First Ultra: Ingvar III, GE Wiz
I've been playing on and off for many years but I never considered doing anything but a normal gate closing ending before, mostly because the game is long enough as it is already and I'm usually quite anxious to finish and get on with my normal life as soon as the end game approaches. But then I watched GordonOverkill's Ultra ending on Youtube and decided to give it a try after all. Said and done, I set myself up for an as problem free game as possible by choosing a raven born gray elven wizard with prerequisites for 'treasure hunter' talent.
To the game. Starting books were fire bolt and cure light wounds, which is of course great. First kill was a child for later convenience, which is perhaps a bit odd for an aspiring Avatar of Order, but nobody is perfect. There's plenty of evil that needs to be done in the early game anyway, so what difference does an innocent child make? Next stop was SMC, where I found the stairs close enough but no blanket. Then to the Puppy cave where I found a nice pair of bracers of To (+6) and TC from a blink dog corpse. Also satisfied the master thief and got DT. Reward for druid quest was Gardening at 70. Nice.
Farmed some herbs for a while, then went to dwarftown through the SMC. Finally got my stuff identified. Dwarven mystic provided a ring of ice and some PoGA. Did the remaining dwarf quests except for the last one (not sure how quickly I can deal with the demon and I don't want him to kill the ratling). Pyramid was as uneventful as ever. The random dungeon next to the HMV entrance had a chaotic altar. I think I converted to C right away but it might have been a little later. Then picked up the phial from the gremlin cave. Light spell helped greatly. I'm level 18 now.
Next goal is to find some more artifacts and an AoLS. I'm doing well with lightning ball so Darkforge seemed like a good idea. Went wonderfully, all golems were quickly killed and I got out with the crown of science, soaker, and an AoLS which I got from a pool wish. No nasty side effects from the drinking, except for getting corrupted with 10 eyes, which is fine. Then ran directly to Khelly to avoid losing the amulet. After that I went to the water dragon cave to secure the trident, which I got soon after. I think this alone makes Raven the best sign.
Fed the ratling with the phial, the torc, the crown of science, soaker, big punch and moon sickle. Tried to do the next chaos quest, but I got tired of looking for the damned boar skull and decided to postpone this until later and hopefully have some missiles of hunting or something. I ran around doomed for maybe 10 game days and found hardly any boars and no skulls dropped whatsoever. Converted back to N. Killed the snake and went down to the wall of flame, practicing throwing the trident.
No issue with ToTHK. Then went west for the IQD and the FGJC. Ignored the GUV there completely. Did the Minotar maze with relative ease by simply casting MM and then teleporting to the stairs. Don't remeber which random gift I got here, so it probably wasn't that awesome. But 4 PoCC, 6 PoGA and 1 PoSt is awesome. And the corpse of course. This place is too good. I wanted to go to the rift next, but I still hadn't managed to get climbing all the way up. I only have an uncursed RoI and no water and I refuse to grind, so that will have to do for the ToEF. Of course I lose my bracers within the first few turns. ACW fell to frost bolts.
Day 90 is already approaching (no 7lb), so I head to the stone cirle. Decide I have time for the rift first. Didn't fall a single time (very light corruption + 41 Dx). Got the weird tome and a surge of power provided Justifier. Just barely made it back in time for Keriax who went down to poisoned dragon slaying arrows. Left the crown of chaos with the barbarian and went back down to the CoC. Got the cat ring. Lost the cat ring a few minutes later due to firing an acid bolt down the wrong corridor. Doh. Air temple was totally uneventful. Stone beast and friends were no problem at all thanks to the rune covered trident. Got crowned L with acid resistance and Robes of resistance.
Then came the blue dragon caves. Now this just fucking sucked. Immediately, on the first level, was a open threat room with 25 or more very experienced quickling queens. My acid balls did slightly less than half their HP in damage, and the poison damage was insane. Lost hundreds of HP each turn and had to go upstairs to recover while fighting off everything upstairs from the staircase, and then back down hoping to pick one or two quicklings off. Repeat. After a while the quicklings were joined by some balors and an emperor lich as well. And of course, the wyrm upstairs will freak out and my ultra attempt will be over if I step away from the stairs. Without Slow and Neutralize poison spells my only chance would have been teleportation, and that would have been even more risky. The wyrm downstairs was no issue.
Back to the surface to sort things out there as I had some arrows of hunting. Quickly found a boar that left a skull this time and I had already secured the rest of the stuff for the crone, except for the farmer corpse that I, er, found in Terinyo. Next I went back to clear the GUV in the FGJC and didn't find anything other than the useless Cat's Claw. Still missing a few (3-4) levels to 45 so I throw my principles out the window and kill things for XP in the lowest level of the crumbling cave for a while. Greater molochs and titans were generated frequently, so it went quite fast. Went to the Ass. guild and got the Flik quest. Flik was on ID:1, of course, and died to a single acid ball. Realized I missed out on maybe 10 DV and PV from not using scrolls of defense/protection, so I beefed up my stuff and went and got the crumpled scroll. There was an open threat room with greater molochs in SC2 that I considered using for levelling, but eventually decided against it. Emperor moloch died from a few throws of the trident. Got the TotRR.
I had two wishes waiting, and for some odd reason I decided to wish for scrolls of education. Wrote a few more and got Food preservation (and a number of useless skills). I wanted find weakness as well, but at this point I still didn't have any paralyzation resistance. So I had to settle for some amulets of free action from my last wish. Quickly got Food preservation up to 100, which I figured had to be a sign that I should do the quickling tree. Entered at day 110, got out at day 142 or so with an additional ~25-30 speed. Killed Nuurag-Vaarn and ate the corpse for the nice mana boost. Got rid of all corruption with the help of the unicorn and went to D50. Got Vanquisher as uselessness gift.
Killed everything on the level quickly and got a bit annoyed at myself for not searching the shops for more boosting potions earlier, but there was no turning back. Stats were ok, I had plenty of corruption removal stuff, prepeared boosting potions and some wands of fireball. The plan was to drink all boosters, wear the chaos stuff, enter the gate, remove and drop the chaos stuff, wear amulet of free action and some helmet, read a blessed scroll of MM and teleport to the fight. The execution went: Wear chaos stuff, enter the gate, appear next to Andor. slight panic, but I ran around some corners, switched helemt and amulet but forgot to drop, and drank most of my boosting potions. My base speed was about 180, so it probably would have been ok anyway. Then it was just a matter of standing at some distance throwing the rune covered trident while occasionally clearing the area with fireballs from a wand. When the trident finally didn't return I just switched to a bow and humanoid slayers, which turned out to work even better. The end.
This was a very, very long game. At least twice as long as usual. I took a break for almost four weeks somewhere in the middle. Really glad I had good notes of locations and so on. The final score was much lower than my previous normal victories, which is a bit odd. I made some bad mistakes in preparations of the final battle, like getting bloated, forgetting to drink boosting potions, forgetting to drop chaos items, etc. I think partially because I played the last six hours in one sitting, which is always bad.
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