I am beginning to understand how people push their chars into Hell while
still (to me) rather low-level: they, like, party up. Pericat had done,
day before yesterday, all but Baal in Normal, and was meandering along
in my usual fashion, levelling in various sections of A5, kicking all
the jars, opening all the chests, looking at all the blue rings and
amulets and so on. She popped into the agd game, thinking to offload
some set stuff off onto the public mules (she'd found Sigon's lost
shield and rather thought he might be missing it) and ran into a crowd,
including jabber's TonitheTiger assassin. TonitheTiger was all frisky
and trapsie and ready for anything, anything at all, that Baal might
come up with, so we made a new agd game and sallied forth.

Everybody runs faster than pericat, and TonitheTiger is no exception. We
took the Worldstone Keep waypoint and ran straight to the stairs, it
seemed, and then down, and around one corner, and into the... dunno what
it would be, the receiving hall? Where Baal entertains petitions from
the peasants and hears disputes and welcomes visiting dignitaries?
Except he doesn't, he's evil and Evil doesn't entertain petitions longer
than it takes to drop a meteor on the petitioner. Which (as we all know
from watching the little vignettes while caravaning/sailing/teleporting
eastward) Baal seems to particularly enjoy.

Which is why I'll bet he entertains the peasants with their petitions
24/7.

So, moving on, which is what TonitheTiger and pericat did in a serious
hurry, Baal's minions came and went (TonitheTiger laid traps all over
their spawning ground) right smartly, until Lister and crew showed up.
They sat on TonitheTiger, and there was pericat, frantically casting
decoys for Minions of Destruction to use as hockey pucks while poinking
them with her teeny guided arrows.

Jabber was quite the gentleperson about waiting for a town portal, and
when all was set, the duo lept down the hatch to the Throneroom, where
TonitheTiger tanked for pericat. Baal folded. There's no other word for
it, he collapsed. (Okay, that would be another word, so I suppose
there's lots of them after all.)

Anyway, after Baal imploded, TonitheTiger and pericat found agdnm, and
Zappatymme (did I get that right, finally? aka Z-something, Sorceress
Exemplar), which sent pericat into ecstacies of reunion joy, and Ash's
sorcie, and the lot of them rampaged through the Den of Evil and points
outward, and what with the Enchant spells and so on and so forth, they
were unstoppable. In Tristram, the heros debated the merits of releasing
Cain, he was after all the only survivor of a massacre, and his cover
story is, to put it mildly, thin. In the end, practicality prevailed and
pericat slapped the gibbet. It's the only way to get the Akara ring, and
pericat needed resists on a ring. Akara's ring was pretty good, for a
change.

Pericat declared the Countess quest to be "boring", and the remainder of
the group (Ash's sorc and pericat, I think, Mark has a life of some kind
and so, it would seem, does jabber, but Kaytie was around, not quite
sure when she brought in her pally, might've been at the start, probably
was, as her paladin has an Insight merc and pericat gets to use all her
best attacks constantly when she's hanging with someone whose merc has
that aura) shot off to the Rogues' old stronghold to fetch Charsi's
malus. Wherever did Blizzard get that word? Anyway, the party took just
long enough to let pericat hand over the malus before they nipped over
to the Inner Courtyard, into the Cathedral, and down the stairway into
the Catacombs. About ten minutes later, Andariel took her last bow and
everyone portaled back to the Rogues' camp to celebrate.

So yesterday when pericat was industriously attempting to mule the set
items she'd gleaned in the A1 run, and Kaytie bounced in with a free
afternoon and a her lvl 75 pally, I was all up for a fierce trouncing of
A2. The skipping of A3, wasting of A4, and not even close to full
clearing of A5 (we did walk it, my, how things have changed in the last
year, they've added all sorts of extra monsters) came as a gift. Kaytie
is a serious amount of fun to play with, and her hammerdin a kickass, if
noisy, tank. Not that pericat has room to snark at noise, she was
strafing. Kaytie's pally (MagicKat? We'll go with that, for now) carried
pericat through all the good bits of A2, where pericat came up with
Hellplague (looked rather smart on her, too, all red-bladed), the Staff,
the Headpiece, the Summoner's empty robes, and practically full-clearing
the Truly True Tomb.

Duriel was smooshed in workmanlike fashion, as well he should have been
facing a high-level paladin. Pericat shot guideds at him, also freezing
arrow, but she could have just stood there and held her skirts (if she
wore skirts) away from the mess. She also kept levelling just prior to
encountering bosses, which cheered her no end.

On to Kurast, which pericat declared a skippable dump, and MagicKat
obligingly drug her to the Kurast Bazaar for the stats book, then to
Travincal to smack down the Council, then to the level 2 waypoint to
ease her way to Mephisto. As she hadn't got round to sitting on the
forge in Normal for her own self, Mephie's soulstone was ungrabbable,
but he dropped something else that was gold and useless, I forget what,
we nipped off to A4 and did for Izual in jig time, and then walked the
River of Flame backwards to see to Hephaisto, so that pericat could get
that done in at least one difficulty level before she forgot completely.

The forge gave up a perfect ruby and an Um rune, which Kaytie said would
match with a Thul and a Shael for a very fine armour, so pericat stowed
it away. Then they blew through the bridgey bit and into the Chaos
Sanctuary. The three Seal bosses died, with their minions, as though
they'd been told to take a fall for a payoff. So did Diablo. The only
trouble being, pericat was hanging back to use guided on him, and was
just a bit too far back.

We made a new game, blasted through the CS with a touch more trouble
this time, MagicKat's merc kept expiring and his insightful aura was of
deep and abiding interest to pericat. This time, though, she got up to
where she could see Diablo appear, and stayed there, poinking him with
freezing arrows for the three or four seconds MagicKat let him live.
This time, too, his drop was worth noticing: Bartuc's. Pericat hung onto
that on the off chance I might start an assassin (very low, frankly) or
get friendly with someone who prefers playing assassins, or trade it for
a three-socket elite armour and a Shael or something else cool or just
bloody give the thing away.

Were Kaytie an ordinary person her generosity in sheparding pericat
around would have played out by now. But no, she was all up for a swing
through, walking and everything, A5. We skipped Nilithak, the
risk/reward ratio is simply awful, you'd think blizzard would notice
this with all their handwringing over 'balancing the game', but then,
Qual-Kek gives out Ral-Tal-Ort all the days of his life, so it seems a
bit much to expect.

Even so, pericat paused to free barbarians in the Frigid Highlands,
noblesse oblige and all that, and they raced up and out and down into
the Crystalline, hammers twirling madly in their wake. They found Anya,
and waypoints, and in the merest blink of time, the statues of the
Ancients. There was no strategy in any of it, so far as coordinating
attacks or anything; pericat tried to freeze stuff long enough for
MagicKat's hammers to smash them into ice cubes, and otherwise strafed
or guided. MagicKat dealt out death by the double heaping bushelfuls. It
seemed to mesh well enough.

The Worldstone Keep looked extremely familiar, as though she'd been
there just the day before, and the story with Baal's minions was
essentially the same: pericat decoyed and froze, and MagicKat smashed,
and nothing lasted long at all. Neither did Baal, frankly, he was pinned
in a crossing of arrows and hammers and couldn't get it together to
teleport away.

And now pericat's a Champion, and isn't that fine? Level 54 or 55, I
think.

jill