Woo!!  Excellent job folks!  A good descriptive tale too. It was really good to hear an IM tale, it's been SO long

Echo'ing others- yes, with one alive it's an official IM victory, only those continuing to NM need clear all of 16. Dead characters get a free res (game doesn't do it, you get to bring him back) when Diablo dies, with the tremendous release of power he brings. Those heading to NM get free ID of all remaining unid gear, but the flip side- NO pools can go over, those are intrincisally part of the dungeon. To survive NM cats you would need a HUGE increase in AC, it's just _brutal_ down there. Then after that, lack of resists will really start to hurt. The other rough thing, you're both "behind the stunlock curve". I'm not sure when that happened for you, but at some point you must have noticed you no longer put monsters in to stunlock. Dmg needed to do that is monster lvl + 3, so 33 pts dmg on dlvl 16. Without consistent stun, it's not long before you're toast.

Grats on the flamedart. each game it's different, but there is frequently one KEY unique that makes the difference between victory and "darn, so close". For the Psycho team (me W, kop S) it was Schaeffer's hammer and constricting ring duo.

Again, congrats. I don't think I could stomach v1.08 for IM  8-\

Charis