Speedrun Strategies

[Carter]

What are the options for ACW killing with the wizard? It shrugs bolts and can probably instakill in single turn so even Ice Ball seems too risky. I tried getting few wizards with RoDS and frost bolt, get them in dwarf town for altar, wish for RDSM to level up in ToEF. It is all fun until that giant throws a rock... But with invisibility and some means of digging it may be possible to get to the temple, but I still have no idea of what to do with the wyrm.

its a combination of luck and skill to kill the ACW at low level. sometimes the ACW will do stuff even the best players can't do much about.

1) You can kill him with frost bolt, it will just take alot. If you have a meat shield between him and you, then he cannot bolt you back. His bolt can insta kill you below about 150hp.
2) You can use a ball spell with 32 WI to ball him around a corner
3) if you have more hp, you can do the water orb rope a dope. Basically you stand there and get bolted, if he hits, you heal, if he doesn't, you cast a spell. It is alot of corruption, not as much as you'd think.

[grobblewobble]

You can kill him with frost bolt

The ACW is (surprisingly) not especially vulnerable to cold. This means that acid bolt deals more damage to it than frost bolt.

[Blasphemous]

The ACW is (surprisingly) not especially vulnerable to cold. This means that acid bolt deals more damage to it than frost bolt.

Is it? I seem to recall a case of bolting it with a wand of cold 3 times and it panicked, critically wounded.

[JellySlayer]

If you're using the SoFS trick, you can also kill him easily with a pet.

[yhal003]

its a combination of luck and skill to kill the ACW at low level. sometimes the ACW will do stuff even the best players can't do much about.

1) You can kill him with frost bolt, it will just take alot. If you have a meat shield between him and you, then he cannot bolt you back. His bolt can insta kill you below about 150hp.
2) You can use a ball spell with 32 WI to ball him around a corner
3) if you have more hp, you can do the water orb rope a dope. Basically you stand there and get bolted, if he hits, you heal, if he doesn't, you cast a spell. It is alot of corruption, not as much as you'd think.

Yeah, getting 150 hp with wizard not going to happen... Even 100 hp is difficult without potions.

Starting with RoDS, wand of far slaying and some means of stealing on August 30th, it is possible to get some levels by AKW wish. One AKW gets gray elf to level 18 and gnome to level 20. There is this embarrassing possibility when AKW is generated hostile but lets say we get lucky... If we generate it in high DL random dungeon it may even yield some nice items. Gnome will get about 80 HP, treasure hunter and great book caster.

Unfortunately it also locks us out of the pyramid, so it may be worthwhile getting level 13 prior to that.

[yhal003]

Is it? I seem to recall a case of bolting it with a wand of cold 3 times and it panicked, critically wounded.

Yeah, just checked - it is immune to fire and does not have any vulnerabilities.

Mist elf, exploration mode. With AKW trick got him to level 18 in dwarf town, got SoRS (getting it without cheater mode is another interesting exercise. Maybe training lighting ball to one shoot golems?. Getting into the armoury with mist elf and no trap detection is also exciting. With SoRS, some adamatitum armour and coward mode got char to 55/24 and 66 HP which is absolutely inadequate versus the wyrm...

If it shots we die. With alertness of 67 and our DV it is about 50/50 chance. If it gets into melee we die. Monster shield is the only way but they die faster than ACW. Frost bolt is actually at a disadvantage here since it kills monsters faster but even acid bolt does not work too well.

Trained shields a bit, got DV to 70 and managed to kill it with Acid Ball. With mist armour and some praying it is enough to hold in melee. It still shots bolts even in melee range, but they miss much more often. Under 3000 turns without blink dog hunting (wished for ring) and some shortcuts in DF.

[JellySlayer]

Another option... sell a tonne of sis or other artifacts to shopkeeper. Kill shopkeeper.

[yhal003]

The only way I can think of to kill buffed shopkeeper is saccing one on the altar. Unfortunately Waldy avoids stepping on it, but it can be accomplished with some doors. Their coins become deadly with few levels, I am not sure if invisibility protects from that. Is time needed for si replication documented somewhere?

edit: Hmm, high elf can get an axe from mystic for some money and this should be enough to sell/buy si's without waiting for replication. But even if this works, I consider shopkeeper levelling exploit too ridiculous even for this challenge .

[Carter]

The ACW is (surprisingly) not especially vulnerable to cold. This means that acid bolt deals more damage to it than frost bolt.

kind of bizzare. I've always used frost bolt, but for low hp it might make sense to use acid bolt, since your meat shields ARE vunerable to frost bolt.

[Carter]

Another option... sell a tonne of sis or other artifacts to shopkeeper. Kill shopkeeper.

i haven't done much testing on this but he does seem to buff up to extreme levels. I had a L50 wizard who nearly died at dwarftown after winning, i fed the shopkeeper like 6-7 artifacts iirc and he was absolutely lethal. I don't think the xp was huge though, but i'm sure there is some bug in his behaviour that might make it easier to kill him...