Part 6

OK, new update, this time hopefully without any naked women sneaking into the post. Wearing her new magic petticoats, DEATHBOT PRIM sets out to kill the mysterious General Zaroff.

The first interesting thing we encounter is a vault. (Our first vault, I believe!)



(Note that our AC here is 179. I'd thought that 'Defensive Array', another of our robot powers, 'only' gave us a wide variety of elemental resists, but it also apparently gives us a ridiculous boost to our AC. I only actually realized what was going on with my AC while I was going through the screenshots to put together this update - I'll have to use that ability more often!)

Inside the vault are no fewer than two uniques.





Neither of them are threats, of course (Ozmar doesn't even get a shot in before dying!), but they do drop some very nice loot. Behold:



These are a strict improvement over our old legs in every way, and the immunity to paralysis will be very nice, but most importantly, they give us another +5 speed, permanently. We're now moving at 310% speed in combat, and 210% speed normally. Ridiculous.

Our robot still has blind spots, unfortunately. For example, we have exactly 0 skill points invested in 'detect traps'.



Stumbling into summon traps like this one (or worse!) will be increasingly common from here on out.

We phase door out immediately:



And dispatch most of the summoned monsters without any particular difficulty, employing a combination of melee attacks and rocket barrages. Unfortunately, we underestimate one.



If you've been following TooMuchAbstraction's LP, you might recall him mentioning the Nexus para-element, which has all kinds of nasty effects ranging from 'heavy damage' to 'random teleport' to 'permanently cripple your character'. It's not called 'nexus' in steamband, but ether is the same thing, as far as I can tell, and it's still pretty nasty. We lose half our health in two shots before we get teleported across the map by a third.



I was overconfident because I'd killed the other summoned monsters without any particular difficulty, and, also, because I was playing a giant death robot. Won't make that mistake again!

We never do make it back to the side of the map where the Vapour Denizen lurked. Instead, we wander through a pair of inconsequential floors, encountering this unlikely unique:





and grabbing this.



Could come in handy, I imagine. (It's Angband's "stone to mud".)

Here's the effect of another trap, a spiked pit we stumble into:



Note the 'nasty leak'. That's one of the effects that Steamband added, if I recall; particularly nasty attacks can cause you to start bleeding profusely (or, if you're a robot, leaking). We take a few turns to patch ourself up with Repair Kit mechanisms (scrolls) before moving on.

One last unique for this level:





It's a fast enemy which does nothing but scream for help and spawn robots every turn. Definitely a threat that could get out of hand very quickly!

Luckily, it's more fragile than its friend-shaped robot buddies. We blast it to bit with rocket barrages, and then clean up the slow-moving allies it left behind.



Finally, we ascend to Level 36, where General Zaroff is waiting for us. He appears almost immediately, which I suspect is a factor of how Steamband implemented its unique-hunting quests. (Could be pretty frustrating otherwise - Angband levels are huge.) Then he opens fire!





Zaroff is fast, tough, powerful (those gunshots pack a punch!), and has a whole bag of tricks. He can blink, haste himself (as if he wasn't fast enough already!), and most annoyingly of all, summon traps all around the player. The combination means that it's tough to close with him.

We end up tossing rockets at him for a little while, but we have a limited number amount of SP to spend (especially considering that I want to save some for emergency healing), and he can keep shooting that pistol all day. Eventually, I decide to step on one of the traps that I know is to my right; how bad could it be?



Summon trap! And it pulls in, among other things, another unique.



I rig a mechanism and blink around the corner. (Probably would have been better to do that before stepping on the trap, but hindsight is always 20/20.)

This seems to do something odd to the enemy AI - Doctor Materialismus waits patiently around the corner while we finish dealing with General Zaroff and the other summons.



Turns out Zaroff was 8 levels out of depth. Nice!



Materialismus turns out to be kind of nasty - he has a punch which inflicts stun, which quickly compounds to 'heavy stun'. Unfortunately for him, he's alone and dies too quickly to KO us, but if he'd actually showed up for the earlier fight, that stun could have really caused some trouble for us!

Our final tally of loot from the expedition. A pile of garbage magic swords; one fur cloak:



Which wouldn't be remarkable, if our old cloak hadn't been (a) shit and (b) dissolved by acid some time ago;



and another 2 skill points.



Next up:



Killing whatever these guys are!