First time in Vaults

[Ferociousdragon]

I entered the vaults as a MiFi of Okawaru (Level 19); it is the first time ever entering it, as well as possessing two runes. I've heard that Vaults:5 is extremely dangerous. Should I go for the silver rune as my third, or go elsewhere (slime pits maybe) to get a third rune?

[Berder]

Don't do vaults:5 until after you've completed depths Do vaults to 4, then move on to depths.

Spoiler on how to do v5 follows.

Spoiler: show

Vaults 5 would be fine for your third rune. The map has stairs in the center with four partly walled in quadrants, and dangerous things in each quadrant. If you stay in the center the noise will attract dangerous things from all four quadrants to your position, which is very bad - they will lock the stairs or constrict you or paralyze you, etc. Therefore, what you should do is haste before you go downstairs, and walk away from the center, all the way to the very edge. Don't be scared by all the vault guards in the center - they shouldn't be very dangerous to a mifi around xl23, just walk away from them. If you get stuck you can use a scroll of blinking. When you reach the edge you want to turn and go into one of the very narrow width-2 corridors at the very edge of the map - get yourself about halfway down into one of those. This reduces the number of directions things can attack you from, and you should be able to kill everything that was chasing you, and then rest. After that initial fight, staying on the edges is wise, because again, most of the dangerous stuff is inside the quadrants.

[Ferociousdragon]

Did depths. When I went in vaults 5, I was surrounded, and needed to blink to get to a corner. It went well after I got to the 2-corridor, though. Thx.

[Ferociousdragon]

It seems I spoke too soon... Do you normally encounter ancient liches in the vaults?

[bcadren]

Uhh... Vaults: 5 is literally the hardest floor in the whole game for a lot of characters. I -never- would recommend it as a 3rd rune. Yes; Ancient Liches, Titans, High Tier Dragons (Quicksilver, Iron, Golden, Shadow), High-tier elves...All the worst stuff in the game (except demons) thrown together at once is pretty much Vaults: 5. If you have consumables (Might, Haste, etc.) use them.

[Berder]

It seems I spoke too soon... Do you normally encounter ancient liches in the vaults?

There's often one ancient lich in v5. Aliches are supremely dangerous, and can paralyze you or deal huge damage to you or summon fiends. They are why you have scrolls of silence - but be careful when using said scroll, because silence cuts down on your other options.

Uhh... Vaults: 5 is literally the hardest floor in the whole game for a lot of characters. I -never- would recommend it as a 3rd rune. Yes; Ancient Liches, Titans, High Tier Dragons (Quicksilver, Iron, Golden, Shadow), High-tier elves...All the worst stuff in the game (except demons) thrown together at once is pretty much Vaults: 5. If you have consumables (Might, Haste, etc.) use them.

That really depends on your character. If you're a tanky MiFi then v5 should be ok. Basically, these are the 3rd rune options:
abyss - requires a stealthy character, plenty of teleports and/or a ring of teleportion, and preferably an amulet of rMut and sources of regen. You don't have to be very strong but you do have to teleport at the first sign of danger.
slime - requires a fairly strong character, rMut, rCorr, and knowledge of how to handle the royal jelly.
vaults - requires a strong character, but doesn't require rMut, rCorr, or much stealth.

[Ferociousdragon]

My only escape option at that point was a scroll of teleport... ...which landed me into many enemies at low HP. Died shortly after. =c (I had haste, but I was slowed as well.)

[bcadren]

Uhh... Vaults: 5 is literally the hardest floor in the whole game for a lot of characters. I -never- would recommend it as a 3rd rune. Yes; Ancient Liches, Titans, High Tier Dragons (Quicksilver, Iron, Golden, Shadow), High-tier elves...All the worst stuff in the game (except demons) thrown together at once is pretty much Vaults: 5. If you have consumables (Might, Haste, etc.) use them.

That really depends on your character. If you're a tanky MiFi then v5 should be ok. Basically, these are the 3rd rune options:
abyss - requires a stealthy character, plenty of teleports and/or a ring of teleportion, and preferably an amulet of rMut and sources of regen. You don't have to be very strong but you do have to teleport at the first sign of danger.
slime - requires a fairly strong character, rMut, rCorr, and knowledge of how to handle the royal jelly.
vaults - requires a strong character, but doesn't require rMut, rCorr, or much stealth.

I -usually- Abyss on my own characters; so I recommend that -usually. But I'm in the group that thinks Pandemonium is easier than Vaults:5 on most characters. Vaults: 5 is the hardest straight-forward battle in the game. Everything can be easier than it with some strategy (IE diving Hell and avoiding the Hell-Lord is easier than V:5; but actually challenging a Hell-Lord in melee is harder; etc. etc.)

[Berder]

bcadren: V5 is not that hard if you can handle depths:5. Pandemonium is much more dangerous, what with tormenters, fiends, panlords, and hell sentinels. Are you following the advice I gave for going to the edge?

[Ferociousdragon]

I made sure to get away from the center, using my last blink scroll.

[Berder]

Oh - I was replying to bcadren there. Ferociousdragon, I would only use a blink scroll to get out of the center like that if I had several in reserve. Usually you can simply walk out of the center by heading for the gaps in the ring of vault guards. If not, you could use a fan of gales or randomly blink.

[bcadren]

V5 is not that hard if you can handle depths:5. Pandemonium is much more dangerous, what with tormenters, fiends, panlords, and hell sentinels.

1's are extremely rare in pan (other than executioners on Gloorx's floor). Fiends aren't even that common in hell. Occasionally spawn from hell effects, but mostly see them on Branch: $'s. And then; at most you see 1-2 at a time. That's the thing the individual creatures of V:5 probably aren't as bad as fiends, sure but the sheer numbers at once are insane.

Vaults: 5 and Tomb: 3 (on non-Undead) are usually put off until last for my extended characters. Pandemonium, Slime and Abyss are the candidates for Rune: 3 for me; though I have done hell as 3rd rune before. Specifically on a Mummy that had a nice artifact armour of rC++ going through Cocytus.

[Sprucery]

By the time I go to V:5 (after Depths, Elf and Crypt), my character is so powerful that V:5 doesn't feel too dangerous. Slime or Abyss are valid options (and Tomb for Kiku worshippers), but I go to V:5 because it is the single most fun level in the whole game. I would never do Pan or Hells for 3rd rune.

[Jushak]

Uhh... Vaults: 5 is literally the hardest floor in the whole game for a lot of characters. I -never- would recommend it as a 3rd rune. Yes; Ancient Liches, Titans, High Tier Dragons (Quicksilver, Iron, Golden, Shadow), High-tier elves...All the worst stuff in the game (except demons) thrown together at once is pretty much Vaults: 5. If you have consumables (Might, Haste, etc.) use them.

That is hugely dependent what kind of character you have and what your plan going in is. In all three of my wins, Vaults 5 has been decently easy, since I had the tools to deal with it: two first were GrFi^Chei (re-did the same build since first one was affected by the double melee damage bug and I had to prove to myself that I can win without such bugs). Using Slouch a few times deals with the start, rest of the floor was pretty easy with high AC character and Dispel Undead for Ancient Liches. On my FoFi^Qaz I used a few Disaster Zones at very high Invocations, melee'd a bit with Shield of the Gong attracting the near-deaf monsters that somehow managed to not wake up yet, went up the stairs every time I killed a Vault Warden to ensure I have enough mana for the next wave of ancient liches, dragons and other bags of XP to Disaster Area down.

Of course, lacking massive AoE/defenses and/or ways to bypass the initial ring of death (blink etc.), going to Vaults 5 can very well be suicidal. At the very least you need a way to reliably dispatch Vault Wardens at range to ensure you actually have the option to run away if things go sour.

I -usually- Abyss on my own characters; so I recommend that -usually. But I'm in the group that thinks Pandemonium is easier than Vaults:5 on most characters. Vaults: 5 is the hardest straight-forward battle in the game. Everything can be easier than it with some strategy (IE diving Hell and avoiding the Hell-Lord is easier than V:5; but actually challenging a Hell-Lord in melee is harder; etc. etc.)

While Abyss wasn't that deadly to me otherwise, it did have the nasty side-effect of slowly accumulating mutations. Think I also spent 4 real life hours walking aimlessly through the damn place on my first win, to no avail. The same damn Draconian in Zot 4 sent me there twice since I was being careless with dispatching it...

[edgefigaro]

Vaults 5 is the reason I love qazal. It is half suicidal, but bringing the whole zone to you immediately due to qaz noise and blowing disaster areas until you run out of piety/magic potions and the ground is just covered in lava pools is tremendously gratifying.

Such characters never win. They die in zigs with a smile on their face.

[edgefigaro]

Abyss rune is easy/trivial if you know how. When I was learning the game, however, I always thought the place was a death sentence, and for many characters, it was.

[Jushak]

Vaults 5 is the reason I love qazal. It is half suicidal, but bringing the whole zone to you immediately due to qaz noise and blowing disaster areas until you run out of piety/magic potions and the ground is just covered in lava pools is tremendously gratifying.

Such characters never win. They die in zigs with a smile on their face.

With 25 Invocation, Disaster Zone was indeed pretty satisfying.

[mps]

V:5 tends to be the hardest floor in the game for characters that die there. It's definitely not harder than Tomb:3, Zot:5, any hell 7, etc. There's no -cTele on V:5...

re: various claims made in thread, 1's are not rare in pan, they aren't rare in hells either although it's true that outside of the last floor they're mostly from hell effects, abyss is probably not a good idea if you haven't successfully won the V:5 fight before (requires a lot more knowledge of monsters, etc. to avoid surprising deaths in abyss), and the worst non-unique monsters in the game are 1s or orbs of fire, none of which are on V:5. Ancient liches are bad news, but with the kind of small fry you meet on V:5, they aren't quite as dangerous as when you mix them with orbs of fire or greater mummies.

Of course, you should still be well prepared when entering V:5, comfortable with your equipment, consumables, skills, etc. but it's a totally reasonable third rune. If you have good equipment and you know what you're doing, abyss usually isn't that bad, but with a lot of third rune seekers, especially ones who are looking for their first third rune, that's not always how it goes. If you've watched people do it before, know what you're getting into, and have the right items/equipment, slime is a pretty easy third rune too, but again you have to know what you're doing. There are straightforward ways to kill TRJ safely and at low levels. Much more predictable than abyss.

Of course, if you want to do V:5 the fun way and you're not ^Qaz, ?immolation is a good time.

[dirtywick]

V5 is not that hard if you can handle depths:5. Pandemonium is much more dangerous, what with tormenters, fiends, panlords, and hell sentinels.

1's are extremely rare in pan (other than executioners on Gloorx's floor). Fiends aren't even that common in hell. Occasionally spawn from hell effects, but mostly see them on Branch: $'s. And then; at most you see 1-2 at a time. That's the thing the individual creatures of V:5 probably aren't as bad as fiends, sure but the sheer numbers at once are insane.

Vaults: 5 and Tomb: 3 (on non-Undead) are usually put off until last for my extended characters. Pandemonium, Slime and Abyss are the candidates for Rune: 3 for me; though I have done hell as 3rd rune before. Specifically on a Mummy that had a nice artifact armour of rC++ going through Cocytus.

Unless something has changed, doing Pan for rune 3 isn't necessarily a straightforward decision. Generic individual floors are probably easier, but it's 1 V5 or potentially a dozen Pan floors of varying difficulty from which there are no safe rest areas from being tormented or an upstairs, which takes some getting used to as it flies in the face of how you've been playing the game up to that point. Further the generic demonic rune could be easier to get, you may also run into the named Pan lord floors that, unless you have a way of ninjaing the rune, contain some of the most difficult monsters in the game on par with or more difficult than V5. Of course you could simply leave the floor, but if you do you can't return. So it could be a good 3rd rune if you're going for any rune win and don't mind abandoning runes permanently. As it stands you're almost certainly better off trying to beat V5 than defeat Cerebov, a few brimstone fiends, and packs of balrugs.

Abyss and Slime are both great alternate choices. The Hell branch endings are way tougher IMO but they are also fairly easy to escape, map the floor, and try again if necessary.

I don't know, it seems if you can ninja a rune from Hells/Pan you can from V5 also.

[bel]

Vaults:5 is pretty tough, but at that point there aren't really any easy places to go. It's best to go there a few times to figure it out: death is almost inevitable the first few times.

There are plenty of ways to do vaults:5. I generally don't like to go to the edges before I've thinned down the crowd.

One thing which helps a lot is teleport control. I almost always stair dance, and teleport if in danger. If a vault warden shows up, try to kill him: if you can't do it fast, teleport to one of the edges, kill a few or wait a bit, then teleport back to the stairs. Either the warden would have wandered off, or the crowd would have thinned so you can handle it.

Use plenty of consumables: agility, haste, might, teleports, blinking.

Other than the general advice, as I said, there needs to be a bit of experience to avoid death. Vaults:5 generally is my favourite place, though I've had my share of deaths there.

[Berder]

Stair dancing vaults:5 is a mistake. It will work as you clear the initial group of vault guards, but by the time you're wrapping that up more dangerous things will appear from the wings and it just turns into a huge deadly disaster. Head for the edges of the map instead.

[bel]

Stair dancing vaults:5 is a mistake. It will work as you clear the initial group of vault guards, but by the time you're wrapping that up more dangerous things will appear from the wings and it just turns into a huge deadly disaster. Head for the edges of the map instead.

As I said already, there are many ways to do vaults:5. Stair dancing is a valid strategy even after clearing out the welcoming committee. It has the advantage that you can escape upstairs when in trouble, while if you are cut off from the stairs, there are fewer options for escape. Teleporting might land you some place even worse, as the OP discovered. Of course, there are drawbacks, like in every other strategy.

As I said above, I almost always stair-dance, and almost never die.

[zxc23]

There are many ways to deal with V:5, which is why it's my favourite floor in a typical DCSS game. You can shatter-stairdance, or regular stairdance, corrupt/other god abilities, random teleport, blink and run down the corridor, magic mapping and ctele to an edge, or a combination of these. Some very special chars can hold tab and autoexplore. If there are no wardens immediately in view, I usually prefer to stairdance and walk down a corridor when it's clear. If wardens show up, I like to random teleport unless they can be sniped/pacified. On very flimsy chars I prefer to ctele to an edge, and for very stealthy chars I like to enter via an escape hatch (which is like a random tele). No deaths in V:5 to date.

[gameguard]

the reason immolation scrolls exist is to use it on V:5.

Haste, go down, read immolation, walk through the gaps or ?blink if stuck, summon some stuff or kill them at range, walk away to the edge and then try to make a safe zone at a corner. That said, i think V:5 is pretty hard if you are extremely unstealthy because the danger of being swarmed is still there. Stair dancing is a viable strategy if you have reliable ways to AOE clear or kill off wardens fast. Tornado/shatter is sometimes feasible to get online by V:5. Penet bolts/javs can also do the job.