Slime Squisher
Posts: 419
Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25
YAVP: 2-oneandwon-streak, 5-rune (with demonic) DrTm^Ihp'ix
Now I'm back in my normal state, a no-streak (lost a DsSk on Lair:6 to a firefly and a lindwurm), it seems like a good time to write this one up. It started fairly normally for a transmuter until I found Ignorance on D:4 and decided, having found no gods I really wanted, to go back and take the faded altar on D:2. This gave me Ihp'ix. Ihp'ix gives you a bit of ammo from a faded altar (or if you're a monk) and enough piety to request a weapon, so off I went.
I didn't find any other slings for ages so was entirely dependent on the divine armoury, making for slow piety growth, and Ihp'ix didn't really improve on +1 hunting sling until they lent me a +1 fusti on Lair:3, then a +1 hunting sling of velocity on Lair:6. (You can only have one divine weapon at a time, and you give your old one up before you request a new one, so it's a gamble if you haven't improved piety/Invo significantly).
Nearly killed by a manticore on Lair:6. After that I was not best pleased to find an orc warlord on O:1 while I was trying to get into an ice cave, but I got away with it; in the ice cave Ihp'ix granted a +7 hunting sling of electrocution, a huge improvement; and then on O:1 I bought a +3 hand crossbow with {venom, rC++ rN+ Int-4} in an antique shop - silly shopkeeper, if you'd offered me that before the ice cave I'd have paid double.
Orc seems to have been fine after that (saw Bloodlust in a shop); went to Shoals where I found a +6 longbow with {venom, MR+ Str+2 Dex+4}. This seemed good enough to remove Ignorance and as a side effect start on spells again. Gave me a bit of a glass jaw, but nothing actually killed me, and it was incredibly effective in the bit of the game where most stuff can be poisoned. Inevitably, it turned up just after I'd bought an amulet with {Reflect Dex+4 SH+5} to go with Ignorance.
The rest of Shoals wasn't too bad, merfolk impalers aside, and served up a +9 longbow with {speed, rElec Int+2}. Just in time; Spider:1 had Nikola, and generally early Spider was a unique party with Jorgrun, Josephine, Agnes, Roxanne, and Azrael. Spider also gave enough gold for Bloodlust; the MR++ and Slay+6 are just fine on a ranged character who won't make melee attacks to trigger the berserk. However, Spider:4 got horrible with ghost moths, but I got through.
Did Elf with my shiny new MR. No real problems there and found the storm bow. To Vaults, immediately hitting a Desolation and a wizlab; I rushed through the Desolation (getting +1 boots with {rF+ Str+2}, nice since I was really hurting for rF/rC) and managed to get into the wizlab - Fleshworks - the Monster was quite nasty but cleaned it out, although alas I had no digging charges to break into the side rooms.
I got a demon blade off a hell knight which let me cash a trove. Some decent consumables, and an amulet with {Spirit rF+ rC+} I'd use later when the time for Bloodlust was past. Learned See Invisible, but I'd learn an important lesson in Pan; See Invisible is not a very useful spell when lorycthingies have already drained all your MP away. Not much else to say about V:1-4 - collected Margery, Jory.
Depths had a shop with Wyrmbane. I am basically incapable of resisting Wyrmbane, so I bought it, but of course it was an extremely poor fit with Bloodlust and if I took off Bloodlust I had terrible MR. I'd get it up to +18 almost immediately (why is it if you can't wear body armour, Depths is crawling with gold dragons, eh?) but only resolve this when I found the ring of the Mage on V:5. I really wanted its resistances a lot of the time, though.
Depths was pretty consistently horrible; there's a lot of worryingly low hit points in the log. After that V:5 was a breeze; found the ring of the Mage, swapped to that and the amulet with {Spirit rF+ rC+}, found Starlight (two games running), learned Conjure Ball Lightning (which did sterling work on non-resistant panlords).
I'd had rN+++ forever from a ring with {rN+++ AC+2 Str+2 Stlth-} I'd found on Spider:1, so I cleaned out Crypt (no problems) and the Vestibule (Geryon can't really do much about Piercing Fire). To Pan!
I got Abyssed by a Zot trap very early but landed almost on top of the rune, scooped it up, and got out. Some panlords were being very feisty so when I found the demonic rune in the vault with eyes of draining and suchlike in squares of grates I scooped it up and got out. Bought all the supplies and off to Zot!
Orbs of fire were not really a problem; I'd been enchanting up an arbalest of freezing from the trove. Pretty soon I learned Statue Form - easily enough XP in Zot to get it online and the defences when using Wyrmbane were just what was wanted. Orbrun uneventful until D; evaded one panlord on D:10 only to find another on D:1 - holy worded and evaded to find _another_ panlord on D:1. That's a first. I also holy worded and evaded them, and that was it, home free.