"Arise, Gunmarie."
"Huh... Oh, hi.... I'm dead again, aren't I?"
"What exactly were you thinking? Trying to stand toe-to-toe against a Manticore?"
"I didn't think they'd shoot their tailspikes in melee."
"You fire magic in hand-to-hand combat all the time."
"Well, yeah. But I didn't think anybody ELSE would do that."
"You were heavily injured already, as well. Why didn't you heal up?"
"I still thought I could take a few blows!"
"Well, apparently six tailspikes at once was a few too many."
"He got lucky! They never all hit at once!"
*Sigh* "Well, you are still under our protection, and the Norns have been watching carefully. You may return to the stairs where you entered this stage."
"... I'll try not to die this time."
"Please don't. It looks bad. You've been doing okay so far, but still."
Yeah, died again. Was fighting a Manticore. Had a few hitpoints left, but he got lucky on a tailspike barrage and killed me.
Death Counter: 2.
So, anyways, Fortress Level 4. What awaits us?
Oooh, a Carrion Creeper.
◊ Totally not a D&D Carrion Crawler. These guys can be quite unpleasant. As I've alluded to above, certain creatures get attack barrages. Attack barrages are shown as...
The [creature] attacks you [x] times and hits you [y] times!Carrion Creepers can do a six-strike attack barrage. Manticores, as I've mentioned above, can do a ranged attack barrage of six tail spikes at once. Some other creatures, like Bears, have a two-strike attack barrage.
I'm not sure, but I think Carrion Creepers can also paralyze. We'll see that effect later.
Since I saved on the same level as where I died, all the monster placements are the same. This is the manticore
◊ that killed me last time. Well, now I know to barrage them from afar and keep an eye on my health. Oh, and I need to show off something I found I can do with Cold Bolts.
The cold bolt blasts open
◊ the door!A neat effect, but since there are no locked doors in the game, all it does is keep the door from being closed, which is handy when sleeping. So not a good thing to do. Still cool, though.
Ow. Oh, yeah, glyphs are activated by proximity, not touch. So wearing Boots of Levitation doesn't make you immune to Glyphs. Most glyphs just describe damage in general, but a few have an elemental theme to them.
I'm getting close to that gathering of Goblin Fighters and the Huge Ogre I saw earlier, so I sleep
◊ in a nearby room to prepare for the battle. And then this happens.
◊
You trigger a hidden glyph!
You feel slower.
Yep, some glyphs can curse you in a variety of ways, draining stats. Most are temporary, but I wonder if there are more permanent versions elsewhere. Either way, look at my speed in the bottom-right corner. 66% off normal speed. Ouch, that's not good. Back to my little room to sleep off
◊ the curse.
Anyways, now with all my speed back, time to charge and whoa, crap!
◊ Them's a lot of nasties!
I move back into the room to fend them off one by one. Fortunately, it seems the Manticore and the Zombie were just napping, and didn't participate. When I'm done, there's a pile of treasure,
◊ and I learned a new spell. I decided to go with Cold Ball.
Note that piles of treasure may be somewhat misleading. The game can't combine items very well, so a pile of treasure could be rusty braces and a dead wand, or two separate piles of copper pieces. This one, however, has something interesting. But first, to finish clearing out the room.
Time to show off my new spell. Let it fly.
◊ Looks like a Cold Bolt in flight. But on impact? Whumph!
◊
The effect is a poorly animated expanding cloud of blue stuff. A Cold Ball will hit the target square, and then every square around it. Note, however, that it'll explode on impact. You can't cast it at the center of a group, as it'll hit any targets in its way and explode there. It also costs 5 mana, compared to Cold Bolt's 2, so it's pretty expensive.
Here's another shot of the cloud
◊, just beginning to expand.
So, now to look at the loot. Aside from piles of silver and gold, there's a scrap of parchment.
◊ Oooh, what does it say? Let's read it!
◊
You uncrumple and carefully examine the scrap of parchment, finding it covered with crude handwriting in a dark reddish brown ink. Laboriously, you decipher the writing:
The terse note prompts more questions than it answers; Who is this Hrungnir? And what castle is this mentioned, to which Hrungnir reports? Somebody ordered a dragnet; uneasily, you suspect that you were the target, just as you were the target of your village's arson. Who is masterminding the search? Grimly, you laugh as you shred the note: at least this patrol will now never loot against orders.
Hoo, so much to comment on.
- 1) What is this? Ye Olde Butcherde Nordic?
- 2) Takes them THIS long to realize somebody is systematically killing monsters and invading the fortress level by level?
- 3) What kind of patrol sits in one room and waits for hours while I wander around and kill everything else?
- 4) Other humans? What about all the Bandits and Smirking Sneak Thieves I've faced off with?
Either way, interesting development. They know somebody is making their way through the dungeon, and they suspect it's me, the person they wanted to kill in the first place.
