CiP - Schwa, HECj of Jivya + Ashenzari (Beware, huge post!)

[SchwaWarrior]

This has, by far, been the most interesting game I've ever played.

Began as High Elf Conjurer, began delving down as usual, found some pretty solid items on D1 and D2, including a +0 Buckler, a +2 Cloak and +2 Leather Armor right off the bat. Encountered Sigmund early and made extremely short work of him with Mephitic Cloud and melee attacks, felt proud of that. Picked up a Wand of Healing in D3 and accidentally recharge-scroll'd it while it was un-ID'd. Found Ashenzari's miniature yellow temple thing early on, D3 I think, bound my Weapon and Shield Hands to get good piety right away.

Then out of nowhere, I get chased halfway across the entire game and back by rampaging orcs and gnolls and giants on one of those wide-open Colisseum levels. Eventually I circle around, FINALLY heal, go back and kill each and every one of those dangerous jerks that gave me so much trouble. >:3 Among the spoils was a +1,+4 Elven Short Sword of Distortion. Because it's so convenient, and I need a better weapon than a dagger, I equip it.

A couple more floors down I encounter a golem fortress. Holy crap. Seriously it was this big metal building full of Iron Golems and Metal Gargoyles. By now I have Mystic Blast and Fireball as offensive spells, and Mystic Blast was surprisingly powerful against the Gargoyles; there was really nothing I could do to hurt the Iron Golems, but I beat them anyway, since they move half as fast as me, I poke one with my sword, step away, poke it again, step away, and eventually I was able to banish every Iron Golem to Abyss that way and gain the Exp for it. In the middle of the golem fortress was the legendary Ring of Robustness, +8 AC. I was so goddamn stoked.

Lair Entrance is on D11, so I make it down there and set up a stash. In no time at all I clear L8, but I don't take on any of the side branches yet. I want to explore the main dungeon some more.

So I get to it, and at like D15 or so, there are the Vaults. ...Now, I have never reached the final floor of the Vaults before. Too hard. But I'm feeling confident, and in I go. Right away I'm given a book of Minor Magic, and I immediately slap on Conjure Flame and Repel Missiles, two of my favorite spells. Thanks to Repel Missiles I make short work of V1 and V2, with only minor problems; the Harpies freaked me out when they suddenly showed up, and even with my Distortion weapon, Orc Knights are very resilient. It was funny trying to chase all the things that got teleported around by my weapon until I killed everything.

Then? I find something I've never even heard of before. The Crypt! I thought the Vaults were just one big long thing down to the bottom with a Rune, I didn't know it was like the Lair with side dungeons! So, because I'm so freaking curious, I enter the Crypt, and I have a BLAST in there. Seriously, it's probably my new favorite dungeon now. There were lots of things to kill, they weren't fast or dodge-happy, and the only times I had to be careful were when Skeletal Knights and Bone Dragons appeared. It was very relaxing! And I leveled up a TON. I also found this really epic enemy called a Silent Spectre which has a permenant Silence aura around it; since I'm playing a spellcaster-melee hybrid with emphasis on melee, I just ran up to it and bawnk'd it five times with my sword and that was enough to remove it. Did NOT want that thing running around while I was trying to fight other stuff!

Two things gave me heart attacks in there though. The Tomb, which is a... sub sub dungeon? filled with MUMMIESSSS ARGHAGHAGH x__x Christ! I see a Mummy Guardian in there, I figure "No big deal, Ashenzari makes me immune to mummy curses", so I FIREBALL FIREBALL FIREBALL it which is my favorite "strategy", and then: "Death has come for you." Four-star demon in its place. ....Ummm... huh. Wow. Okay, shit. Teleport outta here. Not even dealing with this floor. (Although, the Sphinx is a really cool enemy. It's too bad she's trying to kill me. I would have given her a hug!)

So I go back to the Crypt, and the next floor down is the next heart attack moment: a Mummy Emperor miniboss, who starts smiting me for almost half my health every turn. Ahhhh! Even Saint Roka isn't that bad! D: I wimp out and run down to the last floor in the Crypt, and I spend about an hour (real-time) ransacking this GIANT ELABORATE TEMPLE for treasure. I almost died sneaking past the Mummy miniboss on the floor above me, but it ain't no thang. I gotta say, I thought Spectral Dragons would be harder to kill than that, and I gotta say, whoever did the work on that undead temple is a fucking genius. Best dungeon design in the entire game right there. For my efforts, I got a unique amulet that's like Gourmand but also boosts accuracy and Strength.

Now that I'm out of the Crypt, I go exploring the Vaults some more, and I come across the Hall of Blades! I wonder once again, "Oooh, what's in here!" and in I go-- only to run SCREAMING RIGHT BACK OUT AGAIN WITH A QUARTET OF MACES AFTER ME HOLY SWEET JESUS WHY WHY ;___; I DIDN'T KNOW THEY COULD DO THAT PLEASE DON'T DIE PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE okay somehow I didn't die after one of them followed me back up the stairs and I Mystic Blasted it just enough times as I had the mana for. Wowww. @_@ I think I went down and up in the Hall of Blades like five different times to try and leech off as much spare Exp as I could without getting my ass completely kicked (just mostly kicked-- there's a difference between mostly kicked, and all kicked. Have fun stormin' the castle! It'll take a miracle.) Wignam the Dwarf also came gunning for me from in there, but he went down after enough Fireballs and once I ran out of mana my sword got lucky with a "major distortion damage" hit to finish him off. Sonofabitch was powerful, too, I'm glad he's not running around in the Vaults anymore now.

I decide I've had it up to here with the Vaults, and I hightail it, to begin exploring the rest of the dungeon. And I fight onwards, going all the way down to D26. Along the way, using my Amulet, I fight lots and lots of Ugly Things, and every time I find a mutagenic corpse of one, I chop it up and eat all the chunks. I wind up with five good mutations and only one bad one-- one of them being "You evolve rapidly" (which is a double mutation of "randomly get good mutations"). Unfortunately, the bad one was "Space occasionally distorts". So get this: now I'm a randomly teleporting mage whose sword causes its targets to randomly teleport. I love this game so much. I wish this ghost could have been in Webtiles just so another player could experience "Bwoop, suddenly a ghost! Bwoop, suddenly you're somewhere else!" or even the Abyss. XDD

So then I went all the way back to my stash in the Lair, and decided to start getting Runes. My character is like, Level 20 by this point, way overleveled compared to my usual rune-gettingness. And I decide to start with the Slime Pit rune, since it's the hardest in the Lair, and I already have an Amulet of Resist Corrosion.

Turns out this was a mistake. My random teleporting put me suddenly at the mercy of two Purple Eyes (the mutating ones) and a Great Orb of Eyes, which promptly hit me with Paralysis while I was mutated like five times with bad mutations at once. ;_; Then I fall down a Shaft. So now I'm stuck in the Slime Pits with several bad mutations and not many options left; I still have 2 charges on my Healing Wand and 2 Teleport scrolls and that's about it. I decide to make a mad dash for the rune, kill the Royal Jelly ASAP so that the whole dungeon would stop actively trying to destroy me. But as I get down there, I find that I'm in over my head, and I get surrounded on all sides.

With only 5 HP left and no ways to escape, I do the only thing I can think of. I spam a Blink spell and it puts me next to Jivya's altar. And I abandon Ashenzari in favor of Jivya. >_<

Well. This very likely saved my life. All the jellies in the whole dungeon became allies and stopped attacking me, and as I made my way back up through eight floors of the Lair, I VERY RAPIDLY acquired Piety, lost ALL my bad mutations, and still wound up with 4 out of 6 Piety stars, just from backtracking those eight floors up to my stash. But now Ashenzari's WRATH is upon me and every single one of my Skills are halved! D: I hope it's just temporary. I don't know how many turns I'm supposed to wait. ;_; I lost the ability to cast Freezing Cloud and Bolt of Draining; I tried in the Snake Pit, which was what I headed towards next, and instead of a freezing cloud, I summoned a freaking TORNADO which blasted the whole room apart. x__x The next time I tried, I got a Ball Lightning which exploded in my face like a baby butt, and I got a mouthful of Glow Radiation which knocked my Strength stat down a notch. ;_; But Jivya's nice. He removes my bad mutations fairly quickly, he rearranges my stats when he's bored so it's kinda like he's a "nice" version of Xom. Just to get the hang of Jivya, I went ALL the way back to D1 and summoned Jellies on every floor so they could eat every item in the game I left behind. And I got a metric ton of good mutations as my reward. It's also nice that I'm never hungry anymore! Jivya takes good care of me. *hugs Jivya affectionately* I wish he and Ashenzari would get along though, these halved Skills bug me!

In the Snake Pit, I managed to get the Serpent's Rune by Slimifying all the Greater Naga that came after me. Worked brilliantly. ^^

So that's my adventure SO FAR. I decided to take a break for the night and maybe work on my fanfic some more. Crawl has so much drama even though it's against the computer. @_@ I'm seeing stars from how overstimulated I am. I need another coffee to calm down. Or maybe I'll hug my dog for a while, she's soft and pleasant.

[hxy]

pretty interesting story

by the way, Slime and Tomb are among the branches that most ppl would leave for later... much later

[XuaXua]

I hope you got as much cool swag on Slime:6 as you could because other than artefacts, it's all probably gone by now.

[schmoe]

Nice story. That was a pretty slick move to convert to Jiyva.

[SchwaWarrior]

Thanks guys. ^^

Jivya actually didn't open the Slime Pit treasure vaults until later, when I got enough piety. So I made a return trip to pick up the Rune as as much items as I could. I got an Artifact +5+1 Vorpal Quickblade with Cold Res, +4 Intelligence and +3 Strength. And when I unequipped my Distortion weapon, luckily I only took major damage and didn't get banished. ^^ I also found FOUR Artifact Rings, all of which increase various stats and offer various resistances, so now I have several things I can switch between. After I picked up all the things I wanted, I summoned Jellies in the treasure rooms to remove all the "junk" items; even though I have max piety, I found that the more items I give to Jellies, the more often I get good mutations, and I'm gunning for as many good mutations as possible. (They're like items that are always being worn and don't take up any inventory space!)

Ashenzari's still halving all my skills. >_< I'm starting to worry. I cleared Snake Pit and Shoals and now I have three Runes (I think I'm going for four or five until I level up to XL 27 before I take on Zot), and Ashie still hasn't let up! I hope this isn't permanent... How many turns does it usually take for abandonment penance to go away?

WORD TO THE WISE FOR JIVYA PLAYERS: If you use Fireball, Conjure Flame or Static Discharge in the Shoals, you WILL hit your own Jellies. It scared me so bad when he took away all my skills and gave me a bad mutation as punishment. But thankfully, he forgave me rather quickly, and by that time I had defeated Illsiyu (or whatever her name is) and picked up the Rune. ^^

But yeah, next time I play, I don't think I'll take on Slime Pits first thing, or at least I'll make sure to have Resist Corrosion AND Mutation! "Teleportitis" was what messed me up and the Purple Eyes made it far far worse; part of why I made the split-second switch to Jivya was also to remove a sea of bad mutations, since I don't have ONE Cure Mutation potion with me (nor do I want to remove any of the good ones in the process).

[rebthor]

It doesn't take turns to get rid of Ash's wrath it takes XP.

[XuaXua]

It doesn't take turns to get rid of Ash's wrath it takes XP.

And Jiyva removes a lot of XP from the dungeon.