[Vadriel]

The Gauntlet is a long and grueling area where you can't use any offensive spells. Monsters are not targetable, they ceaselessly attack you, there are aura orbs that drain your stamina and energy, you're bombarded by aerial attacks similar to the act 5 catapults, and parts of it are one helluva maze to boot.

When getting ready for the Gauntlet, you'll want to have a defensive character, not an offensive. Since your attacks literally can't do anything, you'll want to have some good defensive stuff. So you'll want high life and vitality, damage reduction, resistances, and if you want to do anything more than just tank through, a fair bit of energy/mana. Parts of it are fairly straightforward, parts of it are confusing as hell. Here's a brief walkthrough.

In the opening room, there's only really one way to go. Follow the corridor until you get to your first fork, it should be in an area that's kind of oddlooking, like a road in space, no walls. You'll want to take the forks on the left side of your screen, a couple of them make you have to loop around a little bit and take a couple U-turns, but after two lefts you'll get to another intersection where you have to do a little sidestep changeover in the road to go straight. There are a few turns in the road that you just have to negotiate, they're not too hard. Find the right path and take a long road around till you get to a long corridor that actually shows up on your map.

This thing is probably the worst for getting knocked back...there are Poison Spitters, Blow-Up Dolls, and Molten Boulder Traps all through it, as well as all the other basic irritants like Treasurebuses and aerial attacks. If you can trudge on through it, you'll take a left at the end and go along a long corridor till you get to a right turn, it makes a U with the Knockback Cooridor. This is the start of the winding Duriel Maze. It's a cooridor that winds back and forth, filled with the usual BS, but every few turns there's a Duriel's Ghost who chases you around...be careful these guys can do the most damage out of anything in this area...their Charge attack SUCKS.

Anyway, you get through that, and you come to a room with a teleporter in it, just go through it and you're in another area like the first, with the wall-less path in space. Follow this one, and you'll have a couple options at a new fork in the road. This shifts a little bit from game to game, you never know which one it is, and you'll have to check each one. Usually I get the correct one the first time, but sometimes it fools me. Anyways, now you're in a pickle. There is a pretty big area with these spaceroads in the shape of a bunch of 3x3, 8-tile donuts that are connected to one another here and there to make a bitch of a maze. This is one of the two places I always get lost...just trudge through and remember, you generally have to pass through each of the donut areas that has a Mana/Stamina Drain Orb, so that little key helps.

Get through the Donut Maze, and you have to take a left on two parallel SpaceRoads that have Blow Up Dolls and Gargoyle Traps, with several side roads hanging off the upper road. Only one of the side roads leads onwards, the rest of them end in dead ends with Gargoyle Traps. Find the right one, (it's usually several to the left of the entry point), and take a longish road up, take a left to a long road left, another left to a long road down, and a right to a long road up, there may be a little zigging around, but you'll get into another area that shows on your map. It's pretty straightforward, just take the path until you can go right, and you'll end up in a room with a lot of obstructions in it, along with entirely too many Treasurebuses and Acid Spitters. Navigate through it to the door on the other side, and keep going into another very short version of the Duriel Maze. There's only one Duriel's Ghost waiting for you at the end, but he can prove to be a real hassle so try to lose him before getting into the next room.

And the next room is probably the worst one in the level. It's the other one where I get all fouled up and turned around. You're in a BIG room that looks empty except for a buncha Aura Orbs and Blow-Up Dolls, but what sucks is that there are invisible walls where you can't pass, but the monsters can. So the following Duriel or the BUDs will just run across it to attack you, but you have to do a very frustrating winding maze where you can't even see the walls. Now, if you have enough mana to withstand the Aura Orbs' effects, this is where you'll want to use Teleport, because you can go right over the invisible walls with this, in spite of the general inability to use it elsewhere in the Gauntlet. The door onwards is up and to the left, so make for that with Teleport. If you choose to just run it, the path takes you all over the place, and you actually spend most of your time running along the right wall, up to the north wall, over along it, and down to the exit at the top of the left wall.

Go through the doors, across a short bridge, and you're in the last room! It's also pretty damn easy, it's just a copy of Tal-Rasha's Prison, the place where you talk to Tyrael at the end of act 2. It's populated entirely by a few BUDs, but they're usually avoidable if you run fast enough. Get across the room, and step into the Gauntlet Prize Chamber!

Don't get excited yet. You've still got a couple bosses to contend with, Belial and Leviathan. Now, these guys you CAN fight, so you just take em out quickly. Leviathan uses cold spells like hurrican, twister, frozen orb...he's not too hard, but be wary of his Frost Nova he casts when he dies. Belial used to be ok, but he's a bitch now, because if you take too long to kill him, he'll summon a ridiculously huge wave of those irritating Blow Up Dolls...and you'll spend the better part of thirty seconds getting knocked about as they all impact on you before you can get back to killing him. He's a lightning enchanted, and emits Charged Bolts when he gets hit, and I think he Novas when he dies, but he's really not that tough, just irritating with his BUD summons.

Take care of them, and go around hitting the Dungeon Prizes to (hopefully) pick up some of the best items in the game!

I figured I'd put this here in a sticky, so as to be easily accessible to any and all. =)

Also, here's a spoiler of one of the two possible configurations for the Invisible Maze room towards the end, taken from the Nez home page. This aught to help ya out a bit.



In addition, the Natilie's Gauntlet Attire set is perhaps the best available for this. It's tailor-made to be used to buff a character out for the Gauntlet, and it's very very useful just in general.

Natilie's Magic Source - Wizard Staff (item code 348)


Natilie's Recovery - Deflection Bracer (item code 590)


Natilie's Runner - Engraved Belt (item code 607)


Natilie's Health - Slotted Greaves (item code 598)


The boots, belt, and gloves pieces of the set can be made using the recipes in the special recipes book. These recipes can also be found in the sticky thread in this section.

The staff is of a type hard to find normally...usually the base items for the staff only drop from Lazarus or The Summoner, and you'll have to use the upgrade recipe to get them to the right level, as I do believe all of the pieces in the Natilie set are Exceptional, including the staff. The upgrade recipe is also in the sticky thread in this section.

Now, the full set has 9 sockets (2 in each of the gloves, belt, and boots, and 3 in the staff), but you'll not want to abuse them. The full set is nearly maxed on attributes allowed on an item, so if you use items in the sockets that have more than just a couple attributes added, you'll crash your game. I advise using class gems or diversity stones. You'll note that I have them fully socketed with Bone Sets in the above screenies.