Ironman H/O paladin diary

[Moving Pictures]

Start with industry standard, point-based half-orc paladin. Forced descent, no recall, know flavours (lost too many ironman entries due to deep descent)
Starting gear: 4 food, 5 torch, 10 ClW, 15 PD, 2 oil, 10 arrows, 12 iron shots; Whip; leather shield; leather sandals; leather gloves, leather cap, cloak.
Action begins before stairs: Mercenary attacks me; kill him, 7gp, turn into 7 more iron shots. They can be thrown for damage, even without a sling, so why not?
Which gets me to thinking – at early levels, why aren’t critical conflicts, like this, or the scruffy cat, worth at least some XP?

1: 1-1. Yer industry-standard kill-small-things-get-stuff level. Robe puts AC to a respectable 16. Jackals take me to CL2. Kill stalking wild cat, floating eye by throwing balls.

2: 2-1 Welcoming committee is Grip. That takes me to L3. Cutpurses take me to CL4, and one drops two PD scrolls. Merci. Yeek dies, coughs up Beginner’s spellbook. Merci.

3: 2-1. Boring/unremarkable. Beat up on a kobold shaman who dropped soft leather armour with a rune. Hope it isn’t a curse, put it on.

4: (forgot to record): My gamble to buy both arrows and iron balls proves fruitful. Pick up both a bow and a sling (neither of great note.) Also nab wand of MM. No memorable nasties – just the usual cutpurse and scout stuff.

5: 2-1. Not going to argue: another beginners, and Word of Wisdom. Knock off Bullroarer, who drops a rapier (+3,+5) and [1,+5] gloves at the cost of a CLW. Blue jelly nearby helps identify armour as +1, resist cold.

6: 2-3. Find a lantern, do the drop-torches thing. Encounter Smeagol, who takes money. Hah. It matters not, creature of evil. A healer dies, and behind him an amulet – infravision. A purple mushroom patch dies, enough to go to CL 11.

7: 3- 2. Wandered around a bit, ran into a bit of trouble with some lemures and a rot jelly. Burned through two CLWs. Was growing of the feeling it was time to move on, when a trap door helped the process.

8: 3-1: Wormtongue proved a bit of a challenge, and requires a pair of CLWs and a CCW to eliminate – and this after depleting a whole whack of charges from a pair of magic missile wands. Key find is a wand of slow monster. Leave at CL12.

9: 2-2: Nothing amazing here, other than a a room of various cutpurses and a gallant. I’m a bit careless here, and blow a few CLWs as a result. However, with hit points now 120, the usefulness of CLW is closing. There are a ton of “detect invisible” scrolls. I leave them, as I’ve got a staff of the same name. Both are near worthless anyhow. (Would that the staff/scroll versions of this last more than one turn!) Have backups in potions of true seeing and a pair of mushrooms of second sight. In truth, if things get ugly, I’m liable to use those instead.

10: 2-2 . No welcoming committee, but I do find a gift – Chants and Blessings. Merci. I am now juggling items. Have amulet of rElec, but also have amulet of +3 infra. I decide to wear the latter, since not many things are going to kill me with rElec at this point, but the +3 infra gives me a strategic advantage of 50ft infra total. I waste a ton of time trying to find the next stairs down.