The Tavern

So, I've just 15-runed a spell-less melee (Ghoul Fighter of Makhleb).

Before I ascended though, I kept a backup of the savefile, just in case I want to mess around (he is really fun!). However, I seem to have a problem with clearing a Ziggurat. The farthest I've got with the him is Zig:26.

My problematic floors mainly are:
1. Pan lords floor
2. Mummies floor
I pretty much tend to skip these floors, using myself to lure everyone to me, and then teleporting and just running to the exit. However, I'm royally screwed if I got these floors several times in a row, which I just got on my last playthrough (spent 90% of my resources to escape from a Pan Lords floor, only to stumble into another Pan Lords floor).

So, my question is simple: is a Ziggurat even clearable using a spell-less guy? If so, how?

Nemelex (since you did not exclude Nemelex as an option). Tomb yourself and fight only 1-2 monsters in your LOS at the time. I haven't done a spell-les but I have done a Spriggan with only max 6 level spells. If you scum for enough wands of hasting you won't need level six spells either and I guess you could just cut the rest as well. I guess this is still viable, Nemelex has not been nerfed yet AFAIK.

What about rods/wands? Any miscellaneous stuff (disc of storms)?

Book of Annihilations herp derp

A lot of things will help a ton

-scrolls of holy word help a lot if you're not undead
-Sceptre of Torment is great in zigs if you are undead

(probably both have some potential even without the "if" but will be very risky)

-legendary Spark
-Staff of Dispater

-/hasting, DMsl rods, Divine Vigour
-Sanctuary for surviving any level if you can get reasonably close to the exit somehow

People have done zigs while following Trog and clearing every floor. I have no idea how though.

Casting Tornado. Trog doesn't kick you out, just gets a little pissed (and all the kills make up for the penance, especially on elf floors). This was MarvinPA on his NaIE, by the way.

Um...pretty sure that contains big, nasty, conjuration spells...did you mean:
http://crawl.develz.org/info/inline.php?q=Tome+of+destruction

...since the OP is looking for help without using spells?

It's "humorous", I think?
(on another note, the tome is really really bad, and you should basically never use it if you are playing seriously and are past D:7 or so)

Right - I figured the Tome was bad enough on its own to warrant a "herp derp" after suggesting its use...

Indeed, I did not exclude Nemelex as an option, purely because he + Tomb is something like a "last resort" kind of thing. No offense intended of course, but I kinda dislike the Tomb spell itself due to its overpowered-ness. Several Tomb cards + Makhleb healing would probably be the "best" in this kind of situation though, I agree.



I have another question for you first, how did you even survive as a pure melee in a Zig using a non-undead race? Since you cannot reach tormentors easily as you will be blocked by lots of summoned creatures (Abjuration got nerfed in Trunk, so I'm -assuming- the the rod itself got nerfed as well), they will just torment + smite you to death. Which is kind of a shame though, since TSO abilities + holy wrath weapons seems so nice versus the undead + demons.

Sceptre of Torment is too rare a find, plus I think most demons + mummies are immune to it anyway.

Scrolls of Holy Word, Divine Vigour and Sanctuary is for the "good guys" only.

Legendary Spark card is too rare as well, as a non-Nemelex worshipper.

I am using Hasting + Deflect Missiles + Staff of Dispater (which is one of the most awesome artifacts ever devised by the way), but I simply can't kill enough of them to win.

Right now, it seems like one of my most successful strategies involved 1 of the most underrated skill in the Crawl universe: Stealth. If I fight a few pan lords at a time, I will usually win. Still not consistent enough though.

I think an interesting idea is to hoard decks with tomb and elixir cards with nemelex, stack them, and burn through the entire deck leaving tomb/elixir as the last card. Nemelex shuffles decks upon leaving him, but this shuffling would theoretically do nothing if it's the last card. So you could a have half your inventory full of tombs and elixirs while having the god of your choice at the same time. The only downside is your elixirs will be power level 1, so you'd lose all your mp, but if you're grinding that much you should find enough of the rare mana potions to compensate.

But we're talking insane grind here.

Why should they? Worshipping Nemelex just adds between 92,6% (evocations 0) and 192,6% (evocations 27) of your piety to the draw's power. This makes it less likely to get higher level effects but does not rule them out (checked source code of 0.9.1).

Well I just meant the gaurantee would no longer be there, that's all. I think legendaries with 27 evo and no nemelex gaurantee P1.