Halls Hopper
Posts: 81
Joined: Friday, 17th April 2015, 23:46
YAVP: OpFi^Gozag | For once, food was a problem
Difficulty-wise, the game went very smoothly after finding a demon whip in Lair, except for the food problems. I had to get a food shop already before the first Lair branch, without using any spells. The second food shop was needed by Vaults:4. By this time I had casted Regen like 20 times and summoned like 20 lightning spires. And then it came the difficult part. I was ready to go to Zot and I had around 10k gold. I called a couple of merchants and they offered the Amulet of the Four Winds (rN+ MR+++ Clar), a +6 ring of slaying and a Ring {rC+ rN+ Int+2}. The three pieces cost like 3.8k. I had like 6 rations (which I assumed should be enough to go straight to Zot:5, bribe it and run away). So I decided to buy the amulet and the two rings, leaving like 1.5k gold. The plan was to earn 1.5k more gold on my way to Zot:5 in order to bribe it.
It turns out that farming 1.5k gold in Zot takes a little bit of time, and it turns out that by the time I was ready to bribe and do Zot:5 I had just 1 ration left. I bribed it anyway, only to find out that the effect of bribing wasn't that strong. You get some allies and some neutral monsters, but you still have to fight your way carefully. But I wasn't doing that, I was trying to go fast for the rune, using the bribed allies to clear for me. Well, at some point I figured my strategy wasn't viable and had to turn around. I almost die to a curse toe torment + death drake miasma, but managed to escape with 45HP. At this point I was out of food and with like 500g (calling a merchant already costing 2.6k).
I decided to do Crypt to get gold for a food merchant, hoping RNG would provide some rations in the process too. I was already hungry (or even very hungry, can't remember) without any rations left when I found a ration, and then I found a couple of them more. Regarding gold, clearing Crypt gave me like 2.3k. I went back to Zot, and cleared a little bit more on the upper levels until I had 2.6k and was able to call a merchant. After that, it was just a matter of carefully doing Zot:5 and the orb run.
I was surprised I had to use three food shops in this run. I used very few spells. What do you think? Was I unlucky or have there been some changes regarding ration generation in the game?