Not entirely sure what poison skill you’re referring to Reason, but if it’s corpse explosion which I agree is overpowered, that’s exactly the build I’m running now, and which you don’t need to be high level for… I’m currently level 50 with lvl 6 corpse explosion, so only lacking 14 levels of it to max it. One thing that’s certain at least, is that I’ll never get to level 99… Not necessarily due to dying. But contrary to D2 days, I’m now a family guy and don’t have tons of hours to waste in game.
Act 3 Nightmare:
The forest maze is also a bit annoying, but decided to use some teleport charges to jump over the rivers to save a bit of time. Took it carefully and had no issues. The temple you need to get inside for the book at Kurast Bazaar can sometimes have a lot of mobs run at you at the same time, but that too worked out fine.
Only issue I had was the small running bastards, Stygian dolls I believe they are called, in Mephisto’s durance. They’re small and dark and hard to see, and they run quickly to you. If you don’t see them fast and turn around for your skellies to face them first, you’re in dangerous water as they do a lot of physical damage, for which my resistances doesn’t work. I was dumped to around 50% health in one go, though not entirely sure if I was hit by 1 or 2 or what. First time I used a full rejuvenation potion to quickly get health back.
Trouble is of course as usual that the minions don’t move where you want them to unless you move in front. Should possibly had some higher light radius to spot them easier, or been a bit more careful. Maybe even had a bit more hp… Currently at 638.
Mephisto was easy. Lost one skeleton. And used one health potion for mercenary (shift click to feed mercenary health potion instead of yourself) And lost no skeleton going through his minions. And then he dropped an El rune… Yay… So overpowered… Not…
Found a gem shrine, and is now using a 3 socket perfect topaz helm, but other than that I’m still sadly wearing the crap gear from the start of nightmare. I’ve found some interesting items, but not one for a necromancer.
Anyhow… Survived and act 3 nightmare done. Now level 50. And was a bit fast levelling up one of these levels and misclicked and picked a level in clay golem when I intended to pick one in corpse explosion. But no biggie. Will wait to respec to fix until I’m at least going into hell.
So where to go from here? Doing some Mephisto runs for loot sounds like a possibility, but running through those stygian dolls more than needed sounds like a liability. Maybe it would be better to grind act 4 instead. There’s some dangerous ranged lightning damage there, but at least I’ve got 75% resistance there.
Grmpf… Can’t make another post… Lets see if I can edit this into bottom of this one.
Act 4 Nightmare:
Got a bit worried I was too careless seeing Diablo’s self imposed min levels above here. I’m facing down Diablo nightmare at level 53, barely a level over when he can enter nightmare
Anyhow, worked out fine to just level through nightmare on my first go, so continued through act IV now.
Diablo chose to target my mercenary down twice, which was smart as he provides double damage aura… Though probably just unlucky with random targeting there. Skeletons have good survivability, though when specifically targetted by one of his lightning or fire attacks, some can die. Ended up running back and re-raising army twice.
I at no point felt I was taking any risks though. The parts that did damage me, didn’t do much damage at all.
Still no useful loot. Collecting lotsa crap levelling other classes in case I wanna play them later. Moving into act V, I’m now at 663 hp, 177 mana and corpse explosion have already gotten to level 11.
Act 5 Nightmare:
Act V went fine too. Ancients killed of half my skeletons, but managed in the end. Had a couple of close calls. At least closer than I’d like. Both times for not paying enough attention to my life circle in time. Whoops… At half life… How did that happen? Getting into high levels of corpse explosion, I run through mana potions fast, but once first mob is dead, rest dies in quick succession. Just to be safe, I wasted a lot of mana potions at Nihlatak to blow up all the corpses before he could do it.
No nice loot though. Level 60, and I can start hell game. Doing so though, I see my resistances are fairly crap. I don’t think I dare start playing through hell without maxing resistances first. They’ll already do a lot more damage. I can’t afford another x2 for having 50% instead of 75% resistance.
Decided to do a bit of nightmare bosses over again. Eventually, at least I found a +1 necromancer skill amulet. Though after that I found a +12 res all and teleport charge amulet which I think I’ll use instead so I don’t need to weapon swap (and lose a ton of resistance) to use teleport. Finally found a decent weapon for merc too. Husoldal Evo Bec-De-Corbin. 55-262 damage and increased attack speed.
Earlier we have found a Dusk Shroud (elite version of Quilted Armor). A gothic plate is the lowest strength requirement armor I can wear for 4 sockets, but the dusk shroud is only at 77, and have a ton more defense. Added 4 sockets with quest reward, and have started to fill it with topaz’es. Currently got 2 perfect topaz’es in it. Got 2 flawless one waiting for gem shrines or more flawless ones. Hopefully that can add some more magic find, making stuff drop a bit easier.
Guess I’ll be grinding nightmare a bit more, trying to find some better resistance gear before hell. If nothing else, at least some more resistance charms.
Currently at level 64, having maxed corpse explosion too. Wonder where to put points next. Might add some to amplify damage to add range while grinding now anyhow. Getting down to revives might be an option too.