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Glazius" post="445459097 posted:
Even though it might be terribly frustrating, I would like to see a successful run of IVAN.
I'm committed to posting a winning run. If it get's really bad I'll stop using any personal conducts and should be able to more easily get a win, albeit as an angel hair limbed half man, half Neiman Marcus monster.
I don't really understand the SSLP testpost thing so I'll just post fewer screens. The rest of this post is devoted to the tale of the demise of my character. In typical IVAN fashion, things go well until death strikes swiftly and ruthlessly.
This is a kamikaze dwarf. They are pretty dangerous as they are fast, charge you, and explode to deal a lot of fire damage. In my case here, my character is OK because he has fire resistant and decent armor and health. A veteran kamikaze dwarf might be able to still single shot me through my fire resistance, but fortunately this is not a veteran.
Kamikaze dwarf, post kamikaze.
The first gloomy cave set-piece. In the early floors a room will spawn full of wolves led by a single werewolf. The werewolf drops some scrolls when you kill him (can be seen here on the ground in front of me). Not too tough a challenge, but dangerous to poorly equipped characters that can get swarmed by the fast and accurate wolves.
The shop, spawning early on GC2. The shopkeeper guards and shopkeeper are very dangerous when you first meet them. Since many players will have a habit of kicking open locked doors, it is an easy mistake to kick open the shop door (which looks the same as any other door) and get a mithril pick-axe in your face, which will very rapidly kill you. No particularly good items in this run, but I will still try to kill the shopkeeper early by praying every ~ 4hrs nearby to try to spawn an angel.
The holy banana, which is a unique item and a flaming banana. Like all bananas in the game, it can be zapped like a wand. Unlike other bananas, it actually does something when zapped and will shoot fireballs. More importantly, it gives stat boosts when eaten so I immediately eat it.
The "big room" is another set-piece that always generates. It is a dwarven minefield that it is generally best to go through ASAP when spotted otherwise some stupid monster will jog through it and create a chain reaction with the mines and destroy scrolls, wands, etc. in the room.
My praying by the shop strategy has paid off. I actually got an archangel here, which is very rare and much, much more dangerous than a regular angel.
Archangel, packing heat.
I swing my pick against the shop wall to make the inhabitants go hostile. The game warns me that I am in great danger near powerful hostile monsters.
The aftermath.
An update on my inventory. Most of this equipment is from the gloomy caves shopkeeper, and is a substantial upgrade to what I was previously wearing. Enchanted nymph-hair equipment is nice as it has decent armour and doesn't reduce your agility / dexterity when worn because it is so light and flexible (also helps with encumbrance).
A shot of a crystal golem in UT:4 (which I mentioned skipping over earlier in the LP). These guys can one hit crit kill characters that have ~100 hp so I'm a little close to the danger zone here but get through OK.
A very bad stroke of luck. Drinking from fountains has a small change to give a permanent status effect. I rolled permanent slow. I also got permanent polymorphitis (invisible stat), which will come up again later.
The enner beast, boss of GC:5. He has a damaging scream that hits the entire level, breaking objects (including in your inventory). Facing him without an unbreakable light is essentially impossible, but we have glowing crystals from UT:4 as well as I think some flaming swords. Enner does a lot of damage as you get close to him and will easily destroy all your potions so is quite dangerous. I have poured my potions into cans so they are safe from destruction and use wands to kill him at a distance.
A meteoric steel chest, with two very nice items. Tragically, the amulet of lifesaving will not help me later on.
The weakest enemy unique, Rondol the kobold. He's spawned pretty late here so I trash him despite being slow. Rondol has a mithril spear which is very dangerous to early-game characters but a little behind the times at this point in this character's run. He drops a wand of polymorph, which is a nice item.
The second enemy unique, the goblin Guugzamesh. Guugzamesh dual wields enchanted mithril swords and is much stronger than rondol.
Angel buddy helps me take him out.
Updated equipment. Notice I am wielding a unique artifact which I got from sacrificing a ton of crap to Mortifier, the most evil of the gods. It is a great weapon that does a ton of damage and provides occasional life steal. It can be dual-wielded with another weapon by those strong enough (32 arm strength; not quite there yet).
A magic mushroom has polymorphed itself into an extremely dangerous enemy, a mistress warlady. Fortunately it is unarmed so I can kill it easily but with a real weapon it would be lethal. Enemy polymorphing is very dangerous because it is unrestricted and nothing stops any unit from rolling a giant dark frog and eating your lunch.
A shot of the other big room, GC:6, which is a level that is all one room. A dead angel can be seen, killed by a veteran kamikaze dwarf. The other angel made it and is fighting a zombie and a golem below me. I hightail it to the stairs down.
The mystic dark frog, boss of GC:7. Very dangerous, and can teleport you and your equipment (weapons, amor, lightsource, rings of resistance, etc.), as well as debuff you and cast direct damage spells. He is invisible but I have infravision so can see him. I fireball him to his doom with a wand and then clean up the other frogs in melee.
Third unique, the skeleton xinroch (shown here as a dead pile of bones). For some reason the uniques this run keep spawning late and when I have angels nearby so have generally been a breeze. Xinroch wields a flaming ruby scimitar and is normally quite dangerous when you meet him. He drops a wand of resurrection which is a key component of some cheesy strategies that I may have to employ if I keep losing.
Fin. I get caught polymorphed as a blink dog (weak early game monster) and get rushed by a kamikaze dwarf, who kills be before my angel can protect me. IVAN has ungenerous polymorph rules and being killed while polymorph doesn't turn you back into a human it just kills you. So if you roll a rat or something its easy for a random enemy walking the level to kill you. My fault for drinking from pools without 100% source of polymorph control. Oh well.