Threat/Tension Room Horror Stories

[JellySlayer]

I think today I cleared one of the nastiest threat rooms I've ever had the misfortune of encountering. I was playing a doomed ranger, about level 20, exploring the area around the Banshee level. I open a door and find a dark room. I step into the threshold, and instantly get stat drained multiple times. I retreat, and suddenly greater fucking daemons start teleporting everywhere around me. I don't have controlled teleport myself, and while I'm somewhat fast (120ish speed), it doesn't exactly do much good when you're surrounded. I take a bunch of stat drains as I attempt to retreat to the stairs. Get trapped a couple times and need to use a wand of digging to open escape routes. Eventually get to the level above with a few daemons in tow. Kill these guys off with missiles. I decide that I might as well try to clear as many as I can, since I'm going to have to deal with them now or when I come back with the Fire Orb. So I use the stairs to pull a few at a time up and kill them with missiles above. Taking lots more stat drains. I killed about 16 or so before my St, To, and Dx were reduced to single digits and I needed to call it quits because I wasn't strong enough to kill them anymore. Spend 10 minutes doing herbs and St training, then went back and cleared the rest of the bastards. (Promptly died three levels down to a frost giant).

I can't decide if this was worse than the time I had to kill 45 minotaur mages on the Mana Temple level. On the one hand, that time I had nasty confusion problems to worry about. On the other hand, I was playing a caster, so I had more option to clear them. Still had about a 10 point stat loss across the board on that one.

Any one else got some memorable threat/tension room horror stories to share? What's the worst you've ever seen?

[Stingray1]

Well, I haven't had it quite as bad as that. My worst was probably a tension room of white unicorns on one of my SIL dives while attempting OCG. During those days I tended to do the SIL dive at fairly low xl. So, those guys teleporting to next to me all the time, hitting very hard and regenerating was nightmarish.

Also once had a massive room of greater titans on MT, but luckily that CK was pretty buff(as all CKs at that stage of the game). Had plenty of human/giant slayers, but still had to use their eternium quarrels against them in the end.

[_Ln_]

Nothing beats an open threat room of quickling queens in the Scintillating Cave near the stairs (about 4 tiles from the nearest queen). An endgame PC with 500+ hp with good DV was near slaughtered from merely TPing on the stairs. The only thing that saved me (I descended with about 100ish hp) was unholy aura corruption as it is applied at monsters' move, not the PC's.

[*invalidname*]

Umm, one early one springs to mind.

The smc, big tension room of blink dogs.
All hostile.
All summoning.
Everywhere.

[Soirana]

Any one else got some memorable threat/tension room horror stories to share? What's the worst you've ever seen?

Worst - freaking black unicorns. Good thing that happened on temple [air probably] level so could fight few at a time.

Most memorable - threat [I think threat at least] room of Ki-rins. I think I simply used darkness to bash them into death, took massive hit on alignment.

[SirTheta]

One of my worst was an ancient white dragon threat room in a cavernous level - so obviously, we're talking like 40 here. I was a Drake Barb and I was very confident because I was invisible and had the AMW, so I was immune to cold. I was taking them out one at a time when I noticed that I was taking more damage as time went on. I sort of ignored it until things click and (queue face of pants-shitting horror) I switch the quick display to see I have a speed in the teens. I backed away and persevered, but ironically, I think this very Barb died to the Archmage because he tried melee'ing him in the middle of a bunch of monsters (no escape route), kept getting frozen, and then hit with death ray once per turn and eventually ran out of healing.

A mostly annoying one was a 4x5 room (or so) of skeletal kings in the mid-COC levels. It was basically right above a T corridor exiting from the stairs..and was already open. I didn't even see anything out of the ordinary before I was confronted with an ass-ton of skeletal warriors. I believe I wound up killing 200+ skeletal warriors before clearing out the skeletal kings.

[Blasphemous]

I had a greater titan 5x6 tension room guarding the only path to down staircase to D48 once. The character somehow did not have means of teleportation and my only wand of digging had (0) charges and I was doomed...

Another time I had a ghost king open tension room in BDC with a ratling duelist, like in JellySlayer's case they were very close to the stairs. Luckily, I had enough stealth to pass by 4 times without being noticed.

The worst tension room that I ever had though, was in MT and I promptly died there AFTER getting the orb.
It was a mixed tension room with greater molochs, quickling king, large rust monster, diamond golem, mimic hivemind and the like.
There was an acid vortex there too.
I didn't know the room was there (probably lost the "certain tension" among messages of eyes draining my PP) and then, for some stupid reason, I decided to dig out another exit from the mana temple, I accidentally dug the entire length of wall, releasing the monsters.
Vortex, which was right next to me - explodes - quickling king panics when he gets hit by acid and hits me multiple times, then blocks off my path of exit.
I realize that teleportation on MT level is disabled so I zap another tunnel but the large rust monster grabs my gauntlets of strength {St+5} and I become overencumbered.
Mimic paralyzes me, moloch and dimond golem finish me off.
Of course, I later realized there were many ways in which I could have played it differently and survived but fact remains that the tension room was far more dangerous than anything that MT threw at me.

[gym21]

I had a duelist go through a series of fun/tough/annoying threat rooms. Greater Molochs on the way to the mana temple, werewolf kings in a cavernous room a little above the branch... but the worst was the ancient karmic dragons on the earth temple level, blocking the way to the temple side of the map. No missiles, no magic, had to kill the things with a huge stack of booze and a wand of magic missiles.

[grobblewobble]

Nothing beats an open threat room of quickling queens in the Scintillating Cave near the stairs (about 4 tiles from the nearest queen).

My worst was similar, only they were kings not queens. Didn't have unholy aura, they nearly killed me.

I also still have bad dreams about that time I had been w5'ing in the library to get the tome and then discovered Chaos Spawns had filled nearly the whole level.

Hmm.. actually the worst was probably when I got stuck between a threat room of ogre magi and a threat room of ice vortices with a low level character.

[magpie]

Not surprising, but the harshest room I've run into would have to be the room stuffed full of very experienced quickling queens on DH:2. No teleportation or anything. Ouch.

The moral is, if you're going to go DH (the Animated Forest is just way too tedious for my likings), go straight, directly through. DO NOT pass GO, DO NOT collect 200 gold.

[anon123]

CoC:

Acid vortices either in the water temple or one level before that. Thankfully they couldn't explode in darkness at the time.
Threat room of balors somewhere in the deep levels. It took me half an hour of real-world time to wipe them and their summons.
Chaos vipers and master thieves, same place. They are very rare but otherwise not particularly dangerous at that point.


DH:

Molochs in DH2. Lots of Lightning Bolt did the trick. I had to go upstairs to recharge my power many times. A couple of hulking armors were dropped.
Lich kings. I think I managed to clear it by taking on them diagonally one at a time with Burning Hands, and bombarding the others with Magic Missile.
Karmic dragons, many years ago. I skipped it at the time, since I was out of Magic Missile castings, but returned later and it was easy with MM plus invisibility.
Chaos knights, which dropped a truckload of eternium items.


Others:

Doppelganger kings in TF:2. This was with an archer, and after taking the first punch from opening the door, I decided I didn't want to clear it and teleported the hell out.
Invisible stalkers somewhere in the ID. Considering they hit pretty hard in melee and I didn't have +SeeI at the time, it was pretty fun.
Two threat rooms of giant slugs, one in the TotHK (cavernous level), the other in NDC. The former didn't yield any corpses, the latter did, which completed my set of immunities for that game if I recall correctly.

[Whippy]

I think my worst (only been playing roughly 6-12 months in total) was an Ogre room with an Ogre Magus in the mix at about level 10. That took me about 45 minutes to clear.

[zasvid]

Greater Molochs on the Mana Temple level. One of them dropped a moloch armor, another one picked it up and it was all over.

Titans in lower CoC are always fun, especially on a no-teleport level. Well, only if you can cast stun ray.

[Sami]

Maybe not the worst, but at least very memorable (layout is not exact but very close to what I actually had once):

Just entered the floor...



##########.#
...........#
##..@<.####
#.....#
#######


So let's see what's left.



#######################.#
#..mixed......@.........#
#..tension.#####...<.####
#..room....# #.....#
############ #######



Crap, let's try another direction...



mixed
vault
#.#
#.#
#######################@#
#..mixed................#
#..tension.#####...<.####
#..room....# #.....#
############ #######



I don't like that either... let's dig a new hallway



###########
#.@@@..@@@#
#@@..@@@@@#
#@@@.@@@.@#
#@.@@@@.@@#
#@.@@.@.@@#
#@@.@@@@@.#
#@@@@.@@.@#
#######.###
##.##
##.## mixed
##.## vault
##.## #.#
##.## #.#
################@######.#
#..mixed................#
#..tension.#####...<.####
#..room....# #.....#
############ #######

Ok... A huge room of doppleganger kings.

[gut]

that is epic :D

[Carter]

Greater Molochs on the Mana Temple level. One of them dropped a moloch armor, another one picked it up and it was all over.


had the same, massive room of molochs which i accidently tunneled into. Having molochs chasing you on a non-tp level is not alot of fun.

[anon123]

that is epic :D

What he said... I think the message from the RNG was clear in that game :)

[The Cold Sailor]

Nowhere near as bad as any of you guys, but once found a large tension room of ghosts in the SMC while playing as an Orc Barbarian. They kept going through walls, so I couldn't run away. They only aged me a few years per hit, but there were about thirty of the bastards. Needless to say, that character did not last long.

[plllizzz9]

Greater Karmic Wyrm threaten at a greater vault level. Was kind of tricky, but gave mad loot - multiple RoDS + sun's Messenger. With a Merchant, clearing it was quite fun. Extensive use of Wands of Far Slaying was involved.


Nothing beats an open threat room of quickling queens in the Scintillating Cave near the stairs (about 4 tiles from the nearest queen). An endgame PC with 500+ hp with good DV was near slaughtered from merely TPing on the stairs

Jesus F**K this kind of stuff. I had a threaten of those in a cavernous level right below Cat Lord, cleared it out -very- slowly by pulling them up and killing with whatever I had, but in the process I lost RoTMC [cave lion got mixed up in the goddamn party]. Rarely ADoM makes me so mad nowadays, but this time it was succesful [especially painful since the previous character who got RotMC was lost to a crash].

[Dogbreath]

In my last win, I had a threat room of Emperor Liches on one of the UL levels.

One of them summoned balors.

Another werewolf kings.

It was bad.

[divij]

i had a threat room of GEE on d50..that is bad enuf in and of itself but i was a drakeling who was slowed to around 30 speed cause of d49....needless too say they surrounded me and killed me...in hindsight i couldve avoided that scenario by tping away but hindsight is 19/20? something like that! also i had a threat room of greater balors and emperor liches on UC3 and i opened the door and every1 got hostile which is ok except i tpd away instantly b4 i cud be confused but a GB also tpd close to me and summoned all kinds of monsters...i tried to get rid of them by leading them up but i was perma invis and they cudnt spot me so i had to hit them and lead them up...this worked for 2-3 Gbalors but then 1 of them summoned ghost kings :mad: i again made the mistake of walking to a distance from him but he randomly hit me (i was invis ) and aged me to death....i shudve used my magic mapping to find the downstairs and just tpd bot in hindsight which is ofc 18/20? i forget the phrase!

[Dogbreath]

You know, it's difficult enough for a lot of us to read English when spelling and grammar is used in some sane fashion. Every time I try and decipher your gibberish I feel like I'm permanently losing a few sanity points.

[Blasphemous]

Once upon a time I entered D:50 and noticed the tension room message.
I was an L+ mindcrafter. Open the tension room - a swarm of hostile white unicorns emerges.
It was a fucking 5x7 room full of them.
As a mindcraftrer I could perhaps confuse stuff but ultimately teleporting monsters interrupting me all the time was a nightmare.
Ended up so annoyed I dropped down to C-, fell from grace in the process, but killed them all.
I think the game should recognize when a crowned holy champion of order is attempting to defeat the forces of chaos and close the gate and instead generate at least friendly white unicorns, if it has to generate them at all.
But no. Let's make them all hostile, all very experienced and annoying as fuck.

[SiTLar]

For some reason the monsters in threat and tension rooms always turn hostile. However, being a mindcrafter you could easily avoid that. In the lategame I use eyes of mind every time I enter a level. That makes things a he'll lot easier.

[Dogbreath]

Yeah, except unicorns will teleport right the fuck out of their tension room, much like ghosts will bypass walls to come at you from their tension room.

[Blasphemous]

They won't teleport out if you don't disturb them, they don't see through walls like ghosts.
I simply wanted to open the door to the room on my path to the left side of D:50 and stumbled into them.
Didn't use detect monsters because I saw no point, I know the layout of the left side.
Besides I deliberately opened tension rooms before to slay the inhabitants for exp.
I thought: ok so it's probably just another mixed tension room or stuff like goblins (which happened to me before, on D:50).

[_Ln_]

Greater Karmic Wyrm threaten at a greater vault level. Was kind of tricky, but gave mad loot - multiple RoDS + sun's Messenger. With a Merchant, clearing it was quite fun. Extensive use of Wands of Far Slaying was involved.



Jesus F**K this kind of stuff. I had a threaten of those in a cavernous level right below Cat Lord, cleared it out -very- slowly by pulling them up and killing with whatever I had, but in the process I lost RoTMC [cave lion got mixed up in the goddamn party]. Rarely ADoM makes me so mad nowadays, but this time it was succesful [especially painful since the previous character who got RotMC was lost to a crash].

I'm sure I've posted the story somewhere, but a while ago I encountered a single quickling king on a cavernous level somewhere around D:35. He was regenerating like crazy and I couldn't hit him hard enough. Finally, I get him to panic and start running away. But this time I was really annoyed by that fuck and went on to pursue him while ranting on IRC (some guys were spectating and having a blast out of my suffering). So I'm chasing the fellow, turn around the corner and a whole load of his friends get in the view. I tried to get to the corridor burning about 3 prayers but without any TP sources I was squished.

It was one of the most hilarious things that caused high-lvl PC deaths, so I fondly remember this story which has a single and very important life lesson - do not venture in the low CoC without sources of teleportation.

[Arbot]

http://i.imgur.com/3rGh9d1.png

Threatening room of emp liches in one of the cavernous levels leading to the crumbled scroll. Accidentally teleported into the middle of them

[Blasphemous]

Hah, fun stuff with lich royalty; I remember another MC of mine.
I was going through DH2 and opened a tension room of lich kings.
I never managed to regain control of my movements; a lvl 15 mindcrafter with ~20 Wi and a ring of mental stability versus ~20 lich kings casting confusion at once or one after another.
Eventually one of them summoned berserker kings and I was done.

[plllizzz9]

On the topic of lich royalty threatens/tensions, I once got a combo like this:

2549

[boat]

divij


i had a threat room of GEE on d50..that is bad enuf in and of itself but i was a drakeling who was slowed to around 30 speed cause of d49....needless too say they surrounded me and killed me...in hindsight i couldve avoided that scenario by tping away but hindsight is 19/20? something like that! also i had a threat room of greater balors and emperor liches on UC3 and i opened the door and every1 got hostile which is ok except i tpd away instantly b4 i cud be confused but a GB also tpd close to me and summoned all kinds of monsters...i tried to get rid of them by leading them up but i was perma invis and they cudnt spot me so i had to hit them and lead them up...this worked for 2-3 Gbalors but then 1 of them summoned ghost kings i again made the mistake of walking to a distance from him but he randomly hit me (i was invis ) and aged me to death....i shudve used my magic mapping to find the downstairs and just tpd bot in hindsight which is ofc 18/20? i forget the phrase!




You know, it's difficult enough for a lot of us to read English when spelling and grammar is used in some sane fashion. Every time I try and decipher your gibberish I feel like I'm permanently losing a few sanity points.

Agreed. At least take some time to format your sentences, and do a spell check for our own sake.

Hindsight is 20/20 , close though


To contribute to the thread, There was a Shadow Wyrm tension room which caused incessant summoning of the ghosts in DH, which was rough early on

[psy_wombats]

I've had some white unicorn and lich rooms that I've avoided at later levels, but the funniest one was probably a L10 or so human fighter exploring the UD. I opened a door, dark room, and immediately started running into things. Backed up a few steps, and found out they were red worms. Well, those are weak, might as well slaughter the whole room. Eventually I was halfway through the room with no end in sight, not that I was taking any damage. Thinking "How many more of these stupid worms are left to go?" I lit a torch, saw that there were about 30 left, and then got immediately scorched to death as they all decided to breathe fire at me. Whoops.

[Soirana]

Stone snakes at UD6 [unremarkable dungeon] on char with no poison resist and no healing skill.
Luckily backtracking to stairs was not blocked by some wererat [RNG has semi-working day or something] - killed like 27 stoen snakes before actually opening room [which happened to be 5x8].

Got some valuable lesson on building piety via precrown [UD3] and not doing early dives to mountain village.

[divij]

@ boat @dogbreath ....." Hindsight is 20/20 , close though" some people dont understand sarcasm and humor...thats ok with me. also with regards grammar and spelling...i care a lot abt these 2 and am rarely, if ever wrong...do you mean punctuations cause i dont give a fuck abt that...so if you would please ignore my comments, that would be great.

[The Cold Sailor]

I believe it was on D:47 where I found a tension room of Lich Kings and greater vault of Red Dragons. I was playing as a Duelist, and thought I could take them in mele. I had Executor, and about four sources of confusion resist, so the undead were destroyed at the cost of a few points of Pe, but the dragons were another story. I learned a valuable lesson that day: level 28 PCs should not take on more than one named fire wyrm at a time. Die and learn, I guess.