1.11 (Guardian Greengod - Set Only Melee Barbarian)

[fearedbliss]

Haha no prob. Take your time and have fun. That BK sword and highlords looking beautiful.

 

[broxigaarr]

Final Chapter, bois!

Upon leaving town, I found the second part of the Sazabi set—Balrog’s Skin! Funny thing is, in all my single-pass self-found games so far, I’ve only ever found Sazabi’s helmet. And now, of course, the helmet is the one piece I’m missing. Thanks, RNGezus.

Moving through the Frigid Highlands, I got lucky with Hone Sundan. My merc couldn’t use it, but I still consider it one of the most useful finds given the restrictions I usually play with.

In the Frozen River, I had a pretty close call. A group of cursed Spearwomen started jabbing away, and I didn’t notice that I had Amplify Damage on me. Ended up with just ~20 HP left. A quick full rejuv saved me, but let’s just say my underwear needed changing afterward, not gonna lie. Later on, I tried performing the Soul Dance, but I must’ve messed something up, because the Souls just kept shooting me.

I don’t often use the reward from the Nihlatak quest, but this time I had to. Wielding Greengod’s Bul-Kathos’ Tribal Guardian seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

The Ancients were pretty easy, as magic damage has its advantages—hardly anyone resists it. Korlic was the only real danger with Fire Enchanted, but I just stepped away and let Ahsab do the dirty work for me. And then there was Baal.

This guy pissed me off like no other. It felt like he knew he was the last obstacle before my fictional greatness, so he spammed me with tentacles, keeping me in hit recovery most of the time. And of course, he was cloning like crazy. The fight took about 30 minutes... I think? I can’t really recall. But trust me, it was traumatic. And when he dropped the Tomb Reaver, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. It’s my second Tomb Reaver drop in my single-pass history, but I couldn’t even use it.

The Cows were fun though, and Natalya’s Helmet was a nice cherry on top of this melee-only, single-pass madness. I finished at level 84, having killed all monsters across all difficulties. Undefeated.

What a journey this has been. When I saw my favorite YouTubers doing this with ranged characters, rerunning locations, I never imagined it could be done with a melee character and no rerun rule. But here we are. I might come back to Greengod at some point and level him up to 90. That’s my idea of an endgame for a character like this. No foolish ambitions to hit level 99—I'm all about doing hard things in Diablo 2 that are achievable (at least for the most part).

Thanks for letting me share this story. More will definitely follow. One character on 1.07 is about to finish his journey, so I’ll keep you updated!

 

[fearedbliss]

Congratulations on your victory Nephalem. Reaching Guardian is definitely an accomplishment in Diablo II <3. The items you found also look good and beautiful screenshots. The A5 environment is lovely for these sorts of things.

The rare flying axe you found is crazy. It would be an amazing item to use in Classic, and I think it would be a bit difficult to find a replacement item for that slot if you had it.

Also, your Grosse Scheisse character name is funny.

 

[broxigaarr]

Congratulations on your victory Nephalem. Reaching Guardian is definitely an accomplishment in Diablo II <3. The items you found also look good and beautiful screenshots. The A5 environment is lovely for these sorts of things.

The rare flying axe you found is crazy. It would be an amazing item to use in Classic, and I think it would be a bit difficult to find a replacement item for that slot if you had it.

Also, your Grosse Scheisse character name is funny.

Thank you! Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised with the rare, love these kind of items. I am a bit bored of using uniques / RWs at this point.

Grosse Scheisse is btw. a reference to 1.11 having significantly lower drop rate for runes compared to 1.13. Last year I was playing a magic / rune find tournament with this character, finding Io as the highest rune during 1 200 /players 7fully cleared Hell Mausoleum runs