Crawl Relay Revival, 0.14 Edition

[NekoNekoRex]

I will try to get the next update out on time for once. Probably starting tomorrow though, since Friday is my busy day

[UncertainJakutten]

All right, I'll update the OP.

[NekoNekoRex]

Tewi Is My Least Favorite Touhou: It's Elf Halls

Well apparently it's up to me to continue Nekomimi Plays Crawl To The Exclusion Of Everyone Else, so I guess I'll go show people how to beat Elf.


HOW TO BEAT ELF

STEP 1: FIND REPEL MISSILES



STEP 2: LEARN REPEL MISSILES



STEP 3: ? ? ?



STEP 4: PROFIT



Oh wait, I'm supposed to actually write a thing, yeah.

Elf 2

So Waggy Saggy went down the Tewi lair and started exploring around, after learning the above important spell. I would take lots of screenshots describing the annoying tewis but totaku already did that I think.


Waggy Saggy stumbled across the home of a wizard, which is cool. The wizard died pretty quickly, though, leaving the house empty quite fas-


Oh my, there's apparently quite a lot more to the house then she thought. The wizard was making abominations!


After a lengthy battle all the abominations were cleared, and Waggy Saggy found a treasure room! It had a rare amulet which she discovered  granted magic resistance and summons warding! (which also grants negative energy resistance!) super great!


Shortly after she discovered a strange shapeshifting animal, obviously the dreaded Glowing Shapeshifter, who changes its form between powerful monsters, healing with each shift! Thankfully it didn't maintain the anaconda form long and was dispatched quickly.


Elf is occasionally also filled with powerful orc bands, which thankfully are not as big of deal as Tewis, but can still be annoying.


Waggy Saggy soon found the lauded Hat of the High Council! This amazing hat makes it harder to cast spells, but makes them much more powerful! Currently of little use to us, since we already have trouble casting spells as-is, but later might make for a powerful upgrade.


More treasure! A potion of beneficial mutation! Unlike that rotten meat Totaku keeps eating  *glares daggers*, this can only give us helpful mutations. Well, most of the time.


This caused Waggy Saggy to grow horns.... no more helmets for us, I guess, but we stun enemies when we attack them in close melee.

Elf 3

The next floor starts dangerous and doesn't get much better from there.


Although ample summons have turned the tides with ease.


I found a summoner at one point because i felt the need for a screenshot, but the floor mostly is uneventful.


A ravenous mimic! Oh my! these are dangerous mimics that grab you and poison you, so watch out!


We came across next a weapons shop and a big band of tewis, but we beat the tewis with some effort and the shop was junk.


However we did find this mighty book, the book of unlife! Full of powerful summoning necromancies, this could prove useful if we want to switch up our summons to different types.


Finally Waggy Saggy stumbled across the dreaded Elf 3 Vault, guarded to start by three dangerous tewi priests.


Waggy was quick to skedaddle from there. It seems we'd have to lure foes out into the open for better dispatching.


So Waggy pushed back...

And forwards

Each time with another undead army to combat the tewis

Having a lot of close calls and annoying battles

Having to defeat lots of annoying tewis and their summons.


Another master archer managed to put us dangerously close to game-over like Totaku, but we used a scroll of blinking and got away.


An orc in Elf Vault 3, that's rare!

Here's Waggy Saggy biting off more then she can chew. Resist Negative Energy saved us here quite nicely.


However we eventually cleared the vault quite nicely, and started exploring for treasure.


Books! Treasure!

Boots of the Spider! GREAT! These fine boots let us do jump attacks towards our foes, make us more stealthy, and let us cling to the dungeon walls!

We also found an interesting artifact trident which we probably won't use, but it's still interesting.

More books and amazing armor we'll never wear!

Probably the most useful book we picked up from here, lots of (as in, exactly one) useful ice spells we can use to hinder our foes and claim victory.

And now everything useful is piled up in the stash! Ready to go to Shoals!

I ended at aut 59000, it took awhile to kill all the tewis.

[Serela]

all these cool armors we'll never be able to use

but hey maybe the spellbooks are nifty

...you know, repel missiles would have been pretty dang nice for Snake Pits too >_>;

 (my personal runs have changed from "doing well but with depressing future prospects" until sudden death, to "living dangerously, but the future looks amazing if we can get there", I'm not sure which was better. I really can appreciate how awesome call imp was at least now, but man, draining my exp gain ;_; One of my conjurers will live to be able to keep up battlesphere eventually)

[Raitaki]

Wizard is pretty dependent on spellbooks, yeah. But if you get offensive books without book-giving gods somehow while worshipping other gods, it can be pretty great. I did a Qazlal run where I found a book with Fireball relatively early on, and it went great (melee fireballs all day err day!)

Roughly the only things in Snake Pits RM would make easier are Tesla and sharpshooters. Venom spit did pitifully little against our rPois and Regen.

[Serela]

Except sharpshooters are like, the worst thing as far as I could tell from all the deaths and almost-deaths in our relay there. (I may have died to a black mamba but it was mainly the fault of arrow doom; and two of the other deaths were sharpshooters)

edit:I pm'd NNR because this is just getting silly.

[NekoNekoRex]

Relax, I'm working on it. Pirate already knows the details of the run and all the useful shit is in the stash anyway, if it isn't equipped, so it's no big deal.

[Serela]

Now I can generally get into the deeper parts of the dungeon and the lair, so that's progress. Now I have to live with the reality where getting low on mp with anything nearby means blowing through emergency items at the speed of light. ;_; Sif Muna, please gift me blinking faster, or at least haste...! (Given that I get a good dose of Charm for battlesphere, haste gets online pretty fast, glorious)

But, the sadness as Fire Storm stayed at 100% failure rate with 10 spellcasting/fire magic and 13 conjurations and like 29 int ;_; Not that I expected to cast it yet, but still 100% failure... Lv9 spells are no joke (I saw how fast Waki could cast simulacrum and thought... erm I also thought that was lv7 for some reason oops). I died to a mob of spiders that was horrifyingly faster than expected, and plenty strong to go with it. Well, lesson learned, I guess.

Maybe I should try a fire elementalist and see how their starter spells pan out through earlygame and Lair. As a sidenote, el o el killing out-of-depth enemies with magical doom

[NekoNekoRex]

Level 6 and below are usually much, much easier to cast then level 7+ spells, once you're past 6 you need pretty serious investment to throw the biggest spells in the game.

Level 9 spells in particular take huge investment and you're guaranteed not to cast them without two runes and a source of Wizardry, and what amounts to basically considering nothing but investment in that spell group, no weapon training, leaving only some moderate XP investment in your defensive stats (fighting and dodging, as well as spellcasting for the spell slots)

if you run out of MP while playing Sif Muna, you're doing something wrong, by the way. Sif has her own MP regen ability, which you need Invocations levels to use well, but it's still there.

(Vehumet is a much better god though)

[Pirate]

Bit of a hurry, so no draws, sadly.






When Wakasagihime awoke from a brief rest, it was with the company of a certain friend.

"So we're going to get the barnacle-y rune..."

"We are."

"And there'll be loads of others like me..."

"There will be."

There was a pause as she looked at the other with gleaming eyes, "do you think we could be friends?"

There was a long silence as the spirit considered what to say.

"...I don't think so."

"Aww," the mermaid pouted a little in disappointment, but as always she had to soldier on for her ultimate goal. Already the lair pressed her on, a surprise that she noticed a little too late.



It was slaughtered, of course, and there began Wakasagihime's perilous trek into the unknown waters of the shoals.



The entry was a quiet one, but soon merfolk were alerted to her presence. Where she offered "love and friendship", they returned with javelins and stabby implements of death. Of course Wakasagihime couldn't just let them turn her into a pincushion, so down they went, and rose as obedient corpses to fuel her undead army; the perfect symbol of love and friendship, so she cheerily told her companion.



"Oh, oh, I see someone!"

Wakasagihime exclaimed, only to be shushed down by the spirit.

"Sneak up on him,' it urged, but Wakasagihime had other plans.

"Sure!" she spoke brightly, except her fingers were already glowing a bright purple, conjuring a gigantic ball of destruction that erupted into a devastating explosion. Unfortunately, short of being shredded into tiny bits of meat, the heavily armored fighter was merely knocked back by the force, and into...



...A teleport trap in the most unsatisfying 'fwip' of a sound.

"Boooo," the mermaid complained, deprived of an opportunity to pulp creatures.


Of course as fate would have it, several chunked merfolk later...



"Oh you're back, hi!" Wakasagihime greeted, except the other was in no mood to banter. Demons were brought from pandemonium, shielding their summoner from the mermaids devastating orbs. To make matters worse, her own army was decimated in a matter of seconds, leaving her alone and vulnerable.



"Oh."

At that point, she wisely listened to her friend's advice, swiftly abandoning the vicinity with a quick read of a teleportation scroll. Having swept through most of the first floor, it was only sensible for her to retreat downward...



Shoals, Level 2.

Another peaceful start, but more groups she came across, and more she enlisted into her army of skeletons and simulacra.





And then suddenly...



Unfortunately, as much as the mermaid wanted to try on this dazzling outfit, she was swiftly reprimanded about her compulsive hoarding, to which she reluctantly relented.

And thus, the second floor came to a close.



Shoals level 3

A more crowded place this time. needless to say Wakasagihime was in no position to fight well.


So she teleported....



and teleported...



"They're everywhere..." the mermaid lamented, zapping her teleport wand on herself for the third time...and a charm it was.



Back with a vengeance, the mermaid began sweeping the level clean of any living inhabitants.



Some hiccups along the way...but that too was rectified.

With few to resist her army, both shoals 3 and 4 crumbled under her.

Shoals level 5



Wakasagihime's ears perked as the jingle of coins caught her attention.

"A bazaar," the spirit commented.

"Best we find it then!" She answered joyously, beckoning her undead army to follow her.

"Wait-"



There was a pause as the offending skeleton rotated its skull to look at its master, now exasperated.

'Oh deary dear..."



Cautiously skirting through the outskirts of the deep waters...the bazaar she had been looking for.



...but not without resistance.





At that point Wakasagihime knew she was close to losing. Without mana or the health to fight alone, the obvious answer was to skittle daddle into the portal, taunting the others to follow her way.






Some disappointments, some a little more useful. Wakasagihime left with a bundle of scrolls and a cloak of the thief in her backpack, ready to engage the rest of the merfolk forces.

And finally..



"The barnacle-y rune!" Wakasagihime exclaimed, gripping the rune tight within her hands, only to quickly pocket it when it started to feel gross.

"And now! For the rest of the shoals! Onward!"



"Oh...Maybe not."

Turn end: 64194


Keynotes:

Wakasagihime has, wisely, retreated to lair: 3 to savor her victory. As you can tell, I didn't bother sticking around to mop up the rest of shoals. Not that there's anything interesting to be gotten from that mess of a branch.

There came a rude awakening when i realised I did not, in fact, have sublimation of blood, which caused a lot of trouble in my run. I was too lazy to go get it though, so someone on the next turn SHOULD get that the moment they start the run.

Not much else of note. I stopped spellcasting and was spending time to train dodging because Wasabihime was a little to squishy for my liking. Still inching slowly in conjurations though. The next person can decide what to do next.

[Raitaki]

NNR and NotaPirate still doing work, I see.
I'm back now, put me back on the list!

[Totaku]

Ok it's time for me to write up my report. This one's went pretty good honestly.
So when we last left off, Wakasagihime was in the Lair after she had completed the Shoals and now ventures deeper into the Dungeon of ZUN. She did go to Eintei to see if she could buy the Book of Death. Unfortunately, the book was sold for 700 gold... Wakasagihime only had 685...

Yeah.... not what I expected. So with that, the mermaid ventured into the next place she could venture to.... The Vaults...

Valuts: Floor 1- Guards.... Guards Everywhere

As the mermaid made her way to the Vaults, it wouldn't take any longer than a few moments before she ran into the first thing she mistook as a piece of equipment.

A ravenous Mimic. Unlike most mimics, ravenous ones are the toughest mimics you'll come across. They are usually capable of poisoning you and ensnaring you with thier tentacles. But otherwise, like most mimics, they're still easy kills.

Just as soon as she killed the mimic, she walks through the door only to find some Yaktuars and a Vault Warden.

Yaktaurs are going to be a common occurance in the Vaults. They are usually armed with crossbows and will shoot at you. Repel missiles is your friend. Otheewise, they're basiclly a beefier version of the Eirin yukkuri

The Vault Warden on the other hand is a much more serious threat. While they are one of many vault guards you'll fight here, they're known especially for being able to seal away the exits you can escape from when they are in the same room as you are. So if you confront one, you'll need to kill him off as soon as possible to make sure you can continue onward or escape.

And later she confronted an orb of eye. This thing can glare at you and cause you to become confused or stunned, otherwise, well... with high MR or proper resistance, you can handle it easily.


Then she confronted an Ironhand convorker, these guards can summon other monsters withing the floor of the vault to come to them and aid them in battle. Potentially they can be dangerous if they can round up enough monsterous allies, but otherwise not too threatening.

Then we found a formicide
"What is this thing doing here?" The mermaid questioned as she quickly slams the thing with ice.

To her surprise, the creature's body twists in shape as it dies revealing to be a shape shifter which left it's corpse.

You know what that means....
She eats the corpses and recived the following effects:
She get brown rugged scales +2 AC +3% HP
She loses her ability to blink (Spider boots will do)
She can now sense her surroundings around her a little bit
She also now slightly regenerate less HP around the presence of enemies. (Regenration should help in a pinch)

(As of this point, I'm officially done with Phase 1 of the "Operation Super Mermaid" the mutations have reached an equilibrium point as far as I can tell and the results are too haphazard to go on, so no more purple meat / mutation potion consumption.)

Then Wakasagi ran into a Yaktar captain a stronger variant of a standard yaktard, not much different though. But usually these guys come with a team of Yaktars.

Probably the most dangerous thing here was... the fire crab. These crabs are generally easy, unless you give them the chance to breath flames upon you. Which then they make the whole area burn with fire and it can HURT! Still they are not too troublesome if you're cautious.

Regardless of that, most of floor 1 was uneventful, since it was mostly Wakasagi performing hit and run stategy methods and surviving the floor... so she proceeds to the next floor...

Vaults: Floor 2 - O, the world of dharma is filled with light

On this floor it started off slow as well. Since Wakasagihime fought against other strange variations of creatures.


Such as the Eintei, a two headed giant that wields two clubs. Nothing too special...

Giant Orange Brains, probably the most dangerous thing present in this Vault. They by themselves are not dangerous, but every time they pulstate and you are in thier LoS, they will possibly mutate you with a bad mutation.

Vault Sentinels, another dangerous Vault guard who usually can blow a horn to wake up everyone on the dungeon floor and worse of all, mark  you, thus making EVERYONE in the dungeon floor to come after you for a short period of time. Thankfully this one was asleep and was killed quickly.

And Freezing Wraiths, a ghostly apparition that can drain your vigor and cause you to go slow as well as freeze you by touching you. Thankfully we had enough undead companions and good weapons to handle the situation.

Then finally before the end of the run the mermaid ran into a bunch of Orcs, trolls, and Byakuren....
Byakuren comes with a mass of followers that aid her in battle. She's basiclly very strong and tough and how  the power to smite you from the distance.


Thankfully dispatching her followers was easy. Byakuren however was tough, after several OoDs the mermaid was forced to run to recover. But afterward when she came back to locate Byakuren she was gone.... so with that the mermaid decided to take a brake...

So I survived the run and got the turn count rounded off to 70k.

For the next player my advice for you is simple:

1. Look for the Crypt it should be coming up soon
2. If you want the book of Death for Sublamination of Blood, we have enough money for it now go back to Einetei if you want.
3. With the current mutation set up, Wakasagihime is a tanky mage. so she might be able to handle fighting and magic (still best to keep your distance though.)
4. Regeneration and repel missles will be your best friends here. Make use of them.
5. If you find a cure mutation potion save it for later if the mutation effects become too problematic so we can attempt Phase 2 of "Operation Super Mermaid"
6. Byakuren is still on the loose, conserve you magic and prepare it so you can slaughter her quickly.
Anyways, at this point, I know what everyone has said and so I'm stopping the mutation consumption habits (Phase 1) since we are at an equalibrium point it seems as of now.

I need to prepare for Second step which will require a potion of cure mutation (in case we don't feel comfrotable under said conditions.) The plan will be to attempt to wipe out the bad mutations + the horns we got of Wakasagihime and hopefully keep most of her new scales intact. I would preffer doing it only when we get a resist mutation amulet though since we are still prone to getting bad mutations.

Also for phase 3, I recommend that if you find any potions of beneficial mutations as of this point, we stock them up now and use them after phase 2. The idea behind why I went to the trouble to mutate our mermaid was to gain as many mutations as possible and hopefully get as  many good as possible. Now it rides on wiping out the bad ones and then add MORE good ones for good measure.

I know people sometimes think my purple meat eating habits are a bad thing, but usually if done right, it can pay off if planned accordingly. But as it stands, we're at the limit (or maybe I just don't want to risk it any further)

Anyways, for the next player, the save is at the bottom like before. Go get and help Wakasagi venture further into the Vaults.

[NekoNekoRex]

Totaku, simultaneously ignoring the advice of absolutely everyone and ruining everything.

Good job

[Pirate]

"I know people sometimes think my purple meat eating habits are a bad thing, but usually if done right, it can pay off if planned accordingly."

Never have i seen or heard such misguided thinking. Done right? Planned accordingly? What are you going to do, have a magic pixie sprinkle lucky dust on you?

But you've hadn't heeded our advice the first umpteenth times. I suppose we're all glad you stopped for this relay. Just this one, at any rate.

[NekoNekoRex]

I have a secret for you Totaku. it's confidential information only known to Elite Crawl Players. Here it is, just for you:


THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO PLAY THE MUTATION ROULETTE.

[UncertainJakutten]

Ramus Serela are you going to make a post?

EDIT: Sorry, misread my notes.

[Serela]

oh shit my deadline was today wasn't it

I was really busy the last two days and forgot, I'll get it out tomorrow morning right after I get up. Sorry!

[UncertainJakutten]

Stop forgetting, people!

[Serela]

Okay now I'm super out of depth so this is going to assuredly be bad, but I'll try to be careful. It'd be nice to -not- die, for once. If only I hadn't made the ungodly silly mistake in the Lair and accidentally had Wakisagi rest as she was eaten alive ;_; Okay moving on, VAULTS

Most of the rest of Vaults 2 isn't very eventful, until Waki stumbled upon a room full of sleeping ogres and other such things.

This is actually after I killed half of them (mostly 2-headeds and ogre mages) and then remembered to take a screenshot. And the shining glory here was... Fulminant Prism still?! A couple prisms pretty much decimated them whilst Waki's undead army kept them at bay. Which is good, because the undead army was pretty weaksauce at the moment.

Of course, it's not very weaksauce after they add to it.

Um a tentacled monstrosity sounds vaguely bad news. Meanwhile, monsters approach me in the halls from three sides and slowly get picked off by the undead and some spearpoking from a safe one-tile-of-undead distance. And a few prisms.

...actually, this is starting to look a little bad. Especially how in the second image we've got 2 mp left. Well... our teleportation wand still has charges left...

This doesn't seem -that- bad, until you realize there's a conga line of enemies right behind them. Let's get out.

AND FIND A DRAGON well at least we rested firs-OH GOD NO GO AWAY NOT RIGHT NOW

crawl why is this possible, for me to fire at the dragon and it walks through the orb to come closer to me. I change tactics and summon corpses to Corpse Rot. They make a convenient wall that delays Byakuren and appear to mess up the Ice Dragon enough for a prism to finish it off. That went much better than expected.

...but she's still coming, so I summon more corpses and start animating to quick-harvest meat and summon an army with haste. Actually, I meant that figuratively, but that makes me realize I should totally cast Haste. ...but I only have 6mp so I'll be hard-pressed to Simulacrum any of my meat in the first place, so no haste. Welp, let's see how this goes.

STOP SMITING ME EVERY SINGLE TURN AUGH I should be prepping teleport right now and leave my minions to her shouldn't I. As of hp bar image 2 I decide "yes", use the tele wand, and start desperately healing myself. Things do go better (aka, less smiting) after I use a Wand of Healing though, so I manage to poison her with the venom glaive. Lookin' good. And then POOF.

I come back to find out, wow, they really did kill her while I was gone. If we had a nice teleporting spell, we could do that more often.

back to finish you dweebs off, do you dare to walk into my rotting corpses (...they don't. awwh. I can't even Orb of Destruction here, it'd hit a wall) After the ill-planned wall runs out, I haste myself, kite them with OoD and prisms, and then make a proper army to finish off the area with.

Loot:+2 Boots of the Scribe, SInv Stealth+ (We could keep See Invisible whilst switching to the other hat we have, I suppose)
Book of the Dragon (Meh) http://puu.sh/aAiKz.png
+0 +1 Glaive of Dragon Slaying (lol no)
I could have sworn there was more glowing glaives but I guess they just kept passing around the same one.

Well I think it's time for Vaults 3, now... especially if I can get things done a bit faster than the incredibly inefficient pace I've been pulling so far, I could clear most of it before turn end. (I'm half done already...!) We'll see.

First thing is there's a temporary Bazaar on V:3. That means I'll either miss it (likely if I don't find it sooner rather than later) or have to decide what's worth buying by myself. PREPARE FOR QUALITY DECISIONS

Hi Crypt entrance! BYE CRYPT ENTRANCE

Vampire Knight! I wonder if I should be afraid. Well, after seeing a spriggan defender behind it, I am just a little bit, but I've got plenty of army.

And then I don't have plenty of army anymore, and I go back to Haste-kiting with orbs of destruction. Now THERE'S a good problem solution. There's an uncursed runed quick blade but for us that's pretty unexciting.

NOW THIS IS SCARY. I was motivated to keep exploring rather than resting by the quickly chiming bell, but I wish I had a full mp reserve right about now. The fact that moving backwards has an Ironheart Preserver coming in from behind is REALLY BAD TIMING, because now the scary stuff is -way- harder to get rid of- and then a deep elf Inaba priest comes in from behind too, which wouldn't be so bad if only I had any spare firepower to take it out with. The fuck?! I queue up a teleport -before- I start to get my shit wrecked, because I know it's about to happen.

Crisis averted. Wait... is that... oh you have got to be kidding me. Well, good a use as ever for the potion of flight I spy in our inventory. Then I can use the escape hatch -upwards- to safely come back. Time to go SHOOOOOPPINGGGGGG

After frowning at the selections (I know the weapons and "gadgets" shop seem pretty boring, and I'm fairly certain we don't care about any of these books, but maybe we'd like some of the scrolls?) I try to ask NNR for shopping advice on IRC.

SHOPPING SUCCESSFUL, courtesy of NNR


Coming back to the hoard of scary things. Get some, Wiglaf. Except all my simulacrum start wearing off or getting slaughtered faster than expected, Wiglaf deals half of poor Waki's health in one hit and is as fast as we are hasted, and...

THAT IS A BAD TELEPORT. Even though we're hasted, the spriggan is terrifyingly fast, so I have to zap with wands of healing every single turn while waiting for the next tele to kick in- walking away will likely still get me hit, and Waki could die with a turn spent not healing.

I spend a minute feeling bad about how many resources just got used for no progress, before collecting my wits. I'll need a real army before I go back there. I also realize "frederick" is actually Miko. Guess she was just ahead of Byakuren, huh? Miko goes down to a huge simulacrum swarm, and the vampire knight teleports around before he goes to a cleared out spot where I OoD him. Much better.

And then, just as I'm about to cast Simulacrum to refuel the dwindled army, I accidentally drop the chunks instead of wielding them. This happens. Knowing how much damage wiglaf can do, this is a very, very unfortunate mistake. I opt to Haste and run off- I can't outrun him, but at least he's only on pace, not outrunning -me- like the spriggan could. Each time he buffs himself, I gain a space, so I barely manage to get out up some stairs without having to burn any consumables.

I make some skeletons, prepare simulacrum, and lead him back up the stairs where I've got my reinforcements waiting to take him out.

You have given me too much trouble, Wiglaf. It's time to say goodbye. >:C I prism him from the side until NOOO WHY, YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DIE. Whilst running from Wiglaf... again... I summon corpses, make a skeleton, and then Corpse Rot after wiglaf stands on one of the damned things. I make the tactical decision to -not- move so that he stands in the cloud (which he does) an-

OKAY OKAY I'LL MOVE FINE. However, his haste wears off, while mine doesn't, and I get the range on him to throw an OoD at him.

FINALLY. Let's finish off Vaults 3.


Found this with some Deep Elf Annihilators. Well, floor's cleared, let's just go check out that area that had the scary things to see if there's any good loot an-

It's one of these jerks. I've dealt with enough jerks for today, let's just OoD you in the fa-oh it didn't do that much of your health. Um. Let's do another. Very nearly dead now? Better. There's actually a -whole lot- of yaks, but I have a whole lot of Fulminant Prisms, so they die easy. Let's see, loot... Demon Whip of Flaming would be awesome if we were someone else... other good gear we don't care about... OoD the dumb vampire knight in the face twice and let the undead deal with him...

This Runed Demon Blade would also be really cool if we were someone else, but we aren't. And then... oh, I missed a door. So the floor -isn't- done yet. My turn, however, very nearly is. I'll see what I can do with 100 time left.

I can run away from this and let the next person deal with it, that's what. I threw OoDs when there was only one enemy and then a lot of backup came running.

 
And here we are. The enemies actually very nearly died to some prisms I left as I ran, but I was out of mp, so I couldn't finish them off safely. They're on the upper left portion of this screenshot somewhere, probably, although since I rested who knows where they've gone. I've cleared most of Vaults 3 as you can see from the map, but there's still a good chunk left on the top and left. I never touched our experience allotments, so they are what they are, and the spellbooks that we probably don't care about are still in the inventory if you want to drop them. More room for chunks is always good. I emptied one of our wands of healing and the wand of teleportation- sorry. So I ID'd the other healing wand after the last screenshot, and it's got 3 charges. We still have one scroll of teleportation left and 2 of blinking. It feels like we should try to get some method of escape other than "haste -> run" online at some point, but maybe people who aren't me get into bad situations less often >_>;

[UncertainJakutten]

Holy shit you lived Serela. Good job!

SO, as a heads up, no one should go directly to Vaults 5. Vaults 5 is a highly unhealthy place for poor Wakasagihime.

[Serela]

Hmm. We have 3 scrolls of recharging. Maybe I should have just recharged the wand of Teleportation. WELL, actually, I probably should have just used up the scroll at some point so it doesn't keep taking up space. And the empty healing wand is droppable since we have another. But these are just tiny nitpicks.

My actual question is... what is Wakasagi's goal after finishing Vaults 4? The only things I remember being left are Crypt, which I hear is pretty scary (although then again, from what I've heard, kiku makes it less a little less scary and letting summon armies soak up mummy death curses also makes it a little less scary)  and The Depths. We cleared all the other branches I remember existing. But I suppose we're strong enough to handle The Depths now, right?

e:Oh, checking the wiki reminded me about Slime Pits (also scary, and it doesn't sound like we have the right gear unless I forgot about it in the stash) and the vaults side-stop Hall of Blades. Although the question still stands, of course. A glance at the Depths enemies, compared to what I was fighting in the vaults, makes it sound not so bad.

[UncertainJakutten]

Crypt isn't scary at all. Tomb is scary...except for us it's basically a slow and careful slog through a bunch of bags of XP. We could easily get the golden rune as our third if we really wanted to. Basically, the recommended order is Crypts to the end, Depths to the end (arguable, by Depths 2 or 3 Vaults 5 should be comfy), Vaults 5, then either Zot to 4, Tomb, or Abyss, then the next one, and then the last one you didn't pick, then Slime, then Pan, then Hells, then win. A lot of this depends on whether we get rMut or not.

[Serela]

Various things that came to mind after going back to our stash to investigate; we could put on the Hat of the High Counsel for the spellpower boost and only suffer a couple % of extra failure on Haste/OoD (Although having them fail at all when needed would obviously suck hard, so there's always waiting until failure is nonexistant). And our cloak grants us SInv so we don't really need the SInv hat -or- boots. (So yeah, the boots I found are pretty useless compared to the ones we already had)

Spell levels! What do we still want? (6 spell levels open) There's a lot of books in the stash we could learn a spell from that's mildly useful, and then trash the book to forget it once it's done/we find something better. We sadly have no book for Freezing Cloud, but Poisonous Cloud also doesn't affect our summons at all and is 22% failure with 0 Air/Poison, so it could be gotten working well with trivial exp investment in those schools- and forget it after Zot since I don't think it's much good after? Alternatively, Metabolic Englaciation doesn't effect our summons either but I don't know how exciting it is for us?

Actually, if we're doing crypt/tomb really soon, it's probably a good time to pick up Dispel Undead, isn't it? How reliable is Kiku's mummy death curse prevention, anyway?

wait.

wait wait wait.

I haven't been wearing any armour for MY ENTIRE TURN WHAT. First thing the next person needs to do on their turn is PUT ON THE LEATHER ARMOR. How long has that been a thing!? I'm pretty sure it was like that when I started my turn! edit:Okay I looked and I apparently accidentally removed it in the middle of my turn somehow, (I... I don't know) in any case it still needs to go back on.

[NekoNekoRex]

We have the Cloak of the Thief? That's a pretty decent find, if we don't melee a whole lot. Free Fog on demand, and even higher stealth.

[Serela]

That did kind of come to mind, although it's got a 50% failure rate with 0 evocations. (I probably would have mentioned it before buying the scrolls of fog if I'd noticed though)

Honestly, my time spent stabbing things with a polearm behind summon walls mostly felt ill-spent. The cloak may have kinda been the reason, though >_>; There's admittedly nothing else to do on low mp but having an offense spell we can use through our summon walls seems like it'd be super great. Prism sometimes works out but it's awkward as it tends to be liable to blow up several of our undead too. This is pretty much the reason I've brought up Clouds more than once- maybe next time it's my turn if we're still in a relevant branch I'll just go sidetrack to the book <.< >.> But if no one dies we might be just about done with all those already, so.

OoD is still entirely glorious, of course. A couple times I kinda thought about picking up swiftness to make haste-kiting with OoD work against even more (also for just escaping), but that spell does have downsides, and not too many things are -that- fast...

(Or maybe I could just make sure to more often go into fights with tons of chunks on hand so I can just keep summoning and summoning and summoning. Kiku's pizza delivery op)

[UncertainJakutten]

so, Ramus, gonna post :|?

[UncertainJakutten]

OK, we're going to drop Ramus, going to NekoNekoRex again.

Three days, etc.

[Totaku]

I think UK forgot, but Rex mentioned that he's busy with life so it's now Pirate's turn! 3 Day ect.

[UncertainJakutten]

@s forgot "was at MOTHERFUCKIN' OTAKON"

Yeah, I should have posted something here though that I wouldn't be here this weekend. So yes, Pirate turn.

[Pirate]

Quick post here. Will update with actual post.

Ended at turn 80217. Mostly nondescript, indiscriminate undead smashing. Also lots of recklessness.

Not much advice. Dispel undead is your friend, control undead for packs. If you want to do the good ol' horde smasher, kiku likes giving high powered corpses such as dragons and titans inside.