One of the most important aspects of a sorc's game is speed. In many situations, she will need to Act quickly to avoid certain death. The speed with which she needs to Act is a often a function of time and space. More specifically, it will be a function of how fast the monsters are and how much space separates you from them. There are some relevant concepts you should always keep in mind when fighting monsters, until awareness of those concepts becomes "second nature" to you.
In wilderness areas, be aware of how quickly monsters can close the gap between you. There will always be some monsters in each Act that can move very quickly, perhaps even faster than you can run. As soon as you identify a monster (or monster pack) as being fast, you need to decide what to do in order to stay out of melee range. If you have time to cast spells, then you should try to do spell damage and slow them down with cold spells, and then run/Teleport to a safer position. If the monsters are too close to safely cast spells, then sometimes running will be sufficient. But if the monsters are as fast as you, then you are only delaying your problem. At some point, you would have to start Teleporting. The section below on escaping danger will go into more detail on situations like these.
Moving in smaller, confined areas is far more dangerous for a sorc than moving in wilderness areas. Hallway-like areas can become clogged with monsters, making escape on foot more risky. Further, because of less available ground space, Teleporting to safety becomes much more tricky. In your haste you may sometimes land in a worse place than the one you just left, or you may not see clearly where to Teleport to if the passages are twisting and have obstacles. Because a sorc has less space to work with, she must use it wisely. The first order of business is to try to clear out your initial starting area, so that you have a safe place to escape to in case you get into trouble later on. Then proceed area-by- area, enlarging the amount of safe space you have behind you. This simple system will work in all cramped areas of the game, and can be thwarted only by Teleporting monsters (there are thankfully not too many of these), revived monsters (you should never see many of these if you have cold spells) and ghosts (which can pass through objects and in some places can come at you from any angle). Duriel's lair is a special case which will get its own discussion below.
Sorcs who do not use cold spells have a special problem in that they do not really have a way to slow down the monsters (unless they have someone to tank for them). If fast monsters come after you, running will often not give you enough space to safely cast spells before the monsters reach you. The Teleport spell becomes all the more important for these sorcs. Nothing is faster than Teleport. If you are not using cold spells, get used to the idea of Teleport as a frequent means of transportation. Many of your battles may well begin not with a display of sorc pyrotechnics, but rather, with some backwards Teleporting intended to give you time to safely cast your offensive spells.
Since speed is so important, you will always want to find items that grant fast/faster/fastest speed increases to abilities such as walk/run, hit recovery, and spell casting. In all of these cases, the benefits stack. You probably do not need more than fastest hit recovery, and a little less than that might be acceptable. Continue on to the spell casting rate section to find out more about the benefits of stacking casting rate bonuses.
Here is probably the single most important tip for survival as a sorc. Before entering into any potentially dangerous situation, you should always have the following question already answered and actively on your mind: What is my escape route? Usually, the only common monster that should ever kill you is the "lag" monster, because before you get into too much trouble to handle, you should already be following your escape plan.
The most natural means of escape is to run, usually (but not necessarily) back to wherever you just came from. Even if the monsters are as fast as you, you can still prepare a Teleport or town portal (TP) while running. You might instead just outright Teleport to wherever it was you were going to run. If you just came from a waypoint, you might think to use that instead. However, waypoints make for undesirable escape routes for a couple of reasons. First, it takes a fair bit of time to activate them and select a new location (which is usually town). During this time, the monsters may catch up to you. This is all quite sporting, but the stakes are rather high. Second, it would no longer be advisable to return by that waypoint because it will probably now be mobbed. Using a TP is probably quicker and will give you an alternate way to get back, instead of two bad ones (mobbed waypoint versus making the trip on foot). If your choice is to escape by going back to town, then try to use a TP. You could afterwards use the nearest safe waypoint, possibly with a little extra running involved, to get back to the monsters.
If you think you have time to cast a cold spell to slow the monsters down before they meet you, then try that first. But understand that if you let a monster get within melee range, it may still be able to hit you even if you successfully cast a cold spell, since you used up some time in casting the spell, during which the monster may be swinging a weapon at you. And if it attacks you, you may be slowed down due to blocking or hit recovery, during which time most of the other melee monsters in the area will try to mob you. This is easily one of the most dangerous situations you will find yourself in. You may or may not be able to get off a spell, depending on whether the monster hits you, how frequently that monster type attacks, and how many monsters are attacking you at once. If you choose to cast a spell, then Teleport is preferable to a cold spell, for the reason just given, and also because Teleport takes effect immediately. Usually though, your best bet in this case is to try to run, hoping that you outrun the monster's attack swing. If you have Teleport hotkeyed, as opposed to having it set to the right mouse button, then running has an advantage over Teleporting in that your response time to issue the command is usually a little faster because you do not need to take the time to switch hotkeys. If your attempt to run succeeds, you will have put a little space between you and the monster(s) and you can now get a spell off. If you do not succeed, the monsters have nearly 100% chance to get past your armor. If you do not block the hit with a shield, you will thus be injured, and possibly get mobbed during hit recovery.
The only time you should not necessarily consider running as the immediate response to a melee attack is if you happen to have a very high DR. If the monsters are too close, then you can take a chance on them taking a swing or two at you, since they may be more likely to miss than hit, given the combined defenses of your armor and shield. This is not to say that it is ever a good idea to have monsters swinging at you, but you have a good chance in this situation to get off a spell, so Teleporting is safer than it would be otherwise. Consult the discussion of armor in the Items section to learn more about the relevance of armor.
If and when you are hit, you might still be able to get away if there is only one monster. But what do you do if you are mobbed? Sometimes death comes so quickly that you have no time to react. But if you are not immediately killed, there are two main options. One is to keep trying to Teleport out of the mess. (This is when having items that increased spell casting rate can really save your skin). When trying to Teleport, click the mouse button repeatedly, but not wildly. If you keep clicking the button wildly, then if you ever do get to Teleport, you might Teleport wildly as well. Who knows where you will end up? You could conceivably make your situation even worse than it was. But if you cannot even get off even a single Teleport, then blasting your way out of trouble is certainly not possible. The only other option for trying to avoid death is to leave the game.
Having at least some bonus to spell casting rate is nice even if only because you can Teleport out of danger more quickly when trapped. As for what it can do for your offensive abilities, the more you stack casting rate bonuses, the more damage you can do over time. Indeed, many sorcs strive to get as many casting bonuses as possible because the cumulative effects can be very powerful. But how much extra speed should you try to get? The answer turns out to be a little complicated.
When you cast a spell, the on-screen animation can be thought of as having two parts. First comes the part after you click your mouse button, causing the sorc to raise her arms in summoning the magic. Next comes the magical effect you see when the spell is cast. What improved spell casting rate basically does is lessen the time it takes for the sorc to raise her arms in casting the spell. This reduction is achieved by removing frames from the arm-raising animation (which normally has 13 frames). The spell animation itself is not affected by spell casting rate. Thus, if you were to cast a spell continuously, you can improve the casting animation but you are still limited by the spell animation. The spell animation time is fixed, is not the same for all spells, and determines how much time you must wait before being able to cast another spell (or do anything else, for that matter). Inferno, lightning and chain lightning get no help at all from speed bonuses. But all other spells are helped, as indicated by the charts I present in the sorc design section.
Wanting to get a lot of items that have casting bonuses puts constraints on the overall quality of items you can equip. For example, getting wall of the eyeless is nice if you are looking to really boost your spell casting, but then you cannot use either Sigon's' or a diamond shield. Likewise, it can be difficult to find good spell casting jewelry that also has other useful properties. So, if you are interested in greatly increasing your spell casting rate, you should give a lot of thought to the pros and cons of different sets of equipment. Being able to cast spells twice as quickly means that you can kill the monsters about twice as quickly, but if you do not have proper defenses, then they may be able to kill you twice as quickly as well.
Not only can your offensive output benefit from the use of casting bonuses, but your defensive abilities can benefit as well. Being able to Teleport out of tough spots is very important. Faster teleporting means better chances of escaping danger, and could outright save your life if you get mobbed.
Spells such as SF and Teleport, which last for only a very brief moment, can thus be cast extremely quickly when stacking casting rate bonuses. Most other spells are helped just as much. But Lightning and CL have a somewhat longer cool down rate than other spells, and are not helped at all by stacking. This is crucial if you are a lightning specialist, because if you are also trying to stack your casting bonuses, then this will affect your various decisions regarding the use of nova and CL.
The benefits of stacking are best seen when you use one spell and cast it repeatedly. It is very easy to choose a powerful spell, such as SF or FO, and dish out very large amounts of damage this way. If you plan to use spell combos often, then things become more complicated. The more frequently you switch your hotkeys during battle, the more quickly you need to be able to do the switching in order to get the full benefits of stacking. It is important to realize that any moment during battle that is not spent casting a spell is a moment where your stacked bonuses are not working for you. As mentioned above, getting a lot of items that speed up your casting rate may force you to sacrifice some other magical properties that you would like to have. So if you take the trouble to get a lot of casting bonuses, make sure that you are actually using all of those stacked bonuses heavily during combat, otherwise it will not be an optimal use of that equipment; swapping in some other kinds of items might serve you better in the long run.
Understand that casting spells more quickly means using up mana more quickly. If you are using any of the higher level spells, then it is very easy to drain your entire mana orb in only a few seconds. So, you would need proportionately better mana regen abilities. This means getting a lot more mana and investing extra skill points into warmth. A rapid burst of FO might clear out an entire area, but if it does not, then having an empty mana orb could get you in serious trouble. On the other hand, spells which usually do not fare well at higher difficulty levels now become possible. One problem with spells like FB and gs is that they do not do enough damage to be useful against high-hp monsters. But by being able to cast them twice as fast, you can as much as double the damage they deal over the same amount of time, and at a very reasonable mana cost. Also, because such spells are easy to reach in their respective skill tress, you can start specializing in them rather early if you wish.
So, what does all of this info mean for the question of how much spell casting speed you should get? The answer that emerges is that it is basically a matter of playing style, and is also a function of the quality of the equipment you have. Do you like the feeling of totally oppressing an entire room full of monsters with SF? Are you willing to bet that even with low resistances, you can kill the monsters before they can kill you? Then a speed-oriented design can suit you well. Do you want your battles to be a little more epic? Do you think that a better way to defend yourself is to sacrifice some casting bonus items so that you can instead have more items that give you better stats and resistances? Then a speed-oriented design is not for you. In any case, always keep in mind that getting casting rate bonuses is not an all-or-nothing proposition. A middle ground, such as wearing Magefist with a single fast cast ring, can be very effective for you in its own right.
One thing you must become adept at if you are to survive is managing crowds of monsters. I will say a few words here about a few specific scenarios.
When you move, the entire crowd of monsters more-or-less moves with you. After all, they all want to kill you. Understanding this behavior allows you to treat crowds almost as you would treat individual monsters, especially if most of the monsters in the crowd use melee attacks. The main idea is to cast an AoE spell on top of the crowd -- or an area where the crowd will soon be -- and then reposition yourself so as to keep the monsters in the area affected by the spell. The simplest example of this is casting BLZ on a crowd and then running around the edges of the affected area, or teleporting back and forth across two opposite ends of it.
When faced with a boss monster and its minions, you often will not get the move-all-as-one behavior just described. So what you need to do is treat the minions as you would individual monsters, killing the boss either first or last, depending on how it interacts with its minions. Generally speaking, when monster resurrection/spawning is involved, you must kill as soon as possible any monster that is doing the resurrecting/spawning. An alternative is to try to separate the boss from its minions, but this is usually not easy, as sometimes the minions will not follow very far from the boss, or the boss has surprisingly long range with its resurrection ability, or the monster will keep spawning an endless number of minions. When monster healing is involved instead (and you will see this in act3), it is usually better to kill whatever is easiest to kill, since dead monsters do not get healed.
Although monsters are sometimes smart enough to retreat from battle, they ultimately know only to come after you. But since you can move around wherever and for whatever reason you like, you are "smarter" than the monsters in that you can lead them where you will. So use terrain to your advantage by making mental notes of good places you see to stage future battles and then leading the monsters there. There exist bottleneck areas, obstacles, and walls in every Act. Learn to use them. For example, if you see a monster hiding around a corner, shooting FO at it is not a bad idea, since the ice bolts will soon have a clear path to the monster, while you are safe from attack. In Kurast, Travincal, and the alter room of the claw viper temple, there exists high ground you can use to give you an advantage over some of the melee monsters. (And yes, the height difference of the terrain can protect you from Fangskin's' lightning enchantment, assuming you are on a higher/lower level than him.)
Mana Stealers: These monsters are especially nasty when they have homing ranged attacks. Such attacks can be outrun, but that is not always advisable, since you might wake up more monsters while running. Luckily, all such monsters can be effectively attacked with cold spells, and so much the better if you have CM. Use cold spells to dispatch them as quickly as possible. Fire is the next best thing to try, although obviously you will not get the slowing effect.
Aura Enchanted: There are only two auras to worry about: Holy Freeze and Fanaticism. Holy Freeze (which is what Duriel uses) is best countered by Teleporting, if you have room to work with. Otherwise you will have to stay in "run" mode in order to dodge melee attackers. Moments like these were made for fastest run/walk boots. Fanaticism is dangerous because it increases the attack rate of monsters, making it more likely that they will stun lock you if they make a successful attack. Other than making sure to keep your distance from these monsters, there is not much that you can do to counter Fanaticism unless you use cold spells.
Cursed: These monsters will cast Amplify Damage on you, which makes physical attacks much more dangerous than usual. This is not as bad as you might think in the case of most melee attackers, since you will not want to stand next to them anyway. But ranged physical attackers can become quite deadly. If you see that you have been cursed with Amplify Damage and there are ranged attackers (such as archers) in the area, immediately try to put some distance between you and them.
Magic Resistant: If you are alone, then you have little choice but to dodge the monster's attacks while wearing it down with spells. You should use your best damage-inflicting spells as much as you can. If those spells are not cold spells, mix them in with cold spells insofar as cold will usefully slow the monster down. SF is never a bad choice. If you have a bow handy, you might try using that instead.
Extra Fast: These monsters may be faster than you, even with fastest run/walk boots on. This is extremely dangerous because it becomes very hard to put space between yourself and the monster(s) chasing you. The only thing faster than an extra fast monster is Teleport. You will need to use it quite often, combined with cold spells, in order to keep the monsters at a distance from you.
Lightning Enchanted: These monsters send out retaliatory charged bolts whenever you hurt them. However, the number of bolts is not proportional to the amount of damage you inflict. Hence, the best strategy is to try to kill the monster in the fewest number of attacks. Basically, this means trying to wear the monster down with SF and then using your favorite high-damage attack to finish it off. If there is some obstacle you can hide behind in order to avoid the charged bolts, then make the most of that opportunity. Such monsters will usually be accompanied by other monsters, in which case, you should try to kill the other monsters first. Considering how dangerous a lightning enchanted monster can be, you might think to try to kill it first. But the other monsters will tend to get in the way of this, and it can be hard to see all of the oncoming charged bolts if monsters are wandering nearby. Killing the rest of the group will make the task of killing the lightning enchanted monster much safer. Any time you can attack the monster from a distance is a good thing. In that regard, FO can be used to great effect, and so can Hydra, as long as the monster is not moving around too much. Be careful about using FW or Blaze though. These spells do not deliver one attack per second, but rather, 25 smaller attacks every 1/25th of a second. Thus, such a monster can end up sending out far more charged bolts than usual, which can easily kill you if you are anywhere nearby. Inferno could also cause similar problems. It has been noticed by some people that Fireball will not always cause a lightning enchanted monster to retaliate. My own experience with this is that the Fireball effect, although reproducible, is not reliable. Finally, since monsters enchanted with an elemental attack have good resistance to attacks of that same elemental type, sorcs who specialize in the Lightning tree will have a tough time dealing with monsters that are lightning enchanted. There is no way around this really, except to try to use SF as much as you can, or better still, use a different skill tree against these monsters.
Teleporting Monsters: Teleporting monsters will start to Teleport when their HP has been reduced to less than 1/3 of what they started with. When they Teleport, they will get back about 25% of their HP. Obviously, they can be hard to finish off. Further, because they Teleport to a seemingly random location, it becomes very hard to target them. Therefore, spells that do not need to be manually targeted at individual monsters can be very helpful. This means using SF (if you have good range with it), Hydra and TS if you have them, and maybe FO. If the monster has Teleported to a place off-screen, a few well-placed hydras will usually reveal the monster's new location for you.
Duriel: Unless you are lucky enough to be in a game with no lag, you will most likely be killed the first time you enter Tal Rasha's chamber, while your computer is loading the new set of graphics/data that is needed to play in the new area. By the time you are able to see and control your sorc, Duriel will have already started attacking her. This may happen even if you hire a mercenary to distract him. Yes, this is unfair. Yes, this is why if you have a Hardcore sorc, you should attempt to fight Duriel only if you have a melee char to go in first.
In fact, in the multi-player version of the game, your best bet to avoid death is always to go into the battle right behind a melee char. Let the melee char take the hits while you cast spells on Duriel, especially SF. Duriel should not take long to kill this way, although keep in mind that the char who is "tanking" for you may well die, in which case, Duriel will suddenly turn his attention to you. Always be prepared for this eventuality. You will not have much time to react.
When fighting Duriel alone, you should first cast a TP outside the entrance to the chamber. Turn on ES, and TS if you have it (and I think Blaze stays on too if you cast it before entering the chamber). Then have Teleport at the ready for when you first enter his chamber. If you are entering his chamber for the first time, then if you are lucky, you may be able to Teleport before you die. While the chamber data is loading, it would not hurt to try to drink a health potion or two. If it is not your first time in the chamber, then you should be able to get the Teleport off even if Duriel is close to the entrance, since you should not be getting much more lag from having to load the chamber data. In any case, whenever you die and decide to continue the battle, a TP should be waiting for you.
There are two main ways to combat Duriel one-on-one, and they are not mutually exclusive. The most well-known way is by casting Blaze and making him run through the flames, while casting SF. You may also try to cast other spells while he is burning in your wake, but the problem is that trying to attack him with ranged spells usually takes up precious time, both to target and to reposition your cursor to issue your next run/Teleport command. He is very fast; turning to shoot Lightning or FB at him can sometimes get you killed (although you might want to try your luck with cold spells such as FN and FO, especially if you have a few levels in CM). SF is always great against high-HP monsters and, like FN, does not need to be aimed. And since Duriel is never far from you, you do not have to worry about him being within range of SF.
The second method, which requires a little more skill, is to Teleport around his chamber while casting offensive spells. The best offensive spell for this by far is SF. Simply Teleport as far away from Duriel as you can, get off as many SFs as you can, and repeat until his HP is low enough to start finishing him off with other spells.
If you want to make it past Duriel with an absolute minimal number of deaths, then there is a third method that people use that does not really require you to battle him all that much. What you do the first time you enter his chamber is get to the other side of it as quickly as possible, cast a TP there, and then immediately go up to town. This serves the purpose of giving you two entrances to the chamber. How you use them is as follows. Enter through the main door, rush through the room casting some spells at Duriel, then quickly get back to town using the TP. If you repeat this procedure over and over again, you will slowly wear Duriel down until he is easy to finish off.
If you are re-entering the chamber after having died, you may not have enough time to safely pick up your corpse. But Duriel hits for huge damage, so your items may not help you much anyway. So you should consider continuing to fight him naked until he is dead. Consider also the possibility that if you try to pick up your corpse, you may not be able to immediately equip all your items. That could be very bad, because if Duriel kills you again while you still have a corpse on the ground, then whatever you were able to equip would drop to floor. What if someone then picks up your items? What if the game lags out before you can get your items back? In either case, you would likely end up losing some of your best stuff.
If you find you are having a lot of trouble killing him, consider leveling up a bit before trying again. If you do not yet have access to Teleport, that would be a very good thing to get.
Some final tips: Do not waste your time pressing a belt hotkey to use a thawing potion. Duriel has a freeze aura that can be applied again right after you drink the potion. It is better to keep rejuvenation potions in your belt instead. Since he hits for very large amounts of damage, you might consider saving some +HP items just for that battle, especially for the first trip into the chamber. Also, since you will be spending much of the battle slowed down by the freeze aura, clearly you would want to equip items that increase your speed, especially your running speed if you will be running, or casting speed if you expect to Teleport frequently.
Hephasto: This guy is quite deadly because he is very fast and will probably kill you if he hits you. To improve your chances against Hephasto, I am a big believer in planning the battle well in advance. While you are clearing out the River of Flame, you should be scouting out areas where you will want the battle with Hephasto to take place. There are generally two methods for attacking him. The first is to run around with Blaze, trying to slowly wear him down. If you run out of stamina during this process, which is a real possibility, you will have to start Teleporting to put some distance between you and Hephasto, before you are ready to use Blaze again. The second method for attacking him involves looking for a barrier that you can Teleport over, or run around, such that he cannot easily reach you. (Pray that he does not have the ability to Teleport.) This would buy you some time and safety to cast spells at him. The idea is to lead him to the area that has the barrier and start using the terrain as much as possible. Whichever of these methods you choose (and they are not mutually exclusive), it never hurts to try to use cold spells to slow him down. (GS or FO would work best.)
Another tip for fighting Hephasto is that if you have the River of Flame waypoint, what you can do is use the waypoint to make trips down to the River of Flame, keeping a TP somewhere closer to the battle, which you can use to quickly get back up to town when you are near death.
Oblivion Knights: Not only do these monsters use many of the spells available to sorcs and necromancers, but there is no way to resist their bone spells (although you can block them with your shield). Worse still, your resistance to bone spells (which are categorized as magic damage, separate from elemental damage) suffers the same resistance penalty as the usual elemental attacks. So, Oblivion Knights in Hell difficulty do 50% greater damage with those spells in addition to the fact that the spell level of monster spells gets a +7 boost per increase difficulty level.
The usual advice when fighting Oblivion Knights is to keep moving. But that is always advisable no matter what monsters you are facing; one would hope for something a little more creative. Also, the fact that Oblivion Knights have such dangerous ranged attacks means that all other things being equal, you would just as soon not even get into their spell range, much less "keep moving" within it. How, then, do you attack them? The best way to attack them as safely as possible is to use whatever spells you have that can effectively increase your spell range. I especially have in mind here Hydra, FO, wide-range SF, and perhaps CL. These spells send attacks that can extend off-screen. The idea would then be to move slowly through whatever area you think will have Oblivion Knights in it, waiting for them to appear. They are also more than happy to signal their presence with their ranged attacks, but those attacks should be easy to dodge since you should see them coming from a fair distance. Once you have determined the position of the Oblivion Knights, use your long-range spells as best you can.
Get to know what the different curses are that they cast on you. If you see a purple haze over your head, then one of them has likely lowered your resistances. Clearly, the idea then would be to avoid their ranged spells all costs. Likewise, if you see a red haze over your head, they may have cast Amplify Damage on you, which would be a good thing to know especially if they are accompanied by melee monsters. Knowing what they have done to you when they cast curses thus has strategic importance for deciding what defensive response is appropriate (aside from blasting them into oblivion :).
Of all the elemental magic spells they use, GS is by far the most dangerous. If you get hit by one of those, you will be chilled. If you are chilled, you cannot dodge attacks as easily. Imagine three Oblivion Knights, one shoots GS and the other two quickly follow up with spells of their own. This can be more than enough to kill you. If you see GS in mid-flight, or even just an Oblivion Knight with cold-colored hands, back off a little and mentally prepare yourself for the possibility that you will be chilled. If you are chilled, try to Teleport to a safer position as soon as possible, especially since spell casting speed is not affected by the fact that you are chilled. Being ready to respond quickly can save your life.
Lord De Seis and his minions are especially nasty. Making matters worse, the game sometimes lags when their seal is opened, much like what happens when fighting Duriel. If you die while fighting them, item retrieval can be extremely difficult. For if you are naked, they will likely kill you if they hit you with an offensive spell. In this scenario, your only chance (for item recovery within that game) is to slowly separate the monsters in order to kill them one at a time.
Lam Elsen's Tome Quest: The Tome is randomly located within one of six sewer areas spread throughout various parts of Kurast. The problem is that usually, when you take the stairs down, you are greeted by a host of monsters. This situation is sometimes referred to by people as a "stair trap". If there is lag when you enter the sewer area, then you will end up in a situation not unlike what happens against Duriel. As you might think, many of the same precautions you follow before entering Duriel's chamber can apply here. One difference here is that, because of the layout of each dungeon area, you can try to Teleport out of your starting place into a nearby room which may or may not have monsters in it. If you are mobbed, or nearly mobbed, and cannot get control of the situation, then consider Teleporting blindly into a nearby room. This can often buy you enough time to make a TP, hopefully far away from the stairs. At this point you can choose to either make a TP and go to town, or instead Teleport around in search of the Tome without actually fighting anything. Whether or not you find the Tome, you can always make a fresh TP and escape. If you get an open space to stand in, feel free to start reducing the monster population. Be warned, however, that the Tome is guarded by a large pack of corrupt rogues whose boss can cause serious problems depending on what its magical enhancements are.
The Five Seals: Opening the 5 seals can be a real pain, since the monsters that suddenly appear sometimes do so right on top of you. In particular, the Infector of Souls and his posse are extremely fast, which can leave you with little or no time to react when they suddenly show up. But two can play at this game. One of the nice things about spells like FW and BLZ is that their effects last for quite a while, meaning that they can be cast before you actually need them. You could, for example, place a few blizzards over the entire area, open a seal and then Teleport out of the mess. But that would be mean...
One thing you sometimes see suggested is to use Telekinesis to open up the seals. The idea is to stand at long range from a given seal and then use Telekinesis to open it. However, depending on the layout of the Chaos Sanctuary, sometimes the monsters spawn at a distance from their seal (right where you would more-or-less be standing when using the Telekinesis strategy), and at other times, they will spawn more-or-less at their seal. If you know that De Seis will spawn at the seal, as opposed to spawning at a distance from it, then Telekinesis is good to use, otherwise not. Likewise for The Infector of Souls. The Grand Vizier of Chaos always seems to spawn away from the relevant seal, so Telekinesis would actually give you less time to react to his oncoming posse. In any case, the best strategy against the Vizier's group is to hit them with some cold spells (if you have any), and then Teleport over the whole group so that you can move the battle to the wider areas of the Sanctuary. Remember that these monsters stack; if you can get them to stack on top of each other, then Teleporting over the whole bunch should be much easier.
How to conserve life: If you are in the middle of combat, you should always drink a health potion once your life orb falls below 50%. This is because the next hit might well kill you. On higher difficulty levels, you may want to drink one at any time you incur damage, since the monsters hit so hard, and it takes time for the orb to refill. In fact, I strongly recommend having at least one column of full rejuvenation potions in your belt for emergencies. If your life orb is above 50%, and you are avoiding taking more hits, and you have items that replenish life, then you can often just let your life replenish back to 100% without the aid of potions. And of course, take advantage of any potions that fall to the ground.
How to conserve mana: You will sometimes find that you are spending mana at a dangerously fast rate. And the last thing you want is to run out of mana in the middle of a battle. There are some things you can do to help yourself out without sacrificing your effectiveness in combat:
Setting up a TP every once in a while is not a bad idea. When you are outmatched by the monsters, you can often run back to it and thereby get to town quickly. This is especially useful in Act4, since running back to town may mean leaving monsters on the stairs of the Pandemonium Fortress. If you do not have any of the waypoints for Act4, then this is a very bad thing to have happen. (In the event that this happens, and if you have patience, what you can do is turn on your SA and stand at the boundary between town and the Outer Steppes. The monsters will not be able to hit you, but they can be injured by your SA. However, if there are other players in the game, then the monsters will probably regen their health too fast for them to be killed by the cold armor.)
This section was last modified: October 25, 2000.
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