Part 13: All Out of Bubblegum

Update 13: All Out of Bubblegum

Last time, Freude chewed his way through several unaccountably unthreatening levels, picking up a nice new shield in the process. Our inventory is full now, so let's head back to town.

The air about you becomes charged... You have 3 Scrolls titled "co abitat" of Word of Recall {!*!*!*}.
You feel yourself yanked upwards!

We know how town visits go now, so I'll summarize:

• Drop off our old Shield of Resistance, the Potion of *Healing*, the Mushroom of Vigor, and the Rod of Recall at home. The shield might possibly be useful later if we find some really nice body armor that doesn't give basic resists. Carrying *Healing* now is overkill, and the potion could get destroyed before we use it, so it's better to save it for later.
  
• Finally swap out Dagmor for Totila:
  
  The damage is very slightly lower, but +2 speed, a more broadly-applicable slay, and protection from confusion should make up for it.
  
• Recharge our staves, and pick up both of their Staves of Detect Evil. Maybe we won't get them all burned this time!
  
• Restock on Phase Door and Word of Recall.
  
• Pick up a Potion of Enlightenment from the Black Market.
  

Here's Freude's inventory and equipment prior to returning to the dungeon:





We haven't had to buy healing potions in a very long time. I am fine with that.

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

You sense the presence of traps! You sense the presence of buried treasure! You sense the presence of objects! You sense the presence of evil creatures!


I did those detections in pretty much precisely the wrong order. Detect monsters first, so you know if you need to bug out. Oh well, nothing in the area is immediately threatening, and we have a few items to chase after. The yin-yang room yields a new Silver-Plated Wand of Dragon's Frost; these cast powerful "cold balls" at 160 damage apiece. Freude has no use for such fripperies, though; save that for the mages.

Something mumbles.


Something just opened a door to the room and then summoned natural creatures. My guess is a Mystic or Dark Elven Druid. The army ant tramples over the B (which was just a Crow) in its eagerness to get to us. Very but we one-shot it anyway.



Oh, excuse me, a Master Mystic. Awhile back I mentioned that there's two enemies in the game that are built around stunning you; Master Mystics are one. Be careful meleeing them, because they can potentially knock you out, and that's a death sentence because you'll never wake up.

The Master mystic misses you. The Master mystic misses you. The Master mystic hits you. You have been heavily stunned. The Master mystic hits you. You resist the effects!

See? One round of melee and we've gone from perfectly fine to heavily stunned. Fortunately, Cure Critical Wounds potions will clear up a stun. His final strike can paralyze, but that at least we are protected from. Oh, and Master Mystics are very fast (3x normal speed), and are immune to all basic elements. Fortunately they're still evil, so Totila's slay kicks in. Unfortunately:

You hit the Master mystic (51). You hit the Master mystic (51). You hit the Master mystic (52). You miss the Master mystic. You hit the Master mystic (47). The Master mystic magically starts closing wounds. The Master mystic looks REALLY healthy! The Master mystick kicks you. The Master mystick kicks you. The Master mystick hits you. You have been given a nasty cut. The Master mystic hits you. You resist the effects!

Stupid healing spells!

On the following turn, we get in two critical hits, while he makes 12 attacks, two of which hit In fact, his accuracy suffers badly from here on out; while he manages to cut us a few times (by kicking us; how does that work?), no stunning attacks land and he casts no further spells.

While waiting to heal up, I start exploring the southern half of the room:

Harowen the Black Hand cackles evilly about traps.


Harowen the Black Hand touches you. You quickly protect your money pouch! Harowen the Black Hand touches you. You grab hold of your backpack! Harowen the Black Hand hits you. Harowen the Black Hand hits you. There is a puff of smoke!


Harowen is, more or less, the Revenge of Wormtongue. He's "incredibly fast" (i.e. 4x normal speed) and can steal with his melee attacks. He does have two strikes against him that make him far less annoying than Wormtongue: first, he has no actual ranged combat capability beyond summoning traps (which can't hurt you if you just stand still), and second, he can't successfully steal from you if your DEX exceeds 18/150, and ours is 18/186.

So he's going to keep popping in, flailing impotently at us, and then running away; meanwhile we should be able to get the occasional shot or melee attack in. It'll be tough to whittle down his 2500 hitpoints like this, though, especially considering unique monsters regenerate faster than normal ones, so he may not actually be killable. But he won't be much of a threat.



Another Potion of Constitution! Our HP increases from 493 to 527, a respectable jump. Our CON, at 18/116, is getting into the range where further increases give significantly accelerating returns on HP.



In this room, a Phantom popped out of the walls, drained our experience, and died, dropping two Silver Speckled Potions, of Dragon Breath. These are odd potions: when you drink one, you get a weak dragonbreath attack. The damage is frankly pathetic -- about half what our old Red Dragon Scale Mail could do -- so they're just a novelty, really.



We're fortunate enough to spot Harowen a distance down this corridor (thanks again to our Amulet of Infravision!), and hit him with a few Arrows of Acid; those plus a round of melee take him to about 50% health. The real question is, how much will he have healed when we find him again? In the interests of speeding that up, I use our Staffs of Detect Evil and whoah hold on slow down



That's Eol the Dark Elf! Screw fighting that guy. He's more dangerous than Gorlim was! We'll grab our arrows and



Oh, Harowen isn't evil, so we couldn't have detected him anyway. Well, he's back for more.



Down to 20% health! Can we make him flee before he steals again?

Your Arrow of Acid (1d4) (+12,+12) dissolves Harowen the Black Hand (186). You have 8 Arrows of Acid (1d4) (+12,+12). Harowen the Black Hand cries out in pain. Harowen the Black Hand picks up an Arrow of Acid (1d4) (+12,+12).


One thing's for sure, he has most of our arrows now. He cannot be allowed to escape!

You burn Harowen the Black Hand (78). You have slain Harowen the Black Hand. Welcome to level 35. You feel less stupid. You feel something roll beneath your feet. You feel something roll beneath your feet.



Harowen was worth 30k experience! A frankly absurd sum, but I guess with a lower DEX he becomes a massive pain in the ass. He also drops all kinds of crap he picked up from the dungeon, like a Wand of Stone to Mud, some {magical} Leather Scale Mail, a {magical} Heavy Crossbow, and this little number:



Ehhh, it means losing 4 tiles of infravision, but I guess it's worth it The CON sustain is quite nice, and monsters will be using nether attacks on us with relative frequency from here on out. "Sustains your life force", as you may recall, protects against experience drain, which is handy if not exactly vital.

Now let's get the hell away from here before Eol wakes up. I head on over to that moated room to our east, and



Oh for cripes' sake! We still haven't killed you?

Folks, this is Lagduf, the Snaga. He is the weakest orc unique in the game.

You burn Lagduf, the Snaga (60). You burn Lagduf, the Snaga (66). You burn Lagduf, the Snaga (72). You have slain Lagduf, the Snaga.



His drop is just some Bolts of Wounding. I guess it'd be too much to ask to get another useful artifact from a woefully out-of-depth unique. He's native to 400'!



I think we've about played out this level, so let's head on.

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

You sense the presence of evil creatures!


Doing things in the right order this time. That's just a Mage, a Black Knight, and a Ninja; nothing to worry about.



Nothing obviously of interest in the area either. Guess we should check out that moated room to the southwest. While there, I use Detect Treasures again and see this:



That particular pattern of four items to our northwest is possibly indicative of a themed item room. The moated room is a bust -- literally empty -- so let's head over there.





Heck yes! A potion room! These can be a fantastic way to get more stat-gain potions.

...or, in our case, another Potion of Speed and some Potions of Cure Critical Wounds We're never going to raise our STR score, are we?

I take us back to the east, stopping to murder an adventurer group and an Ancient Green Dragon en route. Then I run into this happy little fellow:



This is a Winged Horror; they're the steeds of the Ringwraiths. Flavor text:

A terrifying sight: a winged creature greater than any bird you have ever seen, and with no feathers on its horrid black leathery wings. Descended from a creature of an older world perhaps, bred by Sauron to be a winged steed for his Ringwraiths.

That's right, the Ringwraiths ride on pterodactyls (never mind that pterodactyls probably had feathers ). They're fast, reasonably durable, and able to drain experience with their melee, but that just doesn't make them threatening compared to the monsters we're killing these days.

Anyway, this level was a bust. Let's keep going.

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

Oh hey, we passed the halfway mark a bit ago. Go us!

You sense the presence of evil creatures!


Looks like some kind of lizard nest to our southeast. I'm betting all the tiles not taken up by nagas are filled with hydras and basilisks. No other obvious (i.e. evil) threats in evidence -- that Nether Wraith can't really hurt us any more.



Yep, some kind of pit/nest all right. The game puts lots of items into those rooms in an attempt to encourage you to clear them out. I guess we may as well check it out.



In the time it takes us to get over there, Freude somehow divines that the items he detected are getting picked up. Monsters in pits and nests are always awake, so there's no sneaking up on them.



If 4-Headed Hydras are the worst that's in here, this will be straightforward.



Oh dear. Game, we're at 2650', and you're throwing snakes at us? Seriously? This is just pathetic. Sure enough, the 4-Headed Hydras were the worst monsters in the place; now we have a bunch of items to pick through:

• A Robe of Permanence:
  
  
  
  These are cute, but kind of lightweight for this stage in the game. Besides, all of our stats are already sustained besides INT, and pffft, who cares about being smart?
  
• A Scroll of Banishment. Banishment used to be called "Genocide"; it removes all monsters that use a chosen letter from the current level, dealing 1d4 damage to you per monster in the process. For example, we could choose to banish Z, and all zephyr hounds on the level would be removed. These can be situationally useful, for example if a nasty group of monsters is between you and some loot. They don't work on uniques though.
  
• A Rod of Probing Dirty jokes aside, Probing fills in a lot of your monster memory for all monsters in line of sight. It can be useful for inexperienced players, but I'd honestly recommend just turning on the full-monster-memory cheat instead.
  
• A bunch of junk equipment and useless magical items.

The nest was a bust, but that Nether Wraith we detected earlier wasn't! Two more Potions of Constitution! 535 HP becomes first 588 and then 605! I'm not sure why the second jump was smaller than the first; odd. Still, 600 HP is more than some characters have at the very end of the game; we're doing well.



Hey, it's Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings! We ran away from you back at 1900'! I bet we can take him now. Pull back around the corner and wait for him to approach, as he does have spells, including summoning spells:



He's surrounded by Easterling Champions, which is appropriate, though they're complete non-threats.

You smite Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings (61). You smite Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings (57). You smite Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings (65). You smite Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings (53). You miss Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings. Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings misses you. Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings misses you. Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings hits you. Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings misses you.

Oh dear, one 3d8 hit? You'll have to do a lot better than that, Lorgan. He is proving impressively durable, though; we can only take off about 10% of his health per turn. It takes 8 turns for us to wear him down, and in that time he dealt nearly 200 damage to us; imagine how things would have gone had we tried to fight him back at 1800', where he's native!

Unfortunately, his only interesting drop is this...thing:



Earthquakes slightly randomize the terrain in a radius around you; they're almost totally useless, and weapons that proc earthquakes when you attack with them are especially useless (with, as usual, one notable exception) because they're more likely to open up line-of-sight with monsters than they are to block it.

It's kind of hilarious to see an acid brand on a 1d2 weapon, though. Watch out, bad guys! It's 3d2 if you're weak against acid!

The Master lich misses you. The Master lich misses you. The Master lich misses you. The Master lich misses you. The Master lich misses you. The Master lich touches you. Energy drains from your pack! The Master lich misses you. The Master lich misses you.



Gack! Master Liches are, again, not much of a threat to us, but between their speed and their drain-charges attack (which stole some charges from one of our 5 Staves of Teleportation), they're kind of a pain to kill. Remember that charges-drain restores a significant amount of the enemy's health each time it goes off.

However, we have some Arrows of Slay Undead

Your Arrow of Slay Undead (1d4) (+9,+10) pierces the Master Lich (162).

Yessssss, this will do nicely. Shoot 'n Scoot to the rescue!

Your Arrow of Slay Undead (1d4) (+9,+10) pierces the Master lich (156). The Master lich is destroyed.

His drop: ...a Potion of Resist Poison, a Potion of Resist Cold, and a Ring of Slow Digestion. What is this crap?

Vargo, Tyrant of Fire casts a ball of fire. One of your Scrolls titled "propera" of Phase Door was destroyed! One of your Redwood Staves of Teleportation was destroyed! One of your Arrows of Acid was destroyed!


Vargo is Ariel's fire-based counterpart. Not nearly so existentially threatening, but he'll do a number on your flammable equipment. Naturally, he's vulnerable to cold attacks, but he's immune to everything else, so we have no effective weapons agains him. He also flings fireballs and plasma bolts around like mad, which can rack up damage surprisingly quickly.



I throw our non-special arrows at him, taking off about 30% of his health. His semirandom wanderings take him over several of the arrows, crushing them. Oh well, they were cheap.

You hit Vargo, Tyrant of Fire (43). You miss Vargo, Tyrant of Fire. You hit Vargo, Tyrant of Fire (44). You hit Vargo, Tyrant of Fire (83). You hit Vargo, Tyrant of Fire (53).


That's what I mean by semirandom. Vargo, like all elementals, moves erratically, which is great if you want to avoid melee attacks and annoying if you want to use melee attacks. Every turn he spends moving is a turn he doesn't spend casting spells, though, which is good because I accidentally threw our Scroll of Banishment at him instead of safely into a corner

Vargo, Tyrant of Fire casts a bolt of plasma. You have been heavily stunned. Vargo, Tyrant of Fire misses you. Vargo, Tyrant of Fire hits you. You are enveloped in flames! Vargo, Tyrant of Fire hits you. You are enveloped in flames! Some of your Arrows of Slay Undead were destroyed! Vargo, Tyrant of Fire misses you.


And an Ancient Blue joins the party. Wait in line, buddy!

You hit Vargo, Tyrant of Fire(47). You hit Vargo, Tyrant of Fire(41). You hit Vargo, Tyrant of Fire(39). You have destroyed Vargo, Tyrant of Fire.

There, that's one nuisance unique dead. Elementals have no drop and are worth crap experience, so the only reason to kill them is to keep them from showing up later. That's still a worthwhile reward: elementals in vaults are horrible because they'll destroy all the loot before you can grab it. I'm perfectly happy to sacrifice a few arrows and staves to Vargo in exchange for getting rid of him permanently.

South from the Vargo fight, we hit another milestone:



Just south of the d (a Mature Multi-Hued Dragon) is a Lesser Balrog! Let's go say hi.

You smite the Lesser Balrog (57). You smite the Lesser Balrog (63). You smite the Lesser Balrog (63). You miss the Lesser Balrog. You smite the Lesser Balrog (61). The Lesser Balrog hits you. You are enveloped in flames! The Lesser Balrog hits you. You are enveloped in flames! The Lesser Balrog misses you. The Lesser Balrog touches you. Energy drains from your pack!


(Also pictured: a Black Harpy that purchased front-row seats...)

Balrogs, like many other late-game monsters, have charge-draining melee attacks, seemingly specifically to piss off the warriors who would otherwise be perfectly capable of tanking their attacks. We can take off 10-15% of his health per round in melee, but every time he drains charges, he heals.

The Lesser Balrog summons a demon. The Black Harpy misses you. The Black Harpy misses you. The Black Harpy misses you. The Lesser Balrog breathes fire. One of your Scrolls titled "propera" of Phase Door was destroyed! One of your Scrolls titled "nimum ormoncto" of Teleportation was destroyed! One of your Runed Staves of Identify was destroyed! The Homunculus resists a lot. The Black harpy dies.


(Also pictured: charred harpy for dinner!)

We got lucky with the summon; Homunculi are no threat. Balrogs can summon other greater demons who can also summon greater demons; such situations can get out of hand fast. As it is, the Balrog whiffs his drain-charges attack a few more times and runs away...

Activate which item?
Your Set of Caestus grows magical spikes... The Lesser Balrog is destroyed.

Fingolfin's activation is handy for when you want a flat 150 damage to a target and/or can't be arsed to pick up your ammo

Lesser Balrogs don't have an amazing drop, but they're worth 14000 experience apiece to us right now (experience rewards drop as your character level goes up, but this is still a significant sum). They also tend to show up alongside greater demon uniques, so it's a good sign that we can take one down relatively painlessly.

And then I go do something dumb.

The Death mold releases spores at you. You feel your life slipping away! The Death mold releases spores at you. Your Elven Cloak was disenchanted! The Death mold releases spores at you. Your Set of Caestus of Fingolfin resists disenchantment!


Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Death Mold. Flavor text:

It is the epitome of all that is evil, in a mold. Its lifeless form draws power from sucking the souls of those who approach it, a nimbus of pure evil surrounds it. Luckily for you, it can't move.

Sometimes I think the Angband developers are a bit batty.

Anyway, Death Molds are incredibly fast (4x normal speed), albeit stationary, and have three disenchantment attacks per round (one of which whiffed, but there's no messages for missed spore attacks), plus the experience drain. But they have no ranged attacks.

You tunnel into the granite wall. <30x> You have finished the tunnel.



Problem solved

After clearing out some ogres, we finally get to explore that room that we detected at the beginning of the level.



In it...a Misty Potion of Strength! And a Rod of Fire Bolts, but who cares about that? Freude finally got his first permanent STR bonus, baby! A good way to end the level, and since our pack's full, we should head back to town and unload. But first, here's the level map:



The air about you becomes charged... You have 4 Scrolls titled "co abitat" of Word of Recall.
You feel yourself yanked upwards!

While in town, we:

• Nick two potions each of Healing and Speed from the Black Market
  
• Buy this lovely little item, also from the Black Market:
  
  A rechargeable source of temporary speed! I've been wanting one of these for quite some time now.
  
• Drop off our *Healing* potion, all our Speed potions, and our Scroll of Banishment at home; we'll want them for the endgame.
  
  Pictured: Nimthanc and some Red Dragon Scale Mail getting the boot to make room in our home. Sorry, guys!
  
• Restock on Phase Door and Word of Recall.
  
• Recharge our Mapping and Identify staves. The Magic Store had no more Staves of Detect Evil, so we're stuck with just the one.
  

We should be all set to return to the dungeon...next time. Until then, Freude's gonna take things easy, maybe stare down a few battle-scarred veterans. Fun fact: Freude now so badly outlevels the townsfolk that they'll run away as soon as they wake up