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Sauron's dead! I cleaned out a few medium and large vaults and greatly upgraded my gear, along with leveling up to cl 37.
Not sure if I've ever found Boots of Feanor before, but with them and Ringil, speed is pretty much taken care of. I didn't know that Cloaks of Elvenkind could give telepathy but that was a very nice surprise, especially when Sauron dropped the Crown of Numenor (which has nice bonuses but no telepathy).
Sadly, there was another civilian casualty; I tapped twice on a door in a vault I thought was empty (a huge one I mass banished right from the middle, lost over 400hp reading the scroll!) and Ringil sliced a Mirkwood spider in one round. Stupid non-telepathy-detectable arachnids!
T'was nice, also, to return to the town and visit Father Christmas! Nice easter egg!
The Sauron fight was pretty easy; got him to 6 bars using Ringil and 2 Runes of Protection; he only summoned fairly wimpy greater undead once. I phased away then and switched to the bow; he added another greater undead and greater dragons and demons summons. The only unique in the bunch, amazingly, was Scatha, though Khamul, Witch-King, Gothmog, Lungorthin and Balrog of Moria were all elsewhere on the level prior to the battle.
I got him to one bar with the bow and splash damage via acid balls, at which point he'd closed in on me so I finished him with Ringil.
The battle went pretty easy on consumables, too, only a few healing, one *healing*, one potion of restore mana. I'm actually lucky he didn't go crazy with summons since I forgot my banish scrolls back at home...doh....
My only question before taking on Morgoth is if I should scum around for good pebbles/shots; the sling of buckland in my home is clearly better than Belthronding damage-wise, but no good ammo has come along. My melee damage with Ringil is only 320ish, pretty weak for endgame.Comment
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Done!
I went straight from Sauron to Morgoth after a quick stop in the town. On returning to the dungeon to maybe scum a bit, I immediately found 29 mithril arrows of slay evil, +17/+19 and figured it was meant to be.
The battle was fairly long, many uniques summoned, had to destruct and TO Morgoth 3 times. Big wrinkle was running out of phase door scrolls about halfway through; big anxiety with 5% failure surrounded by nasty summons and the big P! I used all my healing and *healing* and 2 potions of life (4 remaining) and was down to my last scroll of banishment (started with 9). I also ran out of arrows and had to scavenge, though that wasn't such a big deal since he was almost dead at that point.
So, total body count was 4:
1 White Harpy
1 Mirkwood Spider
1 Sauron, the Sorceror
1 Morgoth, Lord of Darkness
Since the 2 unintentional kills were incident/didn't contribute anything, I think this is a decent proof-of-concept run, though obviously a perfect 2-kill run was not achieved.
Looking back, I'd divide this challenge into 3 phases:
Pre-detect-traps spell: very tedious and difficult; a lot of scumming for $ to buy detection scrolls of various types. Using a shovel +1 as primary weapon was key to easily dig $ out of walls. Intuition was somewhat useful in determining where to use precious detection scrolls (i.e. certain room types often have traps). Very early on it's useful to get xp from id'ing potions, etc, though it's minimal. Until a few speed potions and a source of sleep monster are found it's impossible to go far from stairs without some fast enemy (Grip/Fang, fruit bat, spider) eventually finding and killing you. And stealth is extremely important at all phases, though Grip/Fang are always awake.
Pre-experience potion: Once I could cast detect-traps, it was pretty easy to level up to cl 10 for detect items - which for Rogues shows the particular item type and is thus invaluable. At that point, I dove to stat-potion depth and scummed for potions, slowly descending to about 2000' to get augmentation potions. During this time, most xp was gained from when Wormtongue would occasionally show up. You need at least resist frost and free action to run around with him and let him create traps to disarm. You can manage without rPoison but you'll burn healing potions at a decent clip. Oh, and it's really annoying that his frost bolts will shatter your potions slowly - the one time I tried to outsmart him by dropping my potions off to the side I ended up falling down a trap door - doh!. Eventually he'll try to steal from you and disappear, or you'll set off some trap that makes you flee. When you get deeper, Harowen is actually great to harvest traps from if you can trap him in LOS behind a few sleeping minor enemies; he'll just sit there forever and casts create-traps much more frequently - if you can keep the intervening monsters from waking up! Oh, during this stage getting 2 rings of escaping was HUGE! Only the first ring has the negative spellcasting effect, which is manageable, and of course in this challenge @ doesn't care about being afraid of melee or poor at archery!
End-game: The first experience potion gets you to around cl 30, so at last you can cast useful spells and have some hp/sp! At that point, the game is much more similar to regular Angband, though obviously you still can't go killing things. I was surprised at this point how very equipment-poor I was; since going after every particular item was a risk, I really hadn't prioritized unknown-quality armor and weapons. Lots of desirable gear shows up in vaults, of course. These are very difficult to clear as a Rogue unless you have a scroll or two of Mass Banishment to burn. Group non-unique monsters can be very tedious to work around to grab items, and can often be dangerous obstacles preventing you from TO-ing a unique. Eventually, I would only go after a vault if there was a particular item of interest (usually un-id'd ring/amulet/rod or a potion of experience). If available I'd use a mass banishment scroll placed as well as possible; failing that I'd use a staff of banishment to at least clear the biggest/worst group monsters. Least effectively, I tried running a berserker around inside a vault until it'd killed most everything, but found that in the meantime someone else had grabbed most of the items... As for the boss fights, they were pretty similar to the usual, though the mass-summoning of uniques was hard and my cl was definitely lower than it'd be in a typical game. Fortunately, I found great gear and got to see that CONGRATULATIONS!!. :-)Last edited by Lord Tom; December 25, 2014, 04:51.Comment
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Congratulations! That's a heck of an achievement, and I'm willing to spot you the two accidental kills.
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This is an incredible achievement, 2 extra kills notwithstanding.
It seems that at this point, the only challenge left is to slap Sauron and Morgoth to death without killing anyone or anything else.Comment
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Wow, that is an amazing feat! Congrats man.
Question though... does Morgoth's earthquakes ever cause damage to himself? I don't really know the mechanic behind that (among many other things), but doesn't rubble rain down? If you could manage a way for Morgoth to kill himself, that would be amazing. Kind of like how superheroes kill bad guys inadvertently. Don't know about Sauron though.You are on something strangeComment
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I don't think that earthquakes can affect the square the caster is in; I'm almost positive I would remember a message about Morgoth getting crushed by his own earthquake.
In any event, though, monsters, including uniques, aren't allowed to kill uniques. They can only take them down to 1HP; the player has to deliver the coup de grace.Comment
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Oh okay, good to know!You are on something strangeComment
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Appreciate the indulgence on the accidents! :-)
Re: the killing of uniques, I assume the logic tracks who is "acting" at the moment damage is given, so even if you had a colusses melee you and cause an earthquake, that earthquake wouldn't be able to kill Morgoth...would be interesting to know for sure if anyone who knows the code cares to comment.
Not that it much matters, since the spirit of the challenge is more a "pacifist mode" than based on what the internal kill counter shows. I imagine you could win with zero known kills by delivering the killing blow to Sauron/Morgoth while blind and non-telepathic -- "You hit it. You have slain it. CONGRATULATIONS..." That would actually be a good sequence for the funny messages thread...Comment
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Very impressive!Comment
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just insane
Dear Lord Tom, get a life
This is an amazingly performance i can just applaud to.
I got a couple of questions tho:
1. What is TO? (teleport other?)
2. How can you manage to kill Sauron and Morgoth? I just won the game as mage, and even with clvl50 i have around 850 hp and around 400 sp. With top artifact Equipment i still burn a lot of healings and restore mana potions / staves / rods.
3. If you are true to yourself you have to confirm that you have more than 4 kills. I don't know where the Monsters end up you banish or mass banish, but i would doubt that they can live there. So i think those must be counted as killed as well.
Nevertheless an extreme Performance.
Cheers,
TibariusBlondes are more fun!Comment
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Amazing. (Me too!)"Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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Yes.
Early on, levels are an incredibly significant part of your character's power. Later, though (basically levels 30-50) pretty much all they do is give you more HP/SP and access to better spells; equipment becomes vastly more important to your power, for non-mages/priests. As long as you have at least 30 speed and 600 HP, you can survive a turn with Morgoth in LOS; from there, careful play and appropriate gear can net you the victory.2. How can you manage to kill Sauron and Morgoth? I just won the game as mage, and even with clvl50 i have around 850 hp and around 400 sp. With top artifact Equipment i still burn a lot of healings and restore mana potions / staves / rods.
I'd say this is open to interpretation. Personally I think of Banish/Mass Banish as being mass-teleport-level spells. More questionable is monsters that are removed from the level due to Word of Destruction or being crushed by earthquakes -- they aren't killed as far as game mechanics go, but "realistically" they probably aren't alive any more either.3. If you are true to yourself you have to confirm that you have more than 4 kills. I don't know where the Monsters end up you banish or mass banish, but i would doubt that they can live there. So i think those must be counted as killed as well.
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I never thought I'd get into deep philosophical/ethical arguments in a game where the player wantonly kills happy drunks and street urchins, BUT...I'd say this is open to interpretation. Personally I think of Banish/Mass Banish as being mass-teleport-level spells. More questionable is monsters that are removed from the level due to Word of Destruction or being crushed by earthquakes -- they aren't killed as far as game mechanics go, but "realistically" they probably aren't alive any more either.
I think of Banish/Mass Banish the same way...not really killing. I do suppose destruction theoretically kills non-uniques, though they aren't counted as kills even if visible, you don't get experience or items, so it's equivalent as far as the game mechanics go. The challenge would still be doable without destruction, but the final boss battles would be a couple notches tougher.
One other ethically-laden strat that I didn't use was encouraging monsters to kill other monsters via breath attacks -- in which case they aren't counted as kills and you don't get exp but you both get rid of monsters and can get items from them. I definitely mused on getting e.g. fire immunity and luring a Great Hell Wyrm into a troll pit or something. I never intentionally did this, though, since it seemed against the spirit of things.Comment
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