Westheim, the Sludge Elf Venom Mage

This page is a Diary of a Crawler, the journal of an individual character. This page probably contains spoilers.

Another attempt at crawling and leaving something behind for the next generation. I upgraded to 0.6.1 the day before 0.7 came out and I’m still using it. Didn’t do too many games with it yet, so at least there may not be annoying ghosts harassing me from turn 8 on ...

Starting off

D:1

Entered the Dungeon with a +0 robe, an edition of Young Poisoner’s Handbook, and a bread ration. Oh, yeah, and a lot of fear. Whether my Sting spell will be enough to keep me alive for more than ten seconds, remains to be seen, however the first kobold storming at me is immediately put to rest by it. Most likely to rest forever.

The large entrance hall contained +0 boots of an unlucky adventurer, which were added to my possessions without much care for the poor guy’s fate.

And now: slaughtering! A goblin leaves me a glowing dagger, but I found it unbranded. A runed hand axe lying around turned out to be cursed. Yee.

The next item was more valuable: a glowing leather armour turned out to be +2, giving me AC 6 early on. Not too terrible, I guess.

D:1 was actually uneventful from there apart from me slaying an ooze for level 3, and learning Mephitic Cloud as 2nd spell.

D:2

Found some more glowing axes and daggers, but was still stuck with the cursed hand axe. I had only few scrolls (and potions, as a matter of fact), and there were no significant stacks among them, so there was little point in starting to waste potentially valuable scrolls now.

D:3

Entered the level next to a stone wall construction, but a lack of doors meant that I was unable to enter the potential vault. I wandered on and stumbled across a pair of orc wizards. A mephitic cloud and a few stings were sufficient to kill only one of them, and the other started to harass me with puffs of frost. Escape was not possible as I had come out of a long corridor, so I had to resort to throwing my unIDed weapons at him, and killed him when he came close enough to melee me.

Found two rings, neither of them IDed upon wearing, but one was cursed. Random teleports are the second-to-last thing a frail elementalist needs in these dungeons, so I started to randomly read scrolls, finally, with good success. I picked the scroll of identify first and used it to identify the scroll of remove curse. Away with the evil axe and ring!

Equipped all my glowing weapons and found a hand axe of electrocution. Mmmm, me like!

Also found a rod of poison on the level, giving me a one off powerful poison spell when necessary, and a +0 helmet.

A bit of panic

D:4

IDed a ring of fire with a scroll. Then ran into Duvessa. And a ghost. Panicked. Ran for the next stair, which was leading down, but I didn’t really care at that point.

D:5

Ran into an ogre at very close distance. Panicked. Screamed like a girl.

Mephitic cloud didn’t impress the ogre much. One hit brought me down from 29HP to 2HP. Zapped a poisioned arrow from my rod of poison on him, before a cockroach decided it was a wise time to chew on me. Luckily the ogre succumbed to the poison while I was trying to save my little bit of remaining life from the cockroach, and I leveled up to level 6.

After a bit of wandering around an orc warrior and an imp decided to both molest me at the same inconvenient time, but my spells kept the warrior at safe distance, before he succumbed to poison, and imps apparently do not like electrocution very much.

It was a good time to leave, though, when a hungry ghost spotted me and didn’t get off my heels.

D:6

Jelly alarm. Found one just a little south from the stairs. A lack of fire spells meant I would have to resort to stones to kill it.

The presence of human slaves also hinted that Pikel was around. Another unpleasant level, apparently. I managed to attract the attention of the pack. Pikel was much less impressed by my poison arrow than the ogre before, and started to pound me with magic darts from a wand, but then he was so foolish to get into the range of my axe of electrocution after I poisoned him with stings. A sudden explosion of sparks killed him and had me jump from level 6 to 8 immediately.

I found wands of fire and fireball on this level while poisoning and hacking my way through hobgoblins and another ogre. Another annoying ghost inhabitated this level, preventing me from exloring it fully again.

D:7

Appeared right next to a room with the entrance to the Orcish Mines, which was ... um ... guarded, to put it simple. Highlights were at least one orc warrior, an ogre, and Edmund, but I was able to kill everything in there with my two spells. The next thing crossing my way was Crazy Yiuf. He actually harmed me more than the scores of orcs in the previous room and I had to kill him with wands, since he didn’t respond too much to poison. The same thing was true for another hungry ghost. The wand of fire did it’s job.

The upper half of the level had a city like layout. In one of the „buildings“ I found a Book of Ice. Right now there was no really useful spell in the book. Instead I learned Venom Bolt. Then I ran into Joseph. Neither poison nor fire seemed to impress and then he quaffed a potion of invisibility.

Panic.

I zapped a mephitic cloud two fields short of where I had last seen him, then went through scrolls to find the ones of teleportation. Found paper and fear, then teleportation. Retired into a nearby building, closed the door, and screamed in fear for a few turns. Then I used my remaining scrolls of identify to find my potions of might and brilliance, and a few more scrolls, including recharging.

When fully recovered, I left my room again and explored the rest of the level, far away from where I had met Joseph. While laying an already poisoned worm to rest, my axe of electrocution IDed as being +2, +3. Wheee! Goody! I used a scroll to further enchant it to +3.

Looking for the Lair. Or maybe not.

D:8

My pack was already quite full, so I wouldn’t have been so mad to find the Lair rather sooner than later to place a stash. What I found on D:8 was an open level again, not much to my liking.

I learned the Ensorcelled Hibernation spell to have at least some way to cope with poison resistant creatures, although it would not actually harm them much.

Well, all stairs down from D:7 were on the eastern edge of the level. To the south was an ice beast. Retreat. To the north: a soldier ant zombie. Retreat. I had no choice but go west to the middle of the level. Meh.

Hungry ghost. And a manticore. Yeeks! And then the zombie and beast from before joined the fray. Retreat to the stairs or a random teleport?

Third option: scroll of fear. It only affected the ice beast, yet gave me time to finish the ghost with my axe. But another zombie attacked me (of the scorpion flavour) and the manticore was taking swings on me as well from afar.

Retreat to the stairs or a random teleport?

I retreated to the stairs and returned to D:7. Luckily I got the zombies between myself and the manticore, so he didn’t attack me again. But now I had a problem. There was no other way down to D:8 except for maybe shafts on the levels above. Not the best way to advance in this Dungeon ...

For a moment I toyed with the idea to enter the Orcish Mines. The orcs didn’t like my poisoned attacks. But ... no ... bad idea. With AC 8 three or four orcs next to the stairs would be enough to kill me.

D:5

D:6 and D:7 held no shafts at all, so that idea was history as well. I returned to D:5 and it’s perils. The first was a hungry ghost. Meleeing them to rest is not the best way to deal with them, but it was my only option.

This level was still partly unexplored, but held nothing more of interest but an orc party with wizards. No shaft either.

D:4

This level was partly unexplored as well. I don’t even know what I was looking for here. I needed more than 1,400 XP to level up, and was too weak to fight Duvessa and Dowan anyway. Plus there was a scary ghost on the level.

I found nothing of value except for a royal jelly in the unexplored parts far away from where I had met Duvessa and the ghost. A few monsters, but still 1,434 XP short of level 10. This led nowhere...

And then I walked around a corner right into the ghost. Running away was no option. He was between myself and the next stair. And between myself and the other stairs was the area where I had left Duvessa before.

Meh. I had no spell to hurt him, that was for sure. Would my wand of fire impress him? It did, luckily. Two shots were enough. He tried to poison me with a sting. Hello, unlucky former venom mage.

I was hoping for Dowan first now, since I don’t like to battle him after his sister died, but ran into Duvessa again. Oh, what the heck. I confused her and killed her with stings, only to hear a distant wail of despair. I know, Dowie, I know. Come out to play. I have a mephitic cloud here, with your name written on it.

I found him a little further east, and the mephitic cloud and sting strategy worked very well on him, although I feared that he wouldn’t be confused long enough to kill him, so zapped him with a wand of fire to shorten things here.

Cleared the level. And now? D:8 or Orc:1? Awful choice.

Orc:1

The entrance was in a small room with a few orcs and a stair further down.

Orc:2

The plan was to gain level 10 somehow to get some extra beef for D:8. I still needed 1,140 XP for this, somehow. That’s a lot of somehows.

Unfortunately, this was another enclosed room with only a hobgoblin and a common orc. And a stair down.

Orc:3

A really tiny room with two orcs. And a stair down. Aaaaaah!!

Orc:4

I’m mad, definitely. And I got what I deserved. A pack of orcs, including a wizard and a mage, surrounding the staircase. Mephitic cloud failed. Wand of fire was empty. Quaffed a potion of might to kill the mage next to me by hand. Four orcs surround me. The wizard is dumb enough to get into melee range and is killed. Still five common orcs to deal with. Through a lucky combination of misses on the orc’s behalf, and electrocuting hits on my side I finish them off quick enough to survive.

I wandered around, looking for stairs up again, but instead find a large pack of orcs with at least one warrior, mage, and wizard each. And a troll.

My poison spells worked well enough to confuse everybody in sight, but they are just too many, although some are clubbing each other to death. I ran for the stairs with a common orc, the troll, and a wizard in pursuit.

Mephitic clouds confused the troll and I had just enough stings left to kill all my pursuiters, including the troll! 612 XP left to go. More orcs show up, with which I can just deal, until another troll comes into view. And a rock troll. Out of MP, I had to retreat from the level, and since there were no other stairs to use, I had to leave the Mines altogether with some loot. Gnah.

D:7

This leaves D:8 as the last place to go. But I paid Joseph a visit first, since he might enable me to get the 501 XP necessary to level up.

Of the loot, a glowing war axe turned out to be brandless, and a dyed leather armour was +2, but I was already wearing such a +2 leather armour. Hmf.

I found Joseph where I last saw him, confused him and poisoned him to death. Level 10. A few extra HP.

Where are we going?

We’re going down, baby.

D:8

Down, down, down we go.

But first I dropped a few stones while still on D:7, since I had become a little encumbered through my orcish loot. I also recharged my wand of fireball with my last scroll. It had been zapped eight times and was possibly already empty. I needed it for the ice beast, and possibly the zombies as well.

And now we enter D:8.

Only the manticore and the soldier ant zombie were at the stairs, but those two already gave me a hard time. Having no really powerful offensive spells sometimes just plain sucks...

To the north was the ice beast, but it didn’t notice me, so I went south.

Found some weaker enemies and some general loot, including a scroll of identify, which had me ID a potion of cure mutation.

I also met a few imps. The first one succumbed quickly to my axe, but the second refused to die, while always more other beasts joined the fight. Including another hungry ghost... the imp didn’t die for at least 200 turns.

I circled the level clockwise and found all three stairs down in the north, finally. Also found a dazzling cloak. It turned out to be the +3 cloak of Lugonu’s Esteem and offered +3 INT and +7 EV, but why the hell was it cursed??

I spared the northeastern corner of the map with the ice beast and the zombies and instead went down to ...

D:9

Took the first stair down and then wandered into the next room. Orc horde. Bees. Ogre. Imp. Zapped mephitic clouds and stings, killed some of the monsters, but retreated before the ogre could harm me and tried the next stair to D:9.

The second stair was surrounded by a few common orcs, but these generally don’t pose much of a threat anymore. An ant attacked as well, but they were easily killed. My main problem was that I was encumbered again.

And that more monsters were coming for me, while another imp refused to be electrocuted properly. When a beetle and a wyvern entered the room I retreated for the stairs to try the third stair down to D:9, although the beetle succumbed to my poison just as I left the level.

The third stair was just a little south east to the second, so I ventured east. I was still looking for the lair here.

When I moved east the wyvern followed me out of nowhere, cutting my retreat. Orcs attacked from the other side. And the imp followed us as well. The imp carried a lot of the weapons of the orcs I slayed earlier and threw them at me constantly, and I was also out of MP.

I was able to kill everything in sight, but I was more and more encumbered. There was actually nothing in my pack I wanted to drop. I even needed the stones for jellies. I read a scroll to enchant my axe to +4, +3, but that was all I could lose on weight.

I actually became more encumbered as I found valuable scrolls and potions. Plus a book of necromancy. Hmm. I hadn’t really planned to venture into this school, but I had nothing in hand against undead and poison resistant creatures. I finally added Pain and Animate Skeleton to my repertoire.

Met a phantom. Another threat I could not respond to at all, and had to kill with wands, which also emptied my wand of magic darts. Recharged it with my only such scroll.

I became overloaded, when I picked up an apple. This was ridiculous, but I had to drop some things to get back to normal. I dropped the darts I had, a few stones, and all spare armour, to get just barely below encumbered again, only to become encumbered again when I found a scroll. Hniyaaah!!

Trained necromancy a little in the first room I had cleared much much earlier and got myself some skeletons. I also found a Book of the Earth. No really useful spells right now. I wanted to throw it away, but then kept it still.

D:10

Oh, a gila monster. Nice to meet y-aaaah, it hits so haaard ...!! (cries) But it’s not poison resistant. Poor thing.

I also found the first yaks here. And a wight. Fascinatingly enough, when I zapped a mephitic cloud, one of the confused yaks gored the wight, destroying it. Poison just works so well against these yaks, they were almost no threat to me. Also got myself a yak skeleton and gained necromancy skill. Big skeletons are actually great – mine killed a troll for me after I confused the troll. I added a troll skeleton to my army – which was annihilated when we ran across a manticore. (sighs)

In the south I stumbled across a huge orc pack with several warriors. Luckily this was in a long one tile corridor, so the whole pack was stopped if just the first orc was confused. At one point a confused warrior killed three or four of it’s adjacent friends for me. I leveled up to level 11 while killing the orcs.

D:11

The level seemed rather empty save for a pack of gnolls and a few yaks, but there was a strangely shaped structure in the middle of the level, which could only be accessed over deep water, so was inaccessible for me.

A wraith harassed me as well. Without proper offensive spells I had to go into melee and with already empty wands this meant he could drain me. Not nice.

I walked on to find the entrance to the Lair. Guarded by rats. Among them: orange rats. Oh, yeah, and several slugs and snails, all storm- ... ah, coming at me.

It took a long time to kill most of them, although I thought some had become lost in confusion in adjacent rooms. By the entrance to the lair were some more items, including another cursed ring and a Book of Spacial Translocations. I learned Apportation immediately, which is just a great spell.

Into the Lair

Lair:1

I barely made it around the first corner, when I already found a spiny frog, oh, great. I wandered in the opposite direction, and –

Lair:2

- fell through a shaft. But no harm done, no monsters in sight. I found a wand shop with some nice things to buy, but I had to find a place for my stash first. I’m lazy. I want my stash close to the stairs closest to the entrance of the Lair. I found a lot of healing potions on this level, as well as +1 gloves.

Lair:1

I became overloaded on Lair:2, so I had to drop a lot of stuff just to get back to Lair:1 to find the stair of my convenience. It took me two spiny frogs to find a suitable stair.

Lair:2

Placed my stash in the room with the stairs. Dropped a lot of potions, even healing potions, since I actually had a lot of them. Also dropped some of my books. I was still in a difficult decision spell school wise. I would have liked the power of fire spells, but the lack of such a book almost forced me into necromancy. I learned how to raise the dead and how to dispel the undead and dropped all books but the one of necromancy and the one of spatial translocations.

While I was not short on potions, I actually was short on food. I carried only two bread rations, a meat ration, and the royal jelly with me. I had to live off the Lair itself for a while. But no edible monsters crossed my way while clearing up the first to levels of the Lair and I had to eat another ration, damnit. I only ran across a group of yaks in the final room.

Lair:3

The first stair down led into an open room with a huge pack of green and grey rats and a brown snakes. I killed a lot, but had to retreat and reenter elsewhere.

The second stair was just around the corner and not much better.

Third stair. Better. Found a wand of frost and a ring of magical power. But still nothing edible. I actually found a lot of wands on the level and another ring, which didn’t ID, but only two giant toads for butchering, but I was almost constantly harassed by spiny frogs. Venom bolts were just good enough to kill them, but even then I needed three or four of those.

Lair:4

IDed rings of invisibility, +4 EV, and +3 AC, and chose to wear the last instead of the ring of fire. Reached level 12 after killing a giant frog. A stray black bear left a corpse allowing me to feast a little. I carried an un-IDed amulet, but sadly it was none of the gourmand.

And then there was a hydra with four heads. It was directly next to me, so there was no escaping, it had to be dealt with. It was not to be impressed buch by poison, but the force of venom bolts hurt it a lot, though. Still, it took me a couple of shots from a wand of frost and two potions of heal wounds to kill it.

There were also yaks coming at me. With depleted MP, these were extremely dangerous, and when another spiny frog joined the battle I had to run for stairs down.

Lair:5

I entered next to a flickering portal to a Bazaar, surrounded by clouds of freezing vapour. Eek. I wanted to enter the Bazaar so badly. With just below 1,000 gold in by pocket there might be a few goodies to purchase, but the freezing vapour scared me. But, well, I went for it anyway and was lucky to reach the portal without being frozen.

Bazaar

There were shops of scrolls, jewellery, antique armour, antique weapons, and a general store here.

I had 960 gold to spend and went on a true shopping spree, buying two special short swords (not my type of weapon, but cheap), a special leather armour, a special cloak, a glowing elven cloak, some scrolls of identify, a scroll of blink, a scroll of blinking, and a few potions, leaving 120 gold.

Lair:5

Upon leaving the Bazaar, I ran into a freezing cloud, and lost the potion of heal wounds I had just bought...

I looked for a quiet corner to test the stuff I had just bought, but ran into an eight-headed hydra. (faints) I read a scroll of fear, which enabled me to escape.

I was unable to wield one of the short swords, being too hungry. Strange. The other sword was cursed, but offered rF+ rN+ and had the freezing brand (IDing showed that it was –1, -2, so ... not good). I also had the +0 leather armour of the Devil, offering rPois and +3 damage and +1 EV. Nice for the Snake Pits or so. One cloak was the +1 cloak of Hedonism, offering +1 EV, +4 INT, more stealth and the ability to blink. The other cloak was +1 elven cloak of poison resistance. I IDed the +2, +5 short sword „Starlight“, which was vampiric and offered rF+ (this was the one I could not wield).

So, I had some armour to play with now, while the swords were mostly failure. But I still had almost nothing to eat. I was down to a bread ration, a meat ration and a royal jelly again.

I spotted another seven headed hydra on the floor. I had to get out of here, preferrably up.

Lair:4

There was only the stair available that I had entered the level through. The spiny frog and the yak had been kind enough to wait for me on the other end. How nice of you, folks. It took all my MP to kill the spiny frog. The yak had to be meleed.

At least the yak left me a few chunks. But even Lair:4 proved to be almost too hard for me, when I encountered a group of blink frogs.

I had found the entrance to the Swamp earlier already, but was still looking for the entrance to either the Shoals or the Snake Pit, preferring the latter.

I moved up to my stash, dropping a few things, before venturing down again to test Lair:5 over a different stair.

Lair:5

Found the stairs to the Snake Pit right next to where I entered the level.

Snake:1

Switched to my +0 leather armour of the Devil, gaining poison resistance. This also enabled me to live off the Nagas here. Before long I found a Book of Callings. But overall the Nagas proved to be a bit too tough, especially when encountering more of them, even in corridors, since I needed a lot of MP to bring even one of them down. Poison didn’t work, so I had to resort to Pain, which made for a terribly slow death.

I got myself a naga skeleton, before I encountered Norris, a unique I’m not familiar with at all. Unfortunately he decided to become invisible. I sent my naga skeleton forward and used the time thus bought to escape back to the Lair.

Lair:5

Found another terrible foe in a black mamba, which took ages to kill with my spell set. Pain was not bad, but as a level 1 spell had it’s limits.

Don't we all just hate these hydras?

Lair:6

Finding weak monsters if you have wands to test is actually not easy. I carried four un-IDed wands. A quokka helped me ID a wand of cold, but I would hate to hasten a black mamba just for the sake of trying.

Unfortunately, this level was infested with hydras as well. I also found the stairs to the Slime Pit, but I’m wise enough to avoid it.

After a pack of blink frogs, I found some grey rats astray, which were suited for wand testing. I also had wands of teleportation, desintegration, and one that was not easy to ID. It had no effect on the rats, and it was no wand of digging, either.

After I killed a komodo dragon, a four headed hydra noticed me, and I couldn’t shake it off. Killed it with venom bolts and a zap from the wand of desintegration. I left the level, when a crocodile and a spiny frog teamed up on me when I was out of MP.

Lair:5

Reentered next to a seven headed hydra, which was not impressed by my wand of desintegration and killed me.