Part 45: Tuna Taint - Six

Update 6: Hot Stuff, Cold Heart, Same Old

When I last left off, I'd just cleared myself from penance, liberated a volcano, and set my bardiche on fire (and myself in the process). This turns out to be rather appropriate.



Given how I've lost all of my allies, and none of them would follow me in and out of a volcano, I convert the nearby lair fungi to wandering mushroom sidekicks. They don't all have to come from corpse fungus that I've prayed up. It's a good thing I do, too, as I soon encounter a hydra, which I lure past my mushroom friends before attacking with my flaming bardiche. Friendly reminder: wandering mushrooms do not move when an enemy is in sight, so you'll need to lure the enemy past them. My two mushrooms put a sizable dent in the hydra and happen to confuse it. Between my shrooms and reaching flaming polearm, I kill it without taking a single hit, stylishly decapitating and cauterizing it in the process.


Here I encounter a lovely swamp drake, with its noxious breath. Unfortunately, I am not immune to mephitic clouds, but my mushrooms are. This time, I actually pay attention to what is going on, and avoid getting any further Fedhas penance.



While exploring Lair 6 and Lair 7, I find two altars to Jivya. Normally quite rare when you actually want one, and crowded with deadly oozes when you don't, this time they're uninhabited. I'm still planning on running with Fedhas, but this opens up a couple options in case I end up horribly, horribly mutated with Herbivore 3, the bane of all Fedhas worshippers, or am feeling silly.


Here, I get brutally mauled by a zot trap that unleashes some very powerful freezing clouds, centered over my lower wandering mushroom. This actually is a lot more dangerous than usual, thanks to being triggered in a corridor, i'm a lot further from safety than usual.



Pugnacious Pachyderms. These guys are a lot more dangerous than most of the guys I've been poisoning so far. They have 51-82 health, two attacks, and enough HD to make mephitic cloud unreliable for an entire pack. Toxic radiance doesn't help nearly as much as it used to, clearly we're nearing the end of its shelf life. I'll continue to abuse it the orcish mines, but I'll probably unmemorize it by the time I hit the Vaults. For now, Venom Bolt contributes to the fight, but even then I have to pull back and let my shrooms take point once more. In an attempt to prevent them from going down quickly to an egregious elephant encounter, I lob in a mephitic cloud. It may not be perfect, but it does buy me and my shrooms enough time to come eliminate my enemies.




I kicked off the lair with a volcano, and now I finish with an ice cave. One subtle difference between the first two images: a staff of cold. It has been said before, but it bears repeating: most portal vaults are on a two-stage timer. Once you spot the portal itself, the countdown speeds up dramatically. If you spot the tileset before spotting the portal, you have more of a chance to prepare. It was a bit of a gamble, but I had enough time to travel to Lair:4 and grab a staff of cold I'd ditched previously. With this source of resistance, a flaming bardiche, and a wand of fireball, I feel daring enough to take it on. Since I know that I can't bring allies in with me, I haul in one of the fresh bodies in order to make new friends.


After ditching my potions near the gate and killing off several ice beasts, I approach the final chambers. Even without wielding the staff of cold, the freezing clouds are a lot less dangerous than they were with that Zot trap. Unlike some scrawny elf, I have over one hundred health, and regenerating troll leather. I only need to travel two tiles, not three to reach safety, thanks to all the open space around me.

The wand of fireball ends up surprisingly useless. I don't have a huge evocations bonus, or the spellpower boost I'd have casting it as a spell rather than from a wand. You're better off saving fireball wands for bees, wasps, vampire mosquitoes and the like. Ice statues have 70 health, and there are much fewer charges on this one wand than I would have guessed. I'm not even able to take one down.

I'm not willing to give up, however. I use my wand of invisibility and staff of cold in order to get within polearm distance of each statue, and take them down one at a time. Since the ice statues are already alert and have an area attack, I still take some damage, but it is enough to let me get in, crush some ice, and get out where I can heal. Each one that goes down makes the rest easier.


My loot this time is much more interesting - a pitted demon trident. This turns out to be the +0,+5 demon trident of Untruth {pain, +Blink, +Lev, rF+}. My necromancy options are limited because of a lack of books and a Fedhas' restrictions on spells that circumvent the normal cycle of life and death, but it is worth keeping in mind. Pain is a powerful brand and I can still use several spells such as the wonderful regeneration. On the other hand, evocable blink and levitation are both handy to have, and I can now handle lava without having to waste slots on potions or rings. If I hadn't stumbled across the three potions of experience earlier on, I would have probably been using this and a shield instead of my flaming bardiche. I only have twenty skill, so the demon trident is faster and about five points more accurate. I'll probably be ignoring it except for corrosive monsters unless I find an exceptional shield, but I'll try both out. The bardiche may turn out to be inaccurate overkill, we'll see.


In the end, I decide to pass on Lair:8. Not only are the stairs rather close to that pack of death yaks, I manage to forget that Fedhas doesn't protect allies from resistable wands, which are not projectiles. I am once more walking fertilizer. With my flaming bardiche, I look like nothing more than a flaming bag of poop on god's doorstep. Fortunately, Toxic Radiance should allow me to clear a couple floors of the Orcish Mines rather easily and regain his divine favor.