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LAST TIME, ON SLASH'EM:



Golems

CONTINUING, ON SLASH'EM:



I go back and check out the armour shop again. I don't know what these boots are, but I'll pick them up to check later.



Squealers are a fairly strong SLASH'EM monster. They can shriek like shriekers, and have a leg-damaging attack like xans.

The guy behind him is a soldier, the first member of the Yendorian army. SLASH'EM includes new weapons like firearms and grenades which the army members all have a chance to start with, but this one doesn't. Firearms are a highly damaging ranged weapon with limited ammo (bullets are one-use only and always disappear after being fired, unlike bows/crossbows/darts which only have a chance of breaking). Grenades come in fire- and poison-damaging varieties and can be ignored if you have those resistances, but fire grenades will destroy any bullets lying on the ground and explode other grenades, so be careful around them.



I find a sink before checking out those boots I picked up, and they turn out to be levitation! While not useful as a general-wear boot, levitation is used in all sorts of situations later in the game, and boots are one of the most reliable ways to levitate.



Levitation boots also have a good chance of generating cursed. This pair wasn't, so they come off no problem. The reason I stood next to a sink is sinks have a secondary function that sinks anything above them to the ground - which can be ranged weapons or you while levitating, and would have dropped me to the floor if the boots were cursed.



I try on some boots since I already have levitation identified. The boots in the armour shop in the mall are also cursed, which probably means they're fumbling.



Floundering around confirms that they are fumbling, alerting monsters on the level to me. Oh well.




I #youpoly to take the boots off and #name them fumbling to ignore them in the future.



Something I can't see is trying to shoot at me, annoying. Or at least, I thought it was just annoying. Where's the hubris button?





So what happened? I put on my blindfold to find whatever was attacking me and this guy somehow hit me for 35 damage in a SINGLE TURN, killing me before I had a chance to deal with it. I think he must have picked up some sort of powerful weapon, because that sort of burst damage from a centaur is ridiculous. Hubris strikes hard and fast - I had multiple options to protect myself before trying to kill him, such as engraving Elbereth or whatever first, but I really wasn't expecting to get hurt so quickly on such an early level.

I let off the gas and let the game have a chance, and it took advantage of it and killed me. SLASH'EM is harsh, and it doesn't take much sometimes.

I won't be making the mistake of giving the game a chance again.



Doppelgangers are another of the new SLASH'EM races. They start off pretty weak, but have access to #youpoly to attempt to shape-shift into other things. And get intrinsic polymorph control at level 9. With a couple of the new powerful late-game polymorph eligible SLASH'EM monsters, once you hit level 9 as a doppelganger, its difficult to die unless you aren't paying attention. Or, y'know, hubris

As for Rogue, they're a vanilla class that has one very special surprise added in SLASH'EM waiting for them.



While I have the potential to get very strong, very quickly, surviving until I get there is a problem, because rogues start out very weak.

Short swords are terrible weapons. Rogues will start with either some daggers and darts or in SLASH'EM they can get a pistol/bullets instead. Unfortunately, I got the pistol. While even the basic pistol is a strong weapon, I have only 31 shots with it and bad aim, the daggers would have been nicer. Gnomes and dwarves are a good source of daggers in the Mines, though. I also don't start with any food, which is another reason to head down quickly to search for some.





Uh, thanks game. Just what I wanted, but I found an altar so early it isn't actually useful to me yet. You can #offer corpses for sacrifice on an altar, but I don't have an easy source of monsters to kill for it (or a lot of food to wait around for monsters to spawn and then killing them). But its there for later!



Dwarvish mithril-coats are probably the best early-game armour before you get dragon scale mail! Excellent find.



My AC is already -2, which is hilarious. The mithril-coat is -6 AC, and the 20 Dex I tarted with (a doppelgangers stat cap for Dex and Rogues naturally start with high Dex) is the other -6 AC. It comes from the new SLASH'EM dexterity bonus to AC, which can go as high as -8 from 25 Dex.



Still, with only 10 HP, we're going to want to be quick, but careful.





The Mines are on DL:2 but I want to get another level or two before I head down there for safety.



4 more HP isn't great. HP on level gain can be increased with Constitution, but ours is too low for that.



I check to see if we get have the Mall (which can be on DL:5-6) and hit level 4 along the way.



Nymphs I need that!



While tracking down that nymph I check DL:6, the Mall helpfully shows up. The ant there is just a giant ant and not a soldier ant, thank god.



Rogues have a special class feature called backstabbing - attacking a scared monster will do a bonus 1d(level) damage to them. Elbereth is a free and easy way to scare (most) monsters while staying safe, so playing Rogue through most of the early game is tossing Elbereths around and killing everything as it runs. This is why the daggers would have been more useful than starting with a pistol because they're reusable, but the pistol does enough damage to take care of early threat and aggravating enemies like nymphs.



Engraving-IDing a wand I found on the floor of the Mall turns my engraving into a rumour, which means its polymorph. Even though we have intrinsic polymorph in #youpoly, a wand of polymorph is still useful. #youpoly can take a lot of power to use (20 power + monster level of target polymorphed monster)

The (false) rumour is "Wish for a master key and open the Magic Memory Vault!" Master keys are a artifact thing, but the vault isn't.



Something invisible is stealing my stuff and I hate it but have no real way to track it down right now. Thankfully its not stealing anything useful yet.



Rogues in SLASH'EM are marked by shopkeepers as suckers and get charged more money to buy things, but they start with a pile of money so it isn't a huge deal. Clear potions are always water, and change price based on their BUC status (Uncursed are base 5, Cursed/Blessed base 150)



SLASH'EM bug that has a shock attack which can potentially destroy rings and wands in inventory.



...Uh oh. Something is zapping a wand near us. And there's for sure at least one monster on the level with a wand of polymorph, which monsters can and will zap on themselves.



Odds are that giant wasp is a result of that nearby zap. Giant wasps are the bigger, meaner SLASH'EM killer bee and it is way out of its depth to spawn here. So uh, I'm going to take my leave of the level now before it poisons me to death. I bought a bunch of food at the shop and I can look through the rest later, first up I'm bolting back to that DL:1 altar



A big stack of food and an altar. The long sword is one I picked up to use instead of my short sword because short swords are garbage.



I start exploring the mines and run into the problem of my super low carrying capacity. How much you can carry is determined by (50 + 25*(Str+Con)) and both my Strength and Constitution are below average, so I drop off some rations to pick up on my way out.



I don't find a down stairs exploring the level, which means its likely on the other side of that trap door, which a bunch of rothes just jumped down in.



Dwarves like to carry pick-axes, so I grab one and make my way around the trap door.







Unfortunately, the Minetown altar isn't chaotic, and I don't want to mess with the priest to convert it. Minetown would be a much nicer altar to have because there's a whole bunch of monsters here to sacrifice.




A whole bunch of nasty monsters, but Elbereth and backstabbing lets me explore over to the shop, and some testing gets me a bag of holding. I even have some holy water already, so I bless it.



Stethoscopes are incredibly useful and I snatch this one up.



The shopkeeper helps demonstrate why they're so useful. You can [a]pply a stethoscope to a nearby monster to get information on it, and the first time you apply it in a turn doesn't take any time.

Note that SLASH'EM shopkeepers are much, much stronger than their vanilla counterpart, at almost double the base level.



Izchak has a magic candle in his shop, which I would have bought if I can afford it. Magic candles don't provide wishes like lamps, but do provide the same infinite light source that magic lamps do.



Getting real tired of all the monsters on this level, so I pack it up and head back upstairs.



Lets get this party started. I'm going to wait here on the level for monsters to spawn so I can kill and sacrifice them, until I either get what I came for or I run out of food.



I got telepathy from a floating eye earlier, so no debate on whether to eat these ones or sacrifice them.



Molds can grow on aged corpses in SLASH'EM, so if a corpse is too old to sacrifice hopefully a mold will grow, drop a different corpse, and be useful then.



This shrieker does just that, and sacrificing its corpse finally does the trick.



HELL YES



The special surprise that SLASH'EM adds to Rogues is this. The Bat From Hell is a new artifact, and their guaranteed first sacrifice gift. It does +3 to hit and +20 damage, against, well, everything.

NEXT TIME, ON SLASH'EM



What are you doing with my wand