Shoals Surfer
Posts: 321
Joined: Friday, 17th December 2010, 02:21
Ziggurat mummy floors: how to?
I initially tried the typical Tomb approach: draw them away from the pack and take them out one at a time with dispel undead. Obviously in a small open space like a ziggurat this didn't work and soon quite a few of them were in my LOS.
So I tried to kill them en masse with ice storm: not much luck either. Ice storm does too little damage (3 ice storms on average to kill a greater mummy) to hope that Vehumet's mp regen for kills can keep up with the expenditure. I had a staff of conjuration and a ball of energy too, but the staff is too slow and I didn't dare use the ball as a failure (especially confusion) could have meant death. Plus casting ice storm obviously means the whole level came after me at once, at which point the combined firepower of a dozen or more things (both the mummies and their summoned balrugs and smoke demons) smiting me was way too much to take.
Furthermore summon spam giving them a ton of meatshields meant it was hard to even hit more than one or two mummies with an ice storm, and every turn spent casting abjuration is a free turn for the mummies to smite or summon more crap.
I eventually made it out of there alive by semicontrolled-blinking through the crowd and reached the exit with something like 40 HP, no mana and some drained stats. Then I had a brainfart and instead of taking the portal back to Pan, I climbed down the stairs and found myself in... another mummy level The RNG must have been in a very good mood because it allowed me to pull the same trick and escape for good.
So, I wonder, how does one do a mummy level? Fire storm? (smite targeting would have helped) Shatter? (hitting everything is LOS would have helped a lot) Tornado? (post-nerf, probably a terrible idea). Death's door -> charge in -> retreat -> borg, rinse and repeat until all mummies are dead and you're left with 50 max HP?
And a melee or hybrid character with no big AOE spells, how is he supposed to do it?