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Last time: I retrieved the Ring of the High Kings and the Chaos Orb of Elemental Fire. This time: I delve deeper into the Caverns of Chaos in search of more Chaos Orbs!

I leave Dwarftown and descend again. I stop on D:24 to visit a Lawful altar I found earlier. Forums poster Kobold Sex Tape has pointed out that it is more efficient to convert alignment with multiple small sacrifices or donations than one large one donation to the Dwarftown priest. If I made a large (3000+) donation here, I'd convert the altar, but by making smaller ones I gradually shift my alignment towards that of the altar. This works really well and I hit N- after making three 1 GP sacrifices. Now I sacrifice 3000 to convert the altar to Neutral. Next I sacrifice a pile of blessed stomafillia herbs. Blessed stomafillia has quite a high piety value and this boosts my piety with the neutral god by a couple of levels. Next I start luring chaotic monsters to the altar and sacrificing them. This is tedious and takes a long time, but brings my alignment from N- to N= and increases my piety. In the process I loot a tower crystal shield [+13,+4], a nice upgrade from my crystal medium shield.



Eventually I hit max piety.



"Mortal, ye have done great service to my cause.
Hereby ye art crowned to be my champion!"
You no longer fear the heat of all hells combined.
Something is lying at your feet.


I pray and get crowned the neutral god's champion. I am rewarded with permanent Blessed status (small bonus to all rolls), fire immunity, and an artifact.



The artifact is chosen from a pool of four to six artifacts for each class. I read a scroll of great identify, which reveals all properties of a single item. Normal identify would only reveal the name, damage stats and and B/U/C status of the item. I get Vanquisher, which as you can see slays pretty much everything. Too bad it's not a spear, but none of the barbarian crowning gifts (which are all melee weapons) are. Vanquisher is probably the best barbarian gift. I'll hang on to it since it is so far my only means of humanoid or undead slaying. I equip it for now to get some marks and gain a few levels in Two-handed Weapons. My long spear, although two-handed, belongs to the polearm category, so I haven't leveled Two-handed at all apart from the free level from the gladiator quest. I continue downwards to the wall of flames, which I can now pass.

On the next level I find a general store but it contains nothing of interest. I also find a potion of strength and kill a chaos warrior. Chaos warriors are great as they drop eternium gear and thick gauntlets. Thick gauntlets counter a nasty mutation which I'll explain when it comes up. I score a nice body armour upgrade from him - eternium plate mail (-1,-2)[-1,+13].

I pick up another mutation from background corruption.



This one is annoying as only the monk class uses kicks. It's not enough to justify burning a scroll of corruption removal on yet though.

On the D:29 stairs I find the Eternal Guardian.



"You may pass."
The eternal guardian disappears.


If I didn't have the Ring of the High King already, I'd have to go and get it before he'd allow me to pass.

D:30 is uneventful and I move on to D:31.

There are flashy lights all over this level. You hear a gong.



This is the casino. The different coloured '$'s are slot machines. The other half of the level is the gift shop. The gift shop contains a huge number of items, but unlike normal shops the items are unidentified. It often contains one or more artifacts. All the items in the gift shop are overpriced compared to normal shops. The slot machines can be played on and, on average, you will actually win money. Before the crowdfunded version, you could play the slot machines as long as you wanted and as long as you accepted the prompt to play again each time, only one turn of game time would pass. You could weigh down the space bar and do something else for a while, and come back to a huge pile of gold with no tradeoff. Now each time you play, time passes. The only catch to this infinite free money (other than time spent) is that once you win money on the slot machines, a guard will block the stairs until you spend more than you actually won in the gift shop. You can attack him but this will spawn a lot of guards and anger the shopkeeper. Shopkeepers are badasses so you'd have a good fight on your hands, but it isn't unwinnable. This would leave you free to loot the gift shop.

I browse through the gift shop, picking up all the arrows, quarrels, water potions, ID scrolls, other helpful consumables, and interesting-looking unIDed items. I read an ID scroll to find out what all of it is to save doing them an item or two at a time when I find them in the dungeon. This *finally* turns up a couple of girdles of carrying, but I can't afford them yet and don't have enough extra money to spend to open the stairs if I gamble for it. I leave the interesting stuff in a pile close to the shopkeeper to come back for later. Unfortunately I don't spot anything that looks like an artifact this time. I head on down the stairs.

On D:32 there is an extra up staircase. This leads to the down staircase I saw earlier in Darkforge but couldn't pass without the fire orb. It is there as a shortcut to the world map. The level is uneventful and I continue downwards.

On D:33 I encounter a werewolf king. These guys are somewhat nasty in melee but no real problem. They're annoying as fuck though, as they summon werewolf lords, which summon silver wolves and dire wolves.



As I cut my way through the resulting horde of shit monsters I hit level 21.




Two into Climbing to max it, and two into Disarm Traps (4). I take the Iron Skin talent for another point of PV.



I also encounter a quickling king. This guy has a Speed of 1076. This could be a problem, quicklings like to play hit-and-run, using their crazy speed to get a couple of hits in melee and then move away before I can counter attack. Luckily he ends a move next to me, and as quicklings are humanoids, I one-shot him with vanquisher. I continue to D:34.



As I enter, I get a message about an intense tension. This is the battle bunny level. It is a U-shaped hallway with the stairways at each end of the U. The level is populated with battle bunnies which reproduce at a very high rate.



I use a wand of digging to make a shortcut.



I encounter Bugs, the boss of the level. Bugs has an annoyingly powerful disarm move, and is able to disarm me of first Vanquisher, then my long spear even with level 12 polearm skill.



I give up trying to fight him with weapons and try acid spit, which misses three times in a row. I zap a blessed wand of fireballs instead. It takes three charges but Bugs goes down. With Bugs dead, the bunnies no longer reproduce so quickly and I clear the level. I find a tower eternium shield, a very slight upgrade over my tower crystal shield, but significantly lighter. I swap it in and continue downwards.

D:35 is boring and I soon arrive on D:36.



The special message means I've arrived on the Cat Lord's level. The Cat Lord is invisible, so I equip a ring of see invisible I picked up somewhere. He is a humanoid, so I equip Vanquisher again. (I had swapped back to spear & shield after reaching lvl 7 in Two-handed.)



After some exploring I encounter the Cat Lord. According to the guidebook, he is vulnerable to stunning, so I open by zapping a wand of stunning at him but he shrugs it off and closes to melee range and rips into me. He gets three attacks per round and hits hard - he takes me from 365 HP to 209 in one round of attacks. My counter-attack takes off a sliver and he attacks again, reducing me to 160 HP, then 113 after another round. I have him down to about 66%. I'm worried about getting critted so I try to back off to drink a healing potion. Turns out that even though I have 2 points of Speed on him, 7LB, the barbarian movement ability and the Long Stride talent, he can still outpace me in movement and he gets another round of attacks in, dropping me to 63 HP. I'll just have to drink the potion in melee range and let him get a free round of attacks after. I get healed to full then taken back to 318 HP. I go a few more rounds and get him to 50% before having to pop another potion.



A couple more hits and he panics and runs. What a pussy. I try the stun wand again but he resists it again. Fleeing monsters hit with ranged attacks will turn to fight again, so the Cat Lord comes back for another go, reducing me to 92 HP and prompting me to pop another potion.



Another hit and he runs again. This time I fire my crossbow at him. It misses but the ranged attack makes him move back into melee range. I hit him again and bring him to the brink of death. This time, rather than panicking, he decides to "fight to the death in a blind rage." He gets twice as many attacks and reduces me to 46 HP. I drink another potion and thankfully he panics again rather than getting another round of 6 attacks in. I fire my crossbow again and he returns to melee range.



One more hit and he goes down. Phew, that was way too close for comfort. That was how tough he is when I only killed one cat. You can imagine what a nightmare he is if you've killed a bunch. I hit level 22.




I put all four into Detect Traps for a whopping six points.

By killing that one cat, I missed out on the Ring of the Master Cat [+0,+5]{Dx +16}(+16 spd). In addition to what is some very nice PV for the ring slot, the 16 Dex and 16 Speed, it grants Fate Smiles, See Invisible, and increased critical hits. It is one of the two best rings in the game, the other being another artifact - the Ring of Immunity [+5,+5], which grants immunity to fire, acid, cold, and shock. I explore the rest of the level and continue on to D: 37.

D:37 turns out to be a cavernous level, and I meet a named spider who dies easily but drops this:



Not bad apart from the bad luck and the fact that it isn't a spear. I won't be using though, so I just take it to sell. I continue to D:38.



On D:38 I find a room full of fire giant kings. I fire all my giant slaying ammo at them then engage in melee with Vanquisher. They're tough opponents in melee and I'm forced to back and eat some healing herbs. I could sacrifice them all on the altar but they're worth nice experience and I'm hoping to score some more Strength from their corpses. After eating all my healing herbs I go back for another round and after killing a couple eat a crit and am forced to down another potion. I kill the rest without too much more difficulty but unfortunately none of them leaves a corpse.



The next room is also full of fun. One is a diamond golem, a hard-hitting regenerating asshole who crits me and forces me to drink another potion before I back off and drop him with construct slaying ammo I forgot I had. The bright side to all the potions of extra/ultra healing I've been drinking is that my max HP are slowly increasing.

On D:39 I get another point of Strength from a frost giant corpse but the level is otherwise uneventful.



I enter D:40 and a special message indicates I have reached the Air Temple. I explore the eastern side and begin digging a tunnel to the temple. When I cross over an invisible line to the temple side, my gear starts taking electrical damage and I lose some stuff including my girdle of strength, but nothing too important. I back off to the safe side and equip indestructible gear only, and leave the rest (except a wand of digging) behind in a nook I dig out with a pickaxe and seal with a wand of door creation, locking the door behind me with a magic lock spell I learnt from a potion of wonder a while back. My first spell!



I break through to the Temple itself and run back to drop the digging wand somewhere safe. I return to start killing the monsters. The first wave are harmless chaos servants and non-threatening but corrupting vapor rats.



Pushing a little deeper I start to encounter air demons. They're like the water and fire demons before them and can breathe lightning bolts.



As I clear the temple I pick up the unholy aura mutation. This doesn't look so bad on face value, but it also has the effect of periodically scaring nearby monsters/NPCs. If this happens in a shop, the shopkeeper will go hostile towards you for scaring away his customers. I'll make sure to remove this before leaving the level - my scrolls of corruption removal are in the cubby hole I dug out along with the rest of my valuables.



With the outside area clear I approach the inner sanctum, searching to reveal the ring of traps around it and open the secret entrance. The boss here is humanoid, so I equip Vanquisher before opening the door.



The boss is Yuglash, the master summoner. Yuglash is capable of summoning very powerful monsters, so I'll want to kill him ASAP.



I switch to berserk tactics and start cutting my way through the air elementals guarding him. He decides to teleport outside the room. I don't remember him doing that before, maybe it's a new ability. Anyway, that's GREAT because it means I don't have to chop through the chaff while he's busy summoning ancient dragons on me.



I run over and cut him down, hitting level 23 from the kill.




All four go into Detect Traps, maxing it.

Unfortunately his corpse is consumed by the lightning before I can get it out. I take the orb and kill the rest of the bodyguards before retrieving my gear. The orb increases Dex by 10 when equipped and can be activated for corruption and to summon an air elemental. Tooooootally worth it.

Next time: I raid the Earth Temple and beyond!