JellySlayer
07-27-2009, 06:43 AM
Randomly rolled a Dwarf Druid born under Candle with the long-lost brother intrinsic. I've never won with a druid (actually, I basically have never played one), so I figured I'd see how it went. Having completed this game, I've decided that druids suck. Their skillset, modifiers, and class powers are dreadful. Thieves have a bad skillset too, but at least they have decent class powers... by level 12, I had maxed out every skill I cared to (except detect traps, which capped out at about 60 and refused to increase) and had no new skills or abilities to look forward to. Very lame.
Anyway, game started pretty normal. First kill was a bandit. Levelled a bit in the druid dungeon, puppy cave. Killed Keethrax for special druid rewards. Found a nice eternium halberd of devastation (7d8+14 I think) in an early Darkforge raid. Did the first couple of levels of CoC. "Pacified" the big room by letting a group of neutral white worms take over the level. Basically no herbs though--there was one patch that was moss/spense in there (later changed to moss/morgia), but that was the only herbs I found before the Casino. Shortly after Dwarftown I picked up a really nice mithril two-handed sword of penetration. Yay giant phase dagger. Boo 14 DV. Anyway, I used that weapon for pretty much the whole game, except for a few parts when I needed to use a mace of destruction and a shield. Cleared HoTHK, Pyramid, Griffyard and Darkforge. Killed Khelly, got Water Orb. Decided to do pure gate closing, so I got myself crowned (acid) with the incredibly awful Black Thumb artifact. I'm sure it would have been useful killing the 4 shambling mounds I ran into, but I ended up just selling it.
The ToEF was pretty epic. I went in completely unprepared--I hadn't been killing animals, so I only had 2 counts fire resist for most of it. I (foolishly) didn't have any pots of blindness or confusion, and had a blessed wand of stunning with 2 charges. Oh, and I had no booze or scrolls of charging. I did have about 12 healing potions and the water orb. Take a guess how many of those I used with my (still) sub-20 DV. Oh, and I didn't have frost bolt or ice ball. Good times. At least I had invisiblity. I used to PoEH against the first fire giant king I ran into. Bad sign. Ran up to level 4, dug the tunnel. Miscounted the lines and dug into the lower elemental room instead of to the Wyrm. Okay... killed a few elementals, then ended up digging a second tunnel into the main room. Used wand of far slaying, which apparently caused the ACW to... run away? He ran into the upper right corner of the temple where the fire grues are. I didn't want to kill everything in there, so I threw on invisible, and followed him in. Stunned him and tried to shoot arrows at him (easier said than done because of all the other monsters swarming me...) ran out of arrows, so I fought him in melee. He regained focus and started fighting back. 6 PoEH, 2 PoUH, and 2 water orbs later, I dropped him, grabbed my loot and fled.
Dove down to Casino, got RotMC. Greater undead vault on D:42. Grey weapon and a book inside. About 30 master liches, 30 lich kings, and 1 emperor lich. No problem--I'm feeling crazy today. I quaff two pots of boost willpower (buffed to about 60) and dive in spamming fireball + acid ball like crazy. Most of the summons aren't too bad, and I'm invisible so I should be okay. Except for all those liches, of course. Emperor lich summons a couple balors and a great karmic wyrm to make things more interesting. Oh, and some hostile cats just to piss me off (I hide the RotMC on another level). I drop these with arrows and keep firing ball spells (and praying to get my PP back). The insanity continues for awhile. The vault has so many liches, and I'm not actually doing that much damage to them (and my ball spells are getting rapidly smaller). Eventually I drop the emperor and most of the kings, and run out of fireball. Then acid ball. Clear the rest in melee. Stat loss wasn't too bad overall--maybe 3 PoGA worth. Found Wyrmlance, Black Tome, Preserver and Crown of Leadership, seven league boots (first ones) and a couple PoCC. Worthwhile overall.
I clear out Air and Earth Temples, then hit Mana Temple. UL:1 has a threat room full of Dorn Beasts... very annoying message spam. Mana Temple wasn't bad with Preserver and an Everburning torch. Used the SoCR from the Dwarven Mystic, went to D:50. Killed all of the balors, hit the levers, cured corruption with the unicorn and won the game.
Anyway, game started pretty normal. First kill was a bandit. Levelled a bit in the druid dungeon, puppy cave. Killed Keethrax for special druid rewards. Found a nice eternium halberd of devastation (7d8+14 I think) in an early Darkforge raid. Did the first couple of levels of CoC. "Pacified" the big room by letting a group of neutral white worms take over the level. Basically no herbs though--there was one patch that was moss/spense in there (later changed to moss/morgia), but that was the only herbs I found before the Casino. Shortly after Dwarftown I picked up a really nice mithril two-handed sword of penetration. Yay giant phase dagger. Boo 14 DV. Anyway, I used that weapon for pretty much the whole game, except for a few parts when I needed to use a mace of destruction and a shield. Cleared HoTHK, Pyramid, Griffyard and Darkforge. Killed Khelly, got Water Orb. Decided to do pure gate closing, so I got myself crowned (acid) with the incredibly awful Black Thumb artifact. I'm sure it would have been useful killing the 4 shambling mounds I ran into, but I ended up just selling it.
The ToEF was pretty epic. I went in completely unprepared--I hadn't been killing animals, so I only had 2 counts fire resist for most of it. I (foolishly) didn't have any pots of blindness or confusion, and had a blessed wand of stunning with 2 charges. Oh, and I had no booze or scrolls of charging. I did have about 12 healing potions and the water orb. Take a guess how many of those I used with my (still) sub-20 DV. Oh, and I didn't have frost bolt or ice ball. Good times. At least I had invisiblity. I used to PoEH against the first fire giant king I ran into. Bad sign. Ran up to level 4, dug the tunnel. Miscounted the lines and dug into the lower elemental room instead of to the Wyrm. Okay... killed a few elementals, then ended up digging a second tunnel into the main room. Used wand of far slaying, which apparently caused the ACW to... run away? He ran into the upper right corner of the temple where the fire grues are. I didn't want to kill everything in there, so I threw on invisible, and followed him in. Stunned him and tried to shoot arrows at him (easier said than done because of all the other monsters swarming me...) ran out of arrows, so I fought him in melee. He regained focus and started fighting back. 6 PoEH, 2 PoUH, and 2 water orbs later, I dropped him, grabbed my loot and fled.
Dove down to Casino, got RotMC. Greater undead vault on D:42. Grey weapon and a book inside. About 30 master liches, 30 lich kings, and 1 emperor lich. No problem--I'm feeling crazy today. I quaff two pots of boost willpower (buffed to about 60) and dive in spamming fireball + acid ball like crazy. Most of the summons aren't too bad, and I'm invisible so I should be okay. Except for all those liches, of course. Emperor lich summons a couple balors and a great karmic wyrm to make things more interesting. Oh, and some hostile cats just to piss me off (I hide the RotMC on another level). I drop these with arrows and keep firing ball spells (and praying to get my PP back). The insanity continues for awhile. The vault has so many liches, and I'm not actually doing that much damage to them (and my ball spells are getting rapidly smaller). Eventually I drop the emperor and most of the kings, and run out of fireball. Then acid ball. Clear the rest in melee. Stat loss wasn't too bad overall--maybe 3 PoGA worth. Found Wyrmlance, Black Tome, Preserver and Crown of Leadership, seven league boots (first ones) and a couple PoCC. Worthwhile overall.
I clear out Air and Earth Temples, then hit Mana Temple. UL:1 has a threat room full of Dorn Beasts... very annoying message spam. Mana Temple wasn't bad with Preserver and an Everburning torch. Used the SoCR from the Dwarven Mystic, went to D:50. Killed all of the balors, hit the levers, cured corruption with the unicorn and won the game.