Toggle Background Color

Last time: I fed the ratling his artifacts and rescued Khelavaster. This time: I go looking for some Chaos Orbs.

I return to Thrundarr to turn in the graveyard quest.



"I sense it... ye hast freed Griff's spirit.
Ye hast shown the mark of a great hero. Yer valor is unquestionable.
Thus we will permit ye to venture into the depths of this dungeon which contain the most dangerous and foul beasts."
The ancient dwarf pulls a stone lever rising from the floor.
You hear a grating sound far below your feet.
"The way is now free for ye.
Here is some stuff ye might find useful on your quest."
The ancient dwarf drops some items in front of you.
"No go save our future!"




My reward is a wand of digging, a wand of fireballs, and 4 potions of extra healing.

I head back down from Dwarftown past Khel's level to D:17

The air suddenly is filled with the stench of death. The stone is colored in strange gray shades and everything seems to be decaying, rotting and dying slowly.

This is another graveyard level. It contains many types of undead, including ghosts, vampires, and liches. Ghosts are able to travel through walls and have an aging melee attack. I'll need to be careful of those. Liches I explained last update. The ones on this level are all just regular liches (unless you go gravedigging) but even those are dangerous. Vampires can drain attributes in melee too.



Like wight corpses, eating wraith corpses is chaotic but has a chance to raise toughness. I'm not sure how likely an increase is when I already have 28 toughness but I need to get back to chaotic anyway so I eat it.



Nothing happens. Several wraiths later I've managed to increase toughness by one point to 29 and my alignment has dropped to CN. I guess wraith corpses increase toughness higher more easily than ogres increase strength. I've been eating a lot of ogre and ogre lord corpses with no increases at all. A wight drops a scroll of corruption removal. Hooray!



I make my way around through the outer hallways and open a tension room in the southwest corner. It contains several dangerous bad guys such as this fire giant currently kicking the shit out of me. The white H is a frost giant - also a nasty melee opponent, and the dark blue C is an annihilator. Annihilators can destroy gear (including higher metals but not artifacts) in melee, so I'll want to keep my distance from him. I back off down the hallway and the fire giant and annihilator pursue me. My crossbow has difficulty penetrating the giant's PV but I manage to kill both with acid spit. To fight the frost giant I switch back to my orcish spear of penetration and a shield. This works much better than the adamantium long spear of mayhem despite the base damage being much, much lower. Giants have a lot of PV so penetration is very powerful against them. At this point I realise that against all these aging and attribute-draining undead* I'm probably better off rolling with a shield anyway, so I stick with this setup. I rest back to near-full health before opening up the middle section.

*Liches drain with a melee-range spell which the shield won't help against, but wights, wraiths, shadows, and vampires all drain attributes with their actual melee attack so a shield is a good option.



A lich already. This guy will be the first of several in this room. Unfortunately I have no undead slaying ammo. I'll have to try pull other monsters out into the corridor and then rush the lich when he's alone. I make sure I'm wearing my ring of the clear mind as liches have a ranged confusion spell.



This one doesn't react in time and gets two-shotted. Thankfully regular liches don't have too many HP.

Several liches and other assorted undead later, I hit level 18.



My level 18 ability is tremendous blows. Meh.




Two into Disarm Traps (21), one each into First Aid (4) and Backstabbing (8). My main skills will hit 100 naturally soon and I'm starting to run out of important stuff to level up. For my level 18 talent I pick Tough Skin for +1 PV.



I make it through to the staircase without too much trouble.



D:18 is mostly uneventful except this happens. I run into a black wizard who surrounds me with trash level summoned monsters. Not a big deal except all those yellow 'f's are cats and I have to be very careful with my attacks to avoid powering up the cat lord.



I manage to pied piper three of them into this room before I dodge around them and lock the door behind me. I kite a few more around and lock them in other rooms before heading down the stairs.



This message indicates I've reached the Water Temple, where I'll find the first Chaos Orb. The river I haven't seen in the Water Temple before, I'm assuming it's a new guaranteed feature of the level. There's no other way out of the room without digging. Swimming is safe enough now that I have the blanket so I decide to jump in and see where it leads.



I find the stairs but the river continues far enough that even with high Swimming skill I'm failing too many checks to swim all the way up it. The temple levels are split into two halves. One half is generated like a normal dungeon level, while the other half - the actual temple - is a preset room layout. The temple half is separated from the other half and requires digging to reach.



After using a pickaxe to dig a route to the stairs so I won't have to swim in future, I use a wand of digging to tunnel into the temple proper. I am greeted by water snakes (blue s) and water grues (dark blue x). The snakes have a poison attack but by this stage everyone should have poison resistance from spider corpses and they're otherwise not very threatening. The grues are more dangerous with a powerful ranged water bolt attack and a corrupting and poisoning melee attack but are nothing I can't handle if I fight them one at a time. Both monsters can cross water, including the moat in the temple. I fall back into the tunnel and kill the initial wave there.



With the outer ring cleared it's time to cross the moat. The inner shore is swarming with chaos servants - weak melee mobs. Not threatening except that they'll block the shore if I try to swim across and I'll be forced to fight while making a swimming check each turn and occasionally losing HP. I use them for crossbow practice and swim across when the literal coast is clear.




On the other side I encounter more water grues and some water demons and water elementals. Water demons are basically another version of water grues with all the same abilities. Elementals are tougher in melee and also have the water breath ability but don't corrupt or poison.



After carefully working my way closer to the centre of the temple clearing the elementals, grues, demons and snakes, I encounter the boss, the Snake from Beyond. I equip my blessed demon slaying ammo.



My first few shots miss but I land a couple before he closes to melee range. Tactics mods apply to normal physical ranged attacks, so always use berserk if you're shooting at something and not being attacked in melee. I continue kiting. Most of the temple bosses are very powerful in melee and have very corrupting attacks. Kill them at range if it all possible.



Two more shots and he's dead. Slaying ammo owns.



The snake leaves a corpse (temple bosses always do) and the water orb. The orb is required to reach the chaos portal and when equipped in the tool slot grants 10 Willpower. It can be activated for a full heal and a bunch of corruption. Not worth activating unless you're desperate, but the 10 Willpower is very nice. The corpse has no positive effects and confers around two mutations' worth of corruption if eaten. However, if I can get it back to the druid in Terinyo without it rotting away, he'll give me a valuable potion of cure corruption. I equip the orb, bless the corpse and beeline back to Dwarftown where I stash the corpse in the shop. I'll take it to Terinyo later.



I return to the Water Temple to use the altar in the middle to sacrifice some gold to make sure the Chaos god is chill with me and to make some more holy water. First I use a wand of door creation to make sure I won't give LOS to the temple to any monsters that might sacrifice me. You can never bee too careful. I then head downstairs.



D:20 is uneventful. On D:21 I find an undead lesser vault. Among the loot I find a helm of water breathing, a crown of regeneration, and an amulet of free action. Water breathing is pretty self-explanatory - when equipped I can swim forever and never lose HP to drowning. Regeneration greatly accelerates HP recovery but also makes you get hungry faster. Free action grants resistance to paralysis and is potentially life saving against monsters that use paralysis. All nice finds, if only situationally useful. I also find a ring of speed [0,+1](+5 spd). Speed is great so I swap it in for my ring of the clear mind. I head down to D:22

This whole level seems to be filled with emotions of terror, sorrow, pain and death... eery echoes foreshadow death!

This is the Banshee's level. The banshee has a scream attack that causes instant death to anyone that hears it. I block my ears with the beeswax I picked up earlier and explore the level, which is filled with various monster corpses. The corpses on the banshee's level do not decompose as long as they are left on the floor. I check them and find a kobold shaman corpse which I eat for some more Mana. As I explore I hit level 19.




I put three into Climbing (12) and one into Athletics to max it out. I could have just left it to max naturally but I was getting impatient and wanted that extra little bit of speed.



I reach the secret room in the centre of the level where the Banshee will always be found guarding the stairs.



With my ears blocked I am immune to her scream and kill her without breaking a sweat. I clean my ears out and continue downwards. The next couple of levels are uneventful but I find a mixed lesser vault on D:28. After clearing a few of the monsters I encounter a quickling lord. Unlike the last one I fought, this one is experienced and it shows. Quicklings regenerate and this guy is healing as fast as I can damage him while dealing quite a lot of damage to me. I beat a retreat from the level and heal up. I stash some loot so I'm no longer burdened and switch my 5 PV helmet for my new crown of regeneration and my spear and shield for my long spear of mayhem. I head back for round two. I hit him once and he panics and flees. He's soon back for round three with full health. I chase him off again and kill some other monsters, one of which drops some black dragon scale mail (-3,-3)[-2,+11]. In addition to its nice PV, black dragon scale provides immunity to acid attacks. I'm already immune, and it's only a slight upgrade, but the extra PV is nice.



The quickling lord stays hidden for now and I explore more of the vault. I encounter a shadow wyrm. These guys are dangerous in melee, summon shadows, and have an aging touch and a cold bolt breath attack. I eat a cold bolt and several unimportant potions shatter. My dragon slaying ammo is stashing in the Ogre Cave but a ranged battle would likely be expensive in terms of shattered potions anyway so I back up into the little dead-end corridor off the side of the vault. (Vaults are the only places you'll find a dead-end that wasn't dug out by the player or a digging monster.) The bolt attack shoots in cardinal directions only, so the wyrm is forced to close to melee range. I equip Wyrmlance and kill her in three hits. Phew. The quickling lord shows up again for another couple of rounds and gets a few hits in and I'm forced to retreat off the level again to regen. While I rest, a dark sage attacks me and drops a blue dragon scale mail (-1,-4)[-1,+10] when I kill him. Blue dragon scale confers immunity to lightning. This will come in handy so I hang on to it.



As I'm about to head back down background corruption ticks me over the threshold for another mutation. This one is really nasty - base 1500 energy cost really slows me down. I read a scroll of corruption removal to get rid of it. Unfortunately this wastes some of the scroll's potential as they're worth around 1.5 mutations but that's a price I'm prepared to pay to get rid of this awful mutation.

I head back for another go at the quickling lord. This time I try a different tactic. Making sure berserk tactic is selected, I use my tremendous blow class ability. If I miss I'll be open to a LOT of attacks while I recover the 4000 energy cost, but luckily it connects and the quickling gets splattered all over the walls.

At this point I fat-fingered something and the game said something about a noteye error and crashed. My character died in the crash. RIP.