DCSS: Sprankton, the High Elf mess.

[grebo]

I was getting worried about my Deep Elf conjurer not having any ability to switch up his spells, and his lack of melee ability so I decided to start a High Elf caster, somewhat less casting skill and significantly more melee ability. 

Took me at least a dozen tries to get one guy past level 7, High Elf corpses littered the dungeion floor.  Finally I was doing well, and the shield I found on level 11 insured that I would live a while longer.  Sticky flame was also key, that spell is godly. 

I've been thru the orc mines, didn't venture into the elves house, won't go there until I get fire resist.  I've cleared the whole Lair and a bit of the swamp.  While in the 2nd swamp level there were 2 named adventurer mobs, and this one bitch cast me into the Abyss.  That place sucked ass!  I burned 4 teleport scrolls running away from things and finally found a gate out, only to forget that whatever was next to me would come too.  I came out with a Rakshasha and an Abomination next to the 2 bitches that had sent me into the abyss.  Sticky flame and hacked one to death but got diseased and was being swarmed by Rakshasha, the other bitch was tossing lightning bolts and other pain, I burned 8 Heal Wounds potions staying alive (barely) but finally a lucky blink got me far enough ahead that I made it up the stairs to safety.  Didn't think I was going to make it out of that one.  That bitch is gonna die!

The one bitch that I did drop had a flaming sword of looking cool, so I've got to go get that.  Next area is probably the Hive, I'm definitely ready for them bees.I also need to find some flame resist (or any resist, all I have is poison).  Other than that, I'm doing pretty well I think.  I've got 2 decent artifiacts and somewhat ok other equipment.  Spells are no problem, I've got a stack of 12 books to pick from.  Currently working on Identify, then maybe Haste or somesuch.

I'll try to update this regularly as I go along with this guy.

[grebo]

That looks like a fun place!  Let's go in there!
2 orc knights, a storm dragon skeleton, a fire giant skeleton, centaur warriors, other crap.  Was a great time.  And the reward?  A buckler of +1 strength was the closest thing to useful.  Bleh.

On the plus side, I returned to the swamp, killed that other nasty bitch and snagged my longsword of fire +4/+3.  Nice!  After I got my identify working I discovered I had a bunch of weapon enchanting scrolls, so now it's +7 +6.  With my ring of slaying +0 +4 I'm taking shit apart!  With an elf!  I one hit an orc warrior. 

Chewed through the Hive in no time, slaughtered and ate the whole place.  The queen was tasty.  Nothing particularly useful there either tho. 

Still too scared to go into the elf halls as I haven't gotten any more resists at all!  Hope I find something soon.  I think I'll poke around in the vaults for a while next, or maybe the swamp again.  I have 6(!!!) scrolls of armor enchanting waiting for when I do find something useful.

Anyone gotten anywhere with summoning?  I'd really like to get that school developed but it seems somewhat... unreliable.

Current status: 

[Raging Turtle]

Looks like a good run so far.  Could you take off the code settings on your character dump so it scrolls a bit easier? 

[grebo]

Ok, done.  I liked the code setting bc everything would line up right, but I'm not in love with it.

E2A:  Didn't have any playtime yesterday, and only an hour or so today.  Made it thru level 1 of the vaults, there was a serious lot of enemies.  Ugly things, orcs of all types, 6 hill giants, a mess of trolls.  I'm really liking how this character is shaping up.  I can take an orc knight or skeletal warrior fairly reliably 1v1 with no need to use spells.  With the spells I am as close to invincible as I have ever been, just have to be careful not to get too cocky. 

Treasure was uninspiring.  2 rings of hunger and a ring of fire.

[Slayerik]

Im doing pretty good on a Spriggan Wanderer (was a Random non good choice by the game)...my biggest problem so far is my dependance on wands if shit is frost resistant.

I'm sure I'll die to some bad stairwell or something soon...but we'll see.

[grebo]

I've still got my lvl 10 spriggan, he's on vacation.  The main problem I was having was I just couldn't do enough damage, my main attack was a poison blowgun and that got very tiresome.  I think spriggans are good with darts, maybe a hand crossbow is the answer...

[Slayerik]

Well, my spriggy wanderer bit it. Went down a stairwell into some caster bitch and like 4 crazy zombie things. With my stabbing ability I thought I could kill the resting bitch caster but she woke up at the last tile.... 21k or something though, i'll post the morgue later.

[grebo]

Got some playtime tonight.

First was playing around in the vaults, level 2 went fairly smoothly, but level 3 ramped it up to ridiculous levels.  I came across an orange brain which pulsated and summoned 4 ugly things, 2 hydras and 4 yaktaurs.  Nutso!  I also came across some named dragon mob with the description "an extremely old and powerful dragon" so I didn't fuck with him either.  I went to the swamp instead.

Got the rune from the swamp!  There was quite a pile of stuff guarding it, but sticky flame and stair dancing won the day eventually.  Don't know if there is a special trigger or what, but it seemed like hydra started coming out of the walls after I grabbed the rune.  Hydra everyfreaking where.

Found a scroll of acuqirement somewhere and it grabbed me a +2 cloak with 2 levels of fire resist!  Elf rapeage ensued in rapid order, cleaned out the whole place.  Level 7 has some super super nasty elves.  Thankfully there are pools of deep water and they are not confusion proof, many of them staggered into the deep water and drowned courtesy of mephitic cloud.  The useful treasure of the elves was a +4+4 hit/dam ring that made me less hungry.  I now don't have to worry about food at all, as I can eat every corpse I see thanks to my necklace and I hunger slowly thanks to my ring.  I have a giant pile of food in my stash already.  I also found a wand of haste that I dumped several recharge scrolls in to.  It's very handy.

There was a crazy shapeshifter on level 6 of the elf place, usually they are no trouble but this guy kept changing and completely healing every 2-6 moves, and changing into huge dragons and fire/storm giants.  Was a major pain in the ass but I finally killed him by hasting myself and smacking him as fast as possible between changes.

Learned Bolt of Iron, it's a very nice addition.  I think I'll also pick up airstrike to round it out.

Guess I have to do the vaults next, don't want to go into the slime pits yet as I don't have corrosion resist.  Maybe the snake pits instead... I dunno.

[Slayerik]

Holy fuck that's a run.

[grebo]

Decided to do some more of the vanilla dungeon.  There was a level, 19 or so, that had at least 30 ogres of various types.  I came down the stairs into a group of 10 or so, but thanks to the fact that I can fireball myself without harm, I easily blasted them.

Level 21 had a big orc temple attached to it, there was a high priest and a warlord, a bunch of gold, but no nice items.  There was also a small wax room with red wasps inside.  Red wasps are quite powerful but seem to be susceptible to fire.  That worked out well! There was a gateway to Hell and to the Abyss on this level too.  No thanks, I've had enough of the Abyss and Hell couldn't be easier than the more mundane levels I have left to play with.

Level 22 is a ton of fun.  Lots of stone giants.  I don't like stone giants.  They throw rocks that regularly do 40+.  There also is a giant area surrounded by stone walls with no apparent door.  Lots of creatures inside.  I've been around the place a bunch of times searching but can't find any way in.  I think maybe you have to use shatter to get in there, but my transmog and earth magics are waaay short of the necessary levels to even think about casting a level 9 spell. 

I've also taken to chopping up corpses even if I can't eat them.  There seems to be roving sneaky necromancers that go around constantly animating dead things, and stone giants are hard enough to kill the first time, I've gotten tired of killing their zombies too.

Didn't really find anything worth using, think I am going to hit the snake pits next. 

[grebo]

Did some more vanilla dungeon, found stairs up into that stone wall blocked off area on the next level down.  There is another green glass walled off area in the middle that really seems inaccessible....  tho I do have a cursed ring of teleport... but the 2 dragons in there lead me to believe that may not be wise.

Found a scroll shop with 2 enchant weapon scrolls, now my protection sword is +7+6 just like my flame one.

Death oozes... not fun.

Not much else going on, I'll post the character file after whatever happens tomorrow(death!).

[Raging Turtle]

Pretty sure you can use a wand of disintegration or digging to get through that glass. 

[grebo]

Pretty sure you can use a wand of disintegration or digging to get through that glass. 

Nah, unfortunately they seem to be impervious to everything.  I did manage to randomly teleport in there, it's split into 4 areas with conveniently placed teleport traps to get you out again.  Fighting a shadow dragon in such tight quarters got a bit hairy, glad I had on a ring of life protect.  I think I'll go back and do the other areas after I find some method of teleport control as randomly getting in there is a major pain.

Got the second rune!  Tore the snake pit apart.  Much easier than the elven halls was despite the fact that I believe everything to be poison proof.  Lightning bolt was key as I repeatedly lured bunches of naga into a narrow hallway and blasted them apart with lightning.  They didn't have any treasure at all other than the rune.

I did a labrynth, was getting a bit worried but eventually found the minotaur and tore him apart without a scratch.  He had a cloak of +4int and a robe+3 of +4 evasion.  I would wear the robe if I could get poison resist some other way.

Probably will be the vault next.  Go and see how strong that ancient dragon really is.  Hopefully 5 bolts of iron will take him down.

[grebo]

God damn the vault is hard!  It contains an absolutely insane stair camp.  I've lost track of my almost deaths.

[grebo]

Uh oh...  not good.


Here is what happens when a greater mummy gets mad at you.  More annoying than dangerous.. but very annonying.

So I finished off the vault.  That took forever.  I could handle the mobs only one at a time, if 2 tough things showed up at once I had to run.  Finally burned thru all the dragons and giants and got some decent loots.  Nothing earth shattering.  Boots of running and gloves of strength +3 made the cut.  There was a great amulet of warding, +1ac, +1ev, Elect and neg energy resist, teleport prevention, but it speeds metabolisim, I think I'll stick with my +6AC Gourmand necklace of see invis, invoke invis and stealth, but it is a tough choice.  Got my third rune too.

Level 9 spells are hard as fuck to memorize.  I still can't do firestorm (fire/conj) despite numerous tries.  Don't think I ever will be able to.

Went to the crypt and turned it inside out, mummies suck!  That's all I will say about that.  Especially mummy priests.  Those bastards could fill up a super walmart with random demons.  Also Zot traps.

Guess I'll do the tomb next, as I still feel lacking a bit in the equipment department.  I spend far too much time running for my life and I'm almost out of healing.  There has got to be at least one more randart out there that I can use.  A wand of healing would be nice too!  Have yet to find one.

[grebo]

Dead.  Tomb.  I got stupid, walked behind a horde to get a healing potion to cure my rotting, got trapped.

Stupid.

[Raging Turtle]

Damn, I thought you had it in the bag. 

[Slayerik]

Insane run...

[grebo]

Damn, I thought you had it in the bag. 

I thought I did too, I think that was most of my problem.

Greater mummies do this thing where they call on the powers of hell and do half your hp, it's unresistable and always hits.
Greater mummies summon smoke demons and sun demons.  He summoned 2 smoke demons which each smited me twice and sun demons are great at melee.
Greater mummies, when they die (all mummies actually) do a death curse which can be many varied things, one of which is "racked with pain" which does about 20 or so.  Put all those things together, and the fact that I just had to get that greater mummy dead, and had to get that healing potion, and it equals dead.

The Tomb is a bad place to get a case of stupid.

Oh well, I don't hate the game, itching to get back in there with another high elf.  Son of Sprankton will get that orb, or maybe Son of Son of Sprankton.

[Raging Turtle]

I just give my characters roman numerals - Severus II, Severus XIV... I usually start over at 30 or so 

Did you consider a Zot run once you had the necessary three runes? 

[grebo]

I just give my characters roman numerals - Severus II, Severus XIV... I usually start over at 30 or so 

Did you consider a Zot run once you had the necessary three runes? 

I was definitely considering it, didn't quite feel ready tho.  Probably was right, if I couldn't survive the tomb I probably wasn't ready for the orb. 

[grebo]

After many deaths and frustration, Sprankton XI has found a +4 robe, boots, +1 cloak and buckler by level 2, his survival at least seems possible.

[grebo]

Oh yeah, things are moving again! 

Magma bolt is pretty damn kickass too, I've been abusing the crap out of it.  Bolt spells are so much fun in hallways.

Got the swamp rune.... barely.  While autotraveling out of the swamp, walking thru some shallow water, 2 swamp worms pop up and knock me down from 79 to 3!  Magma bolt did take down the hydras and swamp dragons quickly though.

Level 8 in the Lair is effectively impassible, there are 2 acid blobs there.  Acid blobs are the kings of suck.  Eating armor, moving fast, spitting, poison proof, I had to burn a teleport scroll every time I saw them and they ate 4 pts of AC off of me.  I think in a few more levels I'll go fight them naked.

Have a decent sword and a bunch of ok other stuff, hopefully the randart gods will bless me soon.

[grebo]

YOU BASTARD! 
Actually i was able to grab the rune with my last move before I teleported, and it put me near a gate!  Score! 

Got 3 runes again, but I don't know, I'm just not feeling it with this guy.  My armor sucks, evasion isn't that great, I'm worried.
The arts I have are uninspiring as well.  The elves had 2 artifact rings, one of them was mutagenic and the other was plusses to int an dex...meh.
On another note, rings of fire kick some serious ass, they jack your fire spells way up in power.