Yasob wrote:Character dump.
I haven't had much time to play lately, but now I've cleared all of Depths. I've still found only two MR+ items in the entire game, one of which is a +0 scale mail so not of much use.
So what now? I'm really hesitant to do Vaults 5 with only two pips of MR. What about the Ziggurat? Will that kill me instantly? Maybe I should also do the elven hall of blades in case there's something interesting there...
Edit: If I could find four more scrolls of identify there's also a trove I could enter.
Don't worry about the MR++, it's okay for vault5. Stack some of your potions at the stairs to buff up, go down to vault5 with your axe, head to the corner that has the most narrow corridor and axe away. Immolation scrolls can be helpful. If things get ugly, use a teleport scroll, you will have already attracted a lot of monsters to the center, so then as an emergency just circle inward gradually from the edges. If you can stairdance successfully, that is fine also.
After you clear vault5, switch to TSO. Clear crypt until you have max piety and make a holy broad axe. You can get rid of the vampiric at this point if you want (you won't be going back to a god that allows it.) Switch to Zin and finish clearing crypt so you'll have max piety with Zin. Next, I would go into the abyss and get the rune, gather enough scrolls for the trove and work off the wrath from beogh. Once you have the abyss rune, exit level 3 (or higher) and finish working off the wrath on level 1.
Once you're done in the abyss, head over to slimes. You can't really cast.. what you'd want is deflect missiles and ignition, so the next best thing really is throwing for the acid blobs. Immolation scroll comes in handy for killing the boss slime. Use vitalization when you see eyeballs or when you need a stat boost, and it'll cover you from having lower MR. Zin will block all the super annoying malmutates.
When you're done with slimes, it's time to clear zot 1-5. There are two main points to doing it now. First, Zin blocks orb malmutates, second the sanctuary ability can save your life if things go very wrong. TSO won't help much with life on kill in there yet, and a lot of the fights are more about defeating hard enemies than getting worn down. Freezing broadaxe if you can find or make one is good for the draconians. When you've cleared zot to whatever level you are comfortable (I do the whole thing usually), you can either win the game or continue on with extended.
If you cotinue, switch from Zin to TSO, now you have hellsx4, tomb and pandemonium to finish. I don't always do those in the same order, it kind of depends on the build. More precise strategies for each of these can be described, but I'm not going into that now - particularly since I don't know if you even want to do all 15 runes this run.
Good luck!
edit: oh yeah, it's fine to clear the vaults in elf2, you might find some useful weapons (freezing, chopping, antimagic) - it's worth a look. The Zig is probably fine for the first several levels and you might get lucky and find some loot. I would not suggest you venture deep into one (or really at all to be safe) with this character, at this point in time at least. You need a much more well rounded character to survive the Zig, one preferably that is a fairly strong hybrid and setup with specific spells, gods, etc.