Blasphemous
02-16-2011, 12:14 PM
Unfortunatelly, I didn't create the flg file so I can't post here, nevertheless Dude, a dwarven bard is at #63 in the Ancardia's Hall of Fame and the replay should likewise be available to anyone interested.
It's my 3rd or 4th attempt at this combination, and I must say it was a very satisfying game. This combo gives a high versatility - I started with decent literacy, backstabbing, herbalism and food preservation among the more important stats.
I got 4 talents, used 3 for Heir and one for Alert, aiming at TH later.
7LB were extremely useful, especially at the beginning. My stats weren't bad - 18 St, 18 To, 16 Pe, 19 Le. I went straight to gremlin cave with my cave bear, to make use of that wand of light with 12 charges that bards start with. Shining around rooms full of gremlins got me 2 fluff balls, 7 levels and much needed wand of trap creation with 7 charges. Then I proceeded to CoC. Cleared two vaults before DT, which was generated on D9, a very nice place coonsidering my plans to set up a gremlin bomb on D8.
Bee hive spawned in the big room (D7) and it was a mess. Fortunatelly somewhere around D8 I've found a randomly dropped cloak of invisibility which made herb stabilization possible at low lvl 7. With the cloak and 7LB, it was a very promising char.
I set up my gremlin bomb in a D8 tunnel, first with just two traps 12 spaces away, which was sufficient. My cave bear between me and gremlins, I held 5 for a long time, ate some stomafilia, then 5 again, repeat. Gremlin bomb provided me with 2 rods (aols for khelly and gogs+12 st), some really decent PV equipment in form of tower crystal shields, some bracers of toughness, looots of potions, scrolls, wands (notably 2 wands of teleport) and gems. Among the trash I've also found a pick axe which allowed me to dig side tunnels and set up 3 traps next to each other, making gremlin multiplication nearly unstoppable.
After I sold the useless stuff, I proceeded doing some quests, with lvl 8 and DV/PV around 60/30 via items. Got village dungeon to get healing, DT quests, got rolf's axe and used it for a long time, trained some xbows and went to level up some more until I hit xl13. Having found climbing set around D8, and plenty of wands of cold, I paid skeletal king a visit. Nothing exciting happened, hit him 3 times, 1 crit, he panicked, went right next to my ice bridge, got shot with undead slaying.
Pyramid was a joke. I got to 14 there, after which I went through small cave to enter HMV. All the time it was with 7LB so at this point in the game, I barely passed the 20 days of in game time. Next, after finding some construct slaying ammo, I went through the darkforge and got 2 levels killing golems. One fire breath took my GoGS. Expectable. Of course both weapons and armors were utter crap, best being probably a cursed dagger of death and white dragon scale mail (already had amw). Pools were equally bad, unfortunately. Got some stat draining, lost tele control (blink dogs spawned earlier in big room) but I remembered having a stashed blink dog corpse in DT (thank you food preservation). Still, I got some resistances so it wasn't bad.
I went back to CoC, collected some herbs and got over 100 blessed spense and around 60 stomafillia. Raised all raisable stats with herbs to 25-26 and restarted my gremlin bomb. Along the way I got a spellbook of magic lock, which allowed me to leave the bear with gremlins, lock the door and w5 right next to it. Bee wax which I got from the big room hive helped suppress the trap activation messages. No more rods unfortunatelly but lots of other interesting stuff, among them amulet of perserverance +8 Wi. I've never seen a +8 one. Still kinda useless to me since I barely ever used any spells. I went down to bring banshee into animated forest, but only for a brief period of time. I got some potions of exchange and coupled with my gremlin drops, 18 rings of fire resistance. Got 18 rods after only 4 dips, which then simplified my game enormously. I wished for the most important stuff, went to water temple, in the mean time reached lvl 19, then fire temple. Gremlins provided one ring of ice, animated forest another. With rolf, ele gaunts, one intristic resistance, fire blankets and high regeneration, I breezed through fire temple, taking the wyrm down with 5 quarrels of dragon slaying. Didn't spend much time with elementals and daemons, wasn't strong enough to kill them easily and lacked enough slaying ammo. No items lost, lvl 20. Wished for find weakness and concentration, then greater moloch. I got boots of slow shuffle and bard's spells provided slow monter. Spellbook of invis was also found somewhere between D15-D20. This coupled gave me below 50 speed and invisible moloch was worth over 1,5 mil exp at this point (slaying ammo again) which got me to lvl 29. I visited casino - RoI and Nature's companion. Not enough str to get 2,5 mil gold so I wished for spellbooks of strength of atlas. Ring, armor and some quarrels bought. Next level - surge of power. Some named dark orc guarded... bracers of war! Oh joy. D36 - kitty was happy and gave me his ring.
Then I went to bug temple, cleared it, smashed the statues, took everything and went to the Maze. No big deal with magic mapping, minotaur mages couldn't resist death rays (easily learned via spellbooks with Le 32, conc and lit 100). Emperor fell in 4 shots. Took the axe, went to gremlin cave and leveled two-handed weapons to 8. Then wished for emperor moloch at the ol' barb's place and began lvling up. With nature's companion and 7LB I could hit a moloch 2 times then run, hit 2 times again, run. cast invis and slow myself just before the last hit - I was xl 50 in no time, L+ (I ate a lot of wights earlier and other intersting stuff which kept me around L or L- all the time), one moloch left.
Still had 10 RoDS left, so I wished for SB of Acid ball and willpower until it reached 76. With all the stat raising potions (lots of poga included) from gremlin bomb and banshee, my most important stats went over 50. Then dive to CoC again, this time with the intention of finishing the game.
Air temple - left some valuable items safely stashed but still took GoGS and 7LB. Didn't loose them luckily. Yulgy couldn't believe how heavy the minotaur's axe really is and went down in 3 hits.
Somewhere between the temples - greater vault full of giants. Fun. Serpent's bite dropped, no other attractions, lots of corpses which I didn't have to eat. Move on.
Earth temple - grues max 1-2 hits with the axe, elementals same. Stone beast hit me once or twice, no big deal. Went down in 5-6 hits.
Decided to do the blue caves, with RoI it was fun. Wyrms and ABDs went down usually in 3 hits, Shrax was a bit more resilient, kept healing but it didn't help him. On my way back the damn dragons burned my girdle of giant strength, but it wasn't such a big deal, still had 3 RoDS left and wyrms dropped 2 more. No wands of wishing.
Mana temple. That was strange. No spellcasting until I entered the temple itself. Detected the traps with skill and the eyes didn't suck a single power point. Weird. Maybe I was so stealthy they just didn't detect me. No matter. Acid ball at lvl 8, willpower 76 = destruction. Nurgy was already severely wounded when I faced him. Slashed twice with axe, he dropped. Not a single stat drain. 2 times cast darkness. Cleared the temple, converted altar (got crowned some time before, around the giant vault, with staff of wanderer and shock immunity).
Endgame begins. I had almost all of my skills at 100, save some woodcraft and necromancy (wonderful bard's gifts at lvl 25). Almost all of the melee skills - tactics, backstabbing, FW, 2Weapon combat etc. Still I decided to mostly rely on acid ball. With 900+ on both HP and PP, it was a fair choice. Uselessness gift - executor. Ehhh why so late. D50 - no surprises. Used my last rods for magic mapping scrolls. Still had 8 SoCR left (khelly and bug temple).
I decided on a guns-blazing head-on approach. Acidball cleared the mutants and wmopc. Tried to prevent wizards from summoning too many extra monsters - fearing they might summon cats like in my first game. Teleported right between chaos warriors and balors. Acid balled everything 10 times. Fisty gone, 2 balors left, wizards gone. Cleared the ghost lords, then proceeded to the side paths. Greater chaos servants cant resist death rays - oh the fun. With 76 willpower it was a joyful experience. Handled levers, destroyed them with wand of D, left.
In attempt to get even more points, I did the water dragon and white unicorn quests. Then left, unfortunatelly without generating the .flg. Still, this was an even better game than my 1st one with a wizard. Dwarf race gave me the much needed starting resilience, Bard is an overall multi-purpose class which can become anything from AotME berserks, through pet generals and keen archers, to range 4 acid ballers and teleporters. A very satisfying and fun game.
It's my 3rd or 4th attempt at this combination, and I must say it was a very satisfying game. This combo gives a high versatility - I started with decent literacy, backstabbing, herbalism and food preservation among the more important stats.
I got 4 talents, used 3 for Heir and one for Alert, aiming at TH later.
7LB were extremely useful, especially at the beginning. My stats weren't bad - 18 St, 18 To, 16 Pe, 19 Le. I went straight to gremlin cave with my cave bear, to make use of that wand of light with 12 charges that bards start with. Shining around rooms full of gremlins got me 2 fluff balls, 7 levels and much needed wand of trap creation with 7 charges. Then I proceeded to CoC. Cleared two vaults before DT, which was generated on D9, a very nice place coonsidering my plans to set up a gremlin bomb on D8.
Bee hive spawned in the big room (D7) and it was a mess. Fortunatelly somewhere around D8 I've found a randomly dropped cloak of invisibility which made herb stabilization possible at low lvl 7. With the cloak and 7LB, it was a very promising char.
I set up my gremlin bomb in a D8 tunnel, first with just two traps 12 spaces away, which was sufficient. My cave bear between me and gremlins, I held 5 for a long time, ate some stomafilia, then 5 again, repeat. Gremlin bomb provided me with 2 rods (aols for khelly and gogs+12 st), some really decent PV equipment in form of tower crystal shields, some bracers of toughness, looots of potions, scrolls, wands (notably 2 wands of teleport) and gems. Among the trash I've also found a pick axe which allowed me to dig side tunnels and set up 3 traps next to each other, making gremlin multiplication nearly unstoppable.
After I sold the useless stuff, I proceeded doing some quests, with lvl 8 and DV/PV around 60/30 via items. Got village dungeon to get healing, DT quests, got rolf's axe and used it for a long time, trained some xbows and went to level up some more until I hit xl13. Having found climbing set around D8, and plenty of wands of cold, I paid skeletal king a visit. Nothing exciting happened, hit him 3 times, 1 crit, he panicked, went right next to my ice bridge, got shot with undead slaying.
Pyramid was a joke. I got to 14 there, after which I went through small cave to enter HMV. All the time it was with 7LB so at this point in the game, I barely passed the 20 days of in game time. Next, after finding some construct slaying ammo, I went through the darkforge and got 2 levels killing golems. One fire breath took my GoGS. Expectable. Of course both weapons and armors were utter crap, best being probably a cursed dagger of death and white dragon scale mail (already had amw). Pools were equally bad, unfortunately. Got some stat draining, lost tele control (blink dogs spawned earlier in big room) but I remembered having a stashed blink dog corpse in DT (thank you food preservation). Still, I got some resistances so it wasn't bad.
I went back to CoC, collected some herbs and got over 100 blessed spense and around 60 stomafillia. Raised all raisable stats with herbs to 25-26 and restarted my gremlin bomb. Along the way I got a spellbook of magic lock, which allowed me to leave the bear with gremlins, lock the door and w5 right next to it. Bee wax which I got from the big room hive helped suppress the trap activation messages. No more rods unfortunatelly but lots of other interesting stuff, among them amulet of perserverance +8 Wi. I've never seen a +8 one. Still kinda useless to me since I barely ever used any spells. I went down to bring banshee into animated forest, but only for a brief period of time. I got some potions of exchange and coupled with my gremlin drops, 18 rings of fire resistance. Got 18 rods after only 4 dips, which then simplified my game enormously. I wished for the most important stuff, went to water temple, in the mean time reached lvl 19, then fire temple. Gremlins provided one ring of ice, animated forest another. With rolf, ele gaunts, one intristic resistance, fire blankets and high regeneration, I breezed through fire temple, taking the wyrm down with 5 quarrels of dragon slaying. Didn't spend much time with elementals and daemons, wasn't strong enough to kill them easily and lacked enough slaying ammo. No items lost, lvl 20. Wished for find weakness and concentration, then greater moloch. I got boots of slow shuffle and bard's spells provided slow monter. Spellbook of invis was also found somewhere between D15-D20. This coupled gave me below 50 speed and invisible moloch was worth over 1,5 mil exp at this point (slaying ammo again) which got me to lvl 29. I visited casino - RoI and Nature's companion. Not enough str to get 2,5 mil gold so I wished for spellbooks of strength of atlas. Ring, armor and some quarrels bought. Next level - surge of power. Some named dark orc guarded... bracers of war! Oh joy. D36 - kitty was happy and gave me his ring.
Then I went to bug temple, cleared it, smashed the statues, took everything and went to the Maze. No big deal with magic mapping, minotaur mages couldn't resist death rays (easily learned via spellbooks with Le 32, conc and lit 100). Emperor fell in 4 shots. Took the axe, went to gremlin cave and leveled two-handed weapons to 8. Then wished for emperor moloch at the ol' barb's place and began lvling up. With nature's companion and 7LB I could hit a moloch 2 times then run, hit 2 times again, run. cast invis and slow myself just before the last hit - I was xl 50 in no time, L+ (I ate a lot of wights earlier and other intersting stuff which kept me around L or L- all the time), one moloch left.
Still had 10 RoDS left, so I wished for SB of Acid ball and willpower until it reached 76. With all the stat raising potions (lots of poga included) from gremlin bomb and banshee, my most important stats went over 50. Then dive to CoC again, this time with the intention of finishing the game.
Air temple - left some valuable items safely stashed but still took GoGS and 7LB. Didn't loose them luckily. Yulgy couldn't believe how heavy the minotaur's axe really is and went down in 3 hits.
Somewhere between the temples - greater vault full of giants. Fun. Serpent's bite dropped, no other attractions, lots of corpses which I didn't have to eat. Move on.
Earth temple - grues max 1-2 hits with the axe, elementals same. Stone beast hit me once or twice, no big deal. Went down in 5-6 hits.
Decided to do the blue caves, with RoI it was fun. Wyrms and ABDs went down usually in 3 hits, Shrax was a bit more resilient, kept healing but it didn't help him. On my way back the damn dragons burned my girdle of giant strength, but it wasn't such a big deal, still had 3 RoDS left and wyrms dropped 2 more. No wands of wishing.
Mana temple. That was strange. No spellcasting until I entered the temple itself. Detected the traps with skill and the eyes didn't suck a single power point. Weird. Maybe I was so stealthy they just didn't detect me. No matter. Acid ball at lvl 8, willpower 76 = destruction. Nurgy was already severely wounded when I faced him. Slashed twice with axe, he dropped. Not a single stat drain. 2 times cast darkness. Cleared the temple, converted altar (got crowned some time before, around the giant vault, with staff of wanderer and shock immunity).
Endgame begins. I had almost all of my skills at 100, save some woodcraft and necromancy (wonderful bard's gifts at lvl 25). Almost all of the melee skills - tactics, backstabbing, FW, 2Weapon combat etc. Still I decided to mostly rely on acid ball. With 900+ on both HP and PP, it was a fair choice. Uselessness gift - executor. Ehhh why so late. D50 - no surprises. Used my last rods for magic mapping scrolls. Still had 8 SoCR left (khelly and bug temple).
I decided on a guns-blazing head-on approach. Acidball cleared the mutants and wmopc. Tried to prevent wizards from summoning too many extra monsters - fearing they might summon cats like in my first game. Teleported right between chaos warriors and balors. Acid balled everything 10 times. Fisty gone, 2 balors left, wizards gone. Cleared the ghost lords, then proceeded to the side paths. Greater chaos servants cant resist death rays - oh the fun. With 76 willpower it was a joyful experience. Handled levers, destroyed them with wand of D, left.
In attempt to get even more points, I did the water dragon and white unicorn quests. Then left, unfortunatelly without generating the .flg. Still, this was an even better game than my 1st one with a wizard. Dwarf race gave me the much needed starting resilience, Bard is an overall multi-purpose class which can become anything from AotME berserks, through pet generals and keen archers, to range 4 acid ballers and teleporters. A very satisfying and fun game.