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Last time: I rescued the carpenter from the Village Dungeon and negotiated the terrors of the Small Cave (ie a roided up goblin.) This time: I attempt the Unremarkable Dungeon.



In the first level I find a tension room full of gnolls. In numbers, gnolls are relatively dangerous for low-level monsters and I take a couple of hits as I pickpocket and kill my way through them. In situations like this I play carefully, switching to Coward and using First Aid any time I take a hit. My hitpoints were already down to about 50% from the roid goblin in the Small Cave but I have loads of hitpoints and the damage I'm taking isn't spiky enough to worry me. I'll probably want to rest soon afterwards though. I hit Polearms 5, Shield 2 and level 7 as I fight them.




I put two into Healing, even though the second had a high likelihood of hitting the skill cap (it did). Worth a few missed points. The other pick went into Alertness (8). Loot from the gnolls includes another scroll of protection, a scroll of power (restores power points), unidentified gloves (probably [+0,+0]) and an unIDed scroll. A ghul wanders in as I rest afterwards and I get Slings 1 as I kill him.



As I continue to rest, my health increases. This means I gained another point of toughness. Taking damage and/or recovering hitpoints seems to train toughness. The slurping sound is a giant spider of some sort spinning a web. The ripping sound is another monster breaking free of a web. I'll need to be careful - giant spiders have a poison attack.



As I head back to the stairs I pass a web (grey |) and run into a cave lion. Cave lions are a type of cat so I want to avoid killing it if possible. I could lead it back to the web and get it stuck but that would be a temporary solution and I might want to come back to this level later to drink from the pool, so instead I try to tame it with music.



Unfortunately my music skill sucks so I fail most of my music checks. The ones that do succeed don't seem to impress the cave lion. Back to plan A!



Later, shitlord!

On to level 2 and



that's a lot of gnolls. I don't bother with pickpocket this time, I want my hitpoints to recover some more and trying to pickpocket this many will just get them ground down through attrition. In the process of killing them I hit level 8.




I put all three picks into Healing (21).



The loot includes a metal girdle. Unlike the metal girdle I'm wearing, which weighs 25s, this one weighs 20s. This means it is made of mithril, a lighter and more protective material. I decide to live dangerously and equip it right away without checking its B/U/C status as I really want more PV. It turns out to not be cursed and I make a net gain of another point of PV. I also loot a wand and some potions. Most wands are safe to use-ID but one in particular is potentially lethal so I'll wait until I can ID it magically. Potions are not really safe to use-ID at all so they can wait too. I'd like to take the gnolls' axes too as weapons sell pretty well at shops, but I'm close to burdened already and don't want to deal with the penalties at the moment.



Tomes are spellbooks and how most casters learn spells. Even if I could read, barbarians get penalties to learning spells and I'll never get any use out of it, but I take it anyway as they're usually fairly valuable.



I run into a karmic lizard. Karmic creatures affect a particular set of player intrinsics. From worst to best they are Doomed, Cursed, Lucky and Fate Smiles. Attacking a Karmic creature in melee has a high chance of removing the positive intrinsics if present, or adding the negative ones if they are not. These intrinsics have a small effect on all of the players rolls and some other side effects. For example, Doomed characters moving through darkness have a small chance to be eaten by a grue each turn. This means instadeath. Characters who take a hit that would reduce them to 0 hitpoints or below have a chance to be left alive on 1 hitpoint if Blessed (or lucky?). Cursed or Doomed characters will generate more dungeon vaults - this could be seen as a good thing as vaults are great sources of loot, but being Cursed or Doomed is otherwise really really bad so trying to take advantage of this is risky to say the least. Reaching high piety levels will cause your god to remove the negative intrinsics and add positive ones. Karmic creatures are usually easy to spot as they change colour as they move. I kill the lizard with my sling and hit Slings 2. I resume exploring and gain another point of Appearance from Athletics, and Shield 3 as I kill stuff. This is as high as my shield skill will go until I find a bigger shield than my [+3,+1] medium shield.

On to level 3 and I loot another spellbook.



I also run into my first river. This one is more narrow than usual at this point, and even if I failed my swimming check would be easy to cross for the loss of a few hitpoints. However, crossing it wouldn't actually lead anywhere, as the level has generated in such a way that I'll have to swim downstream to explore further. Fortunately I started with 80 points in swimming so this should be safe. I stow rustable gear in my inventory where it will be protected by the waterproof blanket from the Small Cave and dive in.



Well fuck. Inspection of my inventory reveals the waterproof blanket is not there. Either I got distracted taking the screenshot and forgot to actually pick it up, or it somehow got destroyed since then and I missed it. Going back to the Small Cave to look for it now would be bordering on suicidal.

The spear was a spare, no big deal. The first two scrolls were the two that I picked up from the Small Cave entrance as RNG fodder. They've served their purpose. It sucks to lose all those other scrolls, especially protection. That huge manual was the only manual of bridge building in the game, so I won't be able to raise the skill past 6. Hopefully I won't need it anyway - there's another way to pass the one body of water that needs to be passed in order to finish the game. Fortunately the stairs down are close by so I decide to cut my losses and turn back before any more gear gets ruined, and proceed to the next level.



I didn't screenshot it, but in the next level I encounter a werewolf. Werewolves are able to summon wolves and this one does. A lot. The wolves are chaff and I kill them without too much problem but there werewolf himself is tougher than I expect and takes off a lot of hitpoints. I then run into the ogre above who crits me down to 8 HP. It is now that I realise I forgot to re-equip my spear and shield after my little swimming excursion. Fuck. No wonder the werewolf was so tough.




I play it safe and pray to my god. This restores me to full HP at the cost of some piety. I re-equip my gear and kill the ogre. Phew. On the bright side, punching all those wolves to death got me to unarmed 4. Due to their sheer numbers I had the key pressed down and didn't notice unarmed was leveling. This is bad play as a cat or something could have gotten mixed in but there was a fucking lot of wolves and fuck doing that shit one press at a time.




I check the piles of dead wolves and find some nice loot. Warm cloaks are always magical, I wear ID it right away and it turns out to be a cloak of defense [+3,+0]. Nice. Longswords are usually 40s; 32s longswords are mithril and sell quite nicely. The crossbow is a nice find too. Bows and Crossbows can be used with slaying ammo. Slaying ammo comes in various varieties such as undead slaying or demon slaying and will always crit when used against its corresponding enemy. Some of these enemies are extremely dangerous, so slaying ammo and the means to fire it are very important. The crossbow will also do a lot more damage than my sling and fortunately I found some quarrels a little while ago too. I also loot the amulet and potions to identify later.

Further exploration and I hit level 9.




Healing is down to 1d5 increases now but is high enough to level passively. Two picks into Alertness (22) and one into Herbalism (14). Level 9 is a talent level and I pick Long Stride, which reduces the base energy cost for movement to 950. This will be handy for outrunning cats, among other things. In fact, it comes in useful almost immediately when I encounter a cat on my way to the stairs to the next level.



I encounter an ochre jelly. Ochre jellies are another monster I don't want to melee. Attacking them with a melee weapon can corrode it, reducing its to-hit and damage. I hit Crowssbows 1 as I shoot it.



I find a medium shield that weighs 160s instead of the usual 100. This means it is a crystal shield, with much better stats than usual. I equip it right away. It has stats of [+9,+4], a huge upgrade from my regular [+3,+1] medium shield.



I meet another orc scorcher and extract a spear from him, which turns out to be cursed. I've been pretty lucky with wear-IDing so far, it was inevitable I'd hit something cursed eventually. This is actually not as big a deal as you might think. As far as I know, cursed weapons don't actually confer any penalties in combat. However if it gets damaged, for example rusted by a water trap, I'm stuck with it. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

I kill a goblin berserker, who drops another medium crystal shield. Not learning at all from the cursed spear, I equip it immediately. Fortunately it isn't cursed and has an extra point of DV compared to the first one. Hooray! On to level 6, where I hit Polearms 7, Crossbows 2, and lose my mandoline to an exploding fire vortex.



Level 6 is mostly uneventful, but I hear a shopkeeper. Unfortunately the shop turns out to be a bookshop, not much use to me. I take the opportunity to sell the two spellbooks I picked up earlier on move on to level 7.



I find herb bushes growing on level 7. Herbs bushes come in 7 varieties, 4 of which yield two types of herb - one with a beneficial effect and one with a negative version of the same effect, and 3 of which yield one type only:

Stomafilla/Stomacemptia: Gain/lose satiation
Curia Mancox/Devil's Rose: Fight/cause sickness (a nasty status effect that confers attribute penalties and effectively caps your HP at 50%)
Alraunia Antidote/Demon Daisy: Fight/cause poisoning (damage over time)
Pepper Petal/Burb Root: Heal/damage
Morgia Root: Trains Toughness and Willpower up to 25
Spenseweed: Heal
Moss of Marelion: Trains Dexterity up to 25 (unless cursed, in which case it abuses, or negatively trains it)

The effectiveness of herbs depends on their B/U/C status. Characters without the Herbalism skill will always get cursed herbs from herb bushes. Herbalism grants a chance to get uncursed or blessed herbs, increasing the higher the skill level. Herbalism also allows the character to identify the type of herb they are picking (but not its B/U/C status) and how "strong" the bush is. Herb bushes have three levels: full of blossoms, strong, and withered. Each time they are picked for herbs there is a chance they will degrade by one level. If a withered bush degrades it will die. Every so often, bushes can spread across tiles or die out according to how many herb bushes are in adjacent tiles. Copy-pasted from the guidebook:

If the bush has 0 or 1 neighboring bush, it will die in the next generation.
If the bush has 2 or 3 neighboring bushes, it will survive through the next generation.
If the bush has 4 neighboring bushes, it will die in the next generation.
If an empty dungeon square has 3 neighboring bushes, a new bush will grow during the next generation.
Births and deaths are simultaneous.

Furthermore, a bush will regenerate by one level if it has 3 neighbouring bushes. The upshot of all this is that a 2x2 square of bushes will remain stable and regenerate indefinitely as long as it is not picked to death. This means it can be farmed for useful herbs. The type of herbs a bush yields depends on what row of tiles it is on. I trim the bushes into an L shape that will grow into a square that yields morgia and marelion, the two stat-training herbs.



I run into some giant ants. This means there is an ant hole around here somewhere which will spawn a number of worker and soldier ants and eventually an ant queen, after which no more ants will generate. Unfortunately none of the ants leaves a corpse. Ant corpses grant intrinsic acid resistance when eaten.

I hit level 10 as I continue to explore.




Two into Athletics (11) and one into Herbalism (7). I also gain yet more Appearance.



I'm nearly at the end of the dungeon and have some spare food so I wait around for a bit and farm some herbs before continuing to the next level.



An out-of-depth shadow troll spawns and drains my Strength. Fuck. That's enough herbs, I'm out. I drop some loot to lose Burdened and run from the troll. On to level 8.



Not far into level 8 I encounter a blink dog. Blink dogs can teleport and summon more blink dogs, however only the original dog can summon more. Blink dog corpses grant one of the most useful intrinsic abilities in the game - teleport control.



I name the original blink dog Fido - I'll want to be able to distinguish him from the others and try to avoid killing him so he can keep summoning more dogs until one leaves a corpse. Blink dogs seem more inclined to summon when injured. The first time I hit him he won't summon any, so I hit him again (with Coward tactics on) and accidentally kill him. He doesn't leave a corpse. Oh well, maybe next time.



Shit. I open a door and tap the button to move through before noticing an ochre jelly had moved into the doorway. It corrodes my cursed spear to (-1,1d8-1). I kill it with my crossbow, but I'll want to find a way to get rid of this spear soon and replace it with a better one.



I also encounter a rust monster. Rust monsters will rust metallic weapons when hit in melee, and can rust your equipment with their attack. To make things worse, they will catch and eat any metallic missiles fired at them. I use my acid spit to kill it, but not before it rusts my crossbow. I don't think rust affects the damage of weapons, but it does make them prone to breaking in combat and further rust damage will destroy the weapon. I realize too late that I should have attacked the rust monster with my cursed spear to rust it into oblivion.



I find a chaotically aligned altar. I'll need to be careful around this as chaotically aligned monsters capable of speech can use it to sacrifice me (instant death) if I stand on it while in their line of sight. However, if I use it to sacrifice enough gold (3000 right now, but I think it scales somehow later in the game), I can convert the altar to neutral. This requires standing on it though, so to be safe I first close all the doors in the room.



You sense a conflict between supernatural entities.
Ussrachs and Issrecht seem to be quarreling for supremacy!
Issrecht triumphs!
You hear the angry wail of Ussrachs.
The altar glows in a gray shine.
The 3000 gold pieces are engulfed by gray mist and disappear."

The altar is now neutral and I use it to determine the B/U/C status of all my gear and loot. Amongst my loot is a pair of blessed bracers. Trying them on reveals them to be bracers of defense [+2,+0]. I also find a sling of accuracy (+5,+1). Finally I have a neutral altar that's not in the dark and not in the corner of a room, so I can now kite non-summoned, non-replicating, non-neutral, living monsters over it and sacrifice them to gain piety. Now that my morgia and marelion herbs are fully identified, I know how many I need to use to train my stats enough to guarantee an increase (it depends on the B/U/C status). I respectively munch/squeeze the required amount of each.



As I explore looking for suitable sacrifices, I hit Shield 4 and the herbs kick in, increasing my Willpower, Toughness and Dexterity. I take a another dose of each and continue.



I sacrifice an outlaw and reach the "very pleased" level of piety. This mean I can now drop water potions onto the altar to turn them into holy water.



I dip my cursed spear into my new holy water. This blesses it, removing the curse and enabling me to replace it. Now that I can let go of my weapon, I can try on the various pairs of unidentified gloves I've picked up along the way. One of them turns out to be a pair of fencing gloves [+1,+1]. Not bad.



I spend a bit more time sacrificing monsters for some extra piety. I could keep this up long enough to reach the max level of piety and pray to get crowned or pre-crowned. Crowning makes you your god's champion, giving you one of a group of possible artifacts (depending on your class), an elemental immunity and permanent blessed status (similar to lucky/fate smiles). However once crowned, if you change alignment, you become a fallen champion and cannot regain crowned status. You need to be crowned to enter the Chaos god's realm for an ultra ending, and I still need to switch to chaotic to do the quests to fulfill the other requirements, so that's out for now. I could get pre-crowned, which is similar to crowning. Crowning requires that you be at max piety and the extreme version of your god's alignment when you pray, that is L+, N=, or C-. If you have max piety but not the alignment, and if less than x artifacts have spawned (x depends on your character level) you can be pre-crowned. This grants you a random artifact and leaves you free to switch alignment later. Artifacts range from junk to very, very nice, but holy shit is it tedious accumulating that much piety through sacrificing monsters. Later when I want to be crowned I can just dump a huge pile of gold on an altar and be done with it, but by then the number of guaranteed artifacts that will have spawned will make it impossible to get pre-crowned. Certain factors can make pre-crowning a little more achievable without spending hours waiting for monsters to spawn and kiting them back to the altar. Not being neutral helps - neutral and lawful gods won't accept neutral or lawful monsters respectively as sacrifices, but chaotic gods will take monsters of any alignment. There are very few lawful monsters, so this isn't a big deal for lawful characters either. For neutrals, the pool of sacrificable monsters is much smaller. Another thing that helps is to get an altar in or close to a cavernous level (big open rooms with much higher spawn rates) or a vault (lots and lots of monsters already inside).

Anyway, I absolutely cannot be fucked getting precrowned, so I head for the stairs. Notice that there are two up stairs here - I have reached the end of the dungeon.



I emerge in a hidden corner of the map, surrounded by impassible high mountains. Next to me is the fortress-like High Mountain Village.

You enter a bustling village. Beings from all kinds of races abound and are scurrying about. Everyone seems to be very active.

The High Mountain Village contains a general store where I sell my loot, leaving me just shy of 6000 gold. As in Holeinthewall, I sort the shop's inventory into two piles - junk and useful stuff.



The good pile. Not pictured: a scroll of defense. There's some really nice stuff here. For now I buy the orcish spear of penetration (ignores PV, as mentioned in an earlier update when I explained prefixes and suffixes, I thought penetration was a prefix, turns out I was wrong), the potion of water, and the clothes of protection. I nip back to the altar to turn the water into holy water and to make sure my new purchases aren't cursed (they aren't) before equipping them. I use the holy water to bless the spear. Blessed weapons are less likely to be damaged and cause more damage to undead.



Back to the High Mountain Village. As you can see, there are three closed off areas here. The ones in the east and west are accessible by secret doors. The one in the upper middle is only accessible by teleportation. I'll be back for that later when I have a means of controlled teleportation.



Inside the eastern secret room I meet Gaab'Baay, the old crone. Biskup loves his anagrams, and Gaab'Baay is an anagram for Baba Yaga, a witch from Slavic folklore.

"Ah, your coming has been foretold.
Mature and we'll talk."

Gaab'Baay gives quests that are part of the ultra-ending chain, but has nothing to say to me until I switch to Chaotic. I'll be back!



The western room contains two things. One is an unIDed potion which is always a blessed potion of extra healing. This restores up to 333 HP and boosts max HP by 1-2. The other is a staircase.



This leads back to the world map, west of the Small Cave. I could head back to Terinyo from here and do the Puppy Cave but I'd have to skirt a long way around a river (or risk losing more gear swimming across) to do so. Travelling across the world map consumes a lot of in-game time and I'll be back that way later anyway, so I'll do it then. For now, I head to the ADOM's main dungeon, the Caverns of Chaos.



Next time: I commence exploration of the Caverns of Chaos.