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A brief summary of Cyrene(AMZ)s Hell Diff Stealth Hunt.
After my last Hell
Diff failure, and after much valuable input from some of the regulars
here, I resolved to change some of my stealth hunt tactics. Instead of
relying on blocking and avoidance, I went with clearing a "tunnel"
through the darkness. Bow, low ac, resists, and proactive firepower. I
spent clvls 35-40 assembling a set of gear, shrine hunting its durability
up where needed, and doing a little play testing at various levels.
Config: Obs Cap of
Precision (AC2, but who cares) Dur 60, Nightscape Dur 52, Eaglehorn, Ring
Dark, Drag Zod Amulet, Obs Heavens ring.
Stats: AC 83, To Hit
261, Dam 83-105, 57% resist all. 231 Hit points, 258 mana.
In other words, enough
to-hit and damage to rip almost any monster, but if something got to me
it was going to be a 2-hit fight (they hit me, I hit the ground). The
low mana meant relying on spells was out except for emergencies, and that
MS would have to be watched closely.
Loaded up on Blues,
hotkeyed Teleport, SC, MS (I dont want to hear about it), and TP
(as a flashlight). No guardian or golem due to monster activations.
My planned tactics
were 1) determine a line of advance, preferably by a wall, 2) fire directly
down that line of advance until all monsters down it were killed, 3) repeat
for adjacent line of squares, as needed, determined by dungeon layout,
4) advance precisely down the original line of squares cleared until next
turn, 5) repeat. This isnt nearly as methodical or time-consuming
in practice as it sounds on paper, and you can take a lot of short cuts.
A couple of more notes
on this procedure. A) You HAVE to be able to stun what you hit and you
HAVE to continue to hit it, or you are doomed. This is a purely shift
key approach. Snakes are trouble. They dont stun well and advance
on the diagonal out of the dark. I heartily recommend a) stopping fire
as soon as you hear the hiss of a hit, b) waiting until it hits your light
radius, stone, kill, c) repeat with the next hiss of the snake inevitably
activated by that one overshot arrow when the last one died, d) burning
an infravision and/or getting the hell off the level as soon as possible.
Barlogs can cause some headaches too, but if you can do enough damage
you can lock them up before they get their dance going. In either case
(or if you rile up some dogs), if you overactivate it is worth the risk
to do a blind hop into the darkness to lose the mob and de-activate the
monsters, just be ready to do the mage hop if your luck is bad on the
first one. Advocates will return fire when activated regardless of range
or LR, so watch the stray arrows on their levels, but witch AI at -80LR
makes them virtually harmless. Stay awake on ANY level where hidden types
are possible!
The whole run went
very smoothly, with a lot of great stair placements, so Ill just
add a couple of notes on the interesting levels.
Dlvl 3. About half way through level opened a door and found Warpskull
and his band of 22 Hiddens. Eeeek! Every time I thought I had them all,
I would move and the floor would sprout new ones. This one encounter took
forever. Leo was a piece of cake, killed him before he ever creaked into
my light radius. (that single -ting- of arrow hitting plate in the midst
of all the -scruntch-s of arrows hitting skeletons is quite useful
in stealth mode).
Dlvl 5. Eldritch Shrine!
Whoohoo! Nothing like an Eldritch when all you are carrying is blue pots.
I thought it was rather pointless since I was running full blue, but it
saved my life in the end.
Dlvl 6. 4 Scrolls
of infravision on one level, all in one library. PRNG, I LOVE ya man!
I knew then that all that would stop me was operator error.
Dlvl 7. Stairs in
direct opposite diagonal corners, and Stalkers. A nasty combo. This level
took as long as the entire first 6 together, and I was very glad to get
off it.
Dlvls 9-12. Theme
night. 9 is mostly dogs (careful!), 10 is ALL rhinos (easy), 11 is mostly
snakes (eek! Burned an infravision)
Dlvls 13-16. Good
stairs on 13, infravision for the rest made them a piece of cake. Laz
dropped (drumroll please) a book of lightening! I was feeling so confident
on 16 that, after clearing out all the way around both bottom rooms, I
went and hunted down Sir G just for the heck of it (he dropped a Gnarled
Root, too).
The Trouble: TKd
the switches, sent a HB invitation to Big D for a debate on good vs evil,
set up where arrow misses wouldnt fly into Ds room and activate
any gate-crashers, put my back to the wall, and HBd a follow-up
note to D that the location of the debate had changed, but I was eager
to join. In the next 10-20 seconds a confident, smiling player turned
into a sweating, frantically clicking player. I really thought that I
had enough damage to stun-lock D and put him out of his pointy-shouldered
misery. What I had was enough damage to animation-lock him, which was
fine, until I miss (automiss?), wherein WHAM went the Apoc, POOF went
a bowl of mana, and now D had the tactical initiative. And so it went-Id
get 3-5 quick hits in on him, then hed get a couple of Apocs in
on me, then Id get an arrow off and get a few more hits in. Meanwhile,
the inventory screen is open and pots are disappearing at an alarming
rate. A very humbling experience for a character who routinely KICKS Diablo
to death in Hell/Hell (with 200 more AC, of course). Anyway, those silly
full rejuvs from the Eldritch save my life as I start letting BOTH mana
and life take hits before taking a pot. Finally, with all pots gone, mana
shield blown and red to the dregs, the game freezes and the death animation
starts. Whew. When I restarted, I had 32 life left....
Heheh. Better lucky
than good.
Cyrene(AMZ) hereby
retires from solo Stealth Hunts for a while, but would be interested in
some group ones with others.
Wed have to agree on tactics ahead of time, though, and the game
would have to be in synch.
Ill also want
to check my damage with a needler for Big D.....
Posted on Feb 04 1999
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