b19 Alf the Dwarf Fighter

[greycat]

I had a character in a previous beta -- back when monsters didn't have infusions -- who couldn't beat Grushnak either. We traded blows for a while, then another while, then another while... eventually I walked away, then came back when I was higher level and better-equipped.

Grushnak has Berserker talents in addition to (apparently) infusions in beta 19. So he has some sort of weird Berserker healing thing. (I don't play Berserkers, so don't ask me how it works.) Good luck.

[Freddybear]

I noticed that Alf was doing less than half his usual damage per blow against Grushnak, I figure it's his armor rating.

I'll farm orc ambushers for a while and see if they drop something sweet with a bonus to armor penetration. Or maybe I'll do one of the side quests. Vor Armory maybe?

I may skip the Dark Crypt and the obvious frustration of trying to fight Alf's shade with high level healing infusions.

[greycat]

Yes, do the Vor Armoury and all the "returning to Maj'Eyal" stuff. You should get some great XP and loot by the time you get back....

[Freddybear]

Alf talked to Zemekkys and got the quest to Vor Armory. He made the trip without incident (no orc patrols this time) and proceeded down to the treasure keep. There were a couple of touchy moments but Alf's armor and his healing infusions kept him going. Sand Breath proved to be very useful in suppressing 'mancers and Shield Pummel and Assault did their usual job on everything. Lots of loot there, of course, and Alf picked up a phase voratun waraxe with a 16 armor penetration factor which might be of help on the return to Grushnak. Also among the loot was the Scale Mail of Kroltar, which Alf imbued with an onyx and will wear. He found the Blood-runed Athame, and a couple of other artifacts to sell back in the Gates of Morning.

Zemekkys then gave Alf the quest to the Sand Wyrm, Briagh. Alf will attempt that tomorrow.

[Freddybear]

Alf went to the southern desert and found Briagh's lair, after abusing a couple more orc patrols on the way. I was expecting something like the Sandworm Lair but Briagh's place was just one level with large open areas and a few sandpiles, no collapsing tunnels to navigate. Alf used the Burning Star to map the ground and wandered around looking for a down ladder, slaughtering miscellaneous worms until Briagh showed up. That was a quite a fight but again Alf's armor and his healing infusions averted any real threat to Alf's life. Briagh didn't have any regen infusions so it was just a matter of Assault and melee strikes until he left a nice pile of gems including the Resonating Diamond.

Alf gave the Athame and the Diamond to Zemekkys and then used the portal back to Maj'Eyal. He spoke to the elders in Last Hope, and then to Tannen in his tower. Alf left the Orb with Tannen (was that a mistake?) and will go back to Rek'nor to look around in the Portal chamber to find another Athame and Diamond for Tannen to build a portal on this end.

[greycat]

Before you leave Maj'Eyal again, be sure to revisit all of the western dungeons. There will be new stuff.

[Freddybear]

Before you leave Maj'Eyal again, be sure to revisit all of the western dungeons. There will be new stuff.

Cool. I'm such a loot whore I love finding new stuff, even when it's mostly just useless junk to leave on the dungeon floor.

I got the Athame and the Diamond from the boss demon in the portal level of Reknor and gave then to Tannen who sent me to look for a book in Telos' tower.

[Freddybear]

So, taking that advice, Alf headed for Trollmire, where on level 1 he met a Radiant Horror that gave him some trouble with blinding and some heavy hitting light beams. Somewhere along the way Alf picked up a Ring of the Dead (+10 luck).
Then on level 2, Aluin the Fallen made an appearance. He put up quite a fight with a "Martyrdom" curse (hex?, whatever) but eventually fell, pushing Alf up to L37, and dropped "Balogrim the Steel Greatsword" worth carrying out to sell.

On trollmire(4), I saw an interesting event. There is a big lake on that level, and while Alf was fighting another monster elsewhere, a bag of money magically appeared in the middle of the lake. I'm sure that a monster of some sort which drops money was standing there and drowned.

Alf finally scoured trollmire(5) and then recalled out without finding anything that would justify the "you feel slightly anxious" level feeling.

Kor'Pul seemed to be overrun by snakes and minor demons, until on Kor'Pul(5), Alf met Kor's Fury, who was very troublesome with various hexes and curses at his disposal. Alf used his lantern of revealing to make the Fury visible, and kept on plugging away and finally Kor's Fury took refuge *inside* a wall pillar where he was only noticeable by the blue aura of some area effect spell (Tidal Wave?). Alf used Burrow to get to him, and then killed him despite the Empathic Hex when he noticed that Kor's Fury was down to his last 40 hitpoints. The "Fiery Choker" was among Kor's remains. Alf is now at L38.

Although the miscellaneous dungeon critters have been leveled up to around 35-37 or so, the loot littering the floor is still low-level trash such as was there the last time through.

[edge2054]

Blues are greater egos, not artifacts.

I've had no trouble selling reds though. If you can reproduce that you should probably post the stdout, make a copy of the savefile, and post it in bugs.

[Freddybear]

Alf goes into the Old Forest, and on old forest(3) he meets Snaproot, who has both a regen and a healing infusion. Watching the message spam and the monster's status display, the healing alone was good for more than 500 hitpoints, and the regen, which ran for six turns accounted for slightly more than 132 points per turn. That's a total of 796 points of regen per cycle. If it were only the regen, Alf might have been able to wear Snaproot down over time, if his stamina held out, but then that big healing kicks in and it's right back to where we started.

This is more than slightly unbalanced. I don't think that I have ever seen any infusions which come close to those numbers and on short cooldown cycles too.

Once again that makes it impossible for Alf to kill the monster.

I have attached a zipped extract of part of the battle in case anybody wants to analyze the numbers.

[Freddybear]

Alf gave up on Snaproot, and went to Telmur, the tower of Telos. There he found several tough levels of bad guys in close quarters, which was quite a fight. He picked up an icy voratun mace of corruption with some interesting damage values, but didn't find the book he was looking for. He returned to Tannen's tower in Last Hope where the treacherous swine tried to trap Alf in his tower.

Alf overcame all the tricky levels, though the fight with the Multi-hued Wyrm and its spawn was quite a threat, what with blinding Alf and swarming him with vicious little biters, and the level with the water spiral had Alf worried about drowning until he found conveniently spaced open air squares to catch his breath.

But again Alf prevailed and finally met the treacherous Tannen and his huge golem construct in a wide-open space in the tower. Strangely, neither the golem nor Tannen had enough stun resistance to matter, so they fell quickly to Shield Pummel and followup Assaults. Alf collected his Orb of Many Ways and the Athame and the Resonating Diamond and went back to Last Hope where they have constructed a proper portal to take Alf back to the Gates of Morning(I presume).

All this action brought Alf up to level 40 with some interesting new gear and a nice supply of high-tier gems for ringmaking and/or imbuing.

[Freddybear]

Alf returned to the Gates of Morning and decided to try a different tactic on Grushnak. Alf stair-scummed him to death. It seems that no turns pass on the level you left when you climb stairs and rest, so Alf lured G next to the stairs and then hit him with Assault, went up the stairs, rested to restore stamina and cooldown the Assault, then down again, rinse and repeat. Without getting turns to regen and/or Heal between rounds of Assault, the big orc finally went down.

When Grushnak died, Alf got an urgent telepathic message from Aeryn and set out for the Southern Desert from Grushnak's caverns, fighting through several orc patrols along the way. After reaching the Desert, Alf found the entrance to the area which Aeryn had mentioned, and proceeded down through several levels of assorted worms and ritches to the cavern where the Sun Paladins were holding the line. He realized that he had to race southward through the lava stream, and used Assault freely on the big drakes and wyrms and elementals which tried to block the way while fighting past their multitudinous spawn and racing ever southward. He made it to the end in time and disrupted the ritual, and then dispatched the big fire elemental who was guarding the portal.

[Freddybear]

Alf finally noticed the lady standing around in Gates of Morning looking worried and spoke to her. She gave him directions to a spider cave, where he rescued her husband from the stomach of Undole, unlocking Sun Paladins. Alf made good use of the Burrow skill a couple of times to dig anti-summoner tunnels when he ran into big packs of drakes. The whole spider quest would probably have been more of a challenge if Alf were around level 32 instead of 44.

[Freddybear]

Alf went to the Underwater Cavern, wore the drakeskin leather cap of the depths, and didn't find anything much. The boss of that cave might have been a challenge at level 30.

Next, Alf went to the Vor pride bastion. Open area levels with assorted "buildings" scattered around to provide some cover. The high 'mancers gave Alf one mortal scare, but he managed to teleport to a relatively safe spot where he could use his infusions to heal up.

Alf was beginning to wonder if Vor(5) was actually the bottom level when he finally encountered Vor himself. The rest of the level had already been depopulated, which made the ensuing chase much easier. Vor's use of invisibility and teleportation made it an amusing hunt, but Alf was equipped with a lantern of revealing and his voratun mace also has see invisible. The little status messages of invis and manasurge gave Vor's position away nicely. Fortunately, Vor had neglected to equip himself with any sort of regen so it was just a matter of hunting him down and Rush and Assault did the work.

Alf is now equipped with the Plate Armor of the King which he imbued with onyx. At level 46 he has maxed out STR(long since) and DEX. Remaining points will go to WIL or CON, probably CON.

[Freddybear]

Alf next proceeded to Rak'shor Pride. Rak'shor was full of necromancers and blood mages, and Alf avoided most of the main parts of the levels on the way down to meet Rak'shor himself on level 5. Rak'shor used teleport freely, just like Vor did, and led Alf a merry chase around the level before he died to Alf's repeated Rushes and Assaults. It was fortunate that Rak'shor didn't have regen or it would most likely have been impossible to kill him.

And finally, Gorbat Pride, which was full of drakes and wyrms and hatchlings. In the open areas the hatchling summoner spam was a sight to behold. Much to Alf's amusement, the various drakes would breath on each other and the hatchlings causing much mutual aggravation which greatly reduced the number of such critters that Alf had to kill himself. If they didn't do it to themselves, a few Sand Breaths from Alf helped the process along nicely. At last Alf encountered Gorbat himself. The high wyrmic summoner kept blinding Alf and summoning Warpers who used Time Prison to give Alf considerable worry as the turns ticked away along with Alf's hitpoints. Good thing Alf has plenty of armor and resists.

Gorbat had high regen, so Alf would have to resort to the stairscumming tactic in order to kill him. It took some risky maneuvers to get Gorbat next to the stairs, but once he was in position, it was just a matter of "Assault, up stairs, rest, down stairs, rinse and repeat". Alf now has the four Orbs of Command in his possession and has been informed of the new quest for the slime tunnels, "Probably in Grushnak".