After having completed Nightmare my original plan was to level him to 33 before starting hell, to be able to equip Kuko Shakaku, the ultimate bow for a Ranger (at least for this task). But I said to myself 'why bother with any exp sessions, just kick him into Hell right now'. All I did were some visits at lower Kurast in Normal difficulty to get UltraLow's brave companion Geschef (an Act 3 Cold Wizard) up to level 25; otherwise he would fall far behind UltraLow's level due to the huge experience penalty below lvl 25. Of course UltraLow gained some experience during this sessions too and ended up with lvl 28.

So give Hell difficulty at lvl 28 a try. It shouldn't take too long to get to lvl 33 to finaly get that cool colored bow. For those of you who are interested in the numbers and equipment (like me), here is the outfit of UltraLow when starting Hell:

 Equipment

Iratha's Coil (flawless ruby)
Hellcast (Nef, exploding bolts !)
Twitchthroe (perfect ruby)
Bloodfist
Rare Demonhide Sash with +37 life +29 lightning resists
Sanders Riprap
Rare ring with +20 fire resits +19 lightning resisst
Angelic Halo+Wings
Tons for charms with +life and +resists
Crushflange (33% Crushing Blow)
Steelclash (perfect diamond)
Long Battle Bow with 6 Tals for special occasions

 Stats (all with equipment)

Str 60
Dex 65
Vit 148
Eng 15 (base)

Dmg 72-336 with Hellcast
Defence 170
Life 873
Mana 82
Resists 30/-43/55/-80

 Skills

Smite 1 (+1)
Holy Shock 5
Blessed Aim 1
Thorns 1 (+1)
Vigor 1
Cleansing 1
Unused 19 (to be invested in Conviction & Salvation)
Prerequisite rest ;)

 Merc

Blood Crescent
Breast Plate with 3 flawless rubies
Duskdeep
Wall of the Eyeless

Life 328
Resists -28/-28/-28/-8


  Lvl 28 Entering Hell Difficulty
With an autohitting weapon like Hellcast Act 1 shouldn't be too hard to get through, and I should hopefully be able to change to Kuko before facing Andariel - let the experiment start.

The killing speed early on varies quite a lot. Some like Quill Rats are killed with two hits, others like Windigos (and other cold immunes) required a lot more treatment. I switched to Smite and let the Crushing Blow of Crushflange bring their live down to about 1/4, and used the xbow for the rest. Smite is still really usefull, as it allows you to kick the critters around and stunlock them. It's a bit wierd tough, as the buildin knockback and stun seems to work all the time, but the chance to actually deal dmg seems to depend on clvl/mlvl ratio and target defence.

So Smite is the primary attack against Corpsfire, after having killed his minions. The stunlock works pretty well against bosses, and UltraLow was hit only 2 or 3 times.

A Gargantuan Beast boss pack (PI/CI/spectral hits) near the Cold Plain waypoint required a different strategy - CB doesn't work on PIs. But Smite is still usefull to isolate one or two minions from the rest and take them down one by one. The firering power of Hellcast combined with Holy Shock isn't yet high enough to fight the whole pack.

  Lvl 29 Burial Grounds
Geschef has to help against the Skeletons and Zombies at the Burial Grounds. He keeps dying a lot - when confronted with 3 or more melee critters, they stunlock him which results in instant death. But he is still usefull in many situations, and any other merc type won't have a better chance to survive IMO. Bloodraven is quite vulnerable against elemental attacks, a few hellcasted bolts are enough.

UltraLow finds himself confronted with a quadruple boss pack at the beginning of the Underground Passage. First is a Corrupt Rogue (LE CE CI manaburn). Hmm might hurt a bit with -43 cold resists in bow gear - switch to the backup bow (6 Tals). Turn them green and keep running. The other three bosses were all Skeleton Archers. CE multishow/FE manaburn cursed/CE PI, all poison immune of course - time for Hellcast again. These Skeleton Archers hurt when being cursed !

  Lvl 30 Dark Wood
UltraLow was cursed by Treehead Woodfist. Well let's ignore that and melee him with Smite. The stunlock didn't work perfectly, and UltraLow had to take some hits, but they didn't hurt too much. Griswolds hits were more painfull (CE cursed extra fast poison immune); I will have to do some work on the crappy cold resist later on. Hellcast and running was once more the only reasonable option left. Of course UltraLow activated a Goatman Boss pack when doing so, which made this battle a bit more exciting :).

All Gargantuan Beasts bosses seems to spawn PI, the one found in the passage to the Black Marsh is already the fifth one. This one is cursed spectral hitting - bring out the poison bow again. He dropped a Bloodletter - another one for my collection.

Three boss packs in Tower III, and all near the entrance, two of them LE. The merc is dead in a second. I let UltraLow run past them, hoping to find some free space, and had luck. Once the bosses are separated from each other it's managable for UltraLow.

Tower V presented another nice task for UltraLow. A MSLE CE Corrupt Rogue Archer, mixed with a PI spectral hitting might enchanted Goatman. The merc vanished in the first could of white death he triggered, but UltraLow could take a sidestep and was untouched. Be carefull now and no mistakes ! Hehe when writing this I would count not having skilled Salvation yet as the first mistake. I somehow forgot that completly ;). But I switched off Holy Shock immediatly, succeded to lure the MSLEB to one of the fortunately unpopulated side rooms and started to kill everything else including the Gotman with (you might have guessed it) poisoned arrows. Proceed to the MSLEB. I could have skipped, but hey I like the challenge. And it's not too dangerous anyway. The middle room is cleared from critters, lure her out again, try to land a poison arrow and keep running. Repeat when the injection is consumed until she's dead. And then - wait a few seconds after the death, as their might still be some invisible sparks triggered by the death swirling around ! I was reminded to that rule after running to early towards the corpse. Some sparks hit UltraLow, but no MS ones as they certainly would have removed more than 200 life from the red bubble.

A LE Wraith boss pack later UltraLow proceded to the Countess who gave up without much resistance. She dropped a nice +59 life 24% fhr lvl 22 heavy belt - ethereal, but usefull for a spellcaster. Wierd thing - I got the quest, but the chest did not open.

  Lvl 31 Outer Cloister
Well not really Outer Cloister. Ian wanted to demonstrate me the use of Necro curses when Smiting, so I just ran the way to the Outer Cloister waypoint past all monsters and joined a game with Ian. Smite/Crushing blow gets a huge benefit when hitting cursed monsters, the number of attacks required is far less than half ! Using a wand with Curse charges might be a thing to think about.

Back into the game an on to the Smith. He showed up - Extra strong Extra fast Fanatic. Only Cursed is missing to make him the ultimate evil of Act 1 for melee chars. But UltraLow is a Ranger :). I lured him out of his hide all the way to the open areas of Outer Cloister. Then I decided to pump Vigor up to 4, because a lot of running will be required. And equiped the poison bow of course. When luring him out I already had some frightning moments due to desync causing the Smith to appear/disappear several times, and UltraLow had to suffer one hit which let the red bubble drop down to half (which is not equal to half of his life, the display is not 1:1). So I did not want to rely on the knockback of Nefed Hellcast, but tried to keep moving all the time except when shooting a single arrow in the hopefully right direction. After 5 breathless minutes the Smith was snatched away. I like this kind of victories :).

  Lvl 32 Jail III
Next job for the Poison bow in Catacombs I - a MSLEFE Tainted. Seems I have to use poison against all tricky targets. The battle went pretty much the same way as before, except that I maxed resists with lvl 2 Salvation this time and was able to make some screenshots with passing by WCoDs. Later on, some critter dropped a Cobalt Mesh Belt of the Whale (24% cold resists +95 life) - might be an option at lvl 37.

  Lvl 33 Catacombs II
Cool lvl 33 finally and close to the Catacombs waypoint too. Everything went fine so far, I could feel the improvement of every single point in Holy Shock, and things should get even easier now. After reaching the waypoint I could not wait to mule. Kuko with Shael of course, some crafted hitpower gloves with 30% lightning resists beside knockback, Rockstopper with 35/38/34, and Vipermagi + Iratha's Coil for the merc. Damage nearly doubled to 92-680 not the mention the increased speed. Life dropped a bit to 932, but resists are improved now to 46/5/75/-80. Hmm still not a single piece with poison resists - hey wait why not using the +10% small charm from the stash.

Some boss packs later (PI/CI/FE/LE Vampire took longest) and quite happy with the increased offensive power it was time to provoke Andariel. I replaced the healing potions with Antidotes to compensate the crappy poison resists. First try was to punch her around a bit with Smite, but that didn't work as well as I thought so I switched to Kuko. It did not even required to much running and the 4 Antidote potions from the belt were enough. Time to show the potential of Kuko in Act 2 :).