I'm exhausted. So exhausted (and nervous) that I didn't think to make a final dump! Fortunately I had a D94 dump I could glean for the glorious summary below. It doesn't feel right to ladder it, although that does rob you all of such stunning notes such as:
Six weeks of effort, three days of cheesily-played pure mage, ~18 recalls, and ~790k turns, one first *band victory of any kind for Bostock... always died or got bored before.
I wanted to get a non-OoI Kimba win, and I wanted to do it under 1.17m turns, so I just kept going after the contest. Vapors of delicious cheese waft from this win, since I decided I couldn't pretend to not know what all the early item flavors were, especially the bad ones. On the other hand, Kimba's opening stats are not fully mage-friendly, so there's that. And I've gotten plenty of cheeseless characters past the stage where these things matter -- though the knowledge did strongly speed up the early dive, mainly via making use-ID XP gains safe and quick.
Like most winners, this one saw many good turns of luck, from 150' ]Agility+4 (originally mistaken for FA!) from Bullroarer (and my WoR back from the dirty rat) to 2000' Hammerhand to 3400' Feanor (!!!) to 4000' Durin (rChaos... in a +CON weapon!) to 4150' Narya and 4450' Nenya... which I kept forgetting to activate! My kit was so good I actually tossed aside Tulkas (also 4450') and was able to field "Mana instead of "Int or even an artifact... I never could understand what "Mana's point was before, but now I see it's a "win more" item extraordinare.
I also had my fair share of close calls, from the forgettable meleeless wizard's constant anguishes of 500'-1000', to a Thunder Giant lightningball down to 1HP when I still only resisted lightning via spell and forgot to cast it, to a 3300' "what, 18 HP?" moment brought to you by the excellent breakcore unit Saruman and the Plasma Hounds, to a 3400' quaff-ID of Death after winning Saruman Round 2, to a 3950' holy-lancing down to 4HP while Dancing with the Stars, with your host Gabriel. But that was it... with 40+ speed under hasting, a 4100' Raal's from Cantoras, and tons of paranoia after that holy-lancing, I was pretty much untouchable. Though I think the 0-MP Aura of Paranoia was the biggest factor of all.
As they say, the great uniques of legend fell easily, though I didn't stick around to farm them much. Tarrasque was the most surprising in its easiness... well, rChaos, castable rDisenchant, and fast damage to tone down the breaths were a great help. Probably the most fun was Gothmog, whom I farmed out of the summoning trap I farmed all game. I'd picked up _Doomblasts by then and just spammed and spammed, finishing off the escorts with Armageddon, then hunted down the limping foe, who manage to start a tough but profitable chain summons before falling.
Sauron was forgettable, easier than Gothmog really. I just pounded and pounded, switching from single-pound to group-pound as needed, and he couldn't keep up. Morgy was pretty tough, decently impressive. The memorable thing though is that I accidentally destructobanished him twice (Raal's-mages with no goal but winning destruct pretty heavily), once because I didn't know any better and once even though I did.
My main means of operation was devices for most of the game, with magic as backup damage, tough-situation damage, and countless buggs. I ran this way mainly to save turncount, which factor was also behind tons of Stone to Mud use and Phase Warping.
My skillset was magic skills (these got maxed), devices, burglary suite without devices or burglary, spell resistance, and forging, the latter decremented to 0 once I had endgame-ready kit.
I only took one quest, at 150' -- to get the money to really dive.
It wouldn't be Bostock without a bug report: Raal's has an perma-illegible spell at the end (100 power), looks like a spell was planned but then abandoned.
A thousand thanks to all in the impressive chain of maintainers of Sangband and of every game it... can't think of the word... from, and not least to camlost, for making all this fun, including the wonderful feeling of a hard-earned victory, possible!
Code:
568109 2650' 71 Note: hit me with a cabbage and call me Celegorm, it's Celegorm
I wanted to get a non-OoI Kimba win, and I wanted to do it under 1.17m turns, so I just kept going after the contest. Vapors of delicious cheese waft from this win, since I decided I couldn't pretend to not know what all the early item flavors were, especially the bad ones. On the other hand, Kimba's opening stats are not fully mage-friendly, so there's that. And I've gotten plenty of cheeseless characters past the stage where these things matter -- though the knowledge did strongly speed up the early dive, mainly via making use-ID XP gains safe and quick.
Like most winners, this one saw many good turns of luck, from 150' ]Agility+4 (originally mistaken for FA!) from Bullroarer (and my WoR back from the dirty rat) to 2000' Hammerhand to 3400' Feanor (!!!) to 4000' Durin (rChaos... in a +CON weapon!) to 4150' Narya and 4450' Nenya... which I kept forgetting to activate! My kit was so good I actually tossed aside Tulkas (also 4450') and was able to field "Mana instead of "Int or even an artifact... I never could understand what "Mana's point was before, but now I see it's a "win more" item extraordinare.
I also had my fair share of close calls, from the forgettable meleeless wizard's constant anguishes of 500'-1000', to a Thunder Giant lightningball down to 1HP when I still only resisted lightning via spell and forgot to cast it, to a 3300' "what, 18 HP?" moment brought to you by the excellent breakcore unit Saruman and the Plasma Hounds, to a 3400' quaff-ID of Death after winning Saruman Round 2, to a 3950' holy-lancing down to 4HP while Dancing with the Stars, with your host Gabriel. But that was it... with 40+ speed under hasting, a 4100' Raal's from Cantoras, and tons of paranoia after that holy-lancing, I was pretty much untouchable. Though I think the 0-MP Aura of Paranoia was the biggest factor of all.
As they say, the great uniques of legend fell easily, though I didn't stick around to farm them much. Tarrasque was the most surprising in its easiness... well, rChaos, castable rDisenchant, and fast damage to tone down the breaths were a great help. Probably the most fun was Gothmog, whom I farmed out of the summoning trap I farmed all game. I'd picked up _Doomblasts by then and just spammed and spammed, finishing off the escorts with Armageddon, then hunted down the limping foe, who manage to start a tough but profitable chain summons before falling.
Sauron was forgettable, easier than Gothmog really. I just pounded and pounded, switching from single-pound to group-pound as needed, and he couldn't keep up. Morgy was pretty tough, decently impressive. The memorable thing though is that I accidentally destructobanished him twice (Raal's-mages with no goal but winning destruct pretty heavily), once because I didn't know any better and once even though I did.
My main means of operation was devices for most of the game, with magic as backup damage, tough-situation damage, and countless buggs. I ran this way mainly to save turncount, which factor was also behind tons of Stone to Mud use and Phase Warping.
My skillset was magic skills (these got maxed), devices, burglary suite without devices or burglary, spell resistance, and forging, the latter decremented to 0 once I had endgame-ready kit.
I only took one quest, at 150' -- to get the money to really dive.
It wouldn't be Bostock without a bug report: Raal's has an perma-illegible spell at the end (100 power), looks like a spell was planned but then abandoned.
A thousand thanks to all in the impressive chain of maintainers of Sangband and of every game it... can't think of the word... from, and not least to camlost, for making all this fun, including the wonderful feeling of a hard-earned victory, possible!
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