What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?


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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 12:16

What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

As the title says, what's your best and safest strategy to clear V:5 as Fo, specifically Be? I've only cleared it once with a Fo and I had strong support spells, so I wasn't too much afraid to get cornered and slowly chipped to death.

I usually clear V:5's ambush via a combination of stairdance/?fear+?bink+?haste/teleport (in the worst case now that +ctele is gone) and then proceed to explore from an angle of the map.

With a Fo most of this is obviosly precluded: I guess I can ?fear the vault guards and at normal pace move to the border. My char is very strong, but I feel that would still be risky, as I would leave a big number of enemies behind and my only escape route without knowing what I'm going to face on the other side - so I could in any case be slowly killed by the overwhelming number of foes.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 12:41

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

I don't think there's any particularly safe way to do it. My FoVM took a hatch down and landed in a safe place. A hatch or shafting can hardly take you to a more dangerous place than the stairs imho. Of course there's no guaranteed escape route but that's just the way it is.
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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 12:51

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

FoBe should be durable enough to stairdance the guards with marginal effort, as well as anything that happens to come near the guards while you're stairdancing. Repeat until there's hardly anything left near the staircase. Then slowly make your way to one edge of the map and start clearing one of the four rectangles, trying to attract as little attention as possible. FIghting 2 stone giants and a titan can be easy with rElec and good HP/AC/EV, but can be very tough for another character. In general, slowly kite things by retreating around corners towards places you've already explored, so they have to walk to you.
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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 13:11

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

TehDruid wrote:FoBe should be durable enough to stairdance the guards with marginal effort, as well as anything that happens to come near the guards while you're stairdancing.

You don't think stairs-locking poses any problems here?
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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 13:28

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Sprucery wrote:
TehDruid wrote:FoBe should be durable enough to stairdance the guards with marginal effort, as well as anything that happens to come near the guards while you're stairdancing.

You don't think stairs-locking poses any problems here?

Well, I haven't had any bad experiences with that so far, I dive in and immediately go back up with 6-8 guards next to me. I've played after that guy that locks stairs was added to the game, but while I guess the possibility exists that this might happen, it's not guaranteed that one of them will spawn near the stairs. You do have a point though, I'll give you that. Still, you can probably kill the guy that locks the stairs after you've dealt with most guards, if he wanders while you're doing this. I guess he could actually be there and use that ability right at the start, leaving you to face a crapton of foes, but my experience has never been such. Idk.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 13:36

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Probably something like "stairdance, have Throwing and javs of penetration in case of wardens"?

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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 13:55

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Stairdancing works generally. Just have a plan for wardens (a wand of fire/cold/lightning/draining or javelins of penetration).

Or you can just play normally (fear + move to a side corridor, normal stuff).

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 14:36

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Why not Slime instead of V:5? Because of no rCorr? Even a single resist potion is enough for the boss fight, although the previous encounters will be more tedious.
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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 14:55

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

I've never much liked stairdancing V:5, honestly. It can be hard to get the number of dudes hitting you at a time down to a reasonable number.

I'd probably do the ?fear-and-corridor thing, though stasis does make that a lot dicier than normal. A few bros, though, will let you diesel your way out of a lot of troubles. Something penetrating and good ranged seem important.
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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 16:04

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Yeah, I use ?fear and some kind of summons (rod shadows/swarm, or bros if needed) to get blockers/swappable freindlies so I don't get stuck as I walk at normal speed towards one of the corridors.

Also for non-BEs metabolic englaciation is extra-good for Formacids.

I also find It's massively useful to have some sort of "do lots of passive damage to stuff" when fighting things in the V:5 corridors, rod of clouds is one of my favorites, along with lantern of fire, also being an axe user is helpful too, although not as much as loads of passive cloud damage. Also regen is super good (I spam the crap out of trog's hand in extended fights as a Be) Again summons/blockers of all sorts are useful here (Just keep them out of your clouds if you have both clouds and summons)
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Friday, 2nd October 2015, 21:59

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Rod of clouds? Having a lot of evo skill in general is probably a good idea if you have some rods. Bros help, also make a beeline for which ever quadrant looks the most defensible if you can't run to the edges.

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Post Saturday, 3rd October 2015, 07:14

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

With high power silence and darkness you can stairdance Vaults:5 perfectly safe as long as the guards are not a big threat to you.
As Be you should probably go with strong evo. Though i also agree with the idea that you should consider slime first.

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Post Saturday, 3rd October 2015, 09:06

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

magic map -> go to the best terrain (which is probably in a quadrant) and dont make noise doing it

so the same as doing v:5 with any other character really, except you don't get to haste which is awful (because of that i am tempted to say slime is actually an easier 3rd rune for Fo much of the time, which i would never say about any other species)

stairdancing v:5 is not really something i aim to do unless my offense is shatter/tornado/cbl. yes, being on stairs is good, but not so good that "fight the entire level at once just so you can be on stairs" is generally a good idea
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Post Saturday, 3rd October 2015, 13:20

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

duvessa wrote:magic map -> go to the best terrain (which is probably in a quadrant) and dont make noise doing it
Could you elaborate on "dont make noise doing it"? Do you mean "don't engage things in melee" or is there more to it? How do you deal with monsters shouting?
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Post Saturday, 3rd October 2015, 18:16

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

TehDruid wrote:
Sprucery wrote:
TehDruid wrote:FoBe should be durable enough to stairdance the guards with marginal effort, as well as anything that happens to come near the guards while you're stairdancing.

You don't think stairs-locking poses any problems here?

Well, I haven't had any bad experiences with that so far, I dive in and immediately go back up with 6-8 guards next to me. I've played after that guy that locks stairs was added to the game, but while I guess the possibility exists that this might happen, it's not guaranteed that one of them will spawn near the stairs. You do have a point though, I'll give you that. Still, you can probably kill the guy that locks the stairs after you've dealt with most guards, if he wanders while you're doing this. I guess he could actually be there and use that ability right at the start, leaving you to face a crapton of foes, but my experience has never been such. Idk.


My experience with other guys actually makes me think the contrary: with a bit of stairdance more dangerous foes from the quadrants will inevitably be attracted - things you most probably won't to follow you while going in a quadrant without haste nor teleport.

Siegurt wrote:Yeah, I use ?fear and some kind of summons (rod shadows/swarm, or bros if needed) to get blockers/swappable freindlies so I don't get stuck as I walk at normal speed towards one of the corridors.

Also for non-BEs metabolic englaciation is extra-good for Formacids.

I also find It's massively useful to have some sort of "do lots of passive damage to stuff" when fighting things in the V:5 corridors, rod of clouds is one of my favorites, along with lantern of fire, also being an axe user is helpful too, although not as much as loads of passive cloud damage. Also regen is super good (I spam the crap out of trog's hand in extended fights as a Be) Again summons/blockers of all sorts are useful here (Just keep them out of your clouds if you have both clouds and summons)


I also love summonings and clouds - actually everywhere but especially in V:5. Unfortunately, I only have 1 ?summonings, 1 box of beasts and no sack of spiders or rods. I do have a rod of clouds, but I'm also using a vamp glaive, which I think would be far more useful here like in any other place - but I keep the rod as a switch in dire situations.
I also have a bit of thowing, but only have 5 javelins of penetration, so I can't really rely on them to kill wardens or summoners near the stairs.

duvessa wrote:magic map -> go to the best terrain (which is probably in a quadrant) and dont make noise doing it

so the same as doing v:5 with any other character really, except you don't get to haste which is awful (because of that i am tempted to say slime is actually an easier 3rd rune for Fo much of the time, which i would never say about any other species)

stairdancing v:5 is not really something i aim to do unless my offense is shatter/tornado/cbl. yes, being on stairs is good, but not so good that "fight the entire level at once just so you can be on stairs" is generally a good idea


By no noise you mean no fighting, right? But how to deal with the noise monsters do (like shouts, fireball, shit like that).
For best terrain, what do you prefer? I tend to go either in the outside corridor, especially if I have some cloud - so I can kill quickly and cheaply a lot of shit - or into the quadrant with a form like a chessboard (I don't know the actual word to describe it), as it easily minimize the number of monsters able to group on me at same time. Is there a better place to run at 10 aut?

Anyway, I had no idea !res gives rcorr - I have 7 with me, so most probably I'll check at least how bad is slimes without rcorr - as I never gone inside if missing the resist.

edit: slimes without rcorr is easily doable, at least with a guy with high defences (38\30\16). I didn't need rcorr until the boss fight - where I test half of the fight without just for fun (I quaffed when Royal Jelly was half health after I got first -4). And in the aftermath I got heavily corroded anyway because a shitty acid blob appeared from behind when walls turned transparent
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Post Saturday, 3rd October 2015, 20:10

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

I meant "don't make lots of noise near the terrain you're going to", not "don't make any noise at all", because yes, monsters will make some noise even if you don't melee anything on the way. The best terrain is whatever terrain gives you the best ability to fight one monster at a time without being cornered. Usually I find there are better options in at least one of the quadrants than the outside corridors.

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Post Sunday, 4th October 2015, 03:04

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Stair dance until a vault warden shows up, use fear or BiA or fan if you need to clear enemies, then go to a corner of the level and clear the subvaults working inward. Using items like lantern of shadows, scroll of summoning, etc. as meatshields to help your escape is useful since you cannot haste, blink, passage, etc. to get into a good position, but aside from that it is similar to the strategy for other races. As a FoBe you should have extremely high defense so it should not be that dangerous. Slime is easier, and is the same as for any other race except you do not use haste (and there are no surprises there) so Slime is better if you want to mitigate risk.
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Post Sunday, 4th October 2015, 05:04

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Formicids have a guaranteed way of shafting themselves down from V:4.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 4th October 2015, 05:08

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

And if they end up in a bad position afterwards, they're fucked.

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Post Sunday, 4th October 2015, 06:54

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Using silence in combination with stair-dancing can prevent the welcome party from attracting any further attention. If it works then the stairs don't get flooded and remain reasonably safe. Not everybody has multiple scrolls or the spell though. Of course then you are also silenced, but since you can't blink or tele anyway it's not so bad.
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Post Sunday, 4th October 2015, 10:39

Re: What's the safest way to clear V:5 with a FoBe?

Silence aura has limited area though, so monsters outside it can still shout... and then you can't read ?fear.
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