Part 19: Adolph Hissler, NaCj - Two

Adolph has just entered the Lair from D:8. Early lair entrances are generally better than later ones as they're less likely to have OOD enemies and more likely to put you safely ahead of the curve for the dungeon proper, allowing you more ability to deal with OOD stuff there.



We acquire armour again, giving us a much better Naga barding, +2 barding of Levitation is pretty good as it gives us 6 more AC and a decent evocable. This is also where we establish our stash. I didn't talk about it much last run, but L:2 is the conventional spot for stashes as things that spawn there can't use the items and stuff that can use items will almost never get from the dungeon down to L:2.



Adolph just loses his temper with this agate snail, stabbing at it until the corpse is riddled with holes. Berserkitis hasn't been an issue yet, but as soon as we find a cMut potion, we're chugging it.



We put one of our newly memorized spells to good use. Freezing cloud just requires line of sight and for there to be no other cloud at the spot targeted. It contours to the area that you cast it on, so you always get about 9 spaces.



This allows us to force the frogs to walk through freezing vapours before they can get to us. The other new spell, sublimation of blood, is a way of converting meat to MP, either chunks of raw flesh or your own health. The latter can do some damage to you, but can't kill you, it just reduces your current HP and refills some of your MP. A good emergency button but one that we don't want to press.



We kill more blink frogs to get to 12, granting us +1 int, +1 Str, and +1 AC.



The Snake Pits, guarded by a few Naga who, like us, can see invisible, are poison resistant, move slow, and can spit poison.



A book of power shows up, so we memorize the first spell, IMB. IMB is a very strong spell that's rather easy to cast, we'll be using it to take out things that're tougher than magic dart can deal with, but don't quite require bolt of cold. Every spell in this book is good at what it does and books of power are basically the best mid-game find for a Cj caster. We'll probably know 2-3 spells out of this book by the end.



We also find the swamp just to the east of the snake pit entrance. Fuck the swamp, it's full of water and vampire mosquitoes and bog mummies and swamp drakes. It sucks, but it's probably the easiest of the lair branches, so I usually do it first when I'm building up to the realm of Zot.





'Nuff Said.



Vehumet grants us a Book of Annihilations, these spells are not messing around, and this book is serious about annihilating. You can't even understand the book if you don't worship Vehumet or have at least a decent investment in spellcasting and Cj. Also, don't fail memorization attempts from this tome, it'll get pretty angry.



A book of Wizardry, also a bunch of good spells, with one being arguably the best in the game, haste. Haste speeds all of your actions by 50%, a pretty big deal. Unfortunately, it's at 99% failure rate, so we won't be casting it for a bit.



Gastronok is a formidable enemy who loves to airstrike you, don't levitate or fly around him! He's still a slug, so we drop freezing clouds on him and let him freeze to death.



Really, this spell is amazing. We cast FC in front of the yaks, then on them, so they died.



We hit 13 and also find some really cool oklob plants chilling out. We'll come back for them because they can't see invisible.



I'm having flashbacks, hopefully we fare better than Testy. We drop down to D:12 and I immediately magic map then walk south to a stair-up.



Nessos is a very nasty unique with poisoned, flaming arrows. I decide the best course of action is to blink to the stairs up, and go, hoping for the best. This was actually a bad idea because if the stairs up was really bad I might be in a pickle, but I've got a few more ways out. We made it out just fine though and the trip back up is uneventful.



Maurice likes to steal from you then blink/go invis/teleport. I kill him quick to prevent any shenanigans.



Urug is a pretty good orc unique, he can be tough if he catches you off-guard or weak, but he's not too bad if he has your undivided attention. He comes with javelins every time, and can throw them pretty hard. Later, we find a book of beasts, so we could get a few summoning spells but we're stretched thin skill-wise right now, so we don't.



We've returned to d:12 and killed Nessos with little issue, then we find this. I've never been as lucky in my normal playthroughs as these LP games in regards to acquirement scrolls. So, I guess that's up for vote, but Armour is off-limits, we're doing something else this time. That uh, giant centipede is dead now, so don't worry about him.



An armour shop, but it only has one good thing (a +0 large shield) so we skip over anything right now. We'll want to use that large shield later.



I didn't recognize this vault, but knowledge bots did. Once I saw a lightning ball, the results of “conjure ball lightning,” I freaked for a second till I remembered that they were really just nastier versions of giant spores. Insubstantial wisps are pretty easy at this point for us, and they never seem to really want to fight, but we decide to skip this vault for the time being, presumably the stuff inside is meaner than exploding lightning. Knowledge Bots apparently agree with this decision.



D:13 is a nightmare, full of crap. We kill Josephine but some of the undead that were handing around her (a seven-headed hydra zombie and his skeletal brother, namely) give us some trouble. We use a newly-memorized “Dispel Undead” to make them easier to deal with. Dispel undead does large amounts of damage to undead creatures, but we can only cast it 6-7 times from full magic. It's good, but we're almost better off with IMB against them right now, though that'll soon change.



There is this really cool shop with neat weapons that aren't worth their gold cost for us, though we will have to remember the rElec hammer if we're desperate.



Erolcha is also on this level, she's an ogre mage and has a penchant for banishing promising characters of mine so I kill her as fast as possible.



This is only one of a pack of Yaktaurs that stalked the DL, they spawned in a strange vault and we had a hard time with them as they filled us with holes.



D:14 holds promise, or something. More like it holds potential for a bunch of eels.

We've got quite a few spellbooks now and are only missing ~4 spells that we'd want to have access to, one of which is blink. I'd also like Repel/Deflect missiles to help with later yaktaur packs, but the shield will go a long way in that department. So, decide if you'd like the acquirement scroll stashed or used (if so, what on) and tell me what spells you'd like to see in general. After this character is done, I'll do one or two updates with a “what-if” version of Adolph where I show off some spells we didn't use so much, so don't fret too much that we'd have some difficulty with fire spells right now or whatever.