Part 8: Ran-dum, DsCK - Four

Ran-dum, whose fate the world depends. Ran-dum, DSCK who ventured into a nest of spiders and shook the whole thing up.





Redbacks aren't too bad at level 11, but without rPois, I'd be seriously watching for red poison. Also, this is what a spiders nest looks like, ugly and dumb and has water everywhere. ed: Spider nests actually look fine, I just really don't like them.



We hit level 12 almost as soon as we get in. Spiders themselves aren't too hard by the time you start meeting them, but they are poisonous and you typically meet them in large groups. It's very important to fight on dry land as moving and attacking in water is very dangerous and standing next to deep water (the darker water tiles) is not a good thing, some spiders can confuse which can lead to you falling into the drink, drowning.



This was the most chump spiders nest ever. The wand doesn't get ID'd, but we keep it, the book is useless as we won't be casting any spells of note with 16 int unless we decide to pick up blink (we will very soon.) The ring though, that's an unrandart (non-random artifact) that grants a bonus to AC, +8 to be precise. It doesn't id, but it shows the AC bonus in our stats, we wear it over the +0,+6 ring of slaying because staying alive is more important and +8AC is amazing.



As we're leaving, I decide to pick up the splint mail (ended up being +2, not bad) which drops a basket of spiders on us. We kill them with no issue. For all the hype, we got probably the easiest spiders nest, I've lost more than one character to “confused, dead” from these things, not to say about the number of them that require levitation to get The Good Stuff.



We find a scroll of acquirement and immediately pop it, asking for armour. We're granted a +2 buckler or reflection, an upgrade over our +0 buckler. Reflection means that some of the projectiles things we block with our shield will bounce back and hit their progenitor. Later, Xom gives us sharp vision, which is pretty nice, level 3 gives us SInv, which we have on that ring.



Death Yaks decide to tango. We can't actually take them on, so we position well, use our wand of hasting and fight them. They trip over themselves trying to keep up with us as our trident gives them gaping wounds for trying. This was almost really, really bad, but good resource management saves us. As reward, Xom lengthens our fingernails and gives us wild magic 2. As a reward for not dying due to losing 40 HP (from him) after a fight like that, he removes our sharp vision and slows our metabolism. Seriously what?



Elephants are better at tangoing on account of their ability to step on everyone elses toes without issue, but the huge chunk of HP I just lost was Xom deciding that things were too banal for his liking. I heal up and pop a scroll of tele. The AC ring just saved us.



Naw Xom, I love fighting Elephant Slugs and Oklob plants. It's not a big deal, I just move out of the oklobs range and continue killing the slug, but it could've been deadly. Oklob plants, for those not in the know, are pretty mean stationary enemies that hurl corrosive bolts at you as soon as they can see you. They can't see invisible and are stationary though.



The slime pits, bane to many unwary adventurers, are six levels deep and are guaranteed to spawn in the lair. Next to the entrance is the altar to Jiyva, god of slimes and some special slime pit walls, they hurt when you're next to them, so don't be!



The antenae probably saved us, that's a room full of bees which Ran-dum can't deal with. It's a good source of honeycomb and royal jelly (very filling and restores stat drain.) We'll come back later, maybe.



What an ass, we just walked down to L:7 and Xom gives us a cadre of angry demons. We kill the lemure and ufetubus who takes his place, them head up the stairs to wait out their duration. We hit XL13 on a spiny toad, then find another pack of elephants. I'm tired of this crap and elephants are a bit too much for Ran-dum, so we back out of the lair. I'm afraid we're going to get the elephant ending to Lair, which we can't deal with. We hit our stash on L:2, dropping a few cool things there and return to the dungeon proper.



Another Scroll of Acquirement? Neat! We pick it up and what we acquire goes up to a vote, but I recommend armour, I always recommend armour.



Ugly things suck and they change color when around other ugly things (or you if you have glow,) they come in packs (surprise.) They signify that you've left the early game and never go away fully. Their colors denote what they can do and what they resist, green is poison.



Slime Creatures: See ugly things. They don't change color, but their gimmick is that they can merge to form large, very large, titanic slime creatures which can one-shot unwary players. Killed my first person to get to D:15. Don't fight them in halls, fight them in the open so they wont glomp together as much.



The two-headed ogre shouts in stereo! Has two weapons and is really just a double ogre. They can't do much alone, but in packs (they come in those later, duh) they can use their great clubs to play the adventurer drums.





fingernails2, Str-1 Dex+1, toenails(1?) Thanks, Xom. Slow metabolism, Dex+1, less mutations in future. Thanks, Xom!



We enter a Bailey (Flagged portal,) but I forgot to take a shot of the entrance or most any of the fighting. Don't do this bailey unless you can fight 3 orc knights at once. They used some of the loot (scrolls of summoning) but we still get some sweet stuff, and a title upgrade, Impaler. A second scroll of Acquirement means another vote for what to get. If there's one very clear winner, we'll probably just do that twice. Otherwise, we'll do the top two winners.



Snorg is a TrBe, don't mess with him. Next turn he wakes up and comes at us, we mess with and them kill him with no trouble. Also of note, I swapped to the ring of slaying in the bailey and forget to change it back for a bit, it helps us kill Snorg through rage though.



What kind of item would you like to acquire? x2
Weapon; Armour; Jewellery; Book; Staff; Wand; Miscellaneous; Food; Gold; Ammunition



Our current set of mutations, the pink ones are from being a demonspawn and won't go away.