ToME Wiki
Getting There
The Sandworm Lair is a long way to the west and slightly south of Bree. Look for the purple stair on the south shore of a small peninsula just to the west of some mountains. Your messages window will call it a 'sandhole'.
The dungeon
Rectangular rooms connected by single-tile-wide corridors. No terrain streamers, but occasional fountains, Melkor altars, and vaults. Standard walls are very easily diggable.
There are enough fire-breathers here that having levitation or flying is recommended.
The Sandlair is reputed to be an excellent source for good magical items including stat potions.
Vaults tend to be extremely easy since the monster types are constrained. However... you did remember to bring a way to detect and disarm traps, right?
Monsters
This dungeon is full of breeding monsters. Most of them are worms (especially Dragon Worms) of one sort or another, but you may also run into others, such as Fleas, Blood Spouts, and Lesser Wall Monsters. There are also a few non-breeders such as Giant Slugs and Gelatinous Cubes.
Guardian
The Sandworm Queen waits for you on DL30. You should have poison resistance before taking her on. She drops the Soft Leather Armour of the Sandworm, which you should enchant up before wearing.
For ToME versions prior to 2.3
The Sandworm Lair is much more difficult with Z and Cthangband monster options turned on. In particular, the Cthangband unique Shudde M'ell is worse than the Sandworm Queen.
General advice
Things helpful with combating breeders:
- Genocide
- Stealth
- Speed
- Area attacks like Noxious Cloud
- A good escape mechanism such as Teleport
The vaults in the Sandworm Lair are an excellent source of Tomes, good potions (like stat potions, Restore Mana, Healing/*Healing*, and the stronger cure-insanity variants), and good magic devices and rod tips. A Melkor worshipper looking for medium-to-good rods to drain in the early midgame will find all s/he wants in the Sandworm Lair.
If you have some way of damaging large groups of monsters at a time (Thaumaturgy View or Area spells come to mind), Lesser Wall Monster groups can yield huge amounts of experience (with very little danger to yourself) if you let them "breed" a lot before killing them. If overused this would probably be considered cheating by the more puritanical players.
Chatter
What are those colored wall segments all about? They don't seem to do anything.
Sirrocco: the yellow walls in the sandworm lair (and elsewhere, but they're all over the place in there) are sandstone. It is easier to dig than normal granite, has somewhat different effects with geomancy, and, most importantly, turns into glass when fire is applied. Glass is see-through but not walkable, continues to block attacks, and pretty much cannot be destroyed
Agnoth I meant to say, the (mostly) red ones that change color.