Gruk the grandmaster, orcish monk, Brass and Lithium man
I've been wanting to do a combination Brass and Lithium man for a while. This is my first Brass and my second Lithium (the first was with an elementalist). I played an orc monk because they're stylish. I also wanted to play unarmed for the entire game, which is my favorite way to play a monk. Thrown rocks were used as a backup. Armor and weight class restrictions were observed, which meant that I could only wear armor weighing less than 60s. This was played in p10. A .flg will follow once Jan Erik puts it up at the HoF. Edit: it's up at http://adom.brinkster.net/hof/flg_di...=gruk edit.txt.
Brass man states that you cannot use artifacts for any purpose and only the orbs may be picked up. I didn't pay any mind about generating artifacts, and many guaranteed ones were generated, I crowned, and I even used my potion of uselessness in D49, but no artifacts other than the orbs were picked up (some were sometimes kicked) and the orbs were never equipped or used in any way. I was curious to see if anything interesting and unattainable pre-1.2.0 showed up. Does Lust for Glory even exist anymore?
Lithium man states that only the CoC and the ToEF might be visited. This was also observed. There was a wilderness encounter I could not evade on the way back home - I left the swamp without even seeing the black dragon.
The early game wasn't terribly eventful except for having to play carefully, which is the case with lithium men in general, especially if they are melee fighters without much PV. I found a neutral altar on D8 and converted. Thrundarr was not asked about "portal". While grinding the big room for something to tame and something to tame it with, before remembering I had a perfectly good wand of teleportation I could use as a dwarven lever solution, an AoLS dropped, which was used to save Khelavaster. The dwarven mystic only gave me potions. My stats were drained by undead multiple times during this game - I could have been more careful in this regard.
The first interesting hurdle (and what a hurdle) was the ToEF. I had a ring of ice thanks to the mystic and a fireproof blanket thanks to Thrundarr, and I was dealing ok damage, but I was taking a point of fire damage each turn (only one ring of fire resistance) and taking a fair amount of damage from the monsters themselves. This meant that in my first journey to the ToEF I went through all my healing potions, and the wyrm was proving to be pretty tough, so instead of gathering my bearings and reading a scroll of identify (which would have told me that I had picked up a PoCC in the tower on the way to the top level), I decided to zap the wyrm with a wand of poison a whole bunch of times. This was a very bad idea. It fled far into the temple.
I had to regroup and decided to come back with a familiar. I generated a balor in DH2 - pretty nifty. He was remarkably tough and other than the teleporting made one hell of a pet. I took him to TF4 and dug a tunnel over the top of the temple to get at the wyrm easier. However, while on TF4, I ran out of piety, and I was taking heat damage periodically so I had to flee. Fearing my balor might have forgotten his loyalties in the meantime (which would have put me in a serious pickle), I summoned another familiar - a greater fire elemental - and came back. The elemental managed to go hostile on me without any warning in the temple, and when I gathered my bearings and noticed what was going on it had brought me down to 1 hp - without the possibility of prayer and taking heat damage every turn. I nearly had a heart attack, adjusted my tactics and used some spenseweed - and lived to tell the tale. A peculiar, funny, buggy situation ensued and my balor saved my skin - and shortly after dispatched the wyrm himself.
I left the balor on TF1 and dove down seeking opportunity for adventure. The next hurdle presented itself with the ASB - it was regenerating faster than I could put a dent in it. Eventually I decided to buy the one hand axe of penetration I'd seen in the casino, smash that lone PoCC over the thing's stony head and hack at it until it was dead - and my acid blood spattering all over its eyes from the corruption it had given me shortly before helped. The turn after it was dead, Gruk dropped the axe, annoyed at having had to use such a crude and unartful implement, and went back to using his fists for the remainder of his adventure.
At this point the piety costs of healing prayers were becoming a serious problem. Gruk had his equipment dusted while clearing his second greater vault - giants again. This included his crown and bracers of regeneration. He went back to the casino and decided to dip a pair of brass bracers in a potion of exchange, which yielded another pair of bracers of regeneration - fate was smiling on him and opening doors where others had closed.
Healing after battles was difficult. Herbs were pretty limited and potions but a memory. There was little else but the bracers' magical regeneration and the unreliable possibility of emergency prayer. Gruk had to choose his battles judiciously and retreat when badly harmed. Eventually, it came time to get the last orb. By now his perception had been severely crippled by corruption, and as he soon learned very low perception is not very good while trying to evade traps. He was blind for about half the battle against the archmage (who brought his perception down to 1), but still managed to prevail.
On the way back up from that battle I got too close to a stone ooze that paralyzed me and got me to 25 HP before losing interest and oozing away. I then took a break, which probably saved Gruk's life.
There wasn't much else to do at this point but face the final battle. Gruk wasn't that corrupted, but at this point he had only one scroll of chaos resistance (yes, I said chaos resistance) left to remove corruption, and a magical writing set with two "charges" as his backup. At this point he was presented with a dilemma. Would he use wands of destruction to destroy the levers or would he fight all the demons until there were none left, and face the peril and corruption? He opted for the second, as he at this point wanted to reach the level of grand master of unarmed combat, and what better training than suitable foes.
I drew out the balors one at a time, which is not as fun as fighting them all at the same time and a bit cheesy in my opinion, but I wanted to play it safe lest I end up having to leave with my proverbial tail between my legs. An interesting thing happened here, as a moloch killed on the right side of the level left behind his hulking armor, and two of the balors tried to equip it, left as sitting ducks as a result. Temporary paralysis for all intents and purposes, which Gruk took advantage of. A strategy of mostly hitting and retreating took care of every last balor. Gruk collected their scourges and left the level, crawling the caverns all the way back to the arena (killing the original eternal guardian on the way, who spawned a duplicate on the stairs before he died, bound to guard them for eternity). While in the arena, Gruk achieved grand mastery of the art of fighting. Having read all scrolls of chaos resistance found and copied, he left the chain, wanting no riches or power, or more fame and glory than his mastery of the art could give, and left with the memory that he had achieved something greater than himself by simple, bare, yet powerful means. Strengthened in mind, body and will by his accumulated experience, he began the long walk home.
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Originally Posted by Mobius
