Directionless Wizard needs help please

[spiny]

Well, I'm a bit stumped as to what to do next. I'm currently playing a GE Wizard who, levelwise, is further than I've gotten any other character. Game progression wise, I haven't done anything of note really...

Done:
Puppy Quest
Keethrax but his corpse rotted on me
SMC to HIMV
Bug island outside area
RotHK
Dwarven Graveyard
Pyramid
teleportation wand obtained from assassin's guild
Thrundarr's quests
Darkforge raid (teleportation/invis) grabbed equip/weapons only - not yet gotten crown
Killed Khelly
Killed Banshee
Cleared way to wall of flame basically
Note: Dwarven Halls has an open tension room filled with some seriously nasty critters, animated forest may be trickier now that I had to kill a tree on the level

Not Done:
Crowning (can't find a stable patch of stomafilla), probably too late with all the artifacts in game now
Retrieved any orbs (I feel water temple is next to do but I have no fire bolt magic or wand)

Bottlenecks:
Lack of stomafilla patch
Not yet found Bless or Firebolt spells
CURE CORRUPTION METHODS!! I had exactly one potion of cure corruption and one scroll. The scroll got drenched by a water trap earlier and the potion was used when I got poisoned hands as my first corruption.

I had exactly one ring of djinni summoning that I stumbled upon. At the time I thought getting 7lbs was a sound choice, but I probably should have gotten amulet of life saving for Khelly instead and that would have solved my cure corruption problems... maybe.

Anyhow, what should I do? The only sound thing I can think of is to head back to the ID to hope to get fire bolt but I don't have treasure hunter as I felt the offensive talents were more high priority at the time.

My hope is to complete the game normally, I know I've taken a lot of time to do what I've done:

Ie. 62 days have passed, I'm lv 22 and I've killed 3193 monsters.

I'm starting to think I should hit the water temple, use lightning bolt, magic missile, arrows... and darkness on the snake, but without fire bolt to cook the corpse, I still won't be able to get potion of cure corruption out of it

Anyhow, enough rambling, thoughts, suggestions?
Thanks!
-Spiny

[JellySlayer]

You should absolutely be hitting the water temple at this point in time. It should be a breeze for you if you have darkness. After that, I would suggest getting your ToEF preparations ready. At level 22, you shouldn't have any real problems. An alternative is to build up your climbing and stealth skills, and hit the Rift. This will net you 5 SoCRs plus a huge pile of useful spells.

As for your other concerns...

What alignment are you? If you're neutral (N= works best in my experience), you should check the Dwarven mystic in Dwarftown. If he's feeling generous, he'll leave you with 4 SoCRs. If you have ball spells and at least 32 Willpower, you could try bugville I guess, which gives you 3 SoCR, but it's very dangerous...

Crowning doesn't have an artifact limit. Only pre/postcrown does.

Bless spell can't be used on items, but remove curse can be used to keep corpses from rotting.

Animated forest isn't a problem unless you kill the trees with fire. That will make them all hostile, but killing a few here and there won't. With invis + dual shields, you should be able to get through easily.

The other point is that, honestly, corruption is not a huge deal. Not having any removal is annoying if you get hit with stiff muscles or something, but 80% of the corruptions are fairly harmless, and several are quite beneficial. If you don't waste a lot of time, you can probably get by without needing too much of it.

[nathrakh]

Wow.. You have really "wasted" some time.. All of my winners had final monster kill count between 2300-3500 monsters. :-P

But yeah. Do water temple now. Snake doesn't see in darkness unless he panics and you corner him. When he runs you can bolt at him and he'll come back IIRC, or shoot at him.

[spiny]

Update:

Water temple is done. Thanks for the remove curse tip on corpses. I very carefully watched every message to check for equipment weighing less etc so that the snake corpse wouldn't rot away on me and I now have one potion of cure corruption. Yay! lol

So... I thought I was ready for fire temple. I thought I had at least 3 sources of resistance to fire... I was mistaken. I have the RotHK and the Elemental gauntlets. The corpse I'd eaten to grant fire resistance apparently didn't take and I thought I had it, I should have checked. Oops. I also thought the mummy wrapping had it, but upon double checking... nope. So at present, I have only 2 sources of fire resistance. Glad I noticed the hit points dropping when I did, rather than when it was too late.

There was a surge of power, a frost giant, in the ToEF. He was holding on to a staff of the magi... I should be excited, but I'm not. At this point, I've retreated as it seems I'll either have to get lucky with a corpse dropping for me to eat. Without Food Preservation, it seems a daunting task. But maybe I'll get lucky, before getting unlucky.

And yes, Nathrakh, I do tend to waste a lot of time, killing stuff and looking in every nook and cranny. I spent more time than I'd have liked ID stair hopping when I started this run, but I figure the furthest I've ever gotten was the ToEF so checking every nook and cranny for useful things seems a logical path for me.

BTW, the thought of going IN to the bug temple scares the bejesus out of me. My usage of ball spells is very limited. Now with the water orb I'm running 44 WI, but even so, I don't know that I'd care to risk attempting that. We'll see. Maybe it will be a new place for me to meet my maker lol.

Update 2: A kind drake on first level of the tower left me a viable corpse to eat Ancient Chaos Wyrm is now dead and I am officially further in game progression than I have been before. Whoot!

Update 3: Ok... I've gotten RotMC I've not done anything about the Air temple yet and am continuing downward in CoC. Should I keep going down to the dragon caves and then back up to deal with the remaining temples? The Dragon caves atm seem less scary to me than the temples in question! lol.

-Spiny

[vogonpoet]

Do the Earth temple, but do it carefully, running back to the stairs as often as you need to take on no more than 3 (preferably 1) elemental or grue at a time. If you a penetrating weapon, thats obviously a good way to go about it, otherwise, just use acid bolt/ball or magic missile or something. Check the casino, it might have some useful books.

Once you have the Earth Orb, you will also have lots more levels. Get back into artifact/higher metal gear, ball spell the air temple, head down to the Mana temple, be careful, kick some ass.

[JellySlayer]

My suggestion for endgame is usually this:

Dive down as far as D:48, looking for "You feel truly excited" messages. That's greater vaults, which usually have a bunch of artifacts and can be worth a dozen levels are more. As a long-lived wizzy, you should be able to clear any of them, although undead vaults are harrowing experiences for any PC.

You might want to skip the dragon caves and just kill Sharad Waador. He can't see invis, so you can kill him with invis + magic missles. For extra fun, invis HIM and slow YOURSELF before he dies. +8 million experience if you do that.

Air Temple is usually very easy. Just don't let the summoner out of the little room he's in.

Earth Temple is fine if you have a lot of ball spells or construct slayers. Try to keep from getting surrounded is the key.

[spiny]

Thanks for the tips.

Currently, I've gone down to D48 as suggested, found a greater vault of fire dragons and elementals which yielded a couple of interesting artifacts. I figured it may be a while before I get a character this high level again, so I went ahead and bit the bullet and raided the lower level of bug island to get the scrolls and such. I also said hi to Blup's mom as I got a water breathing helmet in that greater vault. I wanted to id a couple of things in the water dragon cave, but Blup's mom didn't like that idea. Luckily I told Blup about her first before pissing her off. In any event, I didn't want to kill her and leave Blup mommyless so I just teleported my way out. Since then, I killed Yulgash and am about to see about raiding the Earth temple. I can't help but think my day's are numbered, because I never expected to get this far to begin with.

-Spiny

[JellySlayer]

Just be careful in the Mana Temple... it's the only place that can really cause problems at this point.

Be sure you have the appropriate resistances, and, most importantly for a wizard... don't be afraid to cast from HP! In fact, pretty much from this point on, it is safe to cast from HP as much as you need to.

[spiny]

Ok, Earth temple is done, moving onward... I have no resistance to water, but I can't think of any resistance that I don't have otherwise atm lol. And oh shit! lmao, was trying to copy the screen from casting Revelation and clicked something on my mouse thinking I could copy the screen and suddenly all my gear was switched around and I ended up wearing the crown of science and somehow casted darkness and tried to attack the druid in the dark. luckily it was near the edge of town, but I think perhaps I should be cautious in Terinyo now lol.

Currently:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            Character Information
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

KrazBandit    St:29  Le:16  Wi:37  Dx:40  To:39  Ch:10  Ap:15  Ma:38  Pe:23
N=
DV/PV: 106/56   H: 728(728)   P: 813(813)   Exp: 50/28685250   M: 112484

In any event, I'm crowned, immune to lightning from that, wearing Ring of Immunities so long as my cloak of invis doesn't get toasted. If that happens, I'll switch back to ring of invis instead.

-Spiny

Edit: Too funny, had to find out if Druid is pissed at me or not... turns out... I have a few pets so I guess I read a scroll of familiar summoning and a scroll of darkness and lord knows what else while changing gear due to a mouse click, but I seem to be ok and druid doesn't care about me so I guess all is well.

[nathrakh]

Right clicking putty window paste's your current clip board there... I have some bad memories from that too. ;-)