The Beggars Opera or: What about Poverty Runs?

[Harpagornis]

If you tell me how to level up fast to 25 i will go for it @Grond as the farming in the lesser vaults can get quite painful.

[Grond]

For some reason I read "on level 35" as 'the character was level 35' instead of 'on D:35'.

[Harpagornis]

Oh... interesting @Grond. Still have to adapt to the terms here.

Monk number 8 is nearly level 17 and preparing for the Water & Fire Orbs. Got lucky in getting invisibilty from a random stalker while a random pool granted me death ray resistance. Thanks to lots of farming (with Invisibility i can easily avoid killing cats!) i granted all resistances against the elements and also resistance against paralyzation from a lesser vault full of cubes. Looks like fate is smiling on me. Only downside so far is the -10 speed corruption even though i like the +10 WP against mind attacks.

What i am wondering about: Will the resistances from eating bodies stack or not? Or is there somewhere a cap? Thanks for the answer!

[Harpagornis]

Luck turned into doom after i got two of the worst corruptions one after another: Stiff Muscles and Chaos Hands. Healing corrupted monsters is instant GG - no? Looks like this challenge will take "a litle bit longer". At least this will also lengthen the fun. Hopefully.

I played a bit with min/maxing starting attributes for Drakeling Monks with regard to poverty rules - here we go:

STRENGTH ---- 24 -> hitting harder and better sounds like a decent plan
LEARNING ----- 02 -> no casting or reading but still 3 skills per level
WILLPOWER --- 24 -> A littlte bit more HP and confusion protection
DEXTERITY --- 18 -> Not the best stat for Drakelings but still okay
TOUGHNESS -- 24 -> Nice HP boost and some PV for the early game
CHARISMA ---- 01 -> as we wont buy anything this is skipped
APPEARANCE -- 01 -> no need for this one either
MANA -------- 01 -> we dont use any spells
PERCEPTION -- 10 -> five tiles of vision should be good enough

Have i missed something? Will soon try this one - lets hope for the best!

[ghostjghost]

Mana also supposedly affects Magic Resistance and Luck to some degree so if you have spare points it may be beneficial, but I don't have any solid numbers for either of those aspects of it, so I think you are good.

[Harpagornis]

Monk number 9 is steamrolling the game reaching level 18 while getting all elemental resistances, luck (the corpse rate of karmic lizards is abysmal) and teleportation (control). So far no luck with the invisible stalkers and also the cubes are not dropping any bodies. One bottleneck - beside making stupid errors- will be the coming corruptions. The poison hands i got are a bit painful with regard to satiation but the poison on the other hand pushes the DPS significantly. Got several attribute increases that pushed Str, Dex & Tougness up to four points. Not bad. However: Pool sipping will be a two sided coin like always even though death ray resistance seems to be important in the late game no? Time to start the orb hunting and going for some steel golem bashing soon.

P.S. Only one dead cat so far. Vortices, statues and lizards always clean the house! Good pets!

[Harpagornis]

Nine is still alive even though the game is going up and down. Got aged by a Ghost King after getting cornered but a pool put me back to youth again. Got perma invisibility from another pool but - damn it - that was it. Only dried up, snakes and even one curse that was neutralized by a karmic lizard shortly after. No death ray resistance so far which would mean that Nuurag-Vaarn will be absolutely painful. If i get there. Water and Fire Orb was easy going thanks to digging a lot of corridors and using superior speed against SfB and ACW. But: 26 Willpower was still not enough to be on the safe side against confusion so two times my monk was randomly running around. Too funny that the elementals could not see him so he never was in any real danger. Also got a second corruption called "Rage". Another DPS boost for faster killing...

So before going in for the deepest dungeons several things have to be done:
1. Get death ray resistance fom a pool (yeah, i am really funny)
2. Get ability to see invisible creatures
3. Reach level 25 to switch places for better battleground control

Fate of Smile would be nice too even though the karmic lizard nearly never drop corpses. Is paralyze resistance essential? Have i forgot something? Getting past the Cat Lord should be no big deal as only two cats have died so far. But there is still the Banshee. And the EG. And the Battle Bunnies. With other words: So many things that can go wrong before even reaching the portal...

[Harpagornis]

Overconfidence and lack of concentration is always a bad combo. To make it short: I thought to be clever farming the snow golems with reduced speed thanks to frost but i wasnt aware how hard they can hit. Two 104+112 damage crits together with the biting frost put my monk instantly down. Maybe i should have retreated after the first one had wounded me. Damn it. Up to that point the XP bar was growing rapidly towards 22 but that put me into a point of already planning for the deeper levels without taking care of the actual action going on. That was my downfall. Wont happen again. However: As the third corruption went badly again (stiff muscles.....) my chances of success dropped down anyway. Lets hope that the pools and corruptions will be with me next time!!!

EDIT: Looks like i am doomed. Two restarts and two times i got stiff muscles as the first coruption. This cannot be!!! Monks Ten and Eleven have therefore been abandoned so its time for number twelve soon. Random luck wont stop me!

[Harpagornis]

My bad luck continues...

Twelve: Sipped the pools in Darkforge at level 20 but got doomed and teleported right into the middle of several steel golems. Fate smiled upon the enemies and my monk instantly turned into dust.
Thirteen: Once i got Maggots i thought: Okay, lets try on! But then - like always - stiff muscles appeared once more after fire and water orb were aquired and my level 21 monk said to himself: Lets go to sleep...
Fourteen: Used a pool in PC:1 when still being a level 1 monk and - yeah - lots of snakes appeared. Two prayers were not enough to get through all the incoming (poison) damage. Fastest death ever so far...

This random pool and corruption crap is making me crazy. Will i ever be lucky like @Jouni getting mostly good corruptions and (nearly) everything i need from the pools? We will see...

[Harpagornis]

Fifteen had to abandon his run after eating a gelatinous cube who paralyzed him long enough that a spawning wraith could drain his toughness down to 13. Damn it.

Sixteen however looks really promising so far. Farming slowly up to level 20 he sipped several pools in Darkforge after killing a whole bunch of steel golems with hit & run.

The pool sipping was really funny:
- Lost Fire Resistance
- Lost Fate smiles
- Lost Resistance against Paralyzation
+ Gained Resistance against Petrification
- Lost Poison Resistance
- Lost Invisibility (nooo)
+ Got a Wish
+ Gained Death Ray Resistance (!)

Fire and Poison resistance was no big deal but getting another stalker corpse for invisibility proved to be difficult so far. Maybe i can live without it!? Strength and Toughness got both pushed 6 points so far which is great. Too bad Willpower never went up so confusion still can be troublesome. No corruptions collected until now - lets hope for the best. In the next days Sixteen will go hunting water and fire orb before starting another farming session to reach level 25 for switching. Still a long way to go!