How do hardcore players survive act 4?

The exp penalty on death was already a problem for my former shadow in merciless. I guessed that it means something between 10 and 30 minutes of the way I play to regain that loss. Which is a lot on the average day.

So I fully agree, avoiding that is a good idea.

I've bought more stash tabs to be able to free my characters inventory, and I can carry more loot to the vendors. Before I had just ID'ed the things and dropped what didn't look interesting.

At the moment I'm happy with my new shadow. Molten strike + CoC FB + spell totem + fire trap + golem + spectre + animated weapons are very powerful in combination, but I tire quickly if I really make use of all that. Noticed that last evening. Towards the end I most just used traps and totem and just waited. Using molten strike had become too dangerous, my reaction time was too bad, very unlike in the beginning of the session.

At lest this is the first character that feels powerful when I'm able to pull all the strings.

Usually you only want 1 or 2 active skills and one movement skill like whirling blades, flame dash or leap slam. Then you want something to generate charges. That can be a skill like blood rage or enduring cry or an item. The rest is auras, a golem, herald(s) and a cast when damage taken link with immortal call, a curse or something like that.

The important part is that you have one powerful skill that clears regular mobs (white and blue) really quickly. Some builds require a 2nd skill for bosses and rares. Your bread and butter skill, as I like to call it, should be a powerful 4-link or even a 5- or 6-link once you can afford it.

I have to say it again though: you need more life. ;P
Fore real, you can't get that much life from regular gear. Sure, it seems disappointing if you take a 5% life node and not much seems to happen but it stacks! Every level you gain you get a little bit more flat life and that is then multiplied by the nodes you took.

You can make due for quite a while without it if you play carefully but it will come and bite you in the ass in merciless! ;)

At the moment it's difficult to make plans. I had planned to use spectral throw as a trigger for CoC + fireball, but I couldn't get enough green sockets on the armor, so I had to invent a setup that works with rggb. First I tried lightning strike, but sicne I had not taken lightning damage nodes, but fire nodes, I switched that to molten strike, which works better.

But it's not what I had in mind when I started the character. A lot of the other aspects are similar, make use of what is possible with the things I have, and hope that some day I get the items I need for the actualy build - or, well, maybe, in case of molten strike, be happy the way it works. It worked surprisingly well, I want to say with that.

I've decided to wait with taking life nodes till there are real problems. So far things are going sufficiently well, and yesterday I could upgrade two items, so now 1200life and 400es, which is, I think, only marignally worse than the former character at this point of the game. Next planned steps are to get the "fire walker" etc. nodes for the resistance and the elemental damage. The passive tree of this character isn't optimal though, there are three nodes which I could free up, using respec points, but I want to wait with that until later (and until I'm more certain about the full path).

Herald of ice I had forgotten. I'm usually running that.

For bosses I still have no good idea. If the armor had another green socket, instead of the red one, I would try barrage. I'm a bit worried about the next boss fight, Piety in the Lunaris, but it'll be a while till then, and maybe I find other items that will help there. Otherwise I'll have to be patient and use fire trap + totem, and try to stay safe in the distance. The problem with piety is though, that she keeps running around and the trap and totem won't work well. But so far it seemed more a question of patience on my side, instead of a real problem. I'll see.

This evening should be easy - Battlefront, Solaris Temple, Docks, General Gravicius. Hmm, I never fought ribbons close up, but so far they also didn't seem to be that dangerous (at least not that dangerous as Grigor thinks they are). I always feel a bit bad for making such a mess in the Solaris temple, which Dialla has kept in so good shape ... but she could tell her ribbons to stay away from not-a-cockroach'es, so it's her fault too, that she's got so much to clean up after the visit. Also kind of funny to meet Fairgraves again, I like this second incarnation of his.

The Lunaris will be difficult I assume. But I learned that one can run through it, because most of the monsters there have problems to track fast moving target. So maybe I'll just run till the end, and then try to wear Piety down.

Strange finding, also for Kaoms dream - it is hard if one moves slowly and picks up fights. But one can just run through till the end ...

At times I think one can exploit this, and collect experience and items in easy areas, and run through the diffucult ones. Daresso's dream is an exception, because in two places it forces the player to stay and fight. But the rest of the game can be run, it seems ...

At the moment I don't think I can set up a real strong single skill, but I need to combine damage from several sources.

No, it's perfectly fine to run through an entire area, don't worry! That's how you play in races or when you want to level efficiently. You run the entire time and only stop to kill good, big packs of mobs that give lots of XP like blue mobs.

I have leveled 3 characters in the last month and a half and I always run through Solaris, Lunaris, Scepter of God, the Mines, Kaom's Dream... without stopping. Then I find myself a good farming area and run that repeatedly if I need gear or more XP. The best place to catch up on XP is Dried Lake imo. Nice, open area with good mob density and the layout is very easy to navigate.

For you the next best farming zone is Docks. Make sure your fire and cold resist are good and run that until you feel comfy to progress further. Do your quests all the way up to Piety (just keep running) then return to Docks to farm more.