I promised to show you guys my loot, so here it is:
My randarts.
And my unrandarts. Now, let's go to the Slime Pits.
Here we are. This place is harder than the other rune branches we conquered. It's 6 levels deep and the levels are disconnected like the Orcish Mines. You'll want to have corrosion, mutation, and cold resistance.
Anyway, we just entered this place and the situation is already dangerous. There are two eyes (the gray one paralyzes you, and the red one drains your MP), an acid blob (reddish-purple creature; has a ranged corrosive attack and hits hard), slimes (green; can merge together), and a few weak oozes and jellies.
My air magic skill is high enough that I can summon friendly air elementals. And I can use a staff of air decently as a weapon. I switched to my stasis amulet, so I don't get paralyzed.
The walls of this place burns you and anyone not immune to acid every turn. And the damage is cumulative, so don't stand in tight tunnels or corners. Fortunately, it doesn't corrode your gear if you have rCorr.
This is the final level on this branch. In the center of the level is an altar to Jiyva, the Slime God, which is surrounded by 4 treasure vaults (one of them has the rune) and a lot of high level jellies.
That blue creature is an azure jelly. It's a fast-moving jelly that hits very hard with multiple, cold-based melee attacks. Squishy characters should have at least rC++ and must avoid getting in close range with them. Azure jellies are weak against fire.
I forgot to mention that the vault walls are made out of stone. In order to get the loot we need to kill the boss of this place. Luckily, it's standing before us.
The Royal JellyA particularly rich and golden gelatinous thing.
The Royal Jelly is the boss of the Slime Pits. It's easily one of the most powerful monsters in the game. It's faster than us, and does a lot of damage in melee. The Royal Jelly doesn't regenerate from its injuries, but damaging it causes it to spawn high-level jellies, such as acid blobs and azure jellies. And like regular jellies, the Royal Jelly will devour ammo, which will heal it.
If you're playing a melee character, then try fighting the Royal Jelly in the stone corridor. Otherwise, you can just haste yourself and blast it to death with a few wands of fire/cold.
I decided to just overpower the Royal Jelly with more forces. It quickly turned into a one-sided fight, because Hir Majesty mostly spawned death oozes and we have an evil-slaying god katana.
When the Royal Jelly dies all the vault walls change into translucent rock walls, and all altars to Jiyva disappears. Why? The gods in Crawl are reliant on worshipers to exist. The Royal Jelly is Jiyva's most loyal and intelligent follower. Almost all other jellies are mindless.
Hey, it's Dissolution!
The Pits of Slime used to be a thriving civilization, and Dissolution was the prophet of their god. When the city was overtaken by its current residents, only Dissolution survived, for he alone turned faithfully to the Slime God. Dissolution became a tremendous mass of acidic ooze, yet retained his intelligence. He is filled with hatred for anything that can hold a form.
Think of him as a weaker, slower version of the Royal Jelly. He can summon various eye monsters, so be careful.
Jiyva's dead, buddy. And you're next.
That was easy, now let's loot this place!
Rune #5
Here's the loot I took. I sacrificed the rest.
We got another legendary deck of dungeons, so I created a portal.
Try to guess how many shops I've visited in total. Normally, you would be lucky to find several shops in a game, but I found over 2 dozen already. And that's not including all the bazaars I go to.
I brought some healing potions and left.
I'm going to run out of money at this rate. Not that it matters much. Getting gold is easy at this point.
I brought this (unidentified) ring of slaying for around $200 gold.
Time to get more runes! We're in the Vestibule of Hell. It's a single open level filled with yaktaur captains, giants, and the unique demon prince, Geryon.
A huge, three-headed, winged arch-demon, guardian of the gates of Hell.
Geryon holds the silver horn, which is necessary to enter the 4 Hell branches. Geryon is pretty weak, but he can use the horn to summon beasts (hard-hitting demons with random stats; don't underestimate them). You'll want high defense stats and missile protections, due to all the ranged attacks in this place.
Poor Geryon.
Everything else in this place is more dangerous than him.
Now we can enter the portals. The Hells have a few things in common:
* All of them are 7 levels deep.
* All of them contain a rune in the bottom level.
* The runes are guarded by a boss.
* There's no loot outside of the last levels.
* Each branch has a theme with appropriate monsters (including greater demons).
* Each branch has random hell effects (similar to a Zot trap) that happens every once in awhile.
* Going up any stairs will take you to the Vestibule, instead of the previous level.
All of this means that resting and exploring in the Hells is dangerous. Ignore the monsters and dive down to the bottom levels as quickly as possible.
We're going to Dis first.
A gateway to the Iron City of Dis. Who will stand the test of iron?
Dis is one of the easier branches of Hell. It's hard to get surrounded and a lot of monsters are slow, so you can easily outrun them.
Here's a hell effect in action. This is one of the more "mild" effects.
Before I get the rune I'm going to explore this place. The last levels tend to have good loot.
Here's a hellion. They're
very dangerous. They like to spam hellfire. A lot. And there's an island full of them in Pandemonium. Walking into a group of them might lead to an instant death if you have low health.
There wasn't any loot outside of this castle, but there's plenty in here. Anyway, I plan on stealing the runes, so I won't be fighting the bosses.
I ran past Dispater, the boss of this place, without taking a screen shot of him.
Oh well, at least I got the rune.
The loot is not too shabby. Wyrmbane is an unrandart.
Author
Topic: Let's Play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup! (Read 95960 times)