Part 34: Matchstick, MuWz - Eight

Update 8: Journey Through Undeath



Picking up from where we left off in the Crypt, I make a decision to at least attempt the Tomb. So let's go into the To-


Oh fuck you Crawl. This was brought up in the thread, but with two entrances, one of them was a mimic. I considered it at the time, but since they placed it in a perfect replica of an entrance, I wasn't certain. Now I am.


In the Tomb of the Ancients for real now. The Tombs has a generally consistent layout, making it easy to run through and avoid over half the difficulty if you know where to go. I do know, but in the interest of showing off all of it for the LP (and because I don't have the spells necessary to cheese the area outright), we'll take the long way. I will say no matter what you do here, Tombs is still very difficult.


Tombs is unsurprisingly full of Mummies of all kinds. It also has a bunch of sphinxes at the bottom end of the first floor, guarding the main entrance.


Mapping it out as a general view of what this place looks like for those who haven't seen it yet. Tombs is artificially increased in length, as you'll soon see. There's two main segments on Tomb 1, and Tomb 2.


The first main section of Tomb 1 is this main room. Filled with Mummies. Oh boy. I put on sustain abilities hoping in vain that it would stop mummy death stat drains. It doesn't. I pull a few at a time, then retreat back around the corner of the entrance to fight them a couple at a time. a loud spell like fire storm would pull the entire segment to me, which is something I'd rather avoid this early.


Eventually, I get to exploring the side passages, finding nothing of real value.


I also find more Mummies. Sick of them yet? I hope not.


An example of what I was doing the whole time. Just moving back here so they come around the corner 1-2 at a time. Easier to finish them off at that point with bolt of fire, bolt of iron, or mystic blast.


Path to Tomb 2 found, but I'm not done yet.


NO. Fuck you Crawl, I beat you at your game! I scroll ID'ed Holy Word, which is good, because it would nearly kill me if read. On living characters, this is a hilarious way to break some of the difficulty of this area.


Welcome to Tomb 2! Enjoy a swarm!


A decent sized swarm! Three greater mummies, two mummy priests, and a couple skeletons summoned by greater mummies? Not that easy to deal with.


And this isn't helping much, since I'm now getting surrounded.


Stairdancing solves a lot of problems though. Heavily enhanced dispel undead solves just as many.


Still stairdancin'.


That's better. 1383 turns later, and I've cleared a single room of Tomb 2. This is part of what makes Tombs so difficult. This is not that simple as it is with me having effectively unlimited MP from Sif. Greater mummies and mummy priests hurt with physical attacks. They both smite. The greater mummies summon, which adds more damage to you. You can very easily be taken out by attrition simply because you think a fight is nearly over, and you burn the last of your MP, only to have another wave of mummies appear to kill you off.


And just when you thought it was over, Tomb 2 takes half the ossuary layouts and amplifies it. I have 10 traps and doors skill at this point, so I can find these. But if you just try running to one of these rooms, you could end up dead running into one and getting nailed by an unseen trap.


Magic mapping Tomb 2, you can see the two segments. The large chamber in the middle and the southern half of the side rooms, and then the path that'll end up being from the central northern chamber to either the east or west to get to Tomb 3.


And Zot traps show up for good measure. Again, just in case you pick one of these rooms to try and bottleneck mummies through.


Going back upstairs to Tomb 1 to be greeted by a greater mummy right off the bat. We now have a long winding passage back to the other side to go back downstairs.


And it won't be a quick trip. The quality of mummies is only increasing, now almost all are greater or guardian mummies. Or both in a nice cluster.


So close... So close to having the shield skill I need.


Tomb is great for one thing. Because of the sheer quantity of high quality mummies, experience comes in droves. At this point, fire magic has hit 21, conjurations is now 20, and shields is on it's way to 15.


Yeah, sustain abilities has done nothing, and now everything is cursed to me, so no point in trying to get it off.


There is nothing terrible about reaching 22 fire magic game, stop being silly.


Bolt of fire still has a strong showing here, and the phantasmal warrior helps give me cover to deal some damage to the mummy.


Well, this group sucks somewhat. If only I had a way to deal with it...


Hmm... I wonder what could solve this...




I love Fire Storm. My favourite spell in the game. A massive blast of partially unresistable damage, smite targeted, that leaves flame clouds and friendly fire vortices? Yes please.


Now, imagine what we just went through again for reaching the western staircase on Tomb 2 to get ready for Tomb 3. Also, I finally reached 15 shields, so that's more exp being fed into fire magic and conjurations.


First: Note the turn. Second: Welcome to Tomb 3. You will possibly die here. Oh sure, it looks fine, and I take out this wave with little difficulty...


Then this shows up.


THIS IS A TERRIBLE PLAN DON'T EVER DO THIS


Oh God, I've just poked the hornet's nest.


Alright, get some MP back, head back down...


OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.


I start stairdancing. I've quite fully pulled every single mummy to the stairs. Sure, most are just guardian mummies. For now. It doesn't get better. Any amount of noise more or less causes this, and you never quite recover from the first time you realize just how many mummies there are down here.


Then, having lost over half my strength and a good chunk of my intelligence, I use the mummy ability I got at level 13 to burn one permanent MP to regain stats immediately. This probably won't last.


Also a great plan, stairdance into a controlled blink away into casting firestorm on those guys. (controlled blink with -cTele leads to a semicontrolled blink where you only pick direction.)


IT.


NEVER.


ENDS!


Oh. I guess it does. That is the hardest part of the Tombs, maybe even the majority of the game. I'll repeat myself, Tombs is not easy. You can remove part of the challenge with Lee's Rapid Deconstruction or Shatter at the top right corner of Tomb 1. This lets you bypass that massive room on Tomb 1, and also avoids the massive room you enter at Tomb 2. You still have to deal with this bullshit on Tomb 3, but that's still about half the area ignored.


Killing a mummy slows me, and leaves me close to a guardian mummy. A bad situation resolved with repeated fire storms. I'm so glad it's mostly castable.


Sif gives me a spell I love using, even if it isn't the best spell ever. Malign Gateway summons an eldritch tentacle from another plane. It attacks with a chaos branded strike, and can even paralyze, leaving the enemy open to more chaos attacks. Eventually the rift it comes from closes, leaving this writhing tentacle very angry on your side of the rift, where it attacks anything in range. Even you.

It's fun to throw down at the entrance to the Elf end vault, then run away and let it rip through a crowd.


For those wondering where all the mummies came from, here and the other side is a good part of the answer. These rooms are normally filled with mummies. I woke them ALL with that first fire storm. You can technically sneak in, grab the rune in the main chamber, and get out, but where's the heart racing fun of that?


Other side of the treasure chambers.


And there she is. The fourth rune for Matchstick is the Golden Rune of Zot. 3178 turns passed from me entering Tomb 3 to me even seeing the Rune. Three THOUSAND turns of setting mummies on fire, running upstairs in fear, and setting more mummies on fire.

Matchstick has a smug look on his face behind the bandages as he remembers a time HE was afraid of fire.


Oh my. That is a NICE find. rMut prevents me from getting rotted instead of mutated (as undead can't get mutations, and instead rot away), and Int+5 is never unwanted.


That... that is a wonderful sight.


All that red. It'll get cleared up next time, but there you go. Another issue of Tombs. The basic mummies make it very difficult to swap weapons as a melee character for when you run into harder foes. You essentially need to prepare to use only one set of items, or have a boatload of remove curse scrolls.


Coming along nicely here. Very nicely.

Next time!

Slime Pits! Hell's Gateway! The Abyss! All of these!