Concillian
06-14-2009, 12:23 AM
Been playing on and off (mostly off) for 8 or 10 years or whatever.
Overall I had really good luck. Endgame polearms came before moving to the CoC in the form of a "crude spear of devastation" and a "crude spear of the eye". These became my go-to weapons throughout the game. Used scorched spear (pre-crown) anywhere item destruction was potentially an issue and when hunting logs in the animated forest for fletching. Eventually I switched to cutting down trees in the wilderness for logs, which easier and non-corrupting.
Crowning happened early with Far Slayer. I didn't really care about an ultra (having never been through ToEF even, I had no plan on a late crowning for Ultra ending)
You can see I took my sweet time with this one. I did quite a bit of just walking around seeing stuff I hadn't seen before, as well as a fair bit of scumming on ID:8 and 9.
This scumming was partly for shield marks after finding an eternium tower before ToEF, partly for a wand of cold I didn't think I had (but found in my Ogre Cave stash AFTER I built a bridge by cutting down trees and failing a lot with my 13 bridge building skill), and partly poking things with a rusty broken spear for weapon marks to up my DV.
The scumming didn't yield a wand of cold, but it did yield 7LB and 2 PoCC, so it wasn't a total loss. I probably got the equivalent of one of those PoCC toting logs down to the lake 3 or 4 times.
Darkforge had nothing more interesting in the vault than the RDSM a random steel golem dropped, which was very handy for the ToEF. Weapon vault of course had nothing useful, given the weapons I already had. I think I killed a chaos knight who dropped an eternium plate of resilience, which I used when I didn't need the fire immunity of the RDSM.
I sipped pools in Darkforge and got a wish for Khelly on the last pool. another sip got natural invisibility, then the pool dried up on the next sip. Extremely favorable pool and from this point on the game was pretty much cake.
Water temple wasn't very eventful. ToEF was actually tougher for me, but that was mostly because I didn't realize how bad the stiff muscles corruption was and had it the whole ToEF. I used one Extra healing here (combination of lack of experience with an archer plus stiff muscles). Water temple I didn't get hit more than twice the whole time. Being natrually invis meant I could pick and choose when and where I fought. Plus the insane range on missiles and the extra sight range range of the spear of the eye plus a necklace of the eye, stuff normally didn't touch me.
Dove to the Casino and gambled up 8 or 10 million. Bought out anything interesting from the shop (Wyrmlance, phase dagger, 2 fletchery kits, another RDSM, some slaying ammo, a slightly better eternium tower shield than I had, and some potions of water).
I went to the rift before diving to air / earth temple, just to kill some stuff and see what books were there. The fall destroyed the PoCC I carry just in case I get a nasty corruption and some ammo, but nothing else important. Mostly uneventful, a couple Master Liches but nothing too dangerous.
At this point I had 9, I think, SoCR and at least 6 or 7 PoCC. Born unicorn, I was beginning to think corruption wouldn't be a major issue (I was right).
Diving to the air temple, I had underestimated the item destruction issues. I jumped back up the stairs and stripped to a suit that was just adamantium, eternium and artifacts. This left me with no bow, so I jumped back up to a corruption free zone and mined up some rocks. Armed with 6 spears and over 100 rocks, I took on the air temple. Rocks and spears apparently don't get destroyed because I killed everything in the place one got destroyed by the shocks. Took rock throwing from rank 0 to rank 7 or 8 in there. The double range class power really makes throwing pretty viable. Had I known how viable rocks were, I would have done ToEF by hurling rocks too.
The level layout of earth was nice in that there was a big room not far from the temple. I could wake stuff, then wait there and shoot it as it crossed.Eventually I had to retreat to a smaller room with down stairs, and took stuff down the stairs one at a time. 7LB were a big help here.
Upon going down the stairs I got "You feel truly excited."
After killing off whatever grue or elemental I was working on, I zapped monster detect. Giants... LOTS of giants. zapped item detect. Some random stuff plus a ~ and two [ (one brown, one black). I thought, I hope those bracers are War.
Finished off the rest of the earth guys and was pretty easy aside from having to find the right spot to dig (went through some booze here, but not bad).
Took the Beast corpse to the druid then back to the vault. One of the giants brought the bracers to me, and they indeed were bracers of war. I thought that was a pretty decent artifact to be in the vault, and was a little low on ammo, so went back up to make more (one giant also gave a fletch kit (7)).
I had Bracers of War so wasn't expecting too much more, but ended up also getting a long bow of hunting, Protector and Nature's Companion. Add that to the extra STR from the corpses and you couldn't ask for a better take from the vault really. THREE downright awesome artifacts from one vault.
Having an outfit that looked as if it couldn't get any better, I dove down to the dragon caves and started meleeing with the Wyrmlance from the Casino. I had again dropped just about everything and was throwing rocks to keep ammo from getting destroyed. Turned out this probably wasn't necessary, but meleeing with Wyrmlance went fine, for the most part. I got a RoDS out of it, plus a couple useless artifacts (Serpent's Bite, Executor, Needle) I held on to the wish for a while.
Then dove straight to the mana temple where I miscalculated. I wasn't using my ring of see invis and wasn't using the mummy wrapping now that I got the artifact leather armor. I didn't see the archmage and got backed into a corner. I lost quite a few stats while I fumbled around. I also didn't notice I had poison hands, and poisoned myself and 4 blessed extra healing. Put the thicks on and drank one of my ultra heals.I got down to like 150, low but not really worrisome. Still, I had tons of pots, so figured to use one.
I took the orb and a potion of uselessness and left the chaos wizards to rot with their buddies. Cleared posion hands and Took the corpse to the druid for one last PoCC, killed the black unicorn and did some boring grinding for bringing my stats back up (herbing, and Garth, mostly.)
In the meantime I didn't really need any items, so used my RoDS for "Find Weakness" then killed the Assassin Prince for fun and training Find Weakness, I had no more item detect wands, so I mined out most of that 2nd level looking for the room. I dual wielded needle and sting for 10 minutes and then went back to stick and board, smithed up my metal stuff, read my scrolls of defense / protection and buffed up for the final descent.
In the buffing, I drank my potions of Wonder (3) and learned wish. Yay. At 5700 pp I wasn't going to be casting it anytime soon, but still, just a testament to This character's luck.
I had already decided I would kill everything on D:50, so there wasn't much left to do but actually do it. I Cleared out D48, shoved the orbs into their respective holes and descended to the point of no return.
Potion of uselessness hurling led to an artifact of uselessness (Hammerhead). Though realistically there was not many artifacts I would have actually used aside from Preserver or maybe crown of Leadership.
An archer with Far Slayer can make his way around D:49 (without digging) rather quickly. One shot would push me 3/4 of the width. D:50 I was still level 49, so cleared a small room of slayers on the right side before going right down the middle towards the gate. Got hit a few times on my way to clearing out the jellies because I was somewhat impatient. Got some corruptions I didn't like (stiff twice), but I had plenty of scrolls and potions, and would bring myself back to thin and nimble.
Cleared the jellies and spawn rooms, and was 50 by then so my quarrels would penetrate. I shot straight to the gate (through a bunch of ghosts) and woke the balors who started teleporting around. They fell with 2-3 shots of demon slaying ammo each. The first couple I forgot about slaying ammo and just pounded them with 6-10 shots of normal quarrels. While retreating with my own teleports if necessary. I had one stack of 300+ quarrels and a couple other stacks close to 100, so had plenty of ammo and would just stand in the corridor and shoot stuff. In this respect being an archer is easier than a wizard even, because you can get around corners to some extent by targeting places a square or two up or down and way out ahead of you. An hour later or so and everything was dead & the levers were 'h'andled. Then I spent 30 minutes finding the right stuff to throw back and forth on D:49 to get back up. Finally got it and read a bunch of my SoCR and left. I guess I was still a little tainted. Never even went to the unicorn to have him clear me and I had a few scrolls and potions left yet.
On the whole, I would have had to kill myself to lose once I had the AoLS for Khelly and permanent invis. Archer with permanent invis and Far Slayer is pretty crazy easy as long as you find enough fletch sets. Even without, rocks do decent damage just thrown, or just a heap of spears if you have the weight to carry them. The incredibly lucky giant vault on D:44 was just icing, the RNGs way of saying, yes, this really is going to be your first win.
Overall I had really good luck. Endgame polearms came before moving to the CoC in the form of a "crude spear of devastation" and a "crude spear of the eye". These became my go-to weapons throughout the game. Used scorched spear (pre-crown) anywhere item destruction was potentially an issue and when hunting logs in the animated forest for fletching. Eventually I switched to cutting down trees in the wilderness for logs, which easier and non-corrupting.
Crowning happened early with Far Slayer. I didn't really care about an ultra (having never been through ToEF even, I had no plan on a late crowning for Ultra ending)
You can see I took my sweet time with this one. I did quite a bit of just walking around seeing stuff I hadn't seen before, as well as a fair bit of scumming on ID:8 and 9.
This scumming was partly for shield marks after finding an eternium tower before ToEF, partly for a wand of cold I didn't think I had (but found in my Ogre Cave stash AFTER I built a bridge by cutting down trees and failing a lot with my 13 bridge building skill), and partly poking things with a rusty broken spear for weapon marks to up my DV.
The scumming didn't yield a wand of cold, but it did yield 7LB and 2 PoCC, so it wasn't a total loss. I probably got the equivalent of one of those PoCC toting logs down to the lake 3 or 4 times.
Darkforge had nothing more interesting in the vault than the RDSM a random steel golem dropped, which was very handy for the ToEF. Weapon vault of course had nothing useful, given the weapons I already had. I think I killed a chaos knight who dropped an eternium plate of resilience, which I used when I didn't need the fire immunity of the RDSM.
I sipped pools in Darkforge and got a wish for Khelly on the last pool. another sip got natural invisibility, then the pool dried up on the next sip. Extremely favorable pool and from this point on the game was pretty much cake.
Water temple wasn't very eventful. ToEF was actually tougher for me, but that was mostly because I didn't realize how bad the stiff muscles corruption was and had it the whole ToEF. I used one Extra healing here (combination of lack of experience with an archer plus stiff muscles). Water temple I didn't get hit more than twice the whole time. Being natrually invis meant I could pick and choose when and where I fought. Plus the insane range on missiles and the extra sight range range of the spear of the eye plus a necklace of the eye, stuff normally didn't touch me.
Dove to the Casino and gambled up 8 or 10 million. Bought out anything interesting from the shop (Wyrmlance, phase dagger, 2 fletchery kits, another RDSM, some slaying ammo, a slightly better eternium tower shield than I had, and some potions of water).
I went to the rift before diving to air / earth temple, just to kill some stuff and see what books were there. The fall destroyed the PoCC I carry just in case I get a nasty corruption and some ammo, but nothing else important. Mostly uneventful, a couple Master Liches but nothing too dangerous.
At this point I had 9, I think, SoCR and at least 6 or 7 PoCC. Born unicorn, I was beginning to think corruption wouldn't be a major issue (I was right).
Diving to the air temple, I had underestimated the item destruction issues. I jumped back up the stairs and stripped to a suit that was just adamantium, eternium and artifacts. This left me with no bow, so I jumped back up to a corruption free zone and mined up some rocks. Armed with 6 spears and over 100 rocks, I took on the air temple. Rocks and spears apparently don't get destroyed because I killed everything in the place one got destroyed by the shocks. Took rock throwing from rank 0 to rank 7 or 8 in there. The double range class power really makes throwing pretty viable. Had I known how viable rocks were, I would have done ToEF by hurling rocks too.
The level layout of earth was nice in that there was a big room not far from the temple. I could wake stuff, then wait there and shoot it as it crossed.Eventually I had to retreat to a smaller room with down stairs, and took stuff down the stairs one at a time. 7LB were a big help here.
Upon going down the stairs I got "You feel truly excited."
After killing off whatever grue or elemental I was working on, I zapped monster detect. Giants... LOTS of giants. zapped item detect. Some random stuff plus a ~ and two [ (one brown, one black). I thought, I hope those bracers are War.
Finished off the rest of the earth guys and was pretty easy aside from having to find the right spot to dig (went through some booze here, but not bad).
Took the Beast corpse to the druid then back to the vault. One of the giants brought the bracers to me, and they indeed were bracers of war. I thought that was a pretty decent artifact to be in the vault, and was a little low on ammo, so went back up to make more (one giant also gave a fletch kit (7)).
I had Bracers of War so wasn't expecting too much more, but ended up also getting a long bow of hunting, Protector and Nature's Companion. Add that to the extra STR from the corpses and you couldn't ask for a better take from the vault really. THREE downright awesome artifacts from one vault.
Having an outfit that looked as if it couldn't get any better, I dove down to the dragon caves and started meleeing with the Wyrmlance from the Casino. I had again dropped just about everything and was throwing rocks to keep ammo from getting destroyed. Turned out this probably wasn't necessary, but meleeing with Wyrmlance went fine, for the most part. I got a RoDS out of it, plus a couple useless artifacts (Serpent's Bite, Executor, Needle) I held on to the wish for a while.
Then dove straight to the mana temple where I miscalculated. I wasn't using my ring of see invis and wasn't using the mummy wrapping now that I got the artifact leather armor. I didn't see the archmage and got backed into a corner. I lost quite a few stats while I fumbled around. I also didn't notice I had poison hands, and poisoned myself and 4 blessed extra healing. Put the thicks on and drank one of my ultra heals.I got down to like 150, low but not really worrisome. Still, I had tons of pots, so figured to use one.
I took the orb and a potion of uselessness and left the chaos wizards to rot with their buddies. Cleared posion hands and Took the corpse to the druid for one last PoCC, killed the black unicorn and did some boring grinding for bringing my stats back up (herbing, and Garth, mostly.)
In the meantime I didn't really need any items, so used my RoDS for "Find Weakness" then killed the Assassin Prince for fun and training Find Weakness, I had no more item detect wands, so I mined out most of that 2nd level looking for the room. I dual wielded needle and sting for 10 minutes and then went back to stick and board, smithed up my metal stuff, read my scrolls of defense / protection and buffed up for the final descent.
In the buffing, I drank my potions of Wonder (3) and learned wish. Yay. At 5700 pp I wasn't going to be casting it anytime soon, but still, just a testament to This character's luck.
I had already decided I would kill everything on D:50, so there wasn't much left to do but actually do it. I Cleared out D48, shoved the orbs into their respective holes and descended to the point of no return.
Potion of uselessness hurling led to an artifact of uselessness (Hammerhead). Though realistically there was not many artifacts I would have actually used aside from Preserver or maybe crown of Leadership.
An archer with Far Slayer can make his way around D:49 (without digging) rather quickly. One shot would push me 3/4 of the width. D:50 I was still level 49, so cleared a small room of slayers on the right side before going right down the middle towards the gate. Got hit a few times on my way to clearing out the jellies because I was somewhat impatient. Got some corruptions I didn't like (stiff twice), but I had plenty of scrolls and potions, and would bring myself back to thin and nimble.
Cleared the jellies and spawn rooms, and was 50 by then so my quarrels would penetrate. I shot straight to the gate (through a bunch of ghosts) and woke the balors who started teleporting around. They fell with 2-3 shots of demon slaying ammo each. The first couple I forgot about slaying ammo and just pounded them with 6-10 shots of normal quarrels. While retreating with my own teleports if necessary. I had one stack of 300+ quarrels and a couple other stacks close to 100, so had plenty of ammo and would just stand in the corridor and shoot stuff. In this respect being an archer is easier than a wizard even, because you can get around corners to some extent by targeting places a square or two up or down and way out ahead of you. An hour later or so and everything was dead & the levers were 'h'andled. Then I spent 30 minutes finding the right stuff to throw back and forth on D:49 to get back up. Finally got it and read a bunch of my SoCR and left. I guess I was still a little tainted. Never even went to the unicorn to have him clear me and I had a few scrolls and potions left yet.
On the whole, I would have had to kill myself to lose once I had the AoLS for Khelly and permanent invis. Archer with permanent invis and Far Slayer is pretty crazy easy as long as you find enough fletch sets. Even without, rocks do decent damage just thrown, or just a heap of spears if you have the weight to carry them. The incredibly lucky giant vault on D:44 was just icing, the RNGs way of saying, yes, this really is going to be your first win.