Dogbreath
11-16-2014, 08:23 AM
So normally I'm too lazy to post my YAVP/YASDs, but this one was pretty special, so I decided to write up a little something. :)
Right from the start Akhmor was meant to test whether or not Assassins could get the Assassin Prince quest early or not, so I needed him to be ultra-capable. What surprised me by playing him was realizing just what a powerful class Assassin is. I haven't really played assassins since I first started playing ADOM - I'd always play rangers instead, since rangers started with considerably more skills, which is all I thought mattered at the time. I'm glad I had the chance to play him, it was an incredible game.
Akhmor was born in the month of the Raven, which was a good choice for him, seeing how many times that extra speed saved his life. After entering the chain, I went to Holeinthewall and killed a beggar, and then perused to the wares at the black market and learned pick pockets from the master thief. I retrieved the blanket, found the SMC downstairs in the room next to the upstairs (which was nice), and stopped by Terinyo to get the village elder, sheriff, and tiny girl quests. I killed Kranach with a thrown poisoned dagger on the way to the VD, got the reward and used it to buy thieves picks.
For most of the early game I used thrown daggers (often times poisoned) as my main weapon. I was pretty fragile (starting toughness was like 9 or 10) and had maybe 30 HP at level 6, so I relied heavily on my speed, DV, and pick locks. I would lock every door I came across, cordon monsters off one at a time, and kill them with my poison daggers. (Right from the start I was doing a lot of damage in melee. Assassins probably have the highest melee DPS of any class due to insanely high critical hit percentage you get with BS+FW+Stealth+class bonus) Using this method I managed to work my way down to VD: 7 and lured the carpenter back up. On coward mode he didn't really have a chance of hitting me (DV of 40), so my main concern was getting trapped between him and another monster. Fortunately this didn't happen, and I got him to the healer.
At this point I was still C, and had the quest from Hotzenplotz, but my Learning score was at 15 and I really didn't want to lose a few points from the mad doctor, so I decided to wait a bit and see if I could find an altar. Luck was on my side and I found a lawful altar on UCa:1 (the newbie dungeon) and converted to L, and then got the healing skill. (unfortunately it was a corner altar, so I couldn't even get past "pleased" and get my water blessed - not enough gold) At this point I was already level 11, so I decided to get a move on post haste and dived into the UD after picking up a few rations from Munxip.
I came upon a neutral altar on UD:4 and tried to convert it so I could finally raise my piety and bless my water. (I think I had a cursed girdle or something I needed to get rid of) The altar converted me instead, but no big deal. I sacced a few monsters and got my holy water.
I found an undead vault on UD:5 and cleared it pretty quickly. At this point I had about 20 orcish knives from 2 orc tension rooms, so it was a matter of killing off all the dangerous monsters from a distance and then meleeing the skeletons and whatnot to pick my knives back up. After I cleared it I found a Tower Crystal Shield [+13, +4] that I ended up using for the rest of the game, and a Dagger of Death, which quickly replaced the crappy Orcish spear I was using. (I ended up using daggers for most of the game, though I had a little fling with dual-wielding whips of the snake +7 DX, which along with the air orb and other DX raising gear got my DX around 90 - in the end, they just didn't hold up compared to the twin daggers)
I got to the HMV and was happy to see Leggot was a Hurthling. For some reason, the RNG really likes making Leggot a Dwarf whenever I play Dark Elves, and I never get decent prices in shops. I went ahead and bought a girdle of carrying he was selling (very desperately needed, as I only had a strength of 14) and sold all the mithril weapons and gear I had been carrying for some decent cash. At this point I was almost out of food, so I headed straight to the CoC to buy some lizards from the ratlings.
I found a neutral altar on D:1 which was very nice for pre-crowning and pool sipping purposes later on, and then bought some lizards from the traders and headed down to Dwarf Town. On D:7 I found a statue of an Ice Dragon which, after kicking, gave me 2 blessed rings of Ice, which was pretty awesome. Waldenbrook had a scroll of danger (which was useful later) and a helm of teleportation, which I bought and kept with my until the end of the game. The Elder asked me to kill a Dark Orc, which I thought would be difficult, but I actually found one on D:11. I did the next 2 quests and went all the way down to Khelevaster. I tried coming back up through the DH, and almost died. I ran into a threat room of Ghost Kings who literally came at my right through the walls, and I went back down as soon as possible and teleported away - but not before being aged 200+ years. The helm of teleportation saved my life.
I was level 15 at this point, so I got the graveyard quest, and headed back up, doing 19 of the Arena fights in the process. I stopped on D:1 and spent about 8 days (in game) getting pre-crowned. I got pre-crowned with Serpent's Bite, which was not only the perfect weapon for my Assassin, but was also my main weapon all the way up until I got Needle+Sting. It's a humanoid slayer, poisons, and has a very high critical chance. Combined with my already very high critical chance as an assassin, I ended up killing almost every monster in the game with 1 or 2 hits. I 1 hit a greater moloch, a balor, and a great blue wyrm with it, for example. I normally used it along with my crystal shield, though for a little while I tried dual-wielding it with a whip of the snake. I gave up after a while because there weren't many monsters that would survive long enough for my second hit with the whip, but I was taking a lot more energy and and a lot less DV without my shield, so it was really pointless.
Anyway, I was a level 16 by the time I got crowned, so I needed to head to the pyramid. I decided to some in on R5 (the caves) and found an altar on R5:1. I briefly considered a second pre-crowning, but decided it was too scummy and left. Rhetep fell to 2 blows from Serpent's Bite, and I then went to the Asssassin's Guild in order to chill with my homies for a while. (Grabbed the wand of teleport while I was there...) I explored the graveyard, killed the necromancer and then dug up graves for a while until a tiger-summoning Lich King put a stop to that. (thank you, wand of teleportation!) I learned swimming from Blup, explored the Puppy Cave and finally found a ring of the fish. Crossed the river again, visited Blups Mum, and got the RCT. (Raven starsign is very nice) At this point I got rid of my daggers and used the RCT as my thrown weapon instead, though surprisingly not very often. Again, Assassins are the best melee class in the game, and so I didn't really need missiles except against karmics and stat drainers.
At this point I still only had like 100 HP or so and was level 18, and knew I was nowhere near ready for the Ice Queen quest, so I did a big loop of the world map and started visiting the random dungeons. They're a very nice touch, btw, but I was wondering if maybe TB has considered doing one of the campaign mini-quests in each one? Having some unique monster/town/temple or whatever at the bottom of each one would be pretty sweet. I cleared R2, and found a potion shop on R2:5 which got me a potion of potential toughness and potential strength - both badly needed. (my strength was still around 17) I also ran into a Gnoll Vault on R2:9 and got some decent armor, including some Bracers of Resistance.
Next I hit up R1 and finally, finally found some herbs on R1:3. I didn't have herbalism but it didn't really matter since I had a scroll of uncursing. I ate a bunch of morgia while I harvested the moss, and got my toughness up to 21 and my dexterity up to 27.
R3 had a general shop with some decent gear, as well as another gnoll vault. At this point I had about 220 HP as well 3 forms of fire resistance (intrinsic, elemental gauntlets, and bracers) and the 2 rings of ice, so I decided to raid Dark Forge. It was pretty easy (I guess Golems count as humanoids? Serpent's Bite slays them), but I found literally nothing good other than the crown of science.
Disgusted, I went to R4 where I found the Robes of Resistance from a random drop on R4:2. I ended up using them for the rest of the game, since you really can't beat that +12 PV and +5 toughness. I also found 2 rings of Djinni Summoning, one on R4:5 and one on R4:13. There was also a Blue Dragon vault on R4:10 that I steered clear of - actually, I don't think I ever came back to clear it out, which is probably why I never found one artifact.
The entire time I was going through the R caves I was also pool sipping and running back to D:1 to take care of any dooming/cursing. I got -sleep, see invis, -paralysis, -shock and teleport control from the pools. (along with a bunch of other effects that I later got rid of from pool sipping) Finally, on a pool in R4:13, I also got a wish. Since I already had the 2 RoDS I knew I could use for Khelly, I decided to use my wish on Concentration.
I went back to the CoC and killed Bonk the Hill Giant in the Arena and got a PoGA from the Dwarven Elder (as well as his reward for freeing Griff's Spirit), saved Khelevaster, and then cleared the Water Temple. I brought the snake corpse back to Guth'Alak, and decided I was finally buff enough to do the Ice Queen domain. I was level 21 at this point and had about 240 HP. I still had a few close calls, but the PoEH from the Dwarf Elder really helped.
I found a Greater Undead Vault on the 5th level of the Frost Giant Jarl cavern, which ended up being a massive, hour + long battle that took everything I had. Ultimately the RCT was my best friend in the battle - I would retreat to one of the side corridors of the vault and kill all the summons until one of the lich kings would appear, then I would 1-shot him with the RCT. rinse and repeat until I killed the last Lich King, and then I took out the Emperor. I went from level 21 to level 24 in the process.
I found Far Slayer and Nature's Companion in the GUV, which was nice. Killed Haggar, killed the diplomat, killed Hotzenplotz, and moved on.
At this point I had finally found a pair of SLB, so I went out to the wilderness, put on my crown of science, and went boar hunting. I also had an extra wish and concentration at 100 by this point was tired of constantly being strained! (my strength was still pretty low) and having to reorganize my inventory, so I wished for spellbooks of Strength of Atlas and read them with the crown on, as well as a handy dandy spellbook of Iceball. (which came in handy later)
I got my giant boar around day 65 (just a bit too late), and then went to Holeinthewall and killed 20 beggars so I could get courage, as well as get knocked down to C-. I fed the Ratling (AMW, Phial, Sword of Nonnack, Crown of Science, Moonsickle), and then did the final dwarf quest and fed him Big Punch. I did the rest of the Old Crone Quests, and then went and converted back to N on the D:1 Altar, and got crowned at the R5:1 altar. With Death's Blade. Which I literally never used - why would an assassin use a frikkin' Claymore? IMO this needs to be reevaluated as a crowning gift for assassins.
I was level 27 now and still had very low attributes, so I decided to rectify this. I went to the Bug Wilderness and didn't have too much trouble - I could one hit most of the bugs with Serpent's Bite, or take them out with the RCT. On the lower level, I just went on Coward mode and cast Ice Ball a lot to clear it. Then I grabbed the scrolls of magic mapping and went off to the Minotaur Maze. I got through that pretty quickly and got rewarded with the AoTME (which I never used) and Wyrmlance (ditto), as well as 6 PoGAs and 2 PoS, which I desperately needed. I cleared out the high king cave and then hung out until D:90.
I entered the Stone Circle and killed Keriax - he fell to 5 of the winged quarrels of slaying I got from the BUGWIL. The Far Slayer can be handy in a pinch. :)
Next I stopped by and picked up Hawkslayer and spent a little while in the cavernous levels of R5 training him. Once he was strong enough, we wandered around R6 until I reached level 30, and then I had Hawkslayer kill the Greater White Unicorn. I got 8 PoGAs and no alignment drop for my trouble. (or rather, Hawkslayer's trouble) Around this point I also got alchemy up to 100 and started pumping out PoGAs pretty regularly - I ended the game with most of my stats in the 60s or 70s.
I went to the ToEF, no trouble due to elemental gauntlets + robes of resistance. One-hitted the ACW, gave his corpse to Guth'Alak (who apparently doesn't care that I slaughtered his white unicorn friend) and then dove all the way to the Blue Dragon Caves. (killing the banshee, cat lord, bugs, et al. on the way, skipping the rest of the levels/temples and a greater giant vault and leaving them for later)
The BDC were ridiculously easy. None of the dragons noticed me, so I could just walk right up to them and bump them and they would die instantly. I gained a few levels from monsters I had to kill along the way (greater molochs, titans, a balor, etc.), and then took out Barney with 3 hits. I found another RoDS and a wand of wishing with 0 charges along the way.
I went to the Assassin Prince and got his quest at level 36, and then fired a missile in his domain (not a chaotic act) to anger him and everyone else (who were peaceful since I was an assassin), and got Sting. From that point on, I dual-wielded Needle and Sting through the rest of the game. Since I had grand mastery in daggers and TWC at 100%, it only cost me 1000 energy to fight with both of them. The Assassins' +20 DV dodge bonus and the +18 DV from Needle+Sting meant that I didn't have to worry about a shield at this point - I still had 148 DV while fighting without a shield since I kept my tactics on "defensive."
I dove to I:21 and killed and ate Filk, and then went and climbed down the rift. I finally got a spellbook of teleport (which I needed to move around the CoC quickly), as well as the weird tome. Went to the Mad Minstral and gave him the tome, and he gave me 6 SoCR as well as telling me about the scintillating cave.
Killed the Emperor Moloch (a few blessed demon slaying quarrels) and got the ToTRR.
From this point on, the ToTRR replaced the RCT as my missile weapon. It's actually pretty awesome and does about 3 times the damage, while having the same slaying powers.
I dove back into the CoC and cleared the Air Temple in about 2 minutes, cleared the Earth temple in about a minute, and took out a greater giant vault and found the Ring of Immunity. I cleared the mana temple pretty quickly (used humanoid slaying quarrels on the archmage), and then went and killed Blue Dragons until I picked up level 50. I had used one of my wishes a while back for herbalism (so I could stop buying ratling crap and built a nice stockpile of stomafilla), and used another for a girdle of giant strength.
Got the golden girdle for my uselessness gift. It's the first time in 14 years of playing ADOM I've ever found it.
I cleared level 50, instakilling most of the balors and chaos wizards. I killed fisty in 2 hits, then just sat around dumping most of my inventory and blessing all my potions of boost stat. At this point I hadn't used a single SoCR in the entire game and had actually 'u'sed the mana orb 3 times before leaving D:48 because I had too few corruptions. Now I just had to w5 for a while until I finally got past the 85% mark and was corrupted enough to enter the portal.
I drank all my potions and boosted my speed, went through and killed Andor Drakon with humanoid slaying quarrels.
Right from the start Akhmor was meant to test whether or not Assassins could get the Assassin Prince quest early or not, so I needed him to be ultra-capable. What surprised me by playing him was realizing just what a powerful class Assassin is. I haven't really played assassins since I first started playing ADOM - I'd always play rangers instead, since rangers started with considerably more skills, which is all I thought mattered at the time. I'm glad I had the chance to play him, it was an incredible game.
Akhmor was born in the month of the Raven, which was a good choice for him, seeing how many times that extra speed saved his life. After entering the chain, I went to Holeinthewall and killed a beggar, and then perused to the wares at the black market and learned pick pockets from the master thief. I retrieved the blanket, found the SMC downstairs in the room next to the upstairs (which was nice), and stopped by Terinyo to get the village elder, sheriff, and tiny girl quests. I killed Kranach with a thrown poisoned dagger on the way to the VD, got the reward and used it to buy thieves picks.
For most of the early game I used thrown daggers (often times poisoned) as my main weapon. I was pretty fragile (starting toughness was like 9 or 10) and had maybe 30 HP at level 6, so I relied heavily on my speed, DV, and pick locks. I would lock every door I came across, cordon monsters off one at a time, and kill them with my poison daggers. (Right from the start I was doing a lot of damage in melee. Assassins probably have the highest melee DPS of any class due to insanely high critical hit percentage you get with BS+FW+Stealth+class bonus) Using this method I managed to work my way down to VD: 7 and lured the carpenter back up. On coward mode he didn't really have a chance of hitting me (DV of 40), so my main concern was getting trapped between him and another monster. Fortunately this didn't happen, and I got him to the healer.
At this point I was still C, and had the quest from Hotzenplotz, but my Learning score was at 15 and I really didn't want to lose a few points from the mad doctor, so I decided to wait a bit and see if I could find an altar. Luck was on my side and I found a lawful altar on UCa:1 (the newbie dungeon) and converted to L, and then got the healing skill. (unfortunately it was a corner altar, so I couldn't even get past "pleased" and get my water blessed - not enough gold) At this point I was already level 11, so I decided to get a move on post haste and dived into the UD after picking up a few rations from Munxip.
I came upon a neutral altar on UD:4 and tried to convert it so I could finally raise my piety and bless my water. (I think I had a cursed girdle or something I needed to get rid of) The altar converted me instead, but no big deal. I sacced a few monsters and got my holy water.
I found an undead vault on UD:5 and cleared it pretty quickly. At this point I had about 20 orcish knives from 2 orc tension rooms, so it was a matter of killing off all the dangerous monsters from a distance and then meleeing the skeletons and whatnot to pick my knives back up. After I cleared it I found a Tower Crystal Shield [+13, +4] that I ended up using for the rest of the game, and a Dagger of Death, which quickly replaced the crappy Orcish spear I was using. (I ended up using daggers for most of the game, though I had a little fling with dual-wielding whips of the snake +7 DX, which along with the air orb and other DX raising gear got my DX around 90 - in the end, they just didn't hold up compared to the twin daggers)
I got to the HMV and was happy to see Leggot was a Hurthling. For some reason, the RNG really likes making Leggot a Dwarf whenever I play Dark Elves, and I never get decent prices in shops. I went ahead and bought a girdle of carrying he was selling (very desperately needed, as I only had a strength of 14) and sold all the mithril weapons and gear I had been carrying for some decent cash. At this point I was almost out of food, so I headed straight to the CoC to buy some lizards from the ratlings.
I found a neutral altar on D:1 which was very nice for pre-crowning and pool sipping purposes later on, and then bought some lizards from the traders and headed down to Dwarf Town. On D:7 I found a statue of an Ice Dragon which, after kicking, gave me 2 blessed rings of Ice, which was pretty awesome. Waldenbrook had a scroll of danger (which was useful later) and a helm of teleportation, which I bought and kept with my until the end of the game. The Elder asked me to kill a Dark Orc, which I thought would be difficult, but I actually found one on D:11. I did the next 2 quests and went all the way down to Khelevaster. I tried coming back up through the DH, and almost died. I ran into a threat room of Ghost Kings who literally came at my right through the walls, and I went back down as soon as possible and teleported away - but not before being aged 200+ years. The helm of teleportation saved my life.
I was level 15 at this point, so I got the graveyard quest, and headed back up, doing 19 of the Arena fights in the process. I stopped on D:1 and spent about 8 days (in game) getting pre-crowned. I got pre-crowned with Serpent's Bite, which was not only the perfect weapon for my Assassin, but was also my main weapon all the way up until I got Needle+Sting. It's a humanoid slayer, poisons, and has a very high critical chance. Combined with my already very high critical chance as an assassin, I ended up killing almost every monster in the game with 1 or 2 hits. I 1 hit a greater moloch, a balor, and a great blue wyrm with it, for example. I normally used it along with my crystal shield, though for a little while I tried dual-wielding it with a whip of the snake. I gave up after a while because there weren't many monsters that would survive long enough for my second hit with the whip, but I was taking a lot more energy and and a lot less DV without my shield, so it was really pointless.
Anyway, I was a level 16 by the time I got crowned, so I needed to head to the pyramid. I decided to some in on R5 (the caves) and found an altar on R5:1. I briefly considered a second pre-crowning, but decided it was too scummy and left. Rhetep fell to 2 blows from Serpent's Bite, and I then went to the Asssassin's Guild in order to chill with my homies for a while. (Grabbed the wand of teleport while I was there...) I explored the graveyard, killed the necromancer and then dug up graves for a while until a tiger-summoning Lich King put a stop to that. (thank you, wand of teleportation!) I learned swimming from Blup, explored the Puppy Cave and finally found a ring of the fish. Crossed the river again, visited Blups Mum, and got the RCT. (Raven starsign is very nice) At this point I got rid of my daggers and used the RCT as my thrown weapon instead, though surprisingly not very often. Again, Assassins are the best melee class in the game, and so I didn't really need missiles except against karmics and stat drainers.
At this point I still only had like 100 HP or so and was level 18, and knew I was nowhere near ready for the Ice Queen quest, so I did a big loop of the world map and started visiting the random dungeons. They're a very nice touch, btw, but I was wondering if maybe TB has considered doing one of the campaign mini-quests in each one? Having some unique monster/town/temple or whatever at the bottom of each one would be pretty sweet. I cleared R2, and found a potion shop on R2:5 which got me a potion of potential toughness and potential strength - both badly needed. (my strength was still around 17) I also ran into a Gnoll Vault on R2:9 and got some decent armor, including some Bracers of Resistance.
Next I hit up R1 and finally, finally found some herbs on R1:3. I didn't have herbalism but it didn't really matter since I had a scroll of uncursing. I ate a bunch of morgia while I harvested the moss, and got my toughness up to 21 and my dexterity up to 27.
R3 had a general shop with some decent gear, as well as another gnoll vault. At this point I had about 220 HP as well 3 forms of fire resistance (intrinsic, elemental gauntlets, and bracers) and the 2 rings of ice, so I decided to raid Dark Forge. It was pretty easy (I guess Golems count as humanoids? Serpent's Bite slays them), but I found literally nothing good other than the crown of science.
Disgusted, I went to R4 where I found the Robes of Resistance from a random drop on R4:2. I ended up using them for the rest of the game, since you really can't beat that +12 PV and +5 toughness. I also found 2 rings of Djinni Summoning, one on R4:5 and one on R4:13. There was also a Blue Dragon vault on R4:10 that I steered clear of - actually, I don't think I ever came back to clear it out, which is probably why I never found one artifact.
The entire time I was going through the R caves I was also pool sipping and running back to D:1 to take care of any dooming/cursing. I got -sleep, see invis, -paralysis, -shock and teleport control from the pools. (along with a bunch of other effects that I later got rid of from pool sipping) Finally, on a pool in R4:13, I also got a wish. Since I already had the 2 RoDS I knew I could use for Khelly, I decided to use my wish on Concentration.
I went back to the CoC and killed Bonk the Hill Giant in the Arena and got a PoGA from the Dwarven Elder (as well as his reward for freeing Griff's Spirit), saved Khelevaster, and then cleared the Water Temple. I brought the snake corpse back to Guth'Alak, and decided I was finally buff enough to do the Ice Queen domain. I was level 21 at this point and had about 240 HP. I still had a few close calls, but the PoEH from the Dwarf Elder really helped.
I found a Greater Undead Vault on the 5th level of the Frost Giant Jarl cavern, which ended up being a massive, hour + long battle that took everything I had. Ultimately the RCT was my best friend in the battle - I would retreat to one of the side corridors of the vault and kill all the summons until one of the lich kings would appear, then I would 1-shot him with the RCT. rinse and repeat until I killed the last Lich King, and then I took out the Emperor. I went from level 21 to level 24 in the process.
I found Far Slayer and Nature's Companion in the GUV, which was nice. Killed Haggar, killed the diplomat, killed Hotzenplotz, and moved on.
At this point I had finally found a pair of SLB, so I went out to the wilderness, put on my crown of science, and went boar hunting. I also had an extra wish and concentration at 100 by this point was tired of constantly being strained! (my strength was still pretty low) and having to reorganize my inventory, so I wished for spellbooks of Strength of Atlas and read them with the crown on, as well as a handy dandy spellbook of Iceball. (which came in handy later)
I got my giant boar around day 65 (just a bit too late), and then went to Holeinthewall and killed 20 beggars so I could get courage, as well as get knocked down to C-. I fed the Ratling (AMW, Phial, Sword of Nonnack, Crown of Science, Moonsickle), and then did the final dwarf quest and fed him Big Punch. I did the rest of the Old Crone Quests, and then went and converted back to N on the D:1 Altar, and got crowned at the R5:1 altar. With Death's Blade. Which I literally never used - why would an assassin use a frikkin' Claymore? IMO this needs to be reevaluated as a crowning gift for assassins.
I was level 27 now and still had very low attributes, so I decided to rectify this. I went to the Bug Wilderness and didn't have too much trouble - I could one hit most of the bugs with Serpent's Bite, or take them out with the RCT. On the lower level, I just went on Coward mode and cast Ice Ball a lot to clear it. Then I grabbed the scrolls of magic mapping and went off to the Minotaur Maze. I got through that pretty quickly and got rewarded with the AoTME (which I never used) and Wyrmlance (ditto), as well as 6 PoGAs and 2 PoS, which I desperately needed. I cleared out the high king cave and then hung out until D:90.
I entered the Stone Circle and killed Keriax - he fell to 5 of the winged quarrels of slaying I got from the BUGWIL. The Far Slayer can be handy in a pinch. :)
Next I stopped by and picked up Hawkslayer and spent a little while in the cavernous levels of R5 training him. Once he was strong enough, we wandered around R6 until I reached level 30, and then I had Hawkslayer kill the Greater White Unicorn. I got 8 PoGAs and no alignment drop for my trouble. (or rather, Hawkslayer's trouble) Around this point I also got alchemy up to 100 and started pumping out PoGAs pretty regularly - I ended the game with most of my stats in the 60s or 70s.
I went to the ToEF, no trouble due to elemental gauntlets + robes of resistance. One-hitted the ACW, gave his corpse to Guth'Alak (who apparently doesn't care that I slaughtered his white unicorn friend) and then dove all the way to the Blue Dragon Caves. (killing the banshee, cat lord, bugs, et al. on the way, skipping the rest of the levels/temples and a greater giant vault and leaving them for later)
The BDC were ridiculously easy. None of the dragons noticed me, so I could just walk right up to them and bump them and they would die instantly. I gained a few levels from monsters I had to kill along the way (greater molochs, titans, a balor, etc.), and then took out Barney with 3 hits. I found another RoDS and a wand of wishing with 0 charges along the way.
I went to the Assassin Prince and got his quest at level 36, and then fired a missile in his domain (not a chaotic act) to anger him and everyone else (who were peaceful since I was an assassin), and got Sting. From that point on, I dual-wielded Needle and Sting through the rest of the game. Since I had grand mastery in daggers and TWC at 100%, it only cost me 1000 energy to fight with both of them. The Assassins' +20 DV dodge bonus and the +18 DV from Needle+Sting meant that I didn't have to worry about a shield at this point - I still had 148 DV while fighting without a shield since I kept my tactics on "defensive."
I dove to I:21 and killed and ate Filk, and then went and climbed down the rift. I finally got a spellbook of teleport (which I needed to move around the CoC quickly), as well as the weird tome. Went to the Mad Minstral and gave him the tome, and he gave me 6 SoCR as well as telling me about the scintillating cave.
Killed the Emperor Moloch (a few blessed demon slaying quarrels) and got the ToTRR.
From this point on, the ToTRR replaced the RCT as my missile weapon. It's actually pretty awesome and does about 3 times the damage, while having the same slaying powers.
I dove back into the CoC and cleared the Air Temple in about 2 minutes, cleared the Earth temple in about a minute, and took out a greater giant vault and found the Ring of Immunity. I cleared the mana temple pretty quickly (used humanoid slaying quarrels on the archmage), and then went and killed Blue Dragons until I picked up level 50. I had used one of my wishes a while back for herbalism (so I could stop buying ratling crap and built a nice stockpile of stomafilla), and used another for a girdle of giant strength.
Got the golden girdle for my uselessness gift. It's the first time in 14 years of playing ADOM I've ever found it.
I cleared level 50, instakilling most of the balors and chaos wizards. I killed fisty in 2 hits, then just sat around dumping most of my inventory and blessing all my potions of boost stat. At this point I hadn't used a single SoCR in the entire game and had actually 'u'sed the mana orb 3 times before leaving D:48 because I had too few corruptions. Now I just had to w5 for a while until I finally got past the 85% mark and was corrupted enough to enter the portal.
I drank all my potions and boosted my speed, went through and killed Andor Drakon with humanoid slaying quarrels.