Anonyone
08-04-2009, 08:19 AM
After winning twice with dark elven beastfighters, I thought I'd branch out a bit to a different DE melee class- a paladin! I had a hard time of things in the early game, but the awesome skillset of my character made every the levels 19+ a complete breeze. Finding an awesome artifact didn't hurt either, though.
Warning: Spoilers and a bunch of possibly boring text ahead!
I started the game in the SMC. I took a kobold as my first kill, found the waterproof blanket and moved on to the UD. In UD1 I found a crystal tower shield, which is the main reason this character became a winner- I used it for the rest of the game. Still, I had a hell of a time in the UD. On UD3 I found a mixed value and was chased into UD4 by a ratling duelist who I couldn't even come close to killing. I managed to lose him in a group of monsters, only to find myself forced to deal with a jelly vault on UD6. The green jellies fell easily, but I had to go back through previous levels and collect every melee weapon that had dropped to deal with the quickly multiplying gray jellies. The biggest problem though, and ironically my biggest challenge of the game, was a single yellow jelly. It regenerated faster than I could damage it on berserk, and since I hadn't gotten poison resistance yet it was completely capable of killing me. I ended up being forced to train in previous UD levels so that I could come back and kill it. From that point on though, the game only got easier.
After I had left the High Mountain Village, I took the quests for courage, pickpocketing, the Black Druid and the cute dog, all of which I completed with relative ease. I also killed Hotzenplotz with a wand of lightning for the amulet of order, since I prefer to play lawful characters. At this point in the game my main problem was a lack of intrinsics- I hadn't found teleport control or fire resistance yet, and none of the ants in the puppy cave dropped a corpse for acid resistance. My other problem was lack of a good weapon. I was using a mithril long sword, and it was quickly becoming less and less effective as I progressed through the game.
With all that done, I proceeded to the CoC for the dwarf quests. Kill a giant rat to prove your valor. Sweet! In the process of doing these, I managed to train up my dexterity, toughness and willpower through herbs. I also harvested enough stomafillia for a percrowning and a crowning. Far Slayer and Aylas Holy Scarf alone with cold immunity. At this point I was pretty much a tank with a two weaknesses: I was still low on intrinsic resistances (although I had teleport control at least), and my damage output was fairly low. I was never in too much danger of dying though, although I did have one close call in DH2 with a great karmic wyrm. I avoided him for most of the remainder of the game, coming back only after I had closed the chaos gate to kill him with two dragon slaying quarrels to the face. Booya.
Anyway, at this point I figured I'd try to fix my damage problem with a tele-raid on darkforge. Unfortunately, the only useful item I found was a blue dragon scale mail. Even this wasn't too useful, as I had done the pyramid shortly after being crowned and was using the ancient mummy wrapping, which I prefered since I was also using a cloak of invisibility. The scale mail did come in handy through, but not immediately.
With my equipment problem still unsolved, I decided to make a trip to the water dragon cave. This is where my last promising character had died, so I was extra careful. I cast darkness throughout the entire level and just picked up every item there was. Among the loot, I found a sword of sharpness! Upon return to the cave after delivering the good news to Blub, I decided to try to kill his mom. I was very careful this time, picking up items to summon the ancient water dragon every time she retreated. Unfortunately, I had a very hard time penetrating her defenses. I decided to try out a different weapon, an artifact I had found among Shyssiryxius' loot- The Executor. I had never really used this weapon before, and man was I impressed! I quickly created a horrifying scene for Blub to come home to, advanced to level 24 and headed off to the Tower of Eternal Flame.
I thought the ToEF might be difficult, since I hadn't found a RoI at this point and had to ditch some gear... but I was wrong. The Executor made quick work of everyone. The ACW died in four hits. I headed off to the library- same story. Tomb of the High Kings? Easy day. I saved Kelly and made my final dive into the CoC, killing everything with ease. The water, earth and air temples were all no challenge whatsoever. The cat lord (who I'm pretty sure was at max power) died pretty quickly too, although I did have to use up a few potions of ultra/extra healing. I expected the mana temple to be hard, but the archmage didn't get so much as a single stat drain in.
I did run into one greater value during my descent- undead sadly. After fighting some ghost lords I decided to simply teleport in and steal the artifacts, wyrmlance and preserver, and then I left. I got Iron Fist as a uselessness gift, and then proceeded to kick serious ass in D50. I killed everyone, closed the gate, and decided to give the Ancient Karmic Wyrm's quest a try. I had never done it before and I expected it to be really hard. I had already saved the world though, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. To my surprise, it was pretty easy. With my blue dragon scale mail the lightning obvious didn't hurt me, and neither the ancient blue dragons nor the ancient wyrm himself could get in much melee damage past my defenses.
After leaving the CoC, I killed the assassin prince and got Sting to go with my Needle (or is the it other way around?). Too bad these weapons aren't available sooner- they're awesome! I did the greater unicorn quest, killed the dwarven artificer and Kranf Niest (why not?), and left the Drakalor Chain.
Warning: Spoilers and a bunch of possibly boring text ahead!
I started the game in the SMC. I took a kobold as my first kill, found the waterproof blanket and moved on to the UD. In UD1 I found a crystal tower shield, which is the main reason this character became a winner- I used it for the rest of the game. Still, I had a hell of a time in the UD. On UD3 I found a mixed value and was chased into UD4 by a ratling duelist who I couldn't even come close to killing. I managed to lose him in a group of monsters, only to find myself forced to deal with a jelly vault on UD6. The green jellies fell easily, but I had to go back through previous levels and collect every melee weapon that had dropped to deal with the quickly multiplying gray jellies. The biggest problem though, and ironically my biggest challenge of the game, was a single yellow jelly. It regenerated faster than I could damage it on berserk, and since I hadn't gotten poison resistance yet it was completely capable of killing me. I ended up being forced to train in previous UD levels so that I could come back and kill it. From that point on though, the game only got easier.
After I had left the High Mountain Village, I took the quests for courage, pickpocketing, the Black Druid and the cute dog, all of which I completed with relative ease. I also killed Hotzenplotz with a wand of lightning for the amulet of order, since I prefer to play lawful characters. At this point in the game my main problem was a lack of intrinsics- I hadn't found teleport control or fire resistance yet, and none of the ants in the puppy cave dropped a corpse for acid resistance. My other problem was lack of a good weapon. I was using a mithril long sword, and it was quickly becoming less and less effective as I progressed through the game.
With all that done, I proceeded to the CoC for the dwarf quests. Kill a giant rat to prove your valor. Sweet! In the process of doing these, I managed to train up my dexterity, toughness and willpower through herbs. I also harvested enough stomafillia for a percrowning and a crowning. Far Slayer and Aylas Holy Scarf alone with cold immunity. At this point I was pretty much a tank with a two weaknesses: I was still low on intrinsic resistances (although I had teleport control at least), and my damage output was fairly low. I was never in too much danger of dying though, although I did have one close call in DH2 with a great karmic wyrm. I avoided him for most of the remainder of the game, coming back only after I had closed the chaos gate to kill him with two dragon slaying quarrels to the face. Booya.
Anyway, at this point I figured I'd try to fix my damage problem with a tele-raid on darkforge. Unfortunately, the only useful item I found was a blue dragon scale mail. Even this wasn't too useful, as I had done the pyramid shortly after being crowned and was using the ancient mummy wrapping, which I prefered since I was also using a cloak of invisibility. The scale mail did come in handy through, but not immediately.
With my equipment problem still unsolved, I decided to make a trip to the water dragon cave. This is where my last promising character had died, so I was extra careful. I cast darkness throughout the entire level and just picked up every item there was. Among the loot, I found a sword of sharpness! Upon return to the cave after delivering the good news to Blub, I decided to try to kill his mom. I was very careful this time, picking up items to summon the ancient water dragon every time she retreated. Unfortunately, I had a very hard time penetrating her defenses. I decided to try out a different weapon, an artifact I had found among Shyssiryxius' loot- The Executor. I had never really used this weapon before, and man was I impressed! I quickly created a horrifying scene for Blub to come home to, advanced to level 24 and headed off to the Tower of Eternal Flame.
I thought the ToEF might be difficult, since I hadn't found a RoI at this point and had to ditch some gear... but I was wrong. The Executor made quick work of everyone. The ACW died in four hits. I headed off to the library- same story. Tomb of the High Kings? Easy day. I saved Kelly and made my final dive into the CoC, killing everything with ease. The water, earth and air temples were all no challenge whatsoever. The cat lord (who I'm pretty sure was at max power) died pretty quickly too, although I did have to use up a few potions of ultra/extra healing. I expected the mana temple to be hard, but the archmage didn't get so much as a single stat drain in.
I did run into one greater value during my descent- undead sadly. After fighting some ghost lords I decided to simply teleport in and steal the artifacts, wyrmlance and preserver, and then I left. I got Iron Fist as a uselessness gift, and then proceeded to kick serious ass in D50. I killed everyone, closed the gate, and decided to give the Ancient Karmic Wyrm's quest a try. I had never done it before and I expected it to be really hard. I had already saved the world though, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. To my surprise, it was pretty easy. With my blue dragon scale mail the lightning obvious didn't hurt me, and neither the ancient blue dragons nor the ancient wyrm himself could get in much melee damage past my defenses.
After leaving the CoC, I killed the assassin prince and got Sting to go with my Needle (or is the it other way around?). Too bad these weapons aren't available sooner- they're awesome! I did the greater unicorn quest, killed the dwarven artificer and Kranf Niest (why not?), and left the Drakalor Chain.