made it through dark crypt - barely

[General_Jah]

holy cow the dark crypt is insanely hard...

I am playing a lvl 24 shadowblade and have never encountered so many casters in a zone before...

died once using my last life so next death i guess that is it

I cannot imagine a warrior or low damage type making it through alive... was intense!

failed the quest, wasn't sure how it worked exactly until i saw the failed message

[tylor]

Blight resist helps a lot. Also, wards.

[General_Jah]

So do experienced players just carry around a bunch of gear with resists to be prepared for certain zones they know are coming up?

Seems hard to do considering encumberance and the likely hood in the early game you can really get resists that high?

[Frumple]

Even fairly minor resists cuts back on the pain a lot. Helps that there's several major blight res artifacts (girdle of calm waters, ferex) you're pretty likely to have ran into by that point, too, on top of any incidental equipment you might have ran in to. It's generally quite easy to get 30-40% resist in any particular element (barring the rare stuff, like physical or arcane, but even then...) without really trying. Just maybe do a shopping trip or two, swing by the ring shop to see what's in, stuff like that. Occasionally the RNG just screws you, but that's fairly rare.

That said, for the last basically forever I've been walking into the dark crypt with often zero blight resist,* and not uncommonly pretty much no mobility. Most of the difficulty is just keeping an eye on line of sight and making sure you're not getting blown up by five or six casters at the same time. Keep it to one or two at once, kill them quick, top yourself back up and do it again until everything's dead. Mobility helps a lot -- rush boots, directed teleportation (PD, etc.), movement infusions, so on, so forth, but it's mostly just a matter of dealing with those ruddy cultists and their position swapping (murder tends to be the most effective means -- kill them the instant you see them and in one turn and you're likely to be safe, haha!) and keeping yourself around corners or whatev'.

As for the encumbrance, most of the high ticket resist items are fairly light -- rings in particular can usually net you an easy 30+% resist alone, if you can double up on a single type -- and once you've got somewhere to stuff the less important junk (house, convenient vault), it's usually not much of an issue. And if it is, there's always +encumbrance items to tide you over a bit.

*I don't micromanage kit basically at all anymore, honestly, and getting through the west material is more a matter of tedium than challenge despite that, at least on normal.

[General_Jah]

As for the encumbrance, most of the high ticket resist items are fairly light -- rings in particular can usually net you an easy 30+% resist alone, if you can double up on a single type -- and once you've got somewhere to stuff the less important junk (house, convenient vault), it's usually not much of an issue. And if it is, there's always +encumbrance items to tide you over a bit.

*I don't micromanage kit basically at all anymore, honestly, and getting through the west material is more a matter of tedium than challenge despite that, at least on normal.

when you say house and vault, how do you access those? Do you get them later in the game?

I'm still pretty new, highest lvl char I have gotten is 26 shadowblade (2nd char)

[Davion Fuxa]

People who donate money for the game have access to a 'Item Vault' after beating the Wierdling Beast in the Sher'tul Fortress. They can use the Item Vault to store items for use on their other characters or just as storage for some items in a current run.

In any case, when approaching the Dark Crypt it is generally about tactical positioning within the dungeon and avoiding being in a position where you will be blasted several times within a turn or two. You can also help mitigate damage through having a high spell save, disease immunity, and blight resistances but generally these aren't necessarily so important that you have to prepare for them in Normal Difficulty.

I'm a Let's Player on YouTube, I've done several videos on ToME and many feature runs through the Dark Crypt. Some links on my various videos covering the instance then:

Let's Play Tales of Maj'Eyal - Nightmare - Dwarven Skirmisher Ep 11 - Squeaking Through Dark Crypt

Let's Learn Tales of Maj'Eyal - Episode 16 - The Deathtrap Known As The Dark Crypt

Let's Play ToME Steam Edition - Skeleton Sun Paladin - Episode 13 - Saving The Damsel (About 3 minutes of the Dark Crypt were in Episode 12)

Let's Play ToME Steam Edition - Higher Anorithil - Episode 11 (Check Towards end of Episode around the 38 minute mark for Dark Crypt)
Let's Play ToME Steam Edition - Higher Anorithil - Episode 12

ToME - Shaloran Berserker Ep 9 - First Death in Dark Crypt

ToME - Shaloran Wyrmic Ep 7 - Killing Melinda's Demonic Spawn (Check Around the 22:30 minute mark for Dark Crypt)

ToME - Cornac Cursed Ep 10 - Hating the Damsel in Distress

[Frumple]

Ah, when I mentioned vault I was just talking about the in-dungeon stuff, not the Item Vault. Unlike most places (unless, of course, it's been changed without me noticing it), stuff dropped inside a vault will not disappear after a certain amount of time has passed. If you're strapped for inventory space, you can (possibly) find one that's not too far out of the way and drop some stuff off there, until you explore enough to find the dedicated storage area.* Vaults, by the by, are easiest to recognize by being an area with a door that kicks up a prompt asking if you want to enter, if you try to open it. Stuff can be dropped freely in them without having to worry about it getting squelched. Or could be, previously. Don't think that's been changed, but I haven't been paying as much attention to the changelogs as I used to, so caveat emptor et al.

*Which is still in the west(generally easily accessible around your mid-teens, level wise), and I imagine most folks know about it by now, but it's technically a spoiler and I won't mention specifics here in the general discussion.

[snoop]

Beware that Bill's lair does *not* preserve dropped equip like the rest of the vaults though. Found that out the hard way

[HousePet]

That's because its not a vault, its a fixed map area.

[snoop]

That's because its not a vault, its a fixed map area.

But it has the same or similar warning when you try to move the rock, so I figured it would work the same as the other vaults.

[tylor]

Dark Crypt only happens after you got to level 24. Which usually happens during Master's tower.
So, you can a) go straight to East, so you will have to deal with Crypt on higher level and/or b) go get your resist blight items from stash and wander around West until you find the dungeon.

If you get to Sher-tul fortress early-ish and upgrade your wand of travel, you will be able to access it from anywhere, making it a perfect stash location.

Personally, I collect blight, lightning and fire resist items. Preferably light ones - jewelry, hats, etc. Fire is especially useful, because there is at least three mandatory dungeons with lots of fire damage - Vor Armoury, Vor and Charred Star.

[HousePet]

I noticed that I kept forgetting that I was carrying different resistance equipment, so I stopped trying to carry it.
I've found just focussing on having a good spread of resistances works fine. As does making sure you have the inscriptions you would want for Dark Crypt on at all times.
If it works for Dark Crypt, it works for the rest of the game.

[Mankeli]

Dark Crypt only happens after you got to level 24. Which usually happens during Master's tower.

Yes, and this is really the reason why you can't reliably save the crypt for after you come back from the East because getting to East requires world map travelling after Dreadfell.

And BTW, if the OP's main objective is to win, then the best way to not get killed in the Crypt is not to enter it. It can be a tricky place even on normal and if you are playing higher difficulties...well, let's just say that on my zero death insane run I pretty much just laughed when the "enter-or-not" screen popped up and pressed the "walk away" option without even considering to enter.

The reason for this is that the place can be incredibly hard to escape from: It's a small, closed place with a lot of dangerous ranged opponents. The rewards for completing this quest being bad doesn't help either.

So the answer to this question:

So do experienced players just carry around a bunch of gear with resists to be prepared for certain zones they know are coming up?

is that experienced players don't enter the place if they are looking to win and not roleplay and play the hero etc.