YAVP: Carrot Juiceless Gnomish Monk (1.2.0p4)

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Some days ago I rolled some gnomish monks with the intention of finishing 1.2.0p4. One was a killer character that had everything, but the whole of Ancardia vanished in the void when he was crossing the Animated Forest due to the attacking-with-two-shields bug. So I rolled another character, Catulnius, and it was the opposite: he had a really unlucky early game.

The game was played on the server and some people saw parts of it. As always, the guy started with a blanket run followed by an UD run to the HMV. Nothing remarkable happened, although no good items were generated, and I think he exited the UD with something like 2 PV, he had no better armor than that. Then, he headed to Terinyo, asked for the druid quest, and - ouch! Wide river in DD:1. So he asked for the puppy quest, and - ouch! Wide river in PC:1. Since he didn't have carrot juice to give Blup, or resources to undertake such a long swim, the only place where he could go to progress a bit and find some carrot juice was the CoC (I don't like the ID, it's boring), so there he went.

There he reached Dwarftown, did the first dwarf quest, reached level 16, did the Pyramid, no carrot juice (although he found a white dragon scale mail). Did the Griffyard, no carrot juice. Did the "find what is beyond the forest" quest, obtained an eternium halberd from DH:2 while leveling to lvl. 17, no carrot juice. Did the arena quest too, and of course the arena had a cat, and of course I had forgotten to get the TP wand at that time, so no cat ring for this guy.

Then he went to the TotHK. He had no wand of cold and didn't know bridge building so, although I hate grinding, I had to grind for a while there (what else could I do?) I found an ogre magus and made him freeze part of the lake but killed him unadvertently (it's pretty hard to make them freeze exactly the squares you need to freeze). So I kept grinding for a while. Got to level 19, still no carrot juice to be seen. But I was crowned with the awesome Robes of Resistance and =Fire. Cool.

Finally I found a wand of cold, got the RotHK, identified my stuff, and I found out that during my grinding I'd had the luck to find an AoLS. So I went and saved Khelly. I still hadn't found any carrot juice during the whole game (and I was level 20), but since I had the wand of teleports (no chance of learning from the teleport book yet in 1.2.0p4, learning spells is TOUGH now) and also a wand of trap detection, I went to DD and PC and completed them using teleport (uncontrolled, I hadn't found a blink dog corpse yet), and did the water temple. The first carrot juice in the game was finally seen at experience level 21.

The ToEF run was pretty easy, with my native =Fire. With a wand of paralysis, the ACW easily succumbed to some dragon slaying ammo combined with melee.

Next was the deeper CoC. Air temple was easy. Casino had nothing very interesting (by the way, although I like fighting unarmed, I had to fight with the eternium halberd during most of the game due to being Burdened or Strained - not a single girdle of carrying was generated, let alone spellbooks of SoA, and I'm a packrat). During most of the midgame, Catulnius had the "babbling mouth on your forehead" corruption, which is really cool - it casts spells at random (exactly like a wand of wonder) from time to time. This is very nice because it lets you learn a bit of each such spell (and at times, the spells were even relevant), although you never know when the babbling mouth will decide to acid ball the Casino shopkeeper so its, hmm... exciting.

And then came ther first time where my char actually thought he could die. In the battle bunny level.

The problem were not the bunnies, which I dispatched easily. The problem is that the level got filled with chaos spawns. They multiplied at an amazing exponential rate, and vermin control scrolls wouldn't work precisely in that level. They filled the whole level, over 400 of them. It was like the AF, but worse. No space to move. And when I started killing them wholesale, I noticed they were leveling and they were becoming a danger. So I used a blessed scroll of familiar summoning, and it gave me Thundaroxor, the Great Black Wyrm. I slowly and tediously commanded this amazing buddy to slay chaos spawns and could get to the upstairs. Then, Thundy and I cleared a white dragon vault, he became very experienced, and I realized that... I had been dumb! Because I was a monk, and my level was exactly... 25, of all things. So I could have just swapped positions with the spawns to get to the stairs.

So we go down again, and I do this to reach the downstairs, with my awesome pet following me, making way for himself with acid breath.

Shortly afterwards came the second (and last) moment where I feared death in this game. The damn Cat Lord. I entered his level with my pet and commanded him to kill that damn feline. It was a spectacular fight, but the Cat Lord triumphed over the great black wyrm... and he must have leveled a lot from that (the wyrm was very experienced), because he was delivering BRUTAL blows, punching through my armor even while blind or confused from a potion (I don't remember which of both I used). He downed me to 20 HP before I gulped a healing potion and finally finished him with humanoid slaying ammo.

The Earth Temple was as normal although I don't know what people smoke when they say that it's very easy to tank the ASB in melee, this char couldn't do that and we're talking about a guy who killed the balors. The Mana Temple was relatively not too hard for being the Mana Temple, I got to the archmage relatively soon and killed him in melee IIRC. The uselessness gift was the Staff of the Archmagi, I think I'd rather kept the potion...

Then came D:50. I had wands of destruction but I thought this character deserved an honourable ending, i.e., killing all the damned balors. So I set myself to the task, killing the WMoPCs, chaos mutants, and so on. I went to the first level, closed it and destroyed for good measure (even though I planned killing the balors, it's never bad to have a B plan). Then the balors got angry and I started fighting them, with a combination of slaying ammo and melee.

This was getting rather tricky... not tricky as in "damn damn damn damn I'm gonna die", but tricky as in "I may need to use the wand of destruction and leave some balors alive after all", because even though I didn't have much problems with HP, I was getting heavily corrupted. Corruptions included tentacles in the mouth (extremely annoying because you fail to cast spells ~90% of the time), mana battery (you know how that is, horrible), poison hands (but I had thick gauntlets), babbling mouth, and hate of the sun (cast darkness from time to time, and with mana battery I didn't have access to wands of light, and with tentacles in the mouth I didn't have access to the Light spell... so plain old torches proved very useful) among many other corruptions, and I was out of SoCRs. But just when I was starting to think about the possibility of not tackling all the balors, what happens of all things? Blup's emissary comes and hands me the RCT. I read this as a clear message that the good people of Ancardia wanted me to kill the balors and supported me in that mission, so I began bashing at them with the RCT, much more effective than my eternium halberd. Finally I killed all the balors, Fisty, and most of the other mobs in D:50. I left some chaos mutants there because I was getting bored, I was already lvl. 50 and I really needed to go to bed.

The game ended with the white unicorn removing my 14 corruptions and Catulnius got back to his place to become a great leader.

To my knowledge, this is the second win ever with 1.2.0p4. As always, this game was played with no herb farming, and no scumming in general except for using Casino gold (which wasn't too useful anyway).

By the way, it's insanely difficult to learn spells in this version. Being experience level 25, with more than 40 Le (using the CoS), 100 Concentration and 100 Literacy, books of stuff like Acid Bolt or Cure Serious Wounds were draining my To. Books of Light sometimes failed. I wasn't able to learn Acid Ball during the whole game, and the damn book almost kills me.

What I like most about 1.2.0p4 is the babbling mouth corruption. It's awesome.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Full flg: http://ancardia.us.to/adom_users/alk...i/catulniu.flg

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Catulnius     St:28  Le:33  Wi:29  Dx:45  To:38  Ch:16  Ap:16  Ma:19  Pe:26 N+
DV/PV: 67/37   H: 938(938)    P: 300(300)    Exp: 50/19138658   DrCh  Sp: 145
Blessed Burdened
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                                  Inventory
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Total weight: 12288 stones                Carrying capacity: 15564 stones

Head          : uncursed eternium cap [+0, +4]                        [28s]
Neck          : blessed ankh                                           [3s]
Body          : blessed robes of resistance (-4, -4) [+3, +12] {To+5} [60s]
Girdle        : blessed girdle of greed [+0, +0]                       [7s]
Cloak         : uncursed cloak of protection [+0, +3]                 [20s]
Right Hand    : blessed rune-covered trident (+6, 3d12+6) [+4, +4] {Dx+12}
Left Hand     : -
Right Ring    : uncursed ring of slaying (+8 melee damage, +6 missile damage)
Left Ring     : uncursed ring of see invisible                         [1s]
Bracers       : uncursed bracers of regeneration [+0, +0]             [18s]
Gauntlets     : uncursed thick gauntlets (-1, -2) [+3, +1]            [15s]
Boots         : blessed seven league boots [+1, +0]                   [30s]
Missile Weapon: uncursed long bow of accuracy (+8, +2)                [30s]
Missiles      : bundle of 7 uncursed penetrating arrows (+3, 1d6)     [14s]
Tool          : uncursed torch (370 turns of fuel remaining)          [10s]


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                                Weapon Skills
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Melee weapon           Lvl   Hit   Dam   DV   Level          Required marks
---------------------  ---   ---   ---   --   -------------  --------------
Unarmed fighting         7    +4    +3   +2   skilled              24
Daggers & knives         1    +1    +0   +0   basic                25
Clubs & hammers          1    +1    +0   +0   basic                25
Maces & flails           6    +4    +2   +1   skilled              275
Swords                   9    +7    +5   +3   excellent            557
Axes                     1    +1    +0   +0   basic                25
Whips                    1    +1    +0   +1   basic                25
Pole arms               14   +18   +11  +20   Mastery              8578
Twohanded weapons        1    +1    +1   +0   basic                25
Staves                   1    +1    +0   +1   basic                25


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                                   Spells
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   Acid Bolt          :   154,  15pp     (Effectivity: +1)
   Calm Monster       :     7,  15pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Cure Disease       :     1,  15pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Cure Light Wounds  :   243,   5pp     (Effectivity: +3)
   Cure Serious Wounds:   262,  10pp     (Effectivity: +1)
   Darkness           :   834,   4pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Destroy Undead     :   464,   8pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Disarm Trap        :     8,  19pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Farsight           :    47,  26pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Fireball           :    14,  37pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Frost Bolt         :     6,  23pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Improved Fireball  :     3,  59pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Invisibility       :     7,  19pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Knock              :   114,  12pp     (Effectivity: +1)
   Light              :   149,   3pp     (Effectivity: +3)
   Lightning Bolt     :   134,  12pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Magic Lock         :   276,   8pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Magic Missile      :    14,  14pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Neutralize Poison  :   244,  10pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Remove Curse       :   198,  50pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Revelation         :     7,  63pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Slow Monster       :     2,  13pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Slow Poison        :     1,  11pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Teleportation      :   321,  22pp     (Effectivity: +2)


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              His achievements during his adventures:
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Catulnius, the gnomish monk, saved the world with his brave efforts and
became a great ruler while saving himself 13 times.
He scored 10743264 points and advanced to level 50.
He survived for 0 years, 43 days, 3 hours, 55 minutes and 55 seconds (103957
turns).
1 companion was killed during his adventures.
Catulnius visited 110 places.
His strength score was modified by +13 during his career.
His learning score was modified by +17 during his career.
His willpower score was modified by +15 during his career.
His dexterity score was modified by +15 during his career.
His toughness score was modified by +16 during his career.
His charisma score was modified by +10 during his career.
His appearance score was modified by +5 during his career.
His mana score was modified by +7 during his career.
His perception score was modified by +11 during his career.
He was unnaturally aged by 30 years.
He was the champion of the arena.
He was a member of the thieves guild.
He made a little water dragon very happy.
He saved Khelavaster from certain death.
He left the Drakalor Chain after completing his quest and became a great
leader and famous hero.
5751 monsters perished under his attacks.

[anon123]

The first carrot juice in the game was finally seen at experience level 21.

Finally!

Congrats on this win, as I've already said yesterday

What I like most about 1.2.0p4 is the babbling mouth corruption. It's awesome.

Remember when it randomly cast Fireball near Thrundy? Thankfully the blast was just out of range.

[grobblewobble]

Grats on the win.

If you're burdened, you don't get the monk DV bonus and there is no reason not to use a shield. You should really try bare hands if you like the idea. It's not that hard to stay unburdened without a girdle of carrying. Don't carry around heavy food and don't pick up weapons, shields or heavy armor. Don't carry too much ammo or crossbows. Playing a race with good starting strength helps, too.

Not to rub it in, but by the endgame you were missing out on a huge DV bonus just to carry more large rations. :/