YASD - DEWz, killed by oklob idiocy

[njvack]

Playing my first really successful DE Wizard [fire], I found a really fantastic vault on Lair:3 where ALL the stairs down are in a room guarded by an Oklob plant.

Clever wizard that I am, I stop screwing around in Lair, find me a wand of digging, and dig around the backside to a place the Oklob can't see me. Find a Staff of Energy. Spam Bolt of Fire and clear Lair. Find another Oklob and discover that Bolt of Fire is strong enough to kill them now.

On my way back up, I think to myself, "I'd better clear that plant out, in case I take the wrong stairs up from Lair:4 by accident." So I take off my gear, walk into the vault...

... and discover that there's not one Oklob in there, but four. FOUR. Which throw acid at me and kill me in one turn.

Am I missing something? Is there a trick to that vault, or is it a subtle way of saying "you don't want to see the rest of Lair"?

On the upside, sometime I'll have the pleasure of finding a ghost who can cast Bolt of Fire and Fireball near the top of Lair.

[mageykun]

Here's a trick: Oklobs can't see invisible. An annoying Oklob vault or stair blockade is a great time to use one of those oft ignored potions of invisibility. Especially in the lair, since your stash is right up the stairs.

Also, it's handy to place a travel exclusion on stairs that lead to death so you don't take them by accident.

[njvack]

Yeah, but on Lair:3? The entrances to Snake, Shoals, and Slime were all below. I'd be traveling past those plants another dozen times.

I could see it on level 7 or something, where I'd need to decide if I wanted to do Lair:8 without the ability to retreat upstairs at will, but man. This was just gonna make the rest of this game really irritating :-/

[mageykun]

I wasn't suggesting invisibility for sneaking past the sentries. While invs, you can pretty much attack them with impunity. They don't fight back.

Or, well, they don't seem to fight back. I suppose they could be attacking randomly, but just never hit me because they've got so many possible squares to choose between. :p

[joellercoaster]

I ran into that vault too and had to laugh.

It did, at the time, mean "go back up and do something else".

In the end a seven-headed hydra zombie did my dirty work for me but it took a while to find a way 'round, that's for sure. On balance I think it's a good thing; it breaks up the Set Menu A progression (clear the Lair as soon as you find it) occasionally so it leads to more interesting games. Even though it was certainly annoying at the time!

[njvack]

Huh. I'd tried the oklob invisibility trick earlier and gotten hit; I think my problem was that I was in LOS when I quaffed the potion. But I just ran an Arena with an Unseen Horror v Oklob and the plant never took a shot.

So I'll experiment (carefully!) next time I see a plant; the ability to take 'em out invisibly means it's a less cruel vault than I thought.

And for the record, the leftmost staircase is invisible to all of the plants. Exclusions on the other stairs up would have been a good plan, sigh :-/

[Shade]

Huh. I'd tried the oklob invisibility trick earlier and gotten hit; I think my problem was that I was in LOS when I quaffed the potion. But I just ran an Arena with an Unseen Horror v Oklob and the plant never took a shot.

I *think* the AI is smart enough to shoot at / near a location you just shot from. (I don't know about melee.) I think Unseen Horrors probably just move too fast.

My strategy usually involves being invisible, and hitting them with some long ranged lingering form of death, like sticky flames or freezing clouds. Or engaging in a game of 'hit at range' and move. If you are fast, and have freezing cloud, or sticky flame (pre HEAD nerf, apparently) you can kind of plink away at them--- Especially if you abuse the volume preserving properties of freezing cloud.

edit: You could also probably hide in a LOS obscuring cloud, and hit and move from that, though I've never tried.

[IndomitableLou]

Summon canine familiars (with a potion of brilliance if you have to) and black ebony boxes are also pretty good. War dogs close with oklob plants very quickly.

[Zooty]

If you have a wand of fireballs, you can shoot them from just beyond LOS. One wand might not do it though so bring several or scrolls of recharging.

[Stormfox]

I *think* the AI is smart enough to shoot at / near a location you just shot from. (I don't know about melee.)

That's right. Especially if you're casting conjurations, since it's noisy as well as giving the AI a tracer to follow back to its source. Firing blindly at invisible melee opponents doesn't happen, though.