Beobear had an extremely exciting time yesterday. He started the day around level 49, mooching around the Pandemonium Fortress in Nightmare and whining because the last time he'd gone after Diablo he'd lagged out while surrounded by OKs. Put a bit of a crimp into his self-esteem, that did.
It was getting on noon, and no one else was logged on whom he knows, so he had to suck it up and go alone. At least in NM he has more options than in Normal, so after beating his way through the bridges he switched to Leap Attack and Battle Orders to clear the Chaos Sanctuary. He and his faithful rogue companion, Heather (equipped with Duskdeep, Rattlecage and Skystrike; she is deadly and hardly ever gets surrounded) got the entryway secured, and then a gaggle of OKs rushed them from the second hall. They bottlenecked in the connecting corridor, and Beobear basely hid behind a projecting pillar, letting Heather shoot while he kept up the BO. ("Why me, then?" "Because Iron Maiden doesn't hurt you." "Everything else does. Selfish bastard.") This worked pretty well, so whenever targets flagged, Beobear would do a little jog around and bring back more.
They cleared the second hall in this way and moved to the pentagram hall, where the monsters in the projecting arms were induced to die. Lord de Seis was the only difficult Seal fight, but Beobear's LA helped him stay on him while slurping fat purples, even though Heather didn't make it. ("You could've tossed me a purple." "I was busy." "Selfish bastard.")
More purples in the belt, switch to Concentrate and they went back and triggered the last Seal. Beobear raced past his portal and up onto the pentagram. He locked on Diablo and found the sweet spot underneath the LBOD. The fire didn't hurt a bit, not even Heather found it more than a little uncomfortable. He went through 6 pots, more to be sure than from real need, and then they were off to Harrogath, where Beobear leveled to 50 in the Foothills. He took his time, barking every dead body he found. They offed Shenk and picked up the Frigid Hills waypoint, where he stopped, as the barking wasn't giving much up this game and I had things to do.
In the evening I logged back on to do a bit of leveling with st_roch, my team assassin who had had her last game basically wiped out by a bnet glitch, and who needed to make up the loss before the next meeting. SvH directed me to one of short's games ("fast levels! no money down!") and before I knew it, st_roch had picked up the first two quests of A5, somewhat ahead of the team, which is not really good form. I took her out, and brought Beobear back in, but the game was basically done. Then ran into someone in PCM who had a necro named Morituri in A4 NM, so we made a game and I told SvH where we were. He had his werewolf druid, Snarla (?), and his grizzly minion pacing along with us right quickly. We went straight for RoF as soon as Morituri had a few minions, and the lag got just awful. I think I saw one frame every three or four seconds. I understand the other two were having the same problems. Beobear switched to LA and BO again, and I think the BO and Snarla's Oak Sage were factors here in keeping us alive in between times when the server deigned to give us some feedback on the fights. I checked at one point—with OS and BO, Beobear's life soared to 1375.
We basically smothered Diablo—Morituri, 0tarin with his sorceress 0tteress (SvH invited him. You see how he is.) and Beobear set up an ambush on the pentagram while Snarla trotted off to trigger the last seal. He dropped Isenhart's sword. At least in the previous shorts game he dropped Venom Grip.
Beobear got a bit ahead of the others in the Foothills, and found himself with Heather standing just to the north of Shenk's platform, where there's no way down for the monsters. They have to go around and down, and it takes a bit for them to work that out. Meanwhile, Beobear stood there, while Heather shot most of them and then Shenk. ("There. Your very own boss kill." "Don't patronize me. Bastard.")
Beobear killed imps while the others found lost barbs, and it was through the tunnels, down the rabbit holes, unfreeze Anya, skip Nihlathak (we didn't even talk about it. Of one mind, we were, in this matter.) and pushing on to the Arreat Summit. Somewhere in there 0t bid us good night, having been thoroughly quelched in the verbal sparring. Beobear got slightly separated from the others in one of the tunnels and injudiciously tipped over an Evil Urn. Out popped Extra Fast, Fire Immune, Fanatic Moon Lords and Heather died again. Beobear retreated, checking his map. The others were moving away, completely unaware of his predicament, and I broke him away for just enough time to type 'help'. Which I spelled correctly, too. They were at his side the next instant, so Beobear dodged that bullet.
In the Ancient's Memorial Park, Morituri and Snarla prudently scattered fat reds all over, and then we each camped by an Ancient. Beobear jogged over to read the book, then quick back to Korlac, Cold Enchanted for this time around. He was no trouble, and the second Ancient died pretty much at the same time, and we all ganged up on the third, who had no life left anyway. They didn't even have time to move away from their pedestals. I highly recommend this tactic.
What with Morituri's Amp Damage, Beobear had no trouble at all mowing through the monsters of the Worldstone Keep, and it didn't look like Snarla was having any difficulty either. Even the second level with all the blow-up dollies was fast and easy. In the Throneroom level, we cleared one arm before chucking that in favour of clearing the Throneroom itself and getting on with Baal's minions. The lag wasn't quite as bad as it had been earlier, but loading each minion group pushed framerates into the single digits. Even Heather lived through it, though, and Beobear dove into the last entry right with the others. Despite this, they pretty much had Baal whupped by the time he jogged round the corners. He dropped Isenhart's armour, to go with the sword. This is, perhaps, the down side of doing Diablo and Baal in the same game. They talk. They converse betimes. They hash over their grievances, and by the time the heroes surround Baal, he is in a positive snit.
Beobear picked up eight levels, Morituri even more, and I've no idea how many Snarla got but expect it was in that range. I was much too scattered from all the lights and noise to get Morituri's nick, very rude of me, so whoever you are, good game!