-
Well actually reading around the forums and thinking about Wicky has led me to play a bit more of him; only the last couple of nights but here is some more of the story. I'll see if I can get some more serious time in this weekend (have to keep the momentum going).
--------------
As he walked on Wickham began to feel increasingly bored with his surroundings. The dungeon around him was a carpet of corpses - humans, orcs, trolls, drakes; none of which had offered him any substantial challenge since he had found the new spellbooks and these fantastic boots. Knowing that he could not ascend upwards, he was reluctant to dive too far or fast, but every time he went downstairs he kept feeling like there was nothing but safety and cobwebs nearby.
He realised this might be because of his now vastly augmented powers and so decided and declared to himself; "Don't get bitter - get better!". He dove 7 levels or so and arriving on level 40 detected a large group of Trolls led by Bert, the Stone Troll. "This might be interesting" he declared - a little too loudly as it appeared Bert had now woken up and was heading his way.
Bert was a giant hulking form, and had he not been moving like a snail would have given Wickham quite a start as he rounded the corner of the corridor and entered the chamber. The elf pulled a pained, almost annoyed expression and whipped out a copy of Incantations and Illusions. "I'll make this quick Bert" he stated. Bert blinked and frowned. In real-time all he had heard was a high pitched chip-munk sounding squeak from across the room where a little blurry figure in blue was holding a red book in one hand and pointing at him with the other.
Then, his guts spilled out. Looking down agape in terror his stony hide had been vaporised and now his whole torso was fizzing and steaming. Wickham winced at the trauma - he almost felt sorry for the poor guy. Bert summoned all the strength he could and stormed at the elf; but Wicky simply hopped back a few steps at super speed and continued the barrage as the Acid Bolt script began to glow in bold red on the page from overload.
Bert knew he would be dissolved completely soon as his skin continued to liberate itself from his body and so stooped and retrieved a massive boulder that just happened to be there. He launched it at the elf with all his might. Wickham was busy thinking about something else while absently flinging acid bolts out of the book and so was caught and only partially dodged at the last instant - the boulder grazed passed him, flinging him to the ground and knocking about a quarter of his life off. "That's more like it!" he cried as he leapt to his nimble feet and mercilessly renewed his fire at the now desperate Troll. Bert took a final fatal acid bolt to the guts that punched through his liquifying body to spatter and sear the wall behind him. As he hit the deck his upper body washed as a smelly goo over the cracked floor leaving two stony, barefoot legs as his only remains.
Wickham then paid a visit to Bert's friends, who were mostly still asleep. Even though he was failing the expensive but monumental Fireball spell about 20% of the time, he couldn't help but try it out on these morons. No screams could be heard over the roar that blasted out as the chamber erupted in flame. As the temperature climbed Wickham furthered the punishment, pulling off two more searing infernos which exploded out from the centre of the chamber. As the flames subsided, through the smouldering haze he could see that the gang had been comprehensively cooked where they stood. As he looted through the charcoal he couldn't help but feel a bit guilty about the contribution he'd just made to greenhouse gas emissions, and so resolved that he would plant a tree one day if he ever made it back to town.Leave a comment:
-
-
Hey Cliff,
Wickham is alive and well but has been temporarily spellbound due to events outside his control. Somewhere in the cosmos of Ea someone became addicted to Skyrim after getting it for his birthday, and shortly afterward his wife gave birth to a baby girl that vastly prefers to be held rather than watch me play on my laptop...
But the temporal distortion is beginning to crumble and he should be back to his old tricks soon!
mbcLeave a comment:
-
-
Yeah - That's probably why I tend to play warriors nearly exclusively - You just go in and hit things, and if it goes south - you leave. the only issues is generally having enough consumables to stay competitive sometimes.
I STILL tend to mash buttons (though sil is slowing me down a bit...), and so the warrior seems to be the most forgiving (i.e. Has enough HP to munch a few wanton kesystrokes.)
oh well- Good luck, Wickham.Leave a comment:
-
Indeed! Hopefully his double resist and +19 hasted-self speed will be enough to keep the boots out of harm's way. Probably the biggest risk now will be diving too hard and getting lazy to die from an offscreen... ooo let's say, shards breath. Those 160 hit points won't go far...
Yes I always found the mage to be quite fun. I think it's because they tend to undergo more extreme experiences than the other classes - ie more of being either completely unstoppable or cowering in panic, not so much in between. It's especially fun when it changes from one to the other mid-combat, which has happened to this guy a few times
Leave a comment:
-
Wickam likely went SQUEEE and got all bug eyed when He ID'ed those boots.
That's a very nice find - here's hoping they don't get acid toasted too badly in the meantime.
Maybe, Just maybe, I'll try a mage one day.
Leave a comment:
-
Thanks ghengiz, that's interesting reading.
There's heaps I really like about the newer version, particularly changes which seem to have removed the most annoying aspects of the old game (amulet of inertia for example). But it does feel like these little perks, in addition to the seemingly increased drop rates have all added up to a noticably 'easier' experience overall.
On a side note I realise that my assessment of the difficulty from here down (assuming he survives) will be biased now because of the boots... (not that I'm complaining about finding them).
Leave a comment:
-
Indeed, IIRC, I read somewhere on this forum (in the poll on which angband version is best, I suppose) that Timo thinks angband got a lot easier in 3.2 (in particular on the artifact drops), and 3.3 is a bit better...so your niiiice drops can be a consequence of this.
A well-written and fascinating adventure...please keep up the good work
edit:
I found the post I was referreng to regarding too many drops. It was Magnate, not Timo, and in another thread...sorry, my memory seems a bit faulty today
Last edited by ghengiz; January 30, 2012, 07:44.Leave a comment:
-
Wicky descended through about three more levels on his way down to dlevel 30. He encountered a number of invisible things touching him and wailing at him but thankfully had managed to learn the advanced spell 'Reveal Monster' which for a brief moment revealed these ghosts and allowed him to slam an acid bolt in their insubstantial backsides. Before long he had found yet another spellbook. "Can I get any luckier?!" he cried. He had gotten into the habit of talking out loud even though he knew it was the first sign of madness. The tome was entitled 'Sorcery and Evocations'. Inside it contained a truly mind bending augmentation to his arsenal include elemental balls and haste self. In the same room was a handy suit of blue dragon armour that he snapped on over his torso in place of his old studded leather. "Ok, so surely that's as lucky as one little elf can get" he stated firmly to the cold stone walls. He happily plodded onward, spinning his beautiful short bow around his body in an attempt to replicate some kind of ninja routine. Every now and then he was distracted by dungeon dwellers and had to fling acid and fire bolts around, pausing to ID anything on their corpses, and to pick up the bow of Amras, which he kept dropping. Life was starting to feel pretty darn good.
He entered a small dead-end room, whistling loudly as he he cast 'mad' to light it up. In the corner were a pair of boots. "Hey!" he chuckled as he ambled over with Identify ready to roll. He dropped the spellbook. Jaw agape, his mind perceived that these were boots... of speed! In a mixture of terror and ecstacy he pulled them on. +9!!! He began sprinting around the little room in circles. "Hahahaha!!" he was beginning to go delerious with glee.
He eventually got hold of himself and began exploring the rest of the dungeon. He was approached by Ugluk the Uruk, and laughed as the smelly brute seemed to move like a tortoise. "Haha!" he cried as he easily dodged out of Ugluk's reach before slamming him with acid bolts to the death. Ibun, son of Mim received a similar reception. "Is that seriously as fast as you're going to fight?!" he boasted as Ibun took a fatal acid bolt to the torso and crashed fizzing and burning to the floor in glorious high definition slow motion.
--------------------
I have never in 13 years of playing Angband ever found boots of speed, let alone ones that give +9. As I've said above and in another thread, I've found that 3.3.0 seems to be pretty easy compared to 3.0.9 - but does this type of drop happen more often now? Or is this quite truly the most insane drop I will ever get in my Angband career?Leave a comment:
-
Yeah - I will remember that next time I hope. Well a fair bit more has happened over the weekend.
-------------
On the other side of the same fateful level Wickham's scroll of magic mapping revealed a small structured room surrounded by what appeared to be permanent rock that would not yield to his wand of stone-to-mud except in a few places. Inside one of the four chambers, he detected the presence of a somehow bonded pair of powerful sorceror warriors. He couldn't be sure if these foes could resist cold, but sensed that they were not as fast or as powerful as Azog, and so reasoned that he would be a match for them. He managed to engineer a firing point from a distance and used his trusty wand of stone-to-mud to release them from their stony bastion.
"Angamaite, we have company!" growled a heavy voice as a large robed figure now emerged into the corridor.
"Well then my dear brother Sangahyando, who might not be my brother, but probably is given the information that we have on record regarding our ancestry" said another equally gruff voice, "perhaps you better make him welcome!"
Sangahyando grinned and gestured menacingly at Wickham, who suddenly felt a sapping force taking over his limbs. He battled within and finally wrested back a full control of his body. Sangahyando's grin went sour and he drew his sword and advanced at Wicky, who in a military drill now honed to perfection, unloaded his first frost bolt. Sangahyando caught the bolt just above the guts and grunted.
"Phew!" shouted Wickham in an attempt to sound brave; "You don't like it chilly do you?". Angamaite emerged from the bastion behind his mate and Wickham felt a doubling in the aura of dominance now radiating down the corridor. He almost hesitated as he realised now he was in for a serious battle, and two against one was never ideal for the one. He snapped back to his drill. Razor shards of superchilled ice careened down the corridor and Sangahyando felt the full brunt. But the pair reacted quickly, and by focussing their minds in repeated barrages, finally crashed through Wickham's formidable mental defences.
Wickham dropped his spellbook and started swatting the air in front of him. He frowned - what had happened? Something bad. He was confused, anyway - at least he knew that. Through blurry vision he could see two large men charging toward him. Funny - they almost look like brothers! He remembered a stash of curing potions he'd been keeping and decided to chugg one.
He snapped to and the dance continued until finally, Sangahyando had caught up to him. Though he was bleeding and sore from the punishment of the frost bolts, he was ready to chop this little elf into pieces. Wickham phased and emerged in a large hall just on the other side of the wall. He manoevered toward the entrance, knowing that his movements would draw his enemies around the corridors toward him. Angamaite appeared first, shielding his wounded companion, and the fight continued. Wickham continued to quaff curing potions as the robed figures managed to confuse him, but all attempts to slow his movement were repelled by the fiesty mind of the little mage.
Wickham eventually caught line of sight to Sangahyando and managed to deliver a fatal frost bolt. The robed warrior crumpled to the floor with a thud behind his ally. Angamaite bellowed in anger, and now rushed furiously at the elf with his weapon raised. But one-on-one he had no hope of overcoming the mage, who began phasing before calmly delivering a complementary death to the second companion.
The 'vault' - if he could call it that - had a number of armours and weapons which as usual could not be identified, and what's this? A spell book! Could it be?! He 'l'ooked at it and... it was... 'Resistances to Scarabtaracies'. What the hell? "Never heard of it" he declared to the orc corpses he'd killed earlier. The book had five spells, three of which he could decipher, all granting resistances to the elements. "Oh well" he thought, "Better than a kick in the pants but man I'd love to be able to identify stuff".
He decided that with the dungeon level littered with loot it made sense to rest for a while. Perhaps more foes would come up from the depths to avenge these deaths, and bring with them the tools he needed to identify the booty. He awoke several hours later and emerged from his hiding place in the vault. Rubbing his eyes, he was suddenly aware that the level was again teeming with gribblies.
In the large chamber in the centre of the level, Boldor the King of all Yeeks was dining with a huge retinue of yeeks, including rather a lot of master yeeks. Wickham began flinging stinking clouds and frost bolts into the room from a distance and had soon caused a major disruption to the party. The masters however began phasing and Wickham soon found himself surrounded. With half the crowd dead, he decided to teleport self and attack again from a distance.
He landed in the north-west corner and detected another huge crowd. But these guys were not dining. Bolg, son of Azog had come to the dungeon, armed to the teeth and surrounded by perhaps 50 brutish gang members to bring severe pain down on the one who had killed his father. The corridors in the north west were however very well configured for a lure-kill strategy, and Wickham now began picking off the gang in convenient groups of five or six. A black orc even dropped a potion of speed. "Excellent!" Wickham declared. Eventually, he lured Bolg out, and at +8 speed for most of the fight, was able to phase-frost bolt the plucky orc to death without suffering a blow in return.
The level had also filled up with an array of hounds. Included among these were air hounds. He decided to try his newly learned 'Resist Poison' spell and have a fight with them. This turned out to work really well as the otherwise scary breath blasts blew past him without hurting much at all. He then murdered Boldor from close quarters after learning the hard way that he was a good summoner.
Things were starting to look rather good. One of the orcs had left a pile of 6 ID scrolls, and he used these to answer the most pressing questions in his backpack. Left over were an array of armours and weapons which he now heaved over to the staircase. Dumping the loot on the next level, he began exploring. In the corner of a large room there appeared to be... a spellbook. He froze. Could it be? Dare he dare to believe in the possibility? He commanded himself to 'l'ook and see and it was... Incantations and Illusions! "OH FRABJOUS DAY!!!" he shouted in euphoria. Tears of joy rolled down his cheeks as he sank to his knees in a giddy kind of soft slow motion. A triumphant operatic music theme began blaring in his mind.
He got up and wiped his face, pumped his fists and then moonwalked over to the book and whipped out his spectacles. Yes.... as he browsed the pages his eyes began to light up. "This is the stuff! I knew it!" he cried. He carefully studied all the spells in the book and then set about practicing. There were five really important spells in here and he couldn't wait to make use of them; "Satisfy Hunger, Turn Stone to Mud, Identify, Fire Bolt and Acid Bolt" he read aloud.
It turned out that Fire Bolt required the same concentration but was a bit more powerful than Frost Bolt, but it scalded his fingers slightly and so he resolved that good old Frost would still have a place in his tactics. Acid Bolt was a substantial upgrade however, and his hapless test subjects suffered nasty trauma from it. He happily dumped all but a few of his satisfy hunger scrolls and went back to the loot pile.
Most of the items he'd brought down from upstairs were uninteresting, except for two short bows. He ID'd the first as a bow of power with +23 damage. "Oh - nice one!" He dropped his old bow and began practicing with it. Then he ID'd the other bow. Uhh... hang on! The spell resolved and his mind was shown the mighty elvish brothers Amrod and Amras, like and unlike as they were. This was THE bow of Amras! He hooped and hollered. This weapon was truly welcome and wielding it, he felt a spring in his step. If only his brothers could see him now!Leave a comment:
-
Well I played almost no Angband over the holiday period and picked up again with Wicky last night. I will save commentary to the end.
-----------
Wickham dived down to dungeon level 22, having secured immunity to paralysis via a nice set of gloves some time ago. He was still very concerned about his inability to see invisible creatures and his susceptibility to blindness but there was simply no choice as the dungeon refused to yield him the equipment he needed to address these issues. At least he couldn't be paralysed. He came across yet one more horde of orcs on his way down, led by Golfimbul, who somehow had risen from the dead and needed to be shot with lightning arrows due to his resistance to cold (turns out the guy Wickham had killed some time ago was actually Grishnak).
On dlevel 24 Wickham detected a mob of elite orcs, led by Azog the High King. Though he was still at -2 speed, he had one potion of speed and decided that he would risk an attempt to kill the brute. Having murdered most of the orc captain bodyguards, Wickham crept closer and closer, detecting obsessively until Azog was awake and - moving! Wow this guy was quick. He chugged his speed potion and ran back toward a large empty room he intended to make use of in the battle. He could hear the clang of heavy steel armour behind him, and felt that below it he could sense a huge, powerful orcish body. Now in the center of the hallroom he turned to face as his speed buff ran out. Azog tromped into the room and leapt at the little elf. The first frost bolt made almost no impact and he was now face to face with the big guy. He let out a little shriek and phased to the other side of the room - but reappearing, discovered that the armoured orc had already made up most of the ground. Wickham's face winced in anticipation of what would likely be a nasty fight. Several rounds of battle ensued in patterns of phase - frost bolt - repeat, and Wickham was now in relatively good shape, having only been hit once by the brute (and having gulped a cure critical potion) and had brought his opponent down to about 60% life.
However, he then made the first mistake of the battle; he emerged from a phase only a couple of paces from Azog, and cast another frost bolt. Azog happily took the damage and pounced, slashing his weapons wih cruel precision. Wickham dropped to 80 hit points and then made his second mistake. Clutching Magic for Beginners with the monster towering above him ready to deliver a fatal flurry, he gestured to phase; and failed the spell. Azog then performed a dreaded double move. All Wickham could do was raise his nimble arms and dodge as best he could (press space bar) as blows began to rain in a terrifying salvo. As the orcish king paused and Wickham finally had time to do something, he was on exactly one (that's ONE) hit point.
He was practically dead. Blood filled his vision and seeped from his leather armour as his head swam in delerium. Though he knew he had lost and would almost surely die, with the last of his strength he cracked a teleportation scroll. He landed in a quiet room with a zombie kobold; but the creature was mercifully several paces from him. With mana to spare it was brought low with magic missiles and Wickham was able to rest until healed.
There was no time to pause for thought as his mind raced. He faced an interesting dilemma. Should he continue the battle? He detected that Azog had only healed to about 70% and was still isolated from his remaining bodyguards. He knew deep down that the right answer was to flee; but then he considered that his only path of escape was deeper into the dungeon - where even deadlier opponents lurked. He wasn't even really thinking straight (part of him wondered if he was in fact dead and haunting the corridors he died in).
He went for it. The combat resumed and, though he had to teleport a second time to be safe (a move in which he again got lucky and landed in the empty dead-zombie-kobold room), he eventually managed to wound the great orc with enough frost bolts for it to turn and flee in anger and panic, in the direction away from the bodyguards. With its back now turned to the elf, the orc had no chance and finally collapsed from a final frost bolt to the dome.
Of course the looting process yielded two massive high quality weapons that Wickham could barely lift. He swore and hefted his backpack, but as he rose from the hulking corpse his mind finally relaxed from its adrenaline fueled state and he fell in to a pale kind of stupor, and now cowered in the gentle draught gusting through the chamber. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he couldn't help but feel that he'd somehow just cheated Death. With a crawling sense he perceived his life from here as a borrowed thing, to be handed back to it's owner whenever it came knocking to collect on the debt he had drawn. The hair on his neck bristled and he shivered in the darkness.
------------------
This I guess is what I get for diving headfirst in to a big fight while 'cold'. I suppose you forget your guy's weaknesses, forget what's in his backpack, his activations etc and fall out of the 'zone' if you haven't played him for ages. I kind of feel like Wickham practically DID die, it was just a pure fluke followed by a lucky teleport (and then another - although he had a decent 70 odd hp on the second one) that spared him. On the other hand, I've had plenty of characters get unlucky and just barely die over the years, and I'm sure few ironman games are won without a bit of luck on the way.
As an incidental, looking back I'm not sure what I should have done emerging two squares from Azog. If you emerge one square away, you phase again, emerge three squares away, cast a frost bolt, but two squares? Neither phase or frost bolt are very appealing (phase could land you next to him, fb will let him hit you). Maybe take one step back allowing him to come adjacent and then phase (alas I don't think things through in this level of detail when out of practice).Leave a comment:
-
Here is some more of Mr Wickham. He remains alive, kicking and cocky as ever but is now getting desperate for a copy of Incantations and Illusions.
-----------
Wickham continued to descend and managed to exterminate several more tribes of orcs and their unique leaders, but was beginning to get impatient as they continually dropped large weapons like glaives and maces. He did not want to lug these around and could not identify them without swinging them at enemies (which was very dangerous as he was terrible at melee). He felt ready to learn perhaps 20 more spells but had no books to study. In fact, he was down to only a single copy of Conjuring and Tricks, which if destroyed would surely mean disaster for him. He was attacked on level 19 by Nar, the Dwarf and managed to win by resorting to his quiver of lightning arrows as the little fellow was not bothered by frost bolt. His luck continued as Nar dropped a large unidentifiable weapon.
On the same level a pack of dark hounds began hunting him. He was fairly sure these were not particularly dangerous and so began engaging them with magic missiles. Disaster struck as two of the hounds breathed, blinding him temporarily. His brothers were used to hunting in the dark and a more physical hero would have been probably quite happy to swing a weapon at the pack in blindness. Not so for Wickham. Without being able to see, he could not cast any spells or read any scrolls. He began to panic and hurriedly groped through his backpack for a solution to the problem. He felt a savage bite on his leg and darkness again was engulfing him. His fingers found a triplet of stinking cloud wands. He nearly dropped them as he wrenched them from his backpack, and then began waving them, his nimble hands reliably firing cloud after cloud at the cluster of hounds that had filled the corridor. Yelps of pain ensued and eventually the pack broke away, leaving the elf to recover. He managed to then kill the remaining hounds by stealth and indirect stinking clouds cast from Magic for Beginners. Phew!
On the next level he detected a well isolated room full of orcs, led by a large one called Gorbag. Accompanying them were a pack of dark hounds. He could picture himself being blinded and then beaten to death within seconds in that pit, but those black orcs might just be carrying something he could use. He began his approach, aided by a scroll of magic mapping he'd found. Gorbag woke at once and sprinted around the network of corridors toward him. Wickham detected this with glee and withdrew to a safer distance. As Gorbag rounded the corner, Wickham had frost bolt ready to go from about 30 paces. He decided "hmm I might do a quick detect first". Around the corner, two steps behind Gorbag was his very own pet dark hound. Oh dear. One breath and he would be as good as dead (where were all the staves of teleport self?). He weighed his choices. To begin firing at Gorbag would be probable suicide, as he would soon be blind and firing his precious lightning arrows in the dark as the brute began bludgeoning him. To phase now could put him next to Gorbag right away - not good. To teleport self could of course easily pop him into the middle of the pit and that would mean absolute and certain death.
He legged it. Running as fast as he could (at Slow -2) he rounded the corner, and - what's this - he could still see! He continued; he could see the next chamber opening out ahead of him. He bombed down the corridor, lungs bursting, but now Gorbag was finally caught up. As the axe came down he phased into the chamber and detected. The hound had not followed! Wickham pumped his fists and shouted "Boo-yah!". The grizzly Gorbag was a bit taken aback by this, he'd never seen a skinny celebrate their moment of certain death before. "Now then, big fella!" shouted Wickham as his hands began to freeze over.
Before long the dungeon was filled with orc and hound corpses. An interesting whip that seemed to make him feel a bit stronger when wielded was his only reward. "Gah! Where are all the spellbooks?!!" he cried to nobody in particular.Leave a comment:
Leave a comment: