Memorable Highlights * The basic idea was pretty straightforward - use formicid's natural advantages to have a crossbow and large shield, and use stealth and dig to set situations up optimally so that I wouldn't need to flee, since haste, swiftness, berserk, blink, and teleportation were not options. I knew I wanted to use Dithmenos, primarily due to the stealth boost, shadow form as a panic button that might buy me another few turns, shadow mimic to increase offensive capacity, and bleed smoke as an aid in escape, if it came to that. The other reason I wanted to use Dithmenos was due to the documentation of shadow form being unclear - in various places, it read like the offensive penalty might only apply to spells and melee attacks. After having used it, I'm not sure if it made my crossbow attacks wimpier or not, as I didn't wind up using it much. * Getting started with this was really, really painful. I was originally doing arcane marksman for the head start on crossbows and I killed 47 of them before I made appreciable progress. Eventually, I gave up and went fighter, and and the early game was so much easier than I only died once before I ascended. Another thing that probably helped was deciding to use Okawaru in the early to mid game to load up on ammo (and maybe get some other nice gifts) with the intention of dumping him for Dithmenos later. * Most of the game was smooth sailing, thanks to stealth, antennae, and crossbows. Things got a little hairy when I dumped Okawaru, and I decided to grind out his penance by gaining a percentage point or two of experience, then waiting for 100 turns or so in a dead end for his punishment to hit. After doing this like a million times, he forgave me. * I got a bunch of bad mutations that on most characters would be terrible, but which could mostly be ignored by this character. I didn't find many potions of cure mutation, so I lived with them for most of the game. The only time that scrolls taking longer to read really mattered was with fear scrolls, since those were the only ones I was really reading in combat. I didn't cast any spells, so the -Int and spells being weaker didn't matter. Healing being worse was potentially quite bad, but wasn't a huge factor. Anyway, not having amulets of resist mutation in the game anymore makes dealing with mutations a lot more interesting. * I had reached the point where I had 2 runes and had to decide between doing Vaults:5 and Slime:6 when I had to stop playing for a few weeks. When I came back, after getting some good advice from friends, I decided to do Slime:6 and while it wasn't easy at all, it wasn't a huge deal. * Overall, I was quite happy with my equipment at the end of the game. For the last third or so, the +7 arbalest of velocity was incredibly good at killing things quickly. I felt like I was spamming crystal spear or something. I found a few nice artifact triple crossbows, but the one Okawaru game me was flame branded, and I found the +0 triple crossbow of Peace {speed, rF++} from Slime:6, which may have been a better choice than the arbalest, but those calculations are too opaque for me to know what the right choice was. The arbalest got the job done, anyway. On the topic of equipment, I made some +9 storm dragon armour that I found from a hide really early on, but replaced it with the plate I was wearing at the end for the resists once my stealth got high enough to make the switch worthwhile. * I spent a bunch of time after clearing Zot:5 digging the shortest path I could find from staircase to staircase on each floor, all the way to the exit. Consequently, the orb run was short and mostly uneventful. I didn't realize until I looked at the morgue after I escaped that the orb apparently gives you a huge hit to your stealth, since it was 1-2 pips away from full before I picked it up. That's good to remember.
* The basic idea was pretty straightforward - use formicid's natural advantages to have a crossbow and large shield, and use stealth and dig to set situations up optimally so that I wouldn't need to flee, since haste, swiftness, berserk, blink, and teleportation were not options. I knew I wanted to use Dithmenos, primarily due to the stealth boost, shadow form as a panic button that might buy me another few turns, shadow mimic to increase offensive capacity, and bleed smoke as an aid in escape, if it came to that. The other reason I wanted to use Dithmenos was due to the documentation of shadow form being unclear - in various places, it read like the offensive penalty might only apply to spells and melee attacks. After having used it, I'm not sure if it made my crossbow attacks wimpier or not, as I didn't wind up using it much.
* Getting started with this was really, really painful. I was originally doing arcane marksman for the head start on crossbows and I killed 47 of them before I made appreciable progress. Eventually, I gave up and went fighter, and and the early game was so much easier than I only died once before I ascended. Another thing that probably helped was deciding to use Okawaru in the early to mid game to load up on ammo (and maybe get some other nice gifts) with the intention of dumping him for Dithmenos later.
* Most of the game was smooth sailing, thanks to stealth, antennae, and crossbows. Things got a little hairy when I dumped Okawaru, and I decided to grind out his penance by gaining a percentage point or two of experience, then waiting for 100 turns or so in a dead end for his punishment to hit. After doing this like a million times, he forgave me.
* I got a bunch of bad mutations that on most characters would be terrible, but which could mostly be ignored by this character. I didn't find many potions of cure mutation, so I lived with them for most of the game. The only time that scrolls taking longer to read really mattered was with fear scrolls, since those were the only ones I was really reading in combat. I didn't cast any spells, so the -Int and spells being weaker didn't matter. Healing being worse was potentially quite bad, but wasn't a huge factor. Anyway, not having amulets of resist mutation in the game anymore makes dealing with mutations a lot more interesting.
* I had reached the point where I had 2 runes and had to decide between doing Vaults:5 and Slime:6 when I had to stop playing for a few weeks. When I came back, after getting some good advice from friends, I decided to do Slime:6 and while it wasn't easy at all, it wasn't a huge deal.
* Overall, I was quite happy with my equipment at the end of the game. For the last third or so, the +7 arbalest of velocity was incredibly good at killing things quickly. I felt like I was spamming crystal spear or something. I found a few nice artifact triple crossbows, but the one Okawaru game me was flame branded, and I found the +0 triple crossbow of Peace {speed, rF++} from Slime:6, which may have been a better choice than the arbalest, but those calculations are too opaque for me to know what the right choice was. The arbalest got the job done, anyway. On the topic of equipment, I made some +9 storm dragon armour that I found from a hide really early on, but replaced it with the plate I was wearing at the end for the resists once my stealth got high enough to make the switch worthwhile.
* I spent a bunch of time after clearing Zot:5 digging the shortest path I could find from staircase to staircase on each floor, all the way to the exit. Consequently, the orb run was short and mostly uneventful. I didn't realize until I looked at the morgue after I escaped that the orb apparently gives you a huge hit to your stealth, since it was 1-2 pips away from full before I picked it up. That's good to remember.
Reply
Leave a comment