Elf Ranger (competition)

[Grotug]

I'm killing off elfen rangers mighty quickly in a bid at the current competition. Here are some fun/exciting videos of my current attempt:

When you have little other recourse, -wonder
at your chances... https://youtu.be/78HHKCePdSU

Pushing my luck...

https://youtu.be/n6yZnfEy_TI

[Grotug]

Oh man, I should participate in competitions more often. I just dove my elf ranger two ?deep descents and immediately found a telepathy trident swap for the Taratol I had been maining. I then clear a dangerous animal pit that had nothing inside of I even remote value; after which I discover a vault which I decided to raid using a combination of Taratol and Terror (they stack!!) for +20 speed and superb stealth (good Ring of the mouse). Turns out I walked right by Arkenstone guarded by a blue lizard but I didn't check to see what objects were under the monsters as I was walking around them! At 32:44 all I had to do was zap the acid bolts at the blue lizard and the arkenstone would be mine! Instead I went after the master theif to get to the other side of the vault /facepalm.

Anyway, going to head back to the vault for another attempt at it in part 2 of the video. All of part 1 is pretty good stuff, especially the second half which starts at 17:38, but if you want to jump straight to the vault it starts near the end of the video at 31:12.

I hope you enjoy!

https://youtu.be/WpGvv9hYj60

[Sphara]

Nice EXP from that animal pit but clearing it was just as painful as I thought it would be
Arkenstone can be tricky to snatch now after waking up Vargo. Plus those Z's and other nasties around. Worth trying for sure. Maybe tunnel from the south and see how it goes?

[Grotug]

https://youtu.be/Hxur5ssQJA0 part 2 of the quest for the Arkenstone.

[Sphara]

https://youtu.be/Hxur5ssQJA0 part 2 of the quest for the Arkenstone.

Well played. I got the feelings of the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark

The main challenge in this quest, however, was getting rid of that death quasit. Picking up the Arkenstone was cosmetic after that because the hounds were enough far away. +21 speed probably saved you there because otherwise you would've given that summoned greater basilisk one free turn.

[Grotug]

Welp, my acquisition of powerful items from vaults continues despite pitiable hitpoints and no TO. I picked up my favorite weapon! @ is becoming a double threat.

Even though the vault was a 7-7 and I'm weakling elf (I don't think I've quaffed any STR) I was able to eliminate just about all the major threats from the vault with seeker arrows of flame which do an incredible 457 damage per round with an average long bow of power.

https://youtu.be/YgtfVPj92u4

I apologize for the swearing...

Gah, just recorded the coolest video and it the video recording software crashed; not to mention angband is lagging and totally trying to kill me that way: delayed keypresses while a lesser balrog is chasing me. Great... Fortunately I didn't get killed.

[Grotug]

Let me tell you a story, as true and bitter as the unpleasantness of cold rain on your face:

I enter DL56 near hellhounds in a nearby corridor. I move away from them to see a large number of Time hounds funneling down another corridor. I _Teleport. I see The Phoenix in a corridor above me. He's awake. Good thing I have one ?*Destruction*. There's nothing for it. If I am to investigate a basic non-permanent "square window" vault not too far away, I'm gonna have to rid the level of the The Phoenix. *KAPOW*

Inside the vault are a couple or three Ds, a master mystic, a lesser titan, a greater basilisk, a hasty ent, a pink M and a spider of Gorgoroth (DL63, 4000hp) Damn. I hem and a haw a lot. What to do! What to do! And mind you, as I am playing this super dangerous level with 241HP and 14 STR, I'm moving overweight at -2 speed, though I recently picked up Nature Craft, but the game keeps inexplicably lagging, so that keypresses become back-logged up to 10 presses and suddenly I'm bumping into walls, or worse, dangerous monsters.

As I deliberate, I decide to check out another square window room (not jam packed with treasure), but I've illuminated the level and I want the the STR ring in it (mine is only +1). I can't remember what monsters I had to kill to get it, but I had to risk a lesser titan waking up as the ring was pretty close to him; I stone to mud into the place where the ring was and grab it <+3>.

Back to the vault I've decided I will use my second banishment of the game (also bought in the BM) on the dragons. I decide to enter the vault from above and stone to mud into it only to see a silent watcher. No worries, I'm pretty lucky to have hockey stick LOS on him. I pelt him with arrows and he's 2/3 dead when for some reason I move into his LOS and all hell breaks loose: he shrieks... EVERYONE is awake. Time to abandon ship. But no! I need to capitalize on the ?*Destruction* and ?banishment I've used to make this at least some way possible. I will not give up. So I start luring monsters away (I'm now +9 or +10 speed temporarily hasted, depending on which weapon I wield [the trident of telepathy has +2 str).

The luring is kind of working but I think I had to ?phase away from something I couldn't deal with and find myself about 10 squares or so from Gorgoroth. I manage to lure him through the destruction zone to near the top of it and teleport away back to the upper window room where I got the ring of STR. I see a potion of wisdom (probably from a young or mature dragon I killed as there are many on this level and I killed just about all of them, thanks to Aule). But I have to step right next to Rogrog to quaff the potion. He doesn't destroy much, though, and I get a sweeeeet ?phase down into the corridor below, totally separated from the room (and not too far above the vault). I make myself back to the vault, and everyone is now still as if they are "asleep" again. I look everywhere for the hasty ent but cannot find him. He must have been destroyed by someone.... I bump into Ariel and I think I ?phased away from her.

Anyway, lots of ?phasing and I find myself in the upper right quadrant of the vault and the monsters left in there I can handle. I start to kill them but more huorns come at me; I can take one or two at a time, but my speed wears off and they are doing me in. I ?phase again and manage to kill them with some lesser healing potions and -slow monster and Aule. Back in the chamber I pick up Law mail of Stealth <+2>, which is the same amount of stealth I have from the chaos elvenkind armor I'm wearing. Good thing I bought the shield of resistance just in case I found good armor without rBase. As I'm checking the rest of the quadrant the pink M shows up, good for 400 poison damage, but I've only got 5 SP. I deliberate awhile and decide my only recourse is to _teleport. I'm above Gorgoroth again and lure him even higher before teleporting back to the vault. I lure the Pink M into a corridor, haste, rPois and start hitting him with mithril frost arrows I bought in the BM (I only bought 5 but still have 4 left). I get him 2/3 dead when he summons two more Pink Ms and a bright Red M. Oh %$&! it all to hell. Well that's game over.

But no, I still don't give up. I feel like the frog down the gullet of the duck with the last ditch idea to choke the duck before it swallows me whole. That's basically the game I'm playing now. I lure all of them to a down exit stair at the end of a bending northeast directing corridor. I let the red M get right next to me, risking him breathing, so as to get the Pink ones over as far as possible. I then teleport which lands me all the way back on the other side near the time hounds. This is actually really good as I can teleport away from them and hopefully land back by the the vault, but farther west away from the super-hydras. So I head west a-ways before teleporting and it works! I land very good! I'm directly above the vault in the long corridor. I deliberate how I will proceed back to where I got the law armor with the hydras nearby. I decide to dig through the granite towards the vault while being sure to keep clear of Ariel. I manage perfectly because no one pursues me and I'm back in the vault!

I got to the lower right chamber and not much is left there except level 10 web weaving spiders; except more huorns complicate the endeavor and I have to ?phase again, but now I only one or two phases left. I finally dispatch them and head to the lower left quadrant which has a hezrou which has 1830HP. I get it below half health when it summons a lesser balrog, but I've picked up a ring of speed <+5> in this chamber before I began to try to kill Hezrou so I have <+15> hasted speed. I start to lure the balrog away when the lag starts to go haywire again, and I stumble into walls, run up a dead end corridor and start humping the wall and then the balrog runs up to me (thankfully he doesn't breath) and then starts to whomp on me. I have one ?phase left. Here is a short video of what happens next.

https://youtu.be/O7Chz-LgZoc

[Grotug]

&lt;38k turn elf ranger winner

My laptop internet is completely kaput, so I made a video of my char dump file for elf ranger winner:

https://youtu.be/DxW79SdqZ-o

[Grotug]

Crash dive to meet Sauron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADfNNSdA5rg

Sauron LOS abuse "fight" and Morgoth prep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y667jP59bqY

And... let's leave all our slay evil arrows at home for the final fight, shall we? I apologize for all the whining in the video. Clearly I was the village complainer above Angband before I set out on my quest to kill Morgoth.

Final fight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwPFg9ney0k

[Grotug]

I've sent another hobbit ranger on a rapid descent through the dungeon. The following video has a rather infuriating battle against Uldor the Accursed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NPhvPKC0N8

[Grotug]

Another harrowing escape. This time I really pushed my luck to the max. Definitely one of the more narrow escapes, not so much because my HP got dangerously low (though it did), but because I ran out of !heals with a bunch of OoD monsters pursuing me, without any decent means to dispatch of them (and no teleportations of any kind). Yet, I somehow beat the incredibly diminishing odds (if my odds were low at the outset, they were extremely low by the end).

This time I was trying to grab some armor. I had used up all my healing potions and ?phase doors were getting low before I had finished my quest and it was looking very much like it was time to give up as my problems were triple compounded:

1. out of !heals
2. a Wolf chieftain keeps blinding me
3. a bunch of his werewolves keep picking up the loot! Yet, somehow, with a little luck, a little cunning and a lot of cajones, my little hobbit ranger beat some damning odds.

While the entire video has interesting elements (it opens with me annihilating Brodda with a wand of same namesake picked up off the floor of DL4 [2-8 feeling]), the level with the vault starts at 17:46 with a Shade or some such harassing me.

Unfortunately there is very limited in-video commentary as I was at work while I made this video, though there would have been a lot to say. There's a couple times near the end where I pause for a couple minutes trying to see if there is some way that I might still pull it off, or if my luck, along with the last of my !heals, had finally run out.

The video progresses very nicely and gets more interesting as it goes along. If it's too long, you can watch it at 2X speed; it plays very nicely at that speed. I recommend starting it at 17:46 at 2X speed.

https://youtu.be/IRh75TLDxLQ

By the way, do people prefer written expose of @ adventures, or videos, or both?