How useful are shields?

[vogonpoet]

: - D

Nice.

Reminds me of Against a Dark Background, and the Lady Sharrow's quest to find the last Lazy Gun before the Huhsz (sp?) find her...

[Covenant]

Thanks for the advice everyone! I decided to do as you suggested and use the pair together, and it's working quite well (though I must admit, although I'm not getting hit half as often as I usually would - evidenced by me having no problems with Darkforge at level 17 - I am doing a lot less damage than usual, despite having reached level 10 with Daggers already).

I'm having the luckiest game ever, though. There seem to be altars on the first level of nearly every dungeon (including the DDL), so I drained Darkforge and heard 'Iceberg', gained Para resistance and Death resistance (no wish, though, so no AoLS yet). Two of my favourite resistances - the only other ones I could really hope for are Petrification and See Invisible, and if I remember rightly there are other ways to get those. I picked up a ring of Elemental Mastery somewhere, too.

That's not the best part though. Firstly, I almost killed a cave lion but managed to miss it! Despite being on Very Aggressive, and having a +39 hit modifier. God knows how that happened. And secondly, I was ascending through the UD and without realising it, came out on the SMC. So when I see a Ghost Lord coming toward me, in stupid arrogance I thought 'Ah, I can bash it to death, I'm fast'. This despite the fact that I'm Strained. So I go over and give it a whack, but miss. It misses too. Only then do I notice I'm on the SMC level and this Ghost Lord is very experienced. Eep. Luckily I had Tele-Control and a scroll of teleport, but eesh, that could have been nasty.

I think 'Protector' has lived up to its name!

[tapi]

That to-hit sounds unusually low for l17 monks.. try using lighter equipment to see if you're getting the penalties for too heavy armor atm.

[Covenant]

I'm having the luckiest game ever, though.

Er... Semi-related question...

Should I give up Serpent's Bite in favour of the Eternium Warhammer of Devastation (8d3+14) I just found?

[Soirana]

That to-hit sounds unusually low for l17 monks.. try using lighter equipment to see if you're getting the penalties for too heavy armor atm.

I think he has penalty for using shield. If so (easy to check just put away all heavy armour and check to hit with and without shield) he might wear moloch armour instead of elven chain mail.

[gut]

> Should I give up Serpent's Bite in favour of the Eternium Warhammer of Devastation

I already answered that!

>> I would use the dagger until a good ego weapon comes along.

I think that hammer would easily qualify for ego : )

Also, I think monks recieve a penalty for being even 'burdened', if so, 'strained' should
be avoided.

EDIT: Make a backup of your save file immediately : )
I (can't believe I'm saying this) think you should smith that hammer a bit. As previously
mentioned, your to-hit modifier seemed a bit low. Even if you just put a few points of
to-hit on that hammer, you should notice a difference.

[Covenant]

> Should I give up Serpent's Bite in favour of the Eternium Warhammer of Devastation

Also, I think monks recieve a penalty for being even 'burdened', if so, 'strained' should
be avoided.

EDIT: Make a backup of your save file immediately : )
I (can't believe I'm saying this) think you should smith that hammer a bit. As previously
mentioned, your to-hit modifier seemed a bit low. Even if you just put a few points of
to-hit on that hammer, you should notice a difference.

I'm too much of a packrat, I know. I already have 'Beast of Burden', too! I really need a girdle of carrying...

Good idea about the smithing, I'll do that next time I'm in Dwarftown. There's a forge on the level below, but I don't have an anvil... Time to kill a certain evil Dwarf, methinks.

Anyway, the good luck continues (did I mention I both killed Kranach and saved Kenny in this game? ). As I killed off Nonnak's retinue, I found a glowing wand among the remains. 0 charges on the blasted thing, but still, it's enough for my AoLS. Though I'm tempted to dig out the Great Treasure graves first before using it, as I might get an AoLS that way. Would an amulet of protection from undead protect me from the Lich's stat-drain? I'll leave it be for now, anyway - first things first, I need to go stash that wand until I figure out what to do next.

So this game has convinced me that shields are awesome. This artifact one, at least. Everything's gone right since I started using it. Hell, with the luck I'm having, I'm even considering taking on the Minotaur Maze for the first time!

[Soirana]

There is no amulet of protection from minotaurs.

//sorry, could not stop myself from saying this.

[Silfir]

"I've found really kickass artifact weapons and my character is super-powerful, also I saved Khelly and did all kinds of really cool shit!"

Well, well, looks like there's another victory on the way!

"I think I could even do the Minotaur Maze!"

NOOOOOO! And he was SO close!



Seriously though, everything can be done. But for the Minotaur Maze being really tough as nails isn't enough. You need the right strategy and magic too.

[Evil Knievel]

Are two-handers so much worse than one-handers and shield that it doesn't make sense to do that for any character, other than role-playing purposes ?