Part 21

Sorry for killing my own thread yesterday

Good thing it's update time!!!

Last time, we got teleported into a small room with a warning not to get poisoned. OK, fine, I'll just not drink the potion

Holy shit. This is getting serious.

There are 3 teleporters in the room with us. Let's start with the left.

It leads out into a large room divided up by long, straight walls.

This is a venomous skitter. It's like a normal skitter, only purple. And venomous.

If a venomous skitter hits you, you get poisoned and have to spend a blue potion. This really sucks, so getting hit by one is a good reason to restore your last save if it wasn't too long ago. Fortunately, their shots move very slowly and do practically no direct damage, so once you get poisoned you have a good chance of clearing the level anyway by just running around, absorbing the odd hit here and there, and only spend the potion once you're sure you won't get poisoned again.

This is a greater nightmare. It's like a normal nightmare, only blue. And greater.

Greater nightmares are armor-plated so they can only be hurt by certain weapons- SABOT rounds for the AK-47, projectile and HE cartridges for the grenade launcher, and crystals. They also fire guided projectiles. Since you move so damn slowly it's impossible to avoid getting hit if one of the comes after you in an open area; you have to move behind a wall to lose it.

HE grenades are not supposed to be able to hurt greater nightmares; this is apparently a bug in the game. On the plus side, this saves us a lot of fussing around in the inventory switching between HE and projectile cartridges; on the minus side this makes projectiles absolutely useless. Greater nightmares hit a lot harder than venomous skitters and they make the whole "ignore being poisoned" thing a lot more difficult.

Exploring the big room, trying to not get poisoned as instructed.

Just in case we do get poisoned, there are 2 blue potions in this area.

Ghasts are now the "spawn randomly in cleared areas to come up and scare the shit out of you" monster.

And here's the second.

One-shot kills are good for when they get this close

The first half of Don't Get Poisoned. Two of the teleporters in the starting room lead here. We can go back and save now.

The middle teleporter takes us to a very similar room, only without a save point and with teleporters to the second half of the level.

The second large room is very much like the first...

..only with a violet potion in it.

And another blue potion.

I'm pretty much out of health now, so I retreat to the teleporter room and .

Back to clearing out the second room.

The second half of Don't Get Poisoned. There's a fancier, more blinged-out than usual teleporter to the south.

We step through and...

GACK

Sorry, reflex

A save rune right at the beginning of the level.

I didn't kill those dead monsters; they were like that when I got here. If the only way down here is through a teleporter, perhaps no mold or other decomposing organisms were ever brought down from the surface.

We're also only 102.5 meters down now. Way down, then way back up? Maybe we passed some sort of test.

This monster I did kill. This level is very similar to the previous, except with this much open space it's far easier to dodge.

Good thing too

Magical floating mystery fish doesn't know what the fuck!

Even more potions. Very, very similar to the previous level.

Even more similar.

The first half of Please Excuse Our Dust. I wonder where those teleporters go...

Deja vu.

Deja deja vu.

Deja deja deja vu.

De

I've gotten poisoned again by now, so this is a welcome sight.

So is this.

This is less so, but it can still be useful.

Most of the second half of Please Excuse Our Dust. As I pull up the map dialog to take this screenshot, I hear a greater nightmare shooting somewhere behind me. I have something like 0.7 health at this point. Can I make the teleporter before he nails me in the back?

We've dropped down to 327.7 meters down and finally found a level that breaks the pattern.

I've used two potions to unpoison myself, but this is still a pretty nice haul.

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