A Day in the Life of Zippy, the Zombie Hobbit Warper, Book 1

While perusing the ladder, I noticed that the only two Warper winners actually used Thaumaturgist spells for offense and there were only a few other successful (though non-winner) Warpers. The others mostly used other mage spells for offense, mostly mana, fire, and water. But then, sticking out like a sore thumb, was Bjorn, the Beorning Warper. Bjorn ultimately came to a sad end, but he was an interesting concept. Warper who actually used Warper skills (and Bearform Combat) for the core of his play.

I’ve always liked Warpers and thought such a character would be fun to play, but repeating Bjorn wouldn’t be interesting. The plan for Zippy then formed. A hobbit Warper! He’ll worship Manwe for the speed bonus, and, more importantly, Manwe’s Blessing so that he can hit things in the late game. Early on, he’ll probably play like a weak mage, then during the late early and mid game, like an inaccurate archer, and then in the end, like a Warper/Rogue as he mostly seeks to avoid combat. It would be like playing three characters in one!

The plan with Zippy will be to raise sling mastery to 32 and archery over 10 and then get ammo creation. Prayer will need to be 21 or so for the full to-hit bonus from Manwe’s blessing. Thaumaturgy will be raised enough to get Destruction and hopefully Wall Create, and all other points will go into the Warper base skills.

Zippy is going to be a mix of mage and archer, so he needs just as much, if not more, DEX than INT and enough STR to carry around his ammo. Since INT isn’t that big a deal, and Hobbit Warpers are quite low on STR and HP, Zippy is going to be a zombie. The SP hit shouldn’t hurt too badly and the extra resists should help a lot in the early going. Zippy’s starting stats will be – 11 STR, 15 INT, 8 WIS, 19 DEX, 17 CON, and 8 CHR with 11 hp and 4 sp. That sounds perfect. He won’t worship Manwe right away, because I don’t feel like digging him out of a -8k piety hole. When he finishes the BD, he’ll go to Lothlorien and find religion.

The adventures of Zippy, Chapter 1

Zippy immediately sells his food (being a zombie, he doesn’t need it) and buys a sling and 20 iron shots for it. A little testing reveals him to be a rather poor shot with it. Well, that was expected. Ok, bring on the Thieves Den.

Thieves Den Zippy recollects his stuff and notes that thanks to 1 starting point in Mana, he can cast a 4d2 mana bolt with a 9% failure chance.

He sets to Berserk/Running. He starts with the novice rogues and discovers that if he can get successfully cast the 4 mana bolts he has mana for, he can just barely kill one rogue. The second rogue falls to sling bullets, but Zippy’s horrible accuracy means it takes half his ammo just to kill one rogue. Zippy gains a level, and I’m about to start pumping Sling Mastery when I realize that until he gets Archery from a FF quest, Sling Mastery points won’t increase Archery. Sigh. That could really come back to bite him later in wasted skill points.

At the same time, I realize that raising spell power will give Zippy more bang for his buck than spending those same points raising Prayer and the various Warper schools, at least until Prayer gets to 21. Could save him a couple of points and would have the added advantage of beefing up his really sad mana bolt in the early going. All 5 points go into spell power, and his mana bolt now does 5d2. Yippee.

Back to the rogues, Zippy knocks off #3 with the last of his sling bullets, but #4 is right behind him. Zippy is really offensively challenged. This could be harder than I thought. Ok, enough of this screwing around. Time to pull out the big guns. Zippy stops shooting the rogues and simply bashes them with his fists. The 12 damage from berserk is much more than any of his other attacks, and, amazingly, he makes quick work of the rest of the novice rogues. The bandit is a bit tougher, but Zippy rests to get his mana back, collects his ammo, and knocks the bandit down to 5 stars with ranged attacks, before finishing him off with his fists. It all goes much more smoothly than I expected. I had no idea Hobbits were such skilled boxers.

By the time everything is dead, Zippy is level 6 (which still seems odd. I really thought he’d only be level 5) and has collected some exploding bolts, the dagger, and some paper armor that pseudo-ID’ed as good. Skill points go into spell power, Thaumaturgy, Divination, and Conveyance. The equipment is ID’ed, and the armor is only (4, +1) but he may as well wear it. Everything else is sold and the money used to buy more ammo, CCW, scrolls of teleport and recall, a shovel, a lantern, and some more ammo.

Zippy is now ready for the Barrow Downs.

BD 1- Fumble Fingers quest for Blue Centipedes A perfect start. If Zippy gets Archery, he can start building Sling Mastery and become a decent shot. The centipedes are weak, but Zippy’s offense is still pathetic (his mana bolt now does 6d2, but it costs 2 mana instead of 1, so it actually reduces his offense). He ends up killing half of the centipedes in melee when his stores of mana and ammo run out. Still, he was never in danger and made level 7. Zippy takes Divination as his reward. Not what I was hoping for, its not bad. That will save points down the road.

BD 2 – Princess Quest for Novice Mindcrafters It’s a small level and there are only 6 of them. Zippy draws them out and pummels them to death one at time. He has less trouble than I would have expected. He’s not that accurate with his fists, but its still a big improvement over the sling, and Zippy is starting to use melee more and more. Maybe he shouldn’t have sold that dagger after all. For a reward, he takes a suit of paper armor over a couple of traps, plus he makes level 8.

BD 3 – Princess Quest for Rattlesnakes This would have been a serious challenge for a classical hobbit, but zombie’s start with rPoison, greatly reducing the danger. It’s a quiet level, but Zippy finds a main gauche on the ground that pseudo-IDs as good. There are only 6 again, and while Zippy has to chase them through a green streamer, they never pose a serious danger. Zippy softens them up with mana bolts and then finishes them off with his fists. He takes a pair of boots as his reward, over two heavier suits of armor. His carrying capacity isn’t that great, and he needs all the speed he can get.

BD 4 – Princess Quest for Rotting Corpses Yuck. I hate these guys and there are 14 of them. Zippy finds them quickly, hits them, kills a few, and then pulls back to rest. His resistance to their poison makes them much less dangerous than normal, and he chops through them using a mix of mana bolts and melee, making level 9 in the process. He hasn’t actually used his sling in a level or two now. The reward choices are three heavy weapons and Zippy take the broadsword, figuring it has the best chance of being an artifact. I realize that Zippy would probably be better off using a weapon instead of his fists, and he equips the broadsword. I’m still amazed at how far he’s gone (and how smoothly his progress has been) using his fists as his primary weapons. Easy monster draws have been a big part of that.

BD 5 – Princess Quest for Giant Slugs Yikes. They’re durable and hit for acid which Zippy doesn’t resist. He gets a good warm-up while looking for the slugs in the form of a pack of Snaga. The BD has been very quiet so far. Relatively few monsters and even fewer packs. Zippy cuts through the Snaga without any problems the broadsword seems to kill them in one hit, so it must be pretty good. He then makes surprisingly short work of the slugs. The princess room is down a very long hallway, and Zippy lures them out in ones and twos and does the ‘hit and back up’ game to score free hits, with the broadsword hitting the slugs much harder than his fists would have. Eventually they all die and Zippy is only hit twice the whole time, both times when I made timing mistakes. He makes both levels 10 and 11. A boomerang or two more traps? The reward choices have been terrible. Fine, fine. He’ll take the boomerang. Down the stairs he goes.

BD 6 – Princess Quest for Wormtongue Ok, NOW we’re talking. Hmm. How exactly is he going to kill Wormtongue with a 6d2 mana bolt? Lets give it a shot. Maybe Zippy will get lucky. Well, Wormtongue does his best to make it easy. Zippy finds the princess room without difficulty, and its right next to a large empty room. While Zippy is still in the other room, Wormtongue comes out and charges across the entire room at Zippy. Zippy just sits there and fires everything he’s got (thankfully, he has almost all of his sling bullets still). Wormtongue fires one stinking cloud (which Zippy resists). Wormtongue is down to 4 stars by the time he gets within melee range of Zippy, so Zippy teleports away and rests to regain mana, also finding a speed potion.

After resting, Zippy finds Wormtongue again, drinks the speed potion and pelts him with mana bolts. By the time Wormtongue is in melee range,he's down to 2 stars, and the hasted Zippy does the ‘hit and back up’ trick to score free melee hits until Wormtongue dies. Whew. That could have been a lot harder, though with innate rCold and rPoison, zombies are well suited to fighting Wormtongue. Anyway, Zippy selects a pick as his quest reward, and Wormtongue dropped a sling and some leather armor. Zippy picks them up and, pack full, recalls to town.

Back in Bree, Zippy IDs his finds and discovers he has quite a few magic items. The paper quest armor is an artifact, though possibly the lamest one I’ve ever seen: The Paper Armour of Dilpion [4,+4]

He already has rPoison, so its basically just free action. Still, its better than his current armor which gets sold. The boots prove to also be FA, but the AC boost is helpful, so he wears them as well. The boomerang is (+11, +10) of accuracy, so he sells it, and the pick is of digging (+3) so he uses it. Zippy has a bit of a weapon conundrum now, though. The main gauche is (+3, +4) slay dragons, the broadsword is (+4, +4) *slay orc*, and he found a spear of shocking. The broadsword also gives a +2 to DEX and detects orcs, so he uses it and sells the rest. Finally, Wormtongue’s armor is leather of rFire so he wears it and puts the artifact armor into his house, and the sling is (+11, +14) of power which is HUGE. Zippy’s sling bullets used to be hugely inaccurate and average just 5 damage per hit. With the new sling, they’re fairly accurate and average 33 damage per hit. Suddenly, the sling isn’t just taking up an inventory slot, it’s could be a real part of his offense.

The adventures of Zippy, Chapter 2

Zippy restocks on CCW, recall scrolls, and teleport scrolls, and recalls back into the BD.

BD 7 – Princess Quest for Clay Golems After some searching and a few snaga, Zippy finds the princess building and the clay golems stream out. It feels like the first real combat test. The golems aren’t especially dangerous individually, but they take a decent amount of damage to kill and there 14 of them. This new sling makes life MUCH easier, but Zippy forgot to restock his ammo and only has enough to kill the first 4 or 5. After that, he uses mana bolts and hacks with his sword. Zippy kills 3 or 4, teleports away to rest and heal and returns. He repeats until they are all gone, making levels 13 and 14 in the process. Its probably too early to get a cloak of air, but Zippy takes the cloak anyway. Colannon! Sweet! +3 speed this early is pretty darn helpful. Down the stairs.

BD 8 – Fumble Fingers quest for Quasits These guys will come and get Zippy, so it should be quick. Fortunately for Zippy, he finds two separate piles of round pebbles to restock his ammo, and the sling just mows the Quasits down. Zippy makes levels 15 and 16 in the process. A few minutes later, FF has his sword back and Archery is one of the options! Hurray! Zippy can start to not suck!

As I start enthusiastically dumping points into Sling Mastery, I notice that Zippy’s Archery skill is going up really slowly. Hmm, I never noticed that the peripheral increases you get from increases skills (the way Combat and Archery go up when you increase Sling Mastery, for example) are proportional to the skill multiplier. Doing a little math, I discover that Zippy can save at least 7 to 8 skill points by raising his Archer skill multiplier to 0.5 before putting his points into Sling Mastery. Sigh. That’s a lot of points. Zippy still seems to be able to kill stuff, so I’ll hold off for now. Down the stairs again.

BD 9 – Princess Quest for Giant Tarantulas There are only 5 and though they are harder to hit than the golems, they seem weaker and go down without any trouble. Two traps or a broadsword? Zippy takes the broadsword.

BD 10 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Flesh Golems They aren’t very tough, but it takes lots of searching to find them. Each one seems to be mixed in with a group of kobolds or cave orcs. After much tedious searching, Zippy knocks them all off making level 17. No archery, but FF does offer Divination, which is one of Zippy’s core skills so he takes it. Time to recall back to Bree. Interestingly, Zippy has completed the Barrow Downs despite using virtually none of his actual skills. He cast his sad little mana bolt quite a bit in the beginning (which was only modestly boosted by his 7 or so points in spell power), and he’d periodically use divination to detect monsters when a tarantula or something wandered away, but that was really it. With that in mind, the BD was easier than I expected.

Zippy ID’s his haul and the broadsword turns out to be Durandil and a spear is ‘of shocking’ (interesting that he found two already), plus he found a ring of rshards which has good resale value. Durandil, vs his current sword vs the spear of shocking? Hmm. The last time he was in Bree, finding that new sword was critical, because his sling and his mana bolts were pretty pathetic. Now, melee has just about faded away entirely. That new sling has proven to be by far his best weapon, so melee damage isn’t as important. Just for fun, Zippy decides to go with Durandil for the luck bonus and sells the other weapons.

Invisibility would really help, so Zippy heads back into the BD and spends some time repeatedly clearing levels 3 through 5 looking for Smeagol. He eventually makes level 18, but never finds Smeagol. Ok, that’s enough of that. Zippy heads to Lothlorien.

In Lothlorien, Zippy converts to the worship of Manwe. He starts at -200 piety, but that’s much better than the -7000 or so he would have right now if he had worshipped Manwe from the beginning. Since he now gets credit for killing evil things, he starts praying and heads for the Loth house quest.

Lothlorien House Quest Weird. I’ve never seen it play out like this. The wolves and dire wolves all CHARGE Zippy. I very seldom play Manwe worshippers so maybe that it, but its really disconcerting. Usually, my characters have to hunt the wolves all down one by one. This time, Zippy is desperately trying to sling to death the charging hoard of canines before they overwhelm him. Fortunately, Zippy is up to the task, and the quest is soon completed and Zippy makes level 19 doing it. Zippy is slowly putting points into Divination and Translocation, though he very seldom uses either except for the aforementioned detect monsters. Mostly, he’s stockpiling points.

Zippy stocks back up on CCW, and recall, ID, and teleport scrolls, plus more iron shots before heading into Mirkwood.

Mirkwood 11 – Princess Quest for Nar the Dwarf Here, little dwarfy, dwarfy… Nar poses a little trouble for Zippy in that his AC makes him a bit of a challenge to hit, but by repeatedly showering Nar with shots and then phase-dooring away, Zippy takes him down without incident. Among the 3 crummy weapons offered, Zippy takes the light axe. Slay Orc. Fine.

Mirkwood 12 – Princess Quest for Clay Golems You guys again? The clay golems rewarded Zippy well after a good fight last time. Zippy’s gained a few levels since then, so they’re less of a challenge now, but no less rewarding. Zippy makes level 20 killing them, and picks a pair of boots as a reward. Boots of Speed (+9)! Zippy is a very happy camper and now has a base running speed of +16.

Mirwood 13 – Princess Quest for Rangers Fortunately for Zippy’s piety, they aren’t actually good. Speaking of which, Zippy’s piety is continuing to hover around -200, so he’s apparently reached Manwe’s piety equilibrium point. As he goes farther down, it should start increasing.

With Zippy’s great speed, the Rangers just aren’t a problem. As an added bonus, they appear with the first big group of Ogres Zippy has seen so far, and the Ogre’s are a nice piety bonus. Zippy takes a dagger, hoping for a ‘Thanc, but gets slay dragon instead.

Mirkwood 14 – Princess Quest for Blink Dogs They aren’t individually hard, but are time consuming. Some of them get lost while chasing Zippy and blink away, forcing Zippy to hunt them down. Eventually, they are all taken care of, along with a big pack of orcs and one of the lesser orc uniques, which takes Zippy up to level 21. He takes a thunderlord coat for his reward and its rElectricity.

Zippy has been skating along with some remarkably skimpy resists so far. He’s got rCold, rPoison, hold life and see invisible to start, rAcid and rNexus from Colannon, free action from his armor and…that’s it. I hadn’t realized he was so exposed, and I’m amazed nothing has blown him away with a simple fire attack yet. Zippy recalls back to Bree to switch equipment.

He picked up some gauntlets of free action from the BM a while back just in case, so on goes the thunderlord armor plus the FA gauntlets, and now he’s a little better defended against the elements. Since he’s back in Bree, Zippy restocks on ammo (he still can’t create ammo, which is annoying), CCW, and scrolls, then recalls back into Mirkwood.

Mirkwood 15 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Hardened Warriors The warriors are a breeze, and they are accompanied by packs of light hounds and clear hounds, which are annoying but not dangerously. FF rewards Zippy by teaching him Symbiosis.

Mirkwood 16 – Princess Quest for Frost Giants Woo. A bit scary at first, but there are only 5 and they actually go down really fast, putting Zippy up to level 22. Zippy takes a feathers cloak, but its only protection. As he prepares to head down the steps, Brodda shows up and is promptly squashed for intruding.

Mirkwood 17 – Princess Quest for Dark Elven Lords Definitely the nastiest monsters Zippy has encountered so far. There are only 5, but Zippy has to lure them out one at a time, because each is a tough fight and he’s running out of ammo. Hopefully he’ll get Archery again soon, because Zippy is starting to have trouble hitting things again. To Zippy’s great excitement, Sling is one of the reward options, and it’s a randart sling! Only (x2), but still, its got to be good, right?

Mirkwood 18 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Wereworms 20 of them. Oh, heavens. If Zippy didn’t need Archery so badly, I’d consider skipping this. For this depth, Wereworms take a TON of damage to kill. While they shouldn’t be a danger to Zippy with his great speed, they will serve as effective road blocks and if something dangerous comes down another hallwall, Zippy could easily get bottled up. Time to restock.

Back in Lothlorien, Zippy gets banned from the BM trying to steal a shield of reflection, and then buys all the sling ammo available. He then goes to Minas Anor where he buys a +18 ring of accuracy (might help with his accuracy woes) and then gets banned from the BM for trying to steal a nice randart rapier. He also buys all the sling ammo available in Minas Anor, bringing him up to 150 or so sling shots (which puts him at 220% encumbrance, but I don’t see any other way to do it). As long as he can collect ammo after every 2 or 3 worms, it should be enough. THe randart sling proves a disappointment. (+12, +3) with no extra shots or might. +1 to speed and a few stats, but it just doesn't have the punch of his current sling. Recall back to Mirkwood.

Zippy finds the first one, and by shooting and backing up, he eventually kills it without danger. Takes 21 shots to kill it, so I’m glad Zippy has so much ammo. The ring of accuracy might be the single best purchase any of my ToME characters has ever made. Without the ring, it would have taken 40+ shots to kill the first worm, making the quest impossible at this point.

Anyway, Zippy slowly, laboriously, and painfully tracks down all the worms and plinks them to death with his sling (Zippy still only gets 1 shot/turn). After the first 10, he’s down to 60% of his ammo, so it looks like I planned right. With 4 left, Zippy started encountering pack after pack of hounds (clear, then light, then fire, then white wolves), and had a tense moment when nearly all of his remaining ammo was sitting on the ground next to a group of fire hounds. Not only did he have to fight the fire hounds to get it back, I couldn’t remember if fire hound breath could destroy sling bullets. Fortunately, none of them ended up breathing on the ammo and with 2 worms left, Zippy still had ¼ of his ammo left. Finally, the last one went down and FF rewarded him with Conveyance. Whew. Zippy also made levels 24 and got his first Manwe quest.

Mirkwood 19 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Pukelmen NOOOOOOO! Pukelmen are MORE durable then Wereworms AND cast acid bolts plus other spells. There’s no way Zippy can handle them right now. He recalls back to town and ponders. I don’t really like doing god quests so soon after getting them, but he really needs to start now in order to get them all done in time.

Zippy stocks up on teleport scrolls and other equipment, plus scums town libraries until one gives him a spellbook of vision for the magic mapping. Time to start hunting for that Lost Temple.

The adventures of Zippy, Chapter 3

After a little hunting, Zippy finds the Lost Temple in Mordor. This will likely be rough, but I think he’s ready.

Lost Temple 16 No enlightenment, so he’ll have to do this the hard way. Right off the bat, who does he see? Smeagol! Thanks to being leveled, he’s unbelievably fast, but he’s in the middle of a big room and wanders erratically while Zippy pelts him with sling bullets. Eventually Smeagol goes down and Zippy is very happy to take the ring of invisibility (and at least not unhappy about the awl-pike of slay giant). Sadly, that was the high point of the level. Zippy discovers that the level is HUGE and FULL of clear hounds. After a tough encounter with the first pack, he bites the bullet and raises Sling Mastery to 16 for the extra shot. It effectively wastes 2 or 3 skill points, but there’s no way he’ll finish this level without it.

The clear hounds are awful. They travel in packs of 8-12 are very fast and tough, and many of them can see him even through the invisibility. After an awful slog, he finally scouts the whole level and the relic isn’t here. Checking kill stats, I note that Zippy killed 87 clear hounds just on that level. He recalls and heads back to town to buy a couple hundred sling bullets and otherwise resupply for a return trip. While in town, he buys an elven cloak.

Lost Temple 16 (x3) It’s a repeat of the last time. Huge level, full of clear hounds. Dangerous AND tedious. Finally, its clear and the relic isn’t here either.

Lost Temple 16 Zippy is just barely hanging on at level 16 so there’s no way I’m going to go down the stairs. He keeps repeating level 16 and finally, on the 5th try, he finds the relic. He ended up killing over 200 clear hounds and since they aren’t evil, his piety, which he had worked up to about zero in Mirkwood, is now down to -800. I thought god quests were supposed to be good for piety… No good equipment finds either. At least its done and he made level 25 somewhere along the way.

With that completed, Zippy decides he’s up to the task of going after the Old Forest and Orc Caves. I had been holding off because I wasn’t sure Zippy was up to them, but those Lost Temple levels were worse than anything either will throw at him. Unless Zippy gets an excellent or better feeling about a level, he’s just heading for the stairs as quickly as possible.

Old Forest 13-15 Quick and painless. A little fighting, but nothing noteworthy. He mostly uses his sling, but with his great speed, even at 1 attack/round, he melees lesser monsters that he doesn’t want to waste ammo on.

Old Forest 16 Dungeon town. Neat. 8 stores clustered in the middle of the level. They are: general, potions, axes, hafted, rare footware, diviner, recaller, and a library. Zippy’s piled up a fair amount of gold, but there isn’t much worthwhile to buy. He ends up buying and drinking potions of STR and DEX, plus self-knowledge. The last tells him that he’s unlucky which is too bad.

Old Forest 17&18 Nothing noteworthy.

Old Forest 19 Zippy spots a small vault and though the monsters aren’t anything special (a stone golem was the toughest thing), one was sitting on the Demonshield of Gothmog. As far as artifacts go, its no great shakes, but its MUCH better than the crummy enchanted small metal shield he’s using is. Plus, since it gives invisibility, he can trade out the ring of invisibility if he finds something useful.

Old Forest 20-23 Nothing noteworthy.

Old Forest 24 Another vault, this time a “foresty” sort of vault. Lots of dark elven warlocks which are trouble if you don’t reflect. He also hacks through a huge stream of black ogres and novice mages. His piety is starting to recover. Zippy finds lots of excellent items in the vault, though none that he’s likely to use until he comes across an amulet of reflection. After that, the warlocks are toast and Zippy recalls to sell loot and resupply. He quickly recalls back in and heads down the stairs.

Old Forest 25 Zippy starts in the room with old Man Willow, who is strangely passive, just sitting there as Zippy kills some Vibration hounds in the same room. In fact, OMW continues just sitting there until he’s down to about 3 stars, at which point he finally teleports Zippy to him. Zippy, however, is much faster than OMW and simply steps out of melee range and continues raining sling bullets on the old tree. Before long, Willow is dead and Zippy makes level 26. Willow dropped some crummy randart armor, but as Zippy is examining it, Ibun, son of Mim wanders into the room. A hail of sling bullets takes Ibun down and he drops Angrist which immediately becomes Zippy’s new melee weapon. Well satisfied with his reward, Zippy recalls back to town.

Durandil was useful far longer than I expected, and Zippy sets it aside in his Bree home. The luck bonus from Durandil and the elven cloak will be great down the line when Zippy’s making ammo. On to the orc caves.

Orc Caves 10 Much like the Old Forest, Zippy is primarily interested in getting down to Deathwatch as fast as possible. If he sees something interesting, he’ll stop, but otherwise he’s just diving. Like the Old Forest, he uses his sling on the tougher monsters, but anything from Cave Orcs down he kills with melee.

Orc Caves 11-18 A bit tedious to fight through the orcs, and much slower going than the Old Forest. Zippy isn’t finding any good gear, but at least his piety is finally above zero.

Orc Caves 19 A big group of wererats suggests a unique nearby, and after carefully dispatching them and their summons, Zippy manages to defeat the Rat King. Bullroarer is right around the corner after the king, and Vort and Gorbag are in a big room together later in the level. Vort and Gorbag are getting it on, eh? I hope Mughash doesn’t find out or there will be serious trouble.

Orc Caves 20 Nothing special, but Zippy recalls back to town and buys more CCW in preparation for Deathwatch. He then recalls back in and heads down the stairs.

Orc Caves 21 Ah, invisibility almost makes this level unfair. The orcs wander around looking for Zippy while he, now she thanks to a gender changing trap, showers them with sling bullets. She makes level 27 while killing Lagduf, and picking up the key artifacts is easy. When his pack is full of useful equipment, Zippy recalls back to town.

Hmm, Maedhros vs Angrist vs a longsword of spinning that she found in Deathwatch. Angrist does the most damage, but the spinning ability can be really handy (its especially good for characters who don’t have see invisible. Just spin and you whack everything within melee range whether you can see it or not.), but Zippy goes with Maedhros and Thalkettoth which puts her at speed +22. While in town, she sees a great pair of randart Cesti and manages to steal them. She’s missing rFire and rConfusion but has most other things covered and hopefully her great speed will make up for it. She recalls back into the Orc Caves.

Orc Caves 21 Oh, I’m glad I came back to this level. It’s a dungeon town! 8 stores clustered in the center of the map, just like in the Old Forest. This time, the market has Forbidden Library, recaller, footwear shop, expensive black market, axe smith, master archer, polearms, and a potion store. Zippy buys a tome of translocation (her first tome!) and a potion of STR. When she drinks the potion she finally gets a second attack with Maedhros, which helps quite a bit. Down the stairs to Azog and company.

Orc Caves 22 Zippy finds Azog right away, and he’s got Ugluk with him. Fortunately for Zippy, neither can see her, so she just rains bullets on them until they die. Hmm. That was anti-climactic. I REALLY should have done these before trying to Lost Temple. Oh well. Back to town.

Zippy’s now up to STR 14/INT 19/WIS 8/DEX 30/CON 17/CHR 8 with 205 HP/140 SN (more than I expected)/42 Mana and 371 piety and I think she’s now ready to head back to Mirkwood and go get those Pukelmen.

The adventures of Zippy, Chapter 4

Zippy loads up on bullets to the point of pushing her running speed from +22 to +19, jogs over to Mirkwood, enters, and recalls to set it as her recall dungeon. She then head back to town, makes sure she’s topped off on recall and teleport scrolls, and CCW potions. Then, she recalls in.

Mirkwood 19 – Fumblefingers Quest for Pukelmen Now, they’re a piece of cake. With her speed and having gotten a second melee attack, she can just hammer them in melee and reflection bounces most of the acid bolts, so they aren’t a problem at range either. They go down quickly, and appropriately, Archery is a reward. One more to go and she can start working on Sling-Mastery in earnest. She also makes level 28. Sadly, Zippy reads an un-IDed scroll and suddenly feels souls returning from the Halls of Mandos. Oh no! It was the Crumpled Scroll of Mass Ressurection! All the wandering uniques are alive again. Oh well. Zippy hadn’t killed anything really dangerous yet, but it IS annoying.

Mirkwood 20 – Princess Quest for Energy Vortexes Ho hum. They die quickly to the sling. Zippy takes a gnomish shovel (+6 of digging as it turns out) as her reward.

Mirwood 21 – Princess Quest for Hellblades I don’t know if it was the extra speed, or the improved Rate of Fire and accuracy from those early points into sling-mastery, or what, but Mirkwood is suddenly a cakewalk. Zippy blows the hellblades away and takes a cloak, hoping for an early cloak of air. Nope. Its Colluin, though, so that’s not bad.

Mirkwood 22 – Princess Quest for Fire Giants This has been really easy. Generally small levels, Zippy finds the rooms quickly using Vision., and she’s been able to blow the monsters away so far. The fire giants are no exception. Mouse fur this time, buts its only of immolation.

Mirkwood 23 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Ghouls The ghouls come right at her, but can’t survive more than a bullet or two each before going down. Crummy skills choices, so she takes Stealth.

Mirkwood 24 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Fire Giants Zippy’s found quite a bit of stuff with good resale value plus a few randarts, so she recalls back out.

Back in Lothlorien, she sells or houses the equipment, though nothing is worth improving her kit. The randarts are all useless except the last one which is for satisfy hunger. While Hobbits can make their own food, Zippy’s a zombie, so that isn’t as helpful as it might be. The randart lets her dump all her scrolls of satisfy hunger and will make restocking in town slightly faster and cheaper. Otherwise, nothing of interest to report. Back into Mirkwood.

Mirkwood 24 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Fire Giants The giants go down quickly, and Zippy finds them easily with Sense Monster. She takes Conveyance as her reward.

Mirkwood 25 – Princess Quest for Fasolt Lokkak is right there in a hallway with ogres on either side. Zippy starts plinking away at the giants until Lokkak is finally free and he charges her. He makes it about halfway to Zippy before the bullets finally take him out, and for a reward… Oh, wait. The quest was for Fasolt, not Lokkak. There’s Fasolt over there. Zippy lets him out and then phase door’s away to get out of his gold/item stealing range and then plinks him with bullets, phase dooring away when he gets close. A short time later he’s dead. Long bow, or two types of helms? She takes the metal cap and its of the Noldor. Bleh, but it does sell for a lot.

Mirkwood 26 – Princess Quest for Ghosts She starts right next to the room, and since each ghost dies to a single shot, its over in less than a minute. Leather armor of rAcid? She leaves it.

Mirkwood 27 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Giant Fire Ants Her pack is pretty full from the Ghosts, so she recalls back to Lothlorien.

She’s been making good progress on stat gain potions, so her mana and hp are starting to look better. The cap of the Noldor does sell for a lot, and a mage staff turns out to be of Wizardry, though it’s a mid-range one. She’s primarily using her sling these days, but Zippy really only uses mana for the occasional detection spell, so I figure she needs the melee more than the magic. The mage staff goes into her house for possible later use. Really no need to restock as she’s using very few of her potions and scrolls. Its amazing how her side trip turned a major roadblock in smooth sailing. Back into Mirkwood.

Mirkwood 27 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Giant Fire Ants They take a while to hunt down, and it’s a big level with lots of ogres and trolls, but none of them are a threat. Using regular ammo is starting to be a drag. Zippy hasn’t been in real danger in a while, but monsters are starting to take a while to kill. This will become a problem when the monsters start getting faster.

With one ant to go, she runs into who I think of as the superPriest. He’s not fast, but the instant he sees Zippy, he summons monsters and on his very next move, he summons monsters again, and on his next move, he summons monsters AGAIN. None of the monsters are terribly dangerous (war bears, white wolves, etc.), but this guy has a talent for cranking out big quantities of them. Zippy finally resorts to her anti-Quylthulg tactics and tunnels around behind the priest, popping out of the wall within melee range. The priest falls quickly, and Zippy mops up what’s left. Fittingly, Zippy makes level 29 while killing him, and gets a Manwe quest. She’ll do it as soon as a full pack makes her recall out. As an added benefit, a random scroll turns out to be acquirement. When the last ant goes down, its anti-climactic and she takes Magic Device.

Mirkwood 28 – Princess Quest for Giant Blue Ants Hmm. Its ant-ville. Small level, the ants go down without too much trouble. Darksword is one of the options. Could it be Mormegil? Lets find out. Nope. Slay undead. Oh well.

Mirkwood 29 – Princess Quest for Bodaks Ok, the weak ammo is starting to be a problem. Zippy had trouble killing the bodaks before they summoned. Fortunately, they never got anything nasty, and there were only 6 of them, but I’m really hoping she finishes archery soon so she can get ammo creation. She takes leather scalemail and its rAcid. Bleh.

Mirkwood 30 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Mature White Dragons Wow, what a level. First, a pack of 5 dragons charges her almost simultaneously. She manages to kill one before having to teleport away. She then hunts down most of the rest of the dragons one at a time, encountering lots of other monsters, Quylthulgs, elite Uruks, and Sanghyando and Lugdush along the way while getting her piety over 5k for the first time. Yea for +1 speed! Switching her praying on and off got really tiresome and I kept forgetting to turn it on before battles, so starting with the Bodaks I just left it on. Finally, while hunting the last dragon, Zippy runs around a corner into a room full of Aranea! She quickly runs back out of the room down half her hp, pursued by a virtual hail of curses. The last dragon was indeed in the room, and since it can fly over trees it gets to her first. A race ensues. Can Zippy kill the dragon before the Aranea start to pour around the corner and hammer her with curses? Not quite, but close enough. When the dragon goes down, only 1 is around the corner but the rest of the spiders are right behind. Her pack is already full and she’s badly injured. Zippy doesn’t bother picking up the dragon’s drops and just teleports away. As a reward, one of the choices is Archery! Yea! Time to get out of here.

Back in Lothlorien, Zippy dumps her saved points into Sling-Mastery and Archery. When her archery is over 10, she buys make ammo and heads off for the Lost Temple and that Manwe quest. She still doesn’t have full level Vision, but hopefully she’ll get it before the next one. She restocks on scrolls and potions, but even though she’s down to 12 sling bullets she doesn’t bother refilling, hoping to make some better ammo along the way. She also remembers to bring that elven robe she’s had for a while plus Durandil and always puts them on before making ammo for the luck bonus. Zippy then heads out to search for the temple. Its right next to Moria and quickly found.

Lost Temple 19 Well, that’s not too bad, but it’s a carbon copy of the lost temple before. Big level, full of clear hounds. Sigh. If Zippy never sees a clear hound again, it will be too soon. They hounds are tougher, but Zippy lucks into a big stack of rubble and makes a healthy supply of ammo almost immediately. That, plus her improved sling skill makes the level easier than the earlier Lost Temple, but not by as much as I’d like. Its not here. She heads back up the stairs and tries again.

Lost Temple 19 Sigh, another big level, full of clear hounds, though also with lots of rubble, so she keeps making ammo while searching for the relic piece. The RNG appears to be stuck. Fortunately, this time she finds the relic piece halfway through the level. Just the 2nd of the 5 levels. The RNG is showing a little mercy.

Zippy made 3 separate sets of slay dragon ammo while in the Lost Temple, and so decides to head for Gondolin and its house quest. In Gondolin, she notices potions of resistance and speed for sale in the Black Market. Someone is giving her a sign, so she buys them and quaffs them before heading into the quest level. Have to be careful here. Easy to forget that Zippy isn’t actually resistant to fire OR confusion. I’ll have to do something about that soon.

Gondolin House Quest Zippy goes in at Speed +32 while wielding shots and pebbles of slay dragon. Since there aren’t any ancient dragons or even any mature multi-hued ones, the poor dragons don’t stand a chance. They get their revenge by not dropping anything of value, but Zippy does make level 30. Time to cash in that scroll of acquirement.

Zippy runs back to Lothlorien and picks up the scroll of acquirement plus the elven robe and Durandil. She then puts them on and runs over to Angband. Since she’s level 30, she can now enter it. She does (quest for lesser Titans. Hmm, perhaps Zippy will try them later) and reads the scroll. A ring. Nifty. She grabs it and heads back over to Gondolin, where she ID’s it as an indestructible ring of speed (+9)! When praying and running, her base speed is up to +32. Sweet. Zippy restores her stuff and heads back into Mirkwood.

Mirkwood 31 – Princess Quest for Cave Trolls Magic ammo makes these guys a breeze. There’s a vault there, too, but its full of low level monsters and treasure. Once the cave trolls are down, one of the reward options is an Anchor, so Zippy takes that.

Mirkwood 32 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Water Trolls These guys would have been tough with regular ammo, but Zippy is now up to the task. This level has a vault, too, with a bunch of low level uniques. Angamite is in there, as is Mim, and also, in the first appearance by a resurrected unique, Ibun. Gorlim is there too, and he’s probably the toughest opponent Zippy has run into so far. None of them last long, though. Finally, Zippy kills the last of the Water Trolls, making level 31 and getting another Manwe quest already, plus she gets some crummy skill choices for rewards. Zippy settles for Weaponmastery.

Mirkwood 33 – Princess Quest for Necromancers It’s a very small level, and the presence of a bunch of bodaks makes it the toughest level Zippy’s seen in a while. She starts very close to the princess room, and manages to kill a couple of the necromancers before she’s forced to teleport away by Vrocks summoned by the Bodaks. After that, it’s a game of cat and mouse as Zippy’s ammo supply slowly dwindles. She pops out, nails a couple of necromancers, deals with the summons, recovers as much ammo as she can, then repeats, while clearing the packs of energy, fire, and aquatic hounds that seemed to rise up out of nowhere. By the last one, she’s entirely out of ammo but manages to kill it as well as a 5-headed hydra in melee. Small metal shield is an option. Could it be Thorin’s? Nope. rLightning. Bleh.

Zippy recalls back to Lothlorien and has a pint of ale to celebrate the completion of the Mirkwood. Her speed has been coming along VERY nicely, her leveling is going well, and considering the late start, she's making great progress on hte Manwe quests. On the other hand, she's got some serious gaps in her resistances, and I'm having trouble putting together a kit that really works. Hopefully Zippy will be able to solve that before it proves fatal.

The adventures of Zippy, Chapter 5

While in Lothlorien, Zippy toys with the idea of going after the next Manwe quest. It would be nice to have 3 out of the way already, but I’m really tired of fighting clear hounds and Zippy only needs one more level (plus a little spellpower) to turn her Vision into Enlightenment. While pondering, she spots a potion of Enlightenment for sale in the Black Market. Ok, fine. She’ll find the temple and quaff this one potion. If its not there, she’ll wait until she makes another level before coming back.

After a bit of hunting, the Temple proves to be East of Rhun. Zippy heads down the stairs.

Lost Temple 20 Hmm, not much worse than the last one, but I’m still tired of fighting Clear Hounds. Zippy quaffs the potion and… no relic piece. Ok, she’ll try again later.

I’d really like to get this quest out of the way, though. Perhaps a quick tour of the dungeon towns. Maybe one has another enlightenment potion for sale. Zippy jogs over to the Orc Caves and then the Old Forest to visit the dungeon towns. Nope. No enlightenment potions, but she does pick up a few stat gain potions (including STR and DEX, which give her 4 attacks with Maedhros) and she manages to steal a +11 Ring of Speed. She also starts building a supply of cure insanity potions. If she’s willing to ditch the ring of accuracy, she can run around with a +43 speed. Zippy plays with super speed for a while, hacking orcs into little pieces, but ends up trading the +9 ring of speed for the ring of accuracy.

While hacking up orcs, I suddenly realize that Zippy is still using an enchanted leather cap for a helmet. The helm of the Noldor was pretty crappy, but it was better than this. Since I’ve finally realized that quality headgear is a need for Zippy, she heads to the Maze next.

Maze 25-32 As annoying as always. Zippy spends the whole time on coward/leisurely and mostly uses stealth to avoid monsters. She has a rod with a detect doors/stairs tip, and at the start of each level, she casts detect monsters and traps, then zaps the rod to find the stairs down. Finally only level 30, she spots Merton, but it proves to be a mindflayer. She sees another likely fellow on level 32, and this time its really Merton. Dunno how he got down to level 32 as a level 1 character and with a broken leg, no less, but after handing over a Word of Recall scroll, the little guy is safely home.

Maze 33-36 Zippy keeps up her earlier pattern, and makes ammo as she goes. She gets two sets of slay undead ammo and some mithril shots of frost. She’ll use the mithril on the minotaur and then take advantage of the undead ammo by heading for the Minas Anor house quest next.

Maze 37 There’s the minotaur. After a little maneuvering, Zippy sets it up so that the minotaur has to charge down a long hall to get to her. She didn’t need to bother. The mithril shots chop the minotaur up fast. 5 or 6 shots later and its dead. Zippy scoops up Hammerhand and discovers that while the weight of the helm costs her 5 mana, the stat bonuses give her +30 hp, plus add rFear and rDark. Definitely worthwhile. She recalls back to town.

While in Bree, Zippy finally checks in with the Mayor (forgot to do that after doing the house quest) and, surprisingly, gets the Barrow Wights. Hmm. She’s got both rDark and rNether now, plus the ammo for it, but it’s still a dangerous quest. Zippy decides to go after Minas Anor first and slowly walks there.

After walking to Minas Anor, she wields the slay undead ammo and heads into the house quest.

Minas Anor House Quest Zippy casts detect monster and the strongest thing on the screen is a black wraith. The usual traps are there, but there seem to be a lot more rotting corpses and fewer revenants and crypt things than expected. Definitely a low difficulty house quest. I once had a character encounter TWO nightmares while doing it. With her ammo and speed, Zippy blows through the quest without difficulty.

While selling the paltry loot (multiple rings of +STR and DEX and a bunch of weapons and armor that prove to be cursed), Zippy notices a potion of experience for sale at the black market. She’s just short of gold for it, but manages a five-finger discount. She quaffs the potion and its enough to bring her to level 32. She puts the points into Divination and Spell power, and its enough to turn her Vision spell into full Enlightenment. NOW lets go get that relic piece.

Zippy returns to the Lost Temple, and it’s a breeze.

Lost Temple 20 She casts the spell and… nope, not here. Back up the stairs to try again.

Lost Temple 20 She casts the spell and… nope, not here. Back up the stairs to try again.

Lost Temple 20 She casts the spell and… there it is. Zippy fights through a pack of clear hounds and manages to get the relic piece. 3 down, 2 to go, and she’s only level 32.

Zippy still has plenty of slay undead ammo left, so I think its now time to go after the Barrow Wights. That quest always makes me nervous, even with rNether, but Zippy should be up to it. I think the Wights are easy to hit, so Zippy takes off her ring of accuracy (but keeps it with her) and wears both Rings of Speed. Good stealth can be tremendously handy in this quest. If you’re quiet enough and fast enough, you can start each encounter with the wights still asleep, so Zippy sets to coward/sluggish which brings her speed down to +26.

Barrow Wight Quest True to form, the wights are still asleep. The forest wights and grave wights all die with one hit from the slay undead ammo, and even on coward without the ring of accuracy, Zippy hits them most of the time. She makes quick progress, killing sleeping wight after sleeping wight until she gets to the room before the King of the Wights. After clearing the room, she casts detect monsters and notes with satisfaction that the King and his escort are still asleep. The King and the Emperor Wights are a lot harder to hit than the common wights, so she swaps the lesser ring of speed for her ring of accuracy, speeds up to running and then takes the void gate into the final room.

They are all still asleep, so Zippy starts killing the common wights with her sling until she has a clear line of fire on the first Emperor Wight. She then bumps up to normal/running and starts shooting at it. Her first shot hits it and wakes it up, but she misses the next few and it tries to curse Zippy, but she resists. Her next couple of shots hit the Emperor Wight and kill it. She follows a similar pattern with the other Emperor Wight, except that instead of trying to curse her, it wastes it chance by taking a step forward. Down it goes. Finally, she starts firing on the still sleeping King Wight. Zippy hits it a few times, but its still standing a fires a nether bolt, which reflects. Zippy hits it a few more times, and the King starts walking forward. Big mistake. Zippy keeps hitting it with slay undead pebbles and it finally goes down. Whew. That wasn’t too bad. Zippy quickly takes the void gate and cleans up the remaining wights and checks out the loot. The wights’ lair is a treasure trove. They dropped 8(!) stat gain potions of various sorts, Paurnemmen (which is the glove set with +4 CON), and numerous valuable wands and “excellent” weapons. She gathers as much as she can carry, discarding CCW potions and teleport scrolls to make room for more valuable items, and then heads back. Bring on Uvatha!

Zippy goes to Gondolin to ID everything and then sells most of it, pocketing well over 100k au, and trades the randart cesti for Paurenemmen. She takes stock of her dwindling supply of slay undead pebbles, but I think its enough, so she heads back to Bree and signs on for the Dark Horseman quest.

Uvatha shows up on cue, Zippy sets to berserk/running, and chops him to pieces with her sling. She hits him every single time and he only gets to take one step before keeling over. It would be nice if all Nazgul were that obliging. Zippy scoops up Uvatha’s drop and IDs it. Wow, 3 “excellent” items plus his ring. I’m used to 2-4 “good” items, so it’s a pleasant surprise. Bolts of slay dragon, a ball and chain of *slay demon*, a shield of rCold, and the ring is nice, but not as good as her rings of speed and accuracy. Very profitable. She sells everything except the ring, which she Mathoms. Lets see if she can Mathom all 13 available rings of power (Durin, the 9 Nazgul rings, and the 3 Elven rings). I’m not sure I want to do the Dim Gates, so maybe not, but we’ll see.

This has gone smoothly so far, so lets move on to the minor end-of-dungeon uniques. Zippy has a couple sets of slay demon ammo, so she decides to go after Helcaraxe first. She replaces the teleport scrolls and CCW potions she dumped in the Wight caves and buys an extra helping of CCW potions to make up for breakage.

Thunderlording to the bottom of dungeons is a bit cheesy, but honestly, there’s no way I’m going to slog through Helcaraxe, so the decision is really “Thunderlord or skip”. Thunderlord it is.

Helcaraxe 40 Hmm, a small vault with Draebor and some mezzodemons. It would be nice to get Draebor out of the way, and Zippy already has the anti-demon ammo ready. The group goes down surprisingly easily, but just as Zippy finishes collecting her ammo, an AMHD comes around the corner. Eeeek. Zippy still has no rFire and no dragon slaying ammo. She teleports away, and it looks like a pretty big level. It takes some searching, but Zippy finally spots the White Balrog down a hallway. The Balrog starts by summoning undead twice, first getting a Revenant and the some ghouls. The revenant is behind her, so Zippy ignores and starts punching through the ghouls to get to the Balrog. The Balrog responds by tossing a couple nether balls at her (which fortunately don’t do much damage) and then charging her. Finally, the ghouls are out of the way, and Zippy and the White Balrog are trading shots. Fortunately for Zippy, she’s a lot faster and her slay demon shots hit harder than the White Balrog’s melee attacks. Finally, the Balrog goes down, so Zippy switches to the last of her slay undead ammo and finishes off the Revenant. Whew. Back to town.

Hmm. I didn’t write down what the White Balrog dropped, so it couldn’t have been very interesting. I think it was a cursed weapon, but I’m not sure. After ID’ing and selling loot, Zippy also sells off some CCW potions for encumbrance purposes. Hobbits and Gnomes only get ¾ the usual encumbrance limits because of their small stature and her strength still isn’t very high, so when she’s got a big load of ammo, it can weigh her down.

Ok, where next? The dungeon towns were nice last time through, so lets do them again. Zippy’s feeling pretty flush with cash after the last few quests, so she splurges and takes the Thunderlord express to both towns. While browsing, she picks up her first tome, Knowledge (no more running to Gondolin to ID things!), a couple more potions of stat gain, and a better sling ((+22, +15) so the damage is about the same, but its got a much bigger bonus to-hit). Zippy decides to do some ammo scumming next, so she picks up some potions of resist cold as well.

Back in Gondolin, she makes a side trip to Lothlorien to get the tome of knowledge fireproofed (she did that quest a while back, I think I forgot to mention it), and then takes the Thunderlord to the bottom of Helcaraxe, where she Enlightens the level, quaffs a potion of resist cold (for the double-resist and to eliminate breakage), and starts scumming for ammo. One good trip (and much monster avoiding) later, she’s got a ton of acid branded ammo and some slay evil ammo. She puts the slay evil ammo into her Lothlorien house and decides to put the acid ammo to good use. Zippy’s coming for you, Eol!

Zippy jogs back to Gondolin, and picks up some potions of speed available in the Black Market. She quaffs a potion of speed and enters Eol’s lair feeling pretty confident. Perhaps too confident.

Eol Quest Zippy is on Berserk/Running with the +11 Ring of Speed and the Ring of Accuracy on and her best bullets of acid wielded. It’s a medium sized, mostly open room, and Zippy enlightens the room, then detects for traps and monsters. Eol is in the bottom right corner of the room. That’s good, because Zippy entered from the bottom left, and there’s cover between them. Zippy hugs the wall as she approaches, trying to stay out of Eol’s LoS. She’s about halfway to him when he wakes up and starts advancing. Zippy spots a good spot to engage Eol from, but has to step into his LoS for a move to get there. Naturally, Eol takes the opportunity to summon, getting Wargs, Ologs, and a necromancer. Zippy does NOT want to get stuck in the open fighting the summons while Eol can see her, so she teleports away.

Zippy lands not far away, behind some rock. She quickly tunnels into it, making a little alcove before the monsters arrive. Zippy kills the necromancer before he can summon, then switches to melee and whittles down the Ologs and Wargs as Eol approaches. As soon as Eol gets into LoS, he summons again, this time getting a mature bronze dragon. Ugh. Zippy still doesn’t have rConfusion (she does in fact get confused reasonably often, but with her great speed and big stock of CCW potions, she typically just relies on her speed to give her a double move and drink one when needed. Sadly, that tactic doesn’t work as well when the issue is damage from a breath attack), so, with great trepidation, she decides to go after the dragon first. Her first round of sling attacks kill it, but Eol then gets another move. Whew. He blinked away.

As Eol works his way back over, Zippy continues using melee to finish off the last remaining earlier summons. Eol gets into LoS again just as the last of them are dead. This time, Eol doesn’t get into LoS until he’s already in melee range. He uses melee, and Zippy responds with acid bullets. Zippy quickly gets the upper hand and Eol blinks away, but Zippy follows him and keeps pelting him with bullets. Eol casts a few ball spells, but never summons again. Before long, he keels over, dead from the acid bullets. Considering how quick Eol was to summon, that went more smoothly than I feared. Looks like Zippy’s shaping up nicely after all.

Sadly for Zippy, Eol’s drop is terrible. Worst I’ve ever seen. No Anguriel, and in fact, of the 7-8 items he dropped, only 1 is an ego item, and its leather armor of rAcid, so I’m not impressed. Still, Zippy collects the equipment and heads back to town.

Zippy cashes in the equipment for the little it sells for, and then collects her reward. The lantern makes up for the bad drop. +2 to INT, WIS, and CHR, can store a spell, rBlindness, and makes her invisible. She actually does need rBlindness, so it’s a nice combination.

Zippy picks up the usual supply of potions and scrolls, and decides to go take care of Rhun, next.

The adventures of Zippy, Chapter 6

Since Rhun can have dungeon towns, Zippy plans on heading down to level 40 the hard way by using the stairs. She’ll cast Vision at the start of each level and hopefully she’ll regenerate enough mana on the way to the stairs to be able to keep casting it as she goes. She’s only planning on stopping for good vaults and dungeon towns. Here we go.

Rhun 26-37 Well, this has been dull so far. A few dead hounds and trolls, but otherwise the descent has been exceedingly quiet.

Rhun 38 Ah, a dungeon town with 8 shops clustered in the middle of the map. Detect monsters picks up a pack of gravity hounds nearby, but Zippy just sprints towards the town, leaving them in her dust. The town has a polearm smith, an axesmith, a hafted smith, a jewelry store, a rare jewelry store, a scroll store, a general store, and an expensive blackmarket. Nothing interesting for sale, but its nice to know its there.

Rhun 39 Nothing interesting.

Rhun 40 Ok, where is Ulfang? Zippy first runs into a pack of gravity hounds. Yikes. Those guys can be trouble and I don’t want them around while fighting Ulfang. By sniping at them from a sheltered spot, only one or two have LoS on her at a time, and Zippy is able to pick them off while only getting breathed on once. Taking the time to eliminate them was the right move, as Ulfang was right behind them. Ulfang must have been celebrating something because he seems to be almost drunk. Either Zippy has an invisible pet she doesn’t know about and Ulfang is trying to kill it, or Ulfang got confused somehow. Anyway, he wanders about, doing whatever he’s doing, and Zippy peppers him with acid branded sling bullets. The strange and one-sided battle is soon over with Zippy making level 34 (she must have made 33 back there somewhere and I didn’t notice) and getting another Manwe quest. Ulfang dropped a spear with multiple brands and slays, plus extra attacks, but its only (+4, +3) so its not worth using. Zippy recalls to town.

Back in Lothlorien, Zippy sells the few items she picked up in Rhun and heads out to find the 4th temple. Ah, its right by Isengard. Hopefully Saruman isn’t around.

Lost Temple 22 (x4) Zippy casts Vision and… nope, not here. Back up the stairs to try again.

Lost Temple 22 Zippy casts Vision. 5th try, so it better be here somewhere… and there it is. The level is pretty quiet, and Zippy is able to get the piece without any problems and recalls back to town.

Back in Lothlorien, Zippy considers her options. She’s still fast enough to run circles around most opponents, and while her sling doesn’t do a ton of damage, its enough to overwhelm most opponents so far. Her spell casting is coming along, but she doesn’t have teleport away up to working on everything in sight and she hasn’t even started on Temporal yet, so she mostly just casts Divination spells. I expect that to change later. What Zippy really needs is better armor. This lack of rFire and rConfusion is going to get her killed and probably soon. The safest place to look for armor is the Sandworm hole, so off she goes.

The trek to the Sandworm hole is uneventful and she begins descending, casting Vision in the hopes of finding a vault at every step.

Sandworm Hole 22-27 Boring an uneventful. Killed a few worms, but nothing interesting.

Sandworm Hole 28 Two vaults on the level. A big one and a little one. Zippy heads for the little one first. Its full of easily dispatched worm masses of various colors and holds 3 stat gain potions and a pair of boots. ID’ing them determines them to be Boots of Speed! That are +1. Zippy keeps them for the resale value.

The big vault proves to be one of the famous greater checkerboard vaults and its FULL of stuff. Zippy slowly works through the vault, killing wereworms and slugs as she goes. It’s a bit tedious, but not dangerous. When the monsters are all dead, she goes back and starts ID’ing the loot. Wow, a nice haul of artifacts – Isildur, both Phials, Forasgil, Thorongil, and Thingol (Zippy is building an outstanding collection of artifact cloaks) plus a bunch of tomes, one of which is a backup fireproof tome of knowledge. Zippy takes as much as she can carry and recalls back to town.

Zippy house in Lothlorien is bulging at the seams, so she moves to Bree and stores the artifacts there and sells the extra tomes. Isildur might just be the answer to her armor problems but I’ll sort that out after dealing with the Sandworm Queen. Zippy recalls back to the Sandworm hole.

Sandworm Hole 28-29 Nothing interesting.

Sandworm Hole 30 Zippy’s detect monsters has been providing temporary ESP for a while and I hate the way the Queen doesn’t show up on it. Zippy wanders the level, squashing worms and recasting detect monsters periodically while hunting for the queen. She finally spots the queen in the middle of a big room in the midst of a bunch of wereworms. Oh well, Zippy shouldn’t have too much trouble. Zippy equips some pebbles of slay animal she made and by the time she gets to the room, the Queen has spotted her and pushed out of the room. Zippy turns a corner and the two are suddenly face to face. The Queen breathes, but Zippy resists and isn’t too badly hurt. Zippy responds by pelting the queen with pebbles, and its all over in a flash. Zippy follows it up by knocking off the wereworms, which helpfully brings her piety up over 10k, raising her speed bonus to +2.

Back in Bree. Zippy gives the future some thought. Swapping Thalkettoth for Isildur would cover her resists better, but would cost her some speed. What would be really nice would a bigger bonus to CON and, since she’ll probably start Mordor soon, Immunity to Fire. Trone’s armor has that.

Going after Trone at this point would certainly be dangerous, but with the right equipment set-up, it wouldn’t necessarily be suicide. Zippy’s sling-mastery skill is up to 25, so her damage multiplier is at x3 now. She’s been hoarding some (+11, +11) mithril shots of lightning that she made and those would do 7+11+15=33*3=99*3=297 damage per hit. With two shots/turn and a speed in the low +40s after quaffing a potion of speed, it actually wouldn’t take that long to kill him. Defensively, Zippy can arrange double resists against base, she already has reflection for his mana bolts, and can wear the anchor to help against Trone’s time breath. I think its doable, and his coat is exactly what Zippy needs. I’ve talked myself into it.

First, Zippy resets her equipment. Thalkettoth gets swapped for Isildur, and Colannon gets traded for Colluin. rFire and rConfusion are finally covered, but rShards is now open. Zippy picks up a few potions of speed she’d stashed away and finds a book of Manwe’s blessing in a bookstore (her prayer isn’t high enough for blessing to give the full effect, but it will still give blessing and heroism, which would help). She also picks up extra CCW potions, and teleport, phase door, and confuse monster scrolls just in case. Zippy raids her Bree home for the small stash of healing potions she’s been accumulating. Just 4. Hopefully that’s enough. After changing equipment, her stats now stand at STR 25/INT 27/WIS 15/ DEX 36/CON 36/CHR 24/HP 564/SN 192/SP 72/Piety 10119 and she’ll be at speed +39 after drinking a potion of speed. I think that’s good enough as long as I’m careful with Trone’s summoning. She takes the Thunderlord to the SLoM.

Sacred Land of Mountains 70 Zippy scums level 70 a bit before finding a layout that could work for anti-summoning, and with Trone in a good location. To get to the spot, Zippy needs to go through a Great Wyrm of Thunder. She switches to her back-up ammo, the mithril shots of frost she used on the Maze Minotaur, and kills the GWoT surprising quickly even on normal/normal. Maybe this won’t be as bad as I fear.

Trone is coming and Zippy quaffs a potion of speed, activates Colluin for the double resists, and casts Manwe’s blessing, plus sets to Berserk/Running. However, before she can equip the Anchor, Trone bashes open a secret door that Zippy didn’t realize was there. Maybe this isn’t as good an anti-summoning spot as I had hoped. Ooh, also forgot to switch to the lightning ammo. Oh well. Zippy starts firing. She lands her first couple of shots, but on his first move Trone summons, getting Marda and a bronze Thunderlord. Uh, no thanks. Zippy teleports away and hits the stairs up. Lets try that again. Zippy rests and then scums level 70 again, looking for a similar set-up to before.

She finally gets one and tries again. Its not a great set-up, but it’s a twisty hallway that should work pretty well. This time Zippy equips the right ammo and when Trone starts getting close, quaffs her potion, activates Colliun, and casts Manwe’s Blessing again. She also remembers to read a scroll of confuse monster. This time she thinks better of it and intentionally holds off on equipping the Anchor. I don’t think he can one-hit kill Zippy with his time breath and I don’t want her to get stuck if Trone summons Marda again.

Trone is just around the corner and Zippy opens fire. Zippy uses the twists in the tunnel to keep Trone out of sight while she keeps hitting him with bullets. Eventually, I mis-time a twist and Trone gets LoS, which he takes full advantage of by summoning a bronze thunderlord. Doh. Its behind Zippy, so she’s stuck. Trone’s down to 7 stars, but I don’t want to fight them both at once. Zippy phase doors away, landing in a nearby hallway. The location is good as by moving down a bit, Zippy gets Trone to follow her, while the Bronze Thunderlord stays where it is. Zippy is able to get a couple more shots off but then Trone comes around the corner and the two are face to face. Lets try a round of melee, maybe Zippy will get lucky with the confusion. She lands a couple of blows, but Trone resists the confusion. Zippy reads another scroll of monster confusion, and Trone responds with melee, doing about 150 hp in damage. Ouch, but survivable. Zippy tries again with melee, landing 3 blows this time, and Trone is confused. Excellent.

Zippy immediately starts pelting Trone with sling bullets again as Trone accidentally makes a couple melee attacks, but mostly wanders around. When Trone gets down to 5 stars, Zippy switches to bullets of acid, and when he gets to 3 stars, he finally recovers from his confusion. He summons again, this time getting a brown thunderlord and it appears between Zippy and Trone. Zippy starts firing sling bullets at the new thunderlord, while Trone starts breathing fire over and over. After a few rounds, the brown thunderlord is dead, but Zippy is down to about half her hp (mostly from the brown thunderlord’s melee attacks), so she drinks a healing potion. Trone moves into melee range, and the two start slugging it out, Zippy with her sling bullets and Trone with his melee attacks. When Trone gets down to 1 star, Zippy has to drink another healing potion and another speed potion, and soon after has to switch to her 4th batch of ammo. Finally, Trone goes down. Whew, that was tough. As Zippy starts moving up to look at what he dropped, the bronze thunderlord finally gets around the corner, and Zippy makes short work of it, reaching level 35 and getting the last Manwe quest in the process. She puts enough points into divination to get *ID* and, going 1 point at a time, enough into Thaumaturgy to get a Destruction spell.

There is a ton of stuff on the ground, though a couple of fire breaths from the bronze thunderlord removed all the scrolls and flammable objects. Sorting through what’s left, Zippy is thrilled to find not only Trone’s armor, but also some nice randart platemail, a crown of seeing that gives telepathy, a very nice dragonshield of preservation, and the Spear of Melkor. She gathers up those items plus the best ego weapons she can carry and recalls to town (Minas Anor, this time).

Back in town, Zippy sells the ego weapons, decides to Mathom the spear and checks out the shield and armor a little more closely. The armor is awesome and might actually be better than Trone’s armor. 4 sustains, 2 immunities, and 11 resists, most of which are higher resists.

The Full Plate Armour of Halque (-3 to accuracy) [25,+9]

In fact, Zippy discovers that if she swaps her current shield (still Gothmog), Hammerhand, and Isildur for the armor (Halque), the dragon shield, and the crown of seeing, she has all resists covered, immunity to fire and electricity, and full telepathy. She loses 50-60 hp and about 20 sp (because of the weight), but its worth while. The shield is great, but its now only providing rDisenchant. A shield with both reflection and rDisenchantment would free up her amulet slot, so finding one is now her top equipment priorty.

That was amazing. Over the course of just one battle, Zippy went from having major resistance holes to being totally covered, plus some immunities and ESP and all sustains except CHR. Zippy is a happy camper.

May as well test out the new kit by taking care of that last Manwe quest. Zippy marches out in search of the temple, and finds it SW of Erebore.

Lost Temple 23 Zippy casts Vision and… no relic piece. But she hears someone or something wondering where its “Precious” has gone. Smeagol! That’s right, he’s back thanks to the Crumpled Scroll. Zippy hunts Smeagol down and peppers him with sling bullets, quickly sending him back to Mandos. Smeagol drops his standard ring, plus a randart main gauche. Thanks, dude. Back up the stairs to try again.

Lost Temple 23 (x2) Zippy casts Vision and… no relic piece. Back up the stairs to try again.

Lost Temple 23 Zippy casts Vision and… there it is. No clear hounds for a change. Lots of clear mushroom patches instead. Why couldn’t Zippy have run into level after level of clear mushroom patches before? Would have been much easier to deal with. She also keeps making more ammo as she goes. Finally, she’s got the last relic piece. Manwe is suitably pleased and Zippy’s Prayer skill is now up to 15. That's pretty cool that Zippy didn't even start worshipping Manwe until level 16, and had completed all 5 quests by level 35. Definitely the most efficient performance of any of my characters. Disappointingly, her skill at Manwe’s Blessing is only up to 19, rather than 20. Hmm. I must have misunderstood Spell Power somehow. Zippy can either put 3 points into Spellpower or 2 points into Prayer to get Manwe’s Blessing up to 20 and full Superheroism (she has no need of Holy Luck or Preserve Life). The Spell power route takes another point, but it will help out Banishment and extend the ranges on the various detects, so Zippy will ultimately take Spell Power to 14 instead of just 12.

Zippy takes the stairs back out and returns to her usual base of Lothlorien. Her stats are coming along nicely, but none are maxed yet, so the Spider Quest is in order. This should be a breeze, so she doesn’t bother packing any additional supplies.

Lothlorien Spider Quest Zippy enters at coward/brisk which puts her speed at +27 but gives her Superb Stealth. She creeps through, killing the lesser spiders with melee, shooting bullets of acid at the Aranea (2 hits to kill them), and the last of her mithril shots of frost (she had 25+ to start and they’ve stuck around forever) on the Elders (also 2 hits to kill). It all goes very smoothly, as except for a few mirkwood spiders at the end, nothing wakes up before Zippy shoots it. One Elder casts a firebolt, but it reflects, and Zippy takes no damage the entire time. She cheerfully gets the reward and immediately gulps it down.

Zippy has sold off the last of her slay undead ammo, but she’s got some bullets of fire and acid, so she may as well take care of the Library Quest in Minas Anor. She trots down to Minas Anor and checks in with the Old Mage. Zippy tells the Old Mage that she’s going to be flinging around burning sling bullets in his library, but it doesn’t seem to bother him as long as the liches are dealt with. Well, ok, its your library.

Library Quest These guys are cake. Zippy sets to Normal/Brisk to make sure she can hit the Monastic Liches, but its not a problem. Zippy gets one-hit kills on the regular liches, and they’re all dead before they wake up. The monastic liches seem oddly spell averse, instead trying to close for melee. One gets close and lands a couple kicks, but the damage isn’t serious. Zippy makes level 36 on the first master lich. For the Master Lich, Zippy breaks back out the mithril shots of lightning, and the Master Lich doesn’t last long. He starts by throwing a curse, which Zippy resists, but after that he also tries to close for melee, but dies before getting close enough. Stupid spell casters. The liches dropped a potion of invulnerability, which is pretty cool and will be saved for later, but otherwise nothing of value.

The Old Mage is happy to see the liches are gone and apparently the collateral book damage isn’t enough to put him off his Geritol. He makes Zippy her own spellbook. Hmm. Zippy will eventually have to carry Tomes of Time, Conveyance and Knowledge, but if she can get both Manwe’s blessing and Windshield, she won’t need to carry a Manwe Tome. Noxious cloud can be handy as well, so she’ll also take that.

Playing with her skill points, Zippy discovers that she can get Manwe’s Blessing to 20 with only a 13 in Spellpower, a point cheaper than I expected. Hmm. I guess I really don’t get how it works. Oh well, not a problem now. The rest of the points go into sling-mastery, slowly pushing it up towards 32.

It will be time to start Mordor soon, but Zippy decides to do another round of visits to the Dungeon Towns using the Thunderlord in Minas Anor. She picks up a few stat gain potions from the potion stores (Maxing her very first stat – INT, still only mid-20s, though) and some more potions of cure insanity. Plus, she picks up Tomes of Knowledge and Time. She takes them to Lothlorien and fireproofs the Tome of Time, but saves her last Fireproofing for a Tome of Conveyance. She then returns to Minas Anor and starts getting ready for Mordor. I believe the rest of the End-of-Dungeon Uniques can be ring bearers (maybe not Durin’s Bane, but no need to take the chance), so Zippy will wait on them until she takes out the Necromancer.

DayInTheLifeArchive/Day in the life of Zippy (last edited 2004-10-22 17:11:07 by 64-132-179-115)