Quick Descent into Madness [The Killing of Wormtongue & the Reward]

[Sparrow the Dunadan]

So here I am, a half-Troll Priest, level 12, and decide to use a scroll of deep decent at the town level... which put me at 450' (LVL 9). And it spawned me on a level that contained Wormtongue. I'm not worried. Wormtongue isn't a particularly tough enemy with my Dagger (1d3) (+5,+4) {Cursed with Stoneskin}, and a Sling (x2) (+5,+5) with basic pebbles as ammo, and a Whip of Slay Undead (1d3) (+3,+7) as backup.

So I'm just exploring the level, looking for treasure and what not. I end up engaging him. A few times he gets away, having stolen some of my money. I get poisoned a couple times, but no worries, I got a couple potions of neutralize poison. Besides I'm a priest, so cure light wounds and serious wounds are available to me at this point. Also I can use bless.

Of course I run into some snagas and cave orcs while giving chase, but they aren't a problem.

Finally I managed the off the bugger. (He was being super annoying with his insults.

My Reward? The Phial of Galadriel! Of course I get my stolen money back also.

Definitely worth using the scroll of Deep Descent.

[Pete Mack]

Stoneskin is a bad news curse. Being that slow all the time *will* get you killed, especially with bad detection and stealth. You should be able to buy scrolls of remove curse occasionally and get it fixed (or destroyed.)
The phial is a nice lagniappe, though

[Adam]

Since you are a priest using a dagger means penalty when you cast spells (unless its description says "Blessed by the gods" but I guess it's not that kind).
Using the whip may be better from that perspective.
You can check how much extra damage the dagger has and what casting penalty it causes.

[Ed_47569]

Leaving aside the curse, I would think you'd be better off using the whip as a priest. +7 will do more damage and you won't get the pointy-weapon penalty.

[Sparrow the Dunadan]

Actually I started off using the whip on him, but it wasn't doing enough overall damage. The dagger, despite the penalties did more damage. I didn't have to worry about stoneskin, since it never actually activated during the fight, and I made sure to drop all my heavy inventory well away from the fight. The most I ever need was a couple potions of cure light wounds, and serious wounds (when I got mobbed by a small band of snagas and cave orcs.). I didn't even really use anything but a bless spell and cure light wounds when I ran out of potions.

The fight wasn't hard at all, even though Wormtongue is pretty annoyingly dodgy anyway, and even if you do have class geared equips.

All in all, it was a nice fight. With a decent early reward.