Unable to do anything further in Hellgate: London until the 2.0 patch, I turned back to Diablo 2 today and got my HC necromancer through Act 4 and up to the first waypoint in Act 5, putting him in a good farming spot.

Diablo was a bit tougher than expected, as he instantly crushed all of my skeletons as soon as he appeared, and the golem and merc didn’t last much longer after that. After finding a skill shrine and resummoning a slightly tougher group of skellies, the second time went much better, partly due to getting Decrepify on him early on and partly because he stuck to melee attacks for a while, rather than the much more dangerous lightning. Now, the next dangerous bit is going to be the ancients on the Arreat summit…