Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?


Ask fellow adventurers how to stay alive in the deep, dark, dangerous dungeon below, or share your own accumulated wisdom.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 13th September 2018, 02:04

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

Yasob wrote:Would you switch to a +0 gold dragon scale for Zot?
No. AC and EV are good.
Yasob wrote:Not sure if rElec is ever worth EV-5, SH-1?
Only if you are currently fighting a monster with strong electric attacks. Swap to the ring when you need it, leave the good rings on when you don't.

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nago

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Thursday, 13th September 2018, 06:35

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

duvessa wrote:
Yasob wrote:Not sure if rElec is ever worth EV-5, SH-1?
Only if you are currently fighting a monster with strong electric attacks. Swap to the ring when you need it, leave the good rings on when you don't.

I only want to add that swapping rings takes only 1 turn. (0.5 turn to take one off, another 0.5 to put the other on). So you can easily do it mid-combat if you need to.

Blades Runner

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Post Thursday, 13th September 2018, 11:10

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

It's kind of iffy.

Probably what I would do is wear the gold dragon armour and swap the MR ring for the wizardry ring with rElec and take the hit on dex. You don't need MR+++ as badly as you need to patch up the rC+, rPois and rElec. This route also leaves you with rF+++ which nicely counters what will be your biggest threat in zot, the orbs of fire. You lose a little AC, and some EV, but your EV isn't all that high to begin with anyway. As you find enchant armour scrolls, the scales will further tip towards this path.

Another route is to wear the rElec plate and switch the MR+ ring to rC+ and/or maybe rPois on an as-needed basis. Losing the rPois will be the easiest of all the resists. This is probably a stronger path than the first option I gave, but will require you to be more alert. You also need to be slightly more careful around orbs of fire. If you have a pile of resistance potions, then they can make this option more attractive.

The decision will mostly come down to a few factors: how do you feel about having no rPois, will the wizardry ring help you enough to be able to cast a few more useful utility spells, is the extra evasion really stopping anything anyways, and is the loss of dex affecting your ability to hit things or have your fighting and weapon skills gone high enough to not worry about that.

Swamp Slogger

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Post Thursday, 13th September 2018, 21:05

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

Yes, I would trade that plate armor for that gold dragon armor in a heartbeat. 2 AC and 2 EV is worth less than rC+ and rF+++ in Zot. (And rPois, while not critical, can really increase your staying power when you run into things that poison - gold dragons and green draconians are nasty when they breathe poison.) Now, you're not listing all of your resources, and since rings take 1 turn to swap, you might have easy ways to get those resists that you're not mentioning. Similarly, don't take off the evasion ring for the rElec until you need rElec. Since it's easy to swap, you can swap when you run into electric golems or whatever. Also, do you have scrolls of enchant armor in the game? Because the choice is much easier if you can enchant it 2-4 (or more!) times, which you can't do to your randart plate mail.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 15th September 2018, 00:37

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

I guess there are many ways to "skin a lich" - which is what makes this game interesting! :D

I haven't been bothered by the lack of rPois so far, but cold attacks hurt more than I'm comfortable with sometimes. I'm playing a pure melee character, so Wiz is not useful (all spells are 99-100 % failure even with that ring).

I've dodged 1250 attacks, blocked (using shield?) 4000, and been hit (armour) 2175 times. So I'd call the EV (which decides the chance to dodge, right?) quite useful.

I understand that even with three pips of MR the ancient liches in Zot have a significant (about 10 %?) chance to Paralyse, Banish, or Confuse me, if they have those spells. That seems to me like the biggest threat to my life in Zot?

Anyway, I'll go with the gold dragon scales from now on, since that gives me more resistances overall and the flexibility to choose among the missing ones (as many of you have said).

---

Seems to work fine, I'm halfway through Zot:3 now! Thanks!
Yasob: Yet Another Shredder of Beings

Blades Runner

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Post Saturday, 15th September 2018, 03:19

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

Yasob wrote:I guess there are many ways to "skin a lich" - which is what makes this game interesting! :D

I haven't been bothered by the lack of rPois so far, but cold attacks hurt more than I'm comfortable with sometimes. I'm playing a pure melee character, so Wiz is not useful (all spells are 99-100 % failure even with that ring).

I've dodged 1250 attacks, blocked (using shield?) 4000, and been hit (armour) 2175 times. So I'd call the EV (which decides the chance to dodge, right?) quite useful.

I understand that even with three pips of MR the ancient liches in Zot have a significant (about 10 %?) chance to Paralyse, Banish, or Confuse me, if they have those spells. That seems to me like the biggest threat to my life in Zot?

Anyway, I'll go with the gold dragon scales from now on, since that gives me more resistances overall and the flexibility to choose among the missing ones (as many of you have said).

---

Seems to work fine, I'm halfway through Zot:3 now! Thanks!


The easiest ways to die in Zot are by letting those moths berserk some dragons or draconians, combined with a ghost moth sucking all your mana out. Second easiest way to die is to get cooked to death by orbs of fire. I would rate the liches low on the scale of things to worry about because they aren't fast, so it's possible to more easily escape them. I haven't been paralyzed by a lich in Zot for quite some time that I recall.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Sunday, 16th September 2018, 23:14

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

I'm standing next to the Orb of Zot! :D

The thing that's come closest to killing me so far in Zot was a Storm dragon (together with a bunch of Draconians, but I think it was the Storm dragon that really hurt). An Electric golem hurt me real bad too, despite me having rElec! I kill the Moths on sight, either in melee if they are alone, or by smiting if with other monsters. The Orbs of fire haven't been a problem for me (rF+++), but I lost one of my orc warlords to one. :( There are plenty of dangerous creatures in Zot, that's for sure! Oh well, I'm invading their living space and stealing their most valued posessions, so who can blame them? :roll:

Anyway, I'm standing at the Orb of Zot and I thought it would be a good idea to plan my escape! Is there a way to see the path of Interlevel Travel without actually travelling? I.e. say I use G^ to go to the entrance of the current branch - is there a way to not actually go but just study the path that would be used?
Yasob: Yet Another Shredder of Beings

Blades Runner

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Post Monday, 17th September 2018, 03:32

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

Yasob wrote:I'm standing next to the Orb of Zot! :D

The thing that's come closest to killing me so far in Zot was a Storm dragon (together with a bunch of Draconians, but I think it was the Storm dragon that really hurt). An Electric golem hurt me real bad too, despite me having rElec! I kill the Moths on sight, either in melee if they are alone, or by smiting if with other monsters. The Orbs of fire haven't been a problem for me (rF+++), but I lost one of my orc warlords to one. :( There are plenty of dangerous creatures in Zot, that's for sure! Oh well, I'm invading their living space and stealing their most valued posessions, so who can blame them? :roll:

Anyway, I'm standing at the Orb of Zot and I thought it would be a good idea to plan my escape! Is there a way to see the path of Interlevel Travel without actually travelling? I.e. say I use G^ to go to the entrance of the current branch - is there a way to not actually go but just study the path that would be used?


Congratulations! There isn't a way to just study the shortest path that I'm aware of. I guess in theory you could reconstruct all the levels in a local game and study it from wizmode, but that would be crazy. I'm pretty sure simply saying go to D:1 will take the shortest path, affected possibly by configuration settings, but also using the terrain as-is. There is one thing you can do which is to stand on stairs, and from the viewing mode pressing X then use [ and ] to look at maps up and down and show you where the stairs would take you before you actually use them.

All that out of the way, my advice for you to run out isn't to simply say auto-travel to D:1. The best way to get out is to head for either the closest stairs, or possibly slightly further away pair of stairs (to increase your number of options). Use digging wands along the way, strategically, in a manner which shortens your run and creates options for you to alternate your path and run away from bad monster spawns. The other thing which I consider is that I try to take a trajectory which will lead me a point where two (or more) stairs become fairly equidistant from each other so that if something goes badly, I have two directions to run to two different sets of stairs.

There used to be a long thread about how pre-digging your route out before you take the orb was optimal. I don't agree with that, because by leaving sections closed off as you are making your run out, digging creates more dynamic options to use as escape routes. I guess if you are really crazy with it, you could use digging just partially beforehand and chart out your exact planned route... but things change along the way because of the randomness of the spawns, so, don't bother.

In summary, study the map of each level and use your brain and plan out your route always trying to give yourself escape routes and timing when and where to use digging to either shorten the path or ditch some attacking monsters. Using tactics, even on the way out of the dungeon will yield better results than any auto-generated path. Just be sure to not waste too many extra turns in your plotting, because those extra turns do add extra danger. It's a balancing act.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 17th September 2018, 06:30

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

svendre wrote: I'm pretty sure simply saying go to D:1 will take the shortest path

Even better: travel to D:0 to get the shortest route to the exit.
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FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
{PaBeDjFi}OgAKPaCAGnCjOgCKMfAEAtCKSpCjDEEE{HOSu
Bloat: 17: RaRoPrPh{GuStGnCa}{ArEtZoNb}KiPaAnDrBXDBQOApDaMeAGBiOCNKAsFnFlUs{RoBoNeWi

Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 22nd September 2018, 17:44

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

Wohoo, I escaped with the Orb!

Using the X + [ and ] trick on the stairs, checking the route maybe three floors ahead, made the Orb run a piece of cake, really.

Thanks! Now to decide what to play as next. Some kind of spell caster, probably. Felid and Octopode seems interesting, too, but I think I want to get comfortable with the spell system first.

Thanks for all the help!!!
Yasob: Yet Another Shredder of Beings

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njvack

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Post Tuesday, 25th September 2018, 00:13

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

Yasob wrote:Wohoo, I escaped with the Orb!

Using the X + [ and ] trick on the stairs, checking the route maybe three floors ahead, made the Orb run a piece of cake, really.

Thanks! Now to decide what to play as next. Some kind of spell caster, probably. Felid and Octopode seems interesting, too, but I think I want to get comfortable with the spell system first.

Thanks for all the help!!!


Congratulations! That was your first win?! Well done!

Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 25th September 2018, 19:03

Re: Ancient lich on Vaults:4 - advice?

Thank you! Yep, it was my first win. :)
Yasob: Yet Another Shredder of Beings
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