All About Death
by Theresa Garcia
We had our first death. I sort of feel personally responsible. My companion walked into a green poison cloud left behind by some creature and it killed him. It was after a fight. I already knew what poison clouds were capable of. I encountered them in Diablo 2. I knew how fast they can take down your health. My companion did not know. They stepped into one and my pinky finger was too slow to reach my push to talk button in time and he died. I wanted to warn him but my brain moved slow. I think I may have started speaking as he died. I resurrected him and we kept adventuring like nothing ever happened but there was still regret.
As I mentioned, I have played mostly hardcore characters. My brother and I played so much Diablo II that in order to keep the game interesting we started playing hardcore characters and playing without potions. Deaths become such a horrible thing especially when you spend an entire day working on leveling a character only to lose them so close to the end of an act. So, even to this day I don’t like to use potions and I don’t like to die. But I lost my partner.
We persevered. By this time we were looking for 3 pieces of an object which would lead to the final boss. That translates to running around an area killing monsters until we find a dungeon then going through the dungeon to get the piece at the end. It was a straight forward assignment and we completed it without incident. After that and a bit of story we moved on to fight the final boss in act 1.
Getting to him was easy. A leisurely stroll through a typical dark dungeon. When we got to the boss though, in stark contrast to the Skeleton King, we found ourselves in a battle worthy of being called a boss fight. The boss hit very hard and the floor itself was riddled with hazardous obstacles.
We fought hard but for the second time I lost my partner and my health was waning. I resisted it. I tried not to but my companion had fallen and my health was too low so… I hit the ‘Q’ key (hot key for potions). “… I used a potion. I didn’t want to do it,” I said over the microphone. Then I proceeded to attempt a resurrect. It didn’t work. The boss had a move that interrupted me. I ran away using some of my classes skills and fired a few extra shots toward the boss. Then I went in for a second resurrect attempt. This time it worked. My partner was alive again.
We continued the fight but he kept bring down our health. I wasted a lot of energy trying to evade him. We were bring down his health pretty low but we were near death also. Then I noticed my companions health had gotten too low. He was about to die. I vaulted toward a health shrine that was near by. I reached in just in time. From almost nothing my companion’s health jumped up to max.
Then we won.
Act 1 about to end
It was over. We moved on to Act II. Act II is the just like Lut Gholein in Diablo II. The town is almost a new version of Diablo II’s Act II. The night was still young so we continued our adventure through the first half of the act.
We had a series of simple tasks in front of us but I got sloppy and too confident so something horrible happened. We entered a cave and a mini-boss caught us off guard. It shouldn’t have happened. It had us cornered. It unleashed a flurry of attacks. It was only a few seconds later that we were both dead.
It was my first death. I was glad that I had made it through act 1 but I was disappointed with myself again especially since it was so simple a fight. It wasn’t a fitting end for me. I would have preferred to be taken down by a real boss but I wasn’t. We re-spawned at the check point and were able to beat him as fast as he beat us. Not long after that we went to town and stopped for the night.
