The Let's Play Archive

Angband

by TooMuchAbstraction

Part 50: Dubious Wisdom

Update 50: Dubious Wisdom

Hey, 50 updates! Too bad it's not a nice round number like 64.

Last time, we fled screaming from a number of dangerous foes, beat up Kavlax in a fit of pique, and improved our HP some. Here's hoping it's enough.

You enter a maze of down staircases. (to 2500')

Halfway there! And at 2500', a certain prayerbook enters native depth, making it a bit more likely that we'll find it. When an item is "out of depth", that means that its native depth is deeper than the drop level (for the monster dropping the item, or for the placement of the item on the floor). Monster drop levels are max(monster level, average(dungeon level, monster level)) -- that is, if the monster is weak for the current dungeon level, then it drops worse stuff. But floor items always use the current dungeon level, and items in vaults can be from even deeper.

In short, the odds of us finding that book just went up. So we're keeping our eyes peeled for libraries.



A nice quiet opening. That potion in our room is a Potion of Strength, taking us to 18/78 internal STR. Nice.



Oh, sod off, Raal's! You play coy all game when we're playing a mage, and you pop right up when we're playing a priest. Raal's also just happens to be the mage book that enters native depth at 2500'. Stupid RNG



Demonic quylthulg. These things really ought to be evil. We get three Orbs in before it teleports away; it has 420 HP so that didn't really accomplish anything. Oh well; there's not much to be done about it.



We run into it again, but this time it has a friend: Ariel, Queen of Air. She's very fast, can confuse with her melee (though our new cloak protects us from that), and casts lightning and cold spells. She also has 2700 HP and isn't evil, so we don't really want to tangle with her.

The Demonic quylthulg squelches. Ariel, Queen of Air shrugs off the attack. Ariel, Queen of Air tramples over the Demonic quylthulg.

Oh, well, she just saved us some effort on that front. In addition to destroying items on the floor, the elemental uniques can all also trample weaker monsters. Thanks, Ariel!

Ariel, Queen of Air disappears!

Now go bother some other part of the dungeon. We enter the room, and

Waldern, King of Water casts a ball of frost.


Okay, what the hell? Ariel and Waldern aren't coded to show up together, so this is just a weird coincidence. Waldern is less dangerous than Ariel, as he's slower and has slightly fewer HP; his spells are a bit more dangerous to compensate. In particular, he can cast Whirlpool, which causes confusion -- but we're protected. Let's take him out!



Waldern can't walk a straight line; I guess he's drunk

Waldern, King of Water shrugs off the attack. Waldern, King of Water fires a jet of water. You resist the effect! You have been stunned.

Oh, water attacks also cause stunning. I forgot about that. Nothing that casting Heal can't fix -- assuming we overcome the 16% minimum failure rate. Which we do, this time. And the next four times he casts a water attack. Stop spamming spells, Waldern!



We're about 30% of the way through the fight, and an errant Blink has taken us out of the room. We're down to 73 out of 252 SP, which is a pretty spendy way to fight (Heal costs 16 SP per cast, for reference), but we have 8 potions of Restore Mana kicking around, waiting to be used.

Waldern, King of Water shrugs off the attack. Waldern, King of Water creates a whirlpool of water. You resist the effect! You have been stunned. Waldern, King of Water shoots a spear of ice. You have been given a bad cut.

I finally think to check his spell list. Whirlpool, Frost Ball, Ice Bolt, Water Bolt. Fully 75% of his spell list causes stunning (there was no message for Ice Bolt this time since we were already stunned), and he casts spells 1 turn in 3 -- which, since he's faster than us, means there's about a 42% chance on any given turn that he'll stun us. No wonder this is going so badly.

Well fuck it, if it's a grinder of a fight he wants, that's what he'll get. Priests are the kings of grinder fights. We have more stamina than anyone! ...just so long as we can survive at least one round of combat, anyway.



Casting Blink so often ends up bouncing us all over the place, with Waldern always in hot pursuit.

Waldern, King of Water shoots a spear of ice. You have been given a light cut. You have been stunned. One of your White Potions of Cure Critical Wounds was destroyed!
You feel very good. You are no longer bleeding. You are no longer stunned. Waldern, King of Water fires a jet of water. You resist the effect! You have been stunned. Waldern, King of Water casts a ball of frost. One of your Cloudy Potions of Restore Mana was destroyed!
You failed to concentrate hard enough! Waldern, King of Water shoots a spear of ice. You have been given a light cut. One of your White Potions of Cure Critical Wounds was destroyed!

Hey! Leave our potions out of this! Stop trying to liberate your liquid brethren!

Waldern, King of Water grunts with pain. Waldern, King of Water shoots a spear of ice. You have been given a bad cut. You have been stunned. Your Dark Red Potion of *Healing* was destroyed!

Aw, shit. There goes our last non-spell-based big heal. Those things are invaluable for when we get into serious trouble and can't rely on spells. Dammit, Waldern, stop casting and die already!



Back in the northern room, and Waldern's 80% dead. We've used two Potions of Restore Mana so far, and he's destroyed 1.

Waldern, King of Water grunts with pain. Waldern, King of Water creates a whirlpool of water. You resist the effect! You have been stunned.
Waldern, King of Water cries out in pain. Waldern, King of Water casts a ball of frost.
Waldern, King of Water cries out in pain.
Waldern, King of Water screams in pain.
You failed to concentrate hard enough!
Waldern, King of Water writhes in agony.
Waldern, King of Water is destroyed.

HA! VICTORY!

Of course, like all elementals he has no drop, so all we get is 5300 EXP. But he'll never bother us again.

...unlike Ariel, who pops up two more times as we head to the rest of the dungeon, and gets teleported away again both times.



Hrm. Gorlim, Betrayer of Barahir. You may remember this guy as being one of the king badasses of the midgame -- he casts spells every other turn and his spell list is Cause Critical Wounds, Mana Bolt, and Water Bolt. And he's fast, and non-evil for some reason. And his melee disenchants. And he's native to 2050'. I seriously don't know what the devs are thinking with this guy; he's even more nuts than Kavlax is.

Gorlim, Betrayer of Barahir disappears!

And now he's awake, and we can't detect him. Maybe teleporting him wasn't the brightest idea I've ever had. Oh well, we're nearly done with the level anyway.

We clear a pack of Gold Dragons and get a potion of Intelligence and a potion of Restore Mana. I don't mind boosting our INT, but it's weird how few CON potions we've seen lately. CON is now our least-boosted stat (ignoring equipment modifiers).

Then we kill a Xaren and finally hit level 35! 359 HP, 259 SP, and we can learn a new spell!

...it's Word of Recall. Thanks, game. Attempting to cast it just prints the message "Nothing happens."

That does it for this level. Let's get out of here.

You enter a maze of down staircases. (to 2550')



A quiet start. Or so I think.

The Nether hound breathes nether. You feel your life force draining away! You have forgotten the prayer of Word of Recall. You can learn 12 more spells. The Nether hound breathes nether. You feel your life force draining away!


Nether Hounds! Non-evil, fast, group monsters with 330 HP apiece -- doesn't sound like much, but that's still six Orbs' worth. ...or hey, we have that Wand of Dragon's Frost, don't we?

You have 3 charges remaining. The Nether hound howls in pain. The Nether hound yelps in pain. It yelps in pain. The Nether hound flees in terror! Something groans. You are hit by something cold! You feel your life force draining away! The Nether hound breathes nether. You feel your life force draining away!

Stupid Never assume there aren't more hounds!

We take two steps backwards, into the corridor, and close the door behind us. Assessing the damage, we're down 33k EXP. Ouch. I miss having ready access to Potions of Restore Life Levels Nether Hounds are worth 7500 EXP apiece to kill, which would go a long way to restoring the damage -- except we'd have to fight them to do it.



Retreating to this position, I wait for them to break the door down...and wait...and wait...and they never do. They can't possibly be failing to path to us, can they? Zephyr hounds are notorious for chasing players all the way across the level. What the hell.

Oh well. Let's just head in a different direction.



Good. More dragons. Keep feeding me dragons, game. Preferably not ancient ones. One of them drops another Scroll of *Destruction*, so we have 3 now. That's enough to make me be more willing to burn them on casual encounters...though the damage they do to the dungeon means they're still unlikely to come out except in dire emergencies.

We kill a Fire Giant and loot a Potion of *Healing* off its corpse. I can breathe easier now that we have an emergency big heal in our inventory again. Maybe we'll actually get to use this one instead of having it blow up or get forgotten on the floor!



Weaker varieties of Ancient Dragon are okay, especially ones whose breath attacks we can double-resist, like this Ancient White Dragon here. With Resist Heat & Cold active, its breath attack can only do, at maximum, 23 damage to us. Peanuts.

As it turns out, the rest of the dungeon lies on the other side of those Nether Hounds, and they've finally broken the door down! We retreat to the room we wanted to fight them in originally, but it's already occupied.

The Nether hound breathes nether. You feel your life force draining away!


Just the one, though, so we take it down without too much trouble. Another one follows, though, and a third, and between them we eat about 10 nether breaths. These things are only supposed to breathe 1 turn in 5! By the time we're done, we're short 75000 EXP. That is gonna take a long time to recover from. And you just know that we'll find a Potion of Restore Life Levels when we're about 500 EXP short of making it back.

Also, nether is the quintessential evil element, so why aren't Nether Hounds evil? Stupid game.



This Sorcerer, by comparison, is peanuts. Sure, he's very fast, but he barely has more HP than Nether Hounds do and he's evil. Plus over 50% of his spells are either straight damage, or status ailments that we're immune to. Four orbs, and he dies. And he drops a Potion of Constitution!

You feel very healthy!

Up to 368 HP, and 18/90 CON. The big gains are coming...



In this odd orb-shaped room, we waylay a pack of trolls, and find another Potion of *Healing* and some more Scrolls of Identify. Excellent additions to our stock of consumables. Odd that *Healing* has been so much more plentiful than plan Healing though.

That level's done with; let's move on. Still 60k EXP in the hole...

You enter a maze of down staircases. (to 2600')



A populous room, from what we can see of it. These guys are all chumps, but is there anything else lurking out of our infravision's radius?



Nothing too serious aside from a Silent Watcher, who doesn't wake up. Silent Watchers have a few annoying spells (including Summon Monsters and Shriek, which as you may recall hastes everything in LOS) and a whopping 1040 HP. They are evil though, so that's nice.



Rather than fight this guy, we'll just leave him napping. We leave by the northern exit, since the southern leads to a conflict with a Dark Elven Sorcerer. They're a bit more dangerous than normal Sorcerers, chiefly in that they're a bit more durable. Like Sorcerers, their spell list is too long for them to make a really coherent offense.



The top half of this moated room had a positively massive pack of Vibration Hounds -- but we resist their sound breath, so who cares? A follow-on Erinyes (a weak greater demon) drops a Potion of Strength, bringing us near the cap for that stat.

Finally, we use up the last charges in our Staves of Identify to ID Armour of Elvenkind (it gives resistance to Nexus, which we already have, so pass) and a new scroll: *Enchant Weapon*. Meh. At least we can drop our staves now, freeing up an item slot and 10 pounds of carrying capacity.



Hey, looks like a vault to our south. Or maybe just one of those templated rooms; it's hard to tell sometimes. Akhorahil the Blind is off to our southwest, too. With our higher HP, it's remotely possible that we could fight him without using up our last Potion of Speed, but I'd rather avoid him if possible. And with Teleport Other, avoiding fights is usually possible.



This is looking crowded. Akhorahil is en route, and Ji Indur Dawndeath is off to the northeast. Finally, Eol the Dark Elf is to our southeast, behind a pack of Hellhounds (finally, an evil hound!). We don't want to fight any of these guys if we can manage it. Eol's very fast and can cast 220-damage Mana Bolts; enough said. Ji Indur Dawndeath is nearly as bad; his spells are similar in strength, but more dilute, and he's only fast.

Akhorahil, meanwhile, has...hm. Blind (we're immune), Cause Critical Wounds (which we'll likely save against), Cause Darkness (does no damage), Paralyze (immune), Frighten (likely save, plus it doesn't affect the failure rate on Orb, Blink, or Portal), Frost Bolt (weak), Fire Bolt (weak), Nether Bolt (...), and Summon Monsters.

Y'know, let's fight this ponce, speed parity or no.



This isn't exactly ideal terrain, mind you, but we'll make do.

The fight goes well for awhile -- we lose a Potion of Restore Mana to his Frost Bolt, but otherwise we Blink in and out of rooms and plink at him as he chases after us. It only gets better when an errant Blink takes us south:



He chases after us, only casting Paralyze once and actually failing to cast a spell on his second try. We get 9 uninterrupted Orbs off, he turns to flee, and the 10th Orb drops him. 20k EXP, and we get his drop: some {excellent} body armor we don't bother IDing, a {magical} Awl-Pike and Heavy Crossbow, and this:



God dammit, why can't the awesome weapons boost WIS instead of INT? This would be such a fucking amazing weapon for us, but it boosts the wrong goddamned stat, and we can't afford to lose the +3 WIS our current weapon is giving us. WIS boosts are damned rare this game.

I guess we can keep it as a swap for dealing with fire breathers. Like, say, packs of Hellhounds.



Alas, I was a bit slow on equipping it and we lost a Scroll of Identify to fire damage. Hellhounds are fast (isn't everything these days?), and have 3 fiery bite attacks per round even though they aren't mentioned as being three-headed. Oh well.

Heading back to the vault, we punch a hole in a Gelatinous Cube, and get a couple of Potions of Healing (yes!) and a Staff of Speed (!YES!). 6 charges' worth of speed parity! And we have a Scroll of Recharging sitting around, too -- no sense wasting those things on piddling little attack wands now.

We could maybe go after Ji Indur Dawndeath now, but his Nether Storm attack is listed as doing up to 200 damage, which has me feeling a bit antsy. Plus, at 3200 HP, he'd take awhile to wear down. Let's just leave him be for the moment.



The rest of the dungeon in the other direction is on the other side of that Silent Watcher (and you can see the Dark Elven Sorcerer to our northeast), but hey, we can dig through solid granite if we need to.

I mean, it takes 210 turns to clear two tiles, but it works. As it turns out, the Dark Elven Sorcerer is awake, but can't reach us; there must be a monster blocking his way. Good.

A Mind Flayer drops a Potion of Enlightenment, which we'll spend on the next level. Meanwhile, there looks to be another vault and/or templated room here:



Alas, nothing in there but some Ogres and Fire Hounds. And we're all done with this level, unless we want to go and tangle with some rather nasty uniques.

You enter a maze of down staircases. (to 2650')

We down the Potion of Enlightenment, and reveal nothing interesting on the level besides a pair of unknown scrolls. Since they are a pair, that almost certainly means they're bad scrolls, like Summon Undead; the only good scrolls that drop in stacks are basic consumables like Phase Door and Identify that we already know about.



One nice thing about Enlightenment is that it lights the entire dungeon for you, without any extra risk of waking up monsters. So this Ancient White Dragon that spawned next to us is still sleeping peacefully...for the moment.

The Ancient white dragon is hit hard. The Ancient white dragon breathes frost. Some of your White Potions of Cure Critical Wounds were destroyed!

Just our luck. We still have 17 of those left, though, so losing some isn't that critical.



Hey, Rogrog the Black Troll and his entourage! Now here's a unique we should be able to paste pretty easily. Sure, he's fast and can push past weaker monsters, but he has no spells beyond the ability to hurl boulders at us, and we can heal the damage from that easily.

Of course, if we're going to Shoot 'n Scoot him, then we should clear the location first. That Lich and Dark Elven Druid to our northeast have to go. Easily done -- and we're stealthy enough that Rogrog doesn't wake up, either.



Firing lines set; commence bombardment!

Rogrog the Black Troll is hit hard. 3 Cave trolls are hit hard. 2 monsters grunt with pain. Rogrog the Black Troll pushes past the Cave troll. Rogrog the Black Troll pushes past the Cave troll.

By the time he reaches melee range, he's already 60% dead. Poor Rogrog. Shoot 'n Scoot wears him down devastatingly quickly -- he only has 2000 HP, which isn't much for a unique with no gimmicks. Soon enough he falls over -- and we make a whopping 6000 EXP from the kill. I wish Ranger Chieftans gave that much.

Alas, Rogrog's drop is just {magical} chaff. Easy come, easy go.

We're still 19k EXP short of where we should be, incidentally. However, we're pretty close to regaining level 35. When your experience is drained, each kill still raises your maximum EXP in addition to your current EXP -- just not by as much as it otherwise would have (so you can still "catch up"). I don't know what exactly the fractions are, but we should be getting at least 10% of the EXP from each kill credited towards our max.

We find the unknown scrolls and ID them (down to 7 Scrolls of Identify) -- they're Teleport Level. Hm. I think we're set for last-ditch escape scrolls, actually, considering our stock of *Destruction* scrolls. So we'll leave these be.



Why do I do these things? We get into a fight with a Beholder; first its melee drains our EXP back below level 35, then it throws a Fire Bolt at us that burns up our Scroll of Banishment. At least we get level 35 back when we kill it.

That proves to be the last interesting thing on the level. Levels seem to be alternating between dull and terrifying, with precious little loot. I'll be honest, I'm getting worried about this game. Our WIS is lower than I'd like it to be -- Bryson II had a whopping +15 to her INT by this stage between race, class, and equipment bonuses, and we're only managing +8. We could also really use a lot more CON. We have +13 to it right now, but only because we're dedicating both ring slots to Rings of Constitution. Our internal CON stat is only 14; there's plenty of room to grow there.

We also need more speed. It's the norm now rather than the exception for monsters to be at at least +10 speed; fighting them without speed parity puts us at an immense disadvantage. We've only seen two pieces of equipment giving speed bonuses (our Amulet of Trickery, and the Elven Cloak of the Magi that we ditched), and both were small.

Finally, we've only found one useful randart. One and a half if you count the mace we're carrying as a swap weapon for its fire immunity. Man, that mace would've been so awesome if only it boosted WIS instead of INT

Anyway, enough whinging. Point is, Friar Tuck's having a rough time of things. But we'll soldier on, until either things get better, or they get much, much worse.

You enter a maze of down staircases. (to 2700')



Another cavern level. I've never seen a group of Shadows like the one to our west, either; weird. I wonder if there's a bug in the escort generation and they're supposed to be pals of the Ogre Chieftan (the blue O).

Also, the red V is an Elder Vampire. They can move through walls and cast all of the nasty spells that Vampire Lords can cast plus Summon Undead. We are staying the fuck away from him.



Accosted by a Winged Horror, one of the Ringwraith's flying steeds. They can breathe poison and nether, and aren't evil. I maintain that any monster that can manipulate nether ought to be evil, but oh well. Its melee also drains experience. Rather than bounce around wearing it down with Orb and maybe blinking closer to the Elder Vampire, we just teleport this guy away.



Man, that's a lot of dragons. One of them drops another Staff of Speed! We now have 13 charges' worth of temporary speed. Excellent. Further exploration turns up some Scrolls of Phase Door, a Scroll of Recharging, and another copy of prayer book #1. So this level is being kind to our consumables, if nothing else. Unfortunately, the Winged Horror comes back and hits us with a nether breath, dinging our EXP a bit. Also, all of the down staircases are on the other side of the Elder Vampire.

However, remember how we accidentally cast Teleport Level? Let's use that to get off the level instead. It should always take us down...I think.

You rise up through the ceiling. (to 2650')

Or not. Okay. Let's take another look at Tuck's birth options:



I'm betting that "force player descent" would make Teleport Level always take you downwards (except on levels 99 and 100 before Sauron/Morgoth are killed). That option isn't set here; whoops! So we can replay levels and scum indefinitely at a "safe" depth.

I'm going to try to avoid doing that, since it makes for a more boring game. Still, it's worth keeping in mind that we can flee upwards if we need to.



In the meantime, this level has a vault in the northeast! Also a Dark Elven Sorcerer in the same room as us, along with a poison-themed 7-Headed Hydra. Poison is much nicer than fire; it doesn't destroy your inventory.

We take out the Sorcerer after hasting up with our new Staves of Speed -- he moves at +20 speed, so being at +12 is far preferable to being at only +2. He spends his first two turns summoning a Bodak (fire-themed lesser demon) and a Skeleton Ettin; then he summons us to melee range. The dope.

He drops a Potion of Strength, getting us 1 point away from maxed in that stat. I won't complain. We also get a new rod type which fires a bolt of something when used. Zapping it at a White Wolf prints the message "The White wolf is unaffected!" which means it must be a status effect of some kind, and therefore junk.

En route to the vault, we pick up yet another Scroll of *Destruction*, and a Scroll of Acquirement that just drops some Dwarven Lamellar Armor worse that our current armor. We also take a detour through this interesting little room:



But there's nothing much in it except, finally, enough EXP worth of enemies that we are no longer drained.

Anyway, that vault:



There's a number of nasty foes in there:



The Great Wyrm of Chaos must be teleported before he gets a turn in our LOS; his chaos and disenchantment breaths could kill us outright. The Ancient Multihued Dragon and Great Crystal Drake are also problematic, the latter moreso than the former as we don't resist shards. Smaug and Itangast are totally killable though, considering we can become immune to fire if we want.

The main problem with this vault layout is that there are no compartments. We'll be relying on the game's crappy pathing to keep all the monsters from spilling out as soon as we open it.

On the flipside, we really, really need some gear upgrades, and if they're going to be anywhere, they're here. We just have to hope that Teleport Other doesn't fail us at a key moment. Current failure rate: 1%.



Antisummoning corridor/tunnel complete; we are ready to breach. But first, I notice an Ancient Black Dragon has spawned nearby, so we go to take care of him first.



The Ancient black dragon breathes acid. One of your Birch Staves of Speed was destroyed!

Stupid game!



The Greater Basilisk and the dragon twins are next. We definitely need to break that group up a bit. The Basilisk should come to us readily enough, but I have no idea how we'll go about separating Smaug from Itangast.



Remember how Greater Basilisks can't push past weaker monsters? This one's being held up by a Zombified Orc, of all things. Of course, the zombie's destroyed in our first Orb, but still, it's amusing.



Oh hey, to our southeast is a moated room with a Wyvern, a Dracolisk, a Black Harpy, and another Greater Basilisk in it. That's almost certainly a Zoo, full of natural monsters, and the rest are just non-evil and thus undetectable. There's going to be tons of zephyr hounds in there, so we'll steer clear.

Also...



What happened to the Great Wyrm of Chaos and the Ancient Multihued Dragon? I didn't imagine them! There must be a non-evil monster present who can trample lesser monsters, and it's stronger than a Great Wyrm of Chaos. That narrows things down considerably: I pop open monster.txt and look for monsters of greater level than a GWoC that have the KILL_BODY flag.

The news is...not good. There's only two: Atlas the Titan, and Huan, Wolfhound of the Valar. And Atlas is evil, so we'd know if he were present.

Huan moves at +20 speed, and can breathe cold, light, sound, and shards, hitting the respective damage caps in each element. A light or shards breath would kill us outright. He breathes 1 turn in 5 (he has no non-breath "spells"), 50% of his breath weapons can kill us -- that's only an 81% chance of surviving two turns in his presence. And that's assuming he doesn't just double-breathe us using elements we can survive, since "surviving" just means "we're at risk of instadeath if he does literally any offensive action."

That doesn't really seem tenable, especially given we also have Itangast and Smaug present. We'll have to bail. Frig. As for how Huan could be here? We're at level 53 (2650') and Huan's native to level 90 (4500'). But there are vault tiles that are "excellent item up to 20 levels out of depth, plus monster up to 40 levels out of depth", and this vault has 5 such tiles. So we're at the stage where just about any monster except Sauron or Morgoth could potentially show up in a vault. Unfortunately we just happened to pull one of the nastiest possible options.

Blink takes us outside the vault easily enough:



Working our way around...



we watch as Smaug and an Ancient Green Dragon suddenly vanish from the map.



Man. I didn't know that uniques could be crushed like that. Soon enough, Itangast is gone too.



Honestly, now it's kind of tempting to try to teleport Huan away, just because the vault is borderline undefended and there are a lot of items in there. It's a chance, sure. It's a big chance. And who knows what the payoff would be. But we really need a boost right now.

Eh, fuck it, let's do it.



We keep temporary speed and Resist Heat & Cold up. Even single-resisted, Huan's cold breath punches for 533 damage; we need the double resistance to be able to survive that.



Right now, Huan is almost certainly two tiles to our south. At some point, his pathfinding will switch from "follow the straight-line distance to my target" to "find the actual path to my target", but I don't know when that will be. We really need to catch him coming around a corner if at all possible.



He'll still be following the straight-line path here, but not for much longer...



We take out a Manes, an Energy Vortex, and a Patriarch that had somehow escaped obliteration. Then we let our buff timers run out, and re-set them. It uses an extra charge from our Staff of Speed, but the last thing we want is to get triple-turned by Huan because our speed ran out at the wrong time.



Those yellow potions to our west? Potions of Enlightenment. Fuck yes.

An image of your surroundings forms in your mind...



We know what items are in the vault! And there's a dungeon prayer book! It's...blast. Purifications and Healing. It's not a bad spellbook, by any means; just not the one I was hoping for. Still, worth making the attempt. We also see some headgear (a source of telepathy would be wonderful), and a lot of weapons. Plus, the Arkenstone, an artifact light source, is in the Zoo we noticed earlier. It's gonna stay there.

Incidentally, we know there used to be more items in the vault. Something's been picking them up. Odds are good that whatever did pick them up got trampled by Huan, so there's not much point worrying about it now.



Huan has got to be fixing his pathfinding right about now...



Come on, where is he...?



OH SHIT

Right. Deep breaths. Don't fuck this one up. RNG, please have mercy.

Cast from which book?


Recite which prayer?


Huan, Wolfhound of the Valar disappears!

Hooooooly shit it worked it worked it worked! We're still alive! And the vault is empty!

...well, probably empty. There might be a quylthulg or something in the middle where Huan didn't step.



Or the motherfucking Phoenix! His light breath is also capable of instantly killing us. Again, don't fuck this up...

The Phoenix disappears!

Phew.



Ha! Aha! Aha ha ha ha ha we're in! Nothing but a Giant Silver Ant, a Cave Spider, and a Large Brown Snake!

The Giant silver ant jerks in agony. The Giant silver ant flees in terror! The Cave spider dies. The Large brown snake dies.
The Giant silver ant dies.

Victory! Now let's get to lootin'! First, we have a new spellbook!


For paladins, this prayer book is crap, since they don't get Healing or, IIRC, Restoration. Priests are pretty happy with it though.

Of the other items, we get:
That does it for vault loot, and I'm sure as fuck not exploring the rest of the level with Huan wandering around out there somewhere. Let's call the update here. Next time: we take on another vault.