DZKane's Storm Dwarf

Version 0.34: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

This article contains advice from other players, which may be subjective, outdated, inaccurate or ill-advised. Take advice as you see fit, and read at your own risk!

DCSS Mountain Dwarf Fighter of Qazlal

“I am the storm that approaches”

Introduction:

The purpose of this guide is to provide a guideline for players wanting to win a run of DCSS. My name is DZKane, and I will describe my strategy and provide reasoning for why I make these decisions during a run. This build is extended viable and can easily handle Zot 5 and beyond with decent play. As always, the greatest threat in Crawl is your own carelessness, but hopefully this guide will provide you with the knowledge and insight required to complete your own run. Here is the proof I completed this myself:

Start:

We will begin by selecting mountain dwarf (hereby abbreviated as MD) and the class fighter (abbreviated as Fi). We choose fighter because MD are somewhat predisposed to be melee combatants, with good aptitudes for fighting, weapons, armor and shields. The starting weapon of choice will be axes. I find that axes provide the most consistent performance for melee characters at the start. This will put you at D1, the first floor of the Dungeon with a war axe, a buckler, scale mail and 2 potions of might. Immediately, before doing anything else, set your skill training to manual, using m then pressing / on the keyboard. Next set skill targets using =, then pressing enter on a skill and entering the desired target skill level. For this run, we will set axes to 18, armor to 18, and shield to 15. This will be important later, but for now, press enter again on axes to set a high priority for the skill, change the + to a * in the interface. Disable armor and shield, leaving fighting and axes turned on. It should look like this:

Early game, the most important factor for survival is the ability to kill foes quickly and reduce the amount of time they can hit you as much as possible. High skill in axes and decent skill in fighting will increase your accuracy and damage to the point where most things before lair should die very quickly. The best defense is a good offense, at least early. D1 should be quite easy to complete, just press o and tab any enemies that appear, you are very unlikely to die, and even if you do it is a quick restart. Your war axe is better than almost any starting weapon in the dungeon. Do not replace your war axe with anything that isn’t another enchanted war axe or broad axe. Hand axes are bad, deceptively so. For a hand axe to be better than your starting war axe, it must be +5 or greater enchanted. An early branded hand axe can help you through D1-D7 but falls off quickly afterwards. I’d personally recommend not switching to a broad axe if you find one until about skill level 12. The broad axe is very good but also somewhat inaccurate without sufficient skill. Another thing to do is change your auto-pickup setting using \ and make sure you are picking up darts. Darts will be useful throughout the early and mid-game and can be easily used without any skill in throwing. If you want, you can set throwing to 2 to increase the accuracy and likelihood of status effects being applied, but this is not required. However, any heavy armor and shields you find in the dungeon should be worn regardless of skill. Chainmail is better than your starting armor, and so is plate. Wear plate if you can. If you find an item with sufficient enchantment levels, it can be better than a +0 plate or chainmail. Just check the AC rating and if it increases, it is a good piece. Do not wear leather or robes for resistance. It is not worth the loss of AC, and it is better to mitigate early weakness with rings or potions that you might find. Equip the best shield you can find. Early on it is quite rare to find a good shield, but an early kite or tower shield can greatly increase your defense. Do not be tempted to start training armor and shields early. We will do this once our offense is sufficient. Do not train dodging. It is a complete waste of EXP for us. We will be in heavy armor and have a -3 apt. in dodging. All your defense will be from AC and SH. Dodging is something we might get from rings of evasion or artefacts, but not something to work towards. Stealth is also irrelevant. We will eventually be worshiping Qazlal, whose passive effect creates so much noise that pretty much any creature will know you are there. This is fine. We will eventually be so mighty that only the strongest foes could possibly threaten us.

Early Game:

I am going to classify early-game as everything before you enter the Lair. Most would consider early-game as before you reach the ecumenical temple and find your god, but it is possible for the god you want to appear anywhere between D3-D10 of the Dungeon as its own individual shrine. We want Qazlal the Stormbringer. Accept no substitutes. You may be tempted by a faded altar, but it has random gods, and even if it has Qazlal on it as an option, it is not worth the gamble. Qazlal is an essential part of this strategy and will serve you well throughout the entire game. Try to save your scrolls of weapon branding and enchantment for a broad axe later. Use armor scrolls on auxillary armor pieces as you feel necessary, and otherwise try to save them for a tower shield and artifact chest piece later.

Order:

The recommended order to complete floors is D1-D11, Lair, D12, Orcish Mines, D13-D15, One S branch to floor 3 (Shoals, Swamp, Spider, Snake), the other S branch to floor 3, do floor 4 of each S branch, then Elf if you have relec and rfire to floor 2 (Don’t go to floor 3), Vaults 1-4. At this point you can decide if you have sufficient resistances and strength to go get the 3rd rune at Vaults 5 or Slime. This build should be able to do either easily.

Tactics:

Now that you understand the overview of Dungeon progression, we will be talking about D1-D11 specifically. This is where most player deaths that happen are due to bad RNG. Later deaths are often due to poor decision making. Your potions and scrolls will be unidentified, skills are low, and overall options will be lacking to tackle encounters. This is the part of the game where it is often better to walk away from a bad fight (numerous enemies, red tinted enemies, or both at the same time). Go to the next floor if you run into this scenario. Oftentimes it will have an easier fight than the one described above. If you feel like you can take a fight, use your consumables early. A potion of might can let you cut down a swarm of foes or eliminate a powerful enemy in a few swings. You start with this identified. Other potions that can be useful are haste, berserk, curing, heal wounds, resistance and enlightenment. Each one is good for different scenarios. Haste is good for both running and fighting. Berserk should be used at max HP and when enemies are in Melee range or 1 step away. Curing removes confusion and poison, which can save your life early. Heal wounds heals ~25 hp, making it very strong early but quickly falls off. Resistance potions should be saved for when you fight dangerous elemental spell casters, numerous simulacra, or when entering the volcano and ice cave side areas. Enlightenment provides flying and increased willpower. Useful when you can kite enemies over impassable terrain or need to avoid being banished to the abyss. Always check named and unfamiliar enemies to make sure you know what they can cast.

Scrolls can also be very useful. Identify allows you to know what each does and should be used on potions first. Don’t blind quaff potions until you find mutagen and moonshine. These are the two “bad” potions. The rest are manageable if you happen to blind drink it when in trouble and can still save you. Scrolls of fear, blinking and teleport are good escape scrolls early game. Read teleport early enough so that you don’t die if the teleport is bad. Scrolls of immolation are very good and can help clears huge amounts of enemies if you have rfire. Scrolls of poison can be used to walk away from most enemies as unless they are particularly powerful or undead they wont walk through it, but Qazlal followers are immune to clouds. Scrolls of fog are extremely valuable for a follower of Qazlal. Not only do they block vision, but with the 2nd ability of Qazlal, elemental force, they can provide guaranteed summons of powerful air elementals. Noise and torment scrolls are utterly useless to you. Keep vulnerability scrolls just in case you get good evocables. A wand of paralysis and scroll of vuln can remove almost any enemy you might find in the early game. Just be careful if they enemy has their own disabling spells!

Pull enemies into corridors to fight them one at a time. Throws darts as they approach to weaken them, then finish them off in melee. Retreat to the stairs and fight a few enemies at a time, pulling some upstairs with you to pick them off a few at a time. This is called “stair-dancing” and is an essential strategy in the early game. Eventually it will be more efficient to cut down large groups of enemies with the special cleave mechanic of axes, but early on you are too weak defensively to do this safely.

My favorite combo for dealing with red enemies early on is the curare dart + net. Apply both to an enemy, then walk up and finish them off. Probably the safest way to deal with uniques, ogres and two headed ogres early. Wands of paralysis can do the same thing if you get a good roll. Wands of polymorph can removes dangerous weapons from enemies and make them safer to fight. Use a combination of all the tactics described above to survive the early-game.

Gods:

You will eventually find the shrine to Qazlal Stormbringer, his altar looks like this:

Begin worshipping Qazlal! He will provide several powerful bonuses and abilities that synergize with our game plan. Also, turn on invocation training, and set it to 17. This is important to be able to use our god abilities, which are upheaval, elemental force, and disaster area. Upheaval is a smite targeted radius 1 explosion that deals a random element of damage and effect. Use it to kill dangerous enemies like orc priests, hydras and hellions. It will be useful all game, and after 16.7 invocations it has a chance to affect a larger radius. Use judiciously though, as Qazlal’s abilities are quite piety expensive, and most enemies can be efficiently cleared with your axe instead! Elemental force summons a bunch of elementals based on the clouds around you. Qazlal generates these passively with his storm shield ability and scrolls of fog also count. Disaster area simply blasts enemies in the area with a bunch of upheavals at once. It is your AOE emergency clear. Use this for difficult fights with numerous foes. Storm shield is the defining trait of qazlal, and why we will be using shields all game. You gain bonus SH based on piety, up to 8 at max. This is a siezable bonus equal to a +8 enchantment on a shield. Qazlal will also provide repel missiles and elemental resistance at higher piety levels. This makes Qazlal excellent defensively for our build, saving us 1 pip of resistance in fire, ice, electric or physical, and providing repel missiles for basically free. Just be careful to maintain high piety. Save these abilities for when you really need them and kill most enemies by chopping them to pieces.

Transition to mid-game:

If you’ve followed my advice and made it to Lair, congrats! You’ve made it through one of the deadliest sections of the game and can really get rolling. Once your axe skill reaches min delay for the war axe, 16, turn on armor and shields. We will raise these now to help round out our defense. Be on the lookout for heavy armor, kite and tower shields, and granite and death talismans. These last two will be important for later. Put any good rings on that you find. For this build AC>EV, and rpois and rfire are the best early resistances. Wear any amulet you find in this order of priority: Reflection>Regen>Spirit>Acrobat>Faith>anything else. A good artifact amulet with nice resistances might be better than a plain reflection. Use your best judgement. Rings of strength are fine if you can’t find anything better. Wearing any ring is better than no ring, except for Ice and Fire. Do your best not to have a negative resistance. Negative fire is worse than negative ice though if you must choose. Carefully fight your way through lair, the rest of the dungeon, and the orcish mines according to the order posted above. The dangerous enemies to watch out for will be spellcasters like orc sorcerors, ogre magis and orc high priests. Also, note that you should not fight hydras unless your axe is flaming. Use god abilities or evocable items like wands to kill the hydra. Once the hydra is dead, you can resume chopping as normal. Eliminate these enemies quickly or risk getting disabled or overwhelmed by summons. Naturally, pay attention to named enemies and anyone in a red outline. Examine each one and decide if you need to use advanced tactics like god abilities and consumables. Be on the lookout for a broad axe to enchant and brand it if it doesn’t have one already.

Mid Game:

I consider mid-game the part where you begin to collect the runes needed to reach the realm of Zot. 3 runes are needed to get in, and a major decision is where to get the 3rd rune along with whether your character can go to extended. If you’ve been following this guide, you can choose either. Naturally, we are going to start with the 2 S branches that have generated. It will either be shoals/swamp, and spider/snake. 1 of each of these is spawned each game, randomly decided. The entrances will be in Lair, somewhere. Each branch requires a different set of resistances to traverse, and will be much more difficult without them. However, Qazlal will make each of these easier with his powerful defensive buffs, smite explosions and summons. Don’t go to the 4th level until you’ve completed both branches to level 3.

Swamp:

Bring your rpoison and rcold to swamp. Most of the creatures are poisonous, and the bog bodies that infest the swamp fire shares of cold at you. If you have a ring of flying, wear it to remove the penalties for being in water. You should be strong enough if you have a broad axe with a brand, preferably flaming, but any brand is fine. The exception is hydras, which you may have face in the lair already. If you manage to find the phantom mirror, save it in case Learny the 27 headed hydra exists in your swamp. Use the mirror to kill him. Otherwise, use everything at your disposal to bring him down, without hitting him with a non-flaming axe. Use a potion of haste if you get slowed.

Shoals:

Normally quite difficult for most characters due to the large number of weapons thrown here. However, Qazlal guarantees access to repel missiles with piety, allowing you to mostly ignore these and cut down the enemies here. Relec and rcold are good here for the variety of spellcasters but repel missiles and high AC and SH should allow you to clear.

Spider:

Spider is made easier by having rcorr, rpois and sinv. Most of the spiders shouldn’t even be able to hit you through your AC and SV, as well as having the storm generated by Qazlal destroy most weak spiders. Watch out for ghost moths hitting you if you cant see invisible, and swing in place. You’ll eventually kill the moth as it tries to attack you. Use disaster area if things get too hectic. It’s almost guaranteed to kill everything on screen in Spider since the enemies are usually low HP and high EV.

Snake:

Snake is a dangerous area with lots of poisonous and fiery snakes. Bring rpois and rfire. You can block most of the attacks here, as the poison and tridents snakes usually have can be blocked. Watch out for constriction from anacondas preventing you from moving, but they best play is to either chop everything to death or cast disaster area if the screen is full of enemies. Using scroll of fog and casting elemental force twice is also an option. The conga line of snakes from your noise might mean you have to rest upstairs occasionally. Qazlal is essentially constantly luring enemies, and as long as you fight carefully you should easily be able to cut through snake.

Special Considerations:

Now, I mentioned two items earlier that may have stood out to you. They were the granite talisman, and the death talisman. These are items that use the shapeshifting skill to transform you, providing buffs and usually melding equipment so it no longer provides bonuses. Shapeshifting does nothing to help you survive while training it and not using the form. Therefore, we train our offense, then our defense to survive. Granite requires 17 skill, and death requires 26. If we find a granite talisman early, we wait until we have 18 axes, then turn off all other skills and rush to 17. Granite is that strong. The only exception is if we have already obtained a great piece of armor early. High enchantment level plate, crystal plate, or golden dragon scales are items worth using instead of granite. However, if your resistances are still bad, granite can help fix those. Also, if you are planning to go extended, you will be training for death form later anyway, so making the effort to get granite online is worth it. I will also say granite form makes the S branches even easier. You are immune to poison, have relec, bonus health and AC and do +50% melee damage, which usually results in your axes 1 hitting all the enemies around you per swing. The downside is that you perform every action, including movement, about 50% slower. Once shapeshifting is 17, stop training it and turn back on fighting, shield, invocation and set evocations to 5. You will want evocations training for later, and it makes sense for dwarves to invest due to their +1 aptitude. We will train more shapeshifting later, but only after our major skills are online, meaning we have fighting 20, armor 18, shield 15 and invocation 23.

Transition to Late Game:

There are a few options to explore after collecting both of your S runes. Consider doing Elf 1-2, saving 3 for later, and Vaults 1-4, saving 5 for later as well. Try to ensure every resist is covered to help prevent a sudden damage spike from ending your run and carry some rings for rcorr and sinv and swap res as needed. You should have found enough jewelry between the different branches and orc shops to cover you until end-game. Complete the crypt and depths before attempting to gather a 3rd rune. You should be strong enough to O-tab almost any enemy that isn’t named. Stair dance as needed, enemies will always be lured to your position because of Qazlal’s storm.

Late Game:

This is either the final part of your run, or the beginning of an extended run. We will prepare for the realm of Zot by grabbing the 3rd and 4th rune. This build should be entirely capable of doing both Vault 5 and Slime. By now, most of your skills should be trained quite high, so decide which skill you’d like to train to 27 first. It is likely to be fighting or invocations, both are strong and will eventually be maxed if going to extended. Also consider training evocations to 10, 15 or even higher. If you have a crystal plate or golden dragon scales, train armor to 23. Turn on shapeshifting again so that we can reach 26, but don’t train any further, death form receives no benefit for skill higher than 26. If you’ve found the spell Enfeeble, turn on hexes and set to skill level 22. This spell neutralizes the most dangerous enemies 1v1, so it’s very useful for the most challenging opponents; pandemonium lords, hell lords, and orbs of fire. Continue to play smart and use your resources effectively. You can cut through swarms of opponents but may occasionally need to teleport or blink if a particularly lucky enemy hits you too many times. Disaster area if the screen has too many enemies and your health starts depleting. Once there are only a handful of enemies, they usually cannot penetrate your defenses as you can block 4 times per turn with a tower shield.

Slime:

This rune is slightly easier than Vault 5 if you are prepared. Rcorr and rpois are good to have, but if you have granite online just rcorr will be needed. Run through each floor of slime, since levels 1-4 will not have any items. Watch out for shining eyes, as they can malmutate you. These are good targets to kill with upheaval. Clear Slime 4 so you can safely retreat from Slime 5. The main enemy in Slime is the Royal Jelly, an extremely dangerous slime boss that spawns slimes as it gets damaged. Luckily, we can very easily defeat this enemy using Qazlal and some scrolls. Upheaval TRJ a few times as it approaches to generate some slimes, then read a scroll of immolation and cast disaster area. If done correctly most enemies on the screen, including TRJ, should disappear from an explosion of fire. Clean up the leftovers and loot Slime 5. Alternatively, read a scroll of fog and cast elemental force twice. The resulting 10-20 air elementals will annihilate TRJ, any slimes it spawns, and everything else in the vicinity within a few turns. They can even paralyze the slimes due to electric damage from the air elementals. Collect the rune and the treasure from the floor before leaving.

Vault 5:

This floor is dangerous due to being able to be locked into it by the wardens that are waiting to ambush you on the bottom floor, and the extreme amount of dangerous enemies around the floor itself. The first task is to take care of the wardens and allow stair dancing to clear the rest of the floor. Quaff might, haste, enlightenment, and brilliance if you have them, then descend down stairs. The wardens will likely lock you in after you take your first action, so decide immediately if you can fight them or need to retreat. If Mennas spawns, either flee upstairs if he is close, or eliminate him with extreme prejudice. He can cast silence, and being silenced and locked in on Vault 5 is a stupid way to die. Read a scroll of immolation and cast disaster area. All of the guards should either die or be very hurt. Finish them off with another disaster area or use elemental force. Once all the wardens are dead, we can safely use the stairs to eliminate groups of enemies a few at a time. Read a scroll of fog and elemental force if the enemies are spread out or use disaster area if they are grouped. Don’t worry about spending your piety here, this is what we were saving it for. Once everything is dead and enemies stop walking towards the middle, go around and finish off the stragglers. Enjoy your loot and collect the rune, you’ve earned it.

Zot:

If you have not completed the depths by now, do so to reach the gateway to Zot. Zot 1-5 will be the last real challenge you face if ending at 3 or 4 runes, otherwise we will save Zot 5 for after extended. The floors will be filled with professional draconians, high tier dragons, moths of wrath (which berserk other enemies) and even a few Orbs of Fire. Most enemies can be handled with the tactics used so far, but make sure to use elemental force or disaster area early to weaken large groups of enemies. Orbs of Fire should be fought with extreme prejudice; use your buffs, cast enfeeble and try to kill them as soon as possible. RF+++ is recommended, or RF++ at the least. Don’t worry about mutations, just focus on killing it asap. Once there are no more OOFs, you can drink potions of mutagen to try to cleanse negative elemental resistance, teleportitis, and beserkitis. Nothing else is worth removing before all the OOFs are dead. If you are planning to do extended and have death form online, use the pots to remove bad mutations as much as possible, and remain transformed the rest of the game to avoid any more mutations. Clear everything here to make sure the orb run is as easy as possible. Do not go to Zot 5 if planning to do extended. Otherwise, make sure you have a clear path out of Zot 5 and grab the orb. Run to the surface and win! Almost no enemy should be able to hurt you while running to the surface, just make sure you are not transformed in statue form. Congratulations if you’ve won using this guide. Keep reading to see how you can take your build into an extended 15 rune game after you’ve managed to win at least once!

Extended:

Extended is going above the conditions for winning the game. If you feel strong enough to go to Pandemonium, the easiest demon area, you could probably go win the game instead. If you’ve not managed to find a death talisman, it might be easier to go win the game instead. However, if you’ve gotten this far and already have 1 win, you might as well push as far as you can. The recommended order for extended is Pandemonium, Abyss, Gehenna, Cocytus, Tartarus, Dis, then the Tomb last. Pan is slightly easier than the other areas, if more random. Dis is by far the hardest Hell. Tartarus can be quite scary if not playing carefully due to the large number of monsters that can cast torment and dispel undead range. Tomb is a complete death trap that requires careful play and calm execution. If you’ve made it this far, you can likely take on each of these areas though.

Pandemonium:

Pandemonium has 5 runes hidden within its infinitely generating dimensions. 4 are within special realms that will specifically call out that a rune is available. If you leave, the rune is lost forever. They are also guarded by 4 themed and named lords of Pandemonium. Their names are Cerebov, Mnoleg, Lom Lobon and Gloorx Vloq. The final demonic rune will be in a random set piece realm, of which there are several. You can find the demonic rune again if not collected from a specific map. It will just generate somewhere else. The strategy for pandemonium involves finding the pandemonium lord, reading what spells they have, and murdering them. No demonic lord on their own should be able to put you down when in death form and enfeebled. This is why we train hexes and memorize enfeeble. It effectively neuters the most dangerous enemies, allowing you to finish them off in melee. Be sure to play safe and think before taking actions. Qazlal will naturally lure enemies out, so wait and make sure no one else is wandering in before moving forward. Use a scroll of teleport if you think the fight is turning against you. Disaster area does horrific damage to clumps of demons, and summoning elementals can give you some breathing room. However, your most effective attack is to swing your axe in 8 enemies. By this point, you should have at least 50 AC and 30+ SH. This makes you extremely tanky, as well as having either maxed out resists or 2 pips in fire and cold resistance. Death form takes care of negative, poison and is torment/mutation immune. Wear the appropriate rings to cover the remaining resistances. The random gear in Pandemonium can solve any remaining holes in your equipment if necessary. Train whatever you feel is necessary. Fighting, armor and shields, invocations, and evocations are my recommendations to level to 27. Dodging might be worthwhile at this point. If you find the spell Discord, raising hexes further to cast it can also be helpful, but nothing else is necessary beyond this to win a 15-rune game. Collect all 5 runes here then find a portal back to the dungeon or the abyss to exit Pandemonium.

Hell:

Hell is composed of 5 areas: the vestibule, Gehenna, Cocytus, Tartarus, and Dis. The vestibule is comprised of 1 floor and features a variety of demon enemies and Geryon, the name NPC that is always found here. At this point, you should have no trouble clearing the vestibule, just watch out for damnation enemies like hellions and hell sentinels showing up here. Once the vestibule is cleared, you should find 4 gates leading to each of the respective hells. Each hell is comprised of 6 small floors, then the 7th floor is a larger preset floor with the demon lord contained in the center of the stronghold. Each floor may also drain you, which is where Ill recommend clearing each small floor up to remove the drain. You can dive out in an emergency, but you’ll go back to the vestibule and may get drained again going back down. I recommend doing Gehenna or Cocytus first, then the other, then Tartarus and finally Dis. Gehenna and Cocytus are extremely straightforward. Make sure you have at least fire++ for Gehenna and cold++ for Cocytus. Qazlal will usually cover the final pip with his elemental protection. Each hell also has a specific mechanic to make it more challenging. You can’t use scroll in Gehenna, potions in Cocytus, your will is halved in Tartarus, and you are affected by -8 corrode while in Dis. This generally makes Dis the most dangerous. In Tartarus, you’ll want to prioritize the Tzitzimitl. This enemy is extremely dangerous both in and out of death form and is one of the only real threats with its powerful dispel undead ranged spell. Enfeeble these or prepare to leave if too many catch you out in the open. It can be worth using a scroll of fog and summon elementals to deal with them, since they need LOF to hit you with dispel undead. In Dis, just carefully clear and try not to eat too many damnations from Hell sentinels. Most enemies won’t be able to hit you through your defenses even with a -8. It can be helpful to equip +slay or +AC if you have rings for it and don’t give up too many other resists. Kill the unique bosses of each Hell the same way you kill pandemonium lords; lure out their bodyguards with Qazlal’s storm noise, then enfeeble, use a throwing net if you have it, and bash their head in. If they summon a lot of ads, use disaster area to help clear. If you cleared the level and aren’t in Gehenna, a scroll of TP can be used to reset if the fight starts going badly. On average, you should easily win these, but crawl sometimes has other ideas.

Tomb:

The tomb is a big annoying deathtrap. You’ll want to have at least 1 scroll of revelation, and preferably 3, one for each level of the Tomb. IF you have 3, use on immediately when you enter the tomb, and again each time you enter another floor. Otherwise, save your scroll for the final level. Focus on maximizing your willpower here on level 1, it will save you from the sphinx’s guarding the front. Afterwards you can put back on your preferred rings. The tomb has a series of 1 way stairs leading to areas. You cannot stair dance here. This is why I recommend saving some scroll of revelation for this part. Your priority should be finding a set of stairs, then fighting mummies on them and retreating upstairs if you start getting overwhelmed. The nearest stairs will always lead back up to the previous floor, with stairs farther away leading to the next part of the tomb. The order is 1st floor, 2nd floor, 1st floor in the walls of the pyramid, 2nd floor outer walls, then finally into the 3rd floor. Watch out for the ushabti, they know dispel undead ranged, and even if it’s a weak spell they can quick chip you down. They have low HP though so it should be possible to smite them using upheaval with high invocations or disaster area if there are many. Fight your way through the tomb until floor 3. Here we use a scroll of revelation and find the nearest set of stairs that does not have a dispersal or zot trap near it. We will fight the tide of mummies here. Pull out all the stops; scrolls of fog and elemental force are great here, as the elementals will continuing killing enemies as long as the summon lasts and the mummies keep pouring in. Use disaster area as an emergency clear and retreat upstairs if you start getting overwhelmed. The mummies should eventually stop trickling in and you’ll be free to loot the Tomb and collect the final rune!

Zot 5:

The final challenge will be Zot 5. Almost nothing in the orb run can hurt us considering we’ve killed the lords of hell and pandemonium. Therefore, we must clear Zot 5, so we don’t fumble at the finish line. The only real dangerous enemy here is going to be the infamous Orb of Fire. Enfeeble and try to fight each of them one at a time. They are extremely strong, so it is difficult to kill them with upheaval or disaster area, and they fire line spells that easily annihilate your elementals and summons. The exception is if you get a stack of 5 or 6 Orbs of Fire. Read a teleport scroll immediately and cast enfeeble on each or roll and hope disaster area can wipe out some within a few casts. If you can fight them one at a time, either by digging or due to the location where you start fighting in Zot 5, then hitting them with your axe will be the most effective method. Don’t worry about getting drained, you will gain back the exp by killing the Orb. Once everything in Zot 5 is dead, collect the orb and make the run for the surface. Auto-path through the dungeon by pressing G, then Dungeon, then floor 0 to head to the surface. Kill anything that tries to stop you. Walk casually back to the surface and win!