Baal? Who's Baal? Oh yeah, he's that demon I killed tonight. Act V on normal has been completed! My character is known as Slayer Nicarra now.

Well, he did kill me once, but I did the run from the teleporter on to Baal and recover the body. You can go back and forth through a portal, he doesn't trap them like Diablo is known to do. In the end, I would lay down a lot of fire traps, then back away till they stopped. Go back and lay down fire traps....

And yes, if you run toward the entry, Baal doesn't seem to follow and you can heal.

The Strat guide says use your best ranged attacks, he gets nasty when you get close.

But doesn't he heal up if you leave and return? Mephisto did. It is going to have to be melee for me and the barbarian. That is about all we do unless I go hire a fire or cold mercenary. I'll have to check his resistances. I do recall that he is resistant to physical attack. We may have a problem.

I assume you drop both sets of weapons that you have equipped if you die.

No, he doesn't heal, or at least not fast. Portal at the ready is a recommended part of the strategy.

You drop all equipment when you die, yes. As an assassin, I put a skill point into shadow master so I can have both a rogue and a copy assassin at the same time. Useful for trying to retrieve your goodies. Basically, the equipment run really was, go resurrect my hireling (almost 20000 gold a pop now), teleport back, call up shadow master, run to Baal's realm, create a portal close to the edge of Baal's realm, run to body and back through portal. Now check, repair and distribute potions in belt. Portal back and fight. Repeat as necessary (only once for the equipment run for me).

I've reached the last waypoint. Worried too much about keeping my barbarian alive against the ancients and died myself. Next time I just let him die and did it myself. Not too hard.

If I choose another hireling rather than resurrect my barbarian, will he still be available later?

No, Pokey, once you replace your hireling, you cant get the old one back (as far as I know)

Thanks, I was concerned about that. Don't want to lose my barbarian, though I wish he had a cold spell.

Keep checking, you may be able to get him a weapon with a cold spell. If the spell is Frost Nova, he'll occasionally freeze the group for you.

The barbarian kept dying against that last strong bunch in the throne room. I traded him for a hireling with a cold spell after taking all his equipment. It was so much easier with the cold spell, but I may go back to a barbarian. I haven't seen any great weapons lately. Luckily when I died against that tough bunch, I was able to buy a pretty good sword and armor. Cash isn't a problem now.

Does cold work against Baal?

I'm pretty sure my Sorceress successfully cast some icy spells against Baal, but Static Charge did most of the damage.

I think I have a big problem. I barely got to Baal when he made a clone of himself. I have died many times and running out of gold. I was able to dash in last time and pick up my original equipment, but I don't think I have dented Baal much. I was using the barbarian. Maybe I'll try the cold hireling again.

Do I have to kill both or will the copy die when Baal does?

You might want to go all the way back to Act 1 and get a rogue (they are archers) and make sure the bow does cold damage (cold and poison both is better). Archers will stand back which makes them a little better.

The copy dies with Baal. Just make sure you are killing the real Baal and not the copy. According to all the cheats, the words Baal and Demon line up perfectly when you have the cursor over the copy. Demon is indented just a bit when it's the real Baal.

Good luck.

Aha, I see what you mean. I was hacking on the wrong Baal, but I made an impression. If this one dies, will he make another?

I did it!!

All by myself. The hirelings wern't any help at all. I killed one Baal and it must have been the copy, though the name looked indented. Then I killed the other. Don't know if there were any more around. My heart was thumping.

That was quite a grandiose ending.

Doesn't it feel good to have done it? Did you try the secret cow level? Unfortunately, I forgot to and then started the next level of difficulty.

Yes, I feel so relieved to have finished. It will be nice to play a game with real saves so if I do something dumb, I have a chance to correct it rather than live with it. Great game otherwise.

I am going to try the cow level today.

Yeah, the save feature is very tough to live with. but some of the character classes are pretty cool. The online char I made is a druid - so far the skills I've picked are pets and shapeshift. A werewolf with a small army of pets makes for an amazing force.