Sniper - the fewest kills challenge

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  • Lord Tom
    replied
    You hear a scream of agony!

    ...and that's me realizing the un-id'd staff I just tested killed an out-of-sight Red Naga. The staff turned out to be Dispel Evil, which is a level 50 item found at 700 feet! I stopped the run after giving the staff to a store to confirm what it was.

    I was trying a Human Rogue for the low-xp, hit-dice and otherwise having a challenge with poor stats/abilities. I was at cl 9, pretty near home free. Sadly, I knew the Naga was there I just forgot they were evil, otherwise I never would have done that.

    For what it's worth, the major difficulty I encountered playing as a human was lack of infravision which is especially trying before a lantern is found as you don't see anything in the dark until it's in melee range. So I ended up using an amulet of infravision +2 (kinda wish the spread of bonuses for those was higher, maybe more akin to rings of searching).

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  • PowerWyrm
    replied
    Originally posted by fph
    Be careful, though. In real life, people are not as lenient as here about a couple of accidental kills.

    Grats!
    Well it was just a spider and a harpy

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  • fph
    replied
    Originally posted by Tibarius
    Dear Lord Tom, get a life
    Be careful, though. In real life, people are not as lenient as here about a couple of accidental kills.

    Grats!

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  • Lord Tom
    replied
    Originally posted by Tibarius
    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,
    Tibarius
    Re: my getting a life, sadly even a Potion of Life would doubtless be insufficient...

    As far as winning the boss battles went, as Derakon said it's much more about the gear for the big two bosses, once you meet minimum criteria for hp/speed, which I was able to do as a rogue with room to spare at cl 38.

    If you look at the character dump, I had >800hp, plenty of speed and reasonable (though not fantastic) damage options for both melee (Ringil) and distance (Belthronding) attacks. I think it's also key to have ac>200 if you're going to melee Morgoth.

    After that, it's just about dealing damage while avoiding potential insta-death (including by combinations of monsters). Since I couldn't kill anything and every unique was potentially summonable, TO/destruct/banish/mass banish/destruct were more important than usual, but that was the only major difference.

    Oh, and thanks to all who enjoyed Sniper's adventures, thanks also to MattB & Ingwe for the inspiration to come up with something wacky to try!

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  • Lord Tom
    replied
    Originally posted by Derakon
    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 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 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.

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  • Derakon
    replied
    Originally posted by Tibarius
    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?)
    Yes.

    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.
    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.

    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.
    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.

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  • Magnate
    replied
    Amazing. (Me too!)

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  • Tibarius
    replied
    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,
    Tibarius

    Leave a comment:


  • MattB
    replied
    Very impressive!

    Leave a comment:


  • AnonymousHero
    replied
    Originally posted by Lord Tom
    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...
    Might be feasible if you remove pBlind and drink a potion of blindness just before delivering the killing blow? (Well, that and removing any esp-granting item.)

    Well done, btw! This was quite an achievement!

    Leave a comment:


  • Lord Tom
    replied
    Originally posted by Derakon
    Congratulations! That's a heck of an achievement, and I'm willing to spot you the two accidental kills.
    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...

    Leave a comment:


  • HallucinationMushroom
    replied
    Oh okay, good to know!

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  • Derakon
    replied
    Originally posted by HallucinationMushroom
    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.
    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.

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  • HallucinationMushroom
    replied
    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.

    Leave a comment:


  • Carnivean
    replied
    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.

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