• DayInTheLifeArchive
• Day in the life of Sparky

Comments

89 blow/round? Is that a typo or some munshkinist item? (in Epilogue)

ElIott: Typo. I just fixed it. I couldn't remember if it was 18 or 19 attacks per round and I must have tried to type them both. He didn't have any one great munchkinish item, but he had a ton of really nice ones. Two randart rings that each gave +2 attacks, a digger than gave +3 attacks, and Moremegil itself was +3. The question was over a randart bolt he had that gave plus to speed, but I can't recall if it also gave an extra attack.

ReenenLaurie: My demonologist is still alive, but I have started a new one. I was running a thunderlord demonologist, which found the gothmog set early. However, the -20 luck made me really hate it. Also my blade was disenchanted to +10 +10. I was level 40, but I don't get much time.

Anyhow, after reading through LD's guide (insert link here)... I read that tulkas sucks... or that manwe's blessing is better. Also with manwe's blessing, I could counter the -20 luck of the blade before I go down a level. Another thing was that I read that angband is really bad (not gone there), and that monsters are very tough to hit. Now I am running rohanknight manwe demonologist, so I can focus on extra attacks rings or slaying instead of speed. On level 50 I'd have +20 speed naturally (assuming I have 35000+ piety) and probably a couple of others.

I've not had time to play at all last week, but I hope this week goes better.

A Day in the Life of Sparky, the Gnome Demonologist

Demonologists are an interesting class, combining aspects of summoning and thaumaturgy with swordmastery, yet there hasn't been a DitL for one yet that I'm aware of. As such, I thought it would be interesting to write one. I went with a gnome because there aren't a lot of gnome characters posted to angband.oook.cz, despite gnomes being an interesting race to play, unlike elves and half-elves of whom there also aren't many, but that's because (IMO) they are relatively boring.

The general plan with Sparky is to make him a steadfast melee fighter with great summoning and other Demonologist skills, combined with excellent mobility and "utility" offensive spells. The skillpoint plan is 50 in swordmastery, 50 in demonology, 30/31/33 in Conveyance (to get recall, void gates, and possibly turn teleport away into a ball), 20 in prayer (Tulkas), 20 in magic device, and the minimum necessary in Thaumaturgy to get a destruction spell, though wall creation and destruction along with a gravity spell, would also be nice.

Classical Gnome Demonologists start with stats of STR 14/INT 10/WIS 8/DEX 14/CON 13/CHR 7. I'll bump STR and DEX up to 21 (hopefully enough to get a second attack with the demonblade), INT up 2 points to 12, bringing spell failure down from 20% to 12%, and CON up 2 points to 15. Not enough for extra HP, but it will speed things up when he gets to stat gain. He will start with 17 HP/10 SN/9 SP and a +4 to hit and +3 to damage in melee combat. If he has good luck finding a useful musical instrument early on, its possible he will never use a projectile weapon. He's going to worship Tulkas and will be playing with 98 options quests and C,Z, Joke monsters all turned on. SParky would REALLY like to find the whole Gothmog set and will be spending quite a bit of time in the Sandworm Hole looking for the pieces. Turning the C monsters on makes the Sandworm Hole MUCH more interesting thanks to Shudde M'ell and the Chthonians. Hopefully sufficient cautionon my art will allow him to survive all the excitement. Time to get started.

I am playing a demonologist at the moment and, neither conveyance or thaumaturgy is skills normally available for them, and if you want all the teleport things I think mindcraft will serve much better. (Not recall though, but you save a inventory slot because mindcraft needs no book, but conveyance needs at least 1, so getting one slot on recall is even trade). Getting monster lore to 12 is also something you should thing about, to turn some of your high demons to companions.

You only need 39 in demonology to have summon demon summon greater demons. Though their level is only 75 with it on 39, I am still pondering whether I want 50 or 39. Level 45 gives demonblade a radius (which should be cool too).

ElIott: Sparky will be playing with 98 optional quests, so I hope to pick up both Thaumaturgy and COnveyance throgh FF quests. Interesting point regarding demonology skill. I had sort of assumed it was going to be my "buffer" skill - ideally I'd get it to 50, but if I needed points from somewhere because FF wasn't friendly, that's where they'd come from. Part of the reason I was shooting for 50 was to get demon charm up to a power of 300, which would give a 50% chance of getting level 150 demons. However, I've just noticed that demons that resist confusion cannot be charmed. Since just about all of the greater demons resist confusion, that's not going to work after all. 39 might be a more reasonable target, with the extra points likely going into weaponsmastery or combat.

Mindcraft is nice and Precognition almost makes it worth getting all by itself. However, Recall is the spell I really want out of Conveyance. Being able to swap places with monsters is incredibly useful, plus it works on no-teleport quest levels (Thaumaturgy's Destruction, which works like a poor man's version of mass genocide can also be used on quest levels). If FF is incredibly generous, I might try to get Mindcraft up to 5 for the sense traps.

The adventures of Sparky, Chapter 1

Darn. Only 1 attack with the demonblade. Well, if the Bree Thieves' dagger is any good, he'll use that instead, and his demonblade will go into storage for a while.

Sparky steals a ring of +3 dex from the Black Market and then fails to steal a demonhorn, getting himself booted. Darn, I really wanted that Demonhorn and thought the ring would improve my chances. The extra dex isn’t enough for an extra attack with the demonblade, either. When on Berserker, he’ll average 32 damage/hit with his demonblade. Time for the Thieves’ Den.

Set to Berserker/Running, and the thieves don’t last long. Tulkas gives his first quest on the very first one. Long way SE of Bree and quite some way SE of Minas Anor. Hmm, sounds like its in Mordor, perhaps. The monsters should be easy, so Sparky will go look for it when he’s at 8th or 9th level. The thieves drop a dagger and a rag, but also a bunch of gold. Sparky also grabs a couple of corpses for hacking. Sparky makes it to 6th level. 18 points into swordmastery and 7 into demonology. He’s at 79 HP/35 SN/13 SP and 108 piety.

By the time he’s done selling everything, he’s up to 460 au. The dagger proves to be (+4, +6) so he’ll use it instead of his demonblade. He gets 4 attacks with the dagger and will average 114 damage/round if all 4 blows hit. That’s better than I hoped.

The plan is to do 1 or perhaps 2 levels of the Barrow Downs, go find the temple, and then come back and finish the BDs. Sparky spends all his money buying magic mapping scrolls and heads into the BDs.

Barrow Downs 1 – Princess Quest for Baby Gold Dragons – A good feeling

Yikes. That’s a rough way to start off. I don’t think Sparky will even be able to clear this level without making at least level 10. On the other hand, they should cough up quite a bit of gold. I wish I had at least bought some CCW potions. I wasn’t expecting a quest for something that might actually kill him. Sparky first has to deal with a pack of grid bugs which go down easily and provide some comic relief.

After some hunting he finds the dragons. Ok, there are only 5. Maybe this won’t be so bad. The first one puts him up to level 7 and the third to level 8. 3 points into swodmastery, 4 into demonology and 3 into prayer. Flail/Trident/Metal Shield? I’ll take the shield. Sparky will do one more level and then move on.

Barrow Downs 2 – Princess Quest for Smeagol – Strangely Lucky

Wow, how can I turn this down? I wish Sparky had a ranged attack. Maybe he’ll find something searching the level. It looks small. First Sparky sees some novice rogues, then some yeeks. All go down easily, and all drop suits of padded armor. He’s in the 3rd room of the level and already has 4 suits. Lots of rubble on the level, which is a pain since Sparky didn’t get a shovel. A wide variety of monsters here. Fruit bats, kobolds, icky things. More novice rogues. Made level 9 killing a clear icky thing. 2 into swordmastery, 1 into demonology, and 2 into prayer. Humph. I found where the room must be, and its entirely blocked by rubble. Grr. Ok, I’ll try the level again.

Barrow Downs 2 - Princess Quest for Smeagol – Looks like any other level

Jellies and spiders in the first room, and then there’s Smeagol in the second room. He does his usual dancing around, and by switching between Berserker and Coward, Sparky was able to hit him pretty hard while avoiding being hit (and robbed) in return. Smeagol goes down without landing a blow, dropping his ring and a boomerang. Longsword/main gauche/full plate armor? I’ll take the main gauche. Maybe it’ll be better than the dagger. That was quick, so I’ll try one more level, then head back up.

Barrow Downs 3 – Princess Quest for Zogs – Looks like any other level

Perfect. This should be fast, and Sparky finds them almost immediately. Ick, a lava room. The lava does far more damage than the Zogs, but the Zogs are stranded in the corners, and by periodically resting, he’s able to kill the Zogs without trouble. He makes level 10 killing the last one. 1 point into Swordmastery, 1 into demonology, and into prayer. Leather cap/Leather armor/Rapier? I’ll take the cap. Oops. A torch was destroyed by the lava. Only one left. Have to be careful getting back out. Take the steps down (Princess Quest for Pink Horrors. Ooh, that’s out of Sparky’s league.) just so he can come back up not surrounded by lava.

The hike back up features lots of ants and cenitipedes, and nearly turns tragic when his last torch burns out while hunting for the stairs on level 1. However, I tried equipping Sparky’s leather cap and it turned out to provide light, so he was able to find his way out after all.

Back in Bree, the main gauche is a (+5, +6) shocking main gauche and it replaces the dagger, since he still gets 4 attacks with it. The shield is resist acid, Smeagol’s boomerang is of Aman, and the leather cap is a randart. Wow, that all worked rather well. I’ll be curious to eventually find out Sparky’s luck. Trying on Smeagol’s ring, its clear something is giving him see invisible, and I believe weapons of Aman provide resist fear, so no more need for that starting ring of rFear.

After selling off everything he isn’t using (or that demonblade) he’s at 1,800 au, so its time to gear up properly. Sparky buys potions of CCW, scrolls of teleport, a lantern and oil, and some extra food. No diggers for sale in Bree, so off to Gondolin to look for diggers and more scrolls of mapping. No scrolls, but he buys a shovel there. He’ll stop in Lothlorien on the way to look for more scrolls of mapping and get the Beastmaster’s quest.

The trip to Lothlorien is uneventful, and the beastmaster asks him for a forest troll corpse, which might be the easiest beast master quest I’ve ever gotten. No problem, ma’am. Be right back with that one. Nothing worth stealing in the Black Market.

Checked into Minas Anor looking for more mapping scrolls. None to be found, but a pair of gloves of power (+4 STR) were at the BM, so Sparky got himself booted trying to lift them. Oh well, it was worth the risk. Enough playing around. Time to find that Temple. There it is. Right in the middle of Mordor. Lets give it a try.

Lost Temple 1 – Can’t be all bad.

Yuck. An arena level. LOTS of space to search for the stupid relic. Well, the monsters shouldn’t be bad, at least. Lots of small kobolds, wandering aimlessly trying to find me. This should be easy but tedious. Ooh, the greater hell beast is here. Perhaps I’ll take a shot at him. Got him! Made level 12. The open space combined with him not being able to see me made him wander all over, and seemed to discourage him from teleporting away when he got into trouble. 4 points into swordmastery, 2 into demonology, 2 into prayer (that’ll take it to 5.0, I hope to get it the rest of the way to 20 using god quests), and 2 into magic device. Killed a bunch more kobolds while methodically sweeping the level and it was all hugely worthwhile when the relic piece proved to be in a room right in the middle of the level. Cool. Guess I should have waited on killing the Hell Beast, but it hopefully won’t be an issue. Time to head back to the Barrow Downs.

After a quick hike back to Bree, Sparky picks up some empty bottles and scrolls of recall. Time to finish exploring the Barrow Downs.

Barrow Downs 4 – Princess Quest for Pink Horrors – Very Good feeling

Pink horrors are a pain because they cause fear and confusion, plus create blue horrors when they die. There are only 6. I’m pretty sure Sparky can take them. Almost immediately I see the horrors and some snaga, both well out of LOS, and I just realize that in the temple I was seeing kobolds that were inside rooms. Looks like I’m getting detect evil from something. That’s handy.

The very first one takes Sparky to level 13 and the voice of Tulkas is already back. Jeez, Tulkas, feeling a little impatient to get this relic back? Its some ways SW of Bree and NW of Minas Anor. Probably on the way to the Sandworm Hole. That should be easy enough. The monsters will be much tougher this time, so I’ll probably wait until the Barrow Downs are done.

Sparky is killing the pink horrors in one round and the blue horrors that spawn take up room, so the pink ones can’t mob him. They confuse Sparky and beat him up a little, and he has to drink a CCW potion but he manages to beat them, making level 14 killing the last blue horror. 3 points into swordmastery, 2 into demonology, and 5 into magic device. He’s now up to 158 HP/75 SN/ 18 SP and 108 piety. Sabre/Small Sword/metal cap? I’ll take the small sword for the 1 in 1,000 chance its Sting. Nope, not Sting, but it’s a defender which is pretty cool.

Barrow Downs 5 – Princess Quest for Novice Mindcrafters – Good feeling

This should be easy. Sparky kills a few grey icky things looking for the princess and finds his first fountain. CCW! The RNG is very kind. After a few more ickys, Bullroarer comes charging down the hallway. Poor guy never knew what hit him. Getting invisibility early almost makes the Barrow Downs unfair. He drops a bastard sword, a sling, and a boomerang. Simon the Weak shows up right afterwards and since he does sanity damage, he can be really dangerous. Fortunately, he goes down just as fast as Bullroarer. This main gauche really does good damage. Lets see, vs non-electrically resistant opponents it’ll do an average of 39 per hit, so about 155/round if he lands all 4 attacks. No wonder stuff is dying so fast. Sparky finds another fountain, but its infra-vision so he leaves it.

Numerous snakes and jellies later, Sparky finds the Novice Mindcrafters. The mindcrafters immediately blind Sparky, but I discover that even on Coward, he will kill them in one round if he’s attacking in their direction, so I don’t even bother to drink a CCW potion to repair the blindness. Quarterstaff/leather cap/Khopesh? Hmm. I’ll go with the Khopesh.

Barrow Downs 6 – Princess Quest for Skeleton Humans – Very good feeling

This should be easy, plus it looks like a small level. A pack of Nibelungs puts Sparky up to level 15 (I love those guys. Lots of rings.). Sparky puts 2 points into swordmastery, 1 into demonology, and 2 into combat. Finally find the skeletons and they’re in a lava room. Yuck. Some tedious tunneling around lets Sparky avoid the worst of the lava and he finishes the skeletons without too much trouble. Leather armor/shortsword/battle axe? Hmm, his weapons are pretty decent right now, so I’ll go with the armor.

Barrow Downs 7 – Princess Quest for Sanddwellers – Luck is turning

It’s a big level. Hopefully they’re evil or this could take a while. Sparky runs into a big bunch of crypt creeps first. I hate those guys. Travel in big groups and can curse and summon. Fortunately, they’re in a twisty corridor and no more than 2 or 3 have LOS at any time. A lucky void gate take Sparky right to the Sanddwellers who die quickly, taking him to level 16, while dropping lots of stuff. 1 point into swordmastery, 1 into demonology, and 3 into combat. Just one more level and Sparky gets an extra attack. Boots/dagger/lead-filled mace. Hmm, the dagger could be a ‘thanc, but Sparky needs boots.

Barrow Downs 8 – FF quest for Clear Hounds – Like the look

I love FF quests for Hounds. They come right at you, saving a lot of tedious searching around. My worst even was for Lurkers. Immobile, invisible, and look like the ground even if you can see invisible. You basically have to bump into each and every one. That was awful. The hounds definitely take their time, until I realize that they can’t see Sparky. He swaps of his ring of invisibility, and the hounds start coming faster.

Sparky finds a group of kobolds and its Mughash’s escort. Mughash is the first monster in a while to last 2 rounds against Sparky, but he still doesn’t cause much trouble. The 9th hound puts Sparky up to level 17. 2 into swordmastery, 1 into demonology, and 2 into combat. Another pack of Nibelungs and cave orcs confirm that Sparky now gets 5 attacks/round with his main gauche. Finally got the last one. Divination/Monster-Lore/Spirituality/Mindcraft. Mindcraft is the back-up in case FF isn’t generous with Conveyance, so I’ll go for that. Sparky’s pack is full, so he recalls back out.

Sparky has a bunch of stuff to ID, so he heads to Gondolin to do it all at once. Hmm, boots of free action, studded leather of resist fire, and the khopesh is slay orc, plus lots of good items. Should be pretty good gold, at least. 8,345 au when all is said and done. Its really nice having a little gold, finally. Its also finally time to get some equipment *ID*ed.

- The boomerang of Aman is +1 WIS, sustain INT, resist fear, see invisible, and sense evil. It also slays demons, undead, and evil, but Sparky doesn’t plan on throwing it anytime soon.

- The defender small sword is +4 Stealth, sustains WIS, free action, rBase, rPoison, rShards, levitate, see invisible, and speed regeneration.

- Finally, the metal cap ‘Anatared’ [3, +8], provides light (radius 2), rElectricity, rDark, and see invisible. Kind of a disappointment, but the light power totally saved Sparky’s butt, so he’ll always think kind thoughts about it.

The big question is whether rCold, rPoison, rShards, levitate, regeneration, and a boost to stealth are worth cutting Sparky’s damage output 20-30%. For the Barrow Downs, probably not, but definitely yes after that.

Barrow Downs 9 – FF quest for Hairy Molds – Luck is turning

Well, I’m glad for the FF quest, but jeez, Hairy Molds? And 20 of them, too. It’s a pretty big level, but Sparky finds 3 right away, so I feel a little better. Brodda pops up shortly afterwards and manages to last 2 rounds. Forgot about the ring of invisibility. Back on it goes, and a pack of Skaven takes Sparky up to level 18 and drop his first rod-tip. 2 points into swordmastery, 1 into demonology, and 2 into combat. I manage to spot a death sword before running into it, and the skaven dropped a bow and some arrows, but they both prove to be cursed, so no more missile weapons for Sparky for a while. The rest of the level is pretty tedious, except at the end when a group of RNGs got out of control and the last two hairy molds were sitting right in the middle of a big room full of them. Sparky managed to wade in and take them out, but it was a bit exciting. Plus, one RNG dropped a dwarven lantern, which will save Sparky from needing to worry about oil ever again. Combat/Divination/Weaponmastery/Anti-Magic? I’ll take combat. That’ll finally get Sparky over 11.0 and into super-pseudo-ID mode.

Barrow Downs 10 – Princess Quest for Air Hounds – Excellent feeling

Air Hounds? They’re 10 levels out of depth showing up here! That defender small sword would be really handy right now for the rPoison. The level is small and Sparky finds them right away. They seem to be asleep, which is odd for hounds, but he kills the first one before they even move, taking him to level 19. 1 into swordmastery, 1 into demonology, and I’ll save the rest for later. The hounds are fairly painless. Not one breathes, and they don’t last long. Halbert/Guisarme/Metal Shod boots? I’ll go for the boots. Sparky is still wearing his boots of free action, but since Gnomes have free action inherently, they aren’t very useful. Down the stairs and back to Bree.

The rod-tip proves to be trap location, which will be very helpful later. The metal shod boots are… definitely an upgrade. Metal shod boots of speed (6, +5) (+5)! That’s extraordinarily useful. I have a feeling Sparky may be one lucky gnome. His improved pseudo-ID starts kicking in, and that makes IDing stuff much easier. The temple has a scroll of remove curse, so he gets rid of the cursed bow and arrows he’s stuck with, and equips the defender sword.

The adventures of Sparky, Chapter 2

Time to get that second god quest. Sparky picks up a few mapping scrolls, buys some more food, and starts hunting for the 2nd temple. Oh, that was quick. Its just SW of the Maze. Sparky descends into the lost temple…

Lost Temple 8 – Like the look

Oh, just level 8? I thought it was going to be worse than that. It’s a fairly small and crowded level level, I see nibelungs, crypt creeps, and hill orcs already. Sparky makes level 20 killing a skeleton kobold. 2 into sword mastery, 1 into demonology. The rest he’ll save.

After disposing of those groups, he runs into nurglings and cave orcs. A red naga bites him, knocking off a point of strength, which is enough to cost him an attack. He’ll need to get that taken care of before trying the other levels. After that, its Orfax, son of Boldor, hanging out by himself. I guess he antagonized his escort so much they abandoned him. Three blows/round was enough to kill him in two turns, so I guess Sparky’s offense is still doing ok. Finished sweeping the level. Nothing here.

Back up the stairs, then back to Bree. No restore STR potions in Bree. Hmm, quick trip to Gondolin which does have one. Sparky’s pack is pretty full, so its all ID’ed an sold. Nothing notable, but it provides a few thousand au. Back to the temple.

Lost Temple 8 – Your luck is turning

Oh, no. Another arena level. Sigh, time to start searching. Scattered orcs give way to a pack of crypt creeps and what looks like Vort and her escorts. The crypt creeps and their summons do some damage, finally collapsing just as the kobolds arrive. Sigh. Vort herself isn’t a problem, but her 10,000 accompanying leveled archers and shamans are. Sparky plays peek-a-boo, killing a few, hiding and resting, then venturing back out to kill kobolds. Finally, he has to teleport away when things get too hairy. At his new site, he’s met by Nibelungs, cave orcs, and a leveled death sword (spotted that one before it chopped Sparky up). Then a pack of snaga, then what looks like a boss pack of orcs. This is a busy level. On the bright side, Sparky’s piety is now over 1,000, so praying to Tulkas will occasionally help in melee.

Looks like Sparky made level 21 in there somewhere. 2 into Swordmastery (which gets it over 25.0, giving another attack), 1 into Demonology, and the rest are saved. Looks like it was just mixed orcs after all, no unique to be seen. After more searching, Sparky finally makes it back to where he ran into the big group of kobolds, and they are joined by Snaga. Man, that was a lot of frigging kobolds. Sparky makes level 22 finishing them off. He puts 1 point into swordmastery, 1 into demonology, and saves the rest. His skills now are:

Combat: 13.3 Weaponmastery 9.2 Sword-mastery: 26.4 Magic: 4.7 Magic Device: 9.0 Demonology: 26.0 Spirituality: 2.7 Prayer: 7.5 Mindcraft: 1.0

Rats. Another group of crypt creeps spawned while Sparky killed off the kobolds. The level is almost clear when another big group of Nibelungs show up, followed by another big group of crypt creeps and a pack of cave orcs. Ok, that’s enough. Sparky is out of here.

Lost Temple 9 – Good feeling

I’m just glad to be gone from that arena level. Looks like a generic, mid-sized dungeon level and that looks good to me. While just starting his search, he sees a big pack of novice rogues, but then, mercifully, individual monsters. A baby red dragon, then a dark elf. That’s much nicer. Lots of sabers and cutlasses in this dungeon. Piety is approaching 3,000 after hacking through a group of cave orcs and passes it hacking through a second group.

A room right in the middle of the level is apparently the nerve center, since Wormtongue is there, with packs of crypt creeps, cave orcs, and snaga. I’d love to get Wormtongue, but Sparky might get overwhelmed there. Just trying to get there enmeshes Sparky in battle with a bunch of baby dragons, nagas and cave orcs. Finally, he fights through them and takes out Wormtongue’s army a few at a time, then finally Wormtongue himself. Whew. That was tough. Finally, the level is searched. Not here.

Lost Temple 10 – Very good feeling

Another mid-sized generic dungeon level. After hacking through a few groups of orcs, the piece is sitting on the ground just a few rooms away from the stairs. Spark grabs it and recalls back out. Perfect timing, his pack is full of “good” or better items.

Back in Gondolin, Sparky IDs everything. Nothing terribly special. shocking boomerang, a dagger of *Slay Undead*, some armor with rCold, and a (+10, +10) dagger. It all gets sold, though he hangs onto a wand of noxious cloud. Back in Bree, the BM is open again, so it looks like Sparky has really spent a lot of time wandering overland.

Time to go after poor immobile Old Man Willow.

Old Forest 13 – Market

Cool. It’s a market with all the shops clustered in a big open room in the middle of the level. Lets see what’s here. A rare jewelry shop, a recaller, a regular jewelry shop, a polearm smith, an expensive black market, a footware shop, a dragon hunter, and a potion store. The dragon hunter has a suit of multi-hued dragon scale mail which would be great, but its about 200k au more than Sparky can afford. Instead, he goes into the potion store and buys the STR, DEX, cure insanity, speed, and enlightenment potions that are for sale. The rare jewelry shop has a +4 amulet of trickery that Sparky can’t afford, but maybe with his brand new extra point of DEX he can negotiate a 5-finger discount… and he succeeds. As an added benefit, the +4 to dex from the amulet gives him another attack with his sword. A few mugged townsfolk cough up a pair of rod-tips of trap detection. Including the one at home, he’s now got 3, but still no rods. Sparky runs into and accidentally kills Hobbes the Tiger before he has a chance to spout any pithy witticisms.

Old Forest 14 – Good feeling

Sparky finds the stairs right away.

Old Forest 15 – Any other level

Took quite a bit of searching to find the stairs, but other than a small group of hellcats, there didn’t seem to be anything there. Found a bunch of un-IDed mushrooms along the way, and tried to ID them by throwing them at hellcats. Don’t think it worked, but it was entertaining.

Old Forest 16 – Superb

Oooohhhhh. Lets see whats here. Probably a stupid jelly pit. Hmm, doors are breaking open. Not too many doors in the Old Forest. Probably a vault somewhere. Sparky spots it by the clump of monsters that turn up on his detect evil esp. That light blue ‘p’ is probably Wormtongue, otherwise looks like a bunch of black ogres and maybe a cultist. A little trap detection would go a long way right now. Sparky finds the opening and sees a mixed group of firehounds and hellcats greeting him. He makes level 24 killing a dark elven priest that’s supporting the initial group of monsters and Tulkas chimes in about another relic piece that some way SE of Bree and NW of Minas Anor. By the Paths of the Dead perhaps? Hmm, Sparky must have made level 23 sometime earlier. 4 points into swordmastery, 2 into demonology, and he saves the rest.

Oh no! Its not Wormtongue (I forgot that Sparky had already killed him), it’s the Variant Maintainer! His clouds of RNGs are one of the great banes of my low lever characters. Sparky ignores the other monsters, runs straight at the Variant Maintainer, and succeeds in both killing him before he summoned anything and getting himself surrounded by hellcats and yeeks. Sparky takes some damage but isn’t in serious trouble. Now he can see into the vault itself. Its mid-sized, and full of woodspiders and black ogres, with some novice rangers, light hounds, and Gorbag throw in. Nothing looks especially dangerous, so Sparky will give it a try. Sparky wades straight in and kills them all. Only Gorbag takes more than one round to kill.

The treasure is pretty modest. Sparky finds a demonhorn, but its cursed. Back to hunting for the stairs. Stray energy vortex takes him to level 25. 1 point into swordmastery, 1 point into demonology, and he saves the rest. Finding the stairs proves easier said than done. After searching ¾ of the level, Sparky finally finds some stairs down, along with a mixed group of Gnome mages and Ewoks. Cuddliness all around!

Old Forest 17 – Very good feeling

Sparky finds the stairs right away.

Old Forest 18 – Superb

After scouring 2/3 of the level, Sparky finally figures out what’s superb about it. Boldor is here with an escort of about 25 master yeeks. That’s more summoners than Sparky feels like taking on at once, though he does have that wand of noxious cloud… Sparky takes a couple shots into the crowd with the wand and another at his own feet to knock out the summons that start piling up around him. From the cries, there were a lot more than 25 yeeks there, and most of them are dead within a couple of rounds. Boldor escaped the initial carnage, but Sparky tracks him down.

While tracking him down, Sparky spots a concentration of evil monsters above and to the left of where he fought Boldor. Hmm, a vampire and a wraith or wight. Maybe there’s a vault here after all. Sparky finds it, but he lost some strength to a trap and can’t manage to break through the granite wall. Hmm, maybe there’s a void gate that leads inside somewhere. While searching, he runs into the Borshin and kills it. No luck. Can’t get in. Oh well. There will be other vaults.

Old Forest 19 – Strangely Lucky

Time to recall back out.

Back to Gondolin for mass ID. Nothing particularly interesting. Sparky will hand onto the junkart that activates for Destruction and the ring of Nether resistance, but that’s it. I notice the entrance to the temple as Sparky heads back to Bree. Its just SW of the entrance to Moria. It will likely be harder, so I definitely want Sparky to finish with Old Man Willow and possible the Orc Cave, before trying this one. Time to recall back to the Forest

Old Forest 19 – Any other level

Sparky finds the stairs right away.

Old Forest 20 – Any other level

Sparky again finds the stairs right away.

Old Forest 21 – Any other level

Lots of hounds for Sparky to play with. Mixed fire and dark. Guardian naga and a daemonette of Slaneesh. Nothing very difficult.

Old Forest 22 – Market

Cool. Two in one dungeon. This time, the shops are scattered around the (fairly small) level. Found a hafted smith first, then a footwear shop that’s selling a pair of +7 boots of speed. The shopkeeper is asking 340K and Sparky only has 41K. It would be criminal to let these go, so Sparky will take a shot a filching them. Nope, booted from the store. But the RNG makes up for it because right after leaving the store, Sparky finds a climbing set! Cool. This should be extremely useful in the Orc Caves. Wow, looks like that’s it for shops. How paltry. I guess they don’t have much customers down here.

Old Forest 23 – Good feeling

Sparky finds the stairs right away.

Old Forest 24 – Any other level

It’s a really small level, but Sparky has to go through a pack of ewoks and pack of half-orcs to get there. Where are the Forest trolls? Part of the reason Sparky went to the Old Forest was to find a forest troll corpse for the beastmaster, and he hasn’t seen one yet.

Old Forest 25 – Good feeling

A swarm of ‘H’s fly up as soon as Sparky enters the level. One is a shantak which makes it a couple levels out of depth. Otherwise nothing noteworthy. It’s a small level, and Sparky quickly blunders into Old Man Willow. OMW drops the Phial of Galadriel and some randart rusted chain mail. Doesn’t look encouraging. He clears the level until his pack is full, making level 26 by killing a 4-headed hydra, then he recalls back out.

Back in Gondolin, the Magical Mishmash he found decreases INT, so its gone. The randart rusted chainmail is [14, -8], yet it isn’t cursed. It sustains STR, WIS, and CHR, and gives rFear and rSound. That’s not the lamest armor I’ve ever seen, but its pretty bad. It sells for less than 5k au, only slightly more than the 3.5k au he got selling the dwarven lantern (the Phial is Sparky’s new light source).

After buying some more food, Sparky heads out for the fable Orc Caves. Sparky really isn’t especially interested in killing droves of orcs, he just wants to dive down to the bottom two levels as quickly as possible. As such, these levels will probably be pretty brief.

Orc Caves 10 – Very good feeling

Sparky finds the stairs right away.

Orc Caves 11 – Any other level

Sparky finds the stairs right away.

Orc Caves 12 – Any other level

Sparky finds the stairs right away.

Orc Caves 13 – Any other level.

Sparky has seen a lot of orcs, but hasn’t fought or even picked up anything yet, but that changes here. Sparky starts off in the moat surround one of those 4-room pits and sanddwellers are already pouring out of one of the rooms. Sparky chases them back into their room and finishes them off. Looks like one of them dropped a demonblade. A 7d6 demonblade! Cool. It’s the Demonblade of Gothmog. Sparky’s ultimate goal is to get all 3 pieces of the set and wear them to the end. This is a big piece of achieving that goal.

Orc Caves 14 – Any other level

Sparky found the stairs quickly.

Orc Caves 15 – Any other level

Found the stairs quickly, but only because the wolves and clear hounds in the way died quickly.

Orc Caves 16 – Any other level

Just a few snaga and a baby red dragon in the way.

Orc Caves 17 – Any other level

Sparky again found the stairs quickly.

Orc Caves 18 – Any other level

A pack of hellcats and a Quylthulg were guarding the stairs, but Sparky got the Q before it could summon and the hellcats went fast.

Orc Caves 19 – Any other level

An arena level. I didn’t know the Orc Caves had those. After hacking through a big pack of winter wolves (invisibility continues to pay enormous dividends), Sparky runs into an RNG, but can’t quite get to it before it splits, and splits again, and again, and soon Sparky is running for his life back to the stairs.

The adventures of Sparky, Chapter 3

Orc Caves 18 – Superb

Hmm. Perhaps Sparky will check this level out a bit more closely. A big line of novice rangers? That’s not very superb, nor are the Ewoks that follow them. Its not a big level, so the source of the Superbness can’t be far. Ah, Forest Trolls at last! Nicely lined up in a hallway. Where have you guys been hiding? Sparky plows right through them and hacks some meat off a corpse. The room after them has a pack of sleeping Nurglings guarding a fountain. A speed fountain! The RNG is in a good mood, it seems.

Pack after pack of monsters. A bunch of novice rangers are in the next hallway, and the room after has more forest trolls, then wood spiders in the next hallway, and more forest trolls and Ogrillions in the next room. This is one crowded level and there even MORE forest trolls in the next hall way. This must be the Orc Cave’s Forest troll breeding center. Sparky has now killed 44 forest trolls on this level alone and he’s only halfway through it. Can a level be superb just by sheer weight of trolls? Uruks in the next room, followed by wolfhounds of Flora, then black orcs, then MORE forest trolls. The level is almost done when the source of superbness is found – a jelly pit. Bleh. Sparky’s pack is full from all those troll kills, so its time to recall out.

Back in Bree the BM has a potion of experience for sale, but at 93k its out of Sparky’s price range. Perhaps some theft… nope, Sparky’s again booted from the Bree BM. Darn. I thought with a 29 DEX Sparky’s chances would be pretty good. Not good enough, apparently. Now on to Gondolin to ID everything at once.

Hmm, a potion of WIS for sale at the Gondolin BM. Something tells me the RNG won’t look kindly on another theft attempt, so Sparky buys it. Nothing interesting in the loot and it only sells for a few thousand au. Its night, so Sparky takes a nap, feeling disappointed.

Checking back in on the BM the next morning, Sparky regrets his WIS potion purchase because there’s a nice randart shield with many high resists for sale. He could have afforded if had he not bought the potion, but now he’s 25k short. He’s only got about a 1 in 3 chance of stealing it and I’d really like to get it. Getting the shield is important, because not only does it cover some important holes, Sparky’s sword is his primary source of resists right now. Though I don’t want to switch to Gothmog’s Demonblade right now (the -20 to luck will make it harder to find the other pieces of the set), the defender sword doesn’t have enough punch to take out Shudde M’ell or the monsters he’s likely to encounter in deep Mirkwood and he’ll have to switch then.

I know how to raise the gold. Sparky will do the Gondolin dragon quest. Look out dragons, here comes Sparky!

Ok, detect evil shows no ancient dragons, so this hopefully won’t be bad. First up, a mature black dragon. It gets in a couple claw attacks, but goes down in two rounds. So far, so good. Sparky tries hiding behind some rock, waiting for more dragons to approach, but a gold dragon sneaks behind him and breathes. Fortunately, it’s just a baby, but Sparky is stunned and one of his speed potions shatters. Can’t just sit there and take that. Its time to go on the offensive.

Sparky quaffs a speed potion (putting him up to +23 when running) and darts around the rock to engage a blue and a black dragon that are approaching. The black dragon is mature, and goes down in two rounds. Sparky switches back and forth between coward and berserker, only using berserker when attacking. The blue is also mature, and goes down in 2 rounds as well. Another black dragon is coming up. Ooops, it’s a Mature multi-hued, but Tulkas helps out with a couple blows and it goes down in 2 rounds. The young dragons go down in one round, and a young bronze takes Sparky to level 28. Hmm, he probably made level 27 killing forest trolls and I didn’t notice. 5 points into swordmastery, 3 into demonology and he saves the rest

Another mature multi-hued goes down in 2 rounds thanks to Tulkas’s help, and I think Sparky is going to be ok. He takes full advantage of his speed, charging straight at dragons and generally killing them before they get a chance to attack. Whoa, simultaneous breath attacks from two mature blue dragons knocks him down to about 150/295, and convinces Sparky to use the terrain for cover, but he’s able to take down the rest of the dragons one by one.

Now for the clean-up. There’s a lot of stuff, but Sparky picked up some ID scrolls, and he uses pseudo-ID to sort them into “no”s (cursed and average), “maybe”s (good), and “yes”s (excellent), and then ID’s the rings, amulets and “maybe”s (no need to ID the “yes”, because Sparky will definitely be taking them anyway).

Sparky ends up with four excellent items: a halberd of slay orc, a metal cap of wisdom, a fiery boomerang of accuracy, and a thunderlord coat of resist lightning. The thunderlord coat beats the leather armor of resist fire he’s currently wearing (though both are redundant with the resists from his sword), so that gets swapped in. Everything else is sold… and he’s still a few thousand au short. Sigh. Ok, he’ll try to steal it… and he succeeds! Yea! Between the shield and the new thunderlord coat, all the resists from his sword (and then some) are covered, so he can swap it out if he finds a better weapon or decides to use Gothmog’s sword.

Sparky now jogs to Lothlorien to drop off that hard earned forest troll meat. The beastmaster is pleased, teaching him corpse preservation and monster lore, and gives him another quest to go get an ancient red dragon corpse. Ok, that should be doable. The Lothlorien BM has a discount potion of STR and a demonhorn for sale. This randart metal cap has been great, but its time to swap to a real demonologist headgear. Sparky buys both and his STR is now up to 22.

The description for the demonhorn says its 6 feet long, but he wears it like a helmet. How does that work, exactly? Is it hollow at the base, so he can wear it like a giant cone-head? Or does it have a strap and he’s supposed to wear it like a prosthetic horn on his own forehead? Neither seems likely given how big it is. Well, Sparky appears to know how to wear it, so I won’t worry about it.

Sparky then quickly does the Lothlorien house quest (he’s now faster than the wolves and the wargs show up on detect evil, so it takes about 30 seconds), and hikes back to Bree where the troll meat and the randart metal cap go into the Mathom house. He also picks up some more ID scrolls and empty bottles, and then recalls back into the Orc Cave.

Orc Cave 19 – Excellent feeling

Sparky recalls right into the middle of a mixed group of Ogres and wolves, and it looks like there is a wyvern to the north. Sparky takes care of the Ogres and wolves and heads for the wyvern while looking for the stairs. The climbing set makes getting there easy, and it turns out to be a baby multi-hued dragon, not a wyvern. No stairs, though. Maybe there are stairs over by those cave orcs to the west… nope and they dropped 5 daggers. Maybe one is useful. Ah, there are the stairs, past the orcs.

Orc Cave 20 – Strangely lucky

There’s a lightning ball in the room with Sparky, so he decides to have some fun and try summoning a demon to take care of it. Alaka-Zam! A level 61 Dweller on the Threshold. Go get him! Hmm. Not much action so far. I don’t think its mobile. If Sparky had symbiosis, it would be handy to carry around, kinda like the junior varsity version of a silent watcher. The lightning ball wanders up to the watcher which tries to paralyze, terrify, and confuse the ball, none of which affect it. After waiting for 5 or 6 turns, the Dweller finally acid bolts the ball, killing it. Humph. Not very impressive. Sparky dismisses his demon and right where the demon was sitting is a trap door. Sparky falls through it and down to death watch. An unimpressive performance all around.

Orc Cave 21 – Deathwatch – Filled with evilness

Ah, the great Deathwatch. Nothing here except the uniques are worth much exp, so Sparky will try summoning another demon to run interference, while Sparky grabs the goodies. Sparky rests for a bit to recover his mana, and tries summoning again. A level 61 Homunculus. I didn’t know those things were demons. Not exactly overwhelming, but lets give it a chance. Sparky names him “Roger” after the Homunculus in Hellboy. Testing Roger out on the initial monsters, he seems to be able to kill Snaga in one round. Lets try some tougher opposition.

In the first big room, Sparky goes for Lagduf, leaving the rest of the room to Roger. Umm, wow. Sparky is at speed +13 and runs straight at Lagduf. Roger kills all but three of the various orcs in the first half of the room and still almost beats Sparky to Lagduf. I’m impressed. Sparky goes and gets Thalkettoth, while Roger cleans up the room and any orcs in the surrounding area. He’s efficient and very fast.

Ok, I gotta know. How tough is Sparky’s new little buddy? Well, according to Angband.oook.cz, a basic Homunculus is level 15, Speed +0, with 8d8 hp, 32 AC, and two attacks 1d2 (with paralyze) and 1d10. Checking out Zizzo’s handy spell spoiler for leveled monster effects, I see that raising him to level 61 (+46 levels) will, on average, give him +294 hp, +28 speed, +69 AC, and 7 extra “dice” on each attack. So, Roger probably has about 330 HP, +28 speed, 101 AC, and two attacks that do 8d2 (plus paralyze) and 8d10. Not bad after all. Lets go kill some orcs, Roger!

Sparky spends the rest of Deathwatch at a dead sprint trying to keep up with Roger as he tears through the orcs. Golfimbul and his escort finally stop him, knocking Roger down to 6 stars, but then Sparky catches up and together they chop up Golfimbul and company.

Monster Lore for demonologists only has a multiple of 0.5, so I don’t think Sparky will spend the points to get it up to 12 (which would allow him to create companions from pets). Sadly, that means Roger goes away when Sparky recalls back out, but Sparky will always remember him fondly.

Sparky recalls back to Bree, but since the house is now open in Gondolin, it becomes the new base of operations. IDing everything reveals little of interest other than the big three pieces from Deathwatch. A dagger of slay animal, a katana of slay animal, and a [5, +5] demonshield lead the list.

*ID*ing the big three reveals:

- Thalkettoth +3 DEX, +3 speed, rAcid, rShard, rNexus

- Cammithrim Light, Free action, and sustain CON

- Maedhros +3 DEX, +3 INT, +3 Speed, slays trolls and giants, free action, levitation, and see invisible

Wielding all 3 gives Sparky a speed of +19 and 8 attacks/round with Maedhros, but leaves him without rCold or rLightning. Wielding just Maedhros gives him a speed of +16, but he still gets 8 attacks, so I think Thalkettoth will stay at home for now, along with the defender small sword. With the defender, assuming all attacks hit, Sparky would average 312/round. With Maedhros, he’d average 432/round. That makes it easy. After stowing his gear, Sparky recalls back to the Orc Caves, hopefully to finish them and face Azog.

Orc Caves 21 – Strangely Lucky

A lizard king greets Sparky on his arrival. A good royalty warm-up for the coming battle with Azog, the Uruk Hai. Sparky finds the stairs right after that.

Orc Caves 22 – Any other level

Sparky appears in a hallway full of snotlings and quickly dispatches them with his new equipment. He then runs into a room with 3 autorollers. Wow, Azog is really serious about dungeon cleanliness. After a few dragon worms, there’s the man himself with what looks like a baby black dragon for company. Sparky marches right up to Azog and starts swinging. After two rounds, Azog is fleeing, but his dragon buddy is blocking his path. Two rounds later, both are dead. Sparky scoops up the stuff, and recalls after killing a few more monsters to fill his pack.

Back in Gondolin, nothing is interesting except the Wand of Thrain and a junkart dropped by a sand-dweller. The junkart is for decrease INT. Bleh. He hangs onto a wand of noxious cloud and the wand of thrain, but sells everything else. Time to stock up on scrolls of mapping and go get that relic piece.

While shopping for scrolls in Bree, Sparky is accosted by a group of pickpockets. He summons a level 61 manes which cleans them all up in 3-4 rounds. I like this spell.

Just in case, Sparky also brings along a few speed potions. I don’t think he’ll need them in the temple, but it never hurts to be prepared. A short walk later, and Sparky is peering nervously into the entrance to the temple. Hopefully it isn’t too tough.

Lost Temple 16 – Good feeling

Sparky starts right next to a level 32 Owlbear. He’s nervous, but kills it in one round. Maybe this won’t be too bad. It’s a nice, small level, though a big pack of orcs with a dark green ‘o’ in the middle suggest there’s at least one unique here. Lets bring in a demon friend. *POOF* Its Roger! Welcome back, old friend. We’ve more orcs to kill.

Turns out to be a smallish arena level, and Roger just goes nuts. He’s darting all over the screen, chopping things up. Takes him longer to kill each monster than in Deathwatch, but he’s still much faster than them and vary effective. The dark green ‘o’ proves to be Ufthak of Cirith Ungol, and Sparky’s noxious cloud wand just manages to make his big pack of orcs mad. Unfortunately, a real disaster occurs when a level 32 RNG wanders into the fight. It manages to split before Sparky sees it, and the noxious cloud wand just doesn’t do enough damage to kill them quickly. If they just don’t split for a couple of turns, Sparky can clear them. Otherwise, well, hopefully the piece isn’t on this level…

Sparky catches a big break when 3 of the 4 RNGs cluster near some snaga sappers. The noxious cloud kills a sapper who starts a chain reaction, killing the rest of them. The combined sapper explosions/noxious cloud is enough to take out all 3 RNGs, and Roger manages to get the last one before it splits. Ufthak himself then kills Roger. NO! Farewell, speedy companion.

Sparky starts picking off the orcs by himself, but the multiple shaman keep casting spells on him, and when he’s down to about 60% HP he starts moving towards cover. As he ducks behind the rubble, he sees a terrible sight. The RNGs weren’t all dead. As he starts hitting them with noxious clouds, he realizes that more are coming from off the screen. They’re taking over the level. Sparky reads a teleport scroll, hopefully he’ll be able to check out a little more of the level just in case the piece is here somewhere.

He reappears in between packs of blue horrors, black ogres, and sand-dwellers. Sparky manages to kill the Sand-dwellers, but he really needs to hide and rest. While fleeing the Ogres, a pack of novice rogues wake up. This is one crowded level, but Sparky manages to find a building with an awkwardly placed door, making it difficult for the monsters to find him. He successfully rests and summons another demon. A level 61 blue horror, this time. Lets see how he compares to Roger. Not very well, as it turns out. He kills the first two level 32 novice rogues, but dies to the third. Humpf.

Despite the lack of help from the horror, Sparky manages to finish off the Ogres and rogues, plus packs of lemurs and sanddwellers that show up. Finally, he catches up with Ufthak and manages to kill him, avenging Roger. He also manages to scout most of the level. The RNG’s really only took over a corner of the level, and Sparky saw part of it, so it really doesn’t look like the piece is here.

Lost Temple 17 – Good feeling

Hmm, a pack of half orcs. Sparky is pretty damaged, but manages to kill the half-orcs without too much trouble. These guys are really worth a lot of piety. Sparky is already up nearly 2k.

Looks like a mid-sized generic dungeon level, this time. That’s fine with me. I really hate those Tulkas arena levels. More individual monsters, this time. Some forest trolls, but then a pseudo dragon, a dark naga, an imp, and a glutton ghost. A few black orcs, a dark elven priest, an illusionist. This is a much happier level than the last one. Sparky’s even managed to heal while exploring. 2/3 of the way through the level, he hits his first snag. Some turbo-growing undead masses are choking off the rest of the dungeon. A group of ogrillions seem to be paring them down, but it’s a losing battle. Sparky summons a demon (getting a level 61 Imp) and starts hacking at the masses. The imp lasts about 30 seconds before getting steamrolled by the ogrillions, but the undead masses gradually are cleaned up. Sparky is pretty beaten up, though his CON is only down 2 points. He cautiously uses his invisibility to pick off the ogrillions one at a time, and manages to avoid getting swamped by staying at the edges of the pack. Finally, they’re all gone and he sorts through the booty.

And that’s it. There just isn’t much else on the level. Probably the quietest Tulkas quest level I’ve ever seen. Back up the stairs.

Lost Temple 16 – Excellent feeling

Another mid-sized generic dungeon level. Looks more crowded than the last one, though. Evil ESP is already picking up Uruks, Nibelungs, and novice rogues in addition to the zombie owlbear in the room with Sparky.

Lots of zombie monsters on this level. A zombie orc was mixed in with some black orcs and a zombie hippogriff showed up near the end. Robin Hood showed up in a pit-like room, and I hate dealing with him without ranged attacks . He’s pretty fast and can steal stuff and teleport away. Its annoying in itself and makes it harder to kill him. Sparky will try knocking out the uruks with him (his merry men?) first, then summon a demon and let it do some damage, then swoop in and finish him off.

Sparky tunnels off a corner of the pit room, and takes out the Uruks one at a time while Robin hood is trapped behind an obstruction in the middle of the room. Once they’re all gone, its demon-time. A level 61 quasit. That should be interesting.

Ok, here comes Robin Hood… where did quasit go? I think it blinked away. Doh. Ok, nevermind. Sparky will do it himself. Sparky gets in one round of attacks, then has to protect his money pouch and Robin Hood blinks away. Hmm. Hopefully he stays away.

Nope, he’s up in the next room at half-health with some ogrillions. His new merry men. Ok, this time Sparky gets him, though not before Robin Hood creates traps. Even in death, he’s annoying. Fortunately, that’s it for the level, and the piece isn’t here. 3 down, 2 to go.

Lost Temple 17 – Luck is turning

Another mid-sized, generic dungeon level. Sparky sees black orcs, nibelungs, and a baby dragon. Doesn’t look too bad. Three skeleton nibelungs just in the first group. That’s pretty rare.

Things rapidly take a turn for the worse. After fighting through a long line of novice rogues in a hallway, the room beyond is filled with Mirkwood Spiders. Sparky is mobbed as he enters the room. He tries to run for the corridor, but those things hit hard leveled up to 32 and he finally teleports to safety as a bright, red “1”. Whew. Have to be more careful with those things. He made level 29, at least. 2 into swordmastery (up to 33.6) and 1 into demonology (up to 33.0), and he saves the rest.

Sparky makes it back to that room and discovers that almost all of the spiders were dead, and he finishes them off, assisted by his new buddy, a level 63 pink horror. The new horror helps, but when a second wave of Mirkwood spiders kills him, he explodes into a pair of hostile level 34 blue horrors, which is less than helpful. I’ll have to remember that. Fortunately, he was alive long enough for Sparky to regain his mana, so a level 63 Quasit takes his place. Hopefully he’ll be more useful than the last one.

A group of cave orcs makes an ideal test. The quasit sticks around, and manages to kill 5 or 6 cave orcs before finally falling. Not ideal, but adequate. Ok, last try of the summoned demon training grounds. A flamer of Tzeentch? A what? Well, I have no idea what it is, but it just annihilates things and leaves big patches of lava behind. He’s not as fast as Roger was, but he slices through rows of leveled Black Ogres and Trolls without breaking a sweat. Sparky just has to avoid the lava.

Following the flamer, Sparky makes fast progress through the level, and finally runs into Ulfast in the last room. No relic piece here. Must be on the last level, but Sparky’s pack is full. Time to recall out and ID stuff.

Oops, recall only takes Sparky to above the temple, and he left all his food in the temple. Fortunately, a few jackals are close by and are quickly turned into jackal-burgers.

Back in Gondolin, Sparky IDs everything, and there are quite a few interesting items. A frozen dagger (+16, +18)!, a frozen main gauche, a main gauche of slay orc, a tulwar of extra attacks, a broad sword of slay evil, a vampire long sword, and a spectral pike. Hmm, none worth swapping, but they should generate a boatload of cash. Unfortunately, the weaponshop in Gondolin only goes up to 10k. The weaponshop in Bree is 30k, so Sparky runs over to drop off the higher end ones and then comes back, fully loaded with ID, teleport and recall scrolls, and ready to finish the god quest.

Lost Temple 17 – Any other level

It’s a big, big dungeon level. Well, better than an arena level, at least and evil ESP doesn’t pick up anything at all. Lets go find that relic piece.

1/3 of the way through the level, the first monster, a quasit, shows up. After that, the packs arrive in force, Ogres, Black orcs, manes… oh wait. Those aren’t manes, those are pink horrors. A whole room full of pink horrors. Yuck. Killing them all, and the blue horrors they spawn is going to take a while. May as well get started…

But it turns out Tulkas was just testing Sparky! The relic piece was sitting just outside the room with the pink horrors. Sparky gives his thanks to Tulkas for being merciful and quickly recalls out of the temple. Sparky picked up about 10k piety finding that piece. Tulkas must be happy.

Sparky’s offense is shaping up nicely with Maedhros, so I think its time to go after Eol. To get Eol, he’ll need a couple of scrolls of mapping, a few potions of speed, and a bunch of scrolls of confuse. Those scrolls of confuse monster aren’t easy to find. Sparky finally picks up 4 in Minas Anor, along with a ring of damage since Eol won’t be impressed with Sparky’s invisibility. Since Sparky is in Minas Anor anyway, he decides to clear out the haunted house. Evil ID only sees Ghosts and Spectres. No nightmares or phantoms, so this should be fairly easy… and it is. Sparky runs through, killing everything as he goes. Nothing lasts more than a round against him, even when he’s on coward. Ok, now back to Gondolin.

Gondolin has another potion of Wisdom for sale. Hmm. Last time Sparky bought one, he regretted it the next day. Well, what are the odds of that happening again? Sparky buys it and his WIS is now all the way up to 11.

Enough stalling, lets get Eol. A scroll of mapping shows Eol’s level to be pretty big and full of twisty passages, which is perfect. Nothing is harder than fighting Eol in a big open room where he can rain summoned monsters on you all day. Lots of traps, but that’s expected. Have to remember that Eol isn’t actually evil, so he won’t show up on Evil ESP. When Sparky gets close to where I think Eol is, he’ll start reading scrolls and quaffing potions to get ready.

DOH! Overran detect traps and set off a trap of Calling Out. *POOF* Eol appears right next to Sparky and starts whacking him. Sparky hits him back and Eol blinks away. Sparky quickly quaffs a potion of speed and reads a scroll of monster confusion while Eol returns. After a couple more rounds of melee, Eol tries to flee, but Sparky is at +26 speed and uses a double move to cut Eol down as he triest to run. Sparky is down to about 50% of his HP, but that wasn’t nearly as hard as it could have been.

Sparky makes levels 30 and 31, and Tulkas is back already. Boy, he’s sure impatient about this relic. I don’t think I’ve ever had a character get the quests this fast before. A long way SE of Bree, and a long way NE of Minas Anor. Perhaps by Rhun. Sparky puts 3 points into swordmastery, 2 into demonology, and saves the rest. He’s now got 31 points saved.

On the way back out of Eol’s level, Sparky notices a purple trap he hasn’t seen before. Lets try setting if off, maybe its acquirement. Nope, fast Quylthulgs. Sparky dispatches the surprisingly slow “fast” Quylthulgs and the trolls they summon, and then sees another one. Hmm, this one IS acquirement. It produces a thunderlord coat. Lets see what it is… an elven thunderlord coat of resistance. That’s really redundant, but certainly nicer than the armor Sparky’s currently wearing. Gathering up Eol’s treasure, there’s no 3d5 longsword, so it looks like he gets Anguriel instead of Aranruth, which is too bad. The rest are all just “good” items.

*ID*ing the thunderlord coat of resistance shows that it resists base, plus rPoison, rNether, and rChaos. That’s one nice suit of armor! All he needs now are rDark, rBlindness, and rDisenchantment and he’s completely covered. The lantern is good and bad in that it’s +3 to INT, WIS, and CHR, but doesn’t give any other powers in addition to the basics of light and magic mapping.

Sparky has a couple of enlightenment potions stored away, so maybe he’ll try the first couple levels of the new Tulkas quest next. If its too deep and he runs out of potions, he’ll come back and finish it later. Sparky picks up those potions from Bree, buys more food and goes hunting. As expected, its right next to Rhun.

Sparky peeks his nose in…

Lost Temple 20 – Superb

The level isn’t as bad as I feared, but the feeling is horrendous. The relic piece is probably in the middle of a greater vault guarded by Anacalagon or something. Ok, time to use an enlightenment potion. Ok, it’s a spiral vault, and the piece doesn’t seem to be on this level… unless it’s under those forest trolls in the next room. Looks like Sparky can handle level 40 forest trolls, even their chieftains and priests. That’s comforting.

So, should he check out the spiral vault? How much could one look hurt? He picks the least heavily trapped spiral arm and starts working his way in. So far, not too bad. A few snaga, a couple of ur-villes, but nothing bad. A dragon worm sits in the middle, and Sparky kills it, then survives a big charge of monsters in from all 4 spiral arms. Fortunately, they can only come up one at a time, the turns prevent very many from getting LOS. When things finally get too heavy, he teleports out. A short sword of Gondolin, a pike of slay giant, and some gauntlets of free action, plus a few good items. Well, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Ok, that’s enough fun. Back up to the surface and then back in.

Lost Temple 20 – Any other level

Looks like a big dungeon level. Sparky quaffs his last potion of enlightenment and… no relic piece. Ok, that was fun. He’ll try the last 3 levels later. For now, Mirkwood awaits.

The adventures of Sparky, Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Sparky moves his base of operations over to Lothlorien and heads into Mirkwood.

Mirkwood 11 – Princess Quest for Stegocentipedes – Strangely lucky

This should be easy. Mapping shows where they are, Sparky goes and gets them. Cloak/Iron Helm/Leather Armor? Sparky goes with the cloak, and its Thingol. Who needs the Phial for good luck?

Mirkwood 12 – Princess Quest for the Rat King – Strangely lucky

Its an arena level, which, as Sparky spots the Rat King, he realizes is a really bad place to take on summoners. But Sparky is fast and lucky, and the King doesn’t summon. Shield/Beaked Axe/Guisarme? Shield, definitely. rLightning. Feh.

Mirkwood 13 – Princess Quest for Vampiric Mists – Any other level

It’s a tiny level, but packs of novice rangers, nibelungs, and snaga still manage to get in the way. The mists themselves are pushovers. Dark sword/chainmail/rhino hide armor? Well, in theory the darksword could be Mormegil, so lets try it. Nope, just *Slay Undead*.

Mirkwood 14 – Princess Quest for Black Dragon Flies – Good feeling

The flies are easy, but one gets out and rather than attacking Sparky, it turns and runs, forcing Sparky to chase it down. Shield/Rhino hide armor/catapult trap? Sparky will try the armor this time. Resist cold. Bah.

Mirkwood 15 – Princess Quest for Green Dragon Flies – Luck is turning

Weak monsters and only 5 of them. Very thoughtful. Catapult Trap/Beaked Axe/Dagger? Sparky takes the dagger. Spectral. Hmm, good resale value.

Mirkwood 16 – Princess Quest for Red Molds – Good feeling

An amused feeling might be more accurate. They go down very quickly. Club/three piece rod/ring mail? Sparky takes the armor. Resist fire. The rewards have matched the challenge of the quests so far – puny. Sparky recalls back out.

Back in Lothlorien, Sparky IDs everything and it’s a fairly valuable haul. Thingol proves useful as well: +3 DEX, +3 CHR, free action, rAcid, rFire, rCold, speeds regeneration and can be activated for recharging. That definitely beats the cloak of protection Sparky is currently using, since rShards is already covered by his shield. Still, Sparky’ll hang onto it just in case. After selling everything off, he swings by the BM and sees a Demonblade of Spinning that’s (+13, +14) (+2) and very intriguing. Its only 50k and if its close to being as good as Maedhros, he’ll use the demonblade instead. +2 to STR and DEX, very sharp, slays demons and can be activated for spinning.

Maedhros, when on Berserk, gets 8 attacks and if they all hit, Sparky will average 440 damage/round (and about +100 more vs Trolls and a giants). The new demonblade only gets 7 attacks and it will average 448 (and about +195 more vs demons). Anyone know what exactly happens to your damage when a weapon “Cuts deep into your opponent”? Losing +3 speed will hurt, but being able to cast the demonblade demonologist spells will make up for it. Maedhros goes into storage.

Sparky buys a few more scrolls of recall and ID, some more food, and recalls back into Mirkwood.

Mirkwood 17 – Princess Quest for Red Dragon Bats – Excellent feeling

The parade of wimpy opponents continues. Sparky finds the building right away, and bats apparently can’t open doors, so they’re stuck. They really breathe a lot, and while it doesn’t do much damage to Sparky, its murder on his scrolls. Finally, they’re all gone and Sparky is going to have to check exactly how many scrolls he has left. Cloak/arrows/bolts? Sparky takes the cloak. Thorongil. Well, its nice that its an artifact.

Mirkwood 18 – Princess Quest for Giant Brown Ticks – Any other level

Some sanddwellers and hill orcs get into the way, but Sparky still makes good time getting to the princess. Sparky knocks off a few of the ticks outside the water room in which the princess awaits. However, the water is almost totally full of piranha. Time to break out the demonblade spells. Go, go, Gadget Demon Field! It’ll do 42 points of nexus damage/round in a 7 square radius around the target square for 62 turns. That’s a nice little suppressing field. 2 turns later the piranha are all dead and the ticks are badly damaged. A little tick cleanup later, and Sparky gets the options – Long Sword/Robe/Device Trap. Hmm. Long sword, I suppose, though none of the options are exciting. Elvagil. Could it be the start of a nice little trend of low grade artifacts?

Sparky waits at the stairs for a moment as a big pack of phantom warriors erupt from the wall only to die the second they hit the demon field. When they’re all gone, he heads down the stairs.

Mirkwood 19 – Princess Quest for Banshees – Very good feeling

9 consecutive princess quests? Wow. Sparky really needs some FF quests to build up his Thaumaturgy and Conveyance.

This time it’s a small level and the princess is in a lava room. Some clear hounds get in the way, but they aren’t a problem. The room before the princess has hellcats on one side and phantom warriors on the other. Lets try another demonologist spell – demon madness. It fires two 124 damage, radius 3 ball attacks in opposite directions, hopefully one into the hellcats and one into the phantoms. Interesting. It did killed most of the cats and phantoms, but did chaos damage and transformed three of the hellcats into a green worm mass, a novice mindcrafter and a giant black louse. Lets try again. Confusion, this time, and it killed almost everything left except the mindcrafter. That was fun.

Sparky is cleaning up what’s left when the banshees start showing up. The banshees can float through walls, which makes it easy to pick spots where they don’t have LOS until they’re in melee range. They go down quickly, and Sparky gets to choose from Phial/Lance/Lead-Filled mace. Well, he’s already got Galadriel, so I think we all know what that Phial is. Still, that would make the 3rd consecutive quest to give out a crummy artifact as a reward. Why not keep up the trend? Phial it is, and it is indeed the Phial of Undeath.

Sparky is about to go down the stairs when he sees Nar the dwarf sitting on top of a demonblade in the next room, so he takes a detour to bump off Nar and grab the demonblade.

Mirkwood 20 – FF Quest for Red Dragon Bats – Very good feeling

If they’re aggressive enough, this will be really easy, otherwise it will be incredible tedious. After fighting the first few, it looks like it will be tedious. Demon madness and demon field are really Sparky’s only ranged attacks, and he only has the mana to cast them a couple times before resting. Just 14 to go. Adding to the doldrums, Nar’s demonblade turns out to be cursed.

A truly interminable amount of searching (one bat went and hid in a corner, forcing Sparky to tunnel all the way over to it to kill) and a really scorched dungeon (since everything was killed with ball spells, good thing Sparky doesn’t worship Yavanna) later, the bats are dead. Weaponmastery/Spirituality/Archer/Symbiosis? Weaponmastery would be nice, but Sparky really could use a symbiote. The searching did have one benefit. Sparky found a randart ring and some drums of the Eldar sitting on the ground.

Mirkwood 21 – Princess Quest for Ibun, Son of Mim – Very good feeling

In the room before Ibun, Sparky ran into the Icky Queen and 30+ of her icky brood. He cast Demon Field and two turns later all of them except the Queen were dead, and Sparky finished her off the next turn. Even better, Ibun came out to see what the ruckus was about, and Sparky was able to fight him in Demon Field. It didn’t do a lot of damage, but it kept plinking him which helped. Broad Sword/Leather shield/katana? Hmm, Sparky goes for the katana. Acidic. Darn. Bad move on my part. The only katana artifact is Aglarang, and its pretty decent. Should have gone with the broadsword to continue to artifact trend.

Mirkwood 22 – Princess Quest for Tyrannosaurs – Good feeling

This might be Sparky’s first real quest monster so far in Mirkwood. Demon field annihilates a huge pack of mixed ghouls, ghasts and other undead in the room before the Tyrannosaurs. I’m a big fan of this spell. The Tyrannosaurs start coming out, but Sparky can kill them in one round, so the battle is a little anti-climactic. Scimitar/Double Ring Mail/Ball and Chain? Ring Mail, please. Sparky’s pack is full and he’s out of ID scrolls, so recall back to town.

Back in Lothlorien, Sparky IDs everything and has some interesting finds. That randart ring is nice: Ring of Palion - +2 WIS, +2 Stealth, sustain STR and CON, rCold, rNether, rChaos, rDisenchantment, and levitation. The drums of the Eldar give +2 STR, +2 CHR, rAcid, rNether, and see invisible. Finally, a suit of excellent armor proves to be elven, though with only rDark for additional resists, and the Double Ring Mail from level 22 is rCold.

Sparky could swap his boomerang of Aman for the drums of the Eldar, trading +1 WIS and Evil ESP for +2 STR and +2 CHR, but I don’t think its worthwhile. On the other hand, Sparky can remove his ring of +3 DEX without losing an attack, so he swaps in the ring of Palion, which gives him rDisenchantment. Additionally, all of his resists from both Thingol and his armor are now redundant, except rElectricity. If he comes across something better for either, he only needs to cover rElectricity to make the swap.

No more scrolls of recall in Lothlorien, so down to Minas Anor to look for some… Nope, none there either. Wow, that’s strange. However, the pet shop has a bunch of discount summon non-moving pet scrolls for sale, so Sparky buys a bunch and heads to Angband to cash them in for leveled pets, swinging by the Old Forest dungeon town to do some shopping on the way.

The dungeon town has some interesting items for sale. The dragon hunter only has chaos dragon scale mail as his best, so that’s not interesting, but both the expensive black market and the rare jewelry store have rings of +3 attacks for sale, and the potion store has potions of STR, CON, and WIS for sale.

First, Sparky picks up and quaffs the potions, then he spends 1,400 au buying a ring of +3 dex from the jewelry shop. Wearing it puts his DEX at 34 and he succeeds in stealing both rings of extra attacks.

Just for fun, he tries them both on. Using the demonblade, on berserk, he gets 13 attacks, and if they all hit, he’d do 845 damage, plus another 365 vs demons, and he only loses rDisenchantment and invisibility. Chaos dragon scale mail gives rDisenchantment, and it would let him fly. Hmm. Sparky buys the Chaos Dragon Scale Mail, but will sit on it until he can find a source of rElectricity. He stores the chaos dragon scale mail in Gondolin and sells off the very useful ring of +3 dex. He’ll also hang onto the ring of Palion and the ring of invisibility for a while yet. Now onto Angband.

Angband 67 – FF quest for Chaos Vortex – Superb feeling

The first scroll produces a leveled grape jelly, but then a chaos vortex comes around the corner and Sparky scrambles back up the stairs. Lets try again.

Angband 67 – FF quest for Chaos Vortex – Any other level

Oh, look. Its Nid-Hogg and a pair of vortex (apparently that’s both singular and plural in Arda). Back up the stairs.

Angband 67 – FF quest for Chaos Vortex – Any other level

Ok, lets try again. A level 48 yellow mushroom patch, a level 35 mimic, a level 46 silent watcher (Sparky grabs that one), two consecutives one disappear, then a level 65 green mold, and a level 64 silent watcher. Well, that’s better than the first one, so Sparky takes it instead. Its got 1,819 HP and will hopefully be a useful companion. A close by lesser titan wakes up, so its time for Sparky to go.

Sparky stops by Bree on the way back to Lothlorien and finally gets those recall scrolls, plus he takes care of the Bree troll quest. However, he’s going to hold off on Uvatha until after he (hopefully) destroys the One Ring so that Uvatha will be permanently destroyed. The Bree trolls are easy. Thanks to frequent intervention by Tulkas, Sparky kills Tom in one round. Bert and Bill each take two rounds, but Sparky still feels pretty good about his newly improved melee ability. He finds Glamdring, of course, but nothing else interesting.

Feeling confident, he returns to Lothlorien, and tries to help an old wizard recover a lost essence. Trying out his Demon Madness spell again, the ball is charm this time and a Chimaera suddenly becomes coaligned. Sparky keeps telling it to seek and destroy, but it just follows him around. It finally attacks a dragon bat that’s almost on top of it, but it is otherwise happy to just follow Sparky around. Ok, now its finally going to work. The Chimaera starts killing off the various molds and bats on the far side of the lava, while Sparky recovers his mana so he can summon a demon.

Sparky definitely sold this Chimaera short. It has a running battle with the hellhound while cleaning up the top half of the screen. Sparky finally has his mana back and summons a level 67 manes. Lets see how it fares against a hellhound. Wow. The hellhound never had a chance. The manes almost killed it in one round. The top is clear when Sparky goes to pick up the essence. Doh, a trap of feminity was hidden in the lava. He’s now Sparkette.

The old mage is very happy to have his essence, and offers to fireproof books for Sparkette. Maybe later. How about IDing this equipment for free? No? Oh well. A sharp dagger, but it all just gets sold.

Since Sparkette is clearing up old quests, she runs down to Minas Anor to clear the library of undead for another old mage. He’s got a whole pack of liches hanging out in his library? That sounds like more than a minor problem to Sparkette, but the mage doesn’t seem overly concerned. Some very sleepy liches, it turns out. Sparkette kills all of the regular liches and all of the golems while waking just an iron golem. The liches must have been out partying the night before. Bad luck for them.

The monastic liches and the master lich, unfortunately, must be all clustered together in the bottom right corner of the library. Sparkette slows all the way down and reverts to coward in an attempt to sneak up on the cluster of lich power. The first monastic lich isn’t in LOS of any others, and Sparkette is able to get right next to it without waking it up. Quickly switching to Berserker/Running, Sparkette’s first round of attacks take the Monastic lich down to 4 stars. It fights back doing a little damage, but Sparky’s second round of attacks kill it, and Sparkette quickly switches back to coward/slug-like for stealth, though it only gets her up to Heroic.

Further scouting revels that there is in fact just one monastic lich. Huh. I thought there were always three on this quest. Apparently not. Time for the big guy. Sparky again manages to get right next to it without waking it up. I’m very surprised by the sleepiness of these liches. Sparkette’s initial attack takes the Master Lich down to 6 stars. Its counter attack does a little damage and drains some exp, but Sparkette has hold life so it doesn’t hurt very much. Sparkette’s demonblade cuts deep 6 different times during the second round, and the master lich doesn’t survive it. The library is now safe. The liches mostly drop junk, and Sparky has a tome made with Stoneskin, Dig, and Divine Aim. Plus, she has the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from doing a good deed.

Sparkette heads back to Lothlorien and recalls back into Mirkwood.

Mirkwood 23 – White Wraith – Good feeling

A big pack of phase spiders play ping-pong with Sparkette for a bit, but she takes out a bunch with demon madness and then whittles the rest down. It’s a short walk to the princess’s room after that. The wraiths are all clustered behind the door, ready to smack Sparkette around when she opens the door. Hmm, doesn’t look like fun. Can demons open doors? If she summons a demon and runs to the other side of the room will it take the initial attack and then let the out? Lets find out. A level 67 tengu. Oh, right. Its SO much faster than Sparkette, that it just follows her around, step for step. She can’t get it into the doorway.

Ok, new plan. Sparkette opens the door, then swaps places with the Tengu, using it as a shield. The tengu responds by thoughtfully teleporting one of the wraiths away. Stupid demon. Sparkette dismisses the demon, and kills the wraiths without any trouble. Looks like I over-thought that battle. The wraiths dropped a demonhorn, but it isn’t anything special. Now to find the last wraith. Ah, there’s a trap of calling out in the room. I’ll make it come to Sparkette. First, a killer red beetle, then the last wraith. Scimitar/Padded Armor/Chainmail? Sparkette is pretty darn happy with her current weapon, so Chainmail. Arvedui, cool.

Mirkwood 24 – Princess Quest for Ghosts – Excellent feeling

Sparkette’s initial mapping shows 4 different pit-like rooms. I guess that’s where the excellent feeling comes from. Sparkette moves up a bit, maps again, and sees 3 more. Wow. That’s potentially a lot of monsters. She makes her way around the pit-like rooms to the where the Ghosts are lurking. Ghosts can go through doors, so at least we won’t have a door-opening fiasco like last level.

The Ghosts come out one at a time, and Sparky kills them without problem. Iron helm/Thunderlord coat/whip? Thunderlord coat. Its of resistance. That’ll sell decently. Hmm, another Calling Out trap in this room. Lets see what else was on this level. First two monsters are an ice skeleton and a killer white beetle. Nothing worth sticking around for.

Mirkwood 25 – FF quest for young bronze dragons – Good feeling

They really aren’t a threat at this point, and Sparkette hunts them down. Both Angamaite and Sanghayando are there as well, and both die quickly too. Sparkette makes level 32 killing the 5th dragon. 2 points into swordmastery, 1 point into demonology, and she saves the rest. The stairs down to the Heart of the Earth are here, and Sparkette will go after Golgarach, after finishing this quest. Fortunately, the dragons are fairly aggressive, so Sparkette isn’t really forced to hunt them down.

One dragon drops a potion of CON, which I believe is the first stat gain potion Sparkette has found in the wild. Finally, they’re all gone. Mindcraft/Thaumaturgy/Stealth/Divination? Thaumaturgy.

Heart of the Earth 25 – Good feeling

Much like the Orc caves, Sparkette is only here to find the next stairs down.

Heart of the Earth 26 – Any other level

After much tunneling, Sparkette quickly finds the stairs down.

Heart of the Earth 27 – Any other level

After much tunneling, Sparkette quickly finds the stairs down.

Heart of the Earth 28 – Any other level

After much tunneling, Sparkette quickly finds the stairs down. Ok, this is a bit repetitive, so I’ll skip ahead. On level 30, Sparkette kills a normal quylthulg with demon field before it can summon, and after much walking and tunneling, she gets to…

Heart of the Earth 36 – Any other level

Golgarach is here somewhere, but he’s sometimes tricky to find. He shows up pretty quickly this time, and with no escorts. Unfortunately, he’s right in the middle of a big open area and Sparkette’s cover disappearers. She grits her teeth and charges him, hoping to reach him before he summons greater wall monsters or something. Fortunately, he charges instead of summons, and Sparkette kills him in one turn. He drops some randart leather scale armor. That’s surprising, because in my experience he drops a ring almost all the time. As an added bonus, there’s a trap of acquirement right behind where Golgarach was standing, and it produces a suit of green dragons scale mail. Time to go. Sparkette recalls back to Lothlorien.

OOoh, this could be good. Its randart green dragon scale mail, plus there’s a flail of westernesse in the loot. Lets see what *ID* says:

- Leather Scale Mail of Galoron {11, +1], sustains DEX and CON, immunity to acid, rFear, rConfusion, an rDisenchantment. - Chainmail of Arvedui [14, +15], +2 to STR and CHR, rBase, rLight, rShards, and rNexus. - Green Dragon Scale Mail of Beren [30, -2], can be activated for breathe poison gas, sustains STR, rAcid, rPoison, rNether, and allows flight. Fills you with black breath, heavily cursed, and has an ancient foul curse. DOH!

The dragon scale mail was horribly disappointing. Oh well. Sparkette sells of most of the stuff, though he keeps all three suits of armor. She runs over the Mirkwood and recalls back out, then runs back to Mirkwood and recalls back down to Mirkwood 25.

Mirkwood 25 – Any other level

Sparkette quickly finds the stairs down.

Mirkwood 26 – Princess Quest for Lokkak – Any other level

She accidentally kills Khim, son of Mim when he pops out into a corridor she’s running down and then a strange thing happens. A master rogue who is trying to sneak up on Sparkette suddenly screams and dies while 5 or 6 squares away. He wasn’t in the range of demon field or anything, and she not only didn’t cast any spells at him, he wasn’t even in LOS yet. Very strange. Sparkette finds Lokkak after that and kills him in 2 rounds. Leather shield/Ringmail/dagger? How about the dagger on the off chance it’s a ‘thanc. Cool! Its Dethanc! Sparky will try using Dethanc for a while.

Mirkwood 27 – Princess Quest for Young gold dragons – Good feeling

Sparkette starts right next to the room, but accidentally sets off a summon undead trap on the way there. After clearing up the various ghouls and servants of Glaaki, she chops up the gold dragons without any problems. Chainmail/Fur Cloak/Broad Axe? Fur cloak. Of Stealth. Bleh. At least another enlightment potion turned up in the treasure.

Mirkwood 28 – Princess Quest for Aranea – Strangely lucky

A tiny level. Just 3 total rooms, one of which is packed with Aranea, Forest Trolls, Serptment, and a basilisk. Sparkette dispatches a Black Knight, and he drops a potion of CHR. The trolls and serpent men charge her, while the Aranea stay back and cast spells. She has to keep digging hidey-holes to block the Aranea LOS while taking on the melee monsters and periodically to rest. Finally, when its just the Aranea’s left, she tunnels as close as she can to a spot where she can engage them and only a few can see her. It works pretty well, but the last 4 are in a corner and she’s forced to just charge them. Its painful, but they go down. Heavy Crossbow/Studded leather/metal scale mail? Hmm, how about the heavy crossbow? Cleaning up afterwards takes forever. The various monsters dropped a ton of chests, which produced even more stuff than some dragon levels. Additionally, Sparkette accidentally set off a dagger trap, and the three daggers provided to be excellent. She recalls back out.

IDing the stuff reveals all kinds of interesting stuff. 3 matched (+7, +7) spectral daggers, various armor pieces with resistances (none for electricity, though), a spear of Aman, an awl-pike of *slay orc*, a pike of slay orc, some high resistance rings, two junk-arts and the heavy crossbow is (+10, +19) (x7) extra-might. Sparkette might just keep that around for a while.

The junkarts are for heal 700 hp and decrease STR, so she keeps the good one, and the heavy crossbow of extra might also happens to provide rElectricity.

- Dethanc is already up to level 17 and is (+16, +9), has access to Fire, Cold, Acid, and Lightning, can be activated for lightning bolt, provides light, does extra damage from electricity, slays dragons and demons, makes its wielder invisible, and provides rElectricity, rCold, and rPoison. I’m very curious where the rPoison came from, since it doesn’t have access to the Poison realm.

Sparkette sells everything else off, and is feeling very flush with cash, as she now has over 300,000 au. Time to run back to Gondolin go get that Chaos Dragon scale mail. The BM in Gondolin has potions of speed, DEX and CHR, so she buys them all and picks up the dragon scale mail.

On the way back, she stops off at the Old Forest dungeon market for a browse. Two more potions of DEX for sale at the potion shop, along with more potions of cure insanity and speed. She buys them all, and gives some thought to buying a pair of boots of dwarven endurance that would give a +5 to CON, but she decides her boots of speed are too valuable. The dragon hunter has 4 more suits of chaos dragon scale mail for sale, so I guess it isn’t very rare.

Back in Lothlorien, a discount WIS potion is on sale at the BM, so Sparkette buys it. Quaffs it, puts on the Chaos dragon scale mail, and heads off to fight the Spiders of Mirkwood.

Sparkette, using Dethanc, kills the Araneas in one turn even when on coward and the elders in one round on berserker, so the beginning of the level goes pretty fast. Sparkette makes level 33 on the second to last elder, and puts 2 points into swordmastery and 1 into demonology, saving the rest. Dethanc goes up to level 24 in the process, gaining no new powers, but increasing from (+16, +9) to (+24, +12). Sparkette takes out the Araneas and elders first, then mops of the lesser spiders after.

After collecting the reward, Sparkette decides to use the new enlightenment potion to check out another level in the lost temple.

Lost Temple 20 – Good feeling

She starts right in the midst of a huge mass of elite uruks and quickly teleports away, then quaffs the potion… nope, no relic piece here. There is an interesting monster not far away, though. Oh, it’s a chaos beastman. Nothing special. Feeling bold, she tries going down the stairs.

Lost Temple 21 – Any other level

It’s a smallish, generic dungeon level. Shouldn’t be too hard to scout. Just have to go through these packs of Ogres and Snaga first. She finds a trap of calling out, but with everything leveled its not as useful. Plus, monsters respawn so fast that its hardly worthwhile. After the first two packs, its more Ogres, plus a couple Ur-Viles and some hill trolls. She gets a chance to rest after t