Well, it's high time we get back into magic. Namely poison magic. Meet Vedic, a naga venom mage.
◊ Nagas are a weird bag of things. For one, they come with the ability to see invisible, resist poison, spit poison, and have +5 in stealth and +3 in poison magic. On the other hand, their movement is slower than most other things, meaning you can't out run jack squat, have terrible dodge and armor aptitudes, and have 0 for pretty much everything else.
Oh, and they can't wear boots. To compensate, you can find something called Naga Barding for them to wear in that slot instead. A great way to find said barding is to not play the naga race. Yeah...
Anyway, venom mages are spellcasters that focus on poison magic, making them great in the early game where almost nothing can resist poison but becomes a terrible idea to remain in that field of magic as you get into the late game due to the sheer number of things with poison resistance.
Don't worry though, using some cross training, we'll be able to reach into other forms of magic and deal with the problem as it comes. In the meantime, we do get a few spells that have non-poison damage tacked on. In fact, here's Vedic's beginning spell book.
◊ Sting is basically the poison equivalent to magic dart and pain, it's a weak shot of poison that can poison the enemy. It is a legit strategy to constantly fire this at a single enemy not for the damage but to continually make it more poisoned and then run away. Cure poison and poison weapon are pretty self explanatory. Mephitic Cloud we've also seen around the block a good number of times. Venom Bolt shoots a heavy bolt of metal with poison on it. Even if the enemy resists poison, I'd love to see it shrug off that sort of damage.
For the record, fast enemies were just a midge faster before with normal speed characters.
◊ As a naga, they are going to be on you butt in no time, making running a really difficult strategy for nagas aside from the translocation magic user. You're better off sticking to the hallways and standing your ground using your magic and your poison spit.
Meet the Angel.
◊ They work under the three good gods (who I really should get around to covering one of these days). They can and will fuck your shit up even in late game and so help you if you're undead or demonic, they will get bonuses to fucking your shit up. They move fast, resist many things, probably fly too. You just don't mess with these guys, they're built to go head on head with rank 1 demons. Luckily for us, it's behind a translucent wall and guarding the Ziggurat. What's the Ziggurat you say? Well, it's the closest thing to a bonus dungeon that Crawl has. In other words, don't expect to survive because if you reach the bottom of it, you'll be long past dealing with rank 1 demons as the primary threat, you'll be up against lich kings and the like, which can make even highly experienced adventurers a bloody stain on the wall in mere seconds.
Shit's scary, man.
Welcome back to the temple.
◊ This time we've got a very, erm, odd god. Chei is the god of slowness. Th god of taking it easy. The god of eating well. Etc. You get all sorts of nice little benefits for going slow.
His first ability he gives you is to make your armor ponderous, which, well, slows down your movement. So, time to make mah hat heavy.
You feel rather ponderous.
Yay, I now have a heavy hat. Note that it's artifact now, so you can't edit it any further, so ge sure to max out the defense of an item before ponderizing it. So what does Chei like? Chei likes it when you kill things that are faster than you. For the Naga, that's more or less everything ever.
Cheibriados appreciates the change of pace.
Yeap. Slow killin'. The faster the enemy that was killed, the happier Chei is.
Cheibriados slows and strengthens your metabolism, and supports the use of ponderous armour.
Cheibriados protects you from negative energy.
Cheibriados raises the support of you attributes.
Rock on. So what to compensate you for the absurd level of slowness you'll eventually acheive with Chei? All sorts of fun bonuses, including elemental resistances, a stronger stomach, and points to each of your primary stats. As of now, strength, intelligence, and dexterity are all up by 1.
A Jewellery store, hopefully this proves more useful than the weapon and general goods store.
◊ Hrm, nothing much in my price range yet, but I'll take the amulet of inaccuracy and ring of dexterity for a cheap way of identifying them.
◊ After all, for 1 coin, I spare myself having to identify these later and waste time missing constantly.
So now I can slow down everyone standing next to me as an ability I have to activate. Yeah, it's pretty much defensive and I don't think Vedic and his long range magic will be seeing much use of it.
y - a +6 ring of intelligence (right hand)
O_O
WOO HOO! FUCK YES! AH HA HA HA!
That's 26 intelligence. Luckiest find of the month! Early to mid game too!
Portal time!
◊ Welcome back to the bailey. What's great about this place?
◊ It's next to deep water and nothing in here can swim. Mephetic Cloud GO! And inside what appears to be the Star of David is lava. Fun times for all!
◊
Oh, woah, that guy has a triple blade, I can't just kill him with lava, that'd cause me to lose that item.
◊ YES, got it. And it's an triple sword of electrocution too. Nice. So this is basically a hilt of a sword with three blades attached. It usually doesn't appear this early in the game and has a ridiculous 19 base damage, only out done by the executioner's axe. I guess I shall be training long blades this game.
Okay, Crawl is being far too generous at this point, something is very, very off.
◊ Well, I make it out alive but I'm still wondering if I'm just that lucky this time around. We'll see next time.
