On Clearing the v0.8 Elf:5 Vaults

[Eldritch Enquirer]

This is my way of clearing the final level of the Elven Halls in v0.8, specifically the large room which contains the treasure vaults on Elf:5. This is the first time I have conquered this branch of the Dungeon.

I know I am still a noob at this game.

Even being aware of that fact couldn't stop me from undertaking an absolutely insane suicide mission which was so stupid of me to even try and it would have sucked pretty bad for my precious character IF I HAVEN'T TOTALLY COME OUT ON TOP IN THE END...

Alright, so, I was only a lvl 14 High Elf Crusader, at the threshold of the "Vaults" area of the final level of the Elven Halls. I have never faced anything more dangerous than a lowly Summoner, Conjurer, Mage or Knight of the pointy-eared variety up to this point and I just KNEW all the Bad Mother F***ers of the Elven Halls were in there. I never faced these bad boys before but I read the things they could do to my poor character on CrawlWiki. Horrible, horrible things which followed a rather obvious pattern: Summoning things from HELL, Banishment to HELL and Nuking you to HELL. It was Crawl's way of telling me; Son, you're goin' to *HELL*.

The Tools of The Trade.

Note: I was only "quite resistant" to magic, which was why this was a huge risk and was also why I did what I did in a very specific and carefully planned pattern which had to be executed perfectly.

I had See Invis, Clarity, Warding, Silence, RMsl, Swiftness, Flight, Potions of Agi, Might, Speed, Res, Invis and a Wand of Teleportation. The Wand of Teleportation and Silence are the most crucial elements along with a way to kill things quickly under the Sil effect which was Short Blades and Bows for me. +5,+6 Short Sword of Venom and +2,+4 Elven Bow with +3 Poison Arrows. I was lvl 15 at SB's and 16 at Bows. I was casting the essential spells with success varying from from Very Good to Excellent. I had no Potion of Brill. which would have helped a lot. I was lvl 8 at Stealth with +Stealth Boots which also helped. Oka's Heroism also helped me kill things faster and boosted my Dodging and Shields against the Master Archers and the Blademasters.

So here's what I did, step by step.

1) While lurking close to the entrance of the large room which contains the treasure vaults and the legions of Deep Elf rapists unique to Elf:5, I cast all my hastening and protective buffs which were Swiftness, RMsl and Flight.

2) Finally I cast Silence and if it turned out with a small Silence bubble, I've started this process all over again until a LARGE Silence bubble popped out of the RNG.

3) After a successful Silence bubble, drink up a Speed and Resist potion and charge into the room.

4) Try to goad the most dangerous Elves into the bubble and contain as many as you can in a certain small area of the large room without waking up every single elf in the room. Think of yourself as the Pied Piper of Hamelin except you're attracting 3000 years old deep elf wizards who can send you to hell with a spoken word or summon hell to this dimension to follow you instead of rats. Shoot the caster types INSIDE the bubble who are sleeping because no one can shout under Silence effect to come at you because you want to be ganged up by weak spellcasters who can't cast in a small area without attracting much more than you can handle so you can come back for them later. WARNING: You might still get an unlucky Banishment despite your best efforts. I got lucky plus I have executed this tactic well which meant I didn't get my ass beamed into the Abyss. Do not keep anything in sight that can banish you outside the SilBubble. Do not try to be all over the place and attract more banishers/summoners than your ever shrinking bubble can handle. Do not wake every everyone up, Silence and Stealth helps. Always remember that they can't shout under Silence but they CAN after your bubble shrinks. Dead DE's lying around your character also cannot shout so try to kill as many as you can and don't attract more than you can handle to your bubble.

5) You might still get some nasty demons upon you who are dangerous even with warding and even if you were careful not to let anyone summon shit before silencing them, or have your bubble dangerously shrinking without having killed all the dangerous casters around you. You cannot cast Translocation spells or read scrolls under silence but activating a Wand of Teleportation while still under the protection of the Silence radius WILL allow you to escape and come back later. WARNING: There's no cTELE allowed in the level so you might still get an extremely unlucky Teleport result. Chances of ending up in a nasty spot is pretty low since only a very small area of the level is packed with the high-end casters and you're already in it so your chances of ending up in safety is greater. If you do end up a few steps further from where you were after a random Tele, that means the RNG Gods want you DEAD, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you have been poisoning the casters a lot by hitting them repeatedly with a venom weapon, you might find that some of them have already died while you were away licking your wounds.

6) Rinse and Repeat after healing up with the other groups still remaining in the room. There's no way you can take all of them in one go and if you've drawn every single elf to your location in the first assault, there is no other outcome than DEATH.

NEVER take any chances, try not to let even one Banisher to be in sight of your poor character while standing outside of your Silence Bubble. ESCAPE EARLY. Estimate the shrinkage of the bubble and escape way earlier than you think you should with your preferably identified TeleWand which tells you how many charges it has left. Run TOWARDS the banishers to include them in the bubble, do not waste time hitting those chasing you, you WANT them to be chasing you as long as they're in the bubble. Start whacking when every banisher in a manageably sized area is inside your bubble, escape via TeleportWand if it looks like you won't be able to kill em' all before time runs out. Annihilators have tons of HP for a Deep Elf.

P.S.

If one or more of the later steps fail to succeed and you end up in an unwinnable situation, just activate your teleport wand and GTFO. That is, if you haven't managed to get yourself banished yet. This tactic of mine is considerably less crazy with MR equal to or higher than "extremely resistant", I guess.

P.P.S.

I couldn't get that damn Quick Blade off of a Blademaster, the bastards all had sabres and nothing but sabres... I got me some fine spellcasting enhancing bling-bling and pimp sticks instead which is OK too I guess.

[Eldritch Enquirer]

@ minmay

"A very stealthy character can still go unnoticed when silenced. And alerted monsters within the radius can't shout."

/\ This quote was taken from CrawlWiki, and it is true. My character was "extremely stealthy" plus he had levitation from "Flight" which positively adds to the Stealth parameter. A lot of Elves just couldn't wake up. I was also careful in including every banishment capable caster in the radius in a small area, "picked and chose my targets", if you will. Since they couldn't shout, I have murdered them all before they had a chance to attract all the others.

My weapons were sub-optimal for XL14, true, but all my other items and mutations were damn powerful so I still had a p. good fighting capacity. Poison seems to be effective in killing Deep Elves as well so the +5,+6 Short Sword of Venom wasn't all that terrible.

In the Elf:5 level I have stumbled upon, the entirely enclosed room-like area that contained all the nasty DE's and the treasure was quite small. My single teleport attempt landed me far away but I guess "extremely unlucky" might be an overstatement, true. Couldn't they have just shrunk the "vault area" in the latest trunk, I dunno. :shrugs: It was like 30% Vault room, 70% the rest of the Elf:5 which had nothing dangerous in it.

It WAS a massively great success for a noob player and for a first attempt but it wasn't entirely up to luck. I have made sure I have never, not even once let anyone have my character in his banishment range. The Master Archers, Blademasters did hurt me bad where I had to gulp Heal Wounds and had some demons slipped which were annoying even with Warding but I've managed things pretty well and came out on top.

The PLACEMENT of the elves in the Vault area was definitely fortunate for me. There were three tightly packed, sizable groups spread around with a fair distance between each other which allowed me to murder them step by step in an orderly fashion using the same tactic while resting between every assault.

Waiting patiently to get the largest Silence radius possible which is random now was probably smart of me to do. In a game where I could save and reload I would have utilized that feature instead before assaulting such a difficult area but here you just have to wait until the effect runs out and start again until you get the largest radius possible. Good thing I had Slow Metabolism I and a Ring of Sustenance.

[KoboldLord]

Banishment isn't that bad. It requires line-of-effect, which means that any minor elves or demons between you and the source of banishment are serving as your bodyguards. Smite targeting or AoE will take care of the offending caster with minimal risk; even wands of fire/cold/draining will usually do.

[Eldritch Enquirer]

You can use stealth with Silence on, but the penalty is very significant; equal to the bonus from boots of stealth. "Extremely stealthy" definitely isn't enough to rely on.

Woah, I've looked it up: it's -50. I had like 35 Dexterity with Potion of Agility which was pretty good but its description on CrawlWiki says: "Quaffing a potion of agility will provide you with a temporary dexterity, stealth, and evasion bonus". Maybe I had 299 Stealth for "extremely stealthy" and it was good enough, who knows. Having even higher Stealth before venturing forth is a good advice tho, I agree. It's not like -50 is the end of the world for an already stealthy dude.

Does anyone know how much the extra "Stealth Bonus" from a Potion of Agility is? It doesn't say on CrawlWiki or in the learndb.

Being at Spriggan speed from Flight and Swiftness along with a large Silence radius allows you to close in very quickly and cover them in your blob of deadly silence before they can shout "GO TO HELL" !

Banishment isn't that bad. It requires line-of-effect, which means that any minor elves or demons between you and the source of banishment are serving as your bodyguards. Smite targeting or AoE will take care of the offending caster with minimal risk; even wands of fire/cold/draining will usually do.

It IS the scariest, though. I had good Elemental and Negative Energy resistances from mutations, potion of Res and items but had mediocre MR. "quite resistant". Summonings are even worse, though.

[mikee]

What this mostly illustrates is that despite the many nerfs over time, silence is still not useless.

Also, I'm surprised you were able to kill blademasters with this character and that absurd weapon. I was recently unable to kill blademasters unassisted with a berserk mdbe at a similar level.

[KoboldLord]

Poison is a ridiculously awesome brand, possibly the best one for raw damage over time (depending on what set of unrealistic assumptions you're using). The only trouble is that the targets that are immune slowly ramp up in concentration over the course of the game until eventually every target worth the slightest concern is totally immune. Deep elves are especially vulnerable to poison because they have low hit points relative to the threat they present.

[mikee]

Poison is a ridiculously awesome brand, possibly the best one for raw damage over time. . .Deep elves are especially vulnerable to poison because they have low hit points relative to the threat they present.

Wouldn't that make them *more* vulnerable to an attack that does high damage immediately? I imagine even a short sword of elec would be a better weapon for elf:5. In any case, the monster I mentioned fighting was de blademaster, which has about 100 hp. All things being equal, I wouldn't advise fighting one with a short sword of venom.

[KoboldLord]

Wouldn't that make them *more* vulnerable to an attack that does high damage immediately? I imagine even a short sword of elec would be a better weapon for elf:5. In any case, the monster I mentioned fighting was de blademaster, which has about 100 hp. All things being equal, I wouldn't advise fighting one with a short sword of venom.

Electrocution would be a good brand, too, but if you can reliably back off and let the poison run its course, poison will usually outdamage it. The trouble is that you often don't have the luxury of letting the poison run its course…

[Eldritch Enquirer]

There were only two Blademasters who were placed far away from each other in my level. I've later found out that this was the bare minimum BM spawning chance (two is guaranteed).

Although the high-end Deep Elf spellcasters have "See Invisibility", the Blademasters and the Master Archers don't have it and you can stab them with impunity if you're good at stabbing with a short blade after gulping a precious Potion of Invisibility.

The Master Archers who spawned a lot more than the Blademasters are FAR worse than them IMHO. The last group close to the treasure room doors was packed with MA's and Invisibility AND Repel/Deflect Missiles are a must for dealing with them.

I am saving my last Invisibility Potion until I reach the point where I can learn and reliably cast Invisibility from now on. They really are a life-saver for a stabby character against powerful non-SeeInvis stuff.

The Poison branded weapon was useful because the elves kept dieing while I was away after escaping with my teleport wand before my Silence Bubble started to dangerously shrunk all around me.

My character was buffed like hell from all the item and the potion effects I have had on so I think I would have killed the few Blademasters with a Rusty Spoon -3,-4, if such a weapon existed at all.