It breathes -more- You have died. Let's play Angband!

Even Rocky had a montage.

By the way, this playthrough has inspired me to start a new game of (vanilla) angband.

A wonderful but rather large image of how Angband variants interrelate.

These montages are a really awesome and entertaining way of conveying dungeon runs where nothing really out of the ordinary goes down. Mad props and all that rot.

I am excited for montage times.

Welcome back! It's montage week here on Let's Play Angband. So get ready to enjoy more montages!

Next time: The thrilling finale!

This is the sort of diverse moveset that I really go for.

Wait, do you seriously find wands with 0 charges in this game? That's just mean. Is there a way to recharge them?

That's actually an artifact of looking up information in the item index. It also says that the item you're looking at isn't identified.

Anyway!

Tonight, on Let's Play Angband: The thrilling montage conclusion. How will it all end? SPOILERS: Agent Cooper gets possessed by Bob. Sorry, that was an actual spoiler. Also Bruce Willis is also a ghost, and Rosebud is a sled.











Next time: ??? But I can already tell you I'm not planning on doing any more of these (at least not huge updates of them), hot damn that took FOREVER. The next update might also be a little late, because I'm switching to a new windows machine so that I can actually play Left 4 Dead after everyone else is finally sick of it. Don't worry, Viki's save file will be backed up to be extra-safe.

I do, however, like those multi-screen pastiches and I think I might actually post an entry somewhere down the line that's just a map of a whole dungeon. That would be most interesting when I get a vault (serious, horrible monsters and unique rooms) or a destroyed level (think Earthquake, but for the entire floor instead of just a 15-tile radius).

I love yeek vaults and orc vaults, with like a half dozen shades in the (and no multiplying monsters in there).

Just popping in once again to say that these montage updates have been great. Though I understand they're a bit labor intensive for doing all the time.

Let's Play Angband! is officially on hiatus until May. This hiatus is brought to you by Colorado Whiskey, Far Cry 2, Valkyria Chronicles DLC, and rejection letters from PhD programs. Depending on how fast I finish Far Cry 2 it may also be brought to you by Dawn of War 2.

Seriously though, I've got a lot of shit to take care of in the next two weeks (and "real" video games I want to play) and then things will settle down enough for me to keep updating.

No. No! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I'm just joking around. Here's hoping this thread continues soon!

Welcome back to Let's Play Angabnd. This update is brought to you by the end of hiatus and me not really being sure if Far Cry 2 is a good game or not. I guess that makes it not good? Also Devil Summoner kind of sucks so I don't feel bad skipping out on it during my "game time" for a few days.

Anyway, Viki had all kinds of fantastical adventures to give me at least a handful of updates of material, so let's get started.

Last time Viki had just destroyed her latest pushover foe, Orfax, Son of Boldor. I'm pretty sure that he was a yeek, but was turned into some kind of reddish-brown paste. This time, Viki has some garden-variety adventures to bring us back up to speed and bring me back into practice for the awesome stuff that's going to happen later. That's right: SPOILERS: Something awesome happens later.



With Viki back in town, she's free to peruse through the stores. As always there's a stop in the Black Market, which reveals one of the real reasons to visit this place: They occasionally have stat-gain potions on sale, at absurd prices. If Viki hadn't picked up that new bow a while back she could get a DEX boost right now, but honestly that doesn't matter very much for the time being. Viki needs to boost WIS and STR only for the time being, so that she can cary heavier equipment and blow monsters away with more Orb of Draining.

She also takes the opportunity to boost her armor back up, enchanting her robe and cloak to get a total of +4 more to her AC. At this point in the game her AC is going to start becoming much, much more important, along with resistances.



Back into the dungeon! Viki is immediately faced with a horrible connundrum - how does she deal with this stuck door? With the awesome shovel she's carrying, the obvious answer is to just dig around it. In fact, you can even dig through doors, but I believe it takes longer. Not that it would be any match for her mighty shovel!



Finally, Viki runs into a dangerous opponent who could seriously ruin her day. Giant Salamanders (R) are a garden-variety enemy except that they can breathe fire. In fact, this is the point in the dungeon where most enemies start gaining abilities beyond "hit" - we've already encountered a few of them, but once floor 15 gets hit, all bets are off. Everything is dangerous and can kill you at that point, which is worth noting because Viki's just been sailing along since around floor 5.



Finally! This is around where staves of perception start showing up, which are essentially just a nice Identify scroll stack. Unfortunately, they weigh a LOT - meaning that unless they have a large number of charges on them, it's worthless to carry them around. Unfortunately, stacking staves distributes the charges evenly among them - meaning that the more staves you've piled, if there's even one with a low number of charges, things can get kind of screwed up.



Meet another one of the special rooms! Sometimes there's a door leading into the center chamber, which contains some kind of neat treasure, which is why Viki is seen here casting Find Doors. In the future, though, she doesn't find a single one of these rooms with a center chamber - which I guess means that this clever and kind of fun dungeon feature was removed in these versions of Angband. But I sure hope not, because finding one is always kind of a little treat.



Viki also continues to have terrible luck with dart traps.

There's a brief trip back up to the town at this point to unload some treasure and dump her Perception staves off at home, and then Viki teleports back down into the dungeon to find herself on another boring level.



However, she does get an obligatory level-up and doesn't really gain anything useful from it. Right now she's at a point where the ability to learn more spells is pretty useless, because she doesn't have any of the extra prayer books on hand. Ethereal Openings is sitting back at home until Viki hits level 30 and it's actually worth carrying it around.



Viki also finds a mushroom of Cure Confusion. These are one of the more valuable items in the game to pick up, because, well, it cures confusion. Confusion resistance is ridiculously hard to get and incredibly important, because even the lowliest monster which can confuse you is a problem - because it means that bigger monster right next to it has free rein to totally blow you away.

Down another level, Viki discovers that it's "not bad". That's definitely a ringing endorsement, and so some exploration commences.

You might notice that so far, there hasn't been any combat featured involving Viki. This is because she quite simply crushes everything in her path - absolutely nothing at this level is a match for Orb of Draining combined with her massively enchanted flail. These days she's not even falling back on blessing herself that often, because it's simply not necessary and the bonuses are becoming more and more negligible.



Viki also finds her first useful rod. She'll be holding onto this for a while - it acts like a rod of light, which means that it's situationally useful against large groups of light-sensitive monsters. Like, say, getting a whole group of orcs lined up in a passage. She won't be able to just spam it to kill them all because of its (very short) recharge period, but it will soften them up enough for her to plow through them with regular attacks and the occasional cast of Draining.



Oh, thank god. These things are impossible to find in town these days and Viki could use that extra point of speed back.



Finally, some action. Viki runs across a pseudo-dragon, which isn't as dangerous as a real dragon, but is still pretty bad - it can breathe to confuse. But since it's asleep, Viki destroys it easily by casting Draining on it twice - all dragon-type creatures she's run across so far are evil.

Viki also comes across a mushroom of Cure Blindness, which isn't as important as Cure Confusion is, but will become useful very, very soon. She's going to start running into a lot of monsters which can breathe Light and Dark, both of which blind, and she needs to be able to see to use her books.



Throughout the dungeon there have also been these moving stacks of copper, silver, and gold that periodically like to attack Viki. These are all great monsters - they're easily defeated and predictably leave huge piles of cash behind. Creeping mythril coins are great in particular because it's easy to pull a 1000-gold haul off of fighting a single one. Right now no other monster has that kind of profit margin.

There are other mimics too, which are all dangerous. Angband keeps up the fine RPG tradition of mimic monsters being the monsters you absolutely do not want to fuck around with.

Viki takes a brief sojourn back to town to unload some of the junk she's carrying - that staff of Perception nets her almost 350 gold, even with no charges at all no it, making it a bargain to carry around instead of a weapon of almost any kind - and then immediately heads back down to the dungeon. In fact, this floor 11 is so boring that Viki makes a beeline straight for some downward stairs, only to end up on a floor just as dull.



Since this room is custom-made for it, now is as good a time as any to discuss a technique for dealing with monsters that Viki will probably not need to use for some time - but which comes in handy. This technique is called "pillardancing".

The basic principle is pretty simple - you need to be twice as fast as your opponent (or close to it) so that you get two moves to their every one. The idea is that you stand on a square adjacent to this block with wide open space around it, and move on the diagonal every other action you can take - you hit a monster, move to the adjacent side of the pillar, and so on. This works because you smack the monster and then (sneakily) move out of its line of sight before it can move, meaning that it has to waste a turn getting next to you instead of hitting or - worse - using a magic spell.

Once Viki finds some boots of speed or a ring of speed, this is going to be something she'll probably do a lot of, because she has a shovel that's practically tailor-made for setting up the geography necessary to pillardance.



Meet nether-type monsters. These ugly black worms have the ability to drain experience from you - which, if you're not careful, can actually drop you down a whole level. You can gain the experience you lost back in two ways; grinding through monsters like is traditional, or by going to drink a potion of Restore Life Levels. Right now it's more expedient to just crush a bunch of monsters, but later in the game nether can suck away huge chunks of your experience that you quite simply won't want to waste time getting back. Most players carry a potion or two of Restore Life Levels until they get nether resistance, which is another resistance that's hard to obtain.



Finally, Viki runs across a worthy foe. No, not the master yeek, but the horrible monsters that it summons, in this case the Water (v)ortex. This is an acid-type creature which shows up about 10 floors beneath this one usually, which means that it's going to be a bitch to defeat and will also dump a boatload of experience on Viki. You'll also notice that she ground back up to her previous experience level pretty fast after getting smacked around by the worms.



The vortex is actually strong enough that Viki has to teleport away for the first time in a long time, and wait out her recovery. This could have gone very badly if I'd been paying just a little less attention to Viki's mana.



Multi-hued dragons are real assholes. They're like every dragon rolled into one - meaning that they can breathe fire, ice, lightning, poison, confusion, poison, and probably some other things later on. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that even the little baby ones are capable of more than that, even though they're just as much of a pushover as the other dragons. You just have to be way more careful when fighting them.



Victory! Viki dumps a whole boatload of Draining on both the multi-hued dragon and the vortex, and it's finally an arrow that slays the beast. By now Viki's only got a reserve of about 10 arrows on her, to use in emergencies - most monsters show up in groups and it's simply easier to cast Draining. As you can see, this was one hell of a tough monster to show up on this level - this is why any monster that can summon is beyond dangerous. If a Master Yeek had summoned one of these, or another higher-level monster when Viki was just starting out exploring floor 10, she'd be dead now.

NEXT TIME: Viki's boring life gets exciting. Possibly more than once!

You know, with all of the shit Viki has to deal with in her climb up the dungeon (like resistances and out-of-depth monsters), I'm surprised anyone at all has managed to ascend in this game. It's a little ridiculous.

That's nothing. When playing Rogue, sometimes it would generate things for you that made it mathematically impossible to survive to ascension.

Wait, seriously? How does that happen?

Basically, by a gap in the monsters' strength levels. Or by not generating a useful tool you need. Basically, something that forces you to take too much damage fighting monsters just a bit too strong for you. Take too much damage and you will need to spend time recovering rather than forging ahead, and there's not enough food in the dungeon for you to stop and explore even in a plentiful game.

Man, if this game had NetHack's pet system, I would so be all over getting a baby multi-hued dragon pet for Viki. She could name it Gon.

(obligatory) Hooray!

Welcome back to Let's Play Angband. This update is brought to you buy Dogfish Head Fort. Do you like slightly bitter, overly fruity raspberry beers? Like the really sour kind of lambics? Perhaps you will enjoy this beer. I did not really enjoy it very much and also it fucked my shit up. Half a glass and I was ready to take a nap, I'm serious.

Last time on Let's Play Angband, we got back into the swing of things. There's nothing wrong with that, but it means that Viki's life is a bore and she should have better times ahead. She hasn't had good luck in a while, actually.



Things start off swimmingly with a "not bad" feeling. This means the floor will be worth trawling around, checking out what's going on, that sort of thing. Maybe Viki will find a nice item or two to sell back in town, start building up her cash reserves so that next time there's a stat-gain potion on the shelf in the black market, she can pick it up.



Things, however, quickly go sour. This happened in less than 100 turns on the floor, which is where the generic level feeling comes from, and more importantly, it happened within about 10 turns on the floor; Viki literally moved three tiles to the east, opened a door, and fell into the trap. This is not an auspicious start to the day, because now she needs to travel the whole floor to find shit all, I bet.

The group of Manes (u) that are in front of Viki are no problem. (u)s are minor demons, which of course mean they're evil, which of course mean that it's drainin' time. I'm now positive that there's a reason most winners in Angband are priests.



Viki destroys a group of wolves and other unsavory beasts for this level up. She can now learn a fantastic 4 prayers, but I'm fairly sure that she can't get another one out of the books she's holding onto right now yet. The things she's got left aren't worth learning until she's got plenty of learnin' to burn.



Meet the illusionist, the older brother of the novice mage. He's kind of an asshole, with the same fantastical magic powers that will cause no end of trouble for poor Viki, being that he's just kind of a buffed-up version of this lower-level monster. Don't worry, the game will get more creative with its weird beasts soon enough when it introduces some with truly interesting abilities.

Upon defeating him, he appears to drop a perfectly ordinary-looking mace. Fortunately, Viki is dragging around a stack of identify scrolls and is in her "id everything" phase of young adulthood.

Because:



HELL

YES

Welcome to pain, population: monsters. Not only does Viki finally get an artifact, but because it's a blunt weapon, it's actually one she can wield. Let's take a closer look at what this magical item is capable of:



Well, that's not very helpful. What exactly does "it might have hidden powers" mean? Well, it means that this object has properties beyond the power of a mere Identify spell - you need *Identify*, which tells you everything about an object. There are a couple things that we can guess at though, from its name and the fact that it's an artifact:

- [+2] is an AC bonus from wielding the item.
- Firestar means it's fire-branded, and should do 3x damage to any monster which does not resist fire.
- It's an artifact, and artifacts have the special property that they can be 'A'ctivated - they're a special kind of magical item, like a rod, that has an effect similar to a wand and has a recharge period. Since this is a fire weapon we can guess it either shoots fire bolts (a fire-branded missile weapon) or a fireball (area of effect with fixed damage).

Let's check the spoilers!

Hey, those were pretty good guesses. The resistance to fire is a huge bonus, and I'm not sure if it shows up on the resistance chart until the item is "properly" identified. Viki's wearing a ring of Resist Fire right now, so when she gets back to town that's going to get swapped off for something a little more useful (in her case, a ring of Resist Cold).

Needless to say she starts using it immediately.



Here's another example of why I hate Master Yeeks and why they're going to be the bane of Viki's existence until hounds start showing up, at which point they'll be replaced: They can blind and poison. If this happens while, say, they're also summoning some monsters, this can be a real problem - because summoning can - and will! - bring in unique monsters (complete with their followers) or just a group of monsters in general.

In fact I think there was a game where I was killed by a group of out-of-depth hounds that were summoned by a unique monster in this way.



Take a look at how awesome that artifact Viki picked up is. Against monsters which don't resist, this is essentially an additional cast of draining for her.

Okay, there was obviously an intervening turn in there while the rangers scattered out a bit, but you get the idea.



Finally, Viki comes back to town, loaded with treasure and an awesome new weapon. The first order of business, of course, is to sell the old junk and cruise around to pick up anything else that's going to turn her into a superstar of monster genocide.



What, that's all she's going to get for this? Do you even know how much money Viki dumped into that thing? Maybe if she weren't a priest or were a half-orc or a troll or something she'd just crush in the shopkeeper's crotch with that fancy new mace or something.

Meanwhile, in the Black Market, there are a couple of cool items that Viki might have picked up if she were really rolling in dough. Especially the Staff of Probing; that's a useful item to have around when going up against large groups of monsters, as you might imagine. I initially thought the potion of Enlightenment would reveal the hidden properties of everything Viki's wearing, but that's actually a potion of Self Knowledge.



Viki also browses through the spellbook sitting at home. There's still not any good reason to take it with - it's a few extra pounds, takes up an inventory slot, and doesn't offer anything really useful yet. But she'll probably want to come back and take it soon, in exchange for dumping some wands she doesn't use or something. After all, Teleport Monster works on uniques and Sleep and Slow don't - not that Viki is having a problem with this.



Back in the dungeon, it looks like Viki's going to have a good time running around and finding things to pick up. Unless she falls through a trapdoor again.



Viki also collects some treasure that's worth more than most items she could sell. At this point in the game it's starting to become worthwhile to go treasure-hunting again on occasion; maybe Viki should drop some other useless things she carries around in favor of a Detect Treasure staff, and just not pick up so much crap to sell back at the shops. It's something to think about.



Coming down a hallway, Viki is touched by a spooky monster that makes her want to run all over everything and trip straight on her face. Obviously it's a ghost of some sort, and so she makes with the Detect Invisible, hopefully to beat up the monster that's all up in her face. Presumably, it could be behind her.



This is a Moaning Spirit (G), and is by far not one of the worst invisible monsters Viki's encountering. In fact, even before coming down to this depth, she should have a permanent source of See Invsible; that, and Free Action (which prevents some kinds of paralysis and slowing) are the two most important things to get before even any resistances. Obviously, dealing with monsters like this is going to be a pain in the ass.



It takes some work and a few casts of See Invsible, but Viki's able to finally defeat the monster after losing 4 points of dexterity. At least she's not at a level of it where she's going to start getting penalized yet.



Meet the druid (light-green p). He's the Illusionist with different clothes; in this case, clothes that let him cast fire bolts, slow, or paralyze, with the standard limited teleportation ability that all mages have. This means he's another monster that can destroy Viki's most precious items, and it finally happens here - ruining her most expensive spellbook, which fortunately, she never uses. Maybe it's time to start carrying some duplicates around.

In addition she loses a scroll of identify and an arrow, so being hit with fire is really dangerous - maybe paralysis increases the chance of having some of your stuff destroyed?



Here's a big downside of Viki's new weapon; against monsters like the manes (u), it's not going to do as much damage as her old weapon, because they resist fire. However, monsters like these can just be taken out with a few choice casts of Draining.

NEXT TIME: Viki puts on a tie-dye headband and thinks it would be an awesome idea to stick some flowers in some guns or go down to the Haight and crash at the pad of a rock and roll group. Because the groups all live together.

There is also another unique monster, but who even cares by now? Sometimes they're even easier than the regular monsters Viki runs into.

So what do you need to progress to deeper levels now? It doesn't really seem like it's an issue of your character level at this point. Are you trying to farm money to buy expensive stuff from the black market, or are you trying to get together resistances for the coming resistance check dungeon levels?

Hmm, I guess those could be the same thing now that I think about it. Resistances are from a combination of spells, equipable items, and potions, right?

It is sort of a combination. I've played several more times since the material that made this last update, and Viki is going to keep scumming around the 18-22 range until she's gathered up the four basic resistences (fire, frost, lightning, acid). Resistances are the sort of thing you get by hook or by crook, which means if it's in the Black Market, you take it if you can get it. If the game is extra kind, it'll give up a mid-weight ego armor of Resistance, which immediately provides the four basics and will allow Viki to make a dash straight for the 30-35 range.

For the record, right now she's running Acid, Fire, and Cold - three of four! - but that's going to change significantly in the coming updates, in part because Firestar is going to get put on a shelf but can be grabbed if necessary.

Hitting Level 30 is also going to be a major milestone, which is the other thing Viki is shooting for. But honestly that probably won't happen until she's able to run through small groups of hound monsters without difficulty, and we'll be meeting the hounds very soon so you can see why they're going to be such a massive problem for Viki.

Welcome back to Let's Play Angband. This update is brought to you by me having just immediately posted the last update and not having anything clever to put here yet. Actually this update is brought to you by the fact that I am currently on vicodin because of the bike accident I had earlier in the week.

Last time, Viki had delved down into the dungeon with her fancy new artifact to go and light some dudes on fire, except for the dudes who were already on fire or have all kinds of callouses which render them resistant to fire.



Snagas? At this level? That can only mean one of two things - either there's a unique orc monster nearby who's still slumming it with monsters from a tenth of the dungeon ago, or there's an orc pit.

Pits are special rooms which are just loaded with one particular type of monster, usually containing a unique and many out-of-depth creatures. They're awesome places to farm for experience and don't contain any special treasure, but usually contain monsters which do drop a lot of awesome loot - and they're (almost?) always contained within one of those special rooms where a corridor circles an inner chamber.



Yeah, this looks like a pit. The Uruk isn't a seriously out of depth monster - he comes from level 16 - but that's a good indicator that we're looking at a pit, in addition to the structure of the room that these orcs are flowing out of. If Viki had bothered to learn Detect Evil, she could cast it right now and you'd see a big block of the map filled with a rainbow of 'o's.

That rainbow of orcs eventually overwhelms Viki and she teleports away.



Viki encounters a bronze dragon around a corner. This leads to an interesting little exploit in Angband's line of sight algorithm - the dragon is around the corner and can see, but won't breathe at, Viki - however, Viki has no problem exploiting the situation. From this vantage point she might be able to target the dragon directly with a Draining spell, but since it's an area of effect spell, it works just as well to cast it on the tile immediately to the left of where the dragon is - it'll still get hit, and in this case, Viki gets the added bonus of either damaging it enough to kill it or get it to run in fear.

This strategy of taking advantage of corners will figure heavily in Viki's fights against hounds. You're going to be hearing a lot about hounds for something like the next 50000 updates, so get ready for it!

Meanwhile, she heads back to where all the orcs are having their bar-b-q and slices through a few of them to get some items floating around.



This is my favorite item in the game. We'll be coming back to it later.



Yeah, it's a pit! Orc pits are the most boring because as far as I know, most orcs are low-level monsters and easy to kill. Troll pits and - god help us - dragon pits are the worst. I think there are dragon pits anyway, I can't remember; maybe dragons only show up in vaults. For those of you who have played Shiren, a vault is like one of those floors that's nothing but super-powerful monsters and a bunch of treasure - except in Angband, a vault is a single (possibly very large) room absolutely crammed with dangerous monsters and usually at least one artifact. Usually two or three.

Viki mops up the last of the orcs with draining and careful application of her flaming mace. Finally, peace and quiet in the dungeon, which means it's time for some recreational drug usage.




Eating the mushroom, Viki is assaulted with strange images from beyond space and time. She tries to look at some of them, but all she can do is wonder why her appendix is crawling out of her nose. Then her mace starts talking to her about life insurance; something is going terribly wrong. Why couldn't she have just stayed home today? Her mom is a giant frog. That is kind of awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Viki can hear the colors of the dungeon, which is kind of a bringdown, because it's all brown and gray. Maybe if there were some monsters she could talk to them and their backwards faces.

Viki sits there in the dungeon, contemplating why her hands are growing a beard, and then everything stops all of a sudden. Viki has learned a valuable lesson: Kids, don't do drugs.



Viki's awesome trip over, she decides that the best thing to do to get rid of those horrifying images is to go and smack monsters until all their bones break and blood flies all over her face. At least that's an ordinary day, unlike having your ear fall off in your hand and start talking to you.



Oh, and look! There's not only a pit on this level, there's a unique monster as well. This is Viki's lucky day - she's going to totally plow through these monsters. Watch. Well, don't watch, exactly - just keep scrolling down. It will help with the suspense if you scroll down slower. In fact, I'll even put a post break here to make it easier on you.

Spoiler: Viki wins.

Sorry about spoiling that for you! I bet you thought she was totally going to die. I also apologize for having to grab the unique death screen again, after Viki had gained four fabulous levels! Consider it a preview of things to come.



Viki inches closer to the all-important level 30. If you remember, that's when Orb of Draining gains an extra tile of radius, which means it will be even better for hot crushing action. Viki's probably going to scum around in the <20 floor area until she hits it, because hounds will come out in full force just a little bit after that and I'm playing this one extremely cautiously.

Cruising around the floor until it's completely explored and no corner is unturned, Viki heads back to town.



And is immediately pickpocketed by a horrible brat. If her dexterity hadn't been drained, he never would've gotten away with that! Children should neither be seen nor heard, unless the sound is from them being turned into sort of a reddish goo. Maybe all of this violence is having an adverse effect on Viki?

Meanwhile the Black Market has a Scroll of Acquirement for a cool 336000, and this is a scroll which creates a "good" item - "good" being kind of an understatement, because it usually generates an ego item or an artifact, when read at a sufficient depth. Needless to say it would kind of be pointless to buy this right now, in part because Viki won't have that much money practically forever.

She also discovers that it's possible to enchant artifacts, bringing up the to-hit of Firestar to +7 - a nice little bonus for a heavy weapon like that. Later on she'll come back and bring it up to the (+10,+10) that most weapons need to be at.



Back into the dungeon, Viki gets another good level feeling. Could this be another artifact? Will she finally get something that I've been pining for since the early floors of the dungeon, a magical light source? God, I hope so.



Finding a scroll of trap creation, Viki decides that it would be a good idea to read it. Now, this might SOUND dumb; but because it creates traps in all 8 squares around a character, you know exactly where they are - and can disarm them, which gives decent (but not necessarily great) experience. However, Viki's lacking in the Detect Traps spell (oops!) and so just teleports out of the death circle she's hanging around in. She could stand there and search for a while, but that's for chumps!

Later on there are monsters which have 'create traps' as an ability, and they're really annoying. One of them is a unique monster who will absolutely trash Viki if she runs into him right now, but that will hopefully be a little ways away.

At some point, Viki fights a perfectly ordinary monster who drops a Tulwar, which is a shitty weapon. Viki though, knowing that she got her artifact by IDing a dropped weapon, decides to have a go at it.



Damnit.

Now, I'm not going to complain about this. Too much. Holy Avengers are probably the single best ego item for a priest to pick up - first, they're blessed by god, so a priest can actually use them. Second, they're branded with all kinds of "slay" attributes, which deal damage multipliers to specific monsters (and which, I believe, stack). And third, and most importantly.. that (+4) there? That's a wisdom bonus. Here's what happens when Viki puts on the weapon:



Those are more prayers than she has access to right now. You'll also notice the huge jump in mana; 14 points is enough for another two casts of draining.

And there are even more bonuses. MORE, MORE, MORE.



Now you can see why there's a problem with Viki getting this weapon when she has her Firestar. This weapon is amazingly fucking good in every single way except for one: It deals shit damage, and will always deal shit damage. The 'slay evil' brand is only a 2x multiplier, although the others are 3x; and 2x damage with the tulwar is, honestly, not going to be that great. On the other hand, an extra 14 points of mana, +4 wisdom, see invisible, and a sustain (which keeps a stat from being drained) - maybe it's strength. Maybe Viki will never be afraid of darts again. Maybe the fact that she can cast draining twice more makes up for the lack of ability to shoot a huge fireball and crush everything under her heels.

Actually it turns out that at this level, Draining only does (36+3d6) damage still, which is less than the fireball on a good day (in fact, on any day). But against evil monsters, it's better, and Viki does encounter a lot of evil monsters. Plus when the hounds show up, she's going to need to take them out from a distance, and some of them will resist fire, so that extra cast or two will be a lifesaver.

There's actually going to be some debate about this, so Viki keeps using Firestar for now. But that could very easily change.



Viki heads back to town to get some rest. It's been a long day and she has a lot to think about.

NEXT TIME: Dangerous yeeks! Boring levels that I'm going to skip most of!

POLL(?) TIME: It's getting to that point where I'd like to know what you, the viewer, want to see. And I don't mean in the game - I mean in the format of "super special updates" like the massive MONTAGE. So far I have plans to (eventually) do a video LP segment which will be the most goddamn boring thing anyone has ever watched but promise to make as entertaining as possible, and may write an entry entirely in haiku. I want to keep this interesting for all of us, as there becomes progressively less to say aside from "Today Viki picked up a +5 Sandwich of Eating."

I want more horrible, gimmicky ideas. You are going to give them to me, and I'll pick the best ones to show up here later on; there's still a lot of material in my backlog - another two or three updates' worth - to go through.

Horrible, gimicky ideas, eh? You could do an update from the perspective of the dungeon overlord as he sends minions to attack Viki. More montages and randomly out-of-context images are always welcome too. Basically, I've enjoyed all the updates so far, so just keep it up, comment on anything that looks interesting, and fast-forward through the stuff that isn't.

Agreed. Been following this, would like to see more updates (even boring ones).

Also, I'd pawn off the holy avenger, unless I had more spellbooks. Amulets/stuff of Wisdom are common enough (speaking of which, what does she have on her? I've lost track)

Videotape yourself acting out the next installment of Angband with interpretive dance.

Alternatively, make the next montage one of Viki's diary, written out and scanned on lined paper with little doodles to go along with them. Let's see how this dungeon crawling stuff is going by in Viki's point of view, eh?