My newbie experience on the game

[MattB]

Feather falling is utterly irrelevant (it saves you from taking something like 8hp damage when you fall into a pit or down a trapdoor).

Fire resist is another matter. There are things out there that can do the maximum 1600 fire damage (IIRC) in one shot if unresisted.

[Azrad]

Feather falling is utterly irrelevant (it saves you from taking something like 8hp damage when you fall into a pit or down a trapdoor).

Fire resist is another matter. There are things out there that can do the maximum 1600 fire damage (IIRC) in one shot if unresisted.

Keeping my current gear with fire resist certainly saved my ass just now. Found a vault, and using detect one of the two uniques that were lurking in the vault was the Tarrasque. Didn't take too long for it to find me, and immediately I was thrown into one big uh-oh situation.

Thankfully, the current wave of enemies surrounding me were fodder... and they were torn away when Tarrasque hit its breath attack. Had I been fighting stronger opponents then, I'd have been dead, so thank you ogres. A single breath took out around 500 hp, half of my total max. I heal up, Tarrasque shoots another breath, definitely fire, and I'm back to half health. I chug a *healing* and thankfully that beastie decided to take a step toward me instead.

This was going to be bad. The vault corridor wasn't narrow, so I'd soon be surrounded. If I tried to back away to the narrow entrance, I'd be under fire by Tarrasque's breath attacks. So I teleport him away. At this point, I could try to clear the rest of the vault, but I didn't want to risk Tarrasque to somehow be nearby and enter the vault and shoot me from behind.

So I do something dumb. I go after him. I teleport self, find myself in an empty room. On one hand, the current floor is only a few rooms with a lot of narrow corridors. On the other hand, there was a lot of narrow corridors. If I'm not careful, I'd be getting hit offscreen by 500 damage breath attacks.

I move carefully. Using detect at every room and halfway through corridors. Soon enough, I find him with detect. I prepare. None of my three weapons have anything that's effective against natural creatures. All three, Ringil, Wrath, and Ulmo had around 300 or so damage to other creatures. How I wished I brought the Glaive of Pain along! Oh well. I went with Ringil to give me over 30 speed. Quaffed a speed potion as well, and any other potion that might give me a boost.

Soon enough, we fight. Right from the start the bastard shoots me offscreen with a breath attack. I step back, use heal, and he shows up. I move towards the thing. Then comes one hell of a rough battle. My previous experience from tough fights help me out. I heal when needed... as in, I heal whenever my hp goes below to 650, since that would be the safest bet. Normal attacks from Tarrasque hit hard, but not as bad as its breath.

I slowly realize that it would be bad if casting heal failed. I had a decent amount of healing, same with *healing* on hand, and found some potions of life during my current climb. So I use up my healing, and if my hp went too low for my comfort I went with *healing* as a last resort.

As the battle went longer, I realized that I began to make a dent on him. The breath attacks were not as bad as they were before, so I slowly switch back to heal spells instead. Soon enough, I saw that Tarrasque finally ran away from me. I catch up to him and murderize him.

End result; just a handful of magical weapons. One ego, and nothing special. Teleporting away definitely saved my hide. Tarrasque seemed to be purely physical in a sense that he didn't have any stat lowering or status lowering anything. Perhaps it's due to my resistances, who knows? If during the battle the others from the vault came around, I'd have been dead, but thankfully the fight happened far away from it.

[Mondkalb]

The Tarrasque can be dangerous, if you encouter it unprepared. It can breath fire and frost with a max of (unresisted) 1600 damage, I believe, which is cut buy resistances or immunity. Keep in mind that you can have double resist for some elements (from an item plus from an effect, or spell, or potion).
The Tarrasque can also breath disenchantment, so be thankful for your bow. But the max damage is only 500.

The breath damage is correlated to health, if the health of the creature decreases, so does the damage output.

All in all you have had good luck.

[Azrad]

Continuing on to the vault, I found that the other unique lurking there was Huan. Much to my horror it was a higher level than the Tarrasque. Debating whether I should teleport him away, collect the vault goodies and run away, I check the spoilers section of this site to see what's on with Huan. Him having frost Breath spooked me a bit, since if he was like Tarrasque I'd be in a pinch since I did lose some healing potions.

Then I realize something, among the loot in the vault, there was some potions of resist cold. Of all the things I tend to ignore, this little potion came through. I remember reading about stacking resistances, so I went and quaffed this bad boy before facing off with Huan.

And good lord did it help me out. With the frost breath being much lower, I could use my heal spell tactics with a little more ease. While he was of a much higher level, only having frost breath was a godsend.

(of course, with a little checking, I found both potions, fire and frost resist, among the loot of defeated enemies near the entrance of the vault. in hindsight, this would have made the battle with Tarrasque less vicious and less costly in those *healing* potions)

[Mondkalb]

You know, that the paladin is able to cast "resist heat and cold", don't you?

[Azrad]

Erm... ahahaha... as it turns out, I completely forgot about that. Had exorcisms, ethereal, godly insights, purifications, and wrath of god, but for the longest time didn't use the other books. Usually went with a scroll of satisfy hunger since I was worried the book will burn up.

Man, this is one of those moments when I gotta smack my head for that error.

As for the vault itself, not a lot of things to nab. Ego weapons, nothing interesting among the vault. Uniques, Quarterstaff Eriril, Mithril Chain Mail Belegennon, and Zweihander Zarcuthra.

Zarcthura's kinda tempting. It doesn't have the 600 damage to undead like the trident of Wrath, only 460, but it has 600 plus to dragons which is better than Ulmo, and 463 to demons which is better than Ringil. It slays a lot of things, looking at it more closely.

All in all, it could potentially replace my three weapons, sacrificing around 140 damage to the undead, but better damage to demons and dragons and a lot of other things. Having two more extra spots would be good, too. On the other hand, aggravate monsters worries me a little.

And again, another brainfart moment comes to me. The Trident of Ulmo does protect against nether, not realizing that for a long time now.

[Derakon]

The Tarrasque has the highest damage-per-turn average of any monster in the game, I think. Pretty sure it beats out Morgoth, who spends more turns on summoning or other indirect means of attack. Congrats on beating it! Most of my characters don't bother because they don't want to pay the toll in consumable healing items.

Huan is also dangerous, but if you have appropriate resists (and double cold resist) then he becomes a lot more manageable.

[Azrad]

Yeah, it was a bit costly in *healing* potions. I carry around 10 each time I go exploring; and if I get more than 10 on hand, I deposit them at home. Luckily, I got around 38 at home now, and a handful of life potions so I'm still stocked.

But definitely a good thing I had some on hand. If I only had healing and the heal spell, it would have been a disaster with Tarrasque.

But to think that life would have been so much easier had I remembered that paladins have a resist spell...

So far, my current setup has all resists, except for nether (unless I use Ulmo as a weapon). No protection from stun and shard, so I gotta be careful in those cases.

[Mondkalb]

Shard attacks can shatter potions, so that would be a shame. Cloaks of Protection aren't that uncommon.

OTOH, shard attacks aren't that common. There are hounds and dragons, and a vortex and maybe some uniques. You can probably avoid them most of the time until you get protection.

[Azrad]

Yeah, I reckon I should. Don't really need Thoringil anymore since the resistances it offers are already there in my other gear.

Also, how bad is the effect of aggravate monsters?

[Mondkalb]

I wakes all monsters in the affected area (I don't know exactly how large it is, might be about detection radius).
It is not a big deal in the fight, especially the last one, but you can't approach a vault for example whithout waking all the monsters, which is annoying, to say the least.

[Azrad]

I see.

I suppose I could use Ulmo or Wrath as my default weapon, then switch out to Zarcuthra when needed. Two weapons on hand, instead of three since Ulmo/Wrath and Ringil will be left at home.

On one hand, that gives me an extra slot in my inventory. On the other hand Zarcuthra's weight is a bit high. Zarcuthra plus one weapon has more weight than Ulmo, Wrath, and Ringil combined.

[Mondkalb]

Also, +10 speed from Ringil is nearly always good.

[Azrad]

Yeah. Currently, without Ringil I got 27 speed, so I need it to go above 30. If I add in Cubragol for my ranged, that's another 10 speed, but that takes away Belthronding which removes my protection from disenchantment.

[Mondkalb]

27 is okay, because with temporal boost from potions or rods it would take you above 30, which is the threshold to make sure, that Morgoth doesn't get a double move on you.