A pair of horns grows on your head!
Welcome back! This time with less suck and less Sigmund, hopefully. Anyway, first mutation for ol' Ganondorf this time around is a pair of horns. This is one of the "meh" mutations and the rest are only upstairs from here. While it does give you a headbutt unarmed attack with increased damage, it keeps you from wearing a potentially awesome helmet, so yeah.
The potion of speed people. This one is universally useful as it gives you a double set of actions per turn for a few turns. This means you can run twice as fast, cast two spells in the time that it'd usually take you to cast one, etc. The duration, though, is pretty short.
Anyway, dare I say it, this run is looking like it'll actually be doable, I found a scale mail, +5 AC armor, so Ganondorf can actually take a hit now. Also, an encrusted wooden ring was found, though I can't seem to identify it just yet.
Added along with the vampire race, there are some potions that contain blood. Pointless for you, all important for the vampires.
You feel resistant to hostile enchantments.
Already? Seriously, that's two mutations in a row with two levels in a row. Anyway, that gives magic resistance, which means enemies have a harder time paralyzing/slowing/blasting you. It's nice, I must say. Plus, that combined with the ring of magic resistance I just identified and I must say, we're nicely anti-wizard right now. NOTE: This doesn't protect against elemental damage, just enchantments (note from the future: And as of now, hexes).
This is a scroll of enchant weapon II. It enhances the attack of weapon, but has a chance at failing if your weapon has already been enhanced too many times. It's now a mace of +2,+3. Hey, did I mention I died again? Yay... I'm being a really terrible playing tonight. On the other hand, in less than 200 turns, I found a glowing dwarven hammer, which means it's likely to have some nice pluses on it and it falls under the "Maces & Flails" weapon category, meaning Ganondorf is already quite good with them.
Later picked up a glowing ruby amulet. Can't identify it yet though...
THIS, this was what I wanted. It's an active ability, which means you can access it by pressing "a" and selecting it, but it was so worth it.
The acid hits the gnoll.
The gnoll writhes in agony as its flesh it eaten away!
The gnoll is almost dead.
Lesser Destruction, for the small price of 1 MP and some hunger, is essentially a random element projectile that's more powerful that magic dart or throw flame, can be used with heavy armor, and is quite spammable. It also trains up invocations quite nicely. The gnoll dies hard and we now have his flail (it's a step up in terms of damage compared to both the hammer and the mace).
Several minor destruction'd enemies later...
And Ganondorf has a shiny new pair of +1 boots. Just thought I'd mention that. Anyway, haven't found any real heavy armor yet and it's already the third floor. To be honest, leather armor just sort of sucks and I'm looking for some real defense.
Oh hey, some nice gloves. This will also give a minor boost to my AC, but it's still not heavy armor...
So about armor, you've got five slots for armor on your body: helmet, gloves, cloak, boots, and of course the central armor. You can throw in the shield as part of that but it doesn't give you AC. The most amount of AC you'll usually get out of boots, gloves, helmets, and cloaks is 3AC a piece and that's assuming they're maxed out with enchantments. No, most of your AC comes from you body armor and you'll usually be using the other parts for their non-defense enchantments. For example, you may find a helmet of intelligence (+3 to your int while wearing it), and you'll wear it for that reason, not for the added defense (though it's a nice bonus).
Anyway, meet Jessica.
◊ Compared to Sigmund, she's a push over, but she can still kill the unprepared, especially if she gets lucky and spawns with a wand that hurts. While she can dish out damage, she can't take it, so just beat her at the health bar removal game and you should be okay. As you might guess, a little bit of minor destruction and she's a bloody splat, though she doesn't leave behind any nice gear.
Third pair of boots this game and I haven't found a single piece of heavy armor.
◊ What the crap.
No wait, there's some armor. Yayz!
◊ With that, Ganondorf's AC jumps from 6 to 9, which is a lot nicer than it sounds. Anyway, scroll identification time:
This is a scroll of teleportation. It basically makes you appear somewhere else on the floor (as in the entire floor, not just what's in sight) in a few turns, so it's good for retreating IF you aren't aren't less than five turns from being dead.
This is the scroll of smoke. It's useful since nothing can see further than two squares into smoke, meaning you just read this and run to escape your enemies.
I am... amazed.
◊ Plate mail is basically the best early game armor you can get and it's glowing too, which means it usually comes extra enchantments and maybe a secondary bonus. Ganondorf, put that shiny suit ON!
Oh Ganondorf, don't you look snazzy in that +2 plate mail.
◊ For the record, this now means Ganondorf's AC is 16... quite a jump from 9. This also pretty much never happens, so take your chances when they come but remember, AC doesn't do jack squat when we're dealing with magic, so while he can now takes melee hits like a pro, you still need to worry about wizards.
Meet the ogre.
◊ If hobgoblins are the first barrier players meet and Sigmund the second, then ogres are the third major barrier. They're meaty, so they have lots of health and dish out damage by the metric tons, so most fighters need some extra power behind them to take on ogres and wizards are pretty much dead if they get close to an ogre. If the goblin wasn't in the way, I'd just start blasting the ogre from where Ganondorf is standing.
Or you can be stupid like me and let the ogre meet you from around a corner where you couldn't have possibly shot him and then spend a turn reading a scroll of teleportation while he takes off more than half your health.
◊ For the record while the plate mail is nice, it's not the end all solution to melee either, the ogre is just putting out too much damage for that. Anyway, thanks to teleportation, we escape.
Meet the giant mite.
◊ This guy is pretty boring, he can poison you but he's so easy to hit and so wussy that he will likely die before he gets that chance.
Welcome to floor four, I meet another ogre and there's a wide gap between me an him.
◊ Prepare to eat a lot of destruction, bitch.
And he's dead. Seriously, ogres can't do anything relatively ranged, so go wild if they're a distance away. Also with that, Ganondorf hits level five and gets his first demonic mutation this game...
You now gain HP by standing on the corpses of enemies. This is nicer than it sounds as it allows you to get an edge on swarms as well as working like regeneration, but without the hunger increase. Anyway, picking up a ring that I can't identify and a wand. Wands are like spells, except they come in the form of a magical stick with limited uses. You don't know how many uses that wand has or what spell it contains until you use it so... time to find an enemy to test it on.
Something to remember: get a relatively weak enemy and make sure when you point at it, there's a wall right behind it.
◊ This way if it's a wand of digging, you find out via there being no wall behind the enemy.
Anyway, this wand put the hobgoblin to sleep, but more importantly:
It's auto identified as a wand of random effects. This is done just to make your life easier since the Crawl team doesn't like to make the identification game essential. This wand basically spouts random effects, some good, some not so good, and so you don't want to use it unless you've got no other option available.
Meet the giant ant. (Note from the future: Now known as the worker ant.)
◊ This is one of the more assholish early game enemies since it moves faster than you (or at least faster than most races), can poison you, can take a beating, and dishes out a beating. And the worst part is they're cowards so if they're low on HP, they just run, heal up, and come back later. The good news is, despite being an ant, you rarely ever see these guys in groups.
Meet the orcs.
◊ Unlike ants, they do come in groups. There's two types on the screen right now, the vanilla variety that are easy to kill and have no redeeming traits and the orc priest. The orc priest brings something new to the table that no other enemy has been able to do so far: smite. Basically, so long as it can see you, even if there's a wall between you two or a large wave of enemies, it can hit you with a damaging attack by basically smiting you. Most ranged attacks need a clear path but smite attacks don't and he can do a decent amount of damage and worse, nothing, not magic resistance, AC, dodge, or anything can lessen the damage. If you're melee, you get behind something and wait for him to get close to you, if you're ranged, you out gun him ASAP.
Luckily, though, Ganondorf gets a morning star out of that, with a base damage of 10, one more than the flail, so let's use that. Also see that ring and amulet we found? Can't identify the ring but the amulet auto identifies upon putting it on, it's an amulet of faith. Basically, this auto identifies itself if you're currently not an atheist and basically increases the rate at which you get piety (or favor of your deity). Since we have nothing better right now, put it on and get up the ranks even faster!
And with a few kills using it, we get a new power from Mak called Less Servant of Makhleb
◊. It basically summons a weaker demon from a place called Pandemonium and it's allied with you for a while before going poof. And by minor demon, I mean it can still handly kick the butt of all early game enemies, including aforementioned ogre. However, beware, this can backfire and summon a hostile demon, so use lightly and be ready to summon a second demon to defend you from the first. Also, note that it costs piety, which means using this too much makes Mak like you less. Minor destruction doesn't do that, so we can spam all day and refill by eating more stuff, this ability, however, is purely here for saving your tush when it gets in the fire. That being said, this update is getting a bit long so we'll get to see it at work another time.
