Posted on 7.9.2004 23:21
Last updated on 20.9.2004 19:59

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2181. on the Ladder (of 18811)
748. on the ToME Ladder (of 3141)
8. for this player (out of 103)

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On 7.9.2004 23:21 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
He's never actually cast a demonologist spell. Why? Because he didn't find demon equipment worth bothering with for quite a while and now its become a badge of honor.

He got that nifty sword he's using as a princess quest reward all the back on BD 3! Right after that, he stole his boomerang and things have generally gone smoothly ever since.

He's going to be the first in a series of characters. First, a Demonologist who doesn't using Demonology, next a priest of Manwe (now THERE is a class that doesn't get used much), then a symbiant who doesn't summon and a warper who doesn't use magic for combat (except for actual warper spells). Sort of a ToME-style island of lost toys.

On 8.9.2004 00:57 dzhang@its.caltech.edu wrote:
Hey.

Just wanted to point out that all of those "firsts" aren't really. Both my character Darpax and Adoetha didn't use Demonology. Manwe is the only God I ever even consider worshipping--usually I go Manwe, or atheist. Xiaomei got symbiosis purely for life-share and teleport to (since she got Summoning too...).

Your warper might be new though. :P

You wanna try unique? Go for an Ent that only uses Boulder-Throwing for damage :P


On 8.9.2004 03:02 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
dzhang,

Howdy. Umm, I didn't actually say any of those characters would be the "first" of their kind, just that they are somewhat unusual builds. I merely said that Lobster would be the "first" of those characters.

As for the rest, ok, a demonologist who doesn't use demonology isn't terribly interesting, but I think you missed on the next two. The Manwe guy isn't going to just worship Manwe, he's going to be a Manwe priest. Check out the ladder and see how many you find.

Xiaomei got symbiosis, but he's not a Symbiant. The plan is to make the Symbiant who takes Symbiosis up to 25 primarily for the "teleport to" power. I actually chose Symbiant because its skill multipliers work better than Loremaster for my plan, but the fact that he's a non-summoning Symbiant does sound better than a non-summoning Loremaster.

The real trick is that I'm hoping to beat Melkor with all of them. The Warper is probably the most interesting of the lot, but I've already beaten Melkor with one (my only win over that peckerhead), so going first with him would be a tad repetative.

I've got all of their skill points planned out and they should all be capable of it, but that doesn't mean I'll actually be ABLE to get them there.

On 8.9.2004 03:02 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
Anyone who can win with a boulder throwing Ent is a god among mere ToME players.

On 8.9.2004 15:42 dzhang@its.caltech.edu wrote:
Er... Xiaomei's supposed to be a to be a "she"... stupid traps that change gender. They tempt me more than anything else to go in and edit my savefiles (but I didn't, as you can see).

Xiaomei = "little sister" in Chinese

Hm... yeah, you're right, Priests are a bit tricky to play. Main problem I see is the sheer lack of damage. I guess you have to get lucky with the FF quests.

Will be away camping for the next week. Best of luck to you during it. Maybe I'll try the boulder-Ent when I come back.

On 13.9.2004 01:10 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
Was just out of towner for a bit myself. Oh, I didn't know that about Xiaomei. Those gender change traps are truly stupid. IF there was an effect on gameplay, I could understand it more.

Re: FF luck, actually, this Demonologist required the most luck on FF quests, (3 different skills 3 times each). None of the rest will require more than 2 and that's pretty trivial with 98 quests.

On 17.9.2004 23:32 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
Ok, that's it for Morgoth. Worshipped Melkor the whole way, destroyed the Ring, and the scummed the Barrow Downs until he found a Melkor altar which allowed Lobster to resume his evil ways and made Morgoth a pushover.

The nastiest situation of the whole game happened during a fairly blah FF quest for Brown Thunderlords back on level 85 or so. Lobster was wielding Mormegil and it was cursed so he couldn't put it down, and was praying to Morgoth. Multiple Chaos hound breaths knocked Lobster down to about 1/4 hp, at which point Melkor helpfully decided to summon greater undead to support his loyal worshipper... except that Mormegil aggravates and among the various greater undead were not one, not two, but THREE Nazgul. Oh, and since Lobster had been stuck to Mormegil for a while he had zero mana left AND he was out of teleport scrolls. Almost croaked there.

Morgoth was thoughtful enough to drop the very first rod tip of healing he's seen all game. One of those would have been really handy earlier, but various other priorities have resulted in a magic device score of 1, so its not really too useful now.

The plan now is to go after Melkor, but I'm still pondering the best way to do it. No cloaks of air, and my patience with this guy is running out, so I don't plan on scumming for one. I brought Symbiosis up to 15 specifically so he could do the share life/heal-symbiote trick, but its questionable whether he really has the mana to pull it off. I'll have to do more testing in Numenor. As a fallback, he could bring the phial of undeath but I really wanted to avoid using it. I went for Melkor with it once before and it was REALLY ugly. By the time he got to Melkor the Black Breath and Morgothian curse had spread everywhere, and the poor guy was melting away before my eyes.

On 18.9.2004 12:14 artagas@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
nice winner, congrats. I was wondering though, why you dumped points into demonology if you are not ever planning to use it.
Also, wouldnt the LS of Dawn be a better choice of weapon? or the clone monster thingy is too annoying maybe. (i cant tell how often it happens, since i have never found it...)

On 20.9.2004 17:35 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
Ok, he's ready for the Void. I think the share-life/heal-symbiote trick isn't actually going to get him through, but at least it will cut down the amount of time he needs to use the phial of undeath.

He swapped the 3-immunity thunderlord armor and shield of reflection for Trone and the shield of Anarion. It costs Immunity to Acid and electricity and he has no resistance at all to shards, but gains +4 speed and stealth, and, more importantly, sustains for all stats. The phial is going to hammer his stats hard, and without sustains, I think its possible that even the huge bonus from the crown wouldn't be enough to keep him maxed out the whole time. That would be disastrous.

I think 17M exp is the smallest total I've ever had for a character who cleared all the dungeons and had 98 quests (ok, he skipped a FF quest for Master Q's, but that's it).

On 20.9.2004 17:38 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
Considered using the sword of the Dawn as main weapon for the trip down since he hopefully will fight almost nothing on the way down and it would have given him another +4 to his speed, but it would be trouble if he actually did have to fight something.

Additionally, he got Eringuin as a princess quest reward on level 3 of the Barrow Downs. Its been his primary weapon for virtually the entire game, and since its gotten him this far, it may as well go the rest of the way.

On 20.9.2004 19:59 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
Oh, the ignomy! Failed to even get through the Void.

The sharelife-heal symbiote trick worked for a few levels and had he been making faster progress through the levels, I might have tried using the potions of restore mana in hopes of making it, but the going was slow. Plus, Lobster seemed to be at 50-60% hit points all the time and that didn't seem like a good idea, so I switched to the Phial of Undeath. Things fell apart a few levels after that.

While void-gating to some stairs, something teleported Lobster to a big pack of demons and Gabriel. Mass Geno took care of the demons, but Gabriel kept summoning. Lobster never really had a decent ranged attack and everytime he tried to chase Gabriel down, he'd either teleport away or summon again.

Lobster finally teleported away, only to land right in the middle of a greater demon pit. Fortunately, he had the hp left for another Mass Geno, but a roving pack of ancient dragons forced him to teleport again, landing close to Gabriel and his summons, who immediately summoned greater demons.

Lobster mass geno'ed AGAIN (3rd time on the same level) but was pretty beat up so he teleported to get away from Gabriel and he landed right in the middle of another pack of demons. Splat.

I think the real problem was that his detection just wasn't good enough. His precognition was good enough to spot close by monsters, but it wasn't doing the critical LOS boost that's probably necessary for the Void and Nether Realms. More intensive stair scumming could have made up for that, but with the asphyxition initially and the phial's Morgothian curse later, I just didn't think he had time.

Oh well. He was my best melee character ever, and he never did cast a demonologist spell. Putting those points into mindcraft might have a big difference.

On 20.9.2004 20:13 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
Why all the points in Demonology? Because while the realization that he had never cast a demonologist spell slowly began dawning on me when he was about level 35, it wasn't until he was close to level 50 that I decided "If he's made it this far without demonologist spells, he can go the whole way."

More briefly, I didn't decide he wasn't going to use them until after the points were spent.

The sword of the dawn rocks as a source of good mods or as a weapon again uniques, but its awful as a regular weapon. I don't know the exact chance of cloning monsters, but I'd guess its around 25% per hit. When Lobster used it against tough opponents (that wouldn't die in one round), the sword would generally clone 2 or 3 new monsters after every round of attacks.

On 20.9.2004 20:18 Elliott946@aol.com wrote:
Oh, I forgot to mention his interesting pick finds.

Back in late Mordor, on consecutive levels, Lobster found nearly identical picks. The first was (+16, +7) with +1 to tunneling, speed, attack speed, and all stats except CON, plus life drain (yippee).

On the next level, he found a pick that was (+15, +14) with +1 to tunneling, speed, attack speed, and all stats except CON, plus life drain (also yippee). Amazingly similar.

My last character, a crossbow using archer, found two crossbows that were nearly identical as well. Strange.

On 22.9.2004 08:58 artagas@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
i say that is pretty bad luck.
good going for a vampire-gnome-nosummon-demonologist
anyhow.
*wonders if he would make it to 1000' with the same char*
r.i.p.

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