Tweet
I had been posting the progress of my Dwarf Priest on the Vanilla forums. He passed away last night under incredibly stupid circumstances, so I decided to put to paper what happened. I thought I would re-post it here in case anyone is interested. At the very least it may be worth a chuckle at my stupidity.
R.I.P. Raaj the Dwarf Priest. Another victim of yet another unbelievably stupid death.
Things had been going well. I had recently found the second ring of power (Narya) in addition to the one I already had (Nenya). I finally overcame my fear and decided to take on Ancalagon. After luring him into my man-made tunnel of death he proved to be quite easy. After painstakingly searching through the corpses of he and his pals I stumble upon the coveted Soulkeeper chest! I take on Mouth of Sauron on this level as well, who I had heard some frightening things about. He dies fairly easily as well - fortunately he rarely made use of his Mana Storm spell, which if used more frequently may have made it a little more challenging. Things are starting to go too well.
I find the next set of stairs and descend down to dlvl 90. I'm getting extremely excited, as this is my first trip down to the last 10 levels of the dungeon. Upon entering the level, I'm greeted with the message of "Omens of death haunt this place." Until recently this would have sent me shivering to the nearest staircase, but instead I feel gitty with anticipation at all the potential loot I may find, and uniques I can kill.
Already I can see Gabriel and a host of Archons and Archangels are sharing the room with me, but are still asleep. I cast Detection and can see that Polyphemus is also close by. I cast Clairvoyance and I find a rather large vault on this level with many promising looking items. I move into this next room and build another summoner death tunnel and cast Orb of Draining to lure our angelic friends to me. I make short work of them all without any notable drops. Oh well, one less unique to deal with. I move over to greet Polyphemus. Other than turning the general area into a giant pile of rubble he proved to be nothing more than a teddy bear and gets easily dispatched.
Now I'm ready to move towards the vault. There is a long, straight, narrow corridor with the vault about 15 tiles south with no other rooms nearby. I cast Detection and see this vault is harboring Vecna and Maeglin. The vault is broken up in such a way that the larger portion closer to the entrance was filled with mostly low level demons and other trivial fodder. Our unique friends were in a narrow corridor in the rear of the vault which required a bit of digging to get to. "This is perfect!" I thought to myself. I can build another zig-zag death trap lined with Glyphs of Warding straight down from this corridor, take care of majority of the small fry monsters first, and then re-prepare myself before having to take on the big boys.
Here's where the stupidity shows up. At this point I have been playing for a few straight hours, and I'm having a discussion with my roommate. If there's one lesson I've learned throughout playing Angband, it's that at this point I should have taken a break. I had been at it for a significant stretch, and now my attention was somewhat divided. However, I was happy with the planning I had done and figured that if by the time I was ready to dig out Vecna and Maeglin I was still engrossed in conversation I would stop there. On to the embarrassment, and the end of this lengthy post as well as Raaj the Dwarf Priest.
I begin clearing through the horde of non-consequential monsters. One of them casts Teleport Other on me, warping me back to the long, narrow corridor I started from. ESP is showing me a pack of Nether Hounds a ways down this corridor, but not too close to me yet - or so I thought at the time. Now had I been paying closer attention and actually thinking about every action as I normally do, I probably would have activated my Celeborn chest piece and simply deleted all Z's from the level. Aside from currently being my only source of disenchant resistance, I keep that item on me at all times for the sole purpose of removing troublesome hound packs. Let's also note that although I have nether resist on one of my swap chest pieces, it's not the chest piece I'm currently wearing.
"Get on with it!" you say. "What did you do?" Well, I did the dumbest possible thing that anybody can do in this situation. I hold my movement key heading back towards the vault. "I see where this is going, but you should have been fine. You have health warnings set up right?" Nope. I have never bothered to set them up, as I found that I pay closer attention to my actions when the game doesn't warn me when my health gets low. In a few short strides that happened near instantly since I was leaning on the key, all of those Nether Hounds breathed. Suddenly, in a nanosecond I go from 980 health to -12. Panic. Dismay. Sudden laughter? I think I'm losing my mind. My roommate asks what happened, as I started laughing during a decidedly unfunny story he was telling me. I tell him I just died. He gives me his condolences and asks if I need a minute alone. I took it.
Unfortunately I forgot to do a character dump at the death screen. I stared at the ASCII gravestone for a few minutes before closing the game and heading off to bed. Oh well, it was a hell of a run. By far my best to date. I won't give up though. Raaj the Dwarf Priest may be nothing more than a legend now, but others will follow in his wake. Perhaps a Hobbit Rogue ...
Things had been going well. I had recently found the second ring of power (Narya) in addition to the one I already had (Nenya). I finally overcame my fear and decided to take on Ancalagon. After luring him into my man-made tunnel of death he proved to be quite easy. After painstakingly searching through the corpses of he and his pals I stumble upon the coveted Soulkeeper chest! I take on Mouth of Sauron on this level as well, who I had heard some frightening things about. He dies fairly easily as well - fortunately he rarely made use of his Mana Storm spell, which if used more frequently may have made it a little more challenging. Things are starting to go too well.
I find the next set of stairs and descend down to dlvl 90. I'm getting extremely excited, as this is my first trip down to the last 10 levels of the dungeon. Upon entering the level, I'm greeted with the message of "Omens of death haunt this place." Until recently this would have sent me shivering to the nearest staircase, but instead I feel gitty with anticipation at all the potential loot I may find, and uniques I can kill.
Already I can see Gabriel and a host of Archons and Archangels are sharing the room with me, but are still asleep. I cast Detection and can see that Polyphemus is also close by. I cast Clairvoyance and I find a rather large vault on this level with many promising looking items. I move into this next room and build another summoner death tunnel and cast Orb of Draining to lure our angelic friends to me. I make short work of them all without any notable drops. Oh well, one less unique to deal with. I move over to greet Polyphemus. Other than turning the general area into a giant pile of rubble he proved to be nothing more than a teddy bear and gets easily dispatched.
Now I'm ready to move towards the vault. There is a long, straight, narrow corridor with the vault about 15 tiles south with no other rooms nearby. I cast Detection and see this vault is harboring Vecna and Maeglin. The vault is broken up in such a way that the larger portion closer to the entrance was filled with mostly low level demons and other trivial fodder. Our unique friends were in a narrow corridor in the rear of the vault which required a bit of digging to get to. "This is perfect!" I thought to myself. I can build another zig-zag death trap lined with Glyphs of Warding straight down from this corridor, take care of majority of the small fry monsters first, and then re-prepare myself before having to take on the big boys.
Here's where the stupidity shows up. At this point I have been playing for a few straight hours, and I'm having a discussion with my roommate. If there's one lesson I've learned throughout playing Angband, it's that at this point I should have taken a break. I had been at it for a significant stretch, and now my attention was somewhat divided. However, I was happy with the planning I had done and figured that if by the time I was ready to dig out Vecna and Maeglin I was still engrossed in conversation I would stop there. On to the embarrassment, and the end of this lengthy post as well as Raaj the Dwarf Priest.
I begin clearing through the horde of non-consequential monsters. One of them casts Teleport Other on me, warping me back to the long, narrow corridor I started from. ESP is showing me a pack of Nether Hounds a ways down this corridor, but not too close to me yet - or so I thought at the time. Now had I been paying closer attention and actually thinking about every action as I normally do, I probably would have activated my Celeborn chest piece and simply deleted all Z's from the level. Aside from currently being my only source of disenchant resistance, I keep that item on me at all times for the sole purpose of removing troublesome hound packs. Let's also note that although I have nether resist on one of my swap chest pieces, it's not the chest piece I'm currently wearing.
"Get on with it!" you say. "What did you do?" Well, I did the dumbest possible thing that anybody can do in this situation. I hold my movement key heading back towards the vault. "I see where this is going, but you should have been fine. You have health warnings set up right?" Nope. I have never bothered to set them up, as I found that I pay closer attention to my actions when the game doesn't warn me when my health gets low. In a few short strides that happened near instantly since I was leaning on the key, all of those Nether Hounds breathed. Suddenly, in a nanosecond I go from 980 health to -12. Panic. Dismay. Sudden laughter? I think I'm losing my mind. My roommate asks what happened, as I started laughing during a decidedly unfunny story he was telling me. I tell him I just died. He gives me his condolences and asks if I need a minute alone. I took it.
Unfortunately I forgot to do a character dump at the death screen. I stared at the ASCII gravestone for a few minutes before closing the game and heading off to bed. Oh well, it was a hell of a run. By far my best to date. I won't give up though. Raaj the Dwarf Priest may be nothing more than a legend now, but others will follow in his wake. Perhaps a Hobbit Rogue ...