My first amazon

[HonMan]

My first amazon

I created an amazon a week ago and I seem to have some problems going past the maggot lair in Act II Hell difficulty.

Her stats:
523 HP
229 MP
133 Str
160 dex
665 def

Weapons:
--Endlesshail double bow
33-80 dam
+209% enhanced dam
+15-30 cold dam
+5 strafe
+50 def vs missile
+40 mana
cold resist 35%

--Husoldal evo bec de corbin
57-257 dam
120% enhanced atk speed
+180% enhanced dam
replenish life +20
prevent monster heal
+20-32 fire dam
+211 AR

Skills
20 Valkyrie
10 Strafe
5 Frozen Arrow
5 Immolition Arrow
18 penetrate
2 decoy
3 jab
3 fend
the rest are prerequisites

--merc
Act 3 Ice mage

Is there something I can change or any tips to get pass the maggot lair?

 

[superdave]

what level are you?
i hesitate to say this but you may not be able to save this one as a viable hell build....your stength is a little high...dex is low....energy should be left at base and strafe used to leech back mana for an fa/immo zon(better stick to one tree...fa?)

to get through the maggot lair you will need to get high light resist and PIERCE is a necessity...nothing in d/a/e will help both you and your valk....think about putting some points into critical

grab a might merc it will help you out when using a low damage bow

read the stickied guides and consider rebuilding

 

[HonMan]

She's currently lvl 64. I'm planning to max penetrate, strafe, and frozen arrow in the future. Pierce and critical strike are at lvl 3. My lightning resistance is horrible (-11). I can't seem to find any high lightning resistance rings or amulets. My strategy now is just freeze enemies, use immo arrow, summon decoy in front of me (to block out the electric from beatles), and repeat the process. The only real source of killing is my valk.

I used a might merc before, but he kept rushing into battle and dying before my valk or I got advantage.

 

[Omikron8]

what level are you?
i hesitate to say this but you may not be able to save this one as a viable hell build....your stength is a little high...dex is low....energy should be left at base and strafe used to leech back mana for an fa/immo zon(better stick to one tree...fa?)

to get through the maggot lair you will need to get high light resist and PIERCE is a necessity...nothing in d/a/e will help both you and your valk....think about putting some points into critical

grab a might merc it will help you out when using a low damage bow

read the stickied guides and consider rebuilding

High light resist is hardly necessary for a bowazon in the first place except for the piercing lightning of gloams/black souls/etc. What the original poster needs is simply better equipment. A bowazon is not a sorc who can waltz around naked and destroy everything.

 

[Tarantella]

Whether or not your build is viable, a runeword bow wouldnt go amiss, I would suggest going back to act one and levelling there till 73, pit running for some good socketables when you can.

 

[superdave]

lvl 64 is just a liitle too low for trying to take on the maggot lair solo with an untwinked zon....5 or 6 more lvls will help out considerably
do get a might merc he will help for a low damage build like yours....a razortail will help with pierce if you can trade for one(cost a few pgems)

High light resist is hardly necessary for a bowazon in the first place except for the piercing lightning of gloams/black souls/etc. What the original poster needs is simply better equipment. A bowazon is not a sorc who can waltz around naked and destroy everything.

i agree he does need better equipment which he will find/trade for eventually but perhaps you missed the point...his immediate concern is getting past the maggot lair....any bets he is getting hammered by lightning? it doesn't take very long for 500 hp to be whittled away from a zon with negative resist....you cannot avoid lite attacks running the maggot lair solo....try to shop something with resists or keep your eye out for these things while you are leveling or you could cube a prismatic amulet or coral ring just to get you past the lair

 

[Tarantella]

Slow missiles is a nice one point skill that works nicely as a damage reduction method in the maggots tunnels.

 

[Superhal]

you definitely need a better bow and weapon. also, i would wait until 72-3.

fend and impale suck. 1pt jab blows them away. what you might want to do is switch to a 1h javelin/shield combo for melee. i'm guessing that the scarabs are what's giving you such a hard time, so a shield would help a lot. if you don't have a decent shield, a 3 pdiamond shield will suffice, giving 57 all res. shael-eth rhyme is also a great cheapo shield, which comes with all res, extra blocking, and cannot be frozen. get a luna or heater if you can (either will get two sockets automatically from lazruk) and make it.

you also don't seem to have anything for pi's, which are also plentiful down there. at this point, the only thing you can do is maybe buy a buzzing or burning javelin and use normal throw.

actually, looking over your build, i would recommend a remake. the skills you chose should be maxxed out, and other skills shouldn't have any points in them. for example, immolation arrow and freezing arrow are good skills, but not at that skill level. if you put all those points into one or the other, you would be much better off. strafe is also not very good until around level 17 when it can release all 10 arrows on a single target, otherwise, it will only shoot once or twice per target.

penetrate is also, imho, a dead end. a few points will help out, but in the long run, it's much more efficient to add dex or charms. strafe in itself is very bad in terms of chance to hit.

a quick fix on the bow would be either a passion or harmony in a +3 mat bow, otherwise, i wouldn't make a non-freezing arrow zon without at minimum cliffkiller or goldstrike (some people like witchwild, i don't.) either of which are cheaper than the runes needed for the other bows. usually, i wait for buriza, which is a viable and cheap final game weapon.

regarding jab, the trick i use vs lightning enchanted monsters is to piggy back on the valk. let the valk attack first, and then aim your attack directly behind the valk. you should stop just behind the valk and start jabbing.

 

[HonMan]

I got a might merc from nightmare and he's currently lvl 62. My amazon is now level 70. I found a unique amulet which adds +23 to all resistances, + 12 to all attributes, and 10% to cast iron maiden. Right now my lightning resistance is at -3. The maggot lair is no problem except the final room, the one with the large sand maggot guarding the Staff of Kings. My merc dies about instantly and my valk doesn't last 10 min. Any ideas how to get past this stage? Or should I just try to get the Staff of Kings and then quickly press esc and quit?

I'm using a javelin and shield now as Superhal advised and my other weapon is a rare diamond bow which does 75-78 damage. FA is at lvl 7 and my plan for the future is to make it level 16, IA lvl 14, and strafe lvl 18. I do pierce over 65% of the time due to a unique razortail belt I found along the way.

To Superhal: My fend and jab are both at lvl 3. I'm using fend right now because it does greater damage and can attack more than 1 target quickly. From your post above, do you think I should switch to jab?

 

[Superhal]

yes, you should just use jab. it doesn't bug. you might notice that you miss quite a bit. that's the bug, when the animation for fend occurs but it's not really attacking.

a good rule of thumb: 100 damage for normal, 500 for nm, 1k for hell. i'm not sure about that bow, but i'm pretty sure you aren't breaking 1k. with a buriza, i get around 1800 normal attack. you should keep looking for a bow with at least 150 damage on it. you can even find a cruel gothic bow at lazruk with @200, although the cheap runeword bows are easy to make. try to farm nightmare worldstone and cows for a while and look for a socketted mat bow.

another trick is to make smoke armor, nef-lum.

for that chamber, there's some little known info about it:

1. coldburrow (i forget her name, the fat one) spawns maggots out of her butt. the longer it takes for you to get there, the more maggots will be there.

2. the baby maggots grow into regular maggots, so you have to hurry.

3. the chamber is always the northernmost room with a south exit. try to avoid all the side rooms as soon as you hit lvl 3. if i find her quickly, usually there are only 2-3 maggots with her.

4. if there are scarabs with her, back up. if you stay in the hallway, only 1 of the charged bolts can hit you.

5. scarabs make fewer charged bolts if they are chilled. try to use a 1-2 cold damage charm of any size. this is a good rule of thumb for all melee/missile chars.

6. her death poison is brutal and will kill a merc very quickly. you need antidote potions (feed it into their picture if you don't have it in a belt slot) or grab the staff quickly and tp back to town.

 

[Superhal]

you can also try pit runs. it's the cave looking thing in the tamoe highlands in a1. i just did a bunch and found quite a few sockettable items, including 2 grand matron bows and colossus crossbows, and a bunch of colossus voulges for a merc.

 

[Omikron8]

you can also try pit runs. it's the cave looking thing in the tamoe highlands in a1. i just did a bunch and found quite a few sockettable items, including 2 grand matron bows and colossus crossbows, and a bunch of colossus voulges for a merc.

Just watch out for the rogue archers. They have a BASE damage of around 150-200 and can often hit a critical on their attack, doing 400+ WITHOUT damage auras or curse mod.

 

[HonMan]

Thanks for all your replies!

I have a new problem now - The Claw Viper Temple
The second I go in, a bunch of unique and champion claw vipers all surround my valk, merc, and myself. And they all use bash at the same time which means I don't have enough time to kill them off. And since they're all immune to ice, I can't use frozen arrows to slow/stop them.

Any ideas on overcoming this?

 

[Superhal]

not much you can do there. reroll and hope the stairs aren't trapped.

otherwise, the typical strategy is the same: cast valk, run the opposite direction, shoot/throw.

for monsters with kb, i usually try to get them to trap the valk against the wall.

 

[bladesyz]

for that chamber, there's some little known info about it:

1. coldburrow (i forget her name, the fat one) spawns maggots out of her butt. the longer it takes for you to get there, the more maggots will be there.

2. the baby maggots grow into regular maggots, so you have to hurry.

Cool, I didn't know about that.

1. Do the extra maggots give xp?
2. Do the baby maggots grow up elsewhere? (like canyon, hell, etc) Do they lay eggs too?
3. Do the baby maggots give more xp when they grow up?

If the above is true, couldn't you find a nest of maggots and wait until they multiply exponentially, and then kill them for big damage + drops?