Gunter, the Barbarian Mage

[MongoJerry]

GUNTER: ACT III

When Gunter and Cain arrived in Kurast, they could not believe their eyes. The city lay in ruin and the neighboring jungle had reclaimed much of the land once occupied by the great city. Gunter and Cain were greeted by Hratli, a shopkeeper sorcerer skilled in metalwork. He told them that Kurast's corruption was due to the handiwork of Mephisto, Diablo's brother. Only the city's dock remained free of evil and corruption due to a temporary protective ward. Cain told Gunter that he must go into the jungle to see if the evil power corrupting Kurast could be destroyed and to find Diablo and Baal, if possible.

Hratli chuckled. He did not see how a barbarian mage could help the people of Kurast. Many powerful adventurers had gone into the jungle only to not return or worse return tortured and mad. Indeed, a palpable sense of lonely senility seemed to have descended on most of the residents of the Kurast Docks. Only Asheara, the leader of the Iron Wolves, a fierce mercenary band of mages who continued the losing fight against the dark evil, seemed to maintain a sense of determined sanity.

This was going to be a tough journey. How could a simple barbarian mage free Kurast from an evil that had corrupted so many before him?




The start of Act III was, in a word, easy. It seemed easier than Act II in fact. I think the new more powerful weapon I imbued at the end of Act II for my mercenary made a huge difference. Also, there aren't many powerful missile fire monsters in the jungle areas of Act III, so it's easy to quickly gather and stun most monster packs. Incidentally, I finally got the definitive answer on the whole 3-normal and 3-flawless cube recipes from a reliable source. Adeyke over at the Lurker Lounge explained all of the game mathematics of it. The recipes set the ilvl of an item to 30, but the qlvl of an item doesn't change. The bottom line is that it is possible to roll a cruel weapon using these recipes, but the qlvl of the weapon must be at least 75. For an act II merc, that means you have to try the recipe on a cryptic axe, great polearm, giant thresher, war pike or ghost spear. Other polearms and spears will never come up with the cruel prefix using the 3-normal or 3-flawless gem recipes. I've started rolling a ghost spear for Gunter. The best he's gotten so far is a Master's Ghost Spear of the Locust (149% enhanced damage, 7% life leech). That would be the weapon Gunter's mercenary would be using if Gunter hadn't gotten that good imbue on the hyperion spear. I'm going to keep rolling the ghost spear every chance I get to see if I can make a socketed cruel.

Anyway, the spider cavern was easy, since all of the spiders rushed to Gunter for the easy stun. Sszark was immune to fire and physical attacks again, though, so Gunter took another page out of Grizabella's play book. While Sszark was busy attacking Gunter's mercenary, Gunter leap attacked past him, hit the chest, got the eye, and tp'd to town.



But how did Gunter do against the endless hordes of screaming flayers? Silly question. He was awesome, of course! Think of a 1.09 tweaker Nova sorceress in the flayer jungle if the flayers weren't lightning immune and the Nova was able to stun for five seconds. That's what Gunter was like. He rolled over the Flayer jungle. All of the knife flayers would run up and get stunned by the War Cry. Flayers don't have many hit points, so they died in 3-4 War Cry's. If you Taunt the flayer shamans, they won't raise flayers anymore and if you Taunt the blowdart flayers, they'll come in the range of War Cry and get stunned along with the melee flayers. It was so easy that after I made my way through the jungle and found the Lower Kurast waypoint, I restarted the game, set the game on /players 8 and did the flayer jungle again to see what it was like. The monster life regeneration increases along with the increase in monster hit points, so it took a lot of War Cry casts and a lot of mana potions to kill a pack of 8-player flayers. But when a given battle was over, Gunter would have 20-odd bodies on which to cast Find Potion and he could restock for the next battle. The leveling speed was pretty good for an 81st level character. I'd definitely recommend the Flayer Jungle to all singing barbs as a place in which to level up and perhaps do some item finding.

Also in the Flayer Jungle, I got the first unique that I was certain came from using Find Item -- a Butcher's Pupil. It's not a very useful item, but it's nice to know that Find Item can give you a unique once in a while. I may have found other uniques using Find Item before (I've definitely found rares using Find Item), but this is the first time I was sure it came from Find Item.

I also found a Spellsteel which would be a very useful item, because it has charges of Teleport on it... if only it weren't ethereal. I tried recharging the Spellsteel using the Ort cube recipe, but it didn't work. I still need to shop for a staff with Teleport charges on it.



After making my way through the jungle and getting the gidbinn (and the usual junk ring), eye, and brain, it was time for the Ruined Temple, formerly known as the "Death Trap." In the description of Grizabella's adventures in Act III, I described what a surprisingly easy fight Grizabella had in this place that in earlier versions of Diablo II was always the cause of angst and frequently death for hardcore characters. I speculated that either 'Delirium' did a real number on the monsters or Blizzard had nerfed the Ruined Temple.

After dealing with the Ruined Temple using Gunter, I'm definitely leaning toward the second explanation. Gunter walked into the Ruined Temple and got the map, formerly known as the "Death Map," which has the main chamber right in front of the entrance stairs and two small rooms on either side of the stairs (see the adventures of Grizabella for a full explanation of the "Death Map" and "Safe Map"). Like Grizabella, Gunter did not get swarmed immediately. Hmmmm... I went to the small room on the left and didn't see any monsters. I went to the small room on the right and there met a boss pack of Wailing Beasts. So at least there was a boss pack other than Battlemaid Sarina's pack this time. Gunter stunned the minions with War Cry and the pack was dispatched efficiently. As I walked further into the small room to open chests, my mercenary wandered and got too close to the entrance to the main chamber and triggered Sarina's pack. The pack quickly rushed into the room... and got stunned... and died quickly. The only things left in the Ruined Temple were about six normal spiders in the main chamber. I'm used to seeing like 20 Flesh Hunters and lots of Wailing Beasts, spiders, and vampires to go with them -- Not to mention at least two random boss packs in addition to Sarina's pack. But you can count in the picture above most of the Flesh Hunters that were in the Ruined Temple. Seven, perhaps? The Ruined Temple has definitely been nerfed. Incidentally, I tried the Ruined Temple in 8-player mode to see if it would spawn with more monsters. It spawned with a champion vampire pack instead of the Wailing Beast boss pack, but otherwise, it was the same as the 1-player version.

After the Ruined Temple, it was time to take on the Kurast sewers. It was again useful to Taunt the Horadrim Ancients (Hollow One types) to stop them from raising skeletons. I met many groups of undead stygian dolls but their explosions did minimal damage to me even when I intentionally killed three of them simultaneously after letting them close to melee range. I don't have enough experience with melee characters in previous versions of D2 to know if the stygian dolls have been nerfed or if maybe people who play melee characters are just whiners (just kidding, guys!). Admittedly, I'm playing in 1-player mode, so perhaps the doll explosions would be more dangerous in an 8-player game, but since Grizabella didn't have any problems even when she killed a boss doll, I suspect that the doll explosions have been nerfed. I had to explore most of the sewers to find the entrance to level 2, but the going was relatively quick and after not a long amount of time, I had the heart placed safely in my stash. Then it was off to Tranvincal.