The Tavern

So, I'm walking along, not sure what floor I was on, when I came upon what appeared to be a moat almost and a castle in the middle. I killed the tons of Jacals along the outside and the couple Gnolls, and that being done I decided to open the only door. It was a doublewide door, and when I open it, I kid you not, every tile within my line of sight was a Gnoll. No walls, no empty spaces, just countless Gnolls.

I hit berserk first; as I hadn't yet found any teleport scrolls and in Berserk I can kill one Gnoll a hit. I spent the next several turns as a living Gnoll blender, the Gnolls unable to leave the gate without being slaughtered, and unable to damage me. Unfortunately, Berserk does not last forever and able to tell that I was probably around 3/4ths of the way through the duration of my Berserk, I decided that retreat would be a good idea before I was hit with exhaustion/slow.

I took a retreat, and found a staircase nearby, rushing down just as my speed boost from Berserk ended. I took a few turns to rest; to get rid of slow/exaust, and noticed I was barely injured at all (this realization made before actually resting). At the time and info, I figured a plan for defeating them all; I would hit berserk, climb upstairs, then straight back downstairs, and then kill the up to 9 that could follow each in one shot, with little damage to myself given that none of them were able to actually really damage me when I was facing the full army.

Unfortunately, there was a small detail I was unaware of that made my plan fall completely to pieces. I hit berserk and climbed the stairs, only to find that one of the Gnolls apparently had a net; and that there were now Ogres present. I could not break free of the net for 4 turns; during which I was smashed repeatedly by the Ogre that managed to be next to me, 8 gnolls, and every gnoll in the crowd that had spears. By the time I freed myself and climbed back downstairs, my berserk decided that now was a great time to end.

By now the only real damage dealer was the Ogre and so made him the target of my attacks. As of yet I did not have any wands or useful scrolls, so I had to attack regularly, slowed and exausted. Sadly I died with about 2 Gnolls to go. ><;

Next time I see that castle I'm going to get some AOE/Line effect wands and blow things up from a distance. ><

At least you died gloriously, surrounded by the bodies of your enemies!

That vault is a fun one. Gnolls are the weakest version I've seen; you can get truly horrible stuff inside if you get it way down deep.

Got that vault today. Fortunately I was playing a MfCr, so I used the moat to my advantage and killed all of them without too much trouble. They gave a lot of experience and a nicely enchanted halberd.

...In fact, killing thouse gnolls took so many turns that some ugly things spawned and almost killed me.

Had one with a whole bunch of elven demonologists, when those hellions and other demons start spawning, you need to run. Anyways if they can't damage you, no point even berserking, the slow is fairly painful.