jongman
08-19-2014, 07:00 AM
Second overall win, two years since my first one. Also, my first win with the post-crowdfunding release.
R50 was the first time I was playing the prereleases - and I liked it a lot. I realized I like graphical mode much better than console mode. There is much more information (it's tiring to look at each tree in the animated forest to see which one is hostile to you), and w> and w< alleviate a lot of problems from the small screen.
Regarding the change in gameplay, I like that a lot of scumming strategies have been nuffed - ID stairhopping, banshee @ animated forest, stomafilla crowning, gremlin bombing etc. At first I was skeptical because I thought scumming was also a part of the game. But since all scummings entail some sort of grinding - disabling those made me do less grinding, and have more fun playing the game.
On to the game - I was fiddling with wizards again with the prereleases, but that got boring, so wanted to do some melee classes. Barbarian seemed too challenging for me without any spells, so I chose a drakeling paladin. I started the game going down to HMV. I forgot to make the first kill in Holeinthewall, and made it in SMC without noting what it was. So there goes the ultra attempt.
UD was useful, had a potion shop and a couple altars. I (as usual) tried livesaccing some creatures to get a precrown, but when you are a neutral this is too boring+painful - so I gave up. (In retrospect, I might have converted to Chaotic and get a precrown, only to convert to neutral later?)
In UD I got a battle axe of devastation from a gnoll tension room or something, which I used until much later in the game. Got detect traps, killed Hotz to get 'order, and went to CoC. In CoC, D:1 had a book shop - which didn't have any powerful spells but good for everyday ones (slow monster etc). Waldenbrook had a tower adamantium shield in stock so that was useful. D:11 gave me a 7LB and a phase dagger, which I used until endgame.
My first dwarf quest got me a potion of literacy. While that was definitely useful, I was more used to getting my inventory identified to see which scroll is the scroll of identify. Later I had to exhaust the scrolls one by one until I got the right one. Is there any better way than this?
After clearing the pyramid and griffyard, came back, sold the loot and got crowned.. and got hammer of the gods. Ah, bummer. Decided to try draining pools in DF - maybe I can find an amulet to save Khelly. I was level 15, but felt pretty buff with my axe - and it was easy. I did get a wish for the amulet, Wyrmlance (was very useful in ToEF and BDC) and red dragon scale mail; later got RoTHK and decended to save Khelly and do water temple.
Water temple was very easy; ToEF was pretty hard.. I didn't have any useful potions so I had to rely on acid spitting and meleeing AKW. However, he now didn't follow me to the lower level - that gave me plenty of time to heal and get ready for fighting again.
Casino shop was meh. Started descending more. At this point, accessing altars became a big problem - I didn't take notes on where I saw altars because I went to dwarftown almost always. But midgame and later, I wasted a lot of time coming back and forth to dwarftown.
After Casino, Cat lord proved to be a bigger problem than I imagined. I was only at level 19 or something at the moment, and he was really fast and strong. (Why is a cat lord infinitely more strong than werewolf lords? Damn.) Teleported away, and started looking for ways to level up.
I ended up clearing the new dungeons (R4 and R6). R6:4 had a dragon vault with a great red wyrm - because of the red dragon scale mail, they went down easily under Wyrmlance. After that, I wasn't still sure, so I decided to go and tackle the Minotaur Maze - and it wasn't too hard once you have the layout of the fake levels in the guidebook. (Antennae corruption and lots of luck also helped) So ended up clearing only a handful of fake levels until I got to the final level. And minotaur emperror gave me bracers of war and 6 PoGAs!!!!! Yay!!! I would do it every game if the reward was this good.. I spent some good time swinging around that badass axe.
Went deeper into CoC, passing the temples. D:45 had a greater vault of giants, which gave me Executor (which made a nice replacement to my axe of devastation). I think I got the crown of leadership here as well, but not sure. At this point I was level 29, and I dove into BDC.
Killed hundreds of ancient blue dragons with Wyrmlance and collect loots until I was bored and went to kill the ancient blue wyrm. He actually was pretty easy, not any harder than the other wyrms.
Since I got Needle I had to try out Sting now(even I'm not going for an ultra). So I ascended to the assassin guild (doing earth temple and air temple on the side, where both was easy) I also found a random RoDS lying next to the stairs of NDC. Haha.
After swinging the two daggers around a bit, went down to mana temple and the final dive. I was at level 40. While I was going to the nearest altar, a great black wyrm gave me a WoW with 0 charges - so I thought I was pretty well prepared.
D:49 useless gift was Alyas Holy Scarf. I chose to wear an amulet of saving instead for the D:50 though.
When I got to D:50, my speed was at 10 (never made it this far with a drakeling).. and I couldn't fire bolt myself but only with a wand. I only had 1 charge and a couple of booze.. seriously considered wishing for scrolls of charging. :-)
Instead, I read a SoFS to summon a greater earth elemental, and hid behind him until I got my speed back. The greater earth elemental made it so much easier; he was able to take down 5 balors when I accidently magic missiled him. :-(
I had 8-9 blessed scrolls of corruption removal at the time, and still had the unicorn corruption removal chance, so I felt comfortable meleeing the balors. Although I think I could have taken them down with just acid spitting and magic missiling while running away on boosted speed.
So cleared the level (without using the amulet nor the wishes), handled the levers, and goodbye CoC. Ah, also used one of the two wishes to get a cute dog for the girl..
R50 was the first time I was playing the prereleases - and I liked it a lot. I realized I like graphical mode much better than console mode. There is much more information (it's tiring to look at each tree in the animated forest to see which one is hostile to you), and w> and w< alleviate a lot of problems from the small screen.
Regarding the change in gameplay, I like that a lot of scumming strategies have been nuffed - ID stairhopping, banshee @ animated forest, stomafilla crowning, gremlin bombing etc. At first I was skeptical because I thought scumming was also a part of the game. But since all scummings entail some sort of grinding - disabling those made me do less grinding, and have more fun playing the game.
On to the game - I was fiddling with wizards again with the prereleases, but that got boring, so wanted to do some melee classes. Barbarian seemed too challenging for me without any spells, so I chose a drakeling paladin. I started the game going down to HMV. I forgot to make the first kill in Holeinthewall, and made it in SMC without noting what it was. So there goes the ultra attempt.
UD was useful, had a potion shop and a couple altars. I (as usual) tried livesaccing some creatures to get a precrown, but when you are a neutral this is too boring+painful - so I gave up. (In retrospect, I might have converted to Chaotic and get a precrown, only to convert to neutral later?)
In UD I got a battle axe of devastation from a gnoll tension room or something, which I used until much later in the game. Got detect traps, killed Hotz to get 'order, and went to CoC. In CoC, D:1 had a book shop - which didn't have any powerful spells but good for everyday ones (slow monster etc). Waldenbrook had a tower adamantium shield in stock so that was useful. D:11 gave me a 7LB and a phase dagger, which I used until endgame.
My first dwarf quest got me a potion of literacy. While that was definitely useful, I was more used to getting my inventory identified to see which scroll is the scroll of identify. Later I had to exhaust the scrolls one by one until I got the right one. Is there any better way than this?
After clearing the pyramid and griffyard, came back, sold the loot and got crowned.. and got hammer of the gods. Ah, bummer. Decided to try draining pools in DF - maybe I can find an amulet to save Khelly. I was level 15, but felt pretty buff with my axe - and it was easy. I did get a wish for the amulet, Wyrmlance (was very useful in ToEF and BDC) and red dragon scale mail; later got RoTHK and decended to save Khelly and do water temple.
Water temple was very easy; ToEF was pretty hard.. I didn't have any useful potions so I had to rely on acid spitting and meleeing AKW. However, he now didn't follow me to the lower level - that gave me plenty of time to heal and get ready for fighting again.
Casino shop was meh. Started descending more. At this point, accessing altars became a big problem - I didn't take notes on where I saw altars because I went to dwarftown almost always. But midgame and later, I wasted a lot of time coming back and forth to dwarftown.
After Casino, Cat lord proved to be a bigger problem than I imagined. I was only at level 19 or something at the moment, and he was really fast and strong. (Why is a cat lord infinitely more strong than werewolf lords? Damn.) Teleported away, and started looking for ways to level up.
I ended up clearing the new dungeons (R4 and R6). R6:4 had a dragon vault with a great red wyrm - because of the red dragon scale mail, they went down easily under Wyrmlance. After that, I wasn't still sure, so I decided to go and tackle the Minotaur Maze - and it wasn't too hard once you have the layout of the fake levels in the guidebook. (Antennae corruption and lots of luck also helped) So ended up clearing only a handful of fake levels until I got to the final level. And minotaur emperror gave me bracers of war and 6 PoGAs!!!!! Yay!!! I would do it every game if the reward was this good.. I spent some good time swinging around that badass axe.
Went deeper into CoC, passing the temples. D:45 had a greater vault of giants, which gave me Executor (which made a nice replacement to my axe of devastation). I think I got the crown of leadership here as well, but not sure. At this point I was level 29, and I dove into BDC.
Killed hundreds of ancient blue dragons with Wyrmlance and collect loots until I was bored and went to kill the ancient blue wyrm. He actually was pretty easy, not any harder than the other wyrms.
Since I got Needle I had to try out Sting now(even I'm not going for an ultra). So I ascended to the assassin guild (doing earth temple and air temple on the side, where both was easy) I also found a random RoDS lying next to the stairs of NDC. Haha.
After swinging the two daggers around a bit, went down to mana temple and the final dive. I was at level 40. While I was going to the nearest altar, a great black wyrm gave me a WoW with 0 charges - so I thought I was pretty well prepared.
D:49 useless gift was Alyas Holy Scarf. I chose to wear an amulet of saving instead for the D:50 though.
When I got to D:50, my speed was at 10 (never made it this far with a drakeling).. and I couldn't fire bolt myself but only with a wand. I only had 1 charge and a couple of booze.. seriously considered wishing for scrolls of charging. :-)
Instead, I read a SoFS to summon a greater earth elemental, and hid behind him until I got my speed back. The greater earth elemental made it so much easier; he was able to take down 5 balors when I accidently magic missiled him. :-(
I had 8-9 blessed scrolls of corruption removal at the time, and still had the unicorn corruption removal chance, so I felt comfortable meleeing the balors. Although I think I could have taken them down with just acid spitting and magic missiling while running away on boosted speed.
So cleared the level (without using the amulet nor the wishes), handled the levers, and goodbye CoC. Ah, also used one of the two wishes to get a cute dog for the girl..