Maldar, the Magnificent

[MongoJerry]

MALDAR: THE RESCUE OF ANYA PLAY AT HOME GAME!

Announcing the new and exciting Maldar game that you can play at home! After I rescued Anya, I kept saying to myself, "Dang! That was fun. I want to do that again!"

So, I thought, "Why not?" A couple days ago, I had made a backup copy of my hard drive's data files, when Maldar was in a state of having just killed Shenk the Overseer. So I copied the "real" Maldar to several backup folders (because I wasn't going to lose him!), and copied the older version of Maldar to the Diablo II save directory. I then played this Maldar all the way through to finding the Crystalline Passage waypoint (which didn't take long, since I knew the maps), exited the game, and saved this version of Maldar in a backup folder of its own.

I then proceeded to rescue Anya over and over again. God, I had so much fun. You guys didn't get an update yesterday, because I spent all afternoon rescuing Anya. It got so addictive that I decided I had to let you guys try it out. What's fun about this is that it's both incredibly challenging and really fast. It's not like the Chaos Sanctuary which took eight hours to conquer. With Anya, it's over in 5-10 minutes. You either rescue Anya or you don't. Then you can try again.

I've zipped together all of the files so that you can use the same map layout I had. You can download the zip file from the following link:

The Maldar Rescue of Anya Play at Home Game

This week, when I get busy doing silly things like graduate school homework, you can get your Maldar fix by playing Maldar himself! Keep tabs on how many times you rescue Anya and how many times you die or had to quit out and report back. Post screenshots if you can. I'm serious! It's just that fun.

I kept statistics of my results over a 20-game stretch and got:

8 Successful rescues
6 Town-portal quit-outs
4 Save & Exit quit-outs
2 Deaths

Yes, I died twice. Let it never be said that I'm not willing to post my failures as well as my successes:

Death Screen #1 (by a siren with help from ghosts and gloams)
Death Screen #2 (by Frozenstein himself)

Don't worry. Our hero is safe and sound in Harrogoth. The ones who died were alternate universe copies of Maldar, not the true Maldar.

Also, these were the first times with Grizabella, Gunter, or Maldar that I have had to use Save & Exit to escape. I get queasy using that trick. I know that it's not any less realistic than rerolling monsters or maps, but I still don't like using it. But again, these were alternate universe Maldars rather than the actual Maldar, so that's OK.

Let me give you a quick rundown of the possible monsters you'll run into and what to watch out for when you do. You'll get three of the following seven monster types (listed in order from most dangerous to least dangerous):

1. Ghosts. These guys should send shivers down your spine when you see them. They fly right through bone prisons, and if they see you before you blind them, they'll keep right on flying toward you. Their attacks drain mana as well as life, so if you get stuck in a pack of them, you might find yourself empty of mana and unable to cast Terror to free yourself. In addition, as you run by blinded ghosts, they'll nip at you and take your mana away, meaning that you might suddenly find yourself out of mana and unable to cast Dim Vision before hordes of monsters start converging upon you and/or shooting at you. Champion and boss ghosts should cause you to scream in terror. There are only a few things you can do. These will be discussed below.

2. Gloams. They hit hard and can shoot at you from a long distance. They also have that melee mana drain attack I mentioned earlier. At least they'll politely stop shooting at you when you blind them.

3. Snow Drifters. They stun and take up a massive amount of room on paths. They'll look deceptively easy to deal with, and then you'll try to run by a blind snow drifter, and he'll hit you, stun you, and hold you down for the rest of his buddies. Champion and boss snow drifters can be a real pain on narrow paths. At least they can be bone prisoned, though.

4. Sirens/Succubi. It was a tough call deciding whether snow drifters or sirens should be ranked #3. Sirens can shoot at you from a long distance and come in massive packs. If you don't keep them properly blinded, you'll see red fire balls shooting at you from every direction. However, if they get in the way, they can be blinded and easily pushed out of the way with Terror. Also, their melee attacks aren't dangerous.

5. Claw Vipers. They take up a decent amount of room on paths and their bone spears and melee attacks can hurt. They move fast and can swarm a person pretty quickly. Also, if you bone prison them, they'll shoot bone spears at the prison and often hit you in the process. Still, they're not nearly as dangerous as the first four kinds of monsters.

6. Frozen Terrors. They take up some room on paths, but they're very slow. Easy stuff.

7. Rot Walker. The only things slower than Frozen Terrors are Rot Walkers and they don't take up as much room on paths. Count your blessings when you get these guys.


I lost count of how many times I ran Anya yesterday. There was one big thing that kept annoying me, though. Every time ghosts appeared, I always ended up quitting out or dying. Well, I did manage to rescue Anya with ghosts around once, but that was only because I got an amazing roll where I never ran into any champion or boss ghost packs. This situation wasn't sitting well with me. I took a break from the computer for a bit and thought about what I could do when I ran into a champion or boss ghost pack. I came up with some ideas, returned to my computer, and rerolled the Frozen River until I got ghosts. I wouldn't stop until I had rescued Anya with ghosts around.



This time, in addition to ghosts, I got gloams. I wasn't going to duck from a challenge, though, so I plunged on ahead. The third monster type turned out to be claw vipers which wasn't bad.



I ran into a champion gloam pack and Bone Prisoned it. It's easier to ditch champion gloams than champion ghosts. I haven't figured out if that's because gloams actually get trapped by bone prisons or if it's because gloams aren't as aggressive when chasing a character. Either way, the gloam pack was easily ditched.

What was not easily ditched was the champion ghost pack I found around the corner. As you'll probably understand, I didn't get a screenshot of it for a while. One benefit of the monster roll I got was that monsters didn't clog up the paths, so I could actually run quite quickly. I had to stop and Dim Vision when I could, but I still managed to outrun the ghost pack.



I got to the area in front of Anya's platform and found that Frozenstein's horde had seen me before I had gotten a chance to Dim Vision it. The pack members came down across the bridge. Oh, well. At least, I had ditched the champion ghost pack.



Or so I thought. (The ghost on the far left that isn't blind is a champion ghost and there's a "ghostly ghost" just off screen behind it). I lead the pack down to the bottom corner (read: ran in a blind panic down to the bottom corner as the pack chased me), and implemented my new plan.