Diablo III: Hardcore Day 2

When last we left our hero BuffyIV was level 11 and needed to get up to level 20 by the next Wednesday. She had a wide selection of banked gear from following people around in Act II and was seemingly positioned well to make it to 20. BuffyIV even started off light by taking on the Skeleton King quest at level 11 and easily smashed all the way through Butcher and into Act II.

Once in Act II BuffyIV decided to get revenge on the achievement which killed off the original Buffy. Not by charging ahead blindly but by quickly and efficiently mowing everything down between the two cultist lairs. No problem! Achievement earned! BuffyIV was up to level 18 and sailing smoothly when disaster struck!

Wandering into an open area a large number of monsters crested the horizon. BuffyIV knew the situation was going to be dicey so she implemented the brave plan 'run away and shoot backwards'. Or at least, she tried to. Hit tumble, no movement. Shoot forward, no arrows. Hit invisible, stay visible. The monsters had stopped moving at this point and it was clear that some sort of time warp was going on. BuffyIV quickly tried to take the blue pill and leave the world behind but it takes 10 seconds to digest and alas it was too late. The monsters suddenly came to life, teleported beside BuffyIV, and obliterated her in an instant. *sad trombone*


Ok, whatever. That sucked, but it's only a minor setback. I still had three days to go. So BuffyV started off with no gear set aside and no initial free levels. I did have a stockpile of crafting materials and made liberal use of my blacksmith training to stay reasonably geared. I ended up getting to level 17 by yesterday which is within 5 levels of the rest of the team so I was fine as far as staying away from the xp penalty. I also found a good weapon so I was able to contribute positively to the fighting. Hurray!

We got to Belial and I screwed up yet again. I decided the right way to try to live through his meteors was to use tumble to dodge around them instead of trying to time my invisible ability to ignore the damage. I ended up tumbling through multiple meteors that were landing at once. (I just missed diving from the one landing on me and ended up just rolling into another one as it was landing. And maybe eating a third in the process.) Kaboom! BuffyV was dead. Everyone else survived and killed Belial. Rejoining now seemed like a waste of time, so I headed out with the plan of tagging back in once they got closer to level 40. Monks are tougher than demon hunters anyway, right?


I was annoyed with D3, so I decided to go play some League of Legends instead. I waited in a log-in queue for about 45 minutes (playing some Pilotwings while I waited) and when I finally got in decided to check if the Megaman Ezreal skin was live yet. Turns out no. And oddly enough it wouldn't let me buy the existing skins either as it had them labeled with a 'need to own champion' icon, which is weird because I've owned Ezreal for months now.

Ok, whatever. Time to play a solo queue ranked game. Nope, can't sign up. I don't own 16 champions so I can't participate in the draft. Juh? Check out my profile. All my champions are gone. All my masteries are gone. Grrr!

I played a quick normal Dominion game with one of the free champions (Fiora) and then Brent suggested logging out to see if that would make my champions appear. Instead it made the server disappear as I wasn't able to reconnect. Grr!


Ok, no LoL. Back to D3 I guess? It turned out Ike and Snuggles had just started hardcore characters so BuffyVI came to life to join them. I think I got up around level 8 before we broke for the night. I believe Tom, Robb, and Adam are around level 30... Can I catch back up I wonder...