Mr Hawking: Part 3 - Some Unique Encounters
The Amazing Adventures of Mr Hawking the Godless Spriggan Enchanter
Part Three - Some Unique Encounters
... in which Mr. Hawking battles named foes and discovers the location of the Temple.
When last we left Mr. Hawking he had just discovered the Orcish Mines and learned that he was
Encumbered. His plan for the moment is to avoid the Orcish Mines for now, but to deal with the encumbrance immediately.
Of note, he discovers the Amulet of Stasis. This amulet is a mixed blessing. On the one hand when he equips he will be able to avoid negative effects like paralyse, slow, teleport. On the other hand, sometimes you need to teleport to escape from bad situations. He chooses to wear it for now, because he now had the means to deal with the Giant Eyeball and Menkaure.
His plan is to climb down the stairs and use his wand of fire to destroy the Mummy. Fire will take a mummy down like nothing else, even a named unique. The Amulet of Stasis will prevent the Giant Eyeball from paralysing him and allowing Menkaure to get free shots at him.
It worked exactly as planned. Mr. Hawking is glad.
He did feel the effects of the mummy death curse though - his Amulet of Stasis is cursed! *note: I should have dealt with that
immediately, but I let it go. This will come back to haunt Mr. Hawking later.
Mr. Hawking finds the Book of Tukima. Some interesting spells in there for sure, but he doesn't Memorize any of them yet.
Sigmund is spotted! One of the most feared uniques to wander the dungeon, but just who is this Sigmund fellow? Mr. Hawking remembers the following from his research:
A notoriously lethal early-game unique human wizard with a shiny scythe, a magic wand, and a necklace of player skulls. Typically generated with a wand of lightning, draining, or paralysis when you get a really good character started.
Sigmund's reputation is moreso built on the fact that he often appears early in the dungeon than that he is a truly dangerous opponent. At this stage of the game Mr. Hawking is more than capable of handling him. That being said, Sigmund can have some spells and weapons when the RNG feels like it, so it's always a good idea to be careful when dealing with him.
Mr. Hawking knows that Sigmund can be killed though. He's heard the stories and
seen the video. He approaches with care.
Mr. Hawking decides not to trust to his stealth or his magic, but instead to a wand of paralysis that he picked up shortly before this encounter. Sleeping Sigmund was easy fodder for the wand, and Paralysed Sigmund was split open like an overripe banana by Mr. Hawking's dagger.
Mr. Hawking climbs down a staircase and finds Pikel with a group of humans standing around him. Pikel is:
A Big Kobold slaver, on his way to the Orcish Mines to sell his wares. He commands a band of 4 human slaves, who are yearning for freedom and will be pacified when you kill their evil master. Pikel wields a whip of either flaming or pain.
The coolest thing about Pikel is that if you manage to kill him first you don't have to deal with the human slaves, and in fact they turn friendly towards you and help you out if they see you in a fight. There's also no benefit to killing the human slaves as they don't provide experience - so you're much better off concentrating on their master.
That is precisely what Mr. Hawking attempts to do, luring Pikel up the stairs to where he knows there is a corridor that will limit the number of monster who can hit him.
Hmmm. Those slaves hit harder than he thought. Mr. Hawking attempts to blink away when he realises that he is still wearing the cursed Amulet of Stasis and can't teleport! With only 24 HP he doesn't have a lot of room for error. He checks his inventory to see he has few items that can help him and only one potion of healing.
Some smart thinking with his spells give him room to work and burning Pikel and the slave is easy once he gets a couple squares clearance.
Mr. Hawking finds a scroll of remove curse and decides to use-ID a robe he's carrying. Fantastic! It turns out to be a +2 robe of MR. This is good news for sure - getting a good source of MR is going to really help with the next couple levels as Mr. Hawking deals with Orc Wizards and a handful of magic using uniques.
Mr. Hawking finds himself in a battle with a few enemies and is getting a bit spooked when suddenly one of Pikel's former slaves jumps into the fray! The slave is probably combat fodder against the war dog, but the he is buying Mr. Hawking time to move out of the battle and get himself better positioned to fight.
Mr. Hawking finds an Antique Weapons Boutique. He finds nothing that really suits him though.
Right after the disappointing shop, Mr. Hawking finds the Young Poisoner's Handbook. Now this is interesting. Mr. Hawking doesn't have any knowledge of the conjuration or poison disciplines, but Mephitic Cloud is a deadly spell when fighting enemies that are susceptible to poison damage - such as the orcs he will eventually encounter in the Orcish mines.
The spell:
Fills the target square and the adjacent squares with clouds of noxious fumes. Any creature breathing these fumes may become confused unless resistant to poison and/or confusion.
To prepare for his eventual spamming of Mephitic Cloud, Mr. Hawking memorizes the Sting spell. It's a good spell to use to train both poison and spellcasting.
This is Mr. Hawking's current list of spells.
Mr. Hawking encounters a Jelly. Grog was able to get through his Jelly encounters without ever having his weapons corrode, but Mr. Hawking was not so lucky. His dagger is damaged by Mr. Hawking slashing at the oozing monster. Luckily Mr. Hawking foresaw this eventuality and changed to a +0 dagger from the +2 one he normally uses. He dropped the -1 dagger afterwards so as not to get acid on his clothing.
As Mr. Hawking dives through the dungeon (he's at DL:9 in this picture) he discovers the entrance to the Lair. Perfect!
The Lair is the first branch of the dungeon that Mr. Hawking will venture into. Some of the rumours that Mr. Hawking had heard float through his head:
The lair eight levels deep and full of "natural" critters such as rats, snakes, and yaks. Three further branches will start in the Lair and there is a relatively hard vault on Lair:8. The Lair is the petting zoo of Crawl, if petting zoos had hydras.
He's not ready just yet to enter the Lair however. First he has to find the Temple and choose a god to worship. It's time to start clearing out levels. Mr. Hawking goes back to level three (where he started diving because of Reknor's ghost) and works his way down the dungeon for a second time.
On his way back up the dungeon Mr. Hawking encounters Grum on DL:8, Grum being yet another unique monster. Grum:
Is a unique gnoll who breeds war dogs. He wears the skin of a deceased war dog and he's a bit of an easy mark for most adventurers by the time they meet him.
Grum is even more of an easy mark if you happen to kill his dogs earlier on the level, as Mr. Hawking has already done. From the screenshots above you can see how this one played out. Stabby stabby!
Still climbing, Mr. Hawking finds an altar to Okawaru on DL:6.
Oka, as he's colloquially known:
Grants Might and Haste abilities, as well as armor and weapon acquirements with a strong +hit/-dam bias.
Moonlights as the god of butterflies, and will be very sad if you let them die. (He doesn't like when you kill allies.)
Why might someone choose Oka?
Armour and weapon gifts, especially if you are a centaur or naga and have a need for specialized armour.
If you want a specialized weapon such as a quick blade.
Might and Haste are extremely useful.
To be honest Okawaru makes a great choice for any SpEn.
DamnedRegistrations brought him up as a possible god choice when I asked people for suggestions. The reason Mr. Hawking is going to skip him is because Oka is boring. He gives you lots of gifts but doesn't bring any new mechanics to the table. Mr. Hawking is a smart Spriggan and has a thirst for knowledge and new experiences, not simply more powerful ways to stab monsters. He wants a bit more of a challenge than Oka can offer. For that reason he passes Okawary by and continues to search for the temple to choose a god.
Remember these guys from earlier?
Well, Mr. Hawking is ready to deal with them now. In no time at all he has the makings for a delicious Orc Pot Roast, were he not inclined towards vegetable eating instead.
And he is in fact rewarded with the entrance to the Temple!
As you can see this is one of those special pre-made entrances. The lava in the water that surrounds the Temple creates steam and those [color=red[b]red X's[/b][/color] that you see in the screenshot above are "travel exceptions" that prevent Mr. Hawking from walking into danger.
...
An Interlude: Travel Features in DCSS
I'm going to stop here and explain one of the great features of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, one of the things that make DCSS, in my opinion, the best roguelike around. I am referring of course to the travel interface that exists in the game. (Don't worry, there is more Mr. Hawking to come, we'll be rejoining him shortly.) I won't go crazy into detail here - if you want to know more about the system the best thing to do is to
read John Harris' column about the subject.
The most basic feature is just fast travelling in one direction. You accomplish this by pressing
shift+direction. Your character will move until he either hits a wall or impassable square or sees a monster.
The real interesting stuff starts with
O. O
(shift-o) is the auto-explore key. When you press it your character begins to explore the level, moving into all the unexplored areas until you have mapped out the entire dungeon level (or at least the accessible parts).
X (shift-x) is the auto-travel key. This allows you to manually select a location on the map and have the game figure out the shortest possible route there and then move along that route. One of the most common ways of using this feature involve cycling through the staircases on a level, by pressing
X followed by
> (shift-.) or
< (shift-,). This is a great way or seeing if you've accessed all the possible entrances and exits to a level, as well as a good way of quickly moving between levels.
An even faster way of moving between levels and locations is to use the
G (shift-g) or
(ctrl-g) keys. This opens up the Travel menu, where you can select Dungeon Branches and then individual levels from any level you've already seen. For example, if I'm in Orc:2 after having already completed Lair and my stash is located back on Lair:2, I can go to the trouble of moving up stairs to get back to the main dungeon, then going to the level that the Lair is located on, then finding my way down to Lair:2. Or I can press
G, followed by L for Lair and 2 for the level. At that point DCSS figures out the way to go and I sit back and watch my character move.
Now, one thing you might wonder about is monsters or other encounters you meet on the way. Don't worry, you won't simply travel until the point of death. When a monster comes in view you will not be able to auto-travel and if you are already auto-travelling you will immediately stop. After you've dealt with the threat, you can then resume your travel by pressing
G and just pressing
ENTER instead of giving new directions - this will resume whatever path you had set. Auto-explore will also go and pick up any items that you have assigned it to get - for example gold, helpful potions and scrolls, things you've thrown at monsters. Most of the pickup behaviours can be modified in the config file, but that's another issue entirely.
You also have the very powerful travel exceptions. Sometimes you want to ensure that you don't under any circumstances travel into dangerous territory. Now, the game knows that you don't want to walk into lava and that you don't want to swim in deep water, but what about walking next to an Oklob Plant or an Ice Statue (*
monsters Mr. Hawking may very well face down the road - they are stationary but deadly?
The travel exception feature creates the red X's in the screenshot above so that you do not travel into those squares. You can also set your own exceptions to avoid some dangerous situations, such as somehow walking into a trap on a level you saw but ran from.
Theres even more advanced stuff you can do, but that's most of it. I really do recommend that you
RTFM to really give yourself a chance to beat this game.
Now - this brings us to an interesting question that
oldmanpaco has raised - should you actually use the auto-explore feature (and the other travel features), and what situations should they be used (or not) in? That's beyond the scope of this particular post but I invite you all to weigh in with comments.
...
Mr. Hawking's Continued Adventures
OK... Sorry for that interlude. We now rejoin Mr. Hawking's adventure in progress.
Mr. Hawking examines the altars in the Temple. Having already seen an altar of Oka there are only two gods left for him to consider. He must decide between Nemelex Xobeh and Xom. Now Xom is an interesting god. While Nemelex Xobeh claims to be a trickster god, Xom is truly the more devilish of the two. Mr. Hawking thinks back to his studies of the gods.
Xom:
Expects you to amuse him. You are not a follower, you are a plaything. You do not pray to Xom, you do interesting things instead.
Gives handsome rewards but exacts random punishments.
Reasons to pick Xom?
You are an unarmed fighter (when Xom gives you horns/hooves/teeth/claws, they will be very useful to you; and when Xom tries to turn your weapon into a hostile dancing blade, it won't do anything to you, making Xom much safer to worship).
After following xom for a while you'll tend to collect a variety of mutations and they will lean towards beneficial.
You don't really care about winning. Losing is fun!
Now, Nemelex Xobeh isn't quite as scary:
The gambling god. He expects sacrifices of anything and everything, and in return grants you decks of cards, and abilities that let you manipulate the decks in your favor.
Why choose Nemelex?
He is very useful for all characters; a collection of decks of summoning, good Evo skill, and Nemelex's abilities are enough to win the game with.
Decks of summoning are probably the most life-saving deck for a Nemelexite, but summoned creatures aren't always stealthy, so stealth-based characters may find Nemelex less useful.
Mr. Hawking briefly considered choosing Xom but down that path lies madness. That will be a challenge for a future adventurer. Because of Mr. Hawking's high evocation aptitude, Nemelex Xobeh will give him a good chance to actually win the game, or at least do some real damage and make it into the mid-game. Plus he already found a deck of cards! It was a sign! He kneels down at the altar to Nemelex Xobeh and begins to pray.
And the camera fades to black...
Up next: Mr. Hawking tackles the Lair.
Well, he was starving due to all the RAGE within him...
Looking forward for more adventures!
