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[Mr.Person]

Doing Hive with an amulet of faith on should net you three gifts or so. Do Hive. Just take it slowly. Berserking in Hive is a really bad idea since there's always bees wandering around that just love to show up when you're slow and low on health.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Welcome back to Let's Play Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Everyone voted for the Hive, so that's where we'll go next.



That's a lot of bees. This should be fun.



I summoned a berserk stone giant and I went berserk against the bees. Stone giants are the 2nd strongest giants in the game (much stronger than hill giants) and the 2nd most powerful ally you can summon with Brother in Arms.



I eventually became exhausted and my stone giant killed the remaining bees for me.



Trog rewarded me pretty quickly with a gift.



Though the gift sucks. The orc slaying brand does 75% more damage against orcs. There are very few dangerous orcs in Crawl, so this is pretty useless.



The 1st level was very small, so I went downstairs to Hive:2. All the stone staircases leading up are next to each other. Let's see where they lead us.



Fruit, gold, and a harmless larva. That's it. 




Not much of an improvement from the other area. I'm probably missing a big portion of the map, but I don't feel like searching yet.



I ran into this group of bees and decided to retreat to the staircase. I enslaved one of the bees as a minor distraction.



This was my main strategy for this place. Fight one at a time and retreat to a staircase (to flee or go berserk) if too many were attacking me at once.



I cleared the northwest corner of the map and got another gift from Trog.



Nice name. This is the 1st item I got with cold resistance, so far.



There's not much else to say about this place. It has a lot of food and bees.



While clearing out the northeast corner I received some steel darts from Trog.



The hell? I didn't know things could get stuck in the wax. 



I have to cross this river to reach the south side of the level.



Lots of harmless critters are getting in my way.



THE WEAK DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE!!! Trog agrees and gives me a double sword!



It's a double sword of protection. 



I'm carrying so much food that it's starting to weigh me down. "Burdened" is what happens when you exceed your maximum weight limit. It takes you longer to move, longer to go upstairs, your hunger rate is increased, and it gives you a huge stealth penalty. Being "overloaded" is even worse, as you can't move up stairs and all the penalties are increased.



In the southwest corner I ran into a couple of oklob plants. These plants splash acid on you, which corrodes your gear and does a lot of damage to you, if you don't have corrosion resistance. The easiest ways of dealing with them is either with summons or invisibility. Go invisible outside their LOS, or they'll still try to splash you with acid, despite not being able to see you.



I summoned another stone giant who proceeded to thrash those annoying plants. Though, he suffered quite a few burns.


Those oklobs were guarding this nice artifact buckler. Too bad I can't use it with my katana. 



Wow. Trog is making things way to easy for me! I'll be using this sling for the rest of the game, unless Trog gives me something better.



That's a lot of food. I'm not going to bother moving it. I'll continue to explore the dungeon.

[Mindmaker]

Posting to watch.

I wish I was that good...

[breadbocks]

What does velocity do?

[Soadreqm]

A damage increase. It's the Vorpal brand for ranged weapons.

[tomas1297]

What does velocity do?

Vorpal for slings. Damage.

Edit:Ninja'd.

[breadbocks]

A damage increase. It's the Vorpal brand for ranged weapons.

Huh. I thought ranged could get just plain Vorpal. What is better than vorpal for slings?

[tomas1297]

A damage increase. It's the Vorpal brand for ranged weapons.

Huh. I thought ranged could get just plain Vorpal. What is better than vorpal for slings?

The vorpal brand is always named according to the weapon, so vorpal for axes is "chopping" , vorpal for swords is "slashing" etc. I'm yet to see a "sword of vorpal" or something.

[zchris13]

The grammar would be a +0,+9 Vorpal long/short sword, btw. I love that +#,+9 dagger you have. It's epic, but Katana... katana's are katana's.  Kick ass.

I'm currently burning a bloody swath through the lair myself with a DEFE. Rather squishy, you're twice as resilient as me, with more EV to boot.  I just like casters more, I guess.  Would hate to fight your ghost, though.

[G-Flex]

The grammar would be a +0,+9 Vorpal long/short sword, btw. I love that +#,+9 dagger you have.

Not in Crawl. In Crawl, the brand is always at the end.

[zchris13]

Nope. When was the last time you saw a vampiric weapon?  Trust me, I know more than most.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Welcome back to Let's Play Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I went back to my stash to leave my katana behind. I think my flaming scimitar and buckler should suffice for now. Shortly after leaving the Lair I received another gift for killing a snake.



D:12 is fully explored (there wasn't much left), so let's go downstairs. I wanna play with the new scimitar I received in the Hive, so I'll be using it for awhile.



Maurice's bio:

A sly, conniving thief.

Maurice is similar to a nymph from NetHack. He likes to steal your stuff from your inventory and run away. He can cast invisibility, swiftness, blink, and teleport self. Maurice isn't particularly dangerous, but I don't want to fight him with a giant eyeball nearby.



I left and took another staircase down to this level.



I ran into Maurice again, and since the giant eye wasn't around anymore I decided to fight him. He cast Swiftness, but I slowed him down with a curare needle.



Flawless victory!



This level is too small. I must've missed something.



I went upstairs and headed down the last stone staircase leading to this level. It lead to this area .



Sonja!

A graceful kobold assassin. Admire her graceful pirouettes, thrill at her daring leaps! But watch out for her knives!

Sonja is quite dangerous. She and dik-dik are very similar. She carries a small stack of curare needles, carries a branded weapon (venom, draining, or even distortion!), and has high EV (though less than dik-dik). Fortunately, Sonja has very low MR, so wands are very useful against her. And we're immune to poison, so curare doesn't have much effect on us.



I drank a potion of agility and gave Sonja a taste of her own medicine. Unlike us, she's vulnerable to curare. Sonja has a short sword of distortion, but she'll never get to use it.



Perfect!



I picked up a deck of cards. Decks are magical and very powerful. More powerful than even spells! Unfortunately, decks are random and potentially dangerous, unless you use Nemelex's (trickster god of gambling) abilities. I might ditch Trog during this game, but I can't survive his wrath yet.



While turning a corner I encountered a necrophage and a hydra. I lured the necrophage away from the hydra and killed it quickly with my holy scimitar.

Necrophages are undead creatures that eat corpses and have a rotting attack that also causes sickness. Rotting lowers your max HP over time, but can be easily cured with a potion of healing. To restore your max HP you need to drink either a potion of healing or heal wounds while while fully healed.



Here's the flaming brand in action against a hydra. Each strike decapitated one of the hydra's heads and prevented it from regrowing. Once you cut off all of its heads the hydra will be instantly killed.



That's the end of D:13. Let's keep going!

[Dr.Feelgood]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

More kobolds. There can only be one!



That white area with ice beasts probably signifies that an ice cave is close by. Those purple creatures beside them are ugly things. Ugly things come in different colors and travel in packs. Their color indicates what kind of damage they'll do and resist. Purple ugly things cause sickness, brown is acid, red is fire, etc.

Ugly things can change their color by "basking in its kin's mutagenic glow" making them an interesting threat.

A permanent cold front seems to surround this portal. Whatever lives on the other side, they will be full of grim and arctic fury. You note that the archway is melting away.

I'm in a rush, so I summoned some help to crush them.



An ice cave is an ice-themed portal vault. I like prefer ice caves over volcanoes, due to the better loot. I found this portal on D:14, so it probably won't be easy.

Simulacrum are powerful, but easily destroyed ice copies of monsters. I suggest having ice resistance before fighting them within close range. I don't have any rCold items on me, so I'll just have to be careful.



I killed a few ice beasts blocking my path and ran into freezing wraiths. Freezing wraiths are tough wraiths with a cold touch and weakness to fire.



My flaming scimitar makes this place easy. I found a small amount of loot, but I know there's more.



Look at all those ice monsters! They must be guarding the good stuff around here!



I have no need for this gift, Trog!



Only 2 wands of frost and some steel darts.



I went to the right side of the level hoping for something better. There was an ice statue guarding the area. Ice statues are similar to other hostile statues, except they're vulnerable against fire instead of disintegration. Ice statues also have several painful ice spells, so avoid them if you lack rCold.



I summoned a berserker to deal with the ice statue and most of the monsters in the area. I killed the rest and claimed my prize: 2 ice magic manuals, a wand of frost, and a ring.



Behind the door was a cap of cold resistance!



I tried IDing the ring, but all I found out was that it provides rCold, so it's either a ring of ice or ring of cold protection.



I returned to the dungeon and encountered a yaktaur. Yaktaurs are similar to centaurs, except it involved human yak lovers instead of horses... All nastiness aside, yaktaurs are tougher and tend to carry crossbows, which deals more damage. Thankfully, they're not as fast as centaurs!

I don't feel like fighting it, so I went elsewhere.



I finally identified my ring as a ring of ice. It boosts the power of ice spells and protects you against ice attacks, but makes you more vulnerable to fire.



I managed to avoid the yaktaur and go downstairs to D:15.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Welcome back to Let's Play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Previously, we had just entered this level. I started looking around and came across a group of slimes. These annoying creatures travel in packs, regenerate quickly, and flee whenever injured. What makes them stand apart from other cowardly monsters is that they can merge together to form bigger slime creatures. Each time they merge with another slime creature their stats increase. Two merged slimes will deal double damage, while 5 slimes merged together will deal up to 110 damage, which will outright kill dik-dik!

They only merge when stuck in tight spaces (like a corridor or tunnel), so it's best to fight them out in the open. Merged slimes will split apart again if you keep them out of tight spaces.



I can kill them from afar with my sling, but that's not very interesting. 



I wanted to show off their merging ability, but the entire level is wide open, so I created a tunnel with my wand of digging and lured 3 slime creatures inside. As you can see the slime gets visibly larger and deals more damage. At this point the "very large" slime creature can kill me with one more hit!



Luckily, I have a lot of dispersal darts. I decided to teleport out in the open, so they'll split up.



The teleport landed in near the opposite side of the level.



They're much easier to kill when separated.



This level is full of slime creatures, but they're no match for us. Anyway, I found a scroll shop. Let's see have they have.



I brought a scroll of blinking and curse jewelry. I don't think I ID that curse scroll yet. I'm saving up blinking scrolls for a reason.



In 0.8, giant mosquitoes and blowflies were merged. Now, we have undead mosquitoes! Their vampiric bites cause disease and heals them. Like bats, these creatures are mainly here to piss you off rather than seriously harm you.



I identified a ring of sustain abilities. Sustain abilities cuts all stat loss in half, except from some spells. You can stack the effect by wearing two rings, but it's kinda pointless, since most hostile effects only cause you to lose 1 stat point at a time. The ring completely blocks the stat loss from sickness and deterioration.



That it for D:15! I have a lot of stuff, so I go back to stash to down some things off.



A pack of ugly things spawned on D:14. Killing them caused dik-dik to level up! I think I'll go finish up the Snake Pit now.



Most of the things that I stash away are for my trip to Zot, except the blink scrolls. I have another plan for them.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Time to get our 1st rune! These weaklings can't stop us! KILL! MAIM! BURN!!



...Just a minor setback. Doom will come to all!



I summoned a berserk stone giant to kill these monsters while I catch my breathe.



My buddy is very enthusiastic and ran off to fight a greater naga. Greater naga are very dangerous. They're the most powerful naga in this place, which is why you didn't see them on the previous levels. Crawl likes saving the best for last.  Greater naga can haste themselves, poison you with poison arrow (bypasses rPois!), blast you with mystic blast, and teleport you somewhere else on the level.

There are a lot of them guarding the rune, so it won't be easy. It's also why teleporting on this level is so dangerous. You might land in a vault surrounded by dozens of these guys!



Trog gave me some sliver bullets, which is always nice. I hope he gives me a stack of steel bullets before the endgame.



Oh, a labyrinth! Wait a minute... I didn't receive any message when I entered this level! It must be a mimic!  Alright, I'll stop pretending to be shocked. Mimics mimic stuff, often unrealistically. They deal a surprising amount of damage, so be careful not to run around with low health. Do not attack them from afar, so they'll teleport away and change into another form.



I finally found a ring of teleportation! Now, if only I could find a ring of teleport control, then I'd be ready.



Trog gave me a double sword of slicing, but I'm not interested in it.



I don't feel like fighting in this area yet. I'll kill them later.



Slings are pretty great. I killed several naga with just some plain ammo.



I found the other two stone staircases and the rune vault. My inventory is packed, so I went back to my stash.



I dropped some stuff and identified a potion of gain dexterity. Gain [stat] potions give you a +1 stat increase mutation. You can get up to +14 with enough potions, but it counts as a single mutation, so don't drink potions of cure mutation, if you don't want to lose it.