Diablo 2 Steemit retro-gaming project! Steemcules the Strong Act 1, Episode 3 - Boss Battle!

This is the tale of Steemcules the Strong. A Steem exclusive playthrough of the iconic Diablo 2 hack n slash game.

Last time on The Tale of Steemcules the Strong Steemcules completed two quests of Act 1. Just like pawning Blood Raven, the Countess in the Forgotten Tower was nothing more than a speedbump. He also retrieved Charsi's magical hammer from the Smith. Tough, but not scary.

But Act 1 is now coming to an end, it is time to move on to the real and only scary thing in Act 1 to deal with: Andariel

Sisters of Slaughter

Looking like a 15 foot tall Kerrigan with a bit of a G-String going on, I would be suitably enamored if she was not so thoroughly evil, bitchy and actually fairly terrifying. I can remember well that she has killed me many times when I first began playing Diablo 2.

Armed with knowledge, familiarity and two big axes I knew I did not need to be too much worried and slew the Demon!
Here is what you need to know so you too can slay this monster.

Being the demonic incarnation of evil ex-wives Addariel boasts a massive amount of poison damage. If you have something you pick up along the way it would be better to loose a couple Defense points in favor of a bit better Poison resistance. You need to do this on the way there.

As you can see, I was not so fortunate. I did however boost quite a bit into Vitality and I carry some good armor. So the first step in taking down this beast is to be patient:

Arrive in the area, clear all monsters from the room where you see this blood pool before you open the doors. Having taken these beasties out will lower the chance of dying dramatically. Stalk her out, remove her support first and foremost.

You will also need to make sure that your belt has one row of rejuvenation potions. These safeguard against that poison and her high physical damage chopping you down suddenly. Do not worry too much about your merc, Andariel hates girlfriends and will probably kill the poor girl before the battle is done.

Steemcules is a Barbarian. Not a lot of finesse here. Use Bash and Double Swing and swig potions and I hacked her down. As foresaw, Andariel killed my archer and I had to solo her out. There were a few creeps that were still alive that joined her attack on me and for a few swings I switched to Double Swing which will hit two targets. Andariel being target one, target two will get the other hit.

As soon as her support thins out this way, go back to Bash which deals slightly higher damage and keep Bashing.

If this was another character (save for the Paladin maybe) I would have needed to employ a completely different tactic to survive and kill Andariel.

The loot was good!

The Andariel Glitch

It is a fairly well known phenomenon in games like Diablo 2 that a loot drop the very first time on a boss character is better than subsequent drops.

With Andariel, as long as you have spoken to Warriv in town after defeating her, there is triggered a "glitch" that Andariel's droprate will stay the same. If you kill her and then immediately exit without speaking to the townsfolk (which would be kinda strange) then it would not trigger this.

Thus it is so acceptable that to NOT trigger the "glitch" could be considered a glitch in itself.

So I took her out a bunch of times...

Onwards Steemcules! To Glory!

So Steemcules marches onward with a spring in his step... because of the new boots... Increased walk/run speed is awesome!

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