Scooter Fox
06-08-2015, 11:34 PM
The first win with a melee class, and with focus on whips too. Well, not all the time, I had to switch to Big Punch from FGJC up to the casino, but I'm still pretty happy with this run.
The beginning was super lucky, I found an eternium two-handed sword in SMC, which ended up helping in a lot of situations requiring quick disposal of an approach enemy. I was using it occasionally as far as Minotaur Maze. I quickly got a good shield too, which made my early game much, much easier. On top of that UD5 spawned with a neutral altar (which turned out to be the only N altar outside Dwarftown, sadly), which allowed for a fast crowning... not. I faced serious food problems, which forced me to finish UD and go to CoC for cooked lizards before coming back.
Crowning gift were fencing gloves of St. Montojja. I hoped for a weapon, so I was initially disappointed, but then I realized - this is the best opportunity to actually try out using whips, since they scale with Dexterity instead of Strength and this artifact gave me a super +12 Dx boost. I spent some more time to get post-crowned, which rewarded me with Long Sting. I never used it even once, left it in a stash right before Dwarftown and never came back for it.
Nothing really interesting was happening for some time; I found a whip or two, but with their stats my damage wasn't all that great. It wasn't bad either with my high relatively Dexterity. I raised my whips weapon skill up to level 9 before I had to switch to Big Punch, as Darkforge and FGJC were undoable without a lot of patience - my whips dealt stable ~35 damage against ~35 PV.
My venture to Tomb of the High Kings ended on the last level, where I realized I actually hadn't found any wand of cold yet. Which was pretty funny considering I already saved Khelavaster at that point thanks to a ring of djinni summoning. Another issue was lack of any means of confusion resistance except for my crowning gift gloves - the first ring of the clear mind was found in the casino shop, the first helm of mental stability somewhere in Unreal Caves. I ventured back to CoC, cleared Water Temple and banshee before going back up, this time with a wand of cold ready. TotHK was pretty easy, except I had to prematurely run away from there after meeting a doppleganger king. It was a second one actually, I killed the first before realizing what kind of doppleganger I was hitting, somehow.
Ice Queen Domain and frost giants were next. Not one, but two doppleganger kings spawned in FGJC at early levels, forcing some fun with wand of teleportation and potions of booze. (No more of them spawned at any later point in the game; I only met lords. How does it even work?) The greater vault turned out to be an undead one. And what rewards did it hold! Black Tome of Alsophocus and Cat's Claw! Talk about risk and reward, ha ha. At least I found a girdle of giant strength on the level below. Haggar submitted to the power of Big Punch and the Ice Queen's blessing (with associated bonuses) was mine as well.
Having literally nothing else to do except ToEF, I reluctantly went to Minotaur Maze. I had to grind experience for a bit as I wasn't even level 22 at that time. The game was relatively generous with the maze layout, with only one dead end and two levels of backtracking necessary to reach the emperor. Before doing that, I had to find a way to deal with the mages and their stat drain. The plan was to glove slap them into the ground and it actually worked the first time - mage got stunned right away and killed seconds later. Happy it worked so well I went with the same plan for the next encountered mage, only to find him stubbornly resisting for 3 turns, while also draining some of my strength away. So much for an useful class power. I resorted to my small stack of humanoid slaying ammo, which disappeared by the time I reach the bottom level of the maze. Mages guarding the emperor turned up the challenge a notch, somehow having much more potent confusion than their brethren from earlier levels; my artifact gloves weren't enough and I barely found any time to zap my wands between confusion spells. I ended up losing some stats and healing herbs, but nothing too drastic. Minotaur emperor dropped Hammerhead, wow. Indestructible pick axe, wow. Anyway, I was so focused on preserving emperor's corpse for future consumption that I forgot to take his axe from the ground. Oooops.
Recovering from losing 8 Willpower, a side effect of having an emperor for lunch, took some time, since I had only one stable 2x2 patch with morgia roots and at that time I was pretty short on holy water. This is a boring part of the story, so let's skip it.
Fast forward quite a lot of in-game days, one visit in Water Dragon Cave and 7 or 8 blessed PoGA later I arrived at Tower of Eternal Flames. It wasn't much, really. I was pretty afraid of Ancient Chaos Wyrm since it was my first time trying to kill it with a melee character, but it died in three hits without even hitting back. I admit I wasn't particularly disappointed with such turn of events. Disappointment came soon after though, when my girdle of giant strength melted away while finishing the remains of Fire Temple for experience. At this point I had enough Strength to carry all my stuff without burdening myself though, so it wasn't THAT big of a loss.
With fire orb in the tool slot, trip down to the casino was rather uneventful. There was one particular item I was hoping to find in the shop (well, there were other ones too, but that makes the narration boring) and I found it - whip of the snake! At this point the FUN began. Fencing gloves of St. Montojja coupled with newly acquired whip of the snake gave +19 Dx and +19 speed. With Raven star sign conveniently generated at the beginning of the game I was running around with 130+ speed, without taking any +speed talents. Somewhere along the way I found a second ring of djinni summoning and I was wondering what to use it for, when I found seven league boots lying on the ground. Talk about luck! RoDS ended up as a backup in case either my new weapon or 7LB get destroyed. Neither happened in the end.
Among other vital items spawned in the casino shop were two rings of the clear mind, an amulet of death ray resistance and an amulet of petrification resistance. Among absolutely non-vital albeit interesting items was a scorched spear. Non-vital for sure. Anyway, at this point I had everything needed to end the game.
D:31, right below the casino, spawned with a greater vault. Undead again. I cleared all outer areas - I could kite vampires and ghosts very easily by hitting and stepping back; with 7LB and tons of Dx/speed they could never reach me. My whip of the snake, now without any shield, was enough to kill anything in melee, even greater molochs. The greater vault had great spoils, Far Slayer, Nature's Companion and Grod, but I didn't dare to fight it out with the liches, especially since one of them already summoned some wyrms.
D:41 was pretty funny - a mixed tension room, a titan tension room and a red dragon lesser vault. All 26 titans were kited to hell and back and gave nice two levels of experience. The guaranteed CoC greater vault for once wasn't undead; in turn it contained Bugbiter and three gold heaps. At least I gained a lot of experience from that, I suppose. It got me up to level 32, which gave me the ridiculous +12 Dx bonus. Not like I really needed it that much, but running around with 160+ speed and hitting enemies in Berserk for 100+ damage only to switch back to Defensive and run away a tile was pretty damn fun. Boring and a bit tedious in the long run, but still fun. I skipped Blue Dragon Caves - there was no point in risking item destruction when nothing could touch me anyway (or so I thought).
D:49 gave me Protector. Damn, game, why can't you give it to me for any other character? Like, you know, one that would want to use a shield? Anyway, I had actually more DV without Protector equipped thanks to class powers and shield skill trained only to level 7.
Having learned from painful past experience, I zapped a wand of monster detection right after entering D:50. And guess what, emperor lich tension room. Again. That's two times in five D:50 spawns. Pretty neat. This time the room wasn't covered in darkness (and there were "only" 38 liches instead of 50); in turn there was no door between the room and the chaos gate part of the level. I was almost pissing myself, but simply creating doors on both sides and locking them up with a key turned out to be enough. I was amazed it was so simple, I only had to dig around the room.
Balors were no fun. Not hard, just no fun. They stubbornly came only one at a time, and only after I handled both levers. It took some time to finish the level because of that. Fistanarius was the last and believe it or not, he was actually overpowering me in melee. Well, not exactly overpowering, I mean I had to allow him to catch up to me in the first place so I could hit him with my trusty whip, you know, and I didn't use any healing items too, but yeah, I decided to kill him with demon slaying ammo rather than in melee. Seven quarrels later he was down and the game was over. I cleared the main gate room for no real reason at all, using a good deal of my bolt wands in the process and went on to get a high score list entry.
The first melee class win! Duelists seem pretty damn strong in the late game to me though. Not as game breaking as wizards, but still strong. Whips are pretty cool actually, their weapon skill bonuses are super good, but the weapons themselves suck hard in mid game until you find their better versions (if you're lucky enough, of course).
I also spent WAY too much time writing this post, so I guess it shows that I'm happy about this game, ha ha.
The beginning was super lucky, I found an eternium two-handed sword in SMC, which ended up helping in a lot of situations requiring quick disposal of an approach enemy. I was using it occasionally as far as Minotaur Maze. I quickly got a good shield too, which made my early game much, much easier. On top of that UD5 spawned with a neutral altar (which turned out to be the only N altar outside Dwarftown, sadly), which allowed for a fast crowning... not. I faced serious food problems, which forced me to finish UD and go to CoC for cooked lizards before coming back.
Crowning gift were fencing gloves of St. Montojja. I hoped for a weapon, so I was initially disappointed, but then I realized - this is the best opportunity to actually try out using whips, since they scale with Dexterity instead of Strength and this artifact gave me a super +12 Dx boost. I spent some more time to get post-crowned, which rewarded me with Long Sting. I never used it even once, left it in a stash right before Dwarftown and never came back for it.
Nothing really interesting was happening for some time; I found a whip or two, but with their stats my damage wasn't all that great. It wasn't bad either with my high relatively Dexterity. I raised my whips weapon skill up to level 9 before I had to switch to Big Punch, as Darkforge and FGJC were undoable without a lot of patience - my whips dealt stable ~35 damage against ~35 PV.
My venture to Tomb of the High Kings ended on the last level, where I realized I actually hadn't found any wand of cold yet. Which was pretty funny considering I already saved Khelavaster at that point thanks to a ring of djinni summoning. Another issue was lack of any means of confusion resistance except for my crowning gift gloves - the first ring of the clear mind was found in the casino shop, the first helm of mental stability somewhere in Unreal Caves. I ventured back to CoC, cleared Water Temple and banshee before going back up, this time with a wand of cold ready. TotHK was pretty easy, except I had to prematurely run away from there after meeting a doppleganger king. It was a second one actually, I killed the first before realizing what kind of doppleganger I was hitting, somehow.
Ice Queen Domain and frost giants were next. Not one, but two doppleganger kings spawned in FGJC at early levels, forcing some fun with wand of teleportation and potions of booze. (No more of them spawned at any later point in the game; I only met lords. How does it even work?) The greater vault turned out to be an undead one. And what rewards did it hold! Black Tome of Alsophocus and Cat's Claw! Talk about risk and reward, ha ha. At least I found a girdle of giant strength on the level below. Haggar submitted to the power of Big Punch and the Ice Queen's blessing (with associated bonuses) was mine as well.
Having literally nothing else to do except ToEF, I reluctantly went to Minotaur Maze. I had to grind experience for a bit as I wasn't even level 22 at that time. The game was relatively generous with the maze layout, with only one dead end and two levels of backtracking necessary to reach the emperor. Before doing that, I had to find a way to deal with the mages and their stat drain. The plan was to glove slap them into the ground and it actually worked the first time - mage got stunned right away and killed seconds later. Happy it worked so well I went with the same plan for the next encountered mage, only to find him stubbornly resisting for 3 turns, while also draining some of my strength away. So much for an useful class power. I resorted to my small stack of humanoid slaying ammo, which disappeared by the time I reach the bottom level of the maze. Mages guarding the emperor turned up the challenge a notch, somehow having much more potent confusion than their brethren from earlier levels; my artifact gloves weren't enough and I barely found any time to zap my wands between confusion spells. I ended up losing some stats and healing herbs, but nothing too drastic. Minotaur emperor dropped Hammerhead, wow. Indestructible pick axe, wow. Anyway, I was so focused on preserving emperor's corpse for future consumption that I forgot to take his axe from the ground. Oooops.
Recovering from losing 8 Willpower, a side effect of having an emperor for lunch, took some time, since I had only one stable 2x2 patch with morgia roots and at that time I was pretty short on holy water. This is a boring part of the story, so let's skip it.
Fast forward quite a lot of in-game days, one visit in Water Dragon Cave and 7 or 8 blessed PoGA later I arrived at Tower of Eternal Flames. It wasn't much, really. I was pretty afraid of Ancient Chaos Wyrm since it was my first time trying to kill it with a melee character, but it died in three hits without even hitting back. I admit I wasn't particularly disappointed with such turn of events. Disappointment came soon after though, when my girdle of giant strength melted away while finishing the remains of Fire Temple for experience. At this point I had enough Strength to carry all my stuff without burdening myself though, so it wasn't THAT big of a loss.
With fire orb in the tool slot, trip down to the casino was rather uneventful. There was one particular item I was hoping to find in the shop (well, there were other ones too, but that makes the narration boring) and I found it - whip of the snake! At this point the FUN began. Fencing gloves of St. Montojja coupled with newly acquired whip of the snake gave +19 Dx and +19 speed. With Raven star sign conveniently generated at the beginning of the game I was running around with 130+ speed, without taking any +speed talents. Somewhere along the way I found a second ring of djinni summoning and I was wondering what to use it for, when I found seven league boots lying on the ground. Talk about luck! RoDS ended up as a backup in case either my new weapon or 7LB get destroyed. Neither happened in the end.
Among other vital items spawned in the casino shop were two rings of the clear mind, an amulet of death ray resistance and an amulet of petrification resistance. Among absolutely non-vital albeit interesting items was a scorched spear. Non-vital for sure. Anyway, at this point I had everything needed to end the game.
D:31, right below the casino, spawned with a greater vault. Undead again. I cleared all outer areas - I could kite vampires and ghosts very easily by hitting and stepping back; with 7LB and tons of Dx/speed they could never reach me. My whip of the snake, now without any shield, was enough to kill anything in melee, even greater molochs. The greater vault had great spoils, Far Slayer, Nature's Companion and Grod, but I didn't dare to fight it out with the liches, especially since one of them already summoned some wyrms.
D:41 was pretty funny - a mixed tension room, a titan tension room and a red dragon lesser vault. All 26 titans were kited to hell and back and gave nice two levels of experience. The guaranteed CoC greater vault for once wasn't undead; in turn it contained Bugbiter and three gold heaps. At least I gained a lot of experience from that, I suppose. It got me up to level 32, which gave me the ridiculous +12 Dx bonus. Not like I really needed it that much, but running around with 160+ speed and hitting enemies in Berserk for 100+ damage only to switch back to Defensive and run away a tile was pretty damn fun. Boring and a bit tedious in the long run, but still fun. I skipped Blue Dragon Caves - there was no point in risking item destruction when nothing could touch me anyway (or so I thought).
D:49 gave me Protector. Damn, game, why can't you give it to me for any other character? Like, you know, one that would want to use a shield? Anyway, I had actually more DV without Protector equipped thanks to class powers and shield skill trained only to level 7.
Having learned from painful past experience, I zapped a wand of monster detection right after entering D:50. And guess what, emperor lich tension room. Again. That's two times in five D:50 spawns. Pretty neat. This time the room wasn't covered in darkness (and there were "only" 38 liches instead of 50); in turn there was no door between the room and the chaos gate part of the level. I was almost pissing myself, but simply creating doors on both sides and locking them up with a key turned out to be enough. I was amazed it was so simple, I only had to dig around the room.
Balors were no fun. Not hard, just no fun. They stubbornly came only one at a time, and only after I handled both levers. It took some time to finish the level because of that. Fistanarius was the last and believe it or not, he was actually overpowering me in melee. Well, not exactly overpowering, I mean I had to allow him to catch up to me in the first place so I could hit him with my trusty whip, you know, and I didn't use any healing items too, but yeah, I decided to kill him with demon slaying ammo rather than in melee. Seven quarrels later he was down and the game was over. I cleared the main gate room for no real reason at all, using a good deal of my bolt wands in the process and went on to get a high score list entry.
The first melee class win! Duelists seem pretty damn strong in the late game to me though. Not as game breaking as wizards, but still strong. Whips are pretty cool actually, their weapon skill bonuses are super good, but the weapons themselves suck hard in mid game until you find their better versions (if you're lucky enough, of course).
I also spent WAY too much time writing this post, so I guess it shows that I'm happy about this game, ha ha.