Maldar, the Magnificent

[MongoJerry]

MALDAR: ACT V, ANYA

"There is a matter which I hesitate to share," said Malah. "But I believe you are the only one who can help me now."

Malah told Maldar that the night before he arrived, she heard Anya, the alchemist daughter of one of Harrogoth's most respected Elders, and Nihlathak, the last remaining Elder, arguing about Anya's father's death. Anya had not been heard from ever since. After the other Elders sacrificed themselves to create the city's protective ward, many had shunned Nihlathak, because they suspected that he remained alive only because he lacked the courage to sacrifice himself as well. Before her disappearance, many people had begun to turn to the young but spirited Anya as their de facto leader. Malah suspected that Nihlathak was behind Anya's disappearance and asked Maldar to look for her and find out what Nihlathak was up to.

This wasn't the first time Maldar had heard unkind words spoken of Nihlathak, and even after all that Maldar had done, he had never once had an audience with Harrogoth's purported leader. Maldar felt it was time to pay him a visit.

When Maldar was ushered into the dimly lit Hall of the Elders, Nihlathak gave him a cold greeting.

"Ah, a necromancer," he said. "While I admire your courage in seeking out the darker side of magic, we really have little need of your skills. The battle will turn soon enough without your meddling. Yet, I should have expected to see your kind here. You are like a moth to the flame -- drawn to all this death. It feeds you in more ways than one, does it not?"

"The fool!" thought Maldar. "True necromancers study death in order to discover the secrets of life. Only charlatans and amateurs study death for its own sake."

Maldar gritted his teeth, but he chose to let Nihlathak's words pass for now, since he had more pressing matters to attend to. He told Nihlathak what Malah had overheard and asked him what he knew about Anya's disappearance.

Nihlathak dismissed Malah's comments as rubbish. He said that he had indeed had an argument with Anya, but it wasn't about Anya's father. Instead, he said that he had tried to stop Anya from going on what he considered a fool's errand. Anya had told Nihlathak that she planned to climb Mount Arreat and stop Baal herself, he said. Anya couldn't be persuaded to give up her plan, and in the morning, she was gone. Nihlathak told Maldar that he should concentrate his efforts on saving Harrogoth -- not on lost causes like Anya.

"Interesting," thought Maldar. "Just a moment ago, you said that my skills weren't needed to turn the tide of battle and yet now that you've heard me talk about Anya, you ask me to focus my efforts on saving Harrogoth."

"Thank-you," said Maldar. "You have been very helpful."

Maldar left the Hall of the Elders. There was no time to rest, he thought. The future of Harrogoth and perhaps the world might hinge on Maldar finding out what Nihlathak was up to, and the only person who could tell him that was Anya. He recast his bone armor and entered the portal he had cast which dropped him off in the Frigid Highlands near the entrance to the Arreat Plateau. Maldar had to find and rescue Anya before it was too late.



Making progress through open outdoor areas is usually pretty easy, and the Arreat Plateau was no exception. This time, the plateau had imps, blood bringers (siege beasts), and slingers. They were easy to blind and imprison, so I found the waypoint and the entrance to the Crystalline Passage quickly.

I did learn one interesting tidbit, though. You can cast Bone Prison on imps and you can cast Bone Prison on siege beasts, but if an imp jumps into a siege beast, you can't cast bone prison on the combined monster. It's like the computer doesn't know the siege beast is a target anymore. You can still imprison the siege beast using Bone Wall, but this inability to cast Bone Prisons on imp-mounted siege beasts seems like a clue that something strange is going on in the game code with regard to imp-mounted siege beasts.



I had to be a lot more careful in the Crystalline Passage, which had bone mages, dark archers, and claw vipers. Like in the countess's tower, I had to resist the temptation to cast too many bone prisons, because it's easy to trap oneself in the narrow passages of the Crystalline Passage. Also, if you imprison claw vipers, they will attack the prison. In tight spaces, it's easy to become the victim of randomly shot bone spears.

I was able to make pretty steady progress, though. Probably the biggest key to avoiding danger was casting Dim Vision well ahead of me in the direction I was going. Whenever I didn't do that, the monsters would see me and start moving toward me, clogging up the passage. Sometimes a route would get so clogged up with monsters (especially when a champion pack was around) that I'd cast bone prisons around the monsters, back off, and find an alternate route. Still, without too much danger, I found the waypoint and the entrance to the Frozen River.



When I entered the Frozen River, I was nervous, because I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. Before making Maldar, I used one of Nobbie's 99th level characters to test out potential pacifist skills and equipment, and I tried to rescue Anya multiple times with that character. After fifteen attempts, here were the results: 14 deaths and one successful rescue. I'd like to think that I have a lot more skill and experience playing a pacifist character than I did then, but I knew this wasn't going to be a walk in the park. In fact, now that I've gotten Maldar past the Chaos Sanctuary, I'm firmly convinced that rescuing Anya is the most difficult quest in the game for characters built like Maldar. I've revised the rankings of my top four most difficult places in the game:

1. Rescuing Anya
2. The Ancients
3. The Chaos Sanctuary
4. The Throne of Destruction

Why is rescuing Anya so hard? The Frozen River has narrow paths to walk on, lots of nasty missle-fire and swarming monsters in it, and no places to effectively park a large number of monsters. You basically have to walk around in "stealth mode" -- hoping you can get past monster packs with Dim Vision and the Terror and praying you can find a nook where you can park champions and bosses.

Oh, and if you get past all of the monsters on the way to Anya's platform, there's the minor issue of Frozenstein's horde that you meet on a narrow bridge. The horde can stun and surround you in an instant, and if its members see you before you Dim Vision them, they'll keep right on coming at you the way gargantuans in act 1 do.



The moment I entered the Frozen River, I cast Dim Visions all around the edge of the screen. I then moved over to see what I was about to face. Sirens, claw vipers, and gloams. "Good," I thought. "At least people can't accuse me of getting an easy draw."

I made my way around the map. It was critical to cast Dim Visions on the edge of the screen in the direction I was going and in any direction across the river where monsters might see me. Sirens and gloams can shoot from an extraordinarily long way away off screen, so I couldn't haphazardly cast Dim Vision near me and expect its merely screen-sized radius to take care of everything for me. Plus, anytime I got delayed by an obstructing monster pack, I had to remember to cast Dim Vision behind me to make sure I wouldn't get shot at from behind.

In addition, progress was complicated by gloams -- but not for the reason most people think about. Sure, their lightning attacks hit hard, but gloams also have a less well-known melee mana burn attack. For most characters, this attack is usually no big deal, but for Maldar, it could be deadly.

How? Let's take a typical case. I'm making away along the Frozen River at a decent clip, casting Dim Vision every few paces along the way. Everything's going well. I pass through a pack of blinded gloams and a couple of gloams clip me as I pass. No big deal, since the attack doesn't cause much damage. I step forward a few paces, right-click to cast Dim Vision, step forward a few more paces, right-click to cast Dim Vision, and then stop. "Wait a second," I think. "I didn't hear the Dim Vision sound. What's going on? Oh, I'm out of mana. Those gloams must've drained me. OH MY GOD, THERE ARE 5,000 LIGHTNING BOLTS AND 10,000 FIRE BALLS COMING RIGHT AT ME!"

Clearly, this situation could pose a potential problem, and it happened to me -- twice. I managed to narrowly escape both times by running, quaffing a mana potion, casting new Dim Visions, quaffing rejuv potions, casting a tp when I got a free chance, and going to town.