Part five is here.
With D'Arnise Keep behind me, it was time to pick up the threads of a quest I had earlier been given by an Athkatla authority. I had begun my search for the murderer Valygar a week ago, but the assault by the crazed gnome in his bedroom had temporarily put me off. I knew he resided somewhere in the wilderness near the village of Umar, and so was off after selling a few houndred pounds of junk and getting a nights rest in a proper bed. Didn't overly concern myself with the villagers problems at this point, and went straight to his hideout. While interrogating him, I learned that I had been deceived. Decided to go with him back to Athkatla to get some closeure to this matter.
We reached the Slums district at night and predictably enough, we were ambushed by bandits. At this level the attackers were unfortunately the third and strongest kind of bandit raiders. Valygar had the misfortune of being the closest to the Conjurer, and after just a few seconds he ate three Flame Arrows, which naturally killed him. Better him than me I guess. I had better luck and found myself quite far from the closest attacker. As a result, everyone started to pelt me with ranged attacks, a quick look at my records screen revealed a combined AC against missiles of -26.
Knock yourselves out fellas!
The Berserker, Wizard Slayer and Fighter were all occupied with trying to hit me, the Bounty Hunter went in and out of shadows constantly without ever seeming to do much (might just be that he missed his backstabs), the Conjurer didn't do much after his initial success with the spell sequencer, and the most dangerous thing the Shadow Druid accomplished was summoning a few Insect plagues, forcing me to keep moving. The trio of fighters did score a few criticals during the course of the battle, but I managed to avoid them and the insect plagues long enough to summon a few Aerial Servants, who proceeded to systematically bash my foes into minced meat while they were occupied with me. All I had to do was run around the battlefield, drink a healing potion every now and then, cast the occasional Holy Smite to speed up the process, and just watch them go down, one by one.
With the battle over, I resurrected Valygar, sold off the loot to Joluv, and then proceeded to the Planar Sphere. Once inside, I decided it would be best to leave Valygar behind in safety and explore the sphere on my own. Summoned an Aerial Servant and pitched him against the Clay Golem in storage room, how proud he made me, downing the golem in a single blow! Met a party of friendly knights in the following room who warned me of the savage halflings ahead. Sure enough, they assaulted me as soon as I opened the next door, but weren't so cocky once they both got held by a Hold Person spell. The last halfling ran away and hinted at a bigger party of them just beyond the bridge, so I fired up the HRDS combo, used an Oil of Speed, and charged in. Slew all the halflings and the summoned fire elemental, the only one left was a pesky mage. He kept activating a new Prot from Magical Weapons the instant the previous ran out, and when I finally did score a hit, his dual fireshield sequencer went off. Forget me engaging that cowardly bastard in melee! Just to annoy the hell out of him, I summoned my acorn friends and the nymphs began pelting him with disabling spells. Just as if that was all he was waiting for, his Chain Lightning/Chaos/Remove Magic Spell Trigger went off
exactly when they appeared, so now under my control was a trio of half dead and confused woodland creatures. Time to quit playing around. The RM relieved me of my Seeking Sword, and I was free to summon the pair of Skeletons I had memorized. I ordered them to attack the mage, since they took relatively little damage from the shields, using the Resurrection rod to heal them when they got close to dying. An interesting thing happened when one of them died at the same time I used the rod to heal it:
Why the other skeleton at that point turned hostile, I have no idea, but the skeleton, who for some reason turned neutral, kept attacking the mage and, as he was running out of stoneskins, managed to kill him. Turned them both into smithereens and moved on. Disposed of a pack of spiders and ettercaps with a pair of Holy Smites, and activated HRDS once again to take out a second party of halflings in the furnace room. Rested, and moved on. The next room contained a nasty trio of golems, one of them being of the Adamantite kind. No biggie eh? On with an Oil of Speed, Prot from Evil, Free Action, HRDS, Defensive Harmony, and in I go. Sure enough, their Golem Slow didn't work, and I made short work of the Stone Golems. The Adamantite Golem was ever so slightly tougher. Constantly being infected by his gas cloud was only a minor nuisance compared to his fists knocking off about 70 HP's with each blow, and he didn't seem to have any problems what so ever piercing my -16 AC. Had to run away quite a few times to heal before he went down.
With all the golem parts in my possession, I activated the furnaces and reconstructed a service golem who led me to the navigation room. Me and my Aerial Servant were also kind enough to help him take out the "intruder", making sure I grabbed the killing blow. Met Lavok in the navigation room, he was rather bitter and lobbed an Abi-Dalzim's in my general direction, with 50% MDR it was easily shrugged off though. I opted to take him out from afar with a Fire Storm. The cunning old man activated a Prot from Energy and Fire shield, but I was even more cunning and waited for his protections to run out before I cast
another Fire Storm! A few rounds of holy fire dropping on his head was apparently what was needed to wake him from his dream.
The new and improved Lavok instructed me to find a demon heart and get the machinery going again, so off I was to the outside. Whereever the sphere had wound up, it seemed like a warm place, so I added a Prot from Fire among the usual buffers to fire up before I went out to explore. With Oil of Speed and HRDS, the whole area was clean just as the Prot from Fire wore off, and I left the place with three hearts. Off with haste to the engine room. Wasn't familiar with the runes on the floor and tasted a few fireballs before I was let in.
Surprise, surprise! That old coot that wanted Valygar dead and his friend was hiding in the next room. I had a battle with two high level mages on my hand and hadn't memorized Dispel Magic. Whatever this was turning out to be, it wasn't going to be quick or smooth. Both of them threw up dual fireshields before I could land any hits, so meleeing them was out of the question. Instead, I retreated and summoned a skeleton to soak up their spells and kill time. They killed off the first one, so I summoned another one, and another one, until they were both down to fist fighting and had no protections save stoneskins left. At that point I joined the fight and finished them off. Dull, but effective. Cleared out the rest of the area with summons and Holy Smites, rested, and went on to the engine room.
Two trios of golems awaited me here. I tried to summon a bunch of Aerial Servants to take out the first one, but they didn't fare too well on the narrow walkway and were decimated by gas clouds before the Adamantite golem was even badly injured. Sigh,
Prot from Evil [img]graemlins/check.gif[/img]
Oil of Speed [img]graemlins/check.gif[/img]
Free Action [img]graemlins/check.gif[/img]
HRDS [img]graemlins/check.gif[/img]
1 turn and 8 super healing potions later, both trios were down, as well as a lone clay golem hiding in a corner. I started the engine, got the sphere back to the prime plane, and made my way back to Lavok. He wanted to see the sky one last time, how could I refuse the last wish of a dying man? I carried him out, and joined up with Valygar on the way to say goodbye. My business in that godawful place was finally done.
Thomas the Priest of Helm was upon the completion of the Planar Sphere nearly level 21. I want to reach level 22 before I go fight Bodhi and move on to Chapter 4, so tomorrow you can probably read about Thomas VS The Shadow Dragon. Now could be a good time to mention that I have edited my XPLevel file to give me an increasingly slower level progression after lvl 20, this because I think the game becomes less interesting once you stop advancing levels. The normal XP gap between levels is 225 000 XP per level for clerics. I've edited the gap to be 300 000 XP between level 20-30, 450 000 XP between 30-40, and 600 000 XP between 40-50, which means I'll max out at level 50 with about 16 000 000 XP, instead of at level 40 with 8 000 000 XP.
Part five ends here, will hopefully have time to write the next tomorrow. Reporting this game is proving to be almost as time consuming as playing it!
[ 04-13-2005, 09:03 AM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]