Mist Elf Duelist Learned a Hard Lesson in Darkforge

[sytar6]

Got teleport control from the first blinkdog killed, didn't scum for it. Found a scroll shop on PC:2. Got "Ratling Master Thief" as Thrundarr's quest. Figured that wasn't going to be happening any time soon. Decided I wanted to raid Darkforge. I usually wait until I can take the Steel Golems out, but I wanted to head to the TotHK prepared. I usually go there right before the ToEF.

Well, I learned that, in one of these recent pre-releases, Thomas has made a small change to DF. I 'z'apped my wand to find that "a mysterious force wrenches control from you" landing me in the middle of DF. Got pummeled pretty hard by Golems. I was almost strong enough to take them, but not quite. Apparently they don't really succumb to blindness, confusion, or potions of exchange. Too bad. RIP.

I guess you're supposed to dig your way to the Crown of Science now?

[anon123]

Constructs and undead are immune to paralyzation, confusion, blindness, stunning and poison, which makes the high-tier monsters in those categories pretty challenging (in addition to the "base" difficulty things like diamond golems and emperor liches already possess). Potions of exchange should work on the steel golems as they're not unique, but powerful monsters tend to dodge them. Anyway, a stack of PoEX big enough to transform all the golems in DFG, even assuming automatic success for every single throw, is probably best reserved to get you a few wishes

I guess you're supposed to dig your way to the Crown of Science now?

Darkforge is undiggable. The only way to get the goodies now is a lot of teleport attempts, or just taking on the golems head on (a chaos knight with Moon Sickle, or wizard with Lightning Ball, can pull that off). By the time you can do the latter, you probably don't need the items much anyway, which is partly why I opposed the RFE to introduce current behavior.

[Stingray1]

Erm, the secret door is still there that leads to the crown room.

Trust me Executor comes in very handy for a character in his teens, which is when I usually take out the golems.

[Grey]

I usually wait until I can take the Steel Golems out, but I wanted to head to the TotHK prepared. I usually go there right before the ToEF.

Interesting - I normally do TotHK first. DarkForge golems are very tough unless you have a specific method of dealing with them, whilst TotHK only very rarely throws something terrible at you (and there's sufficient room for escape when that does happen).

[sytar6]

Well, I was off my usual path because of the weird 'ratling master thief' request. I figured TotHK would be a good place to find one. I was only visiting DF so early because of the teleport control and scroll of item detection I found so luckily. I don't raid DF very much anymore, and I never scum to raid it, but it felt like a good idea to gear up there this time around due to the weird request from Thrundarr.

I suppose I'm glad he fixed DF raiding. That tended to be a little cheap when people scummed to do it.

[anon123]

I suppose I'm glad he fixed DF raiding. That tended to be a little cheap when people scummed to do it.

There was nothing cheap or requiring scumming about raiding Darkforge as I see it. A wand of teleportation is guaranteed. Booze to charge it is guaranteed. Teleport control is virtually guaranteed. Getting great weapons and armor from the raid proper wasn't - I didn't exactly find Executor and RDSM on every game. Nonetheless, when I fluked a PC that got far enough, one of the things that motivated me to play another was that he might find something awesome on DFG. Now that's gone

[JellySlayer]

You can still do Darkforge raids... You just need to be a little stronger, have a couple of extra teleports in your wand, and have 100 Stealth.

[Stingray1]

Now one needs construct slayers or DH2 assistance. It's still worthwhile fighting your way to the loot. Even if only for the crown or shield. Depending on who you are.