Problem with undead

[Blank4u47]

I've tried this before, and it just gives them MORE room to summon - since it opens space back in the main vault room for the other liches still there. Then more liches and summons leak out and hit the many corridors around as well.

True, but it's way more manageable this way, you can at least beat past the current summons to send an arrow into the bastard lich's skull. Try doing this while invisible, you'll probably notice it's much easier to deal with the summons.

[AlterAsc]

what determines classes strength is its weaknesses

That's not really true.
Nobody cares abot weaknesses when playing a Wizard. You just blow things into oblivion. Same thing with Archers. Shoot stuff, kill stuff.
And the same with Duelists. The only enemies i don't want to melee as a duelyst is a giant pack of high karmics and doppelganger kings. And yeah, GUV are a pain. Everything else is either easy or really easy.

[Blasphemous]

The idea of summon control is to lure out the lich royalty one by one.
Of the 3 greater vault types, 2 allow this with ease (air temple-like and the type with several rooms), while the one with large trapezoid area in the middle - not so much.
The problem is typically with having enough undead slayers, which make things simple if you can initially clear a way through summons.
Without that, you need at least range 2 ball spells, which even non-casters can use via guaranteed wand of fireballs and lots of booze.
Mindcrafter is my personal favorite undead vault cleaner because I don't need to worry about summons when using GTB directly against liches; GTB never misses and can't be resisted by any lich.
I cleared a greater undead vault with a duelist once and a ratling on top of that, with only one aging hit from a ghost lord and no drains, despite having meleed all high order liches.
It's certainly doable but requires *a lot* of tactical retreats, speed calculations, hits & runs and extensive wand usage to clear path of retreat.
Finally, one of the near foolproof methods is to get a greater earth elemental from a scroll of familiar summoning and just order it to destroy the liches.
They can drain it all they want, it's immune to death rays and hits really hard, with an occasional thrown huge rock ranged attack.

[grobblewobble]

If anything, perhaps the experience rewards for killing higher liches could be improved. Emperor liches are harder to kill and more dangerous than greater balors and great wyrms. It would be fair if they yielded more xp.

[Blank4u47]

The idea of summon control is to lure out the lich royalty one by one.
Of the 3 greater vault types, 2 allow this with ease (air temple-like and the type with several rooms), while the one with large trapezoid area in the middle - not so much.
The problem is typically with having enough undead slayers, which make things simple if you can initially clear a way through summons.

It's funny you say that, I literally just had a ME archer clear the trapezoid type GUV. It was definitely annoying, but all I really needed to do was press t a lot but I did have lightning shot and lvl 13 in crossbows and thunderstroke. So my energy cost was around 415. Sadly only gained 5 levels, even though it was on D:47ish.

[Blasphemous]

Anything is easy for archers with thunderstroke.
I agree with grobble that emp liches give very meager exp when you consider they are probably the nastiest monsters in the game.
Great red wyrms are tough of course and scary in melee but they don't summon, they don't insta-heal with spells and don't cast death rays.
Yet wyrms are worth about 10x as much in exp.

[SinsI]

That's not really true.
Nobody cares abot weaknesses when playing a Wizard. You just blow things into oblivion. Same thing with Archers. Shoot stuff, kill stuff.
And the same with Duelists. The only enemies i don't want to melee as a duelyst is a giant pack of high karmics and doppelganger kings. And yeah, GUV are a pain. Everything else is either easy or really easy.

That's because by the time those weaknesses (poor melee attack and initial armor) really matter (monsters dodging/immune to spells or powerful gangers in restricted teleport areas) they have plenty of chances to compensate for it with equipment - weapons of devastation and/or artifacts are not that rare.

Melee fighters are much worse in that aspect - if you don't find that Amulet Of Free Action or Amulet of Petrification Resistance you are pretty screwed the next time you stumble upon Master Mimic or Gorgon...

Melee practically requires that you abuse poor beggars in Lawnilotech for booze to death...

[Couchfighter]

Melee practically requires that you abuse poor beggars in Lawnilotech for booze to death...

I thought beggars only gave 1 potion of booze each ?

[Blank4u47]

I thought beggars only gave 1 potion of booze each ?

Yep, but then you can lead them into the wilderness, and more will take their place.

[anon123]

Yep, but then you can lead them into the wilderness

Assuming you aren't chaotic