[Tempest] Sarah the Self-Found Solo Summoner

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Back to the Caverns and on to the basement of the pyramid. The usual annoyances of necromancers and projectile constructs, nothing unexpected. Found a Forbidden Chamber, my first corrupted area, infested with totems. Cleared it fairly easily, though the Metalsmith did wipe out an entire set of minions with his initial attack. Minion Instability dropped a good chunk of his health in the process, though, and I just tossed skeletons and spirits at him until he died. Never got near Sarah. Found a Vaal Lightning Warp and a Wondertrap unique Velvet Slippers, both which got donated to the guild stash.

Climbed the pyramid, hitting level 26 along the way and picking up Death Attunement. Ran into a couple of small rooms with allies-cannot-die totems, which can be a pain for summoners since the minions can't be relied upon to kill the totem first, and they don't yet have enough area damage to kill it while attacking other monsters. Dealt with this either by pulling back and letting the mobile monsters come away from the totem aura, or by sending a bunch of skeletons into the room as a distraction, then running in myself and summoning spirits right on top of the totem until it died.

Fighting the Vaal Oversoul came down basically to summoning a whole lot of skeletons to keep it occupied, and spirits to whittle down its health. The zombies didn't last long against that big melee slam attack, so I didn't bother summoning more. Kept Sarah back far enough to be out of range of the big attack, and moved around as much as possible, so she only got hit by one falling rock and one of the lightning blasts. Fight only lasted maybe 45 seconds and I only had to deal with 2 rounds of its summon-minions-and-disappear trick. Found a couple of rares, but neither were useful.

Quick and easy trip through the City of Sarn, though there were tempests freezing things. Actually made it a bit easier, as I mostly dodged them but the monsters often got caught. Kept skeletons out in front enough that I didn't get swarmed, and Clarissa's guards dropped easily enough. Putting her before the City of Sarn makes a lot of sense, good change, although they ought to update Hargan's comments since the vast majority of people won't ever see his first comment about finding both lovers.

Made the trek through the Slums to find the Crematorium. Found Perpetus on his platform, and killed him by simply summoning minions near him and letting their exploding corpses eat away at his health. Took a while to fight through all the Carrion Queens, and the Sharding Tempest didn't help when one of them happened to stand in it, but no real danger. Hit level 27 and picked up the minion life/regen node in the Death Attunement cluster. Not going to bother with that last minion life node up there. Here's the current passive tree; next I'll head for Puppet Master.

Checked Clarissa's gems for sale and found some good ones. Picked up Enfeeble and Purity of Elements. I'd like my main curse to be Temporal Chains eventually, but until I find one, Enfeeble will work nicely. When playing hardcore, I prefer curses that help my defenses to those that increase kill speed, since they just might save my life one day. Similar argument for taking Purity of Elements over an offense-boosting aura. I also bought a Convocation, although I don't have a slot for it at the moment. It's a good utility skill, but I may not ever use it since I would really like to keep Flame Dash for escape purposes. With these gem changes, my skill bar now has Move Only-Desecrate-Spirits on the top, and Enfeeble-Skeletons-Flesh Offering-Zombies-Flame Dash on the bottom.

Also found a 4-link Clasped Boots in Hargan's inventory, and upgraded it with a Alchemy Orb. Only moderate stats, but it has cold resist and some extra mana. Primarily useful for the links, though, which are currently GBBB and filled with zombie-skeleton-minion damage (and Desecrate, not that the links matter there).

Crematorium time. Resistance check: 72% fire, all good. 49% lightning, for the Piety fight, reasonable since this is just normal difficulty. Going is a bit slower than normal since everything resists the spirits' fire damage, but not too bad...until I hit a room with Hatebeat and a rare Cinder Elemental with the faster attacks aura. That was ugly, burnt minion everywhere, and eventually I had to pull back until the rare moved a bit away from Hatebeat and I could kill it first. Even by himself, Hatebeat killed a lot of minions with his Firestorm, but with skeletons summoned right next to him, their exploding deaths eventually wore him down. Piety was easy in comparison to that, just dodge a couple of the lightning ball attacks and keep summoning minions to chase her around the room.

Got back to town, picked up the sewer keys, then got my quest reward from Maramoa...the same gems I earlier looked at from Clarissa. Whoops, looks like a bug - Clarissa shouldn't have sold those to me until the quest was complete. Not that I'm complaining.

Then I was forced to take a break because the game kicked me out...got a message about "the account must be logged in", and when I restarted and tried to go out into the Slums, it hung on the loading screen. I noticed the forums were really slow, too, so something must be going on either on the server end, or in the Internet between me and them. Not a good idea to be playing hardcore in that environment. Came back after about an hour and things seemed to be functioning normally again.

Time to get dirty in the sewers. The Slums sewers had a Shivering Tempest, so I had to cast Desecrate a lot, to make up for the lack of corpses. Ran into Spinesnap, who died nearly instantly when he jumped a few times on the minion horde and their exploding deaths wiped him out. Found the statuette and hit level 28 on the way. In the Warehouse Sewers, the tempest changed to Static, a bit more dangerous but avoidable as long as you keep moving. No significant monster problems, found the statuette, and headed upstairs.

Yet another Static Tempest in the Warehouses. Found Vorici standing almost at the Marketplace exit, and of course he sent me after a target way on the other end of the map. So I ended up clearing almost the entire map while dodging lightning, which is just about as much fun as it sounds, but it did get me to level 29. The Marketplace was free of tempests, a nice change after all the lightning earlier. Beat up Marceus and got an improved helm for my troubles, BBR linked and with better stats than the blue one I had been using. Happened across the Decanter Spiritus as well, so that's one less backtracking trip to make later.

The tempests shifted while I was in town, putting a Seething Tempest in both the Marketplace and the adjacent sewers. Fine with me, that's basically just a big buff to the minion damage. Found the last statuette easily enough and put the point into Puppet Master. Think I'll grab the Quick Recovery node cluster next, for a bit more life buff. Took a brief detour into the Catacombs, cleared just enough to hit level 30. It was affected by a Shrinking Tempest, which I hadn't run across before. Tiny zombies, so cute!

In the Battlefront, a Molten Tempest fried many zombies. Moved through as quickly as I could to grab the waypoint, then up into the Docks so I can get rid of this Decanter. No tempest in the Docks, fortunately. Ditched the Decanter on Fairgraves and cleared most of the zone, ignoring the sulfite for now. I can pick it up later once I have the Solaris Temple waypoint, so I don't have to carry it around. Vorici made another appearance, but his mission involved leaving one guard alive while killing a rogue exile. With the undirected damage blender that is an undead horde, that's not going to happen. Tried it anyway, and killed off Minara Anemina easily, but as expected all the guards went down as well, so no mission credit.

Picked up my first divination card in the Battlefront, one of The Carrion Crow. Also found a RRBB 4-link chainmail, and tried first a Chance, then a Vaal Orb in hopes of getting a rare out of it, but no such luck. Also picked up a ring with lots of ES, some strength, and all resists on it. Currently at 701 life, 192 ES, and 70/59/58 resists. Not bad for this stage of normal difficulty.

Time for a visit to the Gemling Queen. No particularly bad tempests along the way: Energizing in the Battlefront, Ghastly in Solaris level 1, Galvanizing in Solaris level 2. Took a little while to deal with the Infernal and Voltaic Seals because of the dozen or so statues that came piling into the fight, but I was able to keep the minion count up easily enough. Got to level 31 in level 1, then pushed through level 2 without any trouble. Stopped to beat up the Goddess of Purity statue, then grabbed the waypoint and talked to Dialla.

Quick trip back through the (now tempest-free) Battlefront and Docks to run Dialla's errands. Other than stopping to kill the Revenant in the Docks, an easy trip. Found a decent 4-link gloves with life and fire resist; only blue, but it'll work for now. Upon turning in the ribbon spool, Dialla gave me the first rare amulet that I've seen, and it's a good one for this level: 30% rarity, 17% cold resist, 7% added energy shield.

One Infernal Talc later, it's on to the Barracks. Took it slow and easy, with lots of skeletons summoned out in front, to avoid being swarmed by charging shield dudes. Made it to level 32 along the way. Found Gravicius and stood on the steps far enough away to avoid aggroing him, summoned skeletons until all his guards gave chase, and killed them. Then took him on, man-to-horde. He lasted about 10 seconds, mostly killing himself via exploding minions from his flamestrike and molten shell. Back to town, and my reward from Maramoa: Raise Spectre.

Now I've got all the basic pieces, so it's time to arrange them. Went back to act 1 and bought a Spell Totem and Lesser Multiple Projectiles gem from Nessa. Rearranged gems and gear a bit so I can link LMP to the spectres and the skeletons to Spell Totem. Both of these are major damage increases: the spectres are obvious, but also the skeleton totem since it means I can spend less time casting skeletons and more casting spirits. The totem is pretty mana-intensive, so I'll let Clarity level up a couple of times to assist in keeping up with the cost. No room on my skill bar for the spectres, but that's OK, since I only plan to summon them out of combat. Went over to the Solaris temple and swapped the skill onto my bar long enough to raise a couple of Flame Sentinels, then swapped it back out. Upgraded my (very old) chest armor also, lost some max life but gained fire resist (now maxed) plus evasion and ES.

Took the newly augmented horde into the Lunaris Temple and tore through level 1. Total domination against Fleshrend, and very little trouble with Kole. Just had to run away a couple of times when he tried to pull Sarah into melee range. Opened a rare Gemcutter's Strongbox and lost both my spectres because the morons moved on the wrong side of a doorway and got pasted, but no big deal because I could just step into level 2 and grab a couple of Tentacle Miscreations instead. Got a Vaal gem from the strongbox, but sadly it was Cold Snap...hoping for a Vaal Summon Skeletons one of these days.

Headed back through the Barracks to the Imperial Gardens. Static Tempest, ugh. Moved through to the waypoint and then into the Library as quickly as was safe. No tempest inside to worry about. The spectres keep dying, but the horde does fine without them until I have a chance to resummon, and as the gem levels up the survival rate will get better. Cleared the first half of the Library (including Tyrannursus Maximus, love that name), hit level 33, and found the waypoint.

I'm starting to run up against Dex limits with gear and gems, so it would be nice to hit another passive tree node. There's an empty jewel slot nearby, I happen to have that +20 Dex/+6% resist all jewel in my stash from the Act 2 quest reward, and it's more or less on the way down to the Gravepact cluster anyway. So I'll head south on the tree, taking the jewel and Shaper then picking up Gravepact.

Refreshed my flame sentinels, then back to the Library. With the skeletotem out in front and flame sentinel artillery behind, pretty much everything just melts at this level. Cleared the second half of the zone, and headed down into the Archives. More of the same there, slowed only by an encounter with Trinian. He didn't last too long, though I did have to resummon a couple of zombies. Found my first unique jewel, Energy From Within, which seems interesting but not something I'm likely to use on Sarah as life is too important.

Found a nice 4-slot tribal circlet with hefty intelligence, life, and mana bonuses plus some rare item find. Had to rearrange my gems on my other gear a bit, and re-roll some colors, but eventually got everything slotted in and even improved the raging spirits by adding a Culling Strike. Took so long messing with it that I lost my portal to the archives and will have to go back again...oh well, more XP.

Second trip to the archives started out much like the first, although a Freezing Tempest had appeared so I had to dodge those. This version had Vorici, and he again offered the mission to leave one guard alive, but this time I completed it, though through no fault of my own. One of the guards got stuck behind a stack of books, away from the horde, while they were busy killing things. Died so fast that I never saw which boss it was, but the guards were soldiers so probably Corrector Draconides. Got level 34 in the process. Moved on, collecting pages, and found a Restricted Gallery. I remember those as being avoid-at-all-costs zones when playing in Merciless because of the ol' Bringer of Rain at the end, but in normal it's not so bad. And indeed it went smoothly, despite the extra lightning damage the zone added, only losing a few zombies here and there. Got lucky with the drop and picked up the Vaal Summon Skeletons I was looking for.

Found a spot to put the Vaal Summon Skeletons on my gear, which displaces Desecrate on the skill bar (I was only using it to make spectre corpses at this point anyway). Don't have a good place for the Fire Penetration gem that I took from the golden pages quest yet, but I put it on weapon switch so it can level up. On the passive tree, I picked up that jewel slot and added the Survival Instincts jewel. Here's how the passive tree looks for now.