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Part 4 - The Storm


Where we last left off, I got the best sword in the game, a two-handed sword, and I haven't had any recent near death experiences. Let's fix that with some good old fashioned hubris!



I charge with my new sword right into a rattlesnake into a dark room. Surely I can kill it before anything bad happens!





Although your strength can never go below 3, it is important to keep it above 7 (where you start getting major penalties to melee).



I run into an actual orc, who doesn't want to attack me. This is because there was a pile of gold in the room, and orcs will greedily run over and stand on top of it as soon as you enter. This only lasts until you attack them or leave the room, in which they will revert to being aggressive like most other monsters.



I beat it up and steal its gold and the ration next to it. Food has definitely not been a problem this game, but it can very easily start running out if I get an unlucky streak.



While walking down this tunnel, I accidentally run into my first centaur (represented with a C). Centaurs, as I covered before, are absolutely nasty and should be killed quickly/avoided.



I get greedy and decide I can take it on, which it punishes me for. I can still take about 2 more hits before dying, however, so I keep gambling.



And it pays off! Level 6, and I get a full ten HP from the level up!



Also, even more food! If I can find about two more pieces, it should be good enough to just dive for stairs at this point.



Of course, as with any roguelike, good luck is usually followed by bad in some shape or form. This is a quagga (represented by a Q): hit as hard as a centaur, with less HP but more dodging. Running into this in the shape I'm in could spell doom, so the smartest idea is to just run to the stairs.



Smart ideas? What are those?

Well, I still managed to kill the quagga, but 4 HP is just asking to be destroyed by the next thing that walks into the room.



Thus, I decide to quaff the one potion I've found since my hallucinatory testing.





Guess this character is screwed. I just drank a potion of blindness, the worst potion in the game. Blindness lasts for 600 turns, and makes it so that you can no longer see anything (although you can still read scrolls, for some reason). Already an awful potion to deal with in the early levels, it's downright lethal now that centaurs and quaggas are spawning.

The only way to cure blindness is to drink either a potion of see invisible, a potion of healing, or a potion of extra healing. Since I'm all out of potions, and my defenses aren't strong enough to hold up to quaggas and centaurs, I decide to dive for points.



A rattlesnake decides to help me out in making sure this character dies, as I accidentally overshoot the tunnel to the room where the staircase is.



I'm still alive at 1 HP, but I might as well be dead.



I make it to the next level, and show off why blindness is even worse on new levels. Since I'm blind, I can't map out any tiles except for whatever I stand on and whatever I run into. If you drink a potion of blindness early, it is highly suggested you try to stick it out on whatever level you drank it on, since you will at least have a partial map to work with.



A leprechaun (represented with an L, but unseen) helps himself to my defenseless pockets



I manage to stumble upon another identify wand scroll, and use it on my other wand. It turns out to be invisibility, which is awful since I can only zap monsters with it, not myself.



I also find another potion of hallucination, and decide "Fuck it" and drink it anyway.



I then enter an open room, only to get beat up by something pretty strong while a rattlesnake drains away the remainder of my strength.



Turns out the strong thing was a centaur

So that's Rogue in a nutshell. I could have played better, but it inevitably boils down to getting lucky at the right times and taking the better part of valor whenever the opportunity presents itself (but mainly the former). Thanks to the luck factor (as well as the incredibly unfair identification system), it is pretty easy to see why many would rather play one of the other, more recent descendants of Rogue in this day and age. In my opinion, however, it's still a relatively fun game to boot up and die in every once in a while, and that's saying something for a game made in 1980.

If anyone is still interested, I can give it another go. Otherwise, I'll move on to other, greener (corpse-filled) pastures.