A Day in the Life of Zippy, the Zombie Hobbit Warper, Book 2

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 7

On to Mordor! Zippy makes sure she has a mixed batch of ammo (fire, lightning, and wounding, and a mix of pebbles and bullets) and the usual scrolls and potions, and will be based out of Minas Anor. She’s usually set to coward/running (which makes her speed +30), but switches to berserk/running when in battle with something that isn’t trivial. When she’s ready, she marches over to the entrance and heads in.

Mordor 34 – Princess Quest for Castamir It’s a small level and Castamir is right there. Zippy is in a hallway that runs into the princess room, but on the opposite side from the door. The princess room is surrounded by wererats. Detect monsters shows that the King Rat and Nar are mixed into the rats. Zippy starts whittling down the rats, getting over half of them before they start waking up. A couple manage to summon and otherwise cast spells, but Zippy casts her very seldom used Noxious Cloud to take out the summons, and keeps knocking out wererats. By the time Nar and the King Rat are in range, they are almost alone and lightning pebbles take them both out quickly. Zippy is behind the princess room, so she circles around to let Castamir out. Just as he breaks down the door, Ulwarth and a pack of acid hounds come barreling down the hallway Zippy started in. Jeez, Zippy hasn’t even left the room and already 4 uniques. Fortunately, none are a threat. Zippy makes short work of Castamir, and selects a leather shield.

Unfortunately, that opens the back wall to the princess room, giving the acid hounds LoS on Zippy. They start breathing and while it doesn’t do much damage, the shield is destroyed before Zippy even gets a chance to ID it. Annoyed, Zippy charges the Acid Hounds, killing them and Ulwarth in melee. Her equipment takes a fair amount of damage, though. Zippy will have to get that fixed when she goes back to town.

Mordor 35 – Fumble Fingers Quest for 9 headed Hydras Its another small level, and the Hydras charge Zippy. Thanks to her Fire Immunity, the Hydras have a hard time hurting her, so she mostly kills them with melee. Khim appears mid-way through the battle, but falls quickly to sling bullets. Fairly soon after, there’s just one to go, but Zippy finds Lorgan first. Lots of uniques in Mordor these days. Must be a popular vacation spot.

When I was first learning to play Vanilla, Lorgan killed a substantial percentage of the characters I got to the middle game and I’ve always hated/feared him. Zippy digs an anti-summoning corridor and lures Lorgan in. Zippy then attacks Lorgan with melee and the battle is over fairly quickly. Lorgan summoned once, but got Forest Trolls and Zippy ignored them until Lorgan fell. Finally, the last Hydra goes down and Zippy takes Conveyance. While sorting through the loot, Zippy discovers that something dropped Haradekket. Cool. Its probably not actually better than Maedhros, but its got some useful powers, so its worth hanging onto in case Zippy decides to change her kit.

Mordor 36 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Ancient Black Dragons Big lava streamer through the center of a mid-sized level. I’m really glad Zippy has Immunity to Fire. Zippy switches to Berserk/Running for the whole level, hoping to wake the dragons up and have them come to her. Zippy continues making ammo from available rubble and makes some shots of slay dragon near the beginning of the level. Lucky find. She uses it on the dragons. Some wake up and charge her, but they come one at a time and aren’t a threat. The rest, she has to hunt down. Lots of orcs to chop through on the level, and Zippy nearly clears an orc pit (making level 37, most of her points are going into Sling-mastery now) trying to get to a small cluster of dragons. The last one is on an island in the lava streamer, surrounded by Phase Spiders, which bounce Zippy around a bit. Soon they’re all dead and the options are fairly crummy. Summoning or more Weaponsmastery. Hmm. Zippy takes Summoning.

Mordor 37 – Princess Quest for Master Liches Zippy gives it a shot, but other than those slay dragon shots, her luck in ammo making hasn’t been very good and she’s running low on branded ammo. She manages to kill a couple, but decides to go get some slay undead ammo first. She recalls back to Minas Anor.

In Minas Anor, she realizes the best place to get ammo is level 70 of the Sacred Land of Mountains. Its pretty dangerous, but with her resists and 500+hp, I don’t think anything can one-hit kill her. Zippy gathers and equips her luck equipment, and uses the Thunderlord to head to SLoM 70 for some scumming.

Sacred Land of Mountains 69 & 70 She’s set to coward/leisurely for stealth and generally tries to avoid monsters, regularly casting detect monsters and traps for safety. She bounces back and forth between 69 and 70 accumulating ammo. She stops at one point to kill a pack of chaos hounds (great exp for the effort) and a group of Aether Vortexes (also great exp for the effort), making level 38.

She creates quite a bit of frost branded and slay evil ammo, but I’d rather use fire or slay undead. Still, the slay evil is worth hoarding for later battles with Morgoth and Melkor (if Zippy makes it that far). She eventually makes some fire ammo and then runs into Dwar. Yikes, the dog summoning one. Fortunately, Zippy runs into him in a twisty hallway and uses her speed and LoS games to get in many free hits. Dwar eventually casts a few spells, but he never actually summons and is generally far less trouble than I expected. On the same level, Zippy runs into Polyphemus. Polyphemus was weirdly easy to kill, despite being the 2nd toughest opponent Zippy has run into (after Trone). Zippy didn’t do anything tricky. He just stood there and fired sling bullets until the Cyclops went down, bringing Zippy to level 39. The lightning sling shots did a substantial amount of damage, and Polyphemus was much easier to hit than his 140 AC would suggest. Finally, his erratic movement caused him more grief than usual and when he did attack, it was mostly to cast water and ice bolts which reflected back at him.

Zippy continued scumming for ammo until her pack was full, then she recalled back to Minas Anor, dumped it and went back for more, returning when her pack was full again. The acid and slay evil ammo she saved for Sauron and Morgoth, and though she didn’t actually make any slay undead ammo, she made enough flame branded ammo to handle the master liches. Zippy still had quite a bit of frost and poison ammo left over. She could sell it, but her bank account is already swelling nicely. Instead, Zippy decided to use it completing the Mallorn Quest, so she put her normal gear back on and hiked back to Lothlorien.

At Lothlorien, she checked in and got the potions of Water purification and then headed out with roughly 200 shots and pebbles worth of branded ammo. It was more than enough.

Mallorn Quest Zippy slowly moved in, a square at a time, firing sling shots at all the opponents she could see. Eventually, they all died. It wasn’t the easiest time I’ve had with that quest, but it certainly wasn’t hard.

During that short trip, she had amazing luck with potions of experience. There was one for sale at the Lothlorien Black Market when she got there (so she bought it and drank it). She took the dragon armor and ran it over to Bree and Mathomed it for posterity, and there was a second potion of experience for sale at the BM in Bree. After buying it, drinking it, and heading back to Minas Anor, she found a third one for sale in the Minas Anor BM. After buying that one too, and drinking it, Zippy found herself at level 40. She finally had sling mastery over 30, so her damage modifier was now up to x4. A couple more levels and she’ll finally get her 3rd shot, which is as high as its going to go.

Back in Minas Anor, she sold off the ammo “stumps” (when a particular set of ammo gets down to 6 or 7, Zippy sells it rather than waste the inventory spot), and got ready for Mordor again.

Mordor 37 – Princess Quest for Master Liches The liches cast their usual curses, but as long as Zippy didn’t let more than 1 or 2 have LoS on her at a time, her flame branded ammo took them down fast enough for her not to be in danger. She took a gnomish shovel as her reward. Hmm, of digging and no better than her current one. The liches dropped a huge number of tomes and other magic items, enough to fill Zippy’s pack. She peeks down at the next level…

Mordor 38 – Fumble Fingers Quest for War Trolls And then recalls back to town.

While Zippy sells off the books (getting her back over 300k, which is where she was prior to buying those potions of exp) except for the tomes of Conveyance (she fireproofs one and stores the other) she contemplates the various quests she still has. She’s had the Recall spell for a while, but I had been holding off on doing the Gondolin Trolls, thinking she might actually go through and clear it. Now, I don’t think she’ll bother. Its unlikely she’ll find anything worth the time, she’ll make level 50 just doing the princess quests in Mordor and Angband, and the Hrus actually make it risky. Zippy decides to finish the Gondolin Trolls the easy way, and walks up to Gondolin.

Zippy arrives at Gondolin and immediately heads into the quest. This should be quick.

Gondolin Trolls Quest Zippy finds a path through the troll army in just about the lowest effort method possible. By using Recall to swap places with trolls, and on coward/sluggish for maximum stealth, she completes the quest in exactly 4 moves. The first recall takes her to the middle of the screen, the second recall places her next to the stairs out, she steps onto the stairs, and then goes up. Wham, bam, thank you Gondolin Trolls.

Turgon seems a little non-plussed when Zippy checks in with him. I think he was hoping for a little more, but Zippy did technically accomplish what he requested. Reluctantly, Turgon opens the royal jewelry shop to Zippy, but “forgets” to give her the bonus gold. Satisfied, Zippy heads back to Minas Anor.

Once back in Minas Anor, Zippy recalls back into Mordor.

Mordor 38 – Fumble Fingers Quest for War Trolls War Trolls don’t like fire very much, and Zippy chops through them quickly. She takes magic device as her skill reward.

Mordor 39 – Princess Quest for Master Liches Didn’t Zippy just take you guys to school? Looks like they are repeating the lesson. Zippy again takes them one or two at a time, and handled them smoothly. One drops a mage staff of power (+11). That’ll be worth hanging onto, and she takes a lance of the reward. Its Eorlingas. Nifty.

Mordor 40 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Water Hounds Water hounds are always bad news, but when they’re scattered, they aren’t quite as dangerous. They still manage to do some damage with the odd waterball, but Zippy gets one hit kills on them now, so they aren’t a problem. Kavlax is there too, but Zippy has some slay dragon ammo, and he goes down pretty quickly, dropping Arvedui. When the last water hound goes down, Zippy is rewarded with more points in Archery, which is always handy.

Mordor 41 – Princess Quest for Smaug Wow, Smaug went down REALLY fast thanks to a few consecutive critical hits from slay dragon sling bullets. Smaug dropped 8 different excellent items, not one of which was worth taking. Zippy takes a khopesh for her reward, and I didn’t write down what it was, so it couldn’t have been very interesting.

Mordor 42 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Nalfeshnee The demons are starting to show up. Zippy hunts down the first few, but then finds a trap of calling out and she uses it to summon the rest to their doom, one at a time. I love traps of calling out. They aren’t as useful in Angband because of the funny leveling, but anywhere else they are huge time savers. The only bad part of the level was when I was manually destroying some stuff (I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the automizer), and accidentally destroyed her Tome of Translation. Umm, oops. Fortunately, she’s got a spare at home, but its not fireproof. Crap. Well, she’s immune to fire, so I guess its not a problem. Down the stairs she goes.

Mordor 43 – Princess Quest for Harowen the Black Zippy finds Harowen right away, and though she does some damage, Harowen’s great speed lets him get into melee range with Zippy, successful steal something (I think it was some teleport scrolls, but I’m not sure. Nothing important was missing.), and then teleport away. I hate this guy. Fortunately, Zippy finds him quickly with detect monsters and finishes him off before he can get away again. She takes a golden crown as her reward (c’mon Gondor! Darn. Regeneration.), and Harowen drops Thengel.

Mordor 44 – Princess Quest for Mariliths Zippy is starting to run low on ammo, but Mariliths don’t really have that many hit points, so Zippy is able to get them all. She makes level 41 on the last one. One more level and she can start building her Temporal skill. She takes a pair of cesti as her reward. C’mon Fingolfin! Nope. Slaying. Darn. She leaves them.

Mordor 45 – Princess Quest for Maulotaurs The Maulotaurs are in a nearby room, but Medusa and a pack of inertia hounds are in the way. Zippy carefully manages her dwindling ammo, but major summoning by Medusa doesn’t help things. Zippy finally digs an anti-summoning tunnel and hides, picking off the hounds one at a time, and killing Medusa’s summons with melee when her ammo runs out. When Medusa finally starts approaching, Zippy is out of ammo so she tunnels over to some rubble and creates some generic magic shots. They’re enough to kill Medusa, but just barely. Wow, that was tougher than I expected.

Once Zippy collects her ammo, the Maultaurs are an afterthought and go down easily. Zippy takes a wolf pelt, but its of protection. She peeks down the stairs…

Mordor 46 – Princess Quest for Death Molds And then recalls back to town.

Back in Minas Anor, does her standard town stuff, restocks on ammo (its nice having all that stored ammo in her house), and gets ready to kill the Death Molds. She’s also really looking forward to making level 32 in Sling-mastery.

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 8

Zippy recalls back into Mordor

Mordor 46 – Princess Quest for Death Molds Vision quickly shows Zippy where the princess room is, and she makes her way there. Death Molds are pretty trivial opponents for a primarily ranged attacker, so they start going down without a problem until the pack of water hounds show up. Zippy is forced to duck and weave around the princess building, making sure never to have more than 1 or 2 hounds in LoS while also not moving into melee range of the remaining molds, while she picks the hounds off. When there are only a few stragglers left, she finishes off the molds, and recollects her ammo. A Star is a reward option, and even though its not great, you just can’t turn down a guaranteed artifact.

Mordor 47 – Princess Quest for Hell Knights The Hell Knights do some summoning to make things interesting, but mostly get Ogres which just take up space. They all die fairly quickly. Zippy takes a feathers cloak which proves to be of protection.

Mordor 48 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Hell Knights Zippy hunts them down through a fairly large, though sparsely populated level. An ogre drops Holhenneth and she kills her first lesser black reaver, but otherwise its unremarkable. She takes Conveyance as her reward when they are all dead.

Mordor 49 – Princess Quest for Ethereal Hounds The Queen Ant is just sitting there, minding her own business, and Zippy initially decides to keep moving since the Queen Ant is good, and all. But Zippy decides she’d rather take the piety hit than risk running into her later, substantially leveled. The Etheral Hounds, helpfully, come and find Zippy rather than the other way around. They go down pretty fast, though. Zippy makes level 42 and takes a small metal shield for her reward, but leaves it when she finds out that it is merely rFire.

Mordor 50 – Princess Quest for Chaos Vortices Small level and she starts right next to the princess room. The Vortices go down in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and Zippy takes a Spectral great axe for her reward.

Mordor 51 – Princess Quest for Lesser Titans This one was a challenge. Zippy finds them down a long hallway, and the Titans are split into two groups of 6. The hallway has a couple doglegs, so Zippy has opportunities to play LoS games. The first group is a piece of cake. They march down the hallway, very occasionally casting spells and generally just getting slaughtered. The second group is tougher. They hang back, stay together, and make Zippy come to them. Zippy steps into the princess room, and they all cast spells at once. Zippy pulls back and heals, then tries to pop out and hit just one or two, when one of the Titans Calls Zippy to the Titans. Half the Titans get in a round of melee attacks before Zippy can react, and she’s barely able to teleport away. Zippy tries 2 or 3 more times, but the Titans keep Calling Zippy into their midst and hammering her in melee. Finally, as Zippy approaches the room, wearily, for the 3rd or 4th time, she sees something moving. Greater wall monsters have erupted into the room and are fighting the Titans. Its hard to say who is winning, but the wall monsters are multiplying rapidly and taking over the level. Zippy decides that discretion is the better part of valor and recalls to town.

Back in Minas Anor, she IDs and sells the contents of her pack (except the artifacts, which she tries to hang onto for posterity, though some do end up getting sold. I mean, by the time you find Incanus, who really needs it?), restocks her seriously depleted supplies of teleport scrolls and CCW potions, picks up some more ammo from her house. Refreshed, Zippy returns to face the Titans again.

Mordor 51 – Princess Quest for Lesser Titans Lets try this again. This time, Zippy approaches the Titans from a different angle, by tunneling a windy passageway through the rock to the princess room. On the way, she runs into Itangast, but he/she/it dies quickly. Zippy then takes a detour to blow through a pack of dark elven warlocks, hoping in vain for stat gain potions. Finally, she finishes the tunnel into the corner of the room, and its situated so that only a couple of Titans can have LoS on her at any given time. They take full advantage by summoning multiple times, but they never get anything nasty (mostly mountain ogres, ogrillions, and wolves). The Titans periodically Call Zippy into their midst, but they don’t do it much, and she is able to take then down one at a time. Whew. That was rough. The Titans did drop Carlammas and Incanus, which was nice. Zippy selects a small sword for her reward, hoping for Sting, but its just of slay orc.

Mordor 52 – Princess Quest for Lernaean Hydra Once she discovered through variety ammo usage that the Hydra didn’t resist cold, it went down quickly. The same could not be said for the huge mass of black puddings that Zippy had to wade through to get to the Hydra. They just never seemed to end. Eventually, Zippy started actually getting low on ammo, but she got the last one just before having to resort to melee against them. Zippy takes a small metal shield, but its just rElectricity.

Mordor 53 – Fumble Fingers for Hell Knights Maybe I’m just tired, but I don’t feel like it. Plus, I think Zippy already has the skill points to do everything she needs. Maybe Zippy will come back later.

Mordor 54 – Princess Quest for Dreadlords Even tougher than the Lesser Titans. Zippy was extremely careful to arrange it so she only fought one at a time. They were awful. Zippy had great difficulty hitting them, and none of her ammo seemed to do much damage to them. Every single one was a hard, draining fight. If even two had attacked her at once, they might have killed her, but they never did. Zippy takes cord armor as her reward, but its only rAcid.

Mordor 55 – Princess Quest for Bile Demons By contrast, these guys were fine. They took a fair amount of damage to kill and didn’t a little summoning, but nothing major. Zippy even fought two at once and didn’t have any serious problems. She made level 43 on a summoned lesser balrog, which put her sling-mastery skill, finally, at 32. Hurray for getting her 3rd shot per round. Now she just needs the sling of the Thain and she’s all set. All the rest of her points will now go into Temporal. She took a mouse fur for her reward, still hoping for a cloak of air, but it was electricity.

Mordor 56 – Princess Quest for Osyluths Yikes. Just as bad as the Dreadlords, but they summon more. Zippy decides to go scum for slay demon ammo before attacking them. She recalls to Minas Anor.

In Minas Anor, Zippy IDs and sells everything, and restocks her supplies. She then goes to her various houses, collecting her +to-luck equipment and puts it all on, she then takes the Thunderlord to the bottom of the Sacred Land of Mountains.

Sacred Land of Mountains 70 Zippy spends a little while creating ammo, but the pace is slow and the results are disappointing. She’s about to quit when she kills a small group of Wyrms which were either guarding a chest or perhaps drop it. Most of what they drop isn’t interesting, but in the chest is a Mouse Fur of Air! Oh happy day! Zippy immediately recalls and stores it in a house for safe keeping. Yea! I’ve been worrying about finding that the entire game.

Back in town, Zippy decides to go try Erebore for ammo creation instead, so she marches over to the entrance and heads in.

Erebore 60 Erebore is definitely the place to go for sling ammo scumming. Lots of rubble in big blocks and it goes deeper than SLoM, too. Apparently, also lots of uniques. On level 61 she kills one of the mid-range primarily melee uniques (can’t remember who it was. Maybe the Cat Lord), and on 62 she kills Baphomet. Keeping the string going, she gets Scatha on 63, and makes level 44 in the process. She finally gets down to about level 70 when she caps an excellent run of ammo creation by making some absolutely butt-kicking ammo.

17 Mithril Shots of Uindagnos (3d4) (+19,+24) {90% off}

No slay evil or acid brand, so it can’t be her primary end-game-unique-killing ammo, but it can do basically anything else. She also gets a second set of randart ammo, and its not bad, except for causing Black Breath. She throws it away. Zippy has her super ammo, plus a couple sets of good slay demon ammo, plus new stock for her largely depleted extra ammo stash at home. Zippy sorts her ammo, puts back on her normal combat equipment, and heads back into Mordor.

Mordor 56 - Princess Quest for Osyluths Oh, yeah. Life is good with the new ammo. 4 shots (3 if one is a critical or if the Osyluth is just wimpy) kill each Osyluth, and she can largely lure them out one at a time. One of them manages to summon a pack of Dreads, but they generally go down without too much trouble. That’s awesome, because Osyluths are major league opponents. They also dropped some impressive loot, first she finds a decent randart cloak, then Anguriel. Picking up steam, some gauntlets prove to be Cambeleg. Sweet! She’s going to stay with Paurnemmen for now, but if she finds a major source of +CON, she’ll definitely swap. Finally, the crown jewel of the drop, a weapon I’ve not found since my very first ToME winner, Ringil! I’ve found Ringil a total of 3 times. First by a Lost Soul who found it just sitting on the ground. Second, my very first ToME winner, an anti-magic archer, found it during the Bree Trolls quest of all places. Now, Zippy has it. She quickly decides its better than Maedhros and makes the switch. The quest reward is an afterthought. She takes a silver rod of the Istari.

Mordor 57 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Eye Druj Zippy decide to pass.

Mordor 58 – Princess Quest for Dracoliches She finds the Dracoliches quickly, and when she starts getting close to level 45, she carefully collects all her randart ammo and switches to disposable slay undead ammo. Halfway through the dracoliches, she makes level 45 and is pulled to Gondolin.

Zippy greets Turgon. Maeglin, eh? Yeah, yeah, sounds serious. I’ll be back later. Zippy’s Temporal skill is now high enough to give her Banishment and Essence of Speed. Until Banishment locks things in time bubbles, its not really worth using and the Essence of Speed isn’t very good yet, so she won’t be casting it much for a while. Zippy recalls back into Mordor

Mordor 58 – Princess Quest for Dracoliches Zippy finds the Dracoliches again and picks up where she left off, butchering them quickly. She takes ribbed plate armor as her reward, but its just elven so she leaves it. At about this point, Zippy realizes that other than boots, slings, and sling ammo, there really aren’t too many more “excellent“ items that she’s interested in. She keeps picking some valuable ones up for resale, but she’s over 1 million au, so it’s not like she needs the gold.

Mordor 59 – Princess Quest for Jabberwocks Some cold hounds get in the way, but Zippy kills them quickly. The Jabberwocks really aren’t much more of a threat. This new ammo is making life vastly easier. Each shot does 1,300 damage to dragons, demons, and undead, 800 per shot against anything that lacks resistance to cold or electricity, and 525 per shot against animals. Only 260 against anything else, but there aren’t too many monsters that fail to land in one of those categories, and she’s got a good stockpile of slay evil, acid branded, and wounding ammo for them. Zippy takes a heavy lance and its slay undead.

Mordor 60 – Princess Quest for the Phoenix The Phoenix is actually vulnerable to cold, so it takes nearly 1,600 damage per shot. It doesn’t last very long. Zippy takes a mage staff of wizardry, but its crappy so she leaves it.

Mordor 61 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Lesser Titans Zippy realizes she doesn’t particularly needs the rewards, and she’s likely to get up to level 50 going through Angband, so she decides to use Probability Travel to quickly check the remaining levels of Mordor for uniques.

Mordor 62 – Princess Quest for Beholder Hive Mothers No thanks.

Mordor 63 – Princess Quest for Bronze Thunderlords Zippy may come back and get these guys later.

Mordor 64 – Princess Quest for Greater Demonic Quylthulgs Definitely no thanks.

Mordor 65 – Princess Quest for Hand Druj Nope.

Mordor 66 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Archliches Zippy may come back and get these guys later.

Well, that last part went fast. Zippy clears out her pack and admires the new additions to her kit. Ringil is especially nice. Her base speed when running is now up to +40. I think she’s ready for the Necromancer. Zippy picks up potions of healing, speed, cure insanity, and restore mana. She also loads up on acid branded ammo, and then she rides the Thunderlord to the bottom of Dol Goldur.

Dol Guldur 72 Zippy casts Vision to enlighten the level, and then detect monsters and traps. She spots the Necromancer and moves to a spot where she can dig anti-summoner tunnel without him attacking her before its done, but where she can also lure him over to it (without giving him LoS during the luring) when its completed. The preparations go as expected, and Zippy bumps off a couple demons along the way.

Finally, she lures the Necromancer in, and casts Manwe’s Blessing, quaffs a potion of speed, casts Wind Shield on herself, and equips her best acid branded ammo. When the Necromancer gets to the end of the tunnel, Zippy pummels him with sling bullets. The Necromancer tries unsuccessfully to summon a couple times, and casts a mana storm, but mostly fights back with melee. Zippy quaffs a couple healing potions to recover from the mana storm, and another one during the battle, but otherwise she’s ok. She uses up her first batch of ammo, but she brought 3 just to be safe. Just a few shots into the second batch of ammo, the Necromancer dies. Oh, it was really Sauron in disguise? I’m shocked. Shocked. The Necromancer dropped Durin’s Ring and… an essence of magic? That’s it? I’m underwhelmed, but at least he’s dealt with. Zippy recalls back to town and decides to start taking out the potential ring bearers.

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 9

Zippy starts by checking in with Galadriel and giving her the grim news that the Necromancer really was Sauron. She wasn’t surprised either, and casually asked Zippy to destroy the One Ring, perhaps while Zippy was picking up the groceries. Humph.

Ok, then. Lets go get those ring bearers. Zippy heads to the Thunderlord nest and rides to the bottom of Cirith Ungol.

Cirith Ungol 50 Zippy spots Shelob fairly quickly, and positions herself so that she’ll get the first shot as Shelob comes around a corner. Before Shelob gets there, Zippy casts Manwe’s blessing and quaffs a potion of speed. Shelob rounds the corner, and 2 rounds of attacks later, she’s dead. Thanks to some timely critical hits, she never even got to move. She drops a randart dagger, but nothing else useful. Zippy recalls back to Lothlorien.

Zippy sells the dagger, puts on the Cloak of Air, and rides the Thunderlord to the bottom of Numenor.

Numenor 50 Forgot to bring anything with acid immunity (actually, I’m not sure Zippy has any armor with acid immunity. She’s had mediocre luck in finding randart armor and no Thorin yet.) or even double resistance, so while she’s not drowning, all her non-artifact equipment is getting damaged. With that happening, finding Ar-Pharazon takes longer than I’d like, but he eventually turns up. Zippy again casts Manwe’s blessing and quaffs a speed potion. This time, Zippy steps around the corner, and Ar-Pharazon summons, getting a pack of scrag. Zippy slips through the scrag until she has a line of fire and Ar-Pharazon and then starts shooting. I forgot how much tougher he is than Shelob, but he still went down pretty quickly, dropping the Toris. Zippy doesn’t bother with the Scrag, simply reading a recall scroll and teleporting away.

Back in town, Zippy gets her armor repaired and restocks the scrolls that were destroyed by the acid. She then walks over to Moria and quickly sinks to the bottom using probability travel.

Moria 33 Hmm. Dungeon town with a general store, swordsmith, polearm smith, potion store, jewelry shop, footware shop, hafted smith, and a recaller. Nice. I’ll remember it for later.

Moria 50 Here Banie, Banie, Banie. Durin’s Bane proves oddly hard to find. Not having mountain climbing hurts, but Zippy still has to exit and re-enter the level twice to find him. Usually he comes charging right at me. Once Zippy finds him, its over quickly. The balrog drops Calris, Narthanc and a couple decent randarts. Zippy tries running around with Narthanc for a bit, testing it out and recalls back to town.

Ok, next up, Paths of the Dead.

Paths of the Dead 70 Zippy handles Feagwath exactly like she handled the Necromancer. Anti-summoner tunnel, lure him in, power up before he gets there, and this time she pummels him with randart ammo. Feagwath gets in a mana storm and a round of melee, but he dies soon after. He drops Doomcaller, Rillia, Hithlomir and a randart axe. Zippy recalls back to town.

Only one left and no Ring. Well, not unexpected, but it was worth trying. Zippy hikes over to Erebore, enters, recalls back out, walks back to town, and then recalls back down to level 70.

Erebore 70 - 71 Zippy’s just here for Glaurung, but she did bring some empty bottles, just in case. And luck is with her. A fountain of *Healing*. Excellent. She heads down the stairs.

Erebore 72 Zippy finds Glaurung, and, again, makes him come around a corner to attack her. Mountain climbing would have been really handy here for blocking LoS, but what are you gonna do? Fortunately for Zippy, Glaurung breathes once and gets in a round of melee, but dies after that. Zippy hit him 7 consecutive times with randart sling bullets to start the battle, so he only got in 2 moves. Sigh. No Ring. Guess Zippy will have to do it the hard way, going through Sauron. Glaurung did drop Gorlim, Gil-Galad, Avavir and a really nice randart cloak, though. Gil-Galad has rDisenchantment, so Zippy swaps it in for her Dragon shield of preservation, and I might be tempted to swap out Colannon for the randart cloak. Hmm, maybe later. Zippy recalls back to town.

Ok, may as well be thorough. He’s not a ring bearer, but Zippy decides to get the Glass Golem as well.

Illusory Castle 52 I hate this place. Zippy spots the Golem tunneling towards her, so she gets ready for it. It doesn’t have a lot of hit points, but it resists everything which makes it a bit harder to kill. Surprisingly, the Golem manages to hit Zippy a couple of times and do some sanity damage before it dies, giving up the helm of knowledge. Zippy then uses Probability Travel to check all of the levels for a dungeon town. No towns, but its not a complete loss. While on level 40, heading for the stairs, Zippy stops to kill a bronze dragon and some Mongbats (I hate Mongbats), and there's an unidentified scroll sitting there. Craftsmanship! Neat! I haven't seen one of these in ages. Zippy will store it away for now. Perhaps she can use it on the Sling of the Thain if she ever finds it. Alternatively, it might work well with a really good magestaff. Down the road, she'll need to decide between Ringil and a good magestaff (if she ever finds one).

Fortunately, Zippy had a few potions of curing set aside for no reason that I can recall, so she drinks a couple and her mind is as good as new. Now that the guardians are gone, its time to start diving for the big cheese. Zippy trudges somewhat nervously up to Gondolin, and starts mentally preparing for the assault on Angband.

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 10

Zippy is rested and ready, with a wide variety of ammo types and a bunch of potions and scrolls. She’s as ready as she’s going to get. Bring on Angband!

Angband 67 - Fumble Fingers Quest for Lesser Titans I almost feel like Zippy should go after them for old times sake, but, nah.

Angband 68 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Bile Wyrms Maybe later.

Angband 69 – Princess Quest for Dracoliches Zippy finds them and knocks them down pretty fast. One drops Celebrimbor… hmm, maybe it was the Dracoliches in late Mordor that dropped it. Anyway, a Dracolich somewhere dropped it and Zippy has it in a home now. Zippy takes a longsword for her reward and its *slay demon*.

Angband 70 – Princess Quest for Time Hounds Hound quests are like gifts from the RNG at this point. They go down with one hit each, AND they come after you so you can prepare. Really very thoughtful. Zippy takes a leather shield for her reward. Its Celegorm. Nice to get an artifact, but what Zippy really needs is a shield or amulet that has both reflection and rDisenchantment.

Angband 71 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Bile Wyrms Zippy kills one on the way to the stairs (I don’t mind killing them, I just feel there’s little to be gained at this point by hunting them all down), but is then chased down by a pack of leveled Mongbats. Holy cow, those things were nasty! Zippy didn’t take them seriously at first, and then I noticed that she was down half her health. Blazingly fast and extremely hard to hit. Zippy finally Banished them, but they came disturbingly close to killing her. I forgot to mention that back in mid-Mordor, Zippy picked up a second useful junkart, though she hasn’t actually used it yet. The Witch-King’s Crystal Ball, which does Light Absorb. I bring it up now, because as Zippy is just about to go down the stairs, Adunaphel walks into Zippy’s LoS. The junkart gets used for the first time, blasting Adunaphel to cinders. I love the way Light Absorb junkarts one-shot kill Nazgul. Adunaphel drops her ring, Anarion, and a small leather shield of reflection.

Angband 72 – Princess Quest for Aether Hounds Well, Aether hounds resist lots of stuff, so they’re a bit tougher to kill than the other hounds, but they still don’t have very many hit points and are worth a bunch of exp. In fact, Zippy makes level 47 killing them (she continues putting all of her points into Temporal). For her reward she gets a dagger of slay orc. How useful. As she’s about to go down the stairs, who should turn up again, but Adunaphel! I know she wasn’t permanently destroyed, but isn’t this just a BIT quick to return? Fortunately, the princess room has plenty of light and the junkart has recharged by now. ZAP! Another pile of Adunaphel cinders. This time she drops her ring, but nothing else useful.

Angband 73 – Princess Quest for Maulotaurs There are only 5, so it isn’t much of a battle, but as its winding down, Akhorahil wanders into the princess quest room. Wow. Its Nazgul central. Again, the junkart has had time to charge up. ZAP! Another temporarily dead Nazgul. Zippy sifts through the remains, and finds nothing interesting except the ring. When the last Maulotaur dies, Zippy takes the small metal shield, but its only rElectricity. Sigh. Zippy has takes quite a few small metal shield as quest rewards, but still no Thorin.

Angband 74 – Princess Quest for Barbazu It’s a tiny level, but the princess room still manages to generate. Zippy tries to create an anti-summoning tunnel, but the Barbazu have her in LoS too quickly. It’s a tedious, but not dangerous battle. Zippy kills a Barbazu, its buddies summon a bunch of mid-range demons. Zippy kill the summons and another Barbazu, at which point its buddies summon a bunch more mid-range demons. Repeated 14 times. At the end, Zippy selects some metal plated boots, hoping for Thror or Gimli, but they’re only levitation.

Angband 75 – Princess Quest for Great Wyrms of Perplexity Except that its really the Crypt. Sigh. I really don’t like the Crypt. For a non-melee character, those early Ghouls and Vampires are just more trouble than they’re worth, and Zippy doesn’t really need Luthien at this point. Zippy reluctantly decides to skip it. She’ll have to find some way to do penance.

Angband 75 – Princess Quest for Great Wyrms of Perplexity Zippy runs into Khufu, who is looking a little sad without an escort. Zippy’s shots take him down very quickly, and she then spots a pack of Nether hounds. By luring them around a corner one at a time, she’s able to kill them all without taking any damage. Finally, she gets to the princess quest room and starts killing the Wyrms one at a time. The wyrms thoughtfully march forward, one at a time, to their destruction, as Zippy kills each one in 4 or so shots. Only 2 breath the entire time, and both breath fairly late in their respective battles, so the damage isn’t significantl. Zippy selects a mage staff. Of Spell. Bah. Its just as well. Her pack is pretty full, so its time to head back to town. First, she peeks her head down the stairs…

Angband 76 – Princess Quest for Elder Vampires Zippy will take care of them later. She’s about to recall back to town, when she sees Ren the Unclean. Yet another Nazgul. The junkart makes shot work him, and Zippy finds room for his ring. NOW, Zippy can recall back to town.

Zippy runs to Bree and drops off the Rings of Power at the Mathom house. Just one per Nazgul, plus Durin, plus the 3 elven rings if she can find them all. The rest will be sold. Zippy is about to head back into Angband, when she looks at her sad little CCW potions, and thinks maybe it worth doing some of those final Angband levels, in case of good rod drops. Zippy mounts up on a Thunderlord and heads back to Mordor 63 and the Bronze Thunderlords

Mordor 63 – Princess Quest for Bronze Thunderlords It’s a crowded, fairly small level. Bullroarer and Draebor are there (Draebor with a demon escort, which Zippy quickly dispatches), and Zippy takes care of them. After that, it’s a convention of mid to high level hounds, with packs of Nexus, Time, Plasma, and Gravity hounds roaming around. Zippy avoids them as best she can, killing only a few, before getting to the Thunderlords. The Bronze’s are hardy creatures, but 3 shots from the randart ammo kills one. A couple manage to teleport away, but Zippy hunts them down, continuing to dodge packs of hounds. Forgetting that she already has a cloak of air, she automatically takes the feathers cloak, getting a feathers cloak of protection. Zippy then casts probability travel and heads down to get the Archliches.

Mordor 66 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Archliches Archliches are tough, but they’re slower than the Thunderlords and they’re scattered about. Zippy’s biggest challenge is that they tend to attack her while standing in walls where she can’t shoot them. Zippy maneuvers to get them into the rooms and hallways while picking them off one at a time. Surprisingly quickly, its over, Zippy is level 48, and there are tomes and rods scattered everywhere. They drop quite a bit of stuff. Sorting through it, Zippy finds the Arkenstone (which takes over as her new lightsource), Flare, Orchast, and, perhaps best of all, a rod tip of healing. In her excitement, Zippy attaches the rod-tip of healing to a golden rod of capacity that dropped, forgetting that she has better rods at home. Oh well. Hopefully she will find more. Zippy selects the skill Magic as her reward, and it bumps her mana up 12 points. Zippy recalls back to town.

Well, that was less painful than expected. Since she’s cleaning things up, Zippy decides to do the Maeglin and Thunderlord Quests. First, Maeglin. Zippy puts the dwarven lantern of the magi into storage, and notices that essence of speed is now better than a potion of speed, so she gets rid of her potions of speed. She then heads to Gondolin and packs acid shots for Maeglin, unique shots for the balrogs, dragons, and mindcrafters, and plans to use melee for everything else. Ready to depart, Zippy walks to the quest entrance and casts essence of speed and Manwe’s Blessing. With it on and having switched to the Arkenstone, she’s +59 speed. The rest of her stats are STR 23/INT 27/WIS 28/DEX 33/CON 35/CHR 29 732 HP/485 SN/131 SP/27544 Piety. That’s an impressively small spell point total for a level 48 Warper with maxed INT.

Maeglin Quest Zippy does the whole battle on Berserk/Running. She starts by smiting the various minor beasties around her with Ringil. After they fall, she uses the randart ammo to knock out the various ancient dragons, typically getting one-hit kills on them. She uses melee on the War Trolls, but switches to fire ammo to deal with the Ettins. Maeglin takes advantage of my inattention to burst out of a wall rather close to Zippy than I had hoped, before she had a chance to switch to acid ammo. She switches and starts pelting Maeglin, but rather than fighting back, Maeglin tries to just run past her to the stairs. The shots are hurting Maeglin, but he’s holding up pretty well. If Zippy was just a tad slower, Maeglin might have pulled it off. Zippy manages to run over and stands directly in front of Maeglin before he gets to the stairs. On the bright side, despite being just 3 squares away from the stairs, Maeglin stops walking towards them. On the down side, he summons water hounds. Yikes. Zippy casts banishment, which scatters the water hounds throughout the level, and Maeglin fails his save and is scattered somewhere else on the level as well. Whew. Better than failing the quest, plus Zippy now has a chance to recover some ammo.

Once she has most of her ammo back, Zippy casts detect monsters and spots Maeglin heading towards her again from the top left room on the map. The Water Hounds are slower on the draw and aren’t moving yet (maybe trapped in time bubbles? I didn’t check to see if that’s happening yet). Maeglin gets back into range well before anything else shows up, and Zippy goes back to pelting him. Maeglin casts a few ball spells and does some damage, but he’s already damaged and doesn’t summon. Zippy keeps on firing, and Maeglin eventually goes down. Whew.

The cleanup was more difficult than expected, because the mindcrafters just kept on summoning, and Zippy finally just ran out of ammo, despite starting with well over 100 shots of various sorts, and used melee to finish them off. But, everything eventually fell (there was a bit of a scare with some black lice that got loose, but Zippy got it under control). Sorting through the treasure, quantity rather than quality was the phrase of the day. It took 3 CON potions to get Zippy that last point to Max it out, and she found a total of 6. Maeglin dropped 2 artifacts and 2 randarts, but Thranduil’s cap was the best of the lot. The most useful item Zippy found was an arguably superior sling to the one she had been using. Her old sling was (+22, +15), while the new sling was (+17, +21). After some thought, she makes the swap, and climbs back up the stairs.

Turgon is much happier to see her this time than after the Gondolin Trolls Quest, and he gives her the potion that boosts her HP by 150. Now THAT is a good reward. Zippy then restocks her ammo, so she’s carrying her randart ammo, plus 9 sets of acid, electricity, or poison branded ammo. She also grabs a few potions of *Healing*, just in case. Thus equipped, Zippy marches down to Minas Anor and checks in with Aragorn, who tells her about setting up the void gates. Zippy is clear on what to do, and starts heading back up to Gondolin. Not surprisingly, she’s ambushed along the way by a wing of thunderlords. Bring it on, bird boys.

Thunderlord Quest Zippy starts by casting essence of speed and Manwe’s blessing. She then casts her Thaumaturgy destruction spell, casts phase door (which creates a void gate), and then casts destruction again. Now she’s got 2 void gates about 10 squares apart, with lots of rock in between. The plan is to fight where she stands, concentrating on knocking out as many of the lesser ones as possible first, then when the Thunderlords start to really beat on her, she’ll take the void gate to the other side, heal and wait for them to move over and attack here there. Rinse and repeat. With Manwe’s Blessing and on Berserk/Running, she’s got +113 to hit, so she should be able to land most of her shots. The Gold Thunderlord complicates matters a bit by summoning Marda right away, but Zippy just treats her like the Gold Thunderlord, keeping her distance until the lesser ones are nearly all gone. The plan works great for a while, but then when about half of them are gone (and she’s made level 49), I realize that Zippy has gone through 2/3 of her ammo already and she hasn’t even started shooting at the hardest targets yet.

Zippy starts mixing in some melee against the badly damaged thunderlords, and generally keeps picking away at them until she’s out of ammo, but only a handful are left. With only a few thunderlords left, Zippy can make quick trips off the void gate squares to quickly grab some ammo before the thunderlords arrive. By grabbing ammo, and then jumping to the other side before the thunderlords arrive, Zippy is able to build her supply back up a bit, and finish off the weak ones. The rod of healing was been a lifesaver and has kept her use of healing potions way down.

Finally, its just Zippy, Marda and the Gold Thunderlord. With just two of them, Zippy is able to collect much of her randart ammo back, and use it to hit the big two. The gold summons another bronze to help out, but Zippy is able to gradually beat them down and kill them, by continuing to jump back and forth. Whew. That was harder than I expected. Even with her new sling, Zippy just doesn’t do quite as much damage as I hoped. Anyway, the thunderlords are dead and while they dropped a ton of stuff, on Ingwe was worth hanging on to.

Zippy continues the trek to Gondolin, checks in with Turgon, and heads back to Minas Anor to complete the Quest. After resorting her ammo, its time for Zippy to head back into Angband.

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 11

Well, I sure hope those Elder Vampires haven’t gotten lonely waiting for Zippy to come back. Lets see how they’re doing.

Angband 76 – Princess Quest for Elder Vampires Ah, but first, Detect Monsters locates a group of Wyrms in the next room over and it looks like Ancalagon might be with them. Getting Ancalagon out of the way would be great, so Zippy decides to make a detour to fight them, possibly the first time he’s done that the entire game. Zippy casts essence of speed and Manwe’s Blessing, then lures them into a hallway one at a time and kills them. It’s a pretty formidable group – great wyrms of law, balance, and many colors, plus a bunch of lesser ones. Finally, Zippy realizes that it wasn’t Ancalagon after all, and just then, Atlas pops out of a wall. Zippy sets up a pair of void gates a short way apart and peppers Atlas with sling bullets, hoping back and forth between the gates when Atlas gets close. Finally, he goes down and drops his corpse. Just for fun (and because I really hate Atlas), Zippy makes a true totem out of Atlas and re-summons him. Zippy hops back and forth between the same void gates, shooting Atlas as he goes. Atlas again goes down. Heh heh. Sorting through the various drops, Zippy finds a nice dragon shield of preservation, the armor of the Rohirrim, and some crappy randart armor. Oh well, she’s almost level 50.

On the way to the princess room, a regular Quylthulg appears around a corner and summons Ariel. Zippy kills the Quylthulg and then kills Ariel. One more unique out of the way. Finally, just before she gets to the princess room, a horned reaper wakes up and comes after her, Zippy kills it without too much trouble, making level 50. Yea! She puts the rest of her points into Temporal. Looks like this will be it for skill points through the end of the game. Hopefully its good enough. 2 steps later, a shade comes out of the wall, and after Zippy kills it, it drops a potion of Augmentation, which maxes out the last of Zippy’s stats. This has been a good level for completing things.

Finally, Zippy gets to the Elder Vampires. They’re tough, summoning a demi-lich and a couple druj, but Zippy is up to the challenge, using corners to play LoS games and get free hits, plus to ensure he doesn’t fight more than one at a time. Eventually, they all go down, dropping the Evenstar, the Seeker Arrow of Gondor, and a really nice randart robe. Oh the princess reward was a shadow cloak of immolation.

Angband 77 – Princess Quest for Bone Golems The theme for the level is set early as Zippy finds two junkarts in the first room, and both of them activate for death. Yikes. Bad omen. On the brighter side, she spots Omarax right away and, as it turns out, he only resists poison and dies quite a bit faster than I expected. Zippy gets to the princess room right after that, and a team of elven rangers is approaching the room as well. Zippy digs a twisty tunnel to partially block summoning, and keep them from attacking her more than one at a time, and then takes on the golems. It’s a tough fight. The golems have a lot of hit points and there are a lot of them, plus they summon a lot, so Zippy keeps running out of ammo. Fortunately, the rangers keep killing the lesser summons (the wights and wraiths), and even manage to tie up the Vampire Lords and Lesser Reavers for far longer than I would have guessed. Zippy has to teleport away to heal and let her junkart of light absorption recharge a couple times, but when she comes back each time, the rangers are still there, holding their ground against the undead. Nice work, folks. Zippy salutes you. Zippy finally polishes the golems off, though one of them does give him the Black Breath along the way. Zippy selects a scythe as her reward, but accidentally recalls before picking it up.

Zippy marches from Bree up to Gondolin and gets the Black Breath’s hold broken and her stats restored (though only her STR isn’t sustained at this point). Usually I make sure to keep some Athelas in each house but since I never figured Zippy would be in melee range of a Nazgul, I didn’t think she’d need to do it. I was wrong.

While she’s on the surface, Zippy takes a quick tour of the dungeon towns, just checking to see if anything useful has turned up. She finds a magical shovel of digging with the same digger bonus as her current shovel, plus it has magical wall remove, so she buys it. Once back in town, Zippy recalls back into Angband.

Angband 78 – Princess Quest for Cantoras After the last couple of levels, Cantoras is a breeze. Even though he has a Greater Titan in the room with him, Zippy makes quick work of them both. Zippy selects adamantine platemail for her reward and its Soulkeeper. Cool. She’ll take it just for the niftiness value.

Angband 79 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Eye Druj Nope.

Angband 80 – Princess Quest for Great Wyrms of Thunder Zippy casts her two main power-up spells (essence of speed and Manwe’s Blessing), lures them out one at a time, and kills them quickly. They drop the Palantir of Orthanc, a randart axe, and some mediocre randart armor. For reward, Zippy takes a shove, and it’s a magical shovel of digging, almost identical to the one she just bought. Sheesh. What a waste. Oh well.

Angband 81 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Barbazu Hmm, they’re pretty weak. Maybe Zippy will try to… Nevermind. There’s a graveyard in the middle of the level. Zippy heads down the stairs.

Angband 82 – Princess Quest for Nightwalkers It’s a small level and the Nightwalkers (plus a demilich) are right there. There are 14 nightwalkers, but Zippy has 140 shots of ammo, so it should be plenty, right? Well, even with her powerup spells, the only reason she doesn’t run out of ammo is because she repeatedly goes out and re-collects it. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been nearly enough. Food for thought for the top of Mount Doom. On the bright side, they drop a ton of neat stuff. An adamantine rod of the Istari and a randart mage staff being the standouts. She takes full plate armor as her reward, but its only elven.

Angband 83 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Hand Druj While heading to the stairs, Zippy realizes there’s a greater vault right in the middle of the level, and its huge. She finds an opening and starts heading in. Right away, she runs into Gothmog, Carcharoth, and Waldern. Oddly, the heavily leveled Waldern is the toughest of the 3. Gothmog mostly does fire damage, and Zippy’s immune to fire, so he can’t hurt her very much. However, Gothmog spends most of the battle breathing fire. It doesn’t hurt Zippy, but it ends up doing a lot of damage to Carcharoth. Carcaroth just doesn’t seem to be into the battle, for some reason. It starts the battle down a few stars from Gothmog’s breath attacks, and starts trying to run when still at 4 or 5 stars. Very disappointing. Waldern, however, is blazingly fast and keeps crushing Zippy’s ammo which is really annoying. Finally, all 3 are dead and Zippy presses on. The vault has a ton of great stuff. By the time she’s 60% of the way through, Zippy has found – Vilya, Cubragol, Lasher, Gothmog’s Axe (dropped by Gothmog himself, appropriately enough), a rod tip of speed, Gilettar, Bloodspike, the arrow of bard, a great randart spiderweb, Gurthang, a set of cesti of combat that gave +1 attacks, Barukhelled, and Merlion Karc’s Demonbane.

At that point, Zippy runs into Ancalagon. Zippy gets two attacks, but then Ancalagon summons greater wyrms. Hmm. Zippy isn’t powered up, and Ancalagon was luck on his call for help. No GWoP, but he got law, chaos, and 2 bile wyrms (and Zippy isn’t immune to acid). Hmm. Better teleport out first, powerup, then come back. Zippy phase door’s outside the vault, only to discover that a graveyard is close by. The inhabitants have conducted a jail break, and there are dreadlords and archliches running everywhere. They aren’t in the vault yet, but Zippy’s void gate is right between two archliches. Sigh. I’d really like to finish the vault, and I’d really like to kill Ancalagon, but discretion is the better part of valor. Zippy recalls back out, realizing as she does so, that she left 2 of her 17 irreplaceable artifact shots back in the vault with Ancalagon. CRAP. Well, still not worth dying for, but the added value of what was left behind is getting closer. Well, at least Gothmog and Carcharoth are out of the way.

Back in town, Zippy replaces her ring of accuracy with Vilya (I plan on putting all the rings of power into the Mathom house, but I think I’ll hold off on Vilya until Zippy navigates the Dim Gates and gets Narya). She’s forced to sell of artifacts en masse to make room for better stuff (bye bye, Thingol, and Colluin), and she laments not being able to use Cubragol, but she really does have to get offense from somewhere. She plans on storing the ring of accuracy, but the Black Market actually has a +22 one for sale, so she sells her old one and buys the better one, storing it in Minas Anor. Zippy replaces the CCW potions, and scrolls of recall and teleport she ditched to make room for more artifacts in the vault.

And that, dear reader, finally brings you to current day. I played Zippy for a good while before starting to write the DitL, and the two are finally now in synch. When a new chapter of Zippy appears here, I will have just have done it, as opposed to it being moderately historical, as it was when the story began. We will just have to see how things turn out.

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 12

Thus resupplied, Zippy recalls back into Angband.

Angband 83 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Hand Druj No thanks.

Angband 84 – Princess Quest for Sky Drakes There are only 5 and Zippy is immune to electricity, so use of an anti-summoner tunnel makes them easy. Zippy takes adamantine platemail. Resistance.

Angband 85 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Great Wyrms of Chaos Except that its really the Dim Gates, of course. No teleport or geno makes me very nervous, so Zippy is only here to get Narya. Its going to be as quick as possible. Lots of GWoC wandering around. Looks like Azriel and Vecna, too. If Zippy gets a chance, she’ll take them out, but only if they’re on the way. Those GWoC’s are certainly in the way. By the time Zippy gets to the first room with the yellow Q’s along the north edge, she’s already killed 3 GWoCs. A greater rotting Q summons a nightwalker, but the junkart of light absorb kills it in one shot. I didn’t realize it could do that to non-Nazgul. Good to know.

Zippy creeps into the first room, keeping LoS to one Q at a time, using her tremendous speed (+60-ish with Essence of Speed) to get the first shot and kill them before they can summon. Once the first 5 are gone, she can use LoS tricks to kill the rest easily. Zippy casts Destruction in the second room to block LoS and maneuvers to attack each on invidivdually. They go down quickly. So far, so good.

Zippy takes the bottom void gate and appears in a small room. There’s a draconic Q, but she kills it before it can move, then takes the other void gate to the hallway of Hell Wyrms. Hell Wyrms aren’t really a problem when you’re immune to fire and have ammo that *Slays* Dragons, so she cuts a quick path through them. The Master Q at the end summons once, but its botches it by getting a mature blue dragon. It redeems itself by teleporting away. Whew. The opponent I was most worried about removed himself from the battle. Very considerate.

Zippy picks up Narya, and trudges back, sorting the Hell Wyrm drops. Some nice stuff. Belgennon, the Shield of the Haradrim, Travak, and a randart boomerang with +41 to hit, possibly the highest to-hit bonus I’ve ever seen. They also drop 3 crossbows of the haradrim. Zippy has now found many nice crossbows (and one or two nice bows), but zero slings of extra might or extra shots, and the only artifact one was that crappy one from the beginning of the game. C’mon, RNG give a hobbit some help! Zippy recalls back to town.

Back in Bree, she Mathoms both rings of power and puts on the +22 ring of accuracy. A climbing set appears in the Black Market and though I don’t expect to use it, Zippy buys it just in case. I’ll probably discover that she stole one ages ago and I forgot about it, but she’s got more money than she needs now anyway. Zippy sells the shield, but keeps Belgennon. She’ll never use it, but I’ve always liked it. Once done, she recalls to Angband.

Angband 85 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Great Wyrms of Chaos No thanks. But Ungoliant is in the room with Zippy and still asleep. Well, its not a nice sling, but its still a nice gift from the RNG. Zippy quickly digs a little anti-summoning tunnel, hits Ungoliant once to wake her up, and lets the big spider pursue her into the tunnel. Once in the tunnel, Zippy hammers Ungoliant with lightning branded bullets. Ungoliant takes a good deal of damage to kill, but she keeps trying to summon and failing, plus, she seems surprisingly slow, so its less of a battle than I expected. Once she’s down, Zippy starts heading to some stairs down, but a pair of GWoC are in the way. Zippy uses her speed to simply run around them and down the stairs, taking only modest damage in the process.

Angband 86 – Princess Quest for Jabberwocks They fall quickly, but their darn chaos breath destroys a chunk of Zippy’s ammo. Going forward, she’ll always lead with her randart ammo, to prevent breakage. Zippy takes a long sword and its spectral of Gondolin. Neat pair of attributes, but not useful.

Angband 87 – Princess Quest for Lesser Titans Good crossbows are everywhere. The Titans drop another one of the haradrim, plus a heavy crossbow of extra might that’s (x8). RNG, I understand that you’re all powerful, but rubbing my nose in it is beneath you, ok? Zippy takes a gold crown, but its only regeneration.

Angband 88 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Archliches Nope

Angband 89 – Princess Quest for Greater Draconic Quylthulgs Despite not having the Anchor, this one went really fast. There were just 6 (it was the room with 2 sets of 3 monsters), and only 1 actually blinked away. They summoned a fair amount, but there wasn’t really much room for serious summons, so Zippy was able to deal with them after each trio of Qs was dead. One of the dragons dropped the Lochaber Axe of the Dwarves, which was pretty cool. Zippy’s reward was a wolf pelt of protection.

Angband 90 – Princess Quest for Great Wyrms of Balance 14 of them. Zippy was really rolling up to now, but this level took quite a while. Each Wyrm took a ton of damage to kill, and they kept summoning more stuff. Zippy providentially found a junkart of genocide, which help keep the sheer numbers down, but it still took a long time. They dropped a whole bunch of randarts, too, but none were especially useful. Once they were done, the Tarraseque showed up, but it only breathed once near the end of the battle, so it was light fighting a GWoB with more hit points that didn’t summon. At the end, Zippy selected a dark sword (hoping for Moremegil, though, honestly, I seriously doubt she’d use anything but Ringil now), and got a fairly nice randart dar ksword.

Angband 91 – Princess Quest for Dracolisk These guys are a breeze at this stage. Bam, bam. Zippy takes some elven leather armor.

Angband 92 – Fumble Fingers Quest for Gelugons Its just a free level at this point.

Angband 93 – Princess Quest for Jabberwocks Zippy’s getting close to Sauron and I’m getting a little over excited. Need to relax or I’ll do something done. Fortunately, there are only 5 Jabberwocks and they aren’t tough foes at this depth. Zippy gets a cloak of protection for her trouble.

Angband 94 – Princess Quest for Bile Demons Speaking of doing something stupid, Zippy picks up a 7d6 demonblade (looks like Gothmog to me), and then when about to fight the Bile Demons, I forget its there and cast the wrong spell from the wrong book, teleporting half the Bile Demons randomly away. Crap. The demons themselves aren’t a problem, but hunting them down is a drag. Zippy eventually gets them all and recalls back to town, just so she can dump Gothmog’s demonblade. The reward is some ribbed plate armor of rFire, which Zippy leaves.

Back in town, Zippy puts the demonblade in storage and immediately returns to Angband.

Angband 95 – Princess Quest for Time Hounds Wow, thanks RNG. Time hounds are almost as good as getting a fumble fingers quest. Of course, its really Nameless, but Zippy’s not here to sightsee. She quickly leaves Nameless and comes back to enter level 95 properly. The Time hounds die to one hit each, so they’re down fast. Black dragon scale mail? Hmm. Only polished, but I always get a chill when dragon scale mail is an option. The single best randart I’ve ever found was some white dragon scale mail with reflection, 4 sustains, 3 immunities, and 5 or 6 other, mostly high level, resists. That sure made life easier.

Angband 96 – Princess Quest for Great Wyrms of Chaos This guys are much easier than the GWoB were. They fall quickly, dropping Hurin, some randart gauntlets, and a randart bolt. The reward is a robe of rAcid. Be still my beating heart.

Angband 97 – Princess Quest for Demiliches Almost there. Just 2 to go. Zippy starts heading to the princess room, but she sees another greater vault on the way, and Vecna is definitely inside. I’d love to get Vecna out of the way. Ok, Zippy will take a detour. She breaks into the vault and runs into Ulfast and Tselakus right off the bat. Ulfast is way out of his depth and is easy, but Tselakus is surprisingly easy. Zippy had real trouble with that Dreadlord quest a while back, and I figured Tselakus would be even worse, but Zippy has much more luck hitting him than she did the Dreadlords. A pleasant surprise, but still a surprise. Half way through, Zippy knocks off the Fire Phantom as well, and then finally gets to Vecna near the end. Before fighting him, Zippy sets up a Void gate running to outside the vault in case she needs to heal, but never needs to use it. For being the 5th or so most powerful unique in the game (Ancalagon is technically lower level, but is definitely more dangerous, while Carcharoth and Huan are tehnically higher level, but definitely less dangerous), Vecna puts up a surprisingly poor showing. He mana storms once and casts a nether ball, but otherwise he sticks to melee. Now, Vecna’s better at melee than once might guess, but its still much less dangerous than, say, him casting Hand of Doom or summoning greater demons. After a quicker than expected fight, Vecna dies, and Zippy goes back and sorts the substantial loot. Lets see, in no particular order – Hansibroner’s Surprise, Lebohaum, Nagulamir, Limbslicer, Taratol, Careth Asdriag, the crown of Numenor, Bard’s Bow, the sword of Angmar, Stonebiter, Nimthanc, Orcrist, Aglarang, Gimli, the Crown of Gondor, and the Mattock of Nain. That’s quite a haul. Zippy only takes the two crowns and Nain, though.

Back in town, Zippy equips Nain and discovers that it has rDisenchantment. Cool! Now he can swap Gil-Galad for a shield of reflection, his amulet of reflection for an amulet of telepathy, and then equip Gondor or Numenor (hmm, maybe she should have kept Lebohaum as well…). Alternatively, she could just swap Gil-Galad for Thorin. Either crown would give +3 speed, but at +60, Zippy really doesn’t need any more speed. Thorin would give immunity to Acid and +4 STR and CON (finally bringing Zippy’s CON up to 40), which would be really nice. Thorin it is, but Zippy keeps the crowns for potential future use. She then recalls back in.

Angband 97 – Princess Quest for Demiliches Oh, there’s Gabriel. Despite being much lower level, Gabriel puts up just as tough a fight as Vecna did, though mostly because Zippy’s ammo just doesn’t work as well against Gabriel. Anyway, the battle is soon over, Zippy finds them Demiliches, and knocks them off as well. Zippy is chomping at the bit to get to Sauron now. Just one quest to go. The princess drops a suit of Dwarven Bar Chainmail, but Zippy doesn’t even notice. Down, the stairs…

Angband 98 Hmm. No quest. Did I accidentally type in 97 quests by mistake? Its weird, but I hardly notice because I’m eager to get down the stairs. The level becomes eventful, though, because on the way to the stairs, Zippy makes some ammo and it’s a randart that’s branded with acid. Handy AND timely. I like it.

16 Iron Shots of Guilth (1d4) (+21,+16) {90% off}

Angband 99 The plan was just to stick in a toe, and then recall to go do Mt Doom, but Sauron is right there. Zippy has been having good luck with ammo creation and somewhat scarred by the GWoB quest, she’s been regularly carrying 7 or 8 bunches of ammo around, so she does in fact have enough ammo to take on Sauron. CHARGE!

Zippy digs an anti-summoner tunnel, lures Sauron in, casts Manwe’s Blessing and Essence of Speed (up to speed +64 now), and the battle is on! Zippy takes Sauron down to about half health, but she doesn’t have the Anchor, so he teleports away. Zippy hunts for him, but she sees and graveyard and the inhabitants start waking up. Time to recall.

It was worth a try, but Zippy really needs to scale Mt Doom. Back in town, Zippy picks up the couple dozen healing potions she’s accumulated and heads to the Thunderlord nest, which she takes to Mordor.

Mordor 65 – Princess Quest for Hand Druj Just passing through. Zippy finds the first purple staircase and heads down.

Mt Doom 85 Here we go. Zippy uses recall liberally to move through the levels quickly, typically going through each level without fighting anything.

Mt Doom 86-91 Fairly uneventful.

Mt Doom 92 Zippy encounters Shadowfax and kills it (Shadowfax should really be co-aligned, in my opinion), then starts salivating when she sees an un-identified ring. Sneaking quietly past a group of demons, she’s disappointed to discover its on rBlindness.

Mt Doom 93 Zippy spots Ibun and kills him quickly.

Mt Doom 94-98 Very quiet. No uniques.

Mt Doom 99 Zippy has scaled to the top, and there’s a pink ‘p’ over in the big monster room. Could be Sauron. Zippy will go and check, but first she recalls back to town to resupply.

DayInTheLifeArchive/Day in the life of Zippy2 (last edited 2004-11-02 22:12:12 by 64-132-179-115)