more interested in gold rather than any sort of higher calling. Natalya was a member of the Assassins, an ancient Order sworn to hunt down corrupted sorcerers. She seemed like she would be a useful companion to have in a fight, but she was awaiting "further news" from her order at the dockside and said she couldn't help Maldar just yet with his task.

Alkor, the alchemist, lived a hermit's life in his small hut filled with books, bottles, and potions of all kinds. Meshif said that Alkor didn't like to be distracted from his studies, but Maldor found Alkor to be surprisingly pleased to see him and Alkor asked him many questions about the potions and techniques used by necromancers to wake the dead and control spirits.

Finally, Maldar visited the tall enigmatic Ormus, who spoke in riddles. Most people on the dockside seemed to think he had gone mad, but Cain recognized the markings on Ormus's skin which bore the symbols of the ancient and secretive Taan mage-clan. He told Maldar that he did not believe Ormus to be as insane as he pretended to be.

By speaking with the dockside's inhabitants, Cain and Maldar determined that the evil seemed to be centered in the temple city of Travincal which lay in the heart of Kurast. In order to enter the main temple, Maldar had to obtain the body parts of Khalim, the last priest who remained true to the light and had been slain and torn apart for his unwavering faith, and then use them to imbue a magic flail to create Khalim's Will which could smash the Compelling Orb and open the way to Mephisto's Durance of Hate. Cain assured Maldar that he wasn't being made the victim of an elaborate practical joke.

Meanwhile, the ward that protected the dockside was failing, and Maldar needed to find the mystical Gidbinn knife that Ormus could use to strengthen the ward and hold back the all-consuming jungle outside.

Maldar had a lot to do, and he knew he had little time to do it in for Diablo and Baal were surely making their way toward their brother Mephisto. Maldar had to get there before they did and thwart whatever plans the three Prime Evils were conjuring up.

Maldar cast his bone armor about him and raced into the jungle.

I always like messing with the Dark Wanderer, and playing a necromancer seemed like my best shot at doing something to him. I first tried casting bone prisons on him, but the game didn't recognize him as a target, so the prisons didn't appear. So instead I cast Bone Walls in front of him. I expected him to walk through them, but instead he stopped and then kind of walk/sidestepped trying to get around the wall. I figured this was my chance, so I cast Bone Walls all around him and trapped him. Woohoo! I caught Diablo! Game over! Then, he disappeared in his cloud of smoke and released those worm thingies. I guess the Dark Wanderer is on a timer, then. Too bad. Seeing the little worms brought back both sad and joyful memories to Maldar, however.

When I was planning Maldar, I identified certain areas that I thought would be troublesome. Obviously the Arcane Sanctuary, Chaos Sanctuary, and the Throne of Destruction would be especially difficult, and the Maggot Lair and several areas of Act V would provide their own unique problems. But right up there on the list was the Spider Cavern. No joke. I really was worried, because it's a maze of narrow corridors and even blind spiders are big and can block your way and trap you in with boss and champion spiders that aren't blind.



So with some trepidation, I entered the Spider Cavern and immediately spammed Dim Vision all around. I didn't get assaulted immediately, so I moved fast, casting Dim Vision every chance I could get. I wanted to move fast, because even blind spiders will move around randomly, and I preferred meeting them while they were still in their computer-generated starting "clumps." It's a good thing I cast those Dim Visions, because the visiting monster type was maggots (it's always either maggots or bats). Blind maggots don't lay eggs, so I was able to keep the passages from getting clogged with little bugs.



I was surprised how easily I made my way to the chest. The "move at a good clip and slip by the spiders before they can react" strategy seemed to work. I ended up coming in the back way to the chest which was serendipitous, since I was able to get to the chest completely unchallenged by Sszark. Apparently, he starts off right in the middle of his minions, so when his blind minions didn't move, he couldn't get out of the prison made up of his own spider minions. I cast the Bone Prisons you see in the above screenshot to give me time to take a small series of victory screenshots. I could've just as well opened the chest, grabbed the Eye, and tp'd to town without casting any prisons on Sszark at all.

Not killing monsters gave me an unexpected opportunity to quickly explore the 1.10 Act III jungle areas. As I've mentioned before, I never take rushes, so I'm experienced with navigating the Act III jungles and have instinctively learned many of the features and quirks of the jungle areas' map-making routines. Doing so makes it easier to navigate the areas and find what one's looking for.

But I've never seen a map like this! Holy cow. There were whole new map pieces (corners, turnoffs, etc.) that I've never seen and paths where normally there's solid rock. I didn't notice these changes with Gunter, because I was probably too focused on dealing with the monsters on my screen to study the automap. Without the need to kill monsters, I was able to race around and map out most of the jungle areas quickly. Normally, there's one connection between the Spider Forest and the Great Marsh and one connection between the Great Marsh and the Flayer Jungle (or sometimes one connection between the Spider Forest and the Flayer Jungle and the Great Marsh is a big dead end). This time, there were three separate and independent connections between the Spider Forest and the Great Marsh, two far flung connections between the Spider Forest and the Flayer Jungle, and one connection between the Great Marsh and the Flayer Jungle. It was really wild to see, and it was obvious that the map generator for the jungle areas had been massively changed. This brought up two questions for me:

1. Why go through all the work of improving the map generator for an area that few people except for a few nuts like me bother going to?

2. And if you're going to go through all the work of changing the map generator, why not make it so that people have to actually fulfill the Compelling Orb quest to get to Mephisto so that people will see these nice new areas that you made? (And why not give a hellforge level rune to those nuts who actually do the quest?)



Anyway, I ended up finding out something else new while adventuring in the Great Marsh in nightmare difficulty, when Maldar wasn't a pacifist, and I was able to get a screenshot of it in hell as you can see above. Look carefully at the frogs. What are they doing in the middle of the river? If you Dim Vision frogs, they randomly slide around -- on the ground and on top of the river. They seem to go into a parallel universe, because even when they're on land, you can't target them when they're blind. Bone Spirits will pass back and forth over their heads without hitting them, Bone Prisons won't appear around them, and neither you or your merc can attack them. The blind frogs can, however, via random motions, make it across the river and when the blindness wears off, they will appear whole on that side of the river as if it were perfectly natural that one could cross a river by sliding around on its surface. It's funny to see, although it's an important bug for necromancers who actually want to kill the frogs to know about. You can't kill a blind frog. You have to wait for the blindness to wear off. (That sounds like a mystical saying. "One must never try to kill the blind frog" or "The blind frog never dies").



The going was smooth through the Flayer Jungle. When I got to the main tribal village, I used Terror to move some of the little flayers and winged nightmares away from the Gidbinn area, threw up some bone prisons, and tried to keep everything Dim Visioned. When I triggered the Gidbinn flame, I got a Ghostly Rat Man, so I Bone Prisoned him and cast Bone Spirits at him. It didn't go completely smoothly, though. Some of the flayers and winged nightmares came off Dim Vision, so I had to dodge around a little and reimprison and Dim Vision some of them. But on the whole I was able to get the Gidbinn without too much trouble. The ring from Ormus was of the usual lousy kind, unfortunately.