Swamp Slogger
Posts: 169
Joined: Tuesday, 25th October 2011, 00:06
Hepliaklqana challenge completedd
https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Yerm ... 142506.txt
I think the hardest part was the initial quest for the altar - diving through floors while running away from stuff. At first I tried SpAs, but then after a couple of fails when I successfully found Hep, but ancestor was sometimes too weak to handle even a quokka, I decided to switch to SpMo. My ancestor became Battlemage right upon worship, and things went much smoother. Why Battlemage and not the others? Well, given the circumstances, the only role I (my character) could fulfil in our small party is tank, so the obvious choice for the second participant would be damage dealer, i.e. Battlemage. Hexer is pure support, thus useless (monsters including ancestor can't stab), and Knight is also a tank. Sure it can unleash some damage but I suppose it's balanced away by this extra tankiness (this is theorycrafting, I played with Knight maybe once-twice right after Hep was released, I don't remember how his power feels like), plus range attack is of great value, which Knight doesn't have.
For challenge to feel "pure" I decided to impose extra limitations, like 'no other allies except the ancestor' and 'no affecting monsters in any way': no wands except digging, no hexing monsters, no moving monsters around with Translocations spells. I did use scrolls of fear early on to survive though, and I decided to use Aura of Abjuration, because it seemed annoyingly hard not to use it in certain circumstances. Oh, and also I carried nets and fan of gales just in case things go gloomy. They didn't, so I haven't used them.
Random highlights:
- Suddenly your weapon is an extra slot for resistances or whatever (remember not to use artefact long blades though or you might get a kill through riposte). For the first part of the game I carried staff of power for extra 16 hp (with amulet of guardian spirit).
- Thanks to the recent change now you don't waste extra time when you press '5' to wait for ancestor to heal up.
- Probably the most annoying part of Hep gameplay (disregarding this particular challenge) is when you go upstairs just to wait for ancestor to respawn and it appears a tile away from you, so you have to press '.' before you can go downstairs again. And ancestor spawns one tile away from you 95% of the time.
- I always try not to stay behind the monster being attacked by ancestor but still through the course of the game I've dodged several crystal spears. I queried Sequell with "!log * ckiller=battlemage" and it turns out there were only 14 deaths like that. And even then some of these deaths were caused not by ancestor's missile hitting the character but by exploding inner flame or ancestor being confused.
- Vanquished Creatures (others) are usually monsters that die to stuff like dragon breath or bolt spells, mechanical traps in Tomb (I look at you, death scarabs), hell effects. And suddenly, 362 out of 495 creatures in this category are ... battlemagi!
- I haven't mentioned it earlier but I went for 15 runes, just for the kicks. In my fight with Lom Lobon at one moment he had more than half of his hp, and then he was dead in a single press of '.': ancestor landed lcs at him and then a finishing hit with lajatang; this was impressive. Overall ancestor killed 4 out of 8 pan/hell bosses. I guess with enough patience I could have them all killed, but just stealing the rune sometimes was simpler.
- For this message the author Yermak has received thanks: 9
- Airwolf, chequers, Eyesburn, nago, nosrepemos, PleasingFungus, PseudoLoneWolf, RoGGa, VeryAngryFelid