The Tavern

Having some critters wander over to the stairs in lair, for instance, is generally as much a help as hindrance.

Noise REALLY sucks late game and V:5 and abyss are an insane pain in the ass, but by the time you're dealing with those you have the tools to deal with those. And you do get summons and a multi-square smite targeted attack to help you out, along with a major defense boost and the occasional lightning strike to critters next to you.

But a three lair branch rune game, not that bad.

Let me guess, you were playing troll or VS?

Nah, random character + Qazal or Ru, whichever comes first. Qazal seems fine on any character type. Never ended up with a troll or vine stalker. (I don't get vine stalkers, btw.)

I've done 6-7 trials recently and the noise is manageable even on Mummy and Felid. You should be a little more careful exploring but you have great defenses and can passively kill monsters while running for the stairs which makes up for it.

The super extreme difficulty in Vaults:5, abyss, and that one freaking depths layout where the down stairs are waaaaaaay on the other side of the level suck, but up 'till then -
- not that bad.

Perhaps Qazlal should have an ability which costs a metric ton of piety in exchange for no noise for some time (and no clouds etc.)

I did my first ziggurat with Qaz. Disaster area + high invos was absolutely insane. (Admittedly being a DS with +3 to invos helped...) The piety cost wasn't an issue because when everything on the screen dies you pretty much get it all back.
On that character, V:5 actually felt really easy, unlike abyss - again, disaster areas. I just took on all the monsters on the staircases. The more they walked in, the more they died. IIRC I killed the entire level with a handful of casts.

Scroll of Immolation becomes a must-carry under Qaz.

Quaz is the Sprinting God. You can win a few of them just using his powers (Zig and Pits are the most outrageous).

Are you being sarcastic?

Did you change your mind since that post?

No, the noise seems really manageable until Vaults:5, and then I either die or barely survive by the skin of my teeth.

Although it's worth pointing out that you can blow piety to get the noise down. I disaster area 5-6 times in a row immediately after landing in the abyss, and I'll probably do this next time I do V:5.

Qaz is fun with hill orcs, too (+3 Invocations and axes on top of clouds).

I believe the general feeling is it's best with heavy armor, but maybe some species have other ways of avoiding major trouble in crowds (?).

Personally I love the local clouds and RMsl on Qaz... Although it really does depend quite a bit on good gear drops to round out your defenses. But that's often true of the fighter types anyway, after a point.

Aftermath of another disaster area approach to the V:5 entrance. Pretty lava!

Well, there was one hardy vault guard in the initial pack, at least!

It didn't do quite as well on the first go against a later wave with multiple ettins and dragons in it (around 21 Invocations and 5 piety now) -- damaged them substantially, but didn't take out all of the big targets right away. The hordes of soft and medium targets often in that area just melt, though.

Has anyone tried it against shrieking stars (aka starcursed masses)?

I haven't tried it against Star Masses, but when I go Qaz, I try very, very hard to stay out of the Abyss.

My experience with Qaz is that:

Qaz limits me in two ways: (1) I draw a lot of attention and (2) I can't rely on summoned help. So basically I'm better off choosing a runner that is not lame to start with.

In return, I get (1) smite bombs to take out dangerous individuals, (2) rF, rC, rE or a bit of AC on demand, and (3) clouds for crowd control.

I don't need to train a ranged weapon or conjurations. Upheaval is good enough as long as my Invoc is keeping pace with the depth. So if I want to, I can focus my xp on a smaller set of skills.

Exploring all three stairs down to a new level before wandering around is generally a good idea. I want to find a largish area to kite baddies--i.e. run around until whatever is chasing me ends up in a cloud and then I go stab it in the face before it gets out.

Pre-designed area (e.g., Elf treasure room) are often "ruined." Those seem to be put together with the idea that players would need to go in where the terrain is not favorable. Qaz tends to bring the bad guys out so I can often fight them on my terms rather than the designer's.

Positioning with Qaz is different than with other meleers. Fighting from the narrow end of a "cone" (i.e., where there is more space around the enemies than around me) can work better than corridors or killholes.

In a nutshell, I find Qaz to be a god that makes it easier to win a game where the cards are already stacked in my favor. If I have a squishy, gimped runner, I probably wouldn't pick Qaz if I was serious about winning.

I don't think they are individually all that sturdy if you can just actually manage to hit them, normally. That said...

Yes, it turned out my Gargoyle of Qaz just got abyssed from Vault:3 by some elf, and I found a pack of starcursed masses that I did not wish to mess around with. This might have something to do with the minor detail that I am wandering around Abyss: 3 now not only as a noisy, cloudy Qaz follower but for extra effect I am also currently wearing an amulet of harm...

... Which well, might make the report a bit skewed! But with 16 Invocations and 5 piety, a small test: Three starcursed masses at 2-4 squares away, all destroyed by Disaster Area. There could have been a couple more, but I ran through some of their associates on the way to make sure I was catching everyone in the blast area.

As a possible bonus, this is apparently also getting me out of my abyss roulette for the moment!



For an idea of the space used: The targets were below me, where the faint (very dark) blue clouds of disruption now are in the aftermath image. Also noting for whatever it's worth, even with Harm in play, some starcursed masses may take 2 hits of disaster to be eliminated.

Not the most perfect site for a disaster area (some bursts were spent on the open space up above), but eliminated half of Boris' pack here (on Crypt 2), damaged the rest to about half and took about half of his strength, too. One more swing of the holy great mace finished him off (at least for now, I think this was his second appearance this game after Vaults somewhere...).

This was 20 Invocations with 6 piety.

In still more celebration of disaster area with good setups, here's the text log and aftermath (for a sense of the spacing) from a blast in a running fight in Tartarus 7 with the Serpent of Hell. I'd been letting fire elementals (Lamp of Fire + Elemental Forces) do the early work on various mobs in the area, plus what turned into escorts for the serpent creeping in. Then tried to melee the serpent (with a holy axe, wounding some of the nearby things to 1/4-1/2 maybe also) but found it slow and reinforcements kept arriving. So started blinking around the edges of the crowd and shooting it down about 1/3-ish of the way with a strong crossbow. Still, wasn't doing very well on long-term outlook with the frequent corrosion and miasma bolts flying back. Disaster area with 24 Invocations (sorry, not positive if it was 5 or 6 piety): ... This was all from a single use of disaster.

Disaster area is the best use of qazal piety in my experience. I used to be a fan of upheaval, but disaster area allows characters to posture more aggressively, and honestly that feels nice in combination with qaz.

Upheaval is pretty nice too, particularly at high power and with smithe targeting dropping it behind enemy lines as well (if your're close to their front). It is a bit picky and covers a lot less ground for a (smaller but still substantial) chunk of piety spent anyway, but bear in mind that disaster area sometimes outright misses targets directly adjacent to you, too.

Upheaval is good for blasting caster/ranged targets that aren't so durable, but may have decent EV as well. It worked well for me against ophans in holy Pan, often one-shotting them.

I haven't generally been using Elemental Forces that much as I haven't seen so many residual clouds just when I needed them, except for using Lamp of Fire or Immolation. When they are there, it's great but it doesn't seem that available. I recall using it more often in the past around Lair off the turn by turn clouds that form around the character... But lately I've been able to do without it there most of the time, and later on I don't see as much opportunity somehow.

Disaster area is just really big at high levels and powerful if you can work up the Invocations. You may only get one or two before you have to start watching piety again, but in confined areas it's a whopper.

I quite like Elemental Force - But I never thought much about disaster area 'till this post. Go figure.

At 6 piety/10 invocations you can count on 3 elementals, which is really nice.

My problem with elemental force is that they frequently die to my clouds before doing anything useful, it's highly annoying (I have that problem using summons with qaz generally...)

Well, earth elementals are immune to everything!

The others... I try to use elemental force when positioning isn't super important, and then blink immediately after using.

Summons are still useful under Qaz, just... less so than with any other character. (Except Ru with sacrifice love.)

I had a melee of Qaz in Abyss:5 once. As soon as I got the Rune, the screen was always filled with monsters. Must have killed a 1000 monsters by the time I died.

It is idiotic, but the second you end up in the abyss you have to use your god powers on the wall or something to get piety down to reduce noise.

You just CAN NOT have more than *** piety in the abyss.... I generally try for *.

This means you're doing the absyss as, basically, atheist. But this is far more survivable on any character than the noise.

What happens if you just wait until stuff shows up and then start blowing it up?

The thing about the abyss is that once monsters START coming they just KEEP coming. So it seems very likely you'll end up surrounded by monsters at ** of piety and have to blow a teleport scroll.

Probably not worth it, IMO.

If you can pop fog or otherwise keep stuff away until your back is to a corner in the Zigs:

(Here's a rather covered gang of unfortunate Shoals types around Z:10 or 11 I think it was, 21-22 Invocations.
Two or three acquamancer sorts survived heavily wounded, from much of the center of the blast area being occupied.)

I dunno, if you're not too concerned about getting the rune... The flipside is that if you're strong enough, you have a good chance of killing a few stronger mobs and maybe, thus getting a door (exit from Abyss) created for yourself fast.