Long post! Sorry :p

A couple hours ago I logged on my brother's old druid and saw skarlon and rokyl both up, so I switched to Tecmos and gated out of the FG area (why'd I camp in there anyways? /sigh) to go snag an imp. I fought/lulled my way back to the FG area and ran into the first one pathing near the lava. Pet beat him down np. Lulled one of the two giants just inside the brown door up there from around the corner, killed them single np too then blurred pet to heal him up and headed up into Tranix's room.

I saw 2 giants, and they were a long ways apart. Cool, I can get singles without even any lull fanciness! Or not!! I got 4, 3 warriors and a wizard, I scrambled backwards down the ramp a little bit, pet went flying in after I caught some of a frost nuke from the wizard... it was a mess. I managed to root two of the warriors right away, but I lost my bedlam+rune and a bunch of HP before I backed off of the 4, rooted the 3rd warrior, and backed up myself and pet a bit more for pet to kill the wiz. Fortunately the wizard went down quickly, pet just needed a couple bedlams. I believe I drank 4-5 charges of a stinging wort pot but was still pretty well-off in terms of mana because of a ToT on the wiz. My pet was down to like 10% when the wiz died though (all roots still holding) from taking damage during the pull, so I CHed him because memblurring to heal my pet while keeping 3 bellycasters rooted didn't sound like much fun, and neither did camping out... although now in hindsight a dazzle on my pet would have let me camp off the giants without having to go back over to freeti to find a new pet. Oh well. It's not even 1k!

The first screenshot I got of this mess was after pet was engaged with the first of the warriors and the second two warriors came down after me when roots wore off: http://postimg.org/image/mytyb6af5/

And here are a few more pretty boring SSs of FGs dying while I bedlam/rune myself/my pet: http://postimg.org/image/y9q4ym0qv/ and http://postimg.org/image/70rb7lmzv/ and http://postimg.org/image/6uls6js5d/


So finally it was clear to Skarlon. Here's his room: http://postimg.org/image/hfretyddj/

After I went and got my pet charmed up and up into tranix's room, I lulled the FG warrior around that corner there and brought skarlon out. Tash, fetter, tepid deeds (forlorn just has such a long cast time when I'm getting beat on by an unslowed level 53), and I backed out to let my pet do some work: http://postimg.org/image/s6ppfxn6z/

Pet took a bit of damage through the bedlam I had on him while I got bedlam+rune back up on myself and hit him with another bedlam, but even with just a 50% slow a level 53 warrior mob doesn't really do that much damage: http://postimg.org/image/qr3ona233/

I took a turn letting Skarlon smack my magical barriers so that my pet could do some backstabbing to speed things up a bit next. He's got a 315 BS in on this shot, not too shabby: http://postimg.org/image/pinpi36tj/

Skarlon started fleeing, which caught me by surprise, but he only took like 1 step back towards the warrior in his room before he turned and wandered back out into Tranix's area, leaving his back exposed to delicious imp backstabs until he died and coughed up the legs: http://postimg.org/image/c7gvnjjop/


At this point, a Full Circle monk was hanging around and said he was wanting to kill some fire giants with a ranger buddy of his. I figured there was no harm in speeding up the clearing process by killing giants with them (the 4-spawn was just repopping from Drumas and I clearing it earlier today) plus a few other giants up since I'd already solod a 4-giant pull without TOO much trouble. That imp sure was nice with someone to tank giants other than me. 100+ DPS!


We cleared to lair in no time, I refreshed buffs and pulled Rokyl back down the stairs just to be safe in the event of a naggy pop... haha. I tashed, hit him with tepid deeds, then started refreshing bedlams on myself while my pet went to town on Rokyl's exposed posterior: http://postimg.org/image/iqcnp3707/ (oops, just noticed I had chloro during that fight... oh well, loot SS looks like I didn't have any skin buffs from the ranger and I didn't take HP damage such that chloro helped anyway!)

Rokyl was nice to me in that he decided to cast MR nukes almost exclusively. I think he only stuck one partial MR nuke on me by the time by pet had dropped him under 10%, and with bedlam spam on myself he still hadn't even gotten through all of rune: http://postimg.org/image/ais1rjimn/

Rokyl wanted to try to keep things a little interesting though, so he channeled a gate when he was at 1% and immediately summoned my pet across the lair: http://postimg.org/image/8nk743t9d/

Nagafen didn't want to come defend his Magi though: http://postimg.org/image/yqgla22rx/



I've got an inside track on Tranix spawns thanks to Llog also, so hopefully tomorrow I'll get him solod (whether or not I get any loot to show for it) and I'll hang up my soloing hat (for now) and maybe see about some duo grandmaster stuff. We don't have a duo legend, after all, although Svenn is really close!

Tecmos, in case I have missed it - do you ever record the footage?

Some of us made it down to Dartain on our own . . . kind of :D

Solo Legend :D


I logged Tecmos into solb a couple hours before Tranix was due, figuring I'd snag a LDC and head into lair with it and just sock on his spawn keeping the spider fettered while I waited for him. Right next to me when I logged in though, were a FC monk and shaman who also were headed to Tranix. I proposed I solo it and they get the loot so I could avoid any drama or anything that would spoil this counting as a challenge kill, they accepted, and we sat around killing some LDCs and FGs while we waited.

Turns out LDCs have exceptional MR though. The one I had was only level 45, but he was breaking fetter early about 50% of the time even with tash. Compare that to level 50 mobs in HS which NEVER EVER break fetter early when they are tashed. So I ended up leaving the spawn to FC while I went and got an imp.

I really hate this zone though. Sonic bats pathing out of nowhere, lava beetles hiding in the lava, green aggro and see invis and OMG I HATE THIS ZONE. It took me like a half hour to get from entrance to solb to freeti, grab an imp, then get back to tranix room.

Die you bastard mobs, die: http://postimg.org/image/6mplo2xbr/


The spawn was like 5-6 minutes later than I thought it would be, and it was driving me nuts to wait for it, knowing that this was my last kill for a while: http://postimg.org/image/b5pfqhpvl/

But finally, he popped. My pet took the HT right away and then I moved in to tash, root, slow: http://postimg.org/image/cuw89osv7/

From there I took turns letting my pet get beat on while I refreshed bedlams and tanking Tranix so pet could backstab. He ended up sticking some dots on me, though, which was pretty annoying... but I didn't feel like using a cure pot and I was too fail to remember to click off grim aura when I saw a magic dot incoming: http://postimg.org/image/rz41nlenn/

Then I had a charm break and was a bit slow recognizing it as such and stunning my pet, but I did hit the imp with a stun and then fire off a boltrans while the slowed tranix was hitting/casting on me, then bedlam and back off. I decided a couple stinging wort clicks were warranted, since I was under 50% from dots and the charm break: http://postimg.org/image/mr6a32dif/

The rest of the fight proceeded normally, with me throwing bedlams/runes on myself and my pet and alternating tanking and medding.

Tranix fleeing: http://postimg.org/image/6elh1n135/
Loot: http://postimg.org/image/wbibic2st/


Solo Legend :D



I really have NO motivation to do god-mode soloing though, except perhaps a fear break and golem kill sometime in the not-too-near future.

I'm glad that so many people enjoyed reading my kill stories and checking out the screenshots and stuff. I really had a blast with the challenge! I probably wouldn't have kept playing p99 if I hadn't rolled up Tecmos with the aim of working on this, but it's now been nearly 7 months since my first solo kill and it was a couple months before that when I made Tecmos!

Thanks for all the help I got with strategies, rez/CR help, and chitchat while trying to pop nameds that I got, especially from Loraen, Daire, Drumas, Briscoe, and the former Iznog.

Short of working on breaking fear solo or maybe (BIG maybe) doing some duo grandmaster kills, I'm probably going to be back to farming and playing a couple alts now... although I do have an idea for something inspired by my stories in this thread that I might jump into here soon :)

Awesome stuff!

Grats Tecmos :) made the tranix kill look easy!

Grats Tecmos!

Shouldn't part of the solo artist challenge be clearing in there all by yourself?

IE: If Tranix is up, I can go in there by myself with consumables and kill him? Or get the charmed pet completely solo also?

Still, good kill.

Yeah, help is a bit cheesy, though I've gotten the impression over the course of this thread that there is some wiggle room (it even says as much in the first post, really), especially when it comes to the named giants, since it is basically impossible to find this whole area of solb fully spawned. There was some discussion on point when someone, I think it was Svenn, solod tranix without his guards up.

Found the discussion:


Now I do feel a little bad about duoing around in hole, but not TOO bad, seeing as we took a route that was far harder to do duo than just dropping in with a DA idol then soloing to Dartain would have been! :p

I haven't, only screenshots. I play on a mediocre laptop, not sure how video recording while doing this stuff would work out on it. That'd be fun though. Maybe I'll see about getting some fraps-ish thing on my desktop and doing some of the more interesting fights again with video instead of just stills... eventually. Maybe I'll go get Dartain again and video it so that I can feel better about getting to him solo, lol :)