Most Hated Phase Beast Challenges

[swillfly]

Everybody knows that Phase Beast Challenges generate lots of gold and bigger, shinier chests.
Farming those spots (after collecting all the loot don't teleport out, just quit out then reload to farm) can be lucrative.. depending upon which PBC you roll up.

However, many of those challenges seem purposefully designed by the devs to induce frustration, bewilderment, indigestion, and malaise.

Some PBC's are rip-offs. I nominate Defeat the Troll in the Blightbogs for being an absolute ßull$hìt waste. You're stuck on a tiny fire geyser laden island with a Big, Nasty Troll Boss... oh and random undead pop up all around the swampy edges while you run around getting toasted by fire geysers. After you finish off Big Ugly your reward = 2 small chests and 1 medium chest that typically generate cr@p.

Survive the Attack in Sundered Battlefield is another chum fest that dishes out the baddies and rewards you with garbage. You face waves of varkolyn goons (including a special crossbow vark that does high damage), big dummy dwarven bots, and mines that fall from the sky in a medium sized cratered arena. And when you defeat all the bad guys you win 3 small chests and 1 medium chest containing all the green and blue trash your heart desires.

Special Recognition goes out to Protect the Crystals in Frosted Hills for promoting hypertension and ulcers. There are 5 of those delicate green crystals that hordes of goblins try to stab, shoot, and blow up along a small path. Each saved crystal generates a medium chest (except the 1st crystal yields a small chest). When the goblins destroy the crystals you get Nuthin -- No chests just a sad trombone to congratulate you for Failing. All the crystals can be protected depending upon which class and skills are used. It's a tough challenge and the rewards are mediocre at best.

[Masque]

I love them all. Excellent post. It all gets your character closer to that level 42 skill, anyway.

I think I'm playing a Dark Noxmer,, right now. Sweet skills. I think I just hit 45. And that grenade skill was incredible for a while, and my two completely badass wands, but I'm hitting up that Death Toll skill, because it's OP as hell, and so freakin' cool to watch, and I don't even have the upgrades yet. My mana never goes down. Ever. It's sick, and I love it. Every time I hit "E", everything on the screen dies and gives me loot.

His name is Doxmer. Level 48.

[Masque]

My Dark Noxmer has died 4 times. He's very OP for his level, but I'm not always so sober.

Did you ever play the Diablo 2 mod called Median XL, with the Plugy mod installed?

Same with WOG for Heroes 3. Or for Heroes 5.5.

Or with Hellgate: Revival. That one runs at like 160FPS now. When it came out, almost no compy could run it, for normal people.

KMQuake2 is cool, but I can't play it, because I don't know where it's saving my gamesaves, and I can't figure it out for the life of me, and so I always have to start from the beginning.

I's been watching games evolve since Lemonade Stand on TRS-80 Model I.

It's really fun watching games evolve.

[swillfly]

Sounds cool - is that from a mod? I'm playing vanilla un-modded TL2. I have a platoon I'm taking through: 3 outlanders, 2 embermages, 1 berserker, 1 engineer. Although I may level up an additional berserker and engineer (currently serving as mules) as well.

I made a 2 page spreadsheet listing each character's name along the top with each zone from each act along the left so I can notate which characters have which enchanters in whatever area. It saves me a lot of gold and helps all of them progress better. I highly recommend doing something like this if you alternate characters and play a platoon of classes as I do.

For example, my one outlander Areth found Boris the Stout (invaluable stat enchanter) on the 1st floor of the Forgotten Halls. So I had him farm like 3 million gold (mostly from Avoid the Lava Phase Beast Challenge) and I tossed the other toons' equipment in the Shared Stash. I load him up with all characters' equipment I want to enchant then head through the teleport to Boris and ch-ching-ala-bling their stuff.

Almost all my characters (except mules) are lvls 48-56 and in the Emberworks now. Once I finish the TL2 for each character I'll start doing Mapworks & NG periodically. I plan on switching over to play Grim Dawn and do thorough multi-character single player platoon sessions such as I did for TL2 using the same spreadsheet loot/etc. notations for that game. Having pen & paper organization to review whilst adventuring really improves enjoyment for me versus trying to remember where such-and-such magic pot of loot is.

[Masque]

Dark Noxmer is, I think, from a mod called simply "Variant" in my mod-list, which contains a whole bunch of non-vanilla classes.

I haven't touched the mapworks yet, still working on the main quest (and every side-quest I can find), and min-maxing my stats and skills. I can literally kill everything onscreen (and many things offscreen) by hitting "E" twice. It's stupid fun. I should be playing this character in Hardcore, but sometimes I ignore that big read bubble at the bottom, and I die with 97 giant health potions.

There's 10 ways to play this character, too. I'm only playing with grenades, wands, and my 42 skill called Death Toll. That's it. No summons. Lots of dmg+ and mana+ passives.

And I still have a long way to go with that skill. The third level's text says "Why would you need this many projectiles? And this much damage?"

i can't wait to finish the MQ again, and get into mapworks, the Endless Dungeon, and Path of Torchlight maps.

It was, recently, Path of Exile that got me back into Torchlight 2 and reminded me just how fun this game is. Really neat how they got rid of money, and made the whole skill system work with sockets. The learning curve was a bit tough for me. No money? Wait, what? I can have a gem in my boot that gives me a spell, that levels up when I do? I can have FFVII-style socket connections? And it's free? The graphics and the systems are so sick, in a good way.

One thing I liked about the Angband games is that you could have a pair of boots (say), with an activatable spell on them. Summon 3 Zombie Archers, (say). You could engrave an inscripition ON those boots, that let you do all sorts of nice keybinding.

I haven't even played Witcher 3 yet. And I own the whole shebang. And it runs like a dream.

I like Torchlight.

[Nodoka]

The maze hands down.

[swillfly]

The maze can be frustrating -just drop low lvl potions along intersections as "breadcrumbs". With 3 medium chests and 1 golden chest I can deal with the maze confusion.

[damien]

escape the lava so juicy love that one, get most of my legendary weapons out of there.

first half of act 2 there is a challenge that always awards two spells. I use that one to farm for tome of blocking, also has decent drops and gold.

NG+ frost hills challenge, the crystals is invaluable for skulls, you can target the damage reduction skulls there because it is the perfect level.

[angelfmf]

Originally posted by damien:

escape the lava so juicy love that one, get most of my legendary weapons out of there.

first half of act 2 there is a challenge that always awards two spells. I use that one to farm for tome of blocking, also has decent drops and gold.

NG+ frost hills challenge, the crystals is invaluable for skulls, you can target the damage reduction skulls there because it is the perfect level.

Not so juicy when u have ur first hardcore hero who valiantly survived the whole game until then just to suddenly getting killed by lava... Thats how i met depression -.-

[Draekus2]

Originally posted by angelfmf:

Not so juicy when u have ur first hardcore hero who valiantly survived the whole game until then just to suddenly getting killed by lava... Thats how i met depression -.-

i'm sure everybody from 6 years ago will be happy to hear that.
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