Ziggurat mummy floors: how to?

[asdu]

It was my first time seriously trying to do a Zig. My character was a 170 HP DEIE with necromutation, ice storm, crystal spear, controlled blink and all that good stuff (but no DDoor or Borg). All was going well until I met mummies on zig: 24. I didn't stand a chance.

I initially tried the typical Tomb approach: draw them away from the pack and take them out one at a time with dispel undead. Obviously in a small open space like a ziggurat this didn't work and soon quite a few of them were in my LOS.

So I tried to kill them en masse with ice storm: not much luck either. Ice storm does too little damage (3 ice storms on average to kill a greater mummy) to hope that Vehumet's mp regen for kills can keep up with the expenditure. I had a staff of conjuration and a ball of energy too, but the staff is too slow and I didn't dare use the ball as a failure (especially confusion) could have meant death. Plus casting ice storm obviously means the whole level came after me at once, at which point the combined firepower of a dozen or more things (both the mummies and their summoned balrugs and smoke demons) smiting me was way too much to take.
Furthermore summon spam giving them a ton of meatshields meant it was hard to even hit more than one or two mummies with an ice storm, and every turn spent casting abjuration is a free turn for the mummies to smite or summon more crap.

I eventually made it out of there alive by semicontrolled-blinking through the crowd and reached the exit with something like 40 HP, no mana and some drained stats. Then I had a brainfart and instead of taking the portal back to Pan, I climbed down the stairs and found myself in... another mummy level The RNG must have been in a very good mood because it allowed me to pull the same trick and escape for good.

So, I wonder, how does one do a mummy level? Fire storm? (smite targeting would have helped) Shatter? (hitting everything is LOS would have helped a lot) Tornado? (post-nerf, probably a terrible idea). Death's door -> charge in -> retreat -> borg, rinse and repeat until all mummies are dead and you're left with 50 max HP?
And a melee or hybrid character with no big AOE spells, how is he supposed to do it?

[slowcar]

i guess there are not too many people here doing something like this regularly, so i try to add the little experience i have.
i survived one of these levels with tornado and TSO hp/mp for kills, but it was really really close (i had no necromutation obviously, so torment was fully functionable)
If i would be in the same situation again i guess i'd try to reach the exit as fast as possible, with our without killing any of them mummies, sneaking as far as possible and trying controlled blink (if no-tele) or cTele+tele then.

i guess it was possible before the hp/mp nerf to play these levels as an undead or necromutated follower of makhleb, but after it i have some doubts there.

[sage]

Just did one of those the other day. Picking up Darkness helps, both for reducing the number of visible smiters, and for making sure your tornado (almost) completely fills your line of sight. Aside from that, use Haste, Necromutation, and cBlink back every now and then to channel back enough mana and heal up enough to survive. I was using Sif Muna, though, so your channeling might not suffice for mummy levels.

Also, make sure you have enough healing wands. I like to have ~20 charges of Heal Wounds before I hit a ziggurat, specifically for these levels.

[Kate]

Worship Makhleb.

[slowcar]

Worship Makhleb.

Which was nerfed into oblivion in 0.9

[Bim]

I think the appropriate response is 'all hope abandon ye who enter here.'
Makhleb would be pretty rubbish now, Necromutate plus firestorm is the way to go I think, with access to channelling. an amulet warding and ignoring summons is probably the best thing to do, but I never got through one (although I did see one) so I'm only speculating here.

[Dustbin]

refrig might of been more effective than ice storm considering how many would be on-screen

I know I used it in Tomb 3 on my MuIE, although I did have a couple of cold enhancers.

[asdu]

I think the appropriate response is 'all hope abandon ye who enter here.'
Makhleb would be pretty rubbish now, Necromutate plus firestorm is the way to go I think, with access to channelling. an amulet warding and ignoring summons is probably the best thing to do, but I never got through one (although I did see one) so I'm only speculating here.

Well, in terms of ideal setups for this specific challenge I'd imagine that the best possible would be shatter and necromutaion: once you're able to hit everything in LOS Vehumet's mp for kills should be more than enough, and you could even spare a turn now and then to abjure problematic summons.
However I have no doubt that others have done it before with Ice storm and Vehumet. The Ice storm nerf certainly hurts somewhat given that mummies have rC, but having to cast an additional Ice storm was the least of my problems compared to not being able to actually hit the damn mummies through the summon spam and being subject to a barrage of smiting that was just too much to take.
I mean, unlike other methods like Makhleb worshippers using Tornado, my setup should not be THAT different in 0.9 than it would have been in 0.8.

Btw, how much of Ice/Fire storm's damage is resistible after the nerf?

[Kate]

Makhleb is still the best Zig god by a long shot, I'm not sure how he's been nerfed into oblivion? You get slightly less HP and MP, that's all.

[slowcar]

Makhleb is still the best Zig god by a long shot, I'm not sure how he's been nerfed into oblivion? You get slightly less HP and MP, that's all.

Greater Mummy has 15HD
pre-nerf Makhleb: HD - 1 + 1d(HD) HP and MP -> 15-1+d15 -> 15-29 HP/MP, at least if the formula in the wiki is correct. in average 22 HP/MP
post-nerf Makhleb: 1d(2+HD/3) MP and d(1+2*HD) HP -> d7 MP + d31 HP -> 1-7 MP, 1-31 HP. in average 4MP, 16 HP

but you are still right, these are still good values, and while the MP-gain is a lot lot less impressive, the HP-gain is still immense, and this would be the important part when fighting mummies.

[asdu]

pre-nerf Makhleb: HD - 1 + 1d(HD) HP and MP -> 15-1+d15 -> 15-29 HP/MP, at least if the formula in the wiki is correct. in average 22 HP/MP

There's no way in hell "old" Makhleb would have given you 22 MP for a greater mummy kill. 22 HP, maybe, but not MP for sure. It's probably more like 5 or 6.