Tuesday, 24th January 2017, 23:17 by Gorgondantess
I've been spamming MuWz lately (I know, I'm masochistic), and generally I've gotten to the point where I do Lair and its two S branches on autopilot. The last 10 or so runs I've done that made it to the Lair sub-branches (of any race) had the Snake Pits for its poisonous branch, much to my chagrin - I've always much preferred the Spider Nest, since I almost always run a mage, and Olgreb's+Ignite Poison turns the Spider nest into a cakewalk: even more so since I already had both of those spells, and was playing a race with not just RPois but poison immunity, so I dove into the Spider Nest immediately after clearing Lair:6. Unfortunately, since I was so used to the Snake Pits, I sort of... forgot what was in the spider nest, other than the standard spiders. Not Ghost Moths, no, I was prepared for that - I had a lovely randart ring with Fire, Dex +5 and SInv, so that would be no problem. And as soon as I ran into a Demonic Crawler, I realized I completely forgot those existed, and my only two real damage spells (Sticky Flame and poison spells) were useless so I was spamming scrolls of Teleport at 2 HP to escape just one of them, but then I memorized Bolt of Magma and they ceased to be a problem, and at this point I was set. I was sprinting through the Spider nest, blasting down Demonic Crawlers and taking on hordes of regular spiders with the Olgreb's+Ignite combo, then finishing off stragglers with a venom bolt, using a mere 11 mana, three spells, to frequently kill groups of 15+ enemies.
Anyways, at this point I'd cleared out a group like that, and I found myself face to face to one almost dead tarantella. I cast one venom bolt, it missed, cast another venom bolt with my divine energy, it missed again, but I wasn't worried here - I had pretty good defenses (17 AC, 15 EV, 140ish HP, good regeneration), and a +9 randart mace of speed with significant training in melee skills, so I could just manfight it... right?
Wrong. It confused me on the first hit and I spent the next thirty-odd turns stumbling around confused while it refreshed the confuse duration and whittled me down to nothing. Couldn't use spells, couldn't use wands, couldn't read scrolls, I just had to sit there and watch one of my most promising characters of late take a death of a thousand cuts.
At this point I'd like to say that I've cleared the spider pits dozens of times and never once in my life have I been confused by a Tarantella (since I always play mages they just die before they can get to me), to the point where I always just assumed poison resistance made you immune to their confusion. I had good magic resistance too, so... is there seriously nothing but the ungodly-rare clarity ego that can make one immune to that? What the hell...
(Sorry for lack of chardump btw, I was so mad I forgot to dump it before exiting).
DEFE, KoBe, SEEE, DEEE, DsWn (15), OpTm, MuWz, GrEE, DsFE, NaTm, VSTm, DrFE