Part 42: Tuna Taint - Three

The continued adventures of Tuna Taint: Part Three

Also known as: Yes, the game is out to get you.

This update ended a bit earlier than I expected, but there's quite a lot to cover.



I begin my adventure by going into the ossuary from the previous update. Rather than stick around to mess with them, I pray the undead flesh away . I'm now able to call down Sunshine, but I really don't like my odds, so I head to the portal out to the east.


Unfortunate for me, a worker ant is waiting just outside. I can easily manage to kill one of these guys, but I finish the battle a little worse for the wear since I can't kite while the poison kicks in. I rest up and continue to explore.


Unfortunately for me, this reveals a hound, yet another enemy I can't kite, and an upcoming pack of orcs. While pulling into the corridor for safety, I get an unpleasant surprise. The orc is carrying a wand of Polymorph Other, and I get hit by one of the worst mutations: You feel sluggish.

Let me repeat that, You feel sluggish. I now cover ground slowly. Take something as awesome as the boots of running or swiftness, and apply the exact opposite. To a venom mage, whose entire schtick is poisoning something and running away. And don't throw in any of the related benefits a Cheibriados worshipper or Naga gets.

But no, instead I use a combination of Mephitic Cloud abuse, Sting, and Toxic Radiance to kill these guys. Note that even with a ring of power I can burn through a lot of my magic when I don't have magic on kills (vehumet) or channeling (sif) or sublimation of blood (kiku). I almost breathe a sigh of relief here.


When that was just about wrapped up, and Orc Warrior decided to join the party. And along the line of retreat to explored territory. Through some judicious Mephitic cloud use I managed to make it here, where I'm next to this lovely orc priest, without enough magic for another Mephitic Cloud. Instead I read random unknown scrolls. I have a lot of unknown scrolls, all at a count of one. I find blink earlier, but then I find magic mapping, and then a desperate, desperate chance. I blink down the unexplored staircase to the bottom right, something I try never to do (leave myself without an escape route.


Safe. For now. No going back up, however. I rest up to full first thing, of course. But then I decide to take stock of my lovely new mutation of COVER GROUND SLOWLY. I decide to go quaff-id in the hopes of cure mutation or even mutation, in the hopes that they overwrite my new trait. I mean, sure things can get worse, but I'm already screwed. How much worse can they get?'



Well I'll be damned. That stack of two potions? Cure fucking mutations. I have one to drink now and another to spare. I immediately drop that spare on the ground, I really don't want it to get shattered by a cold attack. More likely than a jelly eating it, at least.



Now that I'm fully healed up, I head back upstairs with mephitic cloud VERY ready to be cast. Conveniently enough, nothing picked up that wand of polymorph other and I can snatch it for myself. Now that I have some peace and quiet, I decide to take care of something I skipped to enter the ossuary and the rush to stay alive afterwards. Mushbros. I pray to get toadstools, then spend a little piety and magic to evolve a toadstool into a friendly wandering mushroom.



And it is a very, very good thing I do, too. What do I come across but an orc priest and an orc warrior with a wand of invisibility. I barely travel even half dozen steps.






It turns out in the stress of everything I forget a few things. First of all, Toxic Radiance cannot effect invisible monsters. Second, I now have Sunlight. I make the mistake of casting Toxic Radiance and Mephitic Cloud first, before I remember sunlight. If I had been a little more cool and collected, the proper course of action here would have been to immediately sunlight the orc warrior, mephitic cloud him and the priest, apply toxic radiance, then flee like a little mermaid. I still win the day, just a lot less elegantly than I could have.



In the end, I just get clear long enough to hide behind my ShroomBros and let them handle things while I pick away with Sting and a trident. If I applied Mephitic Cloud, I wouldn't have enough magic to properly kill the warrior, and nowhere real comfortable to run to.


Your buds, being plants, are also immune to poison, which is quite convenient for my good friend Mephitic Cloud. However, this is one of the stupider things I could have done here, for reasons which I'll cover shortly

Not only do wandering mushrooms hit surprisingly hard for such a cheap, permanent ally, but they also have a confuse attack, which in this case renders mephitic cloud entirely unnecessary, and in fact, detrimental. Why? Because Mephitic Cloud is fucking loud and will attract and wake monsters from quite a distance. It is as loud as Fireball, even.






Yes, repeated Mephitic Cloud use does tend to attract monsters and uniques to your position, why do you ask?

I won't cover the wonder twins Dowan and Duvessa in much detail, because Venom Mages are pretty damn good at neutering both before they have a chance to showcase their unique feature. Well, as long as I have some magic left in my pool, which isn't a given with the way things have been going despite my ring of power. Dowan and Duvessa both go down. It could have gone worse, of course. In fact, I expected it to.




I pick up my last spell, Venom Bolt, even though I can't cast it reliably yet, and tweak my experience training by focusing on polearms while devaluing spellcasting. While looking over my skills, I decide I really don't need much more invocations.

This has gone a lot less smoothly than I predicted, so I decided enough Dungeon Crawling at 2 AM. Time to take my survival and save the game. I've taken 43 screenshots for less than one and a half floors.

Fedhas and you
Fedhas Madash is the god of plants and fungus. He is pretty easy to get along with as long as you stay away from spells that prevent corpses from decaying properly, like Sublimation of Blood, Animate Dead. Oh, and don't ever attack (or polymorph) your allied shrooms, you'll go into penance, even if you're confused. If you're confused, it is is even worse, and it is really best just to sit there doing nothing.

• Prayer. Prayer decomposes almost all corpses in view (there are occasional issues when someone is standing on the corpse) and places a short-lived toadstool in their place. If the corpse is big enough, it can even sprout multiple toadstools. These toadstools are short lived, neutral, and entirely passive. They can block for you, but they've only got 2-4 health. Since they're neutral, you suffer no piety hit when they die (unless you do it yourself). You'll generally ignore them, but from time to time you'll be converting one or two a wandering mushroom. Sometimes there are pathing issues, as demonstrated in
  
  It can also decay zombies and certain other undead (ghouls, primarily) into skeletal forms (or barring an underlying skeleton, true death), as mentioned before. Finally, it's worth remembering this ability on the rare occasion you run into a necromancer or skeletal warrior and want to prevent them from raising corpses from the dead.
  
  
• You can walk through plants and fire through allied plants.
  
  Although you can walk through plants, your wandering mushrooms (or any other allies) cannot. The toadstool will disappear soon enough, just rest up and refill your magic and health. While you can normally swap places with one of your wandering mushrooms, if you're standing on a toadstool, they cannot swap positions with you. If you ever get trapped by this in a corner, the easiest thing to do is to Tell them to Wait Here. They'll wander off from their tight formation, and you can get yourself out of your trap. Or, simply rest until the toadstools disappear.
  
  The rules for firing through allied plants are something I'm not familiar with for all casters, to be honest. The game will properly warn you when you're potentially going to hurt an ally, pay attention. I do know that venom bolt, stone arrow, iron shot, lee's rapid disintegration, etc are all perfectly safe. I'm not so confident about bolt of fire, fireball, bolt of lightning. Crossbows, slings, bows are all fine, of course.
  
  
• You can induce evolution.
  
  One thing people often get caught up is that this ability requires either Fruit OR Piety, not both. Piety to transform fungus into an allied wandering mushroom, fruit to transform a plant into an allied Oklob. I often like to inscribe fruit with {=e}, this prevents me from accidentally eating it. You can use natural plants for either of purposes, if they're available. It is just that prayer and one other ability makes them available everywhere.
  
  For the moment, I'll only be covering Wandering Mushrooms. These creatures are often initially frustrating due to their quirks, but once you get used to them they are the best thing ever before the end of lair.
  
  1. These guys stop moving when an enemy comes into view. If you're used to summons surrounding and taking down your enemies, you're in for an unpleasant surprise. There's no problem luring an enemy back to them if you need the help, however. On the plus side, they don't steal your kills all the time and you don't have to worry about attrition on every random roach that gets in your way.
     
  2. These guys have a good amount of health, but they can only hit an enemy eight times before they die. If they die in this fashion, you don't get a piety hit. If they die due to being attacked, you'll only feel a little guilty and won't go into penance.
     
  3. These guys do an incredible 20 damage confuse attack, though their accuracy varies. Two or three of these guys can easily handle a hydra if you line them up properly. They can also help handle several uniques or a lone orc warrior/knight. Once you see them handle a hydra, you'll be shocked at how incredibly poorly they handle yak packs and the orcish mines. Because these guys do not move when an enemy is in sight, they do very poorly at handling a group of enemies in the open. They just won't fill the gap.
     
  4. They're pretty cheap, but for the reasons outlined above, having more than two-three shrooms out at a time is generally a complete waste of piety. You can regularly have a few die while still gaining piety, but having eight or twelve die causes your piety to plummet. And they WILL die, since they won't retreat and they'll invariably have a broken formation which the enemy can pick off at their leisure.
     
  5. At some point in the early game, you WILL get confused by a monster with a spell or wand of confusion. Make absolutely sure not to attack a nearby wandering mushroom, you will get put in penance, and you won't like the effects of being out of Fedhas favor next to a monster with a confuse attack. If you cannot or willnot quaff a curing potion, just wait out the turns.
  
  
• You can call sunshine
  
  Similar to Corona, this affects an area and is unresistable. Since the status is applied to the enemies, this helps all your attacks, be they trident, inaccurate giant spiked club, thrown large rock, or innaccurate Lehudib's Crystal Spear. Because it affects an area it is also very good at revealing invisible enemies. Most significantly, it can evaporate water, allowing non-amphibious or flying players to do some interesting things and also retrieve items that became submerged. Finally, it has a very low chance to create a plant, but I never remember seeing this happen.
  
  
• Growth
  You can use fruit to create a ring of plain, normal plants to your specifically desired number. Each one will use up a valuable piece of fruit, however. Note that you still have to spend a second piece of fruit if you want to evolve them into Oklobs. For this reason, if you only need a little fire support it can pay to find a natural one and evolve that instead, saving half the cost.
  

Quiet down, you punks
Many players only think about noise when they're playing a stabber, and then only their stealth score. However, it can often pay for even a plate armour wearing, zero stealth berserker to pay attention to how much noise they're making. The specifics are a bit obscure, but there are some helpful things to remember.

1. Shouts travel just a bit further than normal vision radius. If you're aware of a nasty sleeping centaur you can sometimes draw them into attack range without exposing yourself.
   
2. Humanoid monsters may chain shouts. If Orc A sees you and shouts, he may wake up Orc B who you cannot see. Orc B may even shout and draw a few more monsters into the mess. If you hear multiple shouts from monsters you can't all see, try pulling back a bit further than normal into a corridor, so you can see everything coming at you for a few turns, rather than seeing them just as they turn the corner adjacent to you.
   
3. Monster shouts do not actually convey your position to other enemies. Instead, they convey the position of the shouter. If you stand your ground and fight, this means absolutely nothing. If you fall back into explored territory and fight fairly quietly, this means the alerted monsters will head to the position of the shout, and then start wandering, looking for you. They won't actually know your position, so there is a good chance they'll look in another direction and you'll be able to have much smaller and manageable fights.
   
4. Along similar lines, Mephitic Cloud, Fireball, and Lee's Rapid Disintegration all convey the position where they explode. Not only are these spells incredibly loud (moreso than a shout, I believe), but the fact that they're generally cast quite far away from you means they'll draw a lot of enemies to your general position. Be careful.
   
5. Mephitic Cloud is entirely worth using, but pay attention to unexplored territory and your escape routes on a new floor. On a mostly cleared floor, it is pretty safe to use on a unique, but on a new floor, autoexplore's tendency to go haring off after loot means that you may be surrounded on three sides by unexplored territory. If you just came out of a corridor, you may even have unexplored territory to your rear. This means Mephitic Cloud can draw a metric shit-ton of enemies to your position, and cut off your retreat. It is especially dangerous to use on a staircase before you've explored around you. If you have to use it to kill a staircamping enemy, don't hang around any longer than you need to. Go down one of the other three guaranteed staircases instead. If you use it in the Orcish Mines (and who doesn't) don't step off the staircase until you've cleared a lot of everything. You don't want some jerk standing on the staircase.