A Day in the Life of Zippy, the Zombie Hobbit Warper, Book 3

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 13

Oh, I forgot to mention that Zippy, in keeping with her trend of gradual sling improvement, found yet another slightly better sling in that vault on 97. It was (+18, +26) (still no extra shots or might, though), which improved on her (+17, +21) sling, so it became the new main weapon.

Zippy finally dumps the CCW potions she’s been hauling around. From now through the end of the game, she won’t need them anymore. The inventory slot gets used for more acid branded ammo. Zippy is definitely here just to do a job, rather than collect treasure, because when she recalls back to Mt Doom, she only has one open inventory slot.

Mt Doom 99 She’s in the starting room on the summit and while the plasma hounds in the next room are awake and trying to get to her, an 11-headed hydra is asleep just outside the door, blocking the way. Zippy is on coward/slug for maximum stealth. Her objective is to scout the level for Sauron and position herself for a return visit to destroy the Ring, hopefully without waking anything up.

A recall spell moves her into the big room full of aether and plasma hounds to the east of the starting room and she casts a Destruction spell to kill some of the hounds and block the LoS of the rest. It works nicely, entirely sealing Zippy off from the hounds. She detects for traps and then carefully creeps over to the room full of monsters. They all appear to still be asleep, so Zippy cracks open the door to see who that pink ‘p’ is… and its just the Mouth of Sauron. He does that to me every frigging game, but usually the character isn’t quiquite stealthy as Zippy. Zippy recalls down to the off-shoot room with the 9 (now 8) hellknights and quickly casts destruction, killing most of them and sealing the rest off. It’s a good, safe spot to base out of and within easy range of the Great Fire. Zippy is about to recall back when she decides to do one more detect monsters, just to see exactly what is in the room of the Great Fire. Ok, it’s the usual mix of monsters, nothing unusual… but there is something odd to the northeast. The room in the top Northeast corner of the level, where that awful, long, narrow hallway empties out, has a pink ‘p’ in it. I’ve definitely never seen Sauron there before, though I have run into Gothmog in that spot. As far as I know, there are only 2 pink ‘p’s (Sauron and the Mouth), so this must be Sauron. The layout isn’t great, but Zippy’s equipped for battle, so lets give it a try. Zippy heads down to the next room, killing its hellknight guards along the way, and then starts working backwards toward Sauron. Sauron definitely sees Zippy as well, and is heading down.

They meet in the hallway, just after the turn. Sauron thoughtfully pushes the guard skull druj out of the way, so it doesn’t have LoS down the hallway and thus won’t be a factor. Zippy casts her usual pair of power-up spells, switches to Berserk/running and equips her big batch of 47 mithril shots of acid (+15, +16) (she was lucky enough to make that exact bonus twice in reasonably large numbers). Zippy waits around the corner for Sauron to move down and starts hitting him with sling bullets as soon as he comes into view. Sauron steps around the corner and throws a couple of water balls, but they fortunately don’t do very much damage. Sauron then settles in and starts using melee while Zippy uses her sling bullets. Zippy is forced to use her healing rods a couple of times, but eventually she kills him. He never casts another spell or even attempts to teleport away. Of course, he doesn’t drop the Ring, or anything else of value for that matter. Zippy switches back to coward/slug, goes back to her safe room and recalls to town.

Ok, that went well. Zippy spies another potion of healing in the Black Market and buys it, but otherwise she doesn’t need much. She runs back to Angband, sticks her toe in and recalls back out (since Zippy never completed the level 67 Angband quest, which was FF for Lesser Titans, this process is a bit more dangerous than I would like, but I don’t think its worth actually taking the time to do the quest), then runs over to Gondolin and recalls back in.

Angband 99 Zippy now spends all of her time on coward/slug for maximum stealth. She spots Sauron almost immediately, and starts digging an anti-summoning tunnel, but Sauron sees her too, and reaches her before the tunnel is done. Zippy breaks from her digging and casts her power-up spells, but she’s not completely protected from summoning. As soon as he gets LoS, Sauron takes advantage by summoning uniques, getting Rogrog and the Emperor Mimic. I’ve commented in other places that I think the Emperor Mimic and the Fire Phantom take the cake in the “least powerful for their level” uniques, but leveled to level 88, the Emperor Mimic is quite a bit more formidable. Zippy manages to kill the Emperor Mimic, just in time for Sauron to summon Dwar. Doh. Zippy’s a little beat-up, so she reads a teleport scroll.

She reappears a short distance away and around a corner. Zippy heals herself and sees Dwar coming for her. Just as he pops around the corner, Zippy blasts him with her light absorb junkart. Hmm. She was standing too close to a wall, so it doesn’t kill him, but he’s badly damaged a sling bullet finishes him off. Sauron is coming next, so Zippy quickly digs another anti-summoning tunnel, this time completing it before Sauron comes into view. He saunters into the tunnel and Zippy starts slinging him. The two fight back and forth, Zippy with her sling and Sauron with a mix of melee and various spells, especially mana storms and water balls. Zippy uses up her bigger rod of healing and is forced to quaff a couple of potions of healing when a couple mana storms hit close together and knock her down to dangerous levels, but Sauron finally drops. Once he entered the tunnel, Sauron never even attempted to Summon or Teleport away.

Zippy suddenly drops his last batch of ammo and picks up the One Ring. Cool. Sauron didn’t have anything else of use, but as Zippy was browsing through it, Rogrog comes around the corner, and Zippy cuts him up into little tiny troll bits. Ok, that’s done. Time to head back to Mt Doom, so Zippy recalls to town.

No need to resupply, there’s nothing to get in town, now. Zippy rides the Gondolin Thunderlords to Mordor 65.

Mordor 65 – Princess Quest for Hand Druj Just passing through.

Mt Doom 85 Zippy quickly recalls back to the surface and recalls back in to level 99.

Mt Doom 99 Zippy casts recall and switches places with a GWoP in the room of the Great Fire. She’s on coward/sluggish, but she’s cast Essence of Speed, so her speed is around +50 with great stealth. Everything but the hounds are still asleep, and Zippy’s very fast, so she takes two steps to the Great Fire and chucks the ring in before anything can react. She takes a couple plasma breaths, and then quickly casts recall again to get out of the room. As soon as she’s safe, Zippy casts recall for a third time, exiting the level for good. Lets go get Sauron.

Zippy does her usual jogging to Angband to set it up so she can recall back to level 99, which she does.

Angband 99 Zippy repeatedly runs up and down the stairs, bouncing between 99 and 100, continually casting detect monsters in an attempt to find Sauron. When it’s a shaft, she casts Vision to locate the nearest non-shaft stairwell and continues the process. It takes quite a while, but she eventually spots him. She does almost no fighting along the way, as her stealth keeps pretty much everything from waking up. At one point, Zippy spots Draugluain, genocides his guard, and kills him. At this point, I figure there are only 4 formidable uniques, plus all the Nazgul, left: the Mouth of Sauron, Kronos, Lungorthin, and Qlzzqlzuuup. Everyone else powerful is dead. Vort and a few of the orc uniques aren’t dead, but I’d be pretty happy if Morgoth summoned uniques and got any of them. Zippy will leap at any chance she gets to knock off one of the big four. The Mouth might be stuck on top of Mt Doom, though, so he might not be an issue.

While running around, Zippy manages to make a third set of randart sling ammo. Its plusses aren’t quite as good as the other two, but it does have slay evil, which is nice. 23 Iron Shots 'Coion' (1d4) (+16,+14) {90% off}

Finally, Zippy spots Sauron, digs the usual anti-summoning tunnel, powers up, and switches to berserk/running when he gets close. BAM, POW, ZAP! Zippy fires away with her sling bullets, while Sauron responds with a mix of melee and Darkness storms (which I vastly prefer to mana storms, since they both do less damage AND don’t destroy Zippy’s ammo). Zippy manages to keep her health at reasonable levels just using the rods. When Sauron is down to 2 stars he teleports away, reminding me that I have again forgotten to bring the Anchor. In fact, Zippy didn’t have it for her other fights with Sauron, either. He just never even tried to teleport away after the first battle.

Fortunately for Zippy, detect monsters picks him up right away as it’s a fairly small level. She goes after Sauron and digs another anti-summoner tunnel. Sauron heads in and trades blows with Zippy until he down to 1 star, at which point he teleports away again. Again, detect monsters shows he’s not far away, so Zippy chases him down. This time, she doesn’t fool around with digging a tunnel; she just walks into range and starts shooting. Sauron does get off one last darkness storm, but then he goes down, finally dead. Whew. Still didn’t drop anything of value, but that’s ok. Zippy recalls back to town, feeling pleased.

In Gondolin, Zippy heads over to her house and starts trading acid branded ammo for slay evil ammo. Jeez, this stuff only does 400 damage per shot, its going to take 75 hits (not counting regeneration) to kill Morgoth with this stuff. If Zippy had the Sling of the Thain, it would take 2/3 of that. Zippy starts getting annoyed again at the RNG for its parsimonious ways with decent slings. GIVE ME A &*(#$(#$ DECENT SLING, RNG!

Once she’s done with her ammo in Gondolin, Zippy walks to Bree to check out what ammo she has there. While passing through Bree, she stops at the Black Market out of habit and for sale there is: The Sling of Nivrimbar (x3) (+26,+17) (+1)

Umm, wow! Thanks, RNG. That was a quick response. Much appreciated. Zippy immediately buys it and swaps it in as her new weapon. It actually does slightly less damage per shot than the sling she found on 97 (Well, bullets that do a combined base-bullet damage+bullet to-damage bonus totaling 20 or so do more damage with the randart sling, and those that do less do more with the other sling, but most of her ammo does less than that), but more than makes up for it with the extra shot per round. Plus the stat bonuses are nice. Zippy is very happy and feeling optimistic about the battle with Morgoth. Now it will only take 19 rounds of straight hits to kill him instead of 25. That’s progress.

Once Zippy is done loading, she has around 120 sling bullets of slay evil, plus all of her randart ammo, plus the remaining 40 of so of the big stack of acid branded mithril shots, and a bunch of teleport scrolls. She’s ready to go.

Angband 100-106 Zippy slowly works down, looking for Morgoth and avoiding enemies. On 106, she unwisely genocides a bunch of leveled Mongbats (I hate Mongbats) and uses her junkart of light absorb on a Nighcrawler (I hate Nightcrawlers almost as much as I hate Mongbats).

Angband 107 It’s a small level, and Zippy sees Morgoth right away. Unfortunately, he’s going to get to her before she can find cover to block his LoS, and a Dark Elven Sorceror and a Dark Elven Priest are approaching from the other side. Zippy checks her options and realizes that the junkart of genocide is still charging and she’s nearly out of mana due to having not taken enough rest stops while casting vision on all the levels going down. Doh. Zippy reads a teleport scroll, and lands near some stairs, in a room with Adunaphel. Zippy gets ready to blast Adunaphel, when she realizes the junkart of light absorb is also still charging. Double Doh! I really want to kill Morgoth, but Zippy just isn’t ready at the moment. She goes up the stairs.

Angbad 106 It’s a big level, and Zippy rests until both junkarts are ready to go, then she heads down the stairs again.

Angbad 107 And there he is again. Zippy is in a destruction area, which is perfect with all the funny walls, plus there are almost no monsters anywhere close by. She equips her best slay evil ammo, positions herself where I think she’ll have the best chance of getting shots before Morgoth gets LoS, and waits for Morgoth to tunnel over. When he gets close, she powers up and sets to berserk/running.

As hoped, Zippy is able to get quite a few shots off before Morgoth gets LoS on Zippy. In fact, thanks to some lucky accuracy by Zippy, Morgoth is down a full star before coming into view. Sadly, he takes the opportunity to cast Hand of Doom, which knocks Zippy from 1100 hp to about 300. She quickly uses her big rod of healing twice, just in time for Morgoth to summon ancient dragons, getting a GWoP, a spectral Great Crystal Drake, and an ancient white dragon. Darn. Well, Zippy’s a lot faster than they are (+64 speed currently), so she’ll keep shooting and Morgoth and take her chances. Zippy quickly empties her first batch of shots, while the dragons and Melkor all go with melee for a while. They’re doing quite a bit of damage, but Zippy is able to fire off 7 or 8 shots between healing rod usages. She’s careful not to let herself get below about 650 hp, which I think is the threshold for several kinds of insta-death attacks. Morgoth summons dragons again, and then again for a third time. A pretty good size pack of dragons is building up, but its actually not a terrible situation. Most of them are fairly low level, and only a few are actual wyrms. Most are just ancient dragons, and Zippy is immune to 3 of the 4 base elemental damage types (she’s only missing cold). When they breath, Zippy is typically immune to the damage, but the other dragons and Morgoth at least take a little damage. Plus, the regular shatter attacks from Morgoth keep damaging the dragons and shifting the landscape, forcing them to keep moving around, rather than just planting themselves and pounding on Zippy. Obviously, I’d much prefer them not being there, but it sure beings Morgoth summoning a bunch of Nazgul, for example.

When Morgoth gets down to 5 stars, he casts a pair of mana storms in a row, killing a bunch of the dragons, but knocking Zippy down below 250 hit points. Zippy’s primary healing rod has run dry and the back-up is about half-empty. Its time to pull back and heal. Zippy reads a teleport scroll and reappears about a screen away in a small room to the Northwest. The room is empty and detect monsters and traps reveals nothing threatening in the surrounding area. Whew. Zippy quickly quaffs healing potions until she’s back to full health and nervously watches her rod slowly build their mana back up. She also hears a grinding noise and sees that Morgoth is busily tunneling over to her. Zippy equips her best remaining slay evil ammo (she’s gone through about 1/3 of her ammo, and everything that was on the ground was destroyed by the mana storms. She also still has all her randart ammo.) and waits for him.

Thankfully, Morgoth is fast enough that he left his big mass of dragons in the dust and they are still only slowly heading towards Zippy. Additionally, Morgoth pops through the wall in a spot where Zippy gets further out-of-LoS shots on him. Zippy is squeezed into a little alcove in the corner of the room, and by the time Morgoth gets into the room and has LoS, he’s down to 4 stars. At this point, Morgoth just seems to get tired. Rather than summoning or mana storming, he just puts his head down and charges Zippy. It’s a small room, so he only has to go 4 or 5 squares, but for someone with Zippy’s speed that’s a LOT of free shots. By the time he’s in melee range, Zippy has finished off the batch of ammo she equipped and is almost done with another very small batch, while Morgoth is down to 2 stars. Morgoth primarily uses melee, but he also casts a couple more mana storms, and Zippy is forced to use her back-up rod of healing down to empty, plus quaff a couple more healing potions. Finally, the big guy is reeling, and with a crash, he goes down. Whew. Hurray!

Just then, the first of the dragons show up, and rather than mess with the, Zippy just genocides them. I probably should have done that earlier, but I was afraid Morgoth would just summon more. In the final tally, she went through 9 healing potions and about 120 shots of ammo, more than half of which was destroyed by mana storms. Morgoth dropped Amrod, Umbar, and a randart arrow, plus his crown and Grond. Zippy’s got plenty of inventory space with so much ammo gone, so she scoops up Amrod, Grond, and the crown, then recalls back to town to celebrate.

Back on the surface, Zippy checks in with Galadriel, who opens the portal to the Void, and Zippy puts Grond into the Mathom house. Hmm. Zippy plans on heading into the Void, but there are 12 significant uniques I’d like to kill first (the 8 free roaming Nazgul, plus the big 4), plus there are still slots in the Mathom house for the 4 remaining rings of Power (Nenya, Hoarmurath, Khamul, and the Witchking). We’ll see if my patience holds out. Additionally, with the crown now in hand, Zippy switches from Parnumen to Cambeleg for the extra +8 to hit.

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 14

Zippy equips the Iron Crown, revels briefly in her new-found stores of mana, and then heads to Minas Anor where she equips her “luck” equipment. (+10, +8) iron shots of slay evil may have been sufficient for Morgoth, but Zippy would like to use better stuff against Melkor. Gil-Galad, Galadriel’s Phial, Durandil, and her elven cloak, combining for a +16 to Zippy’s luck. That should be good enough. Zippy recalls back into Angband.

Angband 107-120 Surprisingly uneventful. Zippy makes some ammo as she dives but neither finds, makes, nor encounters anything interesting.

Angband 121 Zippy runs into an open vault where Qlqqqlzuup is hanging out. Its packed in with a bunch of relatively weak monsters, so Zippy uses Recall to swap places with a small kobold that’s right next to it. The big Q has no where to summon, though it certainly tries. Zippy isn’t using all of her best stuff, but she’s still at +50 speed and able to put an absolute hailstorm of shots into the Q, killing it before it can teleport away. Whew. Another big unique down.

Angband 126 Lungorthin and Hoarmurath and hanging out together in a room. Zippy sneaks in without disturbing them and blasts Hoarmurath with her junkart of light absorb. Doesn’t kill it instantly, but it does knock Hoarmurath down to 2 stars. 2 quick sling bullets finish it off. Lungorthin is awake now, and summons greater demons. Zippy genocides them and peppers Lungorthin with sling bullets, while the demon charges, alternately breathing flame and plasma. Zippy keeps firing, and Lungorthin goes down as he enters melee range. Nice. Two more uniques down.

Angband 127 Ooh, a greater checkerboard vault, and it looks like Kronos is inside. Plus a few interesting rings. Zippy uses recall to snag the rings out of the vault, and is very pleased to discover one is Nenya. Ring of Power in hand, Zippy cracks open the vault and pushes through the various monsters until she gets to Kronos. Fortunately, her ammo creation has given her some shots of slay evil and some randart shots that slay giant, but Kronos is level 122 and, WOW, does he take a lot of damage to kill. He doesn’t have anywhere near Morgoth’s or Sauron’s offense, and he isn’t as hard to kill as Morgoth, but he’s in the ballpark and he takes MUCH longer to kill than Sauron did. Kronos is about 35 levels higher than normal, so he’s roughly speed +41, AC 410, and his first 3 melee attacks are 15d12 instead of 12d12. I have no idea how to scale his hitpoints, but I’d guess that he’s somewhere around 20k, plus he resists base and poison, so only slay evil and slay giant ammo will do extra damage to him. Fortunately, he only summoned once, got fire giants, and Zippy happened to have some frost shots on him, plus he never breaths. He just stands and uses melee, which is damaging, but manageable. Zippy finally knocks him down, but she has to fire well over 100 shots to do it. Just the Nazgul left, now. As a reward, Zippy finds an elven cloak of the Magi that’s pretty darn nice. +7 INT, Stealth, speed, and searching, plus some other abilities. Colannon has served Zippy long and well, but this cloak is clearly better. Zippy makes the swap and will carry the elven cloak of the magi into the void as a replacement for when she (hopefully) gets the ring of phasing and can drop the cloak of air.

Once Kronos is gone, Zippy just bounces back and forth between 126 and 127 creating ammo. At one point, she creates 3 different sets of randart ammo on the same level, and she finds a backup mouse fur of air and another rod-tip of healing. She has bad luck finding ammo of slay evil, and eventually I get bored. She’s not making slay evil ammo and no Nazgul are showing up. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me its time to hit the Void.

Zippy heads back to town, grabs and wears the cloak of air with the higher defensive bonus, goes to the armor enchanter in Gondolin and makes sure all her armor is enchanted up to +10. Surprisingly, her randart armor was only +9, and they successfully enchant it to +10. She then sells off her scrolls of recall and runs from town to town buying teleport scrolls until she’s at 60 or so. While visiting the various towns, she makes sure she’s carrying the best ammo she’s got. 4 bunches of randart ammo, 2 with slay evil, 2 with *slay undead*, and one that has a bunch of good brands and is +43 to-hit. 25 Mithril Shots of Neleglos (3d4) (+43,+25) {90% off}

Plus, 5 more sets of mixed ammo of various brands, all mithril, and all between +19 to +24 to-hit and to-damage. With retrospect, I should have made sure it was all slay evil, rather than being so impatient to get going. She sticks the rod-tip of healing onto another silver rod of the Istari, and grabs her stash of *Healing* and cure insanity potions.

Her pack is now full, she’s at speed +27 when set on slug-like, her AC is 138 when set on coward, but she’s at +155 to-hit when using good (though not the +43 stuff) ammo, on berserk, and with Manwe’s Blessing running. That’s good enough for anything she’ll run into, though hopefully she won’t fight much besides Tiki and Melkor. The plan is for her to spend as much time as possible on coward/slug-like for maximum stealth. Having to wear the cloak of air knocks her stealth down a bit to Heroic, but hopefully its still good enough. Zippy heads back to Lothlorien, says Goodbye to Galadriel, and steps into the Void.

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 15

After running a few other character types into the Void, I had forgotten how easy it was (relatively speaking) to take a Warper there. Vision, great range on detect traps and monsters, plus Recall, make it much, much easier than with many other classes. The Void actually goes fairly quickly as Zippy has good luck in finding down staircases and her stealth proves up to the challenge. I try not to stairscum too much, but, jeez, it’s the Void. If Zippy even thinks she sees a greater demon pit or a horde of something nasty, she’s back up the stairs as fast as her little legs (and Recall spell) can carry her. Before she knows it, she’s in the Nether Realm and hasn’t even had to fight anything yet (though she has had to cast Banishment many times). There is indeed some rubble along the way, and Zippy diligently turns it into ammo, though she hasn’t gotten anything useful so far.

The Nether Realm is a bit easier to navigate, but Zippy’s luck with stairs goes out the window and she spends quite a bit of time breaking into lightly populated vaults looking for stairs. While moving down, she encounters Ji Indur Dawndeath and knocks him off with the junkart of light absorb and sling bullets. Not too much trouble, and one fewer baddie for Tiki and Melkor to summon. On 688, Zippy makes her first batch of mithril slay evil shots. Looking through her equipment, Zippy decides to dump some lightning shots to keep the slay evils. On 694, she finds a “good” long sword, perfect for imbuing. To keep it, Zippy drops a batch of acid bullets. Zippy kills a few more monsters along the way, but not many. The genocide junkart is getting a lot of work, but Recall is really the life saver. Several times Zippy gets close enough to a greater demon pit to wake the inhabitants up, but she casts detect monster and swaps places with whatever is farthest away. Works really well.

Finally, she’s down to 696. Zippy casts her powerup spells, and makes sure she still has her base Uniaglos shots equipped. Tiki is actually undead, so mithril shots with good damage bonuses and *slay evil* flags do well over 1k damage per hit. I don’t expect this to be a hard battle.

Setting up the battle proves harder than expected. 3 times in a row, Zippy takes the stairs down to 696 and steps into a greater demon pit. The 4th time, Zippy searches the whole (small) level and can’t find Tiki anywhere. Try #5, Zippy isn’t powered-up going down the stairs and Tiki is right there. Before Zippy can even step off the stairs, Tiki has summoned a big hoard of greater demons, and Zippy runs back up the stairs. Finally, it’s a nice, normal level.

Zippy clears out the close by monsters, powers up, and spots Tiki a medium distance away. She starts creeping towards Tiki and once in range, switches to Berserk/Running and begins peppering Tiki with shots. Maybe it’s the range, but less than half of Zippy’s shots hit their target. Tiki casts a couple nether balls and breathes disenchantment, but, amazingly, never summons. She just keeps floating forward. When Zippy uses up her first set of ammo, she switches to the +43 to-hit set (which merely slays undead) and suddenly becomes much more accurate. Finally, with 1 star left, Tiki summons a bunch of Dreads. Zippy genocides them away, and lands the killing blow on Tiki. That wasn’t bad at all, once the situation was set-up decently.

The Flame Imperishable is suddenly in Zippy’s inventory, and she uses it to imbue the long sword, creating the long sword of Eternity. Next, she picks up the Ring of Phasing and gets ready to swap out her old ring of speed, when she notices that the old ring is cursed. Rats. Ok, off goes the ring of accuracy (but she hangs onto it), and she’ll just wear both. Since she doesn’t need to breath anymore, the cloak of air is tossed aside and replaced by the elven cloak of the magi. Zippy is now +49 speed when on coward/slug-like, and up to +83 when running and essence of speed is active. Nifty. As an added plus, her stealth on coward/slug-like is now up to legendary(10) which should help on the trip back up. Zippy heads back to the stairs and begins the climb back up.

Its arduous. On level 692, Zippy runs into Khamul, who immediately summons a mix of greater undead. Zippy escapes, but not before Khamul gives her the Black Breath. Doh! Zippy suffers from it for a few levels, but, fortunately, finds a sprig of Athelas on 688 and eats it, breaking the Black Breath. She then finds a mushroom of restoration on 687 and eats it too, restoring her stats (thanks to the crown, nothing dropped below 40, but it still bugged me). Finding the stairs each time feels like a major undertaking, and near the end she gets a little reckless, peeking into vaults to find the stairs.

As she climbs, Zippy continues making new ammo, and eventually tosses out her long used Uindagnos (incredibly versatile, but lack slay evil) shots in favor of some nice mithril shots of slay evil. She’s now carrying 3 sets of randart shots (75 shots total), all mithril and with to-hit and to-damage bonuses ranging from +23 to +43. 2 have slay evil and the third is the +43 to-hit set. She also has 55 (+21, +24) mithril shots of frost, having made the same exact set 3 times during the trip, and 5 sets of mithril slay evil shots with to-hit and to-damage bonuses ranging from +19 to +25 (107 shots total). The frost ammo will only do 300 damage per hit to Melkor, but the rest averages around 550 per hit. That means 145 hits to kill Melkor, not counting regeneration. That means her ammo supply almost certainly won’t be enough to kill him, but hopefully she can re-gather ammo during the battle.

As she goes up, Zippy has countless encounters with demons and other monsters, and close calls with some chaos hounds (knocked her down to about ¼ her hp), and a seeker bolt trap (Zippy overran her trap detection and as she tried to step on the square, spotted the trap and stepped around it. Seeker bolt traps in the Nether Realms have dead hobbit written all over them.), but she kept going, finally reaching the Void. I glossed over it fairly quickly because there were few big battles with uniques or other exceptional events, but the whole process took forever and was exceedingly dangerous.

Up in the Void, I decided that the relative lack of buildings makes it easier to navigate than the Nether Realms, though it could be a case of the grass being greener on the other side. Zippy kills a few Spirits, and tries out her Destruction spell by sneaking up to a bunch of Dreads, firing it off, and effectively genociding them all. Cool. She also FINALLY finds a scroll of *remove curse* so she can swap in the ring of accuracy if she chooses. After a surprisingly short period of searching, she finds the stairs to 149 and then the stairs to 150.

Here we go. Zippy equips the Long Sword of Eternity (its awesome, but the anti-magic shield is just too annoying), takes a DEEP breath, breaks the seal, and heads down the stairs…

The adventures of Zippy - Chapter 16

Oh, crap. A greater demon pit. Zippy quickly tries to genocide them, but can’t. Rats. Forgot that genocide doesn’t work on this level. Perhaps destruction will get rid of them en masse if they wake up. Zippy dumps the junkart of genocide. Won’t need that anymore.

Checking inventory, Zippy notices for the first time that her lack of cold immunity has resulted in serious damage to her potions. She’s down to 8 healing, 25 *healing*, and 15 cure insanity, which means, after factoring in the stuff she’s picked up in the Void and Nether Realm, she lost about half of what she brought in. Wow. It should still be plenty, but its quite a bit less than I expected.

I still can’t decide how Zippy should fight Melkor. Keep her distance and try to play LoS games (thus preventing Melkor from using his nasty melee attacks, but relying on Banishment to get rid of summons), or close to melee range fast to prevent summoning (and risk getting turned into an abomination or made in insane by his melee attacks). I’ve been agonizing over this for quite some time and I’m still not sure, but since Melkor doesn’t hit to shatter, I’m leaning towards walling Zippy in with destruction spells, setting up a void gate as an escape hatch, and then fighting the battle at close range, with partial protection from summons. It’s the best plan I can come up with. Even swapping the Ring of Accuracy for the ring of speed, with Essence of speed on, Zippy should be up around +70, so even after being turned into an abomination she should still be faster than Melkor with (thanks to the crown) maxed stats. Hopefully its enough potions of cure insanity. Real Wall Creation would have been handy right about now.

Following the anti-summoning strategy, Zippy starts casting destruction with wild abandon, chopping as much as possible of the smallish (1 screen high by 2 screens wide) level into a rocky ruin with extremely poor visibility. This has the added benefit of destroying a good chunk of the monsters on that part of the level (including everything in the demon pit), though Zippy tries to avoid destroying any piles of rubble that might be laying around.

Unfortunately, I forget that Melkor is a big, pink G rather than a blackish P, and he’s in melee range before I realize its him. Zippy quickly teleports away, but Melkor can still see her and he summons a bunch of Dreads. Zippy casts destruction to block LoS, and it also kills all of the Dreads. She then powers up, switches to berserk/running, and waits for Melkor. He arrives shortly by bashing down the walls.

The fight is on! Zippy discovers quickly that she didn’t really pick a good spot when a crypt creep starts cursing her from the side and some flying skulls start attacking her from behind. She shifts to another spot, where there’s only one open square, but Melkor quickly summons phantom warriors who can walk through walls. Grrr. Hopefully they don’t do much damage, because Zippy would really like to ignore them and focus on Melkor.

Melkor himself is two full tons of trouble. His melee attacks are fairly damaging, but combined with the occasional mind blast, they just shred Zippy’s sanity. She has to quaff her first cure insanity potion before Melkor is even down a star. When Melkor is down 2 stars, I do the math and realize that switching to coward/running should only knock her to-hit % down by 5%, but should reduce the melee damage she takes by almost 20%. Worth a try. Hmm, might be helping a little. At least I don’t have to keep switching back every time she quaffs a potion.

Speaking of which, Zippy isn’t 100% reliable with her rods of healing, and wasting even one turn could be fatal, so Zippy uses her potions of *healing* and cure insanity in melee, but when she phase-door or teleports away, she has a spare turn or two, so she uses the rods to preserve the potions. Additionally, I’ve just realized that Zippy lost rBlindness way back when she swapped Morgoth’s crown for the crown of seeing, so she’s getting blinded periodically. The potions helpfully cure the blindness while the rods don’t, making the potions even more valuable.

Zippy also quickly resigns herself to spending most of the battle as an abomination. Melkor successfully transformed her on his very first hit. So far, the effect doesn’t seem to serious. Even transformed, her stats are still maxed and her speed is +63 (thank you, Essence of Speed), so I don’t think the difference is even noticeable. Zippy does seem to be hitting a bit less frequently than I expected, so maybe it affected her base missile attack bonus, but then again, maybe I just did the math wrong.

After a few more rounds, she’s badly damaged and looking for a way to get rid of those phantom warriors. They’re doing too much damage, and the time lost to healing it gives Melkor more attacks, which Zippy also needs to heal. It could be the margin between victory and defeat. Zippy phase-doors away to buy a little time to heal and then Banishes the phantom warriors, also getting a wyrm and a spirit that were approaching. Once Melkor arrives, he settles into a nice melee-and-occasional-heal-of-himself routine. A couple mana bolts and darkness storms are mixed in, but they either reflect or don’t do much damage, and Melkor is soon down to 5 stars.

Melkor seems to perk back up at that point, and summons greater undead, getting the Witchking of Angmar. Oh, NOW you decide to show up, peckerhead. He resists teleportation, so I guess it’ll be Zippy that changes location. Zippy phase-doors away, but now I need to separate those two. Zippy finds a spot where Melkor can tunnel to him in such a way that nothing else can see her, at least until something circles around behind her or something (other than Melkor) that can tunnel moves to the front. If a black reaver chews through some stone, Zippy will need to move. One round of combat later, Melkor summons greater undead again. Just leveled Vampire Lords and Barrow Wights, but they do have LoS on Zippy. Hmm, maybe they won’t hit very hard. No such luck. After a couple rounds, Zippy phase-doors away yet again.

A little more healing, and she’s back to full strength, but Zippy’s potions are half-gone. Fortunately, she’s back to the original battlesite and is able to collect some ammo before the mass of undead forces her to flee. Still, most of them can’t tunnel or walk through walls, so she fights a running battle with Melkor for a bit, dodging through the stone, getting hits in before the undead can catch up, and she knocks Melkor down to 4 stars before the Witchking arrives again.

Zippy phase-doors away again, landing very close by, next to an Aether vortex and out in the open. Uh, oh. Too many undead with LoS on Zippy means death, so she casts destruction. Just like that, vortex is gone, and so is the Witchking. Hmm. He doesn’t appear to be dead, but I don’t see him anywhere. If he was banished off the level, I’d better be REALLY careful not to do that to Melkor or Zippy is screwed.

A couple more hits and, ack, Manwe’s Blessing wore off. Zippy backs through the stone for shelter and recasts it. When Melkor catches up, the undead horde is a few squares back and out of LoS, so Zippy stays put and goes toe-to-toe with Melkor until the undead catch up. After a few rounds of blows (dropping Melkor to 3 stars), the undead catch up just as Zippy needs to heal, so she phase-doors, landing somewhat behind the horde. A rod of healing gets her hp back to full. Her sanity is only at about 60%, but the running and dodging style of fighting is much easier on her sanity, so she decides save them (only 8 left) for now.

There are a few of Zippy’s randart shots there, so Zippy scoops them up, and fires off the last of her regular slay evil and randart slay evil shots. Most of the rest of the Barrow Wights move into LoS almost simultaneously and Zippy takes the opportunity to Banish them all. The Vampire Lord and most of the rest of the liches are stuck around a corner, except for a master lich which has been sniping at Zippy the whole time. It resists teleportation and Zippy’s had real trouble shaking it. Fortunately for Zippy, it decides to blink away, landing in a spot where it can’t get to Zippy. Cool, this means that Zippy has at least 5 turns to slug it out with Melkor before the horde shows up. Of course, Melkor could decide to summon another horde, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Pity Zippy’s out of slay evil ammo, but she’ll make the best of what she has left.

The next turn, Melkor drops to 2 stars and he’s now badly wounded. Zippy is at 60% of both health and sanity, and her speed has bumped up a couple points. She’s fired off so much ammo and used so many potions that she’s back below 120% encumbrance for the first time since entering the Void.

Hmm, this non-slay evil stuff really takes a long time to damage Melkor. Zippy fires continuously until the master lich and the last couple of barrow wights reach her, and she has great luck during the run, hitting 80-90% of the time, but its not enough to knock Melkor down a star (though he did heal himself a couple of times during the process). Even the barrow wights do significant damage at this point (they’re both level 130+), so Zippy phase-doors away, heals back up, and spends a few turns looking in vain for used slay evil ammo. I know generally where the battles have taken place, but with much of the landscape being destruction zones, its hard to find the exact spot, and thus the left-over ammo. She’s down to 70 remaining shots, none of which is slay evil. Its probably enough to finish him, but slay evil would do it faster, plus, running out of ammo would be really bad.

Eventually, Melkor and the master lich catch up. I realize that Zippy is a little farther north than most of the battles so far, so, barring a lucky phase-door, she resigns herself to trying to finish Melkor with that big batch of mithril shots of frost. With most of the undead horde either dead from sling bullets, banished, or destruction-ed away, its much easier to stand and slug it out with Melkor, at least for a few turns. Two rounds into fighting Melkor with the frost shots, he’s down to 1 star. Possible victory is getting very close and I can smell the win, so I need to be very careful not to get overexcited and blow it.

Melkor, on the other hand, keeps blowing his turns by healing himself. The master lich has just moved into LoS and those two barrow wights are just around the corner, so we’ll see how long Zippy can last at this position. Zippy’s primary healing rod has run dry, but her back-ups are both full, and she’s got 19 combined *healing* and healing potions left, so she’s fine for hp for now, but her sanity is really hurting. She’s down to 50% and she’s only got 4 potions of cure insanity left. I think she can pull it off, but if Melkor or the undead go mind blast happy, Zippy will have to fight to conserve her sanity the rest of the way.

Zippy has wedged herself into a short hallway with stone all around her, so Melkor has no room to summon. The lich teleports himself away and the barrow wights are stuck behind Melkor, tossing the occasional curse, but otherwise just milling around. This is it. Melkor can’t get any more reinforcements here. Unless Zippy runs out of ammo, she’s making her stand here. The big guy is still at one star, and he’s grunting instead of shrugging, but Zippy’s almost out of ammo. She’s finished off her big batch of frost shots and also fired off her junkart of light absorb, but he’s still there. Melkor heals himself about every other round. At first, I thought it was amusing the way he wasted turns like that. Now that Zippy is down to 17 shots of her +43 to-hit randart ammo and nothing else, its not quite as funny. Zippy’s also down to 2 potions of cure insanity. Its going to come down to the wire.

One potion of cure insanity left and just 7 shots of randart ammo, but the last shot made Melkor cry out in pain instead of grunt, so he’s got to be really close. Zippy has to do it with her sling, she’d never do enough damage in melee to finish him off. Melkor slugs Zippy again. She won’t last much longer herself. Zippy’s next two shots are both critical hits and Melkor cries feebly. Come on, COME ON. DIE, DAMN IT! Melkor hits Zippy again, but Zippy lucks out and only the abomination attack lands. She’s down to 60% hp and 70% sanity. Zippy’s next hit is a third critical and IT FINISHES HIM! MELKOR GOES DOWN! VICTORY! VICTORY!

Whew.

After banishing the barrow wights, Zippy looks around and notices that Melkor apparently didn’t drop anything after he died. Is that normal? When Hamfist (my last warper to kill Melkor) killed Melkor, he exploded like a piñata. Hamfist killed many, many monsters on that level, and maybe Melkor just had stuff he had picked up from the various dead beasties.

Galadriel’s stairs appear, and Zippy heads down them and returns, finally, to Lothlorien. She checks in with Galadriel, who seems less friendly than I would have guessed, seeing as how Zippy just killed Melkor and all. Well, being made part of the Valar by Eru is reward enough. Zippy retires.

The End.

Chatter

That was really fun. In fact, it may have been the most satisfying win I've ever had, even better than my first ever win over Morgoth. That one was with an anti-magic archer, which made it a bit dull, really. Anti-magic plus a dark sword of nothingness plus a bunch of phase door scrolls plus a good missile weapon makes the battle almost unfair. Morgotyh can't summon or cast spells, so you just shoot him until he gets close, phase door away, and shoot him some more.

Anyway, I had worked out in advance that the build *could* win, but when the Sling of the Thain didn't turn up and I did the math on fighting Melkor... Wow, I really had my doubts if I could pull it off. I think the uncertainty is what made it fun for me. That final battle was probably 50/50 in terms of who would win. If Zippy had been hit by just a couple more mind blasts, or if she hadn't been lucky in terms of phase-dooring right onto some ammo, Melkor could easily have worn her down and killed her. Still, 1 potion of cure insanty left. Wow. Hopefully you had as much fun reading this as I did playing and writing it. It ended up being 65 double-spaced pages long, in case you're curious.

DayInTheLifeArchive/Day in the life of Zippy3 (last edited 2004-11-08 15:20:18 by 64-132-179-115)