grobblewobble
08-06-2012, 07:49 PM
This is the second time I obtained the platinum girdle "true strength". To get it, you must never commit any chaotic act and, more difficult, make sure no lawful creature dies in the game. So all blink dogs and dwarves must survive and Khelavaster must be saved.
Getting the platinum girdle is hard, but imho it is not *as* hard as it has the reputation to be. I think it is a really nice challenge, as it is not as tedious as an ultimate ending. It feels a bit similar to an ultra ending because it involves the same search for the amulet, but otherwise it is really a sort of speedrun because you need to avoid the risk of generating a blink dog as much as possible, so it is all about minimizing the time you spend in the "normal" dungeons, where they can generate. However, I enjoy this challenge more than a pure speedrun because it is not as tight and strict.
Here is the story of Zark the barbarian:
The early stages: on to dwarftown
Zark started his life as a hurthling barbarian, born candle. I spent all his starting talents on the heir gift, because the starting melee weapon of a hurthling barbarian is crap. With the nice sword and loads of arrows, he was well equipped from the start.
I started off this game trying to save the carpenter, for a few reasons. The HMV must absolutely be avoided if you are aiming at a platinum, because that place very commonly spawns goodwives and farmers and kills them. So the SMC wasn't really interesting. The raider lord isn't interesting either, because picking up the reward you get is a chaotic act, so that makes the quest pointless. The druid quest is out of the question unless you start of chaotic, because it draws your alignment toward N= so is a chaotic act.
Rescuing the puppy is a stylish thing to do with a platinum run, but makes the challenge more difficult. There is a high risk of a blink dog spawn in the cavernous level. I couldn't be bothered this time, sorry kid. :(
Anyway, I figured that the carpenter quest had a good risk / reward ratio so I went for it. But in the second level a blink dog jumped into my view. I quickly ran back to the stairs and got out of there. Never mind the carpenter, with the candle starsign I don't really need healing.
So I went back to Terinyo, after first killing the crime lord and collecting the amulet. Attacking him is ok as long as you shoot past him and hit him "accidentally". :p
Then it was on to dwarftown, but skipping the arena. The arena sometimes lets you fight dwarves and turning in the golden gladius is a bad idea anyway, because Bart teaches you backstabbing, which I believe is a minor chaotic act when it kicks in.
Thankfully the stairs in the big room were generated close together (the big room is another place with a high blink dog density), and there was a nice stable patch with stomafillia below it in the CoC. I went on to dwarftown and there I had my first stroke of luck.. Waldenbrook had an amulet of life saving!
The middle game: poolsipping and preparing for the tower.
Next I wanted to use my cooking skills and that patch of stoma to get crowned. That went well enough, I pacified the herb level in the process, making it much safer. Got crowned with =Acid and skullcrusher.. not the best as I was mainly worried about the ToEF, but good enough.
Then I drained a random pool just below dwarftown. This is where my luck was truly disgusting. Third sip: wish. I wondered what to do with it.. RDSM? Since I had a stable patch of stoma on a pacified level, I decided to exploit a ring of weakness instead. Perhaps it wasn't the best choice, it ruined my turncount and my score (you get a very high score if you get True Strength and keep a low turncount). It pushed me past the 90 day limit, too and I even started to worry about the new 180 day limit.
In any case, the advantage of 99 str is hard to deny, lol. ;) And as I kept sipping, I soon got what I was really hoping for: teleport control! All from the same pool, without touching Darkforge.. unbelievable. At that moment I got very excited, my chances of making it were looking good now.
Next, Griffyard, the Pyramid and Darkforge were all a piece of cake. Those areas are great for an aspiring platinum, no blink dogs there. I spent a lot of time in Darkforge, happily hunting golems for xp and hunting dwarven chaos knights for their pickaxes.
Nonetheless, the tower of eternal flames was a bitch. I absolutely wanted to finish it before making the dive to the water temple and below, to minimize travelling through high-blinkdog-risk levels. But with only one source of -fire (gauntlets) and 5 PoEH (griffyard reward), there was no way I could make it, even with my overpowered strength. I started to regret my wish choice more and more..
I did soon manage to get a fire giant corpse for better resistance. And then I realized that I could get another source of -fire if I would wield the ever unpopular dwarven rune axe.. so I returned to dwarftown and used a helm of teleportation to retrieve it.
Now having four sources of -fire and a pile of pickaxes from chaos knights in DF, the fire temple was in my reach. It was a close call as the AKW nearly killed me, but in the end he bit the dust first.
As an aside, I noticed that in version 1.2.0, you still take a bit of damage in the tower with four sources of -fire. IIRC you didn't in 1.1.1, or did you?
The endgame: casino and onwards!
Fire orb secured, I raced off to save the sage. The DH were my route of choice, spending ages in the forest is bound to kill some dwarf or blinky. On DH:2 there was a surge of power.. my excitement died in a laugh when I read "Brankas, the orc chieftain, picks up the black tome".
The casino, however, had a very nice surprise in store: executor! Now I know that you could safely rob the casino in 1.1.1 without spoiling platinum, but I wasn't sure about 1.2.0. So instead, I went with the old-fashioned way of gambling (which apparently didn't change). Off I went with the prize!
I passed the eternal guardian by zapping him from out of LOS and then teleporting to the stairs. Credits to Grey for figuring out that this is ok for platinum.
There were no less than 3 greater giant vaults in this game. I fooled around with the first one for xp but didn't bother with the rest. Got some crap artifact like the silvery arrow. I didn't bother with the other two.
The cat lord went down to a wand of paralysis. Beyond that, the RNG made a nice try at killing me with a threat room of quickling queens, but I was able to teleport past them.
And so I ended up on D:50.. with the platinum girdle! I celebrated by Executing every last monster there.. well, not literally. Irony had it that D:50 had a random tension room with a hostile blink dog. He survived, along with a ghost that got scared of me and ran off into rock.
Getting the platinum girdle is hard, but imho it is not *as* hard as it has the reputation to be. I think it is a really nice challenge, as it is not as tedious as an ultimate ending. It feels a bit similar to an ultra ending because it involves the same search for the amulet, but otherwise it is really a sort of speedrun because you need to avoid the risk of generating a blink dog as much as possible, so it is all about minimizing the time you spend in the "normal" dungeons, where they can generate. However, I enjoy this challenge more than a pure speedrun because it is not as tight and strict.
Here is the story of Zark the barbarian:
The early stages: on to dwarftown
Zark started his life as a hurthling barbarian, born candle. I spent all his starting talents on the heir gift, because the starting melee weapon of a hurthling barbarian is crap. With the nice sword and loads of arrows, he was well equipped from the start.
I started off this game trying to save the carpenter, for a few reasons. The HMV must absolutely be avoided if you are aiming at a platinum, because that place very commonly spawns goodwives and farmers and kills them. So the SMC wasn't really interesting. The raider lord isn't interesting either, because picking up the reward you get is a chaotic act, so that makes the quest pointless. The druid quest is out of the question unless you start of chaotic, because it draws your alignment toward N= so is a chaotic act.
Rescuing the puppy is a stylish thing to do with a platinum run, but makes the challenge more difficult. There is a high risk of a blink dog spawn in the cavernous level. I couldn't be bothered this time, sorry kid. :(
Anyway, I figured that the carpenter quest had a good risk / reward ratio so I went for it. But in the second level a blink dog jumped into my view. I quickly ran back to the stairs and got out of there. Never mind the carpenter, with the candle starsign I don't really need healing.
So I went back to Terinyo, after first killing the crime lord and collecting the amulet. Attacking him is ok as long as you shoot past him and hit him "accidentally". :p
Then it was on to dwarftown, but skipping the arena. The arena sometimes lets you fight dwarves and turning in the golden gladius is a bad idea anyway, because Bart teaches you backstabbing, which I believe is a minor chaotic act when it kicks in.
Thankfully the stairs in the big room were generated close together (the big room is another place with a high blink dog density), and there was a nice stable patch with stomafillia below it in the CoC. I went on to dwarftown and there I had my first stroke of luck.. Waldenbrook had an amulet of life saving!
The middle game: poolsipping and preparing for the tower.
Next I wanted to use my cooking skills and that patch of stoma to get crowned. That went well enough, I pacified the herb level in the process, making it much safer. Got crowned with =Acid and skullcrusher.. not the best as I was mainly worried about the ToEF, but good enough.
Then I drained a random pool just below dwarftown. This is where my luck was truly disgusting. Third sip: wish. I wondered what to do with it.. RDSM? Since I had a stable patch of stoma on a pacified level, I decided to exploit a ring of weakness instead. Perhaps it wasn't the best choice, it ruined my turncount and my score (you get a very high score if you get True Strength and keep a low turncount). It pushed me past the 90 day limit, too and I even started to worry about the new 180 day limit.
In any case, the advantage of 99 str is hard to deny, lol. ;) And as I kept sipping, I soon got what I was really hoping for: teleport control! All from the same pool, without touching Darkforge.. unbelievable. At that moment I got very excited, my chances of making it were looking good now.
Next, Griffyard, the Pyramid and Darkforge were all a piece of cake. Those areas are great for an aspiring platinum, no blink dogs there. I spent a lot of time in Darkforge, happily hunting golems for xp and hunting dwarven chaos knights for their pickaxes.
Nonetheless, the tower of eternal flames was a bitch. I absolutely wanted to finish it before making the dive to the water temple and below, to minimize travelling through high-blinkdog-risk levels. But with only one source of -fire (gauntlets) and 5 PoEH (griffyard reward), there was no way I could make it, even with my overpowered strength. I started to regret my wish choice more and more..
I did soon manage to get a fire giant corpse for better resistance. And then I realized that I could get another source of -fire if I would wield the ever unpopular dwarven rune axe.. so I returned to dwarftown and used a helm of teleportation to retrieve it.
Now having four sources of -fire and a pile of pickaxes from chaos knights in DF, the fire temple was in my reach. It was a close call as the AKW nearly killed me, but in the end he bit the dust first.
As an aside, I noticed that in version 1.2.0, you still take a bit of damage in the tower with four sources of -fire. IIRC you didn't in 1.1.1, or did you?
The endgame: casino and onwards!
Fire orb secured, I raced off to save the sage. The DH were my route of choice, spending ages in the forest is bound to kill some dwarf or blinky. On DH:2 there was a surge of power.. my excitement died in a laugh when I read "Brankas, the orc chieftain, picks up the black tome".
The casino, however, had a very nice surprise in store: executor! Now I know that you could safely rob the casino in 1.1.1 without spoiling platinum, but I wasn't sure about 1.2.0. So instead, I went with the old-fashioned way of gambling (which apparently didn't change). Off I went with the prize!
I passed the eternal guardian by zapping him from out of LOS and then teleporting to the stairs. Credits to Grey for figuring out that this is ok for platinum.
There were no less than 3 greater giant vaults in this game. I fooled around with the first one for xp but didn't bother with the rest. Got some crap artifact like the silvery arrow. I didn't bother with the other two.
The cat lord went down to a wand of paralysis. Beyond that, the RNG made a nice try at killing me with a threat room of quickling queens, but I was able to teleport past them.
And so I ended up on D:50.. with the platinum girdle! I celebrated by Executing every last monster there.. well, not literally. Irony had it that D:50 had a random tension room with a hostile blink dog. He survived, along with a ghost that got scared of me and ran off into rock.