So after my relatively uneventful and smooth march to victory in my recent artifactless ironman Half Troll Warrior attempt, I decided to roll up a Hobbit Ranger with forced descent, as that seems to be my second favorite race/class combo.
After inspecting every monster early on (1d1, 1d2, 1d3, oohh, that one has 1d4 attack), and ruminating over the fact that some deeper monsters have less stats than earlier ones, (most notably the scary stats of Soldiers) I eventually get my footing and find myself cruising through the levels pretty quickly after finding a sling (+2, +5) and a *slay Orc* broadsword with +1 DEX and See Invisible on DL3, though my first trip to the dungeon barely got me enough gold to buy another ?recall (I was able to buy 21 arrows) after running into a room with a shrieker mushroom I had forgotten about.
Even after I found the early weapons I was dealing the most damage with magic missile. Very handy early game attack. For starting stats I gave my Hobbit +6 STR, +6 DEX, +6 CON and +2 INT. Given how good the MM is, I'm considering doing +4 INT and +4 DEX in the future for starting stats.
So anyway, I'm cruising along when I suddenly find myself on a 3-9 level.
I finally find the room with the object. It's a purple [. I'm a bit surprised it's not a book and am not sure what to make of it. Is it a jewel encrusted crown? I'm dumbstruck when I walk over it. PDSM. I have found some pretty amazing early game things lying around the dungeon, but only a few times have I found a PDSM, and the earliest one was at DL70-something in a large vault. I put it on and find myself slowed (-2) but not really bothered by this trade off.
I notice a bug in my armor's description: it says protects from confusion, but my @ doesn't know about such abilities yet (as shown in the character abilities screen--pConf is grayed out).
I get a bit reckless, nearly dying a few times, most notably to a summoned Dark Elven Lord as my weight issues only get worse as I accumulate potions and staves ((-4) speed at the worst). Pasting uniques with the rapidly recharging magic breath is pretty amusing, though. All the early game ones die in a single breath. As I get deeper, I need to rely on a short bow (+15, +13) I found in the store to take on some of the 800hp uniques, namely one of the disenchanter dudes and the confuser brothers on DL32. The confuser brothers drop me my first three artifacts: the star of Nascabil <+2> <+3> and The Elfstone of Ibingwil <+3> <+1> and the Short Sword Golot with SI, Slay Evil (among others) and slightly better damage than the +1 Dex broadsword. The star gives me +2 INT & STR which is huge as my slowness jumps from (-3) to (-1). The amulet confers +3 CON and abilities already covered by my armor (pConf and rDisen). On DL27 I find a <+2> attacks main gauche which I keep as a swap. On DL34 I pick up a wand of TO.
That brings us up to the present position having just arrived on DL35 doing 74 dam with the main gauche thanks to a RoD (+8). Our AC is at 117 and our SP is 35. We are a level 27 Guide.
After inspecting every monster early on (1d1, 1d2, 1d3, oohh, that one has 1d4 attack), and ruminating over the fact that some deeper monsters have less stats than earlier ones, (most notably the scary stats of Soldiers) I eventually get my footing and find myself cruising through the levels pretty quickly after finding a sling (+2, +5) and a *slay Orc* broadsword with +1 DEX and See Invisible on DL3, though my first trip to the dungeon barely got me enough gold to buy another ?recall (I was able to buy 21 arrows) after running into a room with a shrieker mushroom I had forgotten about.
Even after I found the early weapons I was dealing the most damage with magic missile. Very handy early game attack. For starting stats I gave my Hobbit +6 STR, +6 DEX, +6 CON and +2 INT. Given how good the MM is, I'm considering doing +4 INT and +4 DEX in the future for starting stats.
So anyway, I'm cruising along when I suddenly find myself on a 3-9 level.
I finally find the room with the object. It's a purple [. I'm a bit surprised it's not a book and am not sure what to make of it. Is it a jewel encrusted crown? I'm dumbstruck when I walk over it. PDSM. I have found some pretty amazing early game things lying around the dungeon, but only a few times have I found a PDSM, and the earliest one was at DL70-something in a large vault. I put it on and find myself slowed (-2) but not really bothered by this trade off.
I notice a bug in my armor's description: it says protects from confusion, but my @ doesn't know about such abilities yet (as shown in the character abilities screen--pConf is grayed out).
I get a bit reckless, nearly dying a few times, most notably to a summoned Dark Elven Lord as my weight issues only get worse as I accumulate potions and staves ((-4) speed at the worst). Pasting uniques with the rapidly recharging magic breath is pretty amusing, though. All the early game ones die in a single breath. As I get deeper, I need to rely on a short bow (+15, +13) I found in the store to take on some of the 800hp uniques, namely one of the disenchanter dudes and the confuser brothers on DL32. The confuser brothers drop me my first three artifacts: the star of Nascabil <+2> <+3> and The Elfstone of Ibingwil <+3> <+1> and the Short Sword Golot with SI, Slay Evil (among others) and slightly better damage than the +1 Dex broadsword. The star gives me +2 INT & STR which is huge as my slowness jumps from (-3) to (-1). The amulet confers +3 CON and abilities already covered by my armor (pConf and rDisen). On DL27 I find a <+2> attacks main gauche which I keep as a swap. On DL34 I pick up a wand of TO.
That brings us up to the present position having just arrived on DL35 doing 74 dam with the main gauche thanks to a RoD (+8). Our AC is at 117 and our SP is 35. We are a level 27 Guide.
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