24hrs Diablo 2 Challenge: 4, Song of Frost & Light - Page 2

At roughly hour #22, I had made it to Hell difficulty with my Nec and Sorc intact after making some terrible mistakes and was finally in good shape to progress to beating Hell. I realized maybe after Hell Baal I even have a little time to MF before having a go at Uber Tristram. I probably should have thought of leaving a little time to MF before, but it's ok. Things were looking up for me. Other than the Uber Tristram part. I had not realized how much time some of the grinding (leveling to 24 for baal runs, then the baal runs themselves in each difficulty took hours) would take and I ended up probably not in a position item-wise to take on Ubers. Although I felt I if I had planned better I could have been, and maybe even get an Enigma!! .....nah, that's actually impossible...

But then the unthinkable happened. While on the phone talking, I was shifting my inventory around to figure out a way to give my Nec enough items to reach 75% faster cast rate so he could teleport behind my Sorc. To make things easier, I dropped 3/4 of the big items on the ground to shift around random gems and runes I was carrying.

"Ok sure, that day should be fine for me." I said as I clicked.

*Esc*

"Do I have to bring anything?" I questioned my iPhone.

*Save and Exit*

"Ok great."

I froze.

My eyes widened as I realized what I had done.

Click goes my phone as the call ended. It ended, I thought. Ended. Ended along with my hopes and dreams of a 24 hour Diablo 2 run.

My fingers FLEW to the keyboard. Where was my phone? It's not in my hands anymore since I'm typing. I must have dropped it. I didn't even feel it drop. But I did feel the chill down my spine and the cold sweat on my hands as adrenaline pumped through my veins. What was the game name and password?

*Click "Join Game"*

Game not found.

*Click again*

Game not found.

*Again*

Game not found.

AHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG.

I accidentally left the game before the 5 minute wait time to make the game "semi-permanent" on battle.net. I lost something like 75% of all the items I had worked SO hard for to a stupid muling error. I overcame internet disconnects and server rollbacks. I overcame massive mistakes in remembering how the game worked, and unhelpful, conflicting, or missing information from old websites to piece together how it actually worked. I overcame poor planning and forgetting how to do things which would end up tripling or doubling my time in certain areas that I had to get 2 or 3 chars through. But not this. Damn, not this. I was fucked.

So now I have a choice. I'm sure that I can still grind though Hell difficulty if I really wanted to. But what's the point? I have no shot at Ubers or Enigma anymore. All I'm doing now is grinding with terrible items and can show no interesting results from all the build-up and strategy I've been working on.

So now it's come to pass, that I've decided I won't be continuing. I've actually been here before. I've lost items the same way before. Well not so stupidly, but to internet disconnects and what not. Bah! I've experienced this moment before and here is where I would curse this stupid time-wasting game, put D2 back on the storage box and wait for the twinge to play again next year.

Or is it the same this time? Part of me was bitter. Bitter that I was doing so well and came so far, only to lose it all to a silly mistake. Part of me saw the possibilities in the failures I had during my run. Honestly, as the series progressed it probably would not have been quite so interesting with all the mistakes I was making. But the possibilities. I had never played with stat/skill resets before. You know, I should have actually taken a Paladin instead of an Assassin. No, I need the Assassin later to run Nilathak without dying to corpse explosion. Or do I? The decisions. The possibilities.