The Tavern

... When half of the pantheon decides to live in a breakaway shrine on D:9, rather than joining the Temple.

(There are no more altars under me - I was just going for symmetry there.)

Granted it's not much worse than those big triangular vaults where you get 2 or 3 at a time in little rooms spread out. It fits the narrative, though!

Oh nice start...
Of course...

Oh crap, it's Grinder, I need to head downstairs now.

Oh look, it's Ijyb. Well, let me just Conjure Flame and I can get away down this hallway...

Never mind, it's a wand of acid. Dead in 2 turns with no chance to escape. It's D:4 so no helpful potions, scrolls or anything I could panic with.

Definitely one of my few unwinnable situations.

While clearing Zot

... when my items alone give MR+++ and a V: ancient lich banished my char, at a 1% chance.

"Huh, that old trick actually still works. Enjoy Abyss:5 bitch!"

Also, when a L9 spell works just fine with a 22%-43% fail rate but just waits for that moment you really need it not to backfire - at a 2% fail rate. It will fail. With a disgusting, spiteful regularity.

Thanks, game.

"An eight-headed hydra comes up the stairs."

The stairs I'm standing on.

Have to admit, that's very polite of your character, to make room for the poor distracted hydra so that it can come up the stairs.

I exited the Abyss with less-than-full hp.
He got me with a bouncing Lightning bolt doublezap.

Autoexplore made me kill a butterfly :'(

...thanks, Xom. Really. That was just what I needed.

Edit: Read a scroll of fear and ran like hell for the stairs. He ran, but came back when I was four steps from the stairs. Read another scroll of fear and escaped upstairs!

This really reinforces that fraud of an incredible tourist brochure, followed by staring in horror at the empty lot where the hotel is supposed to be. I even got lucky with identifying the map scroll. Damn it, game, we're better than this.

Accidentally went to my first Zig (mistook it for Trove)... had to bail at :8 made it out via Invisibility and Silence vs. crypt, only a mummy priest followed back to the depths, that was close:



...then:


then resume and...



doh

Wow, I've never seen a vampire on d4 before!

... I bail out of extended after 3 Pan runes, go into Zot 1 hoping for a fairly painless ascension, and see this:



I died. What actually did most of the job is not pictured here - I (carelessly) didn't have SInv, and there was a ghost moth or three, which rather massacred my panic buttons.

I hate it when the game begins well, I find nice equipment, think this could be a nice run - and then I turn a corner on D3 to stand face to face with Ijyb, who happens to have a wand of acid.

Not very funny.

...I get sent to the Abyss by Sonja at Level 13. So far the Abyss goes nicely, because just previously a scroll of acquirement gave me an evening star of holy wrath, and as a Fo I manage to stay in little nooks and crannies to pounce on unsuspecting demons and abominations. But then I get "suddenly pulled into a different region of the Abyss", and where do I land? I'm in the only solid square in a huge field of lava! Since TSO gives me a nice shine, it won't take long until every demon and its brother will come at me from all directions...

...when I dare to play another Octopode game, and I make it to the lair without finding a single ring - not even a bad one. And I also did not identify a scroll of blinking, so when I turned a corner and tried to stare down that huge hydra, the game was basically over.

When this some of the Minotaur loot in Gauntlet, and I'm an Op...

This is the V:1 we all know happens at some point.

Welcome to the mines, indeed.

Roxanne has my char in firing range, right at the entrance. Just had to post this, I haven't been this surprised in a long time.