The Tavern

What's do people think of this portal vault in trunk? It feels really dangerous for where it appears, has anyone found a safe way to clear it?

they don't call it the desolation of salt for no reason

I've beaten it on one character, but they were fairly stacked. Some of the enemies there can deal large damage if you're at all in a bad position. LRD probably works fairly well there, I think saltlings and crystal golems can both be LRD'd.

I had silence castable, and used throwing on the saltlings. The hexxer with the -MR on melee made me tele away and reset, and I was overrun once and had to tele-reset again. I never felt like I was in real danger, but I was playing extra cautiously because of new threats/content.

Character was very strange, OgWn^Dith, GSC, Throwing, air magics for Utility. I ran into DoS in Elf 1 after clearing V1-4. Questionably representative of other experiences.

I had Wild Magic 2, and was going for Tornadogre. YASD Jugg simiricalcum =(

Have not run into it yet, is the loot worth it?

No loot is ever worth any risk , but I'd say it's not.
Managed to do fine the first time I was there, but 3 healing potions had to be quaffed.
Second time I was overconfident, and I think one of the hierophants cast a spell which reflected some of the damage I dealt back on me, which caused my health to quickly drop.

Gotta say I love the idea and execution of this branch a lot and I'd like to see more innovations like it.

That's a good point about LRD. I've gone three times, first time on a character who was all set for extended, who cleared it easily as expected. The other two died, since then I've avoided the place.

Biggest problem I had with the chars who died was the guardian serpents, they can really screw you over in an open area like that. Love the theme though.

I did it once and I've spec'd some others doing it. My feel was that you could suddenly take a lot of damage easily, but this was mostly because I didn't know what most of the monsters did at the time. The torment guy obviously can get a lot of damage and then there's the lightning bolt and earth blast guys. While there aren't a lot of walls around, there are some and it's well worth staying near them and exploring carefully until you figure out where the structures with loot are. If you explore carefully and you have reasonable ranged attacks or allies, I don't think the portal is very hard.

The loot is okay, from what I've seen. Lots of armor and books.

Loot is insane. Stumbling upon it in E:1, I got in the main chamber armour of dragon king+glaive of guard, two randart rings, a randart amulet, multiple misc items, and good potions (haste/heal).

One thing I must say: this seems like a lot of effort and a lot of unique mechanics for just another optional timed portal with more loot and no other impact on the game. Is this supposed to be an experimental status for the Desolation that would eventually become a rune branch, perhaps replacing another rune?

New content is easier to start out as a portal vault before being turned into a branch. Spider used to be a portal vault.

IIRC the thought was this might randomly replace Elf?

I haven't seen the portal, myself. As a primarily felid player these days...I'd give it an attempt if I had two lives currently; risky is pretty low in that state (risk of literally anything is pretty low in that state). I think with Fe restrictions, only Conjurations and Dragon Form would work against those kinds of enemies. I'd be preferential to using quieter Conjurations and Luring over trying to destroy everything. Open floor like that, even if you had Fire Storm and killed a whole pack at once you'd attract too much attention after. Stealth is a good skill to have in these extreme circumstances too...nowhere to hide have to make things not see you in the first place.

Don't go if you want to win, I died first time, a lot of other players have died on their first or second time

XP, items, a risk of death. In what other ways do you think it could impact the game?

Hit it with a stealth vampire and pretty much murdered everything. It's hard to judge the danger level because there wasn't really any fighting. The loot was OK.

Noise is very bad for this one. If this was a branch that allowed stair-dancing it would be completely trivial, but if my way of killing things is noisy there's not much to do but shrug and leave. Nothing felt particularly dangerous, but I could see losing a character to this portal vault if I insisted on smashing into it face-first because I couldn't bear to back down and lose the xp/loot forever.

Not sure how this is supposed to rotate in with Elf in its current state.

I tried it once with a HOWr of Qazlal, and the noise attracted everything right to the middle, and I lost a large chunk of my health, and ran away.

Good man.

It's funny because they want players to test it so they made it so the portal always appears, but quite a lot of players don't go there in fear of dying

Went in on a statue form octopode of chei. Had plenty of stealth and just walked over to a side before getting swarmed, and then cleaned up the rest of it easily. I've had some good luck with protection rings (+8 ac on top of statue form) and chei dexterity, so my defenses made it pretty easy.

Wasn't too much good loot, but a lot of the armors aren't applicable to an octopode so I didn't check them much. Found a few spellbooks and a shield of protection which is a nice upgrade from my regular shield, so it was worth it.

thank you for bumping this 16 month old thread to talk about chei

You're most welcome! Sometimes I don't play much between tournaments, but I needed to update you on my octopode! I know you're a huge fan of Chei, so I understand you're excited to see it referenced, but I do feel I'd be amiss to not correct you that my above post was mainly about rings of protection!

Rings of protection! So, so good. Everyone should wear them! And like, at least 3 or 4, which is why Octopodes were made!

Hope you continue having a lovely day!

I probably meant to post this in the other, recent salt thread and somehow ended up in this one by mistake.