Part 14: Distractions

Last time on Heroes...


Pretty much the wussiest vampire in modern gaming. It's OK though, Rodney will more than make up for it.

Chapter 14 - Distractions


When you get the candelabrum, take out your 7 candles (you did remember to get them in Minetown, right?) and attach them, before you forget.




Finally, got something out of a throne. This lets me genocide a single monster, as per an uncursed scroll of genocide.



Fuck mind flayers. This was a pretty easy choice. If I'd already genocided h, my next choice would probably be disenchanters, since there's too many ; to use an uncursed genocide on.


Back to Orcus Town to BUC test my stuff. It's always a good idea to identify your invocation items (Bell of Opening, candelabrum, Book of the Dead), since they need to be uncursed in order to perform the invocation. I also find that my potion of gain level is uncursed - I'll probably curse this one for later.

Moving down through Gehennom...


I love it when this happens.


Uh, whoops. That was stupid.


Well, that isn't too bad either.


Looks like we've found one of the Fake Wizard's Towers. There's two of them in Gehennom - one has a portal which leads to the Wizard's Tower, the other does not. Just zap a wand of digging in and cross the moat to get in.


Looks like this is the other one. Instead of a portal, it has a randomly generated amulet where the portal would be. Let's go find the other one.



I hate mind flayers. Looks like this one's looking for a bit of revenge.


Hey, another wand of polymorph. Think I'll try and get myself a ring of conflict.


I dropped all my rings in piles back there and zapped them with a wand of cancellation to uncurse them.


You want to put your objects in piles of 4 or less to avoid system shock, which can destroy the items you're trying to polymorph. Unfortunately, no matter what precautions you take, you'll invariably lose items to system shock anyway.

I continue to polypile rings until I run out of charges, using the not-so-scientific method of "put on the ring and listen for sounds of conflict". Don't really have any scrolls of identify to spare. I didn't seem to find conflict, which is unfortunate. Oh well, I still have time.


Awesome.

I'm getting a bit tired of mapping all of Gehennom by hand. One big problem is that without magic mapping, I have no way of knowing which is the lowest level of Gehennom. I could always try and dig down at each level and see if I can dig through, but there's an easier way.


There's a ton of level teleport traps all over Gehennom. Thankfully magic resistance has been protecting me from them.


But in this case, I think I'm going to trigger it. Made sure to put my ring of teleport control on.


You can #sit on a trap to activate it. Works on all other teleportation traps and portals.


Clearly, there is no level 99 in Nethack.


Instead, it will deposit me as close as it can to level 99, which is the lowest level of Gehennom. This is the Vibrating Square level, and now we need to start the ever-so-fun process of finding the vibrating square. You can't detect it by magic mapping or crystal ball or anything, you just need to walk around the level until you find it. Fortunately, there's a few restrictions - the vibrating square must be:

code:

    * in a corridor (not in a wall)
    * at least five squares from the side of the map
    * at least four squares from the top or bottom of the map
    * not within a circle of eleven squares radius around the upstair
    * not in a straight line with the upstair
    * not on the same square as a trap

Any little bit helps.


Well, that only took 600 turns, but I finally found it.



You can drop the bell and the candelabrum, since you won't need them until you perform the invocation ritual.

Hiro has now finished his journey to the deepest known part of Gehennom. Now he must travel back up to battle the Wizard of Yendor. Who will emerge triumphant?! Find out next time on Chapter 15 - Run!.

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