dynast wrote:CHEIBROS UNITE!
Cheibro reporting in. I had a pretty easy time diving D for extra xp before committing to Lair, aside from finding Azrael on D:14 (spent four Slouches and a !magic on that), and then some really nasty stuff by the Depths entrance. I eventually bailed on D:15; of course at that point Lair was a snoozefest. I actually took Shoals as rune 1, a personal first, because I had flight and invisibility, which help a lot in Shoals but are useless in Snake.
Neither Shoals nor Snake put up much of a fight, but then I had to do Slime with no rCorr or rMut. Diving went reasonably okay, with careful stairdancing to isolate the acid blobs; there was an XL27 ghost on Slime:5, but he couldn't see invisible so I just skulked past him. The real trouble began on Slime:6, when I realized my damage output was kinda mediocre, and I couldn't use !haste (Chei unreasons) or !might (never found any after using up my starter potion) for the TRJ fight. I asked for help on IRC, and settled on the plan of slouching him to death (it takes 6 or 7 slouches). That went fine, but dealing with the resulting fallout was the worst situation I got into all game: I decided I didn't want to fight his entourage at all that game, so instead of teleporting away I dug to the rune and blinked to it. But I did that badly, and was reduced to 2HP/1MP the turn after I picked it up! Some serious antics ensued, but I did eventually make it out okay.
After that, nothing was much of a challenge: I roflstomped orc/elf/vaults/depths, and decided to go for 15 since I had fantastic resists as well as a strong combo playing chei. Pan presented no real challenge: the worst was actually not a named pan lord, but a random one with glaciate, torment, and an entourage of tormentors and lorocyproca. Hell was just a test of patience: the antimagic bite is
so good against demons (though some of them I preferred to just steal from, where possible). And tomb was actually less tedious than usual, because I felt so strong I didn't stairdance the second half of Tomb:1 very much, instead just antimagicking the greater mummies to death. Torment is a lot less frightening when a bunch of the damage is taken as MP instead, and then you regain all the MP with your next bite.
I decided to get the Zot100 challenge as well this game, because any 15-runer really ought to be able to. I actually got into a tough spot
after picking up the orb: beset by curse toes and multiple orbs of fire, my teleport scrolls kept taking me right back into the same fight. I ended up having to Step to escape, twice, before I finally got back to Zot:4.
Anyway, another fun set of challenges. Looks like a lot of people are going for the bonus points on this strong combo, which has been fun to watch. Good luck with that, and see you all next week!