Malakal: Part 1 - Reaching the Temple
The Incredible Adventures of Malakal the Demonspawn Fire Elementalist
Part One - Reaching the Temple
... in which we are introduced to Malakal and follow him as he attempts to reach the Temple.
Meet Malakal. The Malakal from this thread requested a Demonspawn of Jiyva but didn't specify the background. I wanted to try something I'd never done before, so I went with a Fire Elementalist. Now, let's break that down.
Malakal is a Demonspawn, which is:
A race with slightly below average aptitudes in all discipines and very poor xp gain. Get 6 semi-random good mutations.
He's also a Fire Elementalist:
A spellcaster that starts out with some conjurations and fire magic skill and a Book of Flames, which contains the very effective Sticky Flame spell.
It's not the most obvious combination, but in 0.7 Demonspawn are actually fairly versatile. As noted, their aptitudes are similar to Demigods; slightly poor at everything and they have difficulty levelling. As opposed to Demigods they have normal stat gain, the ability to worship gods of course, and most importantly their Demonspawn mutations every couple levels. Depending on what the RNG gives me, Malakal could end up with a constant demon companion, a permanent shield of ice, or turn into a warped monstrocity covered in horns and claws.
To be honest, I haven't actually tried Demonspawn seriously since the update, and I've never played a Fire Elementalist past the first couple levels, so this was a really intersting game for me. Let's see how it plays out...
Still on DL:1, Malakal gains a level. The early game for a DsFE is all about spamming his flame spell, throwing things, and praying that your dagger hits when you have no other choice, so I'm pretty happy that Malakal has had a fairly easy time to this point.
Malakal got his first mutation at level 2 - this is basically the first of three levels of the shadow mutation. Each successive level increases stealth for the character and reduces your LOS. Reducing the player's LOS also reduces the monster's LOS (a key point here). It's not really ideal for some spells, but sneaking around and escaping will be a lot easier now.
With Demonspawns the early mutations can have a major impact on the direction you take your character in. I was always going to contentrate on stealth, but even moreso now that Malakal has some intrinsic advantages in that regard.
Malakal reaches level 3 and gets another mutation. This one gives him some extra protection, never a bad thing with a squishy magic-user. This has the ability to give him +10 AC by the time it reaches level 3... very powerful stuff.
Here on DL:3 Malakal gets into a really bad spot. He could die in a single hit to a strong monster like a gnoll, and his spells weren't able to do any damage to the gnoll at all.
Never forget to use a scroll of fear. It's a scroll new people almost always forget about, and it often can save you in the space of a turn.
Malakal runs the opposite direction of course.
Looks like Malakal might have missed the portal entrance to Sewer. A lot of the portals are timed. Bah.
Malakal meets the gnoll again, but he's stronger now. He takes the gnoll out. Revenge is a dish best served flaming hot.
Malakal finds a book shop on DL:5. This is going to come in handy later! For now though he's just going to focus on the Book of Flame he started with.
The difference between life and death, success and failure in the early game is razor thin sometimes.
The only reason Malakal survived the encounter is because:
a) the orc wizard didn't kill Malakal when Malakal took a turn to quaff a potion of might
b) the swing hit - hardly a sure thing with no skill in fighting or short blades
That said, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Malakal cheated death, but sometimes that's what it takes.
With a new level comes a new mutation. Malakal has claws now. Every Demonspawn is guaranteed some sort of physical mutation - there's a second type of Demonspawn that gets all three physical mutations; they're considered monstrocities. I like using hats, gloves and boots so I'd rather keep the physical mutations to a minimum but of course nobody asked me.
Yikes! Malakal finds a vault of kobolds and Big Kobolds on DL:6. He immediately turns the other way and thanks the stars that he wasn't spotted..
Malakal uses a wand of enslavement to charm the orc priest. The orc priest and Malakal take down the orc warrior.
Malakal finds a book of Spatial Translocations. The blink spell is especially useful for extending a character's life, so Malakal immediately memorizes it - he'll victory dance it the first chance he gets.
Malakal finds another shop. I didn't screenshot the contents for some reason, but there wasn't much of note. He grabbed a scroll of immolation and identify.
DL:8 is presenting some problems to Malakal. He's now been down all three staircases and seen the same thing all three times - a large group of monsters. It looks like the cross level you come across sometimes in the main dungeon. Short of rushing through and diving it blind, the only real way to deal with it is to clear out every single monster.
Malakal decides to aver that decision for now and instead climbs back up the dungeon to do some grinding while he thinks the problem over.
Some grinding accomplished Malakal goes back down to DL:8 and with the help of his enslavement wand he clears out a section of the dungeon level.
DL:9 has a really interesting structure. I love crawl's dungeons. Soooo much more interesting than the corridor / room setup from certain other prominent roguelikes.
Malakal gains another level and is now even more protected than before.
What did I just say about cool dungeons?
Anyway, this altar to Trog has a bunch of rats surrounding it. They can berserk but they're still easy fodder at this point. Malakal kills them and sits back to enjoy the view. As a spellcaster Trog is of course out of bounds, but a Demonspawn has to respect the blood god.
Malakal returns to DL:8 to clear out the cross. He's strong enough at this point that he empties it out in two trips. There is quite a bit of loot here but nothing spectacular.
By the time he hits the stairs to DL:10, Malakal knows he has missed the Temple.
He goes back to DL:4 and there it is! Doh!
Lots of altars to the gods here, but none to Jiyva. Hmmm... what to do.
There is of course a guaranteed altar in Slime, but that's a long way from now, even deep diving.
So - Malakal decides on an interim god.
Vehumet is an evil god, and he's a magic using god. Seems like a good fit for Malakal the spellcasting spawn of demons.
[Later I read up on switching from Vehumet to Jiyva. Needless to say, I picked the wrong god. Vehumet isn't one to piss off. You won't be seeing a slime god worshipper this time around - I'll have to find another character to work that in on.]
Now that Malakal has picked his god, we will leave him here.
Next up: Malakal explores the main dungeon looking for the Lair, demonstrates some basic FE tactics along the way.
