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[BishopX]

I vote clear the lair through L5-6 before moving on to the mines. A -1 venom dagger isn't that hot when you start running into poison resistant stuff. The mines will almost certainly give us a better small blade, and possibly a much better long blade.

Also, how's Dik-Dik piety doing? Is there a chance we'll start getting god gifts soon? Is Dik-Dik's throwing skill high enough Trog will start granting ammo rather than weapons?

[zchris13]

So, Dr. Feelgood? You actually listened to your viewers and dropped Maces and flails for short blades?

That isn't the worst idea, actually. There aren't that many high level maces that you can use. (I take that back you should have gone for a demon whip).

It's usually a good idea to clear lair completely before going near the orcish mines, people. Maybe even dip into some of the branches, depending on your equipment and resists.

[BishopX]

So, Dr. Feelgood? You actually listened to your viewers and dropped Maces and flails for short blades?

That isn't the worst idea, actually. There aren't that many high level maces that you can use. (I take that back you should have gone for a demon whip).

It's usually a good idea to clear lair completely before going near the orcish mines, people. Maybe even dip into some of the branches, depending on your equipment and resists.

Short blades then long blades is actually kinda scary in the trunk. Cross training gives you a net +3 to level long blades if short blades are higher, and short blades level incredibly quickly.

[Mr.Person]

Of course, now that you can start with a long blade on several fighting classes, there's no point to using short blades if you're not stabbing.

[Soadreqm]

EDIT: Shit wrong thread.

Anyway, I'm going to give a vote for Orc. Someone has to.

[Dr.Feelgood]

5 votes for the Lair and only 1 for the Mines. Looks like I'll be clearing the Lair first.

I vote clear the lair through L5-6 before moving on to the mines. A -1 venom dagger isn't that hot when you start running into poison resistant stuff. The mines will almost certainly give us a better small blade, and possibly a much better long blade.

Also, how's Dik-Dik piety doing? Is there a chance we'll start getting god gifts soon? Is Dik-Dik's throwing skill high enough Trog will start granting ammo rather than weapons?

5-star piety, so I'll start receiving gifts pretty soon. Throwing skill is at 2, so I don't think I'll be receiving much ammo.

[BishopX]

Sweet, lets hope you get something you can kill Hydras with.

[Dr.Feelgood]

I managed to find some time to play Crawl. Next update is coming soon, as I'm nearly done with the Lair.

[BishopX]

Nice!

[Dr.Feelgood]

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

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While looking around I ran into a pack of 4 yaks. Yaks are surprisingly tough, for new players anyway.



Immediately after killing the yaks a green rat comes into view. Green rats also come in packs. These tiny critters don't have poisonous attacks, despite being green and leaving poisonous corpses behind.



Getting surrounded while slow and exhausted is bad, even if the monsters are mostly harmless.



I drank a potion of invisibility and maneuvered around the rats. Then, I started switching between my venom dagger and falchion to kill them.



Like so.



Most of the monsters in the Lair are susceptible to poison, so my venom dagger is pretty useful here.



Well, that's not good. On my right are 4 war dogs, and to my left is a gila monster. War dogs travel in packs and are one of the toughest (non-demonic) dogs in the game. Gila monsters are vanilla monsters with a very painful bite.

I'm a dirty coward, so I ran away before most of them noticed me.



While fleeing the area I encountered an agate snail ("giant snail" in 0.7).
Agate snails are slow monsters that withdraw into their shells when damaged enough. Hiding in their shells causes them to regenerate and gives them a big boost to their AC.

Fortunately, it also causes them to stop attacking and become sitting ducks.



Due to their high health, toughness, and general sluggishness, agate snails make great training dummies. I've been whacking that snail for over 50 turns to train my skills. Anyway, I ran into the gila monster that I encountered earlier again. This time, I finally killed it.



After killing monsters, I rest on the staircases. Why? To quickly escape from anything that might attack me while I'm vulnerable. Monsters respawn slowly, so fleeing to a previously cleared level is often a good idea, if you're in trouble.



Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I replaced my ring of dexterity with a ring of magic resistance that I found. Magic resistance (MR) protects against hostile enchantments, such as slow, paralyze, etc. There are no monsters here who can cast spells, except uniques, but I tend to ditch stat increasing rings as soon as possible. Anyway, I also identified a couple of scrolls I found: a scroll of recharging and a scroll of noise.

Recharging refills wands and rods. Noise is noisy. I think it might be louder than a shout. You can use it to break a mermaid or siren's mesmerizing effect. Otherwise, it doesn't have much use.



The scroll of noise attracted more frogs to me. Giant toads (the brown frog) are much stronger than giant frogs, but they aren't too difficult by the time you reach the lair.

Blink frogs are a completely different story. They're of the toughest enemies in the Lair. They're pretty evasive, blink (short ranged teleport) around frequently, and they come in packs. Poison is effective, since it'll keep damaging them while they blink away.



It seems that the noise attracted more than just frogs. My situation was getting worse, so I decided to kill the frogs as quickly as possible.



I couldn't finish off the dogs before my rage wore off. I was too exhausted to flee or fight back, so I called upon Trog to send aid.



A berserk ogre appeared. The ogre pulverized one of the dogs in one hit. The 2nd war dog put up a good fight, but the ogre managed to win.



The last war dog mauled the ogre to death. Berserk ogres aren't very useful. Now, it's a one-on-one fight.



I doubt dik-dik is going to do well against a war dog in his condition, so I zapped it with my wand of confusion.



While I was busy stabbing and poisoning the war dog, more enemies arrived. Water moccasins are tougher, more poisonous snakes. Not too dangerous.



More monsters appear to harass me. Thankfully, they're weak.



Only one pest left.



In the next area I encountered more blink frogs. I think they annoy me more than bats or mosquitoes.



I didn't want to get poisoned by the moccasin that appeared out of nowhere, so I went berserk and killed it quickly.



By the time I reached the blink frog I became exhausted. I zapped it with my wand of confusion and stabbed it to death.



That's it for L:1. This lonely croc is the last enemy on the level.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah, I went berserk against the crocodile. I'd rather not suffer more damage than necessary. Anyway, here we are on L:2!



Dik-dik's long blades skill is increasing rapidly, despite kobolds having bad aptitude with swords. Why? If you are already good at a weapon, like a short sword, and you practice for a while with a similar weapon such as a falchion, your practice will be sped up (and will require less experience) until both skills are equal; this is called cross-training. Similar types of weapons are:

* Long Blades and Short Blades
* Maces & Flails and Axes
* Polearms and Axes
* Staves and Polearms
* Staves and Maces & Flails

I'll be turning off stealth at level 8, since that's when I usually turn it off. Stealth is useful for avoiding trouble. Being stealthy helped me win quite a few times.



This level isn't that interesting so far. I found another scroll of blinking. I rarely use them. Mainly because I rarely find myself in life threatening situations.



I explored a third of the level and the only tough monsters I found are these centaurs guarding an altar. I started blasted them with my wand of fireball.



Then I thought it would be more amusing if I caused them to drown.



While I was eating a hydra appeared. Hydras are one of the most dangerous monsters that can appear in the Lair. They're multi-headed monsters that attacks once for each head. Slashing attacks (pretty much anything used for butchering corpses, except for most short blades) will cut off a head, causing two more to grow and healing the hydra.

Hydras also move faster than you in water and they regenerate quickly.

What are their weaknesses? Fiery slashing weapons remove their heads but prevents them from growing new ones and healing. Hydras also don't have very high MR, so enchantments (with high spell power) can work on them.



Instead of zapping it with a fireball I decided to test a scroll of fear on the hydra, since it works on dragons. It seems that hydras have more HD than dragons.

I didn't like being next to the hydra, so I used a blinking scroll to gain some distance. Then, I blasted it with fireballs, until I ran out of charges. The hydra started to run from me, so I used my wand of paralysis to stop it from fleeing.



My stabbing skill isn't high enough to OHK the hydra, so I went berserk and stabbed it repeatedly. The hydra broke free from the paralysis, but it died before it could do much damage.



I continued looking around and found the 1st side branch in the Lair - The Swamp.

A stair to a swampy wasteland, complete with ooze, muck, flies and large slavering carnivorous monsters.

I'm not going to enter it yet. There's a giant leech and a few jackals guarding the stairs. Giant leeches are monsters normally found in the swamp. They're evil creatures with a vampiric bite.



I lured the monsters away from the unexplored area, so I could use berserk without attracting too much attention.



I found an unidentified wand and scroll near the entrance to the swamp. I tested the wand on a bat and identified it as a wand of flame. For some reason I still have that empty wand in my inventory. I finally got rid of it.



I'm done with L:2. That was quick.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I walked into a group of sleeping monsters.



I killed them with ease and sacrificed their corpses to Trog. Hopefully, Trog will give me a gift soon. I picked up the items and started exploring the level.



I found a vault full of ants. Free food and sacrifices!



Soldier ants aren't nearly as scary as they are in NetHack. Killing all these ants caused dik-dik to gain a level. I picked intelligence.



I felt more comfortable fighting the monsters near a staircase. I started poisoning every monster that followed me. Trog was very happy with the constant killing and sacrifices, so he finally gave me a gift!



He gave me a dagger of speed. I want a long blade. Speed is the best brand in the game for melee weapons and vorpal is the best brand for ranged weapons. Daggers are already fast, so the speed brand doesn't increase the overall damage by much.



I went upstairs to recover. I identified a scroll of amnesia. Amnesia is a new scroll in 0.8. It let's you forget a spell. It was added because the Selective Amnesia spell was removed. You can also forget spells by destroying spell books as well. It's useless to me for obvious reasons.



The queen ant finally decided to show up. If you can kill one ant you can kill them all.



I found a wand of cold in the ants' home.



I found another wand. This time it's a wand of frost. Most wands are similar to spells. Throw Frost/Flame is weak and Bolt of Cold/Fire is powerful.



Walking into a room full of poisonous insects without poison resistance is pretty scary.



I should be able to handle them one at a time.



I polymorphed one of the bees into an ooze. After killing the ooze the queen bee came after me. I dropped the spell book in case I needed to escape. I didn't want to take a risk and polymorph the queen, so I started zapping the queen with my wands.



I got carried away and started zapping all the bees.



I dropped my empty wands and picked up my book.



Bee/ant larvae are weak, vanilla monsters. They're only use is to warn you of tougher insects lurking nearby and being sacrifice fodder.



Trog gave me another gift for killing all of these bugs - an enchanted quick blade. Quick blades are between a short sword and dagger in length, so it won't cut off a hydra's head. They're the fastest weapons in the game and are somewhat rare.



The map was too small, so I decided to go back upstairs and check the other staircases. One of them lead to this place.



It turns out that there's nothing really interesting here, except for those silver bolts. Silver ammo does double damage against anything that causes mutations and the corporeal undead.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I found another potion of brilliance on L:4. Hopefully, I won't need to use it.



Huh? Stone walls and a sleeping naga. The entrance to the Snake Pit must be close.



Yep.

Here is the way to the home of serpents, the lair of the naga.

Nagas are half-human hybrids. Human from the chest up, with a scaly, muscular torso trailing off like that of a snake. They're slower than most PCs, but they can spit poison.

Spiny frogs are worse than blink frogs. They hit hard, poison you, and they're immune to poison. They're also faster than us. I really don't want to fight them all.



I used Brothers in Arms to summon some help. I got a freaking iron troll!

This is the most powerful ally (along with stone giants) that you can summon using BiA. Why? A normal iron troll could kill dik-dik instantly, if all of it's attacks connected. Iron trolls also have high health and absurdly high AC. Fortunately, iron trolls are slow moving and mostly appear near the bottom of the dungeon.

Harold came into view after I summoned the troll.

Harold's bio:

A middle aged bounty hunter, hired to kill you. He is in a hurry.

As you can see, Harold's attacks can't scratch the iron troll.



He died in 1 turn.



Our berserker brother killed everything in 10 turns.



Ooh. An artifact robe! I'll wear it when I find some curse detection scrolls.



I found a wand of magic darts, which should be useful for luring monsters one at a time towards me.



Ugh, more ants.



That's it for this level. I'm going back upstairs to ID that robe.



When I headed upstairs I was surrounded by green rats.



Short blades increased to 10. I'm still training short blades to make it easier to train long blades.



Meh. I prefer resistances over stat boosts. I'll wear it until I find something better.

[Korbac]

You are seriously good at this.

[G-Flex]

I'm still training short blades to make it easier to train long blades.

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Cross-training only works up until the point at which the skills are equal, and has a constant magnitude.

Training short blades to 12 and then long blades to 12 takes more XP than training short blades to 8 and then long blades to 12.

Don't keep training a skill just so you can train another one; it doesn't work that way.