How was I supposed to get out of this situation?

[Scooter Fox]

Hi there. I'm new here, but not new to the game. I've been playing, although very, very rarely, since 0.9.9 versions. I never managed to win (not counting one instance of obnoxious cheating), I even barely ever reach elemental temples. This time however, it was different! I was on my way to win this time... until I lost. Nothing unusual, you could say, wrong forum, you could add, but the circumstances have caught me completely off-guard and I seek some useful tips if I ever encounter something like this again.

Is it customary to include spoiler alerts around here? If so, then: WARNING, SPOILERS BELOW.

This is a verbose log of my PC a few dozen of turns before death: http://pastebin.com/8rpG6yLS

This is the effect of using a wand of monster detection: http://i.imgur.com/vNfFGMr.png

Those dark gray Ls are emperor liches, 46 of them. The room they are in is in darkness. I don't think this should have happened, but, well, it did. So, I died after killing 6 out of initial 50. I met them right at the beginning of the level and didn't even know that there were so many of them until it was too late: successful confusion -> no control over teleport corruption -> random teleport into the middle of their room -> stat drained to hell and back.

PC is a gray elven wizard. She is level 34 - the game wasn't hard at all until this point, not couting two greater undead vaults which I decided to skip, so I just rushed things because everything went so well.

After stat drain confusion resistance is bad. You can live through 2 death rays, maybe more if resistance stacks, haven't tried. Left side of the level is untouched, revealed only through blessed scroll of magic mapping. Fire immunity, shock resistance, see invisible, teleport control, lucky, fate smiles without items.

There's some undead slaying ammo (arrows, quarrels, sling bullets) and works pretty well but weapon skills aren't stellar, so PC misses half of the time with Berserk on. Retrieving ammo is generally a problem too.

Willpower has fallen way below radius 2 threshold for ball spells, so the only reliable way of killing emperor liches through spells outside of melee range is Improved Fireball. You can't shoot them from that corner by the way. All ball and bolt spells are available, but not trained much; I preferred Burning Hands and Magic Missile throughout the game due to no risk of destroying loot. Plenty of books in backpack if you want to read, but not for all spells.

There are some healing items available (spenseweeds, potions of extra/ultra healing), but only 2 scrolls of power, so teleport hopping and extensive magic healing might be a problem. Three PoCC and one SoCR available if you want to enjoy a prolonged stay or get rid of teleportitis. All blessed of course.

Can you take a look at this and tell me how would you do it? I have no intention of redoing this but I wonder what better players than me would do. I can upload the save file if someone wants to actually try playing (1.2.0 pre23), I made a copy when the log and screenshot were taken.

Sorry if it's not a proper place for this post.

[_Ln_]

I clear D:50 with every game even with somewhat underpowered characters, but I would probably handled switches with monster creation/destruction wand and got the fuck out of there. 50 emperor liches are no joke.

Seriously, probably one of the most epic end-game RNG middle fingers I've ever seen.

[Blasphemous]

heap of 2 blessed scrolls of familiar summoning [4s]

This may result in a greater earth elemental or maybe even two of them.
I would level it on lich summons and order it to kill the emps.
Experienced earth elementals are pretty good at dealing with lich emps.

uncursed potion of exchange [4s]

Bless and use this on the scrolls of ID to transmute them into possibly more scrolls of familiar summoning.

On the other hand, Ln is right, this is a classic "handle the levers and gtfo" case.
Otherwise I don't see a whole lot of way to deal with this epic tragedy.

[divij]

i had a similar thing happen to me once on d50...forgot to take a screenshot. but it was the usual map layout except.....a room full of ghost kings, a room full of ghost lords and another mixed tension room with all sorts of obnonious monsters including a black unicorn and a ghost king coming out cause i was near it and forgot invis...i was a drake with speed = 40. i would have won it im sure if i didnt make a silly mistake...i went invis and used fireball on the black unicorn while on coward and bring its hp down till it decided to blind rage and the panic away....instead of letting it go, i decided to chase it with my slow as hell hero and cornered it and it decided to fight and kill me...but i was a little distracted by the fact that there was a ghost king next to me who would instakill me with a single hit!

as for your situation, you should always use detect monsters on elemental lvls cause you dont have tp to run away (as well as you dont have the option of not doing these lvls). this includes d50, cause you cant not do d50. its like an x-ray and can find out your disease early!! next, if you find something...use magic mapping and take the safest route....i dont know if the monster detection was done the first thing you could do, but i see a space between the WMoPC and emperor lich. just tp to that spot and kill the 2 ELs nearby and proceed as normal (dont mind the stat drain cause thats what stats are for!!!)....you must have -para, -conf and -deth ofc. you can e1 use door-creation cause ELs cant open locked doors. win and just tp back to the stairs and up. ofc hindsight is 20/20!

Finally, since you have manage to get this far once, you can probably do it again. take a gnomish wizard next time...it was my 1st win and it is simply overpowered mid-to-late game and is easier to have take off in the early game..enjoy and the correct place to have this thread is in the YASD part of the forum!

[JellySlayer]

Problem is that most of the liches at this point are now active. You might be able to dig around and try to handle the levers, but probably a bunch of them are going to chase you and start summoning like mad. Definitely a mess. How's your piety? You can refill PP and cure confusion with prayers for pretty cheap, so if you've got a lot of prayers to burn, you might be able to knock most of them out with ball spells. I'd also equip both of those rings of mental stability you have... confusion resistance stacks in a big way, so you might have a better chance of resisting confusion with that, and it shouldn't last more than maybe 1 turn.

You could try unloading your wand of far slaying diagonally down that hallway into the room with huge charges on it, and keep praying to restore your PP. You could also dig into the area to the left so that you can use ball spells through the wall against them. Sadly, your Wi is so pitiful at this point that your ball spells won't have great range, and the liches will work their way around eventually...

Actually... emperor liches can't unlock doors, IIRC, so you can probably trap most of them and just ignore them.

[Soirana]

Problem is that most of the liches at this point are now active.

It is fucking wizard -- just teleport behind purple jellies and go nuts with ball spells [drink boost willpower,although willpower is criminally low for wizard]. Make to levers, handle and zap wand of destruction.

[Scooter Fox]

It is fucking wizard -- just teleport behind purple jellies and go nuts with ball spells [drink boost willpower,although willpower is criminally low for wizard]. Make to levers, handle and zap wand of destruction.

Willpower was higher, but then the random teleport happened. I suppose trying to ignore the liches was indeed the best idea, but I got so freaked out I didn't even think about it at the time.

[mjkittredge]

level 34??? Get to level 50. 200hp is a joke in the lower half of CoC. Do the side areas of the game and scum for wishes/stats, upgrade gear with smithing, train bows/xbows. were you doing some sort of rush challenge?

[Scooter Fox]

level 34??? Get to level 50. 200hp is a joke in the lower half of CoC. Do the side areas of the game and scum for wishes/stats, upgrade gear with smithing, train bows/xbows. were you doing some sort of rush challenge?

You'd think it's a joke, but I had absolutely no problems through the whole CoC, with the exception of greater undead vaults which seemed too tedious to clear. Nothing was ever hitting me hard enough to get me even remotely scared, so I just went to TotHK, FGJC, ToEF and dived CoC, no sweat at all. Then 50 emperor liches happened. I guess I learned something from that, ha ha. I still think I would've won if not for that nasty case of RNG.

[taickyto]

level 34??? Get to level 50. 200hp is a joke in the lower half of CoC. Do the side areas of the game and scum for wishes/stats, upgrade gear with smithing, train bows/xbows. were you doing some sort of rush challenge?

Even with the low willpower, he had (+45) in Burning Hand, (+49) in Magic Missile and a fair amount of Acid Ball castings. It would have been tedious to farm in the higher parts of CoC and more dangerous to go to the BDC. He could have taken D:50 easily if not for what is basically a greater undead vault.
By the time he'd have had to actually fight a Balor the major part of D:50 would be cleared, he would have leveled up to ~40 and gotten around 300hp, which is more than enough to take a turn of lucky hits from a single balor.