Enemies at the Gate: A Hardcore Play Group
I'm forming a weekly hardcore/untwinked group to meet on Monday nights. Play is outlined after the fiction below:
The overseer grinned. These foolish adventurers had decided to wander into his canyon! No armies; no protective wards; just two men, a woman, and their hired hands...he licked his lips at the prospect of slaughter. Women of the South Seas were reputed to have a rare, sweet taste...
Such carelessness! The smoke from this fire could be seen miles away. Close now...he could smell the meat of a careless animal on the spit. The demon bellowed a hoarse laugh, its girth rolling from the effort. The hungry will become meals, themselves. Twisted fingers circled the expanse of his middle, savoring the idea. This will be a good day.
Time to charge. He lashed his minions into frenzy, pushing them to frothing hatred. The rush picked up speed as rusty, blood-caked blades were thrust into the air. The gaunt, white-haired target moved slowly. A cut, dripping, and murmuring: final prayers to a useless god.
Strange magic glowed in front of the odd priest, before a towering wall sprung into the air! Minions of Baal stood stupefied in a moment of calm. Then an impossible number of arrows penetrated their ranks, cutting demons down. They struck with unnerving accuracy between bony armor. Large, ghostly projectiles joined the fray, ripping through lines of demon spawn. This was not good! The demon commander roared at the siege beast to his left, and the latter began to turn a catapult in the direction of the weird wall.
This latest offense was to be short lived; ghastly spirits tore into worldly planes of existence near the infernal machine, ripping it apart. The mountainous siege beast recoiled back for the first and last time in its existence, as a glowing warrior woman appeared from the ether and pierced its heart with a single thrust.
Demonic bodies littered the ground, twitching and ruined. A full outpost lay slaughtered in the span of thirty seconds. Must run...must flee! They had trapped themselves with their bone outcropping; there is time. Suddenly, an iron-skinned man leapt above the fray, reaching an impossible height. His shadow passed over fallen adversaries, the movement mocking their mortality. The overseer stood transfixed, until the trembling started. His new challenger blotted out the sun and grew larger, larger, closer, closer...a mighty mace was raised above a furrowed brow. The overseer raised meaty claws above its head to ward off the pain...
A blow!
...
The Group
Enemy at the Gates is a once-weekly untwinked play group. Every Monday we'll meet from 6:30PM to 9:30PM EST from Act 1 Normal to Hell Baal's last breaths. The name comes from the composition of the party: A Bonemancer, Strafeazon, and Barbarian.
Recently, I introduced my girlfriend to D2 (she's a keeper) and spent quite a bit of time brainstorming the best build combination for us to use. Her initial preference was a strafeazon, which has a few untwinked drawbacks:
-Damage is low unless you're very lucky with runes/drops.
-Physical immunes are unkillable without a backup skill.
-Relative fragility and lack of mobility compared to other builds.
Amplify damage is a great counter to low damage and PIs. But the default choice, a fishymancer, can solo the game so well that our strafe user is left in the dust. Bone skills are a great partner, on the other hand. Unlike other builds that curse bone wall and bone prison, a strafeazon is more than happy to sit in safety while slinging arrows, deploying her valk, and reveling in the amp damage. While my gal decided to play a trapper to my FC druid, this bone/strafe combination has been rolling around my imagination for weeks.
Yet trios are more fun than duos, what build would round this group out? A barbarian is the obvious choice. He can leap over bone obstacles and go toe to toe with monsters on the other side. Concentrate, frenzy, and whirlwind barbarians all do respectable damage (synergized with amp) while buffing our party with sexy warcries. Hell, a leap attack hybrid might even be fun.
Builds are fairly standard. Strafeazon with Strafe/Valk/Multi/Goodies; lightning fury hybrids aren't kosher due to crowding out the necro/barb. Necro with bone synergies and basic curses. Barbarian with concentrate/frenzy/whirlwind/etc.
That's the plan; all we need are a few fun folks to rock!
The Basics
Meetup Time: Every Monday from 6:30PM-9:30PM EST. Try to arrive earlier if possible. Please don't commit if there's a good chance that your boss will yank your chain, you need to watch the kids, your parents will make you wax the hogs, etc.
Untwinked: No outside items/gold from other characters/trading/etc. If the thought of using a Goldstrike Arch or Minotaur in hell is terrifying, this isn't the group for you.
All Quests/Waypoints I'm looking for folks who enjoy the journey. All quests; all waypoints; all walking. No hacks/exploits/teleports/enchants/etc. No tedious boss runs unless we're missing a common rune or desperately need levels. Good players are much more interesting than ADDers, especially as our builds may require a lot of care and patience.
Attitude/Maturity: Teamwork and sharing are how groups survive; a good attitude and maturity are how they stay together. Experience with hardcore/untwinked play is a must.
Ventrilo: Please install/test the Ventrilo client with normalization (http://www.lockergnome.com/game/2008...tion-settings/)
Start Date: We need one barbarian and one amazon to start. If there are players interested in being the barb/zon by Monday the 18th, we'll start then. Otherwise our group will start on Monday the 25th. An alternate is welcome to show up for the first session in case there's a no-show, in which case he becomes third player.
If this sounds interesting to you, post here and we'll get the ball rolling! Let's have fun, kick ***, and collect loot.|||i would love to join but i have a physics lab on mondays at 9. good luck tho! sounds like a blast.
No comments:
Post a Comment