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LAST TIME, ON SLASH'EM



We got a baseball bat to smash heads in with!

The Bat From Hell is very, very good at killing things. It doesn't have any other artifact properties, but it doesn't really need them. To put it in comparison with other artifacts in the same damage ballpark:

Bat From Hell (chaotic baseball bat) +3 to-hit, +20 damage vs everything: First sacrifice gift for rogues. Baseball bats are a new base item that are never randomly generated, so only obtainable by sacrifice or wishing. Any chaotic can eventually hope to get it from sacrifice and use it effectively.

Disruptor (neutral mace) +5 to-hit, +30 damage vs undead: First sacrifice gift for priests. Useful as an occasional switch considering some of the new dangerous undead but not a good general weapon.

Mjollnir (neutral war hammer) +5 to-hit, +24 vs not-shock resistant monsters: First sacrifice gift for Valkyries, who are the only ones really able to use it well due to the changes to gauntlets of power. Most enemies aren't shock resistant, but there are some very dangerous monsters in the endgame that have shock resistance, like Solars.

Reaper (lawful halberd) +5 to-hit, +20 damage vs everything: Second sacrifice gift for Yeomen, but its a pole arm, so therefore sucks unless you're riding something. Yeomen and I guess Knights who don't want to use Excalibur for some reason can do OK with it.

Anyways, on with the show!

CONTINUING, ON SLASH'EM



This is what a vault looks like, a little 4x4 square separated from the main map. The money in it is dependent on dungeon depth, so this one doesn't have a lot.



It did give me enough to go back and buy a blindfold and the magic candle in minetown, though. Magic candles are a lightweight, permanent light source, but pricey!




Heading back down the dungeon I run into a pixie turning into a mobat.

Mobats are a new SLASH'EM bat but they aren't that strong, but they only generate in Gehennom. Looks like we found that pixie that stole the polymorph wand on this level earlier.




Monsters benefit from the new polymorph changes that Dogmeat had: If you kill them while polymorphed, they revert back to their base form.



So I kill the coyote and it turn into that

I've never even seen a catoblepas in SLASH'EM, but mythologically they have the capability to instantly kill people, so I run away to figure out what it can do before I die. Turns out, its in the game as a valid polymorph form, but is never randomly generated, so the only way you'll see it is via polymorph.

The gaze can instantly kill you if you don't stop it, but its a gaze attack, so being blind or reflecting does the trick, and this particular gaze attack has very low accuracy.



Putting on a blindfold let me kill it safely, as well as the long worm it turns into, and finally the pixie.



I haven't forgotten what you did last run, jerk!



Oracle brings us killer bees. I don't have poison resistance yet so I need to actually be careful around them.



God I hate nymphs.



Oracle is otherwise uneventful and the level below it has a nice, convenient altar. Its even chaotic already! I use it for BUC testing and note it for later.



Unicorns have a decent chance of giving poison or sleep resistance, this one thankfully gives me poison resistance. One less thing to worry about.



I don't even know why I bother reading spell books, rogues are pretty not good casters.



Sokoban gives us one of the new SLASH'EM levels, at least. This level is pretty straightforward. The wand there turns out to be speed monster, which I zap myself with and then forget about.



Second level is also a SLASH'EM one, and about as easy as the first one.



It begins! There's intrinsic polymorph control.



Straightforward, right I manage to mess up a boulder and there wasn't any extras for this level. Thankfully, the #technique liquid leap lets me jump small gaps like that, although it takes a while to recharge.



A third SLASH'EM level, this one is pretty creative for the low amounts of boulders there is.



Come on, reflection...



Damn it, that's the NetHack bag of holding level. Oh well.



Scampers, mumaks, and kamadans, oh my. I leave well enough alone and ditch after checking around in the starting area for items.



There's a load of new special levels coming up in the next little while, but I'm going to be diving straight for one specific one that's another 10 levels down from here.



This one has a shop I'll have to check out later, he's behind a locked door and I don't have a lockpick or anything, for some reason.



Leocrottas are speedy bags of pain, oh dear. I kill this one in two hits, but the one round of attacks it got in on me did 25 damage.



DL:13 has a two downstairs, so there's one special level.



Its just Grund's Stronghold again though. Be back later!



DL:14 gives us the first of another new group of enemies, deep ones. They spawn in groups and are akin to a stronger version of orcs.



I remembered there's an option to show how much damage you're taking from enemy attacks. Deep ones aren't a huge threat.



DL:16 has a haunted leprechaun hall



It also has the start of the next special SLASH'EM levels. Between DL:15-19, there's four different magic portals somewhere, at most one per level. Three of these lead to the new SLASH'EM quests - one off single special levels with a unique boss at the end and a theme for each of the three alignments, although any character can do any of them. This one is the Neutral Quest level, a small level featuring a ton of gas spores. I could probably do this one now, but eh. Its the easiest and also the least rewarding of the three.

The primary loot from the three alignment quests is a Key Of <alignment>, an artifact key you need to unlock doors in Vlad's tower, in order to get one of the items you need to beat the game. You need two of the keys to unlock enough doors to get to him, but you can technically skip the keys entirely if you want to if you have a means to wake Vlad up behind the doors (like a drum of earthquake, or polymorphing into a mind flayer)



I find a second magic portal on DL:18



Just stopping in to say hi and now we're leaving, please don't kill me master lich.

I didn't risk putting on my blindfold to show off the rest of the level, but this is the Chaotic Quest. Its chock full of liches. Its the hardest of the three quests overall, but the boss of it drops an artifact that gives hungerless regeneration and half physical damage, which is incredible.



There's also an ant hole on this level, but all of the ants in it are weak enough to die in one hit. Ant holes spawn lots of food, I get like 10 food rations from this room.



Cockatrice! Cockatrices have two dozen different ways to kill you if you're not careful around them, they can cause you to turn to stone instantly in a myriad of ways. This one dies quietly.



DL:19 gives us a message that the fourth of the magic portals in this section is on it. This one is our class quest portal, it says again sense because I popped down the stairs on the earlier lever when I found them.



We'll need to do the quest eventually to get the silver bell at the end of it, and the rogue quest artifact is pretty good as well, but we're too low level to do it yet.



SLASH'EM changes the level you need to do the quest to 12 instead of 14 though, due to its changed experience curve, so we're not that for off. A quick check of the level will suffice.



DL:20 has a room full of giants. Giants are highly nutritious and can increase strength when eaten, so I'm going to leave these alone until I can find a tinning kit to eat them all in one go.



DL:21. We're close! The level I'm looking for is accessed by a magic portal somewhere on DL:22-23. There's a priest on this level though.



Which means there's also an altar, in a very useful location. This one is even chaotic, bonus!



A mumak runs into me in a corridor. It hurts. A lot.



A priest of your alignment in a room with an altar counts as a sanctuary, so I retreat there to recover. It's basically a room full of souped-up Elbereth - monsters won't even enter it.



While I'm here, I offer for divine protection. #chatting to a priest and offering 400*XL level zorkmids can get you some bonus AC. Two donations drops me from -4 to -7



I stash most of my stuff in an extra bag by the altar and head downstairs, we're close to the goal.



There it is even, right there.

NEXT TIME, ON SLASH'EM