Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[baruk]

My current woes:

D:14 Nikola!
Lair:6 orange rat pack!
Lair:8 acid blob!
Swamp:1 Nessos!
Snake:1 anaconda!

My only resists are poison and corrosion. I have no usables of any note left - I burnt up the last teleport scrolls escaping the anaconda.
 Nikola effectively blocks access to the Hive and the Vaults (trying to sneak past him is just asking for trouble). I managed to clear Orc:4, so the Elven Halls seem to be my best option now. I've discovered that deep elf knights with bows deal eye-watering amounts of damage, however.
 In the plus column, I have summon butterflies, which work great at blocking arrow fire from the aforementioned missile-users.
 Also, I possess perhaps the ultimate elf-killing weapon:

F - a +1,+2 orcish anti-magic war axe

[Robsoie]

Usually each time i manage to get a good run, it is followed by dozen of ridiculously short lived characters that die stupidly.
And again this proves true.

I hope i'll get a good run soon.

[xczxc]

My current woes:

D:14 Nikola!
Lair:6 orange rat pack!
Lair:8 acid blob!
Swamp:1 Nessos!
Snake:1 anaconda!

My only resists are poison and corrosion. I have no usables of any note left - I burnt up the last teleport scrolls escaping the anaconda.
 Nikola effectively blocks access to the Hive and the Vaults (trying to sneak past him is just asking for trouble). I managed to clear Orc:4, so the Elven Halls seem to be my best option now.

Nikola is terrible. I have encountered him serveral times and haven't been able to kill him. He killed my best run in the tournament: my DDNe

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/xczxc/morgue-xczxc-20110518-172222.txt

. I was overconfident (cleared Lair, Elven, Hive, Snake 1-4 and survived an encounter with a Green Death and an Executioner) and Nikola blasted me in two turns.

Too bad, my DDNe was meant to win. I had all the major Necromancy books (including

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Necronomicon (found it laying in the floor on Lair:6)

)

[Robsoie]

Never ever forget that if you need to have your stash in Lair, DO NOT USE the 1st floor of it, use Lair:2, never Lair:1

I forgot that kind of spawning mechanism crap unfortunately and created my stash in Lair:1, and after some point i came back to my stash to use my pile of identify scrolls on several unknown items and scrolls .
... and Crawl had spawned on that floor that i took a specific amount of time to completely clear before ... 4 jellies out of nowhere ... directly in my stash location, not at a deserted side of the level, no no no , directly on my stash.

Result : no more stash, every single items i had put there for future usage had disappeared, eaten by those stupid spawned jellies.

So important to remember : never use Lair:1 for stash, never

[zchris13]

Did I just hear that somebody is doing the orcish mines before they do lair?  Don't do that. It'll kill you.  There are WAY too many really strong enemies that can spawn in the orc mines, before you're ready for them.  Just off the top of my head, the list goes something like this:
Orc Knight packs, including:
   Wargs
   Multiple Orc Warriors
   Multiple Orc Priests
Saint Roka or a non-unique Orc Warlord, whose pack basically includes the above but with:
   Orc High Priests
   Orc Sorcerers

In addition, you could end up with any number of ending vaults in Orc:4, which will just tear you to peices.  You could end up with Iron Trolls or something.  I usually end up doing the Orc Mines after I finish the Lair.

[Meanmelter]

Orc Mine is easier for me, mainly when I pray to Trog, because I could just go berserk and mass-murder EVERYONE. At the Lair I can barely hit anything without losing 20 health.

[Robsoie]

I think both branches are equally difficult overall.

Lair can spawn death yaks packs, hydras that can destroy players that is not at a good level or does not have a good equipment, while Orc Mine can spawn trolls , uniques and those orcs summoners that can too destroy the player that is not prepared for this.

I think overall Lair "regular" monsters are stronger than Orcs monsters. frogs are stronger than basic Orcs, snakes of many kind to poison the character to death, lots of normal yak packs etc...
And strong Lair monster are actually not rare at all, you'll get often hydras and elephants.

While you don't get that much Trolls or Ogre in Orcs but mostly regular Orcs with a few warriors (and in Orcs:4 the more dangerous knight, warlords , sorcerers etc...)

What make Orcs dangerous is that the end of the branch comes earlier (at Lair:4) and since 0.8 can be very difficult (it was not that hard before), more difficult that the Lair end branch. And there are more dangerous uniques apparently that can appear in Orcs and not in Lair.

[Seriyu]

Do not attempt to scout out the bottom of the orcish mines like I did with the lair. Got it.

Incidentally does the Hive have a badass end of branch set up too or is it safe to hit the bottom there?

[Robsoie]

Assuming you have poison resistance, if you have no problem killing a bunch of bee, you should have no problem with the bottom of Hive, in 0.8 and previous it is not more difficult than the Hive 1st floor, it's just much larger.

Now if you can kill a bee but have problem dealing with a pack of them, Hive will be difficult and you may come back with a higher level.

[zchris13]

I don't understand why people have such a problem with Lair:8. It's not much harder than the rest of the Lair, and if you've been killdudesing your way through the previous 7 floors, you should be more than strong enough to deal with almost anything it could throw at you.  As long as you can recognize the actual end vault, there are only around 10 of them, and you can actually know almost precisely what sort of forces you will be facing.

[drkpaladin]

Who the hell is Rupert?  Apparently the guy that can take down my well equipped fighter in a couple rounds no problem, d'oh!  Another good character dead midgame.


I was just searching levels of the lair I already cleared before heading over the the Orcish Mines, and BLAM! I'll never mess with Rupert again, at least not without the ability to confuse him.  I guess I should have high tailed it out of there when I had a chance, sheesh.

[Seriyu]

The thing is that elephants are pretty nasty to melee charecters, and death yaks aren't exactly pleasent either. Both at the same time could be a bit overwhelming, but I'm not sure if there's an end of lair vault with such a thing. If there is one with dire elephants like I've heard, that's just flat out out of bounds for most melee charecters until later.

[drkpaladin]

My own ghosts have been kicking my ass, I guess thats a good thing?!

[Seriyu]

Well keep in mind they have the blessing of unlimited MP, so caster ghosts are much deadlier

I think they get spell upgrades too.

[drkpaladin]

More like my troll ghost/transmuter.  He only knew evaporation, and if he were any good at casting it in life, he wouldn't be dead lol.  He's much scarier as a ghost, almost all fighting/unarmed/shield.