Engmos the Naga Venom Mage

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

Round 1

D:1

Experience shows that while poison can make early game easy, its effects drop sharply once PR monsters start to appear. Hence, I turned off every skill except spellcasting, hoping that the naga will get his chance to learn offensive spells from other scholl.

The tactic was basically sting a monster, back up, hit it with a tiny dagger until it was finished by the poison. The naga was sometimes glowing (darkgrey text), maybe it has something to do with crawl 0.5 change? Anyway, it didn't look harmful for the time being. Soon enough, conjuration skills was trained to level 1. Although unsure abut if this would increase the naga's survivability, I turn it off as well to focus on spellcasting.

The naga is lucky to find 3 rings on D:1. Being bold, I decided to try them out. One of them was a ring of magical power, and the others was uncursed mysterious rings. Out of curiousity, I read one of the five scrolls labeled QOWKOI SIQA sitting in my pack, hoping it's ?identify. Nothing happens. Well, maybe it's a ?remove curse. Another type of scrolls, which I got two, turned out to be ?identify. Now I can see that the other two rings were a MR ring and a PR ring, respectively.

D:2

There was a ooze sleeping. A simple ooze, totally harmless to, say, a MiGl. To this young naga, however, oozes can be deadly as poison wouldn't work against them. Let's try to take it out with dart. At the cost of 8 darts and half of the naga's hp, finally, the ooze was bleeding to death (do oozes have blood?).

As soon as the naga turned level 3, he learned mephitic cloud. As a naga, cure poison was not needed. Poison weapon seems to be redundant, with sting and naga's racial breath.

The naga found a spellbook, The Book of Charms, which provided a nice introductive material for enchantment spell school. From what written in this book, it looks like that enchantment was a school of supportive spells (like "buffs" and "debuffs") instead of offensive spells. Was that a sign of RNG indicating that the naga shall get fighting as his main attack? Or should I wait for a bit, hoping for a conjuration or summoning book? Well, even if I want to take the first route, there's another question: Which weapon should the naga use? Let's collect items along the way and see what comes first, a good weapon or another spellbook. Repel missles spell was worth learning anyway.

D:4

A phantom was awaken by goblin shouting. Hard hitting, blinking, immune to poison, this guy posed a even more serious threat than the ooze. Luckily, it wandered away after the naga hide himself around a corner. While exploring this level, the phantom had come into the view several times, but never noticed me, thanks to naga's racial stealthiness.

At the end of this level I mass identified the weapons, scrolls and potions the naga found along the way. There was a +1,+1 sabre; let's try go enchanting and melee then. A !mutation gave the naga a level of magic resistence. I love to gamble with mutation, but it's better to refrain from drinking the other !mutation until the naga gets mean of teleport control or !cure mutation.

D:5

The naga hadn't go far from the stairs before he saw an orge. Three levels of poison were applied, but the orge was just moderately wounded. The effect of !speed (drunk while identifying things on last level) was not expired yet, so the naga ran the other way, bumping into two orc wizards. He stinged the orge once more to slaughter it, and ran upstair without looking back.

D:6

It's a big room without any obstables between monsters and me. The naga's fighting and long blade skills was advancing quick enough, and I lost my sense of danger. After clearing most of the room, a troll clawing and biting the naga, whose hp droped from 32 to 0 in one turn. Maybe the tragedy could be avoided if I tell the naga to poison the troll continously without meleeing, or to sliently walk away at the sight of a troll.

Round 4

D:1

A swamp dragon hide? Interesting, but I couldn't see the naga wearing heavy armour any time soon. Even if he went to practice fighting later, it would only make his combat style hybrid, not pure melee. Spellcasting would possibly play an important role, and I didn't want the cumbersome armour to interfere his effectiveness while casting.

D:2

As soon as the naga climbed down the stairs, gnolls rushed to him. He ran back upstairs, heading for another set of stairs. Later, when fighting a kobold, one of the gnolls approached the naga from behind. After reading ?teleportation, poisoning, breath weapon, and melee when no other options are available, finally the naga killed two gnolls.

There's a third gnoll who was smart enough to throw a net on the naga. Fortunately, that gnoll wasn't too good at swinging flail, and intoxinated to death before he hit the naga.

D:3

At the end of this level, the naga grabbed a mace of protection from Terence as well as a leather armour of MR. Time to practice some skull-crushing?

D:4

Another group of gnolls; there were 3 of them at least. As usual, the naga ran back and found another set of stairs to pick them one by one. Thanks to the extra AC, gnolls were no longer such a threat when it's alone. Even snake zombies fell quickly under the hammer.

The entrance to the temple looked like a deserted place, without any decoration. Being unsure about the naga's future, I deemed my worship to Okawaru, waiting for hime to shower the naga with equipments... if the naga doesn't die young.

One of the best thing to do in the temple is mass-identification. In the process, a !mutation gave me deteriorating. Ugh!

D:5

The naga found a set of upstairs to an unexplored area of D:4. After clearing out some orcs, he found a bloodstained sling lying on the floor. Although the bonus looks nice (rF+, Str+3), sling is not known as a powerful weapon. Let's put the sling in the inventory and see if I can use it to kill some jellies. Soon After, I tried to identify a wand by zapping it at some rat and got the naga mangled by another naga.

Round 11

D:2

There's a wandering imp. As the naga hadn't got any good offensive means other than poison, I decided lure that annoying thing upstairs and forget about it. Luckily, no other monsters came for the naga along the way, and the imp spent more time blinking than hitting the slow-moving naga.

The only ego weapon the naga collected was a dagger of draining. Although not a particularly powerful brand, it's still better than nothing for a main weapon.

D:3

The naga found a crooked smoking staff. Let's wielding it and sting some monsters to see what the staff does exactly.

Even though the game told me this level had been fully explored, only one set of stairs was revealed. There must be another space that was unreachable from any visible doors. I decided to move on to try to find the stairs on D:4.

D:3, Revisited

A snake and a wyvern zombie was waiting for the naga on the other side of the stairs. The snake was poisoned and chased the naga downstair before it's dead. I asked the naga to venture upstair again and see if the zombie could be safely dealed with. One turn later, the naga escaped with hp reduced to half. Looks like it would be better to try the other stairs. Also it's nice undead creatures can't use stairs in 0.5. It must be very inconvenient for necromancers, but for the naga it's just a life-saving mechanic.

The other set of stairs lead the naga to a sleeping Sigmund. I decided to stand on the stairs, poison Sigmund as much as I can, and run away and forget this level if the situation looks too horrible. As usual, Sigmund spawned with a wand. But this time, it's a wand of paralysis... Thanks, rng. When the naga was freed from the effect, 3/4 of his hp was still there, and Sigmund was 3 steps away. Seeing that Sigmund was moderately wounded, I couldn't resist the idea of poisoning him even more. Finally, when the naga was reduced to 8 hp (out of 34) and 0 mp (out of 8), Sigmund died. I know, I know, it's not a good practice at all. but hey, it's just D:3 and I won't lose anything other then yet another naga.

When the naga started resting, two patrolling orcs came into the view, who didn't noticed the naga yet. The loots from Sigmund lied between the naga and the orcs. Being greedy, I asked the naga to grab the loots before he went back to D:4. The orcs shout and ran to the naga, but he survived the uneccessary risk once again. The stupid thing that kill the naga was that after he rested to max hp and mp, I told him to went back upstairs to finish the orcs. One of the orcs was equipped with a hammer of electrocution, and the naga bit the dust quickly.

Round 12

D:2

That was the first naga barding I found in a naga game! It's nice to have 4 extra AC, without even enchanting it. Jessica donated a dagger of speed to the naga. Also, a /teleportation lied somewhere on this floor. This thing would come handy, I'm sure.

D:3

There was a room full of monsters waiting for the naga. I put mephitic clouds around the orcs and ran into a corridor. The result was pretty good; only a giant bat and a goblin came after the naga, which were taken out swiftly. Later, all the mobs were cleared one by one.

D:4

Although the naga took out an orge by poisoning it repeatedly, he became very hungry in the process and dined on some orge meat. The chunks turned out to be contaminated. He remembered seeing a phatom nearby, and decided retreat to D:3 for a rest. Unfortunately, he was hungry again before recovering from the sickness. Time to hunt some rats?

Of course, it hadn't been too long before the phantom noticed the naga. As a phatom has more hp and hits harder than an imp, it is more of an annoyance as well. Let's lure it to D:3 and dump it there.

Being sick and hungry, the naga found a bronze shield. I didn't identify scrolls of remove curse yet (that's why the naga was equipping 3 cursed gears), and had only few unidentified scrolls sitting in my inventory. Regardless, let's see what the shield does by putting it on. It appeared to be the +3 shield of Resistance, with rF+ rC+ MR in one pack. Thanks rng, I'd try to use it wisely.

D:5

Here comes a jelly. As slow as it is, a naga can't outrun it. Still, I didn't want to avoid this encounter, only to give this bastard a chance to eat whatever it comes across and splits to many. Jellies have to be killed, it's that simple. Let's use the dwarven darts of frost I'd been preserving till the time. There were few of them, and the jelly was moderately wounded before these darts ran out. Now it's one step away from the naga. Unfortunately, the only thing I got against a jelly, other than forsty darts, was stones. Not even a sling. Anyway, what needed to be done had to be done, even at the cost of a few enchantments. To my surprise, the jelly was hurt enough to flee without landing any successful hit on the naga. His hp didn't drop at all!

D:6

Oh, A burning altar of Makhleb. I usually convert to whatever god if an altar shows up before the character reaches the temple, for the fact that he can begin to build relationship with that god earlier. Not that it's such a great advantage, but... Also, it gives the game some variety, as it's tempting to choose one of Okawaru/Sif Muna/Vehumet once I'm in the temple. I recall previous games where the hero was a Makhleb follower. Summoning great demons were fun, and impressive (deadly impressive for the monsters). Yeah... let's make contact with him and see if I'm qualified for his religeon. "Makhleb welcomes you!" Good, good.

Another phantom showed up. with a total AC of 15, I decided to take it on. Because the phantom kept blinking away, the naga spent more time throwing darts than hitting it. As a result, both throwing and darts skills improved significantly. Let's turn these off. It looked like the naga had enough killing power already and didn't need to rely on darts.

D:7

Well, there's another jelly, sleeping peacefully. Before taking it on, let's identify what this wand does on some minor monsters. On his way doing so, not only the naga found another wand, but a steaming spear as well (and a sleeping Blork the Orc). Excited, I decided to head back to the temple, which the naga found soon after he entered this level, to do some mass-identification.

The spear was the cursed spear of the Gods {AC+3 Int+4}. Fortunately, it didn't recurse itself upon wielding, and thus the problem could be easily solved with a ?remove curse. The extra AC was nice as always, but I'm not sure about if the spear should be taken as a main weapon. Let's play with it a bit and see if it has decent enchantments.

This time, !mutation gave the naga Str+1, fast metabolism 1, and mutation resistance 1. Being low on permanent food reserves, it was somewhat uncomfortable to see fast metabolism. But the naga was born poison resisting; I think he'd be okay at least in the lair and in the hive.

With the effects of !speed still lasting, and the wand of paralysis, this time it was an easy task taking out the jelly. It didn't even have a chance to move!

Thanks to the sield of resistance, Blork's spells didn't do the naga much damage. But his shout and the sound of mephitic cloud caught the attention of nearby jackels, and the naga was forced to retreat to a corridor to pick them one by one. After the jackels was put away, the naga tried to confuse Blork once more, but failed four times. Luckily, Blork's had been already badly weakened by toxin, and the naga meleed him to death easily.

The naga saw a cluster of orcs, including at least one orc priest. He tried to take them from another side, but things didn't look well when regular orcs started to corner him, and an orc warrior was awaken from his nap. After reading a ?teleportation, the naga was sent to the other side of the map, facing a jelly. Using the old trick of paralysis and stoning, it looked like the jelly would fall soon. However, a giant frog decided to join this fighting, and blocked my line of fire. When the poison spitted by the naga miss the frog and hit the jelly, I learned that jellies would be damaged by the splash, although not the poison. The room had only one doorway, so they couldn't escape from it. The jelly died in two hits after the frog started running away.

When the naga was fighting an imp, the artefact spear he's been using for a while was revealed to be a -4, -2 spear. I thought it's the shield that made it hard for the naga to hit anything, but obviously I was wrong. Still, the spear could be wield when I'm focus on casting, not meleeing, for the AC it provided.

D:8

The food problem was more substantial than I thought. The naga was constatly "very hungry" or "near starving". It didn't help that half of the contaminated chunks made him sick. Needless to say, he hadn't sacrificed lots of corpses to Makhleb.

I had never been so happy to see a group of killer bees before. They're prone to mephitic cloud and poison, have low hp, and leave decent chunks for this naga with a +5 dagger of speed.

D:9

Somehow I totally forgot about mephitic cloud when the naga was dueling with a manticore. When his hp was reduced to half, finally I remembered to use it, and the new unique in 0.5, Prince Ribbit, came to check what's going on. This guy moves pretty fast in his frog form, and caught up the naga on his way to the stairs. However, after throwing another mephitic cloud on him, the naga fleed successfully.

Not far from Prince Ribbit was a mummy. The naga couldn't summon Makhleb's imps yet, and he didn't want to take a curse or a !degeneration. The mummy was lured and dumped on D:8.

The naga was in a good shape and prepared to take on Prince Ribbit. Between mephitic cloud, poison spitting, and Makhleb's minor conjuration spells (the naga had to practice his invocation skill), the frog was not that serious a problem.

Erolcha was the third unique the naga met on this level (the second was Edmund). She's a nasty orge who can banish you into the abyss. Nevertheless, I thought the naga would be ok if she would stay confused. Although the naga spent almost all of his mp, Erolcha was killed relatively easily. A dose of mephitic could kept her confused for a long time.

D:10

A row of yaks were sleeping near the entrance of D:10. Did that means the naga was close to the lairs?

When the naga used his old trick, mephitic cloud, against a yak that was too close to him, a huge group of orcs poured out. I didn't know there were so many of them, but it surely was better to retreat. That cloud must create a really loud sound. To make things worse, the naga heard a distant slurping noise, which means more jellies.

Somewhere else on this level, the naga found the entrance to the orcish mines, unguarded. So that was where all the orcs came from, huh? Let's mark it's location and go on. I didn't think the naga could take out a huge pack of orcs yet. In a nearby room there's the entry to the lairs. I decided to forget about the orcs and the jellies, just venture forth.

L:1

Fortunately, when the naga steped into the lair, there's not a lot of mobs, only one snake sleeping. The nearby downstairs, however, did lead him to a pack of wild yaks. I would like to make a stash on L:2, so the yaks had to somehow to dealt with, but maybe the naga could approach them from another side. Let's explore L:1 first and see if there's any other route to the yaks.

Looks like someone had opened a bookshop for young adventureres in D:1. Maybe they have books of zoology or animal behavior on sale. Regardless, the only book the naga could offer was a book of Wizardry. There was 3 interesting spells in this book: detect creatures (level 2), magic mapping (level 4) and identify (level 6). Of course, teleport self and haste are both useful, but without proper training in the magic schools they belong, the naga was unlikely to cast the spells successfully.

Although the lair is known to be the home of various beasts (read: edible chunks), all that the naga seen on this level, except the snake near the entrance, were gray rats and jackels. Both leave contaminated meat, which are constantly made the naga sick. Thanks to Mahkleb, the naga's hp and mp would refill after he killed any enemy, which greatly (it seems) reduced the down time. Fortunately, a giant slug poped out of the thin air, and once again the naga, with his natural poison resistance, found something to dine on.

L:2

After exploring L:1, it looked like the naga had no choice but going down from the only set of stairs, which leaded to a pack of yaks and other mobs. Let's lure them upstair and confuse them in small groups. During my first attempt, the naga failed to cast mephitic cloud for 4 times, and his hp was reduced to half in the mean time. Being angered, I asked Mahkleb lend me one of his minions. The smoke demon did a good job smiting those creatures; it's a pity that he didn't last long. Maybe I should train more on invocation.

The mass-identification after clearing revealed a robe of FR. Earlier in the game, the naga found a +2 artefact robe that gave a +3 damage bonus. As the naga already reached 2 levels of FR, I decided to put the FR robe away for the time being.

L:3

The naga found a small 5x6 hive. It's fun to see how fast bees could kill each other when confused. The naga finally got some extra food to put in his stash. Still, I wished that a "gourmand or a =sustenance would show up soon. Being hungry all the time was not so fun.

L:5

A 5-head hydra joined war dogs' fighting against me. Panicked, I called a greater demon to my side. It was a blue death, which made the beast flee and die quickly. Looks like summoning greater demon could be seen as an "Ouch" option.

One of the unidentified scrolls turned out to be the scroll of acquirement. As the naga hadn't came across a variety of jewelleries yet, I decided to take one. The ring appears to be a {Fire AC+5} one. Well, it wasn't so valuable to the naga, but I kept it for the extra AC.

L:7

Soon after I got the idea that Makhleb's greater servants could be used as an emergency option, an unfreindly Barlug appeared, whipping me from afar. Once I saw it I tried to teleport away, but still a scroll got burned. Still, the naga escaped to the other side of the map, killing sheeps and hoping that Barlug would be away when he's back.

The naga heard a loud "Zot" twice, which means there was at least one Zot trap nearby. He got level 3 traps & doors skills, which made me think it would be safe after he had searched for traps for 100 turns. Of course, the opposite was true; the naga steped on the Zot trap at the end of the corridor and engulfed by a huge fireball. Thanks to the resistence sield and ring, only 1 hp was lost.

L:9

Death yaks hit pretty hard, and managed to kill my green death. Nevertheless, there was only one of them left, with little hp. The naga successfully blasted it with minor destruction just before the death yak ran outside his view. (In fact, death yaks are prone to mephitic cloud, but I forgot to use it at the time).

A runed leather armour was one of cold resistance. As the orcish mines was my next destination,and the naga didn't get any CR yet, I let the naga replace the +3 Dmg robe with this leather armour.

In order to have some DoT other than poison against fleeing enemies, I'd like the naga to pick up the spell of sticky flame. However, it looked like he couldn't learn the trick yet. Sticky flame is a level 4 spell based on the art of both conjuration and fire. Now if the naga had deemed his faith to Sif Muna, or had skilled in enchantment, one day he would be able to free up spell slots. Neither was the case, so I'd rather not to waste additional slots on other fire spells. Let's just turn conjuration on and start sting enemies once again to practice the naga's conjuration skills once again; once he's knowledge base in conjuration become large enough, he can learn sticky flame even without ever heard of fire magics.

O:1

To keep the naga from starving as often as possible, I decided rely on the trusty +6,+5 dagger of speed and the humble spell called sting (which cost no nutrition to cast) for killing normal orcs. As the naga's invocation skill had been raised high enough to summon greater demons reliably (actually, it's the skill he was most adept in), there's no need to train further by burning food to cast minor destructions.

O:2

Not only there was an orc knight greeting me, but an orc priest and two orc warriors as well. To play it safely, the naga lured the knight upstairs and confused him. For some reason, the knight wasn't intoxinated much by sting, and thus was somewhat hard to kill, as his armour was obviously too shiny for a thin dagger to penetrate. Orc priests, on the other hand, can be easily dealt with once they're confused, although smite could hit the naga pretty hard if they got a chance to cast it.

O:4

The dagger of speed was nice, but I couldn't help imaging what the naga's damage output would be with a long blade. Of course, the first ego long black he wield-identified was a runed falchion of distortion. Arggghhh! Darn greedy me. This naga was a promising and fun one, and I'd hate to lose him.

Let's think about it. Maybe we can clear O:4 first, and try to unwield this weapon once the naga done preparing himself with abyss from whatever in the L:2 stash. As slow as he was, I didn't expect him to survive long once he saw any hostile being; but if he's lucky with that ring of teleportation, it's not impossible to get out. Also, the remaining charges in that wand of haste might buy him some time to escape.

Alternatively, he could just take this falchon of distortion as his main weapon. The bad thing about this choice is that if a monster gets banished, the naga won't get any exp. However, he was more of a hybrid than a melee character; although he had 27 AC and could safely kill many monsters with a dagger, when the situation got nasty, the naga always had to resort to demon summoning or mephitic cloud. It didn't seem to be unreasonable for the naga to stop actively meleeing and rely purely on spells, demons, and poison spitting.

Well, let me leave the game for a while, ponder both of the solutions, and sort out what's the best for this naga.

L:2 Stash

After consulting on r.g.r.m, I made up my mind to let the naga get rid of the falchon of distortion. After running back to the stash and grabbing all his perma food, he unwielded the weapon. Fortunately, he was only caught in a spatial distortion, nothing serious. Rest up and ready to go. From now on, I'd ignore any ego weapons. +6, +5 dagger of speed was nice enough after all.

During his short stay, the naga also learned the tricks of magic mapping and of sticky flame. Although he wasn't able to use them half reliably, I think the two spells would be proved to have great value one day.

D:12

Not only the naga found the entrance to the Hive, but a !cure mutation. Yay! I had to suffer from hunger no more! Maybe it was better to refrain from drinking the other potion of mutation now. Let's wait to see if he can get teleport control or yet another !cure mutation.

H:1

Ooops, I forgot to explore the Swamp and the Snake Pit first... Oh well. Killer bees could be handled safely now, but were still annoying due to their sheer number. It's at this level I realized that mephitic cloud, despite of being only 3x3 squares, can be used to confuse a large number of monsters if they're not dangerous. Just cast it and move further from those who were not affected by the cloud yet. They will come after the character and, by doing so, drag themselves into the cloud.

S:1

Someone talked about how a distortion branded weapon toss waterborn creatures on the land, so I wanted to give it a try in the swamps. Being drunk, somehow I managed to tell the naga to fire my +4 AC artefact spear at a swamp worm. Goodbye the spear of the Gods. And then the naga somehow switched from that falchion of destortion to a deck of defense and ended up in the abyss (people also talked about not playing crawl, or any roguelike for that matter, while being drunk). Awww.

Abyss

With a ring of teleportation and a drunken but pissed me, the naga set off after finishing taking his honeycomb. An interest turn of events was that he found a altar of Lugonu just after his first teleportation. Without thinking if the naga could survive Makhleb's rage, I ordered the naga converted to Lugonu on a whim.

Seeing two 3s sent by Makhleb turned their malign attention on him, the naga lefe Abyss swiftly and switched for the dagger of speed.

Swamp:1

The naga noticed an aretifact once he was on the level. It was the spear of the Gods, laying peacefully on dry land. So it's not lost after all. Good. I had to be more careful with the firing command. Let's inscribe it with {!f}.

Between the naga's stings and sticky flames, it wasn't too hard to kill swamp worms without Makhleb's minor destruction. He even managed to kill a six-headed hydra at the cost of 4/5 of his energy. Needless to say, it was so much easier with Makhleb's greater servants. I wondered which of Lugonu's ablities would be proved to be a significant advantage for the naga. It better be a life-saving ability in need!

What gave the naga trouble was Makhleb's retribution. Even though he just released minor demons to attack the naga, they had abilities harmful enough (like summoning a lot of even less powerful demons) that forced the naga to retreat upstair and pick the demons one by one. As Lugonu isn't particularly impress with demon slaying, all this trouble lead not to any increase of his piety, but more hunger.

Swamp:2

It was a pleasant surprise that sticky flame was powerful enough to take out a 6-headed hydra quickly. With 29 AC and level 9 dodging, the naga was only scratched a bit by the hydra before the poor thing fleed.

He found a book of Cantrips, which contains this humble but powerful spell, Summon Small Mammels. The more meat shields, the merrier. Considering that Makhleb's servants would help the naga no longer, the spell looked like very handy to me. Still, I don't really think the naga had the spare experiences for training summoning, so I put the book aside.

Swamp:5

Not really knowing what Lugonu's corruption does, I decided to try it near the swamp dragons guarding the rune. Apparently, it created a lot of neutral abyssal monsters, who were excellent meat shield and crushed some hydra and dragons. However, they attacked things indifferently; the naga escaped after his hp dropped to 1/4. Hmm. Maybe the ability wasn't meant to be used to create a large meat shield?

Snake:1

Between Sticky Flame and the dagger of speed, the naga was killing those poisonous monsters effectively. Even a blue death sent by Makhleb demised quickly. He found a chamber filled with nasty sleeping Js. After setting a travel exclusion mark, he sliently ran away, pretending he didn't see anything.

Snake:3

It turned out that the wand of fireball couldn't take out two ice statues as fast as I thought. With all it charges ran out, the naga retreated to a corridor to deal with the awaken nagas, waiting to wipe out the remaining ice statue with his sticky flame. Luckily, those naga were slow-runners as myself, thus I didn't have any difficulty on my way to the corridor.

Near the now broken ice statues was a frozen archway. Motivated by his curiousity, the naga went through the archway and entered an ice cave. That's amazing, I've never seen such a place in my previous games. The spell of detect creatures showed that the cave was inhabitated by demons. Seeing there were a couple of 2s and 8s, it was somewhat risky to explore this area. Still, the naga couldn't help but want to know what kind of a place this was, and want to discover if there was any treasures.

As the shield of resistance provided the naga one level of AC, it was not that hard to deal with all these cold-based demons. The only thing that gave the naga trouble were the clouds of freezing vapour covering some parts of this area. It did significant damage, and shattered some potions. At the end of this level, the naga found a staff of energy and a slimy demon trident. Not bad.

Snake:5

Having used Lugonu's power of corruption at the Swamp, I got a rough idea of how to use it in my mind. After corrupting this level, I tried to teleport my naga out of the troubles at once, and let the abyssal residents deal with the hostile nagas for a while. Meanwhile, our hero was busy exploring the rest of this level.

Frankly speaking, it didn't look like to me that lots of nagas were wiped by the corruption. Maybe I just had to think harder about the correct way of using it?

D:16

The naga was informed that an interdimensional caravan has stopped on this level. Without any scroll of mapping at his hand, the naga had no choice but casting the spell of magic mapping, although he was not familiar with it. Fortunately, although the spell wasn't proved to be a great help, he did heard the stately tolling of a bell nearby. Soon after, he found a flickering gateway to a bazaar. To his dismay, the naga didn't found the products there exceptionally attractive; he bought some items that weren't identified yet and left the market.

Sonja the assasin was a new unique in 0.5. From the description in irc, she looked deadly. Luckily (?), the kobold teleported herself away soon after encountering with the naga, so I didn't even have a chance to endorse her prowess before she succumbed to the naga's sticky flame and poison.

D:18

The naga found a slimy demon blade, which turned out to be "Ocumyata" {elec, Stlth+}. Being already extremely stealthy, the demon blade didn't offer much for the naga. However, personally I always find weapons of electrocution charming. Let's play around with it a bit.

D:19

A lot of Ws and zs were detected forming a square. There were some ns and Vs as well. Could that be a graveyard? On the naga's way to explore that area, a dragon shapeshifter gave him a lot of trouble. Although the naga can resist fire himself, lots of scrolls were burnt. Worse still, the demon blade turned out to be -2,-5 and wasn't much help.

It appeared that the graveyard thing was guarded by yet another new unique in 0.5, Roxanne the earth mage statue. Henzell the irc bot said she can be safely killed with magic darts. Unfortunately, I didn't find any book that contains this spell. Also, the only wand of magic darts was left at the stash in the lair long ago. Being lazy, I asked the naga to zap her with a wand of disintegration. Of course, the wand was shown to be out of charge.

People on r.g.r.m commented on how useful Lugonu's corruption is when you escape upstairs after casting it. Maybe I could try that here. The naga invoked corruption, and then ran upstairs. It took a while for the effects of corruption to kick in, and the naga went back to his stash to grab the wand of magic darts meantime.

Back to D:19. It didn't look like corruption wiped out the monsters in that graveyard... Oh well. Unfortunately, even though I used up all charges in that wand of magic darts, Roxanne was just lightly wounded. Disintegration and banish didn't work against her. The good thing was that she's immobile. Thus I set a travel exclusion moved on.

D:20

It's a big cross-shaped room with yaktaurs. Although the naga casted swiftness before engaging them, their crossbows were still deadly. Looked like it might be worth to invest in repel missles.

Also, he found a book of fiery conjurations, from which he learned the spell of magic dart. I picked this spell up just for killing Roxanne (which took forever), but it's worth it. She's way too annoying!

Elf:1

Never in my previous games was the character welcomed by so many elves as soon as he entered the elven hall. There must be at least 10 of them, all of whom are not regular elves but deep elves. Panicked, I dropped a corruption and ran back to the orcish mines.

After the naga returned to Elf:1 from Lair:2, the summoned creatures were almost all gone. Still, a lot of elves remained there. Sigh. Let's lure them upstair one by one. It had to be done with patience. It turned out that, in fact, the deep elves are quite easy to kill. Maybe I didn't have to worry that much.

Elf:7

Lesson learned: It's hard, if not impossible, to corrupt undiggable walls. The naga prayed to Lugonu several times, wishing her tear apart the walls of elf:7 vaults. Needless to say, there's not even a hole appeared on these walls. Moreover, during the process the only entrance into the vault was closed by a newly created stone wall, which is itself undiggable.

After several charges in the wand of digging were wasted, the naga finally entered by random teleportation. There was too few free inventory slots, so I just grabbed some staves, books, and jewelries. One of the ring turned out to be the ring of Optimism (left hand) {rF+ rC+ AC+6 Dam+4}, which is plain nice. Together with the shield of resistance, the naga got 2 levels of rF and rC. Six extra AC was not to be overlooked, too. The damage bonus was just icing on the cake.

In response to the shortage of scrolls of identification, I let the naga learned the spell of identify. Proved to be a waste of spell levels. Even when equping a wizardry item, he casted it so poorly that he can't identify two items without mutated by residual magical energies.

Vault:3

Coming across a potion of cure mutation, I decided to gamble with mutation, and ended up with herbivore 1 and deterioring body. With a staff of energy and an amulet of the gourmand, food wasn't a problem. However, constantly loosing stat points was. Although I got about 10 potions of restore abilities, it was still annoying. Quaffed the potion of cure mutation and moved on.

Vault:8

I should have just teleport after corrupt the level, not ran upstairs. It seems that you have to be on the level for the abyssal monsters to take out anything.

"You hear a distant slurping noise." NOOOO! There were jellies eating MY fat loot! Somehow they were not detected by the naga's spell. Let's put a ring of teleportation on and see if I can bump into that darn creature.

Later, when I was stucked with a vault guard and orc socerer, I corrupted the level again and never heard or detected any jellies from then on. Maybe it was crushed by some reapers, or just stepped on a zot trap.

It had been a long time before the naga heard another slurping noise. Geez. What's going on here? "The yaktaur changes into a brown ooze!" So it was a shapeshifter, huh?