Dissolved

[mjkittredge]

is there a best level or X amount of HP you should have before trying to finish Druid Dungeon?

I had a great character going, High Elf Paladin. She had excellent stats, 17 dv 10 pv, adamantium polearm, crystal dagger, ring of damage, girdle of carrying blessed. Got her to level 9 - But only 11 toughness and 52 hp. She was tearing through the early game content.

As I'm running from a cat at about 45 HP I'm down a long hall and there is a Giant Slug. Stab it, it's half dead. Breathes acid at me. Insta-killed. How much damage can those fuckers do? I've never had problems with these slimy bastards before.

To add insult to injury, an un-id ring in my inventory was acid resistance.

[blunk]

is there a best level or X amount of HP you should have before trying to finish Druid Dungeon?

I had a great character going, High Elf Paladin. She had excellent stats, 17 dv 10 pv, adamantium polearm, crystal dagger, ring of damage, girdle of carrying blessed. Got her to level 9 - But only 11 toughness and 52 hp. She was tearing through the early game content.

As I'm running from a cat at about 45 HP I'm down a long hall and there is a Giant Slug. Stab it, it's half dead. Breathes acid at me. Insta-killed. How much damage can those fuckers do? I've never had problems with these slimy bastards before.

To add insult to injury, an un-id ring in my inventory was acid resistance.

Off topic:
As paladin starts with healing you may want to practice starting with smc/ud up to high mountain village, it will kill you a ton until you get a hang of it, and then only kill you now and then, rewards are very nice.

On topic:
Yes this is an example of early game that is extremely punishing for inexperienced players.
Giant slugs breath hurts a lot but they are very rare, even somewhat rare in lowest Druid Dungeon area (which is animals only).
If you had tried to equip rings you'd probably get a cursed ring of damage and a ring of fish.
Did you have any sort of healing? probably not this early
They don't breathe that far so ranged works but they have a fair amount of hps, even better is, spoiler:

 turn around, go to puppy cave level 2 which garantuees ants
hope to get an ant corpse and eat it for acid resistance, note thats resistance not immunity, but it helps a lot

[mjkittredge]

Off topic:
As paladin starts with healing you may want to practice starting with smc/ud up to high mountain village, it will kill you a ton until you get a hang of it, and then only kill you now and then, rewards are very nice.

On topic:
Yes this is an example of early game that is extremely punishing for inexperienced players.
Giant slugs breath hurts a lot but they are very rare, even somewhat rare in lowest Druid Dungeon area (which is animals only).
If you had tried to equip rings you'd probably get a cursed ring of damage and a ring of fish.
Did you have any sort of healing? probably not this early
They don't breathe that far so ranged works but they have a fair amount of hps, even better is, spoiler:

 turn around, go to puppy cave level 2 which garantuees ants
hope to get an ant corpse and eat it for acid resistance, note thats resistance not immunity, but it helps a lot

Ah yes the ants. Fought several in there but no corpse. Should have taken out the whole nest and gotten at least one for the resist. I will not make this mistake again.

Just don't remember in any of my hundreds of play-throughs that reached DD7 slug acid breath doing 50+ damage. I had no healing items but my HP was near full and wasn't expecting to be one-shotted.

Definitely agree about SMC to HMV, I just try to do all the beginner quests in the area first. After ducking in SMC at level 1

[JellySlayer]

I've seen slugs do 50-60 damage with breath before. It's uncommon, but they're very out of depth for that area, so their damage can be quite high. They can actually 1 shot kill Keethrax if you line them up. Going for the ants is not a bad idea first. Slugs are super slow, so if you have some missile capacity, you can pick them off at angles.

Rings are generally worth equipID in the early game, IMHO. The only bad one you can get is fish, and that isn't really a problem beyond the autocurse. Rings of damage are always of the ordinary/onyx/opal/adamantium set, so if you're concerned about a cursed ring of damage, just ignore those.

[mjkittredge]

60 damage? That's insane for a creature that spawns so often in an early game quest. Vortices aren't even that bad.. Maybe just come back to finish that one in the teens after going to Dwarftown. That way you're more likely to have something to deal with cats also.

Another bad one you can get is Ring of Doom, right?

[Tyrnyx]

Slugs are pretty rare. RNG'd but still Adom's maxim: Live and learn - Don't do the dungeon until you need to or until you have acid res. Personally I would just say: Do the SMC HMV.

Also, vorticies in my experience do 50% to 70% of your health as damage if you don't have the resistance and they are the same experience level as you. Breathe damage without res is always painful, often extremely so and acid, IMO, hits the hardest.

[taickyto]

There are guaranteed monsters in the puppy cave that grant Acid Resist when eaten. This way you can also use Giant Slug's acid bolts to deal with cats.

[JellySlayer]

60 damage? That's insane for a creature that spawns so often in an early game quest. Vortices aren't even that bad.. Maybe just come back to finish that one in the teens after going to Dwarftown. That way you're more likely to have something to deal with cats also.

Another bad one you can get is Ring of Doom, right?

That's true, though rings of doom are a bit higher DL and are very rare. And if you accidentally equip one, you may as well just drop everything else and have your god dust your inventory.