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LAST TIME, ON SLASH'EM



Special levels!

CONTINUING, ON SLASH'EM



More special levels! Uh, SLASH'EM has a lot of special levels.



This one is the third of the new alignment quests, the Lawful Quest. It also probably the funniest one of them.



First up, we're dropped off in a set of rooms that each have a theme. All of those are actually monsters - bad eggs, killer tripe/food rations.



The don't even have the common courtesy to turn into normal food rations when killed



The next room is all piles of killer coins.



This room is tricky - the altar will always be your alignment, but it is not a temple. The priest is just a random monster and #chatting to it (to, say, donate money) will anger it and have it try to kill you.

The altar works as normal altars do, though.



The room in the top left spawned a bunch of items, mostly for snakes to hide under. This room has were-creatres and some interestingly named items.



They're not artifacts, just named to look like them. They're cursed and negatively enchanted



The amulet is actually strangulation, not life saving. The wands are all useless.



FUCK

Asphynxs are one of the two new SLASH'EM monsters (with basilisks) that share all the fun, stoning properties of cockatrices. The "you are slowing down" message means that I'm currently turning into stone - I have only TWO TURNS to stop turning into stone, or its game over.



So of course, I use my two turns to pull out my lizard corpse and munch down on that. Lizards always leave corpses when killed and never grow old, so are always safe to eat. Eating one will stop the delayed stoning process! Always good to keep a couple on hand.

There's a couple other ways of stopping it. I could have drank a potion of acid or polymorphed into an acidic or otherwise stoning resistant monster, for example. Or prayed and hoped Kos was looking out for me on this one, turning into stone is a major trouble for prayer.



The section on the right is a maze of unlit corridors that also don't show up on the map. In the middle is a swamp, but you can avoid it.

I put on my ring of levitation to go over all the lava, there's a fair bit of it next. The black thing is an invisible black light, which suicides on you to cause hallucination.



A drow gets me sleep resistance, finally. The latent telepathy damage is from the master mind flayers in the middle section, who are all named after the Spice Girls, for....some reason. (Seriously - one named Ginger is guaranteed, ones named Victora and Emma are likely)

I didn't get a screenshot of them because I'm ignoring them for now. I'll come back later to deal with them when I feel like risking minds eaten.



Dry land means we're at the last part of the lawful quest, finally. A short forest section and then the boss.



The forest in this section always has three unicorns, one for each colour, and all hostile towards you. You still get a penalty for killing the one of your alignment, but I just take the hit rather than have it sitting around. Some sacrifice will clear it right up later.



Nightmare is the boss of is level, sitting on his throne in the centre of the forest.



Nightmare also managed to do what neither Beholder nor Vecna could do, in that he actually managed to hit me.

Nighthorn is a cursed unicorn horn that grants reflection when wielded, but otherwise is a normal unicorn horn. Its a lawful artifact though, so will blast non-lawfuls. The Key Of Law gets shoved in my bag to sit next to the neutral key all game.



That section in the middle is where all the mind flayers are hanging out. There's a secret door to get in there, but as long as you don't reveal it, they're stuck there.



Next up, back upstairs to visit Grund's Stronghold.



Searching revealed the statue trap, even though I didn't step on it



There's a couple ways to get across the moat - my water walking boots, levitation, and so on - but for style points I #technique liquid leap through the grates across.



Because hey, why not?





Wands of draining are very much a thing in SLASH'EM, and they ignore reflection/magic resistance.







There's a bunch of hellhounds on this level, but I end up killing all of them before the last one finally drops a corpse, which gets me fire resistance. Hell hounds have a 80% chance of giving fire resistance and the stronghold is the earliest source of them.



Nothing in this stronghold really poses a threat to me, so in short order we're in the throne room where Grund hangs out.



He's not very strong.



He always has a random amulet on him, which could potentially be useful, although this one just turns out to be ESP.



To get to the real loot of the level, there's several secret doors to pass through.



Both the top and bottom left corners have chests hidden behind secret doors, which have a set chance of a couple of different sets of loot.



The spellbook in this one was acid stream, which means the amulet that was in here was drain resistance.



In the bottom there's a helmet, which is telepathy. Extrinsic telepathy works the same as intrinsic telepathy except it provides a limited range non-blind version as well.



Time to leave!



Next up is the Rogue quest, but before that I'm going to head down to my stash and sort out all the random stuff I've picked up recently.

Migo drones are like bees, but they can and will use scrolls, potions, and wands



Organizing time!




I've got a whole bunch more potions of (extra) healing so I alchemize them up to double my HP again.



Some more enchanting happens and now I have 212HP and -41AC, as well has half physical damage and regeneration, meaning it'll take a lot to kill me by HP damage.



On to the rogue quest. The quest levels feature lots of shapeshifters, nymphs, and leprechauns, just to be annoying.



Thank god for reflection. Crystal golems have a random breath attack that can be any of the breaths a dragon can use, this one chose disintegration.



Fire vampires are very dangerous without fire resistance. Despite the name, its not technically a vampire, its some alien monster from Cthulhu Mythos post-Lovecraft.



I walk next to the Master Of Thieves, who asides being a total jerk sends me off to get the master key of thievery.



The first level below the entrance is a boring filler level.



After that, we get the Assassin Guild Hall, the halfway point of the quest.



Fish out of water!



Fourth level is more filler, but exploring it I trigger a trapdoor which drops me to the last level.




The last level of the rogue quest has the staircase on the left side of the map, with an undiggible wall separating it from where all the good stuff is. The trapdoor helpfully put us on the right side of the wall, near where the Master Assassin waits.



Despite his name, he's not very strong.



I hit him hard enough that he teleported away to heal before actually picking up the master key.



He can have it over my dead body, and I don't think that's happening.







The silver bell is the Bell Of Opening, one of the handful of items you actually need to win the game.




Instead of bothering to go past the undiggable wall and walk up, I pull out a cursed teleportation scroll. Cursed scrolls will level teleport you, and the Master Key of Thievery grants teleport control, so I pop right back up to the first level of the quest. They're one of the items that are actually more useful cursed than uncursed/blessed.

The Master Key also grants half physical damage, but we already have that from the Hand of Vecna, and it sadly doesn't stack.



One of the shapeshifters turned into a minotaur. They hit extremely hard and ignore Elbereth, making them a very dangerous late game enemy.



Master of Thieves knows he won't be able to take me in a fight so he "lets" me keep the key. Turns out the Master Assassin wasn't so bad a guy, really. Too bad he had something I wanted.



Lets get the hell out of here.



Oh my way to continue down the dungeon, I read some of my create monster scrolls to sacrifice, mostly to get my luck back up after killing that black unicorn.



You can dig down on graves to try and loot them if there was something in them, but its not really worth the bother.

NEXT TIME, ON SLASH'EM



Hmm, a nymph, and... wait a second, we're on DL:23.



NYMPH LEVEL