First time through Act 4 Normal

SC Split Arrow ranger... Normal Act 4 impressions.

1. If you've decided to play a Hardcore character your first time through the game, this is where you're guaranteed to die. I only died twice in act 3 (once to Perpetus, once to the Dominus guards, which doesn't even count because I needed to AFK) and died several times in act 4 to things that I had no way of knowing were this dangerous. If you're playing HC for your first time, you WILL die.

2. Everything up to Kaom/Daresso is pretty much OK "as is", after that you may need to grind for levels/life nodes if you don't have enough. The Grand Arena is the best place I've found to do so.

3. Daresso's Dream pit cages are bullshit. If you don't have some kind of a carpet-bomb AOE skill OR a way to kill enemies faster than they appear, it's almost impossible because you have no room to move. Oh, and the last one with the boss is hilarious - if you die, entering it again puts you IN THE MIDDLE OF EVERYTHING and you die in less than a second. I must have died dozens of times to that one trap area alone. The non-boss pits aren't that bad, but they can still kill the unprepared. It's mainly the boss pit that I'm worried about. I don't see a good reasonable tactic.

4. The Grand Arena is, by contrast, very well done and enjoyable, an epic fight that actually allows you to MOVE, but still remains a challenge. The high amount of enemies makes this one of the best leveling areas in the whole act. The only problem is that entering the last part (with Daresso's Trio) sometimes causes a prolonged lagspike, which can kill you instantly. I'd suggest moving the cycloner out of the way so you don't get immediately attacked upon entry. Though maybe my computer is just shit, because I've had such a lagspike literally outlasting my grace period once.

5. Daresso is insanely fun. Died to him once, but that was my own fault, I had too little in my flasks and tried to yolo. One of the best boss fights in the game.

6. Kaom's area has awesome scenery and is, in general, awesome. The enemies are awesome, the design is awesome, everything is awesome.

7. Triskeriaki (or whatever that unique Rakango was) is fucking ridiculous. If your method of dealing damage requires you to stand still for even a moment, you might as well forget about this fight. Thankfully, it's optional.

8. King Kaom... eh, I like the epic feel of it, but is there any way to predict where the safe space will be when he starts raining fireballs? Died once because I didn't want to portal out and he outlasted my flasks. Daresso allows you to kill his swords to refill flasks, I believe, but I don't think Kaom has any adds to do so. Still, it's quite a fun fight and the flasks were partially my fault, because the flasks were fairly shit. Had to roll some new ones later on.

9. Piety WILL kill HC-first-timers, that beam deals a huge amount of damage. I've seen it was even worse before when it could one-shot most characters, but, thankfully, this is not the case anymore. I specificallly leveled until I could get over 1000 HP, then went and re-fought Piety properly. With the laser beam not one-shotting you and with better flasks, it was really fun.

10. Doedre seems fairly non-threatening if you have some distraction, which, for me, was an ice golem. Run, shoot, run, shoot, run, shoot. Split Arrow really helps to nail bosses off-screen, all you have to do is to fire in their general direction. Lots of status effects in this fight, but fairly easy.

11. Maligaro is a dodging fight, kind of similar to a hybrid between Daresso/Dominus. Very fun and is a decent bit of challenge.

12. Shavronne = serious FPS drop whenever she's on the screen. When she's off-screen, FPS returns back to normal. Makes the fight a bit more tedious than it should be, which is a shame, because otherwise it's probably my favorite fight among the three.

13. Malachai, phase 1: brutal, insane and awesome. Piety's HP is a touch higher than needed. I think a slightly lower HP for Piety and slightly higher HP for Malachai would make the fight seem faster while not significantly lowering the challenge. Keyword is "slightly", though, and its mostly a cosmetic thing about pacing. It's not a balancing suggestion, really.

14. Malachai, phase 2: brutal, insane and awesome. Died once on it, partly through lack of skill, partly because I spent way too long not realizing that he spawned a Heart of the Beast and I needed to kill that in order to make him not invincible. Fun, but not sure how much I'd need to level before I'd feel safe battling him with an HC character. :P Feels a bit too long, but I don't care, it's so goddamn epic. I've seen someone saying that leaving and re-entering makes his ground traps invisible - if true, that's a bothersome bug and should be fixed. I didn't notice this, but maybe it was because I was too busy trying to dodge red balls and huge tentacly claws. :) They make my FPS drop, too, but since you're supposed to avoid them, it's not as much of an issue as with Shavronne.

15. Lastly: first time I entered Malachai's Lair (first part) it immediately disconnected me from the server, then I spent a really long time trying to get back in, then trying to get into the Harvest once again REBOOTED MY COMPUTER. Yep. Not even a "normal" game crash, just a complete reboot with "Windows did not shut down successfully" and so on. Not sure what the fuck was up with that, especially since the second time everything worked just fine. Might be a random bug on my end. During these shenanigans, though, I found out that, if your instance times out, you have to fight the guardians again in order to fight Malachai. I think this is ridiculous, you've already completed the quest, why should you have to do it again just because your instance is over.

16. Only one optional quest? Really? :( Feels way more linear than the previous acts.

17. The overall atmosphere, visual design and such are superb. The lore, despite feeling a bit rushed, is very good, with Voll's confession, Daresso's diaries and Piety's newfound characterization being some of my favorite lore moments.

18. TLDR: one optional quest is not enough, leveling is required way more than before, Daresso's pits (especially the last one) are bullshit, Triskeari is ridiculous, everything else is mostly really awesome.

Thank you, GGG. That was an awesome act with an awesome finish. Malachai might be a bit hard, but I expect that from an epic final boss. Thank you.

Now, onto Cruel...

I read this. I felt it.

I've also recalled similar posts about Vaal when he was first added, Piety, and Dominus. Once these fights are "learned", they're pretty easy to accomplish.

I think that's what motivated GGG to come up with most of Act IV. They wanted fights that would make characters have to deal with adversity. You need more than X,Y or Z to finish act IV. You might need X,Y and Z.

The only build I've had an easy time with Act IV is a tri-totem build. That build has X,Y and Z. It has range, damage avoidance, area damage, single target damage, and defense.

I still skip nonsense like "the grove" and the unique Rakango.

Indeed.

All parts that kill me are due to my computer being sucky imo. other than the mini boss in Daresso's dream with the 20+ mobs around him.... always die once there. Piety's death beam is easy to avoid when you don't lag but I've only not lagged once or twice during that (just run up close to her, hit your quicksilver flask even though you may not need it, stay close and run circles around her until she's done.) I've seen a lot of people staying far away from piety while running around and that doesn't make sense to me.... the closer to a circles center you are the faster you will go around. There's nothing else in that Piety fight that i find dangerous. For Kaom just pay attention to which volcano is shooting out fireballs at first its just 1 (> ) then 2 (><) in my opinion it is best to stay either at the top or bottom of this area... for me the fireballs are not much of a threat in this fight the hardest part for me is when he summons 10-20 raging spirits and i lag... but then its just hit and run tactics while staying in the safest area's... unless you have a build that can hit the srs's and kill them (i was using flame totem so it couldn't target them and before i was using a summoner... which i don't think can target them either). For me the hardest part on the way to Kaom is the unique totem's that all pelt you with a barrage of fireballs from off-screen... kills me every time before I even know they are there... After getting killed by it and knowing where it is it also becomes an easy fight for any ranged character though. Daresso is harder than Kaom for me... mainly because I end up forgetting to pay attention to where I am running and end up going right through one of his group of swords that he spreads around... mainly when running out of the circle of ice clones.... but i think if you pay attention and don't lag to much this fight would also be a breeze. There may be a better way to do these fights but i'm always at less than 10 fps... 1-5 fps during any boss in act4 or Dominus.... stupid rain.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

I read this. I felt it.

I've also recalled similar posts about Vaal when he was first added, Piety, and Dominus. Once these fights are "learned", they're pretty easy to accomplish.

I think that's what motivated GGG to come up with most of Act IV. They wanted fights that would make characters have to deal with adversity. You need more than X,Y or Z to finish act IV. You might need X,Y and Z.

The only build I've had an easy time with Act IV is a tri-totem build. That build has X,Y and Z. It has range, damage avoidance, area damage, single target damage, and defense.

I still skip nonsense like "the grove" and the unique Rakango.

I think one of the differences is that Vaal/Piety (and even Dominus, to some extent) can be "learned" within the fight. There's nothing you have to know in advance in order to not die, aside from "the second phase of Dominus will probably lag".

Kaom/Daresso, though, indeed, more dangerous, can also be "learned" within the fight. Daresso's mini-pits, though, are not. You have a tactic in advance or you die. Same for Piety's laser beam, I think it's REALLY unlikely for a first-time player to be able to immediately adapt to that laser beam, unless they've spent a lot of time on old arcade games, where such stuff is normal. I think Piety in Act 4 is very difficult to "learn" without dying a few times. Same for Malachai's second phase because the hearts spawn off-screen and I think they don't appear on the map. As soon as you figure out what is it that the game wants you to do, it's much more manageable.

"

All parts that kill me are due to my computer being sucky imo.

I have to agree, that's why I'll never roll a HC character. Dying to a prolonged lagspike on Daresso's trio taught me this lesson. I even hit a granite flask before entering that area and I still insta-died as soon as the lagspike went away. Strongboxes can be especially painful in this regard. Even blink arrow doesn't help if you're dead before you can move. I'll need to figure out if there's a way to remotely activate them or something... there's generally no strongbox crowd that I can't handle, it's the lagspikes that make them so dangerous.

"

For me the hardest part on the way to Kaom is the unique totem's that all pelt you with a barrage of fireballs from off-screen...

Ah, yes, I forgot about that one. I'm fairly good at dodging stuff, so I could actually avoid the fireballs and step away. Then killing them off-screen isn't really difficult, just takes time. Can't imagine what melee characters go through, though.

"

There may be a better way to do these fights but i'm always at less than 10 fps... 1-5 fps during any boss in act4 or Dominus.... stupid rain.

Damn, that sucks. I did lag on 2nd phase of Dominus and on some of the act 4 bosses, but not that much.

I'll have to watch a video of Kaom to figure out how he works, though. Daresso's attacks are tough to avoid, but I can at least anticipate them. I haven't figured out how to anticipate Kaom's attacks properly.

First thing to say: a lot of your complaints have been made, so you are into something there. That being said:

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Muzozavr wrote:

16. Only one optional quest? Really? :( Feels way more linear than the previous acts.

Thing is that Act IV is like Diablo 2 Act IV (it's meant to be short, linear and make you go to Hell...I mean The Nightmare). The Godless three work in the same way that the Unique Bosses in Chaos Sanctuary.

That being said, putting a lot more of stuff in the act wouldn't hurt. There is something about its length that bothers me. But then again, it will be replayed a lot, and if GGG doesn't come with some alternate way to level people are going to be pissed off to do it many times.

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Muzozavr wrote:

I think one of the differences is that Vaal/Piety (and even Dominus, to some extent) can be "learned" within the fight. There's nothing you have to know in advance in order to not die, aside from "the second phase of Dominus will probably lag".

Kaom/Daresso, though, indeed, more dangerous, can also be "learned" within the fight. Daresso's mini-pits, though, are not. You have a tactic in advance or you die. Same for Piety's laser beam, I think it's REALLY unlikely for a first-time player to be able to immediately adapt to that laser beam, unless they've spent a lot of time on old arcade games, where such stuff is normal. I think Piety in Act 4 is very difficult to "learn" without dying a few times. Same for Malachai's second phase because the hearts spawn off-screen and I think they don't appear on the map. As soon as you figure out what is it that the game wants you to do, it's much more manageable.

Dominus can kill you with his blood rain (there is a lot of mess on the screen to confuse you) the same way Piety the Abomination can kill you with her laser. It's something about having to get staunching flasks and dying if you not notice the bleed.

Piety can be learned now that she is modified (you can know when she'll shoot the laser, and the radial distance you can handle in that fight), but it will be really hard. I put her at the same level than Dominus.

About Malachai, he is totally learnable, and I killed him the first time, with one death (because I got distracted and I didn't dodge the Vaal Slam).

It's a fairly easy thing to learn, but since the beam can two-shot most characters, I think you're likely to die at least once before realizing how to avoid it. The movement itself is fairly easy, but the attack is punishing enough that if you're unaware, it's likely to kill you first.

Once you do learn how it works, it IS intuitive, I agree on that.

Yeah, I also died just once on Malachai, but I think the map could use an indicator to tell you "oh shit, something extra appeared on the map". I don't think such an indicator exists.

His attacks are very learnable, that's true, I just took a lot of time trying to figure out how to bypass his invincibility and too busy dodging stuff to figure out that he spawned something off-screen that needs to be destroyed first. Maybe it's just me, though.

About Piety, maybe. Thing is that we'll see more of that stuff going to the game in the future, this are the only things that can actually challenge us without using "more HP/DPS".

About Malachai, no it's just you. It didn't take a genius to figure out something was off (he has a shield, and no Piety) and you can look at the whole arena for inspiration (the Hearts have shields too).

I actually got through to Cruel on my first attempts of the content (LA ranger in beta, then CI lightning trapper on release), so it's not impossible to do on hardcore on a blind run.

The thread is mostly pretty spot-on though, especially about how linear it is. The other acts feel like you're exploring a land and there are optional side areas everywhere, while act 4 is like "Here's a couple tunnels, doesn't matter which one you pick, you have to do them all anyway". There isn't even a second skillpoint quest!

Daresso's dream is amusing because of how polarising it is. Some people seem to really hate it and others have no problem with it. I fall into the latter camp, but that doesn't mean it's well-designed. Very valid points here, especially about spawning in the middle of things during Barkhul's fight. While I haven't encountered it myself, if you're partying with someone else and the gate closes before one of you gets through then they still have to deal with spawning in the middle.

Ez fix would be to just move the spawn to the other side of the gate instead of in the middle of nowhere. It would mean there's a lot less potential for monsters to hit you while still putting you in the thick of things.