Completed Let's play Caverns Of Xaskazien II

[CryptRat]

Hopefully this will make some people want to try this great roguelike.

We'll start with some Rogue class. We play as a Lizard Man because he has got a significant bonus in Defense ; he can swim, which should be useful once in a while. We'll play as a Ranger, he gets some extra XP for killing animals and animals are easy to kill.

We need to choose a God or Godess (Agnostic is also an option). We choose Lastaviark basically because he's easy to satisfy.

Let's go.

Spoiler

There are a 4 base stats (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Health) that you can upgrade on level-up. The strength determines the damage bonus with melee weapons, which does not interest us much, dexterity determines the chances to hit and intelligence the spell points, which we don't care much about either.

To each of the 4 stats correponds a set of available skills and because of our class the two sets which interest us are the General skills (corresponding to health) and the Rogue skills (corresponding to dexterity). The Warrior and Mage skills cost more than one point to upgrade so they are not worth it.

As a ranger we start with the advanced rank in hunting. There are 3 ranks (basic/advanced/expert) and we need 30/60/90 in the corresponding stat (dexterity here) to be able to reach the next rank, spending one skill point.

Note that we start with the basic rank in spell use, armour use and weapon use like most classes do, but we will probably never advance further.

During the game we'll come across the different God's shrines where we can choose to pray. A summary of the current attitude of each God towards us is available, which determines the chance to get a good outcome rather than a bad one (the outcomes are specific to each God).

You can also see the attitude of the monsters towards us. It's very simple, the more we kill of a type of monsters the stronger they get.

Let's pay attention to our specific God. We can directly ask for miracles from a list specific to this God provided we've got enough Faith points to spend.

Lastaviak can repare our pieces of armour, which is valuable because unlike Warriors we'll suck at repairing until the end. He can also summon a hero who will fight for us and is strong enough to get rid of monsters available up to 20th floor or so.

Our faith will raise each time we do a good act (which can be a lot of things) and kill goblinoids which generally are weak (it's better than having to kill gorgons). There's no kind of monsters we don't need to kill, which is one of the reasons we chose this god. We need to avoid praying to Evil God which it's fine since we're doing to do Good Acts which will upset most Evil God anyway so we couldn't pray to them for good rewards even if we wanted to.

So...

We start near an urn which can hold a treasure or a monster, we'll open it later.

Here's our first enemy, a Grue, but it's not Zork so it's weak.

Take a look at its odds. He has got "67% chance of" because we're using a dart. A particularity of the game is that is does not have ranged attacks nor bumping. When you're in the same tile as a monster you fight against it for one round. If you want to target him with a spell you need to be on the same tile as well. There's no real tactical positioning unlike in most roguelikes, you need to rely on stats and odds like for many things in the game. So, here our dart which is a missile weapon simply increases the chance that the monsters won't hit us (while with a melee weapon we would probably make more damage instead). Also 10% is the minimal chance to hit, with our inherent bonus in defense the first enemies likely won't have more chance to hit us.

Also a wisp, which is hard to kill because it keeps teleporting itself away :

We start to collect some junk, this enchanted armor takes 3 rooms in the inventory but it's not that bad, I'd even say we may not find something better for a while, especially since we won't upgrade our strength so we won't be able to use heavy armors.

There's a smuggler corpse here. It's not anodyne, a smuggler can buy our junk but like other NPCs he can get killed by the monsters he crosses.

It's especially not anodyne that in a closet we find 3 trinkets which are useless stuff that you're meant to sell to a smuggler and that we won't be able to carry to the next floor without dropping about everything else.

Here's a shrine :

The reason we won't use it is that it'll give a piece of equipment part we likely won't use, with an equal risk of definitively lose some health, that's not worth it.

We find some club, it'll be better than nothing for now.

We open the urn that we saw at the beginning.

There's a kind of useless ring in it, it won't take long before we can upgrade rogue or general skills to expert so we leave it here.

We come across an armour merchant which sells a buckler, but unfortunately we can't afford it.

We come across a wheel of fortune but don't use it. It allows to try and double your money (gold + gems) or lose everything. The thing is that the gambling skill allows to have more than 50% chances to win in which case it can be very valuable.

We decend to the next level.

Xaskazien that we need to kill is in the, deepest, 30th floor. Note that if we don't die before, and we will very likely die before, we will probably roam through much more than 30 levels, we should come across exits to a same floor, basic or special, level or even to an actually upper floor level (you never get back to a previously visited level, it's always a new one), this to maximize experience before reaching the ending parts.

 

[Kalin]

lol so fukin ugly

 

[CryptRat]

There's a Spriggan here, which is the kind of annoying enemy which can permanently drop your stats, and there are a lot of such enemies in the game.

Spoiler

Also a rock baboon, and killing it earns us our first level. Each level basically gives 10 attributes, 1 skill point and 2 additional hit points.

We put 10 points in dexterity (we want 60 then 90 points as quickly as possible to be able and upgrade our rogue skills) and take basic archery to make some damage with our dart.

We come across a mouth, which asks a riddle (to the character, not the player) for a reward. With our poor intelligence we obviously fail to answer. There's no penalty for failing though', or we would have not even tried.

Our strength is tested as well, although opening this door is simply a matter of trying until it finally opens.

We detect a hidden compartment, which a test of intelligence allows to open, once again it's possible to try again until you succeed but we only try a few times and let it go.

We kill a gremlins, a badger and a mosquito. A mosquito has a small chance to cause a disease, it's the kind of things which makes high chance to hit and low chance to get hit important even if you can sustain some damages.

Now that's getting interesting. We find a book which teaches the advanced rank of the cartography skill.

Cartography is a skill which reveals the current map of a level provided you "find a map" (it's used automatically), which is far from uncommon. I tend to think that at basic and advanced levels cartography is useless because it does not reveal traps which is the only thing you want revealed, but at expert level it does reveal traps and is very valuable. I'm not sure if we would have taken cartography sooner or later but now that we have the book which will spare us a point we want 90 points to max health rather sooner than later, and we also want to unlock the basic level of cartography so we can use the book.

We'll have to cross a river. It's an opportunity to use our fishing pod we started with. Unfortunately we catch nothing.

We cross the water since we can swim, if we could not we could be moved by the current and take some damage from drowning while we don't manage to reach a shore.

We ring a bell, which can attracts an ally or an enemy.

A spell merchant appears. Unfortunately he does not sell any spell we want. The number of spells we can learn is limited to 7 (it depends on our memory skill, which is not a skill we intend to learn), and we already know 3 useless spells, unlike some other classes which start with actually useful ones, so we won't learn any useless spell on purpose.

There's a pit we have low chances to cross, although it's just a simple damaging pit and the damage is low because we're still high in the dungeon. We will continue to roam the level but maybe we'll come back later.

We continue to cross some water, our swimming skill is definitely useful here, the stairs going down are a little further but first we get back across the pit, we even manage to leap over it.

There's a damsel. Saving her give some experience and unless you serve an evil god there's no downside to it. At worse it's in fact a succubus but a succubus is pretty weak.

Anyway, it's not a succubus, and we gain a level.

Note that when gaining a level the character regain his full health. It's very important and often the main way of healing.

 

[Kabas]

It's sure nice when the dungeon level makes the most of your chosen skills.
By the way, there is some nice sound design going on in this game. You can easily guess what monster are you going to encounter or if there is a smuggler nearby just by listening.

You didn't mention that the strength stat also determines the amount of gold you can carry. I wouldn't neglect it completely as a non-fighter.

 

[CryptRat]

Yes, thanks.

Note that I never really upgrade strength as a non-fighter because in the beginning I think I've no time, I want those two 90s (+ with a rogue I want those 100% chance to hit, and with a mage well you need a lot of MPs), and later not only the already lost gold is lost so it's likely not that worth it anymore but also in the doubt I prefer to always upgrade Max health since one or two traps can quickly deal 100 points of damage then. I lose several levels from gold in the process for sure so I probably should upgrade it more than I do indeed.

 

[CryptRat]

We upgrade our dexterity, and will spend our skill point a bit later on basic cartography.

We're near a shrine of Viean, which is the Goddess (God?) of healing and can cure diseases. Having her has main Goddess is also very convenient because she can cure poison and diseases and you often have no other way. Basic alchemy allows to identify curing potions and it's also a generally reliable way but it's a mage skill so we won't learn it. Without alchemy only potions which gives back health are identified.

Spoiler

Note that when we gain a level we gain either a racial perk or a class perk, so far the ones we have are not very important, Animal Tracking is a useable skill which indicates how many Animal type monsters are present in the current level, not really useful.

We come across an avoidable trap, but it's worth mentioning because with our moderate dexterity we have a reasonable chance to dodge it and our dexterity will continue to go up, if it was an hidden trap (to be precise every "object" on the map has a small chance to be a trap instead of an item) we would gladly dodge it, with a low health mage it can simply kill you.

We descend. Special ones more but even basic floors often have only a few types of different enemies. With our class bonus weak enemies like this hell hound here give us quite a lot of experience ...

while this cultist actually permanently drains us from a few Intelligence points and even if it's not a big deal it would have been safer to just avoid it.

We gain a level an raise our dexterity to 60 and train into advanced archery because the bonus to chance to hit is huge (we're less of a hurry concerning the expert rank) and even if our dart is currently our only found missile weapon and we may have temporarily to use a melee one. Note that if we had no dart, for example for playing as an explorer and not a ranger which starts with it, we would upgrade dodge instead. Each rank upgrades our defense by 15 points, without heavy armor it'll be like half our defense during the full game. Dice rolls to hit are simple, roll 100 + ATT - DEF. We will definitely raise dodging up to expert rather sooner than later.

We use a miracle from our god which upgrades our max health because we're close to 60 and it could allow us to use our advanced cartography book and leave some place for something else. Unfortunately it does not grant us enough points.

 

[CryptRat]

We meet a merchant who sells at least 3 items that we may use, a pouch which increases our gold capacity by 40, a cloak which prevents some damage and a mirror of location which allows to see where and which monsters are on the current map.

Spoiler

We currently don't have enough gold (gold + gems actually, gems are money too but unlike gold there's no limit to the amount you can carry) but if we find some we'll come back later, hopefully he won't get killed in the meantime.

I did not talk about it but one reason we never have gold nor gems is that we can exchange them with experience in a temple, which is what we very regularly do since the amount of gold we can carry is limited. Trading money for XP, selling trinkets and killing monsters are the three main ways to gain experience.

We find the entrance to a lair which contains only one kind of monsters. You know the kind before entering but unfortunately it seems I messed with the screenshot.

The main reason we're happy to find it is that the lair is on the same floor as the one you exit from, so it's one more level to grind experience before going further. We'll enter the lair after exploring the current level.

We get poisoned by a trap. Every 10 turns we lose some health and there's a chance the poison is cured. Not good news but it's not a serious poison and with our current health and the next level which is not that far we should be fine anyway.

Then we face an acid trap and our dart and our book of cartography both melt.

Then we face a lullaby gas trap. This one is not a serious problem. If you sleep then a monster will automatically hit you once for max damage, but that's not that much of an issue, and that's if a monster even comes, monster which won't enter a sleeping gas on purpose.

Then we face a trap which reveals pits all over you. Not such a big deal since falling into a pit won't damage us much and then we can try to leave as much as we want, but we're currently not really lucky, or more likely there's a machine in the level which spreads booby traps, if we find the machine we can break it so it does not spread more but that won't remove the already there ones.

The only part we've not visited is behind a pendulum trap, so we'll just take the remaining items and exit to the lair ...

Well, that's not what's going to happen, of course this item near the temple is in fact a booby trap, it was evident since we already got there and did not pick it so it was definitely spread later by a machine. Well we fall to the next level and won't be able to enter the lair, we made a mistake here.

Note that you automatically gain faith when reaching a lower level, that does not depend on the divinity you chose.

We fight more monsters. With our club our chance to hit is very low, fortunately not as low as the one of the monsters.

We find a tome of expert weapon smithing. It's a cool skill which adds a chance (45% when expert) to create a random weapon whose power depends on the floor whenever entering a new map. Unfortunately as a rogue we'll never progress in this skill, at very best we'll find a basic skill tome and learn it.

Then we meet a jewerly merchant.

What he's got to sell is not that strong (better than nothing I guess, but it takes a room in the inventory), and we actually find a better ring just close to him. 25% Magic resistance means both 25% chance to resist a spell and if I not mistaken also 25% reduction to damage from spells.

We fight a dracon that we've freed from a cage using a lever and which can destroy items when it hits. That's alright, its odds are low and we kill it. This kind of cage can carry some really strong monsters, and you can see what's inside before switching the lever, in that case it's just that we did not see the cage and thought the lever would just activate some levered bridge somewhere since it's a level with a river.

There's a throne, sitting on it can give more than one level of experience if we're lucky, or make some of our main stats drop if we're not, which is not that terrible and is worth the risk. Note that the History skill adds a chance to prevent the outcome of this kind of events in the case you're facing the bad outcome. We sit on the throne but nothing happens.

We need to be a bit careful while swimming because they are waterfalls which would move and damage us.

Some place is accessible via a fractured wall. There's 75% chances that it falls over our head, then we can eventually pass but lose some health and our current level map. The Mining skill eventually allows to pass safely through this kind of walls.

We find some trinket and what's cool is that a smuggler is just there too so we sell him the trinket.

A smuggler pays with gems, not gold, so you don't have to care about your carrying capacity.

We find a poison trap. You set traps on the floor then enemies get to activate it, you can even safely stay on the tile. The problem is that you must learn the trap setting skill or you can be damaged by the trap. To be fair as a ranger especially which gets perks related to traps we should use traps, it's really one of the legit ways for rogues to damage monsters, but for now we won't so we leave it there.

With all these gems we gain a new level when reaching the temple just ahead and take the travelling skill which adds 5 more inventory slots, the skill that makes you hate the classes whose general skills cost more than one point.

 

[CryptRat]

The current map contains a monolith which strengthens all the monsters of the map. We could destroy it with high intelligence or by bruteforcing if we really needed to but we won't because we've already explored about all the map so there's likely no more enemies.

Spoiler

We need to cut brambles to progress which are a bit annoying because they'll take some of your health or weapon durability.

We find another expensive trinket and a smuggler. With his gems we went back to the jewellery merchant to buy an amulet of dexterity and a ring which raises the exp gained at a temple from him. We will need a basic level in Magic Item Use to be able and wear the items but that's something we would have learnt for sure at some point anyway.

We gain another level at the temple with the remaining money and raise our dexterity to 80. With the automatic bonus our max health is now 60 so we can also learn advanced general skills. For now we learn basic dodging.

We descend, kill a brigand, and find a Wallpass spell that we immediately learn. As a non-mage it's typically the kind of spells we want to learn. Its mana cost is very cheap and it allows to pass walls for a small period and then is a good way to bypass a pit or follow a river of lava without having to cross it.

These stone chest are cool because they can't be trapped unless a lot of containers, the problem is that you need high strength to open them, you can't try again if you fail.

One type of champions, and we probably fought a lot of champions already, can cast offensive spells (and another type defensive ones) independently of the type of monsters. As long as you're on the upper floors of the dungeon they can only cast low power spells so it's never a problem, mid power spells like fireball can make some substantial damage and death is a high power spell which instantly kills you provided you've got no way to resist it.

We find 2 expensive trinkets in a closet, unfortunately we won't be able to carry the two items.

Much more interesting, we actually find the Descend spell which is probably the very best spell for a non-mage. It allows to directly descend to a lower floor and is very useful in case you're just stuck behind an acid river or don't want to look for the stairs in a level full of gorgons, even with our Wallpass spell these are situations which will likely occur. Note that a couple of bad events excepted, and especially a map can contain an anti-magic glyph you need to walk on to destroy before being able to cast spells, it means that technically we're a few steps away from the very last floor. We won't try to get there because we would just end up being killed by Xaskazien but I think it's cool that we could try anyway.

Shoxian Shrine, not really useful now.

The level contains a gold seam. Leave alone that we can't carry much gold (gem seams are better), trying to mine seams is not worth it if your mining skill is nonexistent, you'll end up more wounded than rewarded.

We're facing a couple of annoying monsters here, it had to happen somehow. At least their chance to hit is still very low and they need to hit to use their skill, because his chance to drain some strength for the first one and to destroy an object for the second one are actually quite high.

We gain a level and raise our dexterity to 90 but don't use our skill point yet for no particular reason. We find two more magic items which only need to be in the inventory to be used. The first one is a powerful protection item which will require the expert level in Magic Item Use.

The second one only requires the basic level in Magic Item Use but is also very powerful since it prevents instant death (gorgon gaze, ...) thrice. There's a death cheating skill which adds some chance to prevent this kind of effect but even at expert level you only have 75% chance so finding this item is really a blessing even if we ever take the death cheating skill, although we probably won't take it now that we have the item.

We find a tome of advanced spearing and just discard it back, melee weapons are a warrior thing.

Altars are interesting, if you've got overall good relationship with the gods it can be used to be healed to full health. There's a chance you die so it's not something you're going to often use. I guess with our instant death prevention item we may eventually take the risk if our odds are high and we're in an otherwise desperate situation.

Some types of monsters are annoyed by us, which provides them a small bonus to their chance to hit. Our relationship with the different gods also moved off 50% for a part, and our relationship with our divinity is as expected very good, we never do anything that would upset him and would lower our faith that we want to spend for miracles.

Most water monsters can't be seen unless you're close to them. We don't really fight them because with an only advanced level in swimming we still can't stay in water more than necessary.

There's an Anti Magic Glyph in the current floor and we will leave it here to prevents monsters from casting spells, there's no spell we would like to cast now or soon.

We find a shrine of Lastaviark, our god. We pray which gives us a short experience boost,

and we gain a level from the next kills.

We've got 90 in dexterity now, so we increase our health instead. Traps will start to make some real damage so we always need to keep our current health high.

We also learn the basic level of Magic Item Use and finally equip our long bought rings.

We finally find another missile weapon, that'll help.

Also we gained a Lizard Man perk which allows to roll twice for jumping above pits, not that it makes our odds any good.

We meet a smith which can repair our armour. In fact he can't because we don't have enough gold, but what we do is that we use our miracle which repairs armours a couple of time so our few gold purse is enough for him to repair it to its full condition.

We descend to the next floor, where there are slugs, which are weak since they can't do anything special and are animal so we get double experience from killing those.

We've got two ranger perks related to killing animals, one may give some meat when killing an animal. Meat must be cooked on a cooking fire to increase an attribute, and the gain depends on our cooking skill, that we may upgrade then. The other perk may give us some pelt that we can sell to a smuggler provided we find one (a mid power spell allows to directly convert an item into its value in gems).

We learn advanced travelling and can now carry 20 rooms of items. We don't sleep in a bed because we don't need to, depending on the type of bed it can make you regain quite a bit of health and spell points if you don't get disturbed by a roamming enemy while sleeping.

We then fight a "spitting" (acts like using a missile weapon) slug in the dark and with a small chance to hit because we just got blinded by a trap.

Swimming works in lava. Or to be more precise it does not work, you get damaged hard anyway, but at least swimming allows you to move out of it instead of being automatically moved from one lava tile to another.

Wyverns have a real chance to poison you, as long as it does hit, so we kill hit.

We also get entangled in webs that a spider monster we killed earlier spread before dying. There's no penalty, it just takes some time to manage to destroy the webs if your strength is low.

We're behind a pit so we just cast our descend spell. Unlike Health points spell points are fully refilled when entering a new map.

 

[Kabas]

*That one dungeon level that was built like a labyrinth and was under a mass teleportation effect. I didn't have a wall pass or descent at the time.*
I still have nightmares

The god who likes mining has a wall pass ability i believe.

 

[CryptRat]

We cast our Wallpass spell to bypass a flame. I always gets a little paranoid when using this spell, you can get killed if the effect stops while you're inside a wall so you must be careful while walking.

Spoiler

We kill a wyrm,

which revives as a zombie. It means there's a glyph turning dead enemies into zombies, and at this point of the game it's actually a windfall since it'll give us some cheap extra XP.

We gain a level and a perk which reduces damage from acid. I've no idea if this perk is actually useful, it is if it reduces the chance of items getting destroyed when suffering acid damage.

From now on we won't be able to wear most armour parts we'll find, ultimately enemies will easily hit us but fortunately we're still a long way from that, and we still have two more ranks of dodging to unlock.

We unlock advanced cartography, because why not and because it would be a waste not to unlock the advanced and expert levels now that we've already unlocked the basic level.

We detect a secret door but we also need to pass an intelligence test to pass through it, we can try again as much as we want without penalty though'.

Pantos kind of likes us but the pantosian shrines are not the most useful ones.

We come across a stained glass window where you can pray to gain some faith. Our chance of success is 100% because it depends on our relationship with our main god. We gain 84 points of faith.

We trade some faith points for some health and some more for an echantment which makes our weapon more powerful against goblinoids because Lastiviark hates goblinoids.

We're in one of these mazey maps.

We find an animate dead spell that we won't learn, it's good for magicans with a lot of spell points.

A well provides vampirism to the monsters in the map, we can lose some health to destroy the well though', and although we would not really need to we will anyway because it's a good act so it earns us some faith.

We keep facing cave-ins and losing our map.

We descend.

We sometimes find much more gold than we can carry now, this big chest is a good example.

We drink from two fountains whose outcomes can be diverse (I think that's one of those fountains where history can help preventing bad outcomes).

The second one releases a jelly monster. It's an animal and it's not that strong so it's not really a bad thing.

We can't safely progress further, and we don't have enough spell points yet (you gain a few based on the floor) to use passwall at will so we just descend.

We quickly find a map of the level, there's no reason for us to cross the lava river.

We'll eventually use our passwall spell but for the time being we'll lose some life to open this door.

We find some spells. We currently have learnt 6 spells from 7 possible. This restoration spell is not the worst we can learn as a last spell, it requires 50 intelligence to cast (and 60 to learn the mid power spell use skill anyway) so we may never be able to cast it but if we get some serious disease like lycanthropy the points we'd need to spend could be worth it.

Our next level grants us a very cool perk which adds a chance that there's a entrance to a lair on any map.

We find another item which increase our defense against instant death. At least until some acid trap melts half of our inventory we should not die from an instant death effect which is a very common way to die especially for warriors who are generally good in combat.

Bandits directly pick gold on the map, but for the rest they're very weak.

We find a ring which protects against diseases. It will replace our ring which gives a small bonus to experience in temples.

Another anti-magic glyph, once again we have no reason to erase it.

We find an amulet increasing strength, and it turns out we don't have our amulet of dexterity anymore, it must have been destroyed by a monster or a trap, so we don't have to make a choice between the two.

There's a cooking fire here, we have got two available skill points and several uncooked pieces of meat in our inventory so it's a good time to put some points into cooking, in the long run it should be valuable.

Most types of meat raises a base stat, the mystery meat especially which we will get when killing an animal raises one of the 4 stats at random. You get 1 point without knowing the cooking skill, 2 points with the basic level and in our case 3 points with the advanced level. Another type of meat gives some faith points.

It looks like we've taken our sweet time in this level, we get a warning that something bad will happen if we stay there too much longer.

It's not some immediate damage to the character, it's that lava, shokes and such gradually start to happen in some parts of the map.

We take the time to visit some part we didn't earlier and it was a good idea since we find a good missile weapon. Missile weapons have a dexterity requirement unlike armors and melee weapons which all have a strength requirement.

Ok, it's time to move on. We descend.

 

[CryptRat]

There are force fields around us that make you lose spell points (if you've got some, or you take lightning damages which can stun you) when you try to pass through them and only a successful intelligence test will break the force field. Better said we don't want to go there, fortunately there's another exit.
Our attack and defense are not that good compared with enemies anymore, we're going to need this dodging expert level and some more dexterity.

Spoiler

These undead monsters can deal some damage if you can't quickly kill them, and with our missile weapons we actually don't make a lot of damage.

We kill more fireflies and vangeful deads, gain a level and learn advanced magic item use so we can wear our amulet of ogre strength which will mostly allow us to carry some more gold but maybe also allow to wear some slightly better armour parts.

Our chances to enter barred or rusted door are just a lit bit less ridiculously low as well.

Paralysis is really not a big deal in this game, you cannot walk for a little while but you can still fight any monster which would come into your tile so it barely matters.

This dead goose will grant us some faith points granted we find a cooking fire.

We've finished to visit the map and descend.

We use some faith points to enchant our new throwing axe, it's pretty cheap anyway.

Some mid power offensive spells can deal quite a bit of damages (fireball can deal more than 40 and make your tile burn for extra damages), with our full health we can engage the fight though'.

We find a tome of expert assassination. Assassination is a rogue skill and it does not grant instant death effect as you may think, it facts is makes you more powerful against persons. There are such kind of skills against any type of enemies although some are mage or warrior skills. The basic level grants +30 ATT (which is a lot), the expert one reduces the damages taken. The advanced level is interesting because it depends on the skill. For example because we're playing as ranger we've already got advanced animal killing which can heal us when we kill an animal ; advanced assassination can earn you money when you kill a person. Actually we'll keep the book for now, the thing is that in theory we would have maybe eventually learnt the basic level but not the further ones so we'll see.

We find a rudimentary shield. Improvised equipment can't be repaired by normal means, but what's cool is that our God can repair those for some faith points so we take it, 9 in defense is not that much now but that's about the best we'll be able to wear even with our amulet of ogre strength.

By the way, we also find a tome of expert necromancy which makes you stronger against the undead, but it's a mage skill so we're never going to use this one.

Jabberwockies are cool monsters, but except for an above average health they are really not much of a threat, especially since they're wyrms and as a lizard man we have the basic level of dragon hunting which grants +30 ATT against wyrms.

We gain a level and improve our health again, we're carrying a couple of health potions but the ones we have currently got only heal 50 health and the better ones we'll find later heal barely more and your health can quickly melt if your max is not high enough, at this point we never need to heal between two levels which is a good thing.

We learn advanced dodging and expert cartography, hopefully we'll find maps. There's a rogue skill which grants a chance to "find a map" whenever you enter a new map, we'll likely learn it later.

We sit on a throne. The experience we could gain is huge, we would instantly gain 3 levels, and the possible loss is clearly not as big. Unfortunately nothing happens.

We pass above a water pit. Note that if you wondered, and you probably didn't but I did, we can't use our fishing pole near the pit.

 

[CryptRat]

This demon is a bit strong. We really don't want to become insane, it would randomize some of our movements, it's not the most critical disease but is still very annoying for example when you get close to an acid river.

Spoiler

This Levitation spell could have been better than our recuperation one, or maybe not with our wallpass and descend spells which should prevent us from having to cross any pit or lava river, but anyway it's not a big deal since we're likely never going to use either.

One more spell caster.

We find a map of the level, which now reveal traps but it seems there's no trap in this one. However there's a tunnel, which allow to travel on another level on the same floor, we'll eventually enter it. There are also some gold behind a flame, our wallpass spell will be useful once again.

We're going to fight a couple of annoying monsters so we cast our Mirror image which increases our chance not to get hit.

We fight a midling demon and a wraith which resists physical damage a bit and can drain some experience but its health is low so it's alright.

We raise our dexterity and learn advanced dodge, our defense won't increase much from now, for the rest we'll have to rely on our mirror image spell, the bonus from the miracle of our god and our high health. As we advance we're also probably going to avoid more and more monsters but we're currently only at level 15 and want to gain at least 10 more levels before reaching the last floor if possible.

We've got one more skill point to learn expert magic item use and finally take advantage of our protective crown.

Liquor can be useful when you've contracted a disease.

A harsh taskmaster was killed by an enemy, they can trade some health for experience.

This plant could instantly kill us, but it does not move and we've got no need to fight it even if it's an animal and the expericence we would gain would be significant. It's more problematic when it appears while trying to pick a fruit from a tree surrounded by bushes that requires to roll for strength to enter.

I've never experienced it but there's no doubt Conjure Elemental is a very good spell if you're a mage and you probably don't need much else than conjuring an army of elementals to rush through most enemies in the game. We can't learn it and probably would not as a non-mage anyway, as a spell you would use once in a while it's not particularly useful.

We've got enough spell points for only 2 wallpass spells so we can't going back and forth from all this gold to the temple.

However the area also contains a gambling machine so we can gamble the gold and simply lose all the available gold.

We enter the tunnel and reach, well, the same floor. We meet a potion merchant.

He sells a potion to cure diseases, we're going to buy it if we find some money.

Well in fact no we won't because he gets killed by an ape. At least we get some double experience from killing the ape.

A trainer also get killed by a monster. That's always sad, for 30/60/60 gold a trainer can train you in basic/advanced/expert level in a random skill specific to the trainer, he can teach you all levels you don't already learn provided you meet the base stat requirements so it can really make you spare several skill points.

We find a trinket which takes 3 rooms in the inventory and is worth 690 gems, we've got no room to take it unfortunately, we already dropped most of our unkown potions and if we're ever get poisoned or contract a disease it could be very bad.

Despite the wall of text this monster is not that strong although with his health and resistance to physical damage it takes some time and then some health to kill it.

Then we meet a doppeldanger who basically copies our base stats, which in our case means he has got a big health but that's about it since our dexterity is finally not that impressive, we upgraded it a lot at the beginning but then we kind of stopped.

We gain a level and raise our dexterity. killing another ape gives us some meat.

We fight another doppeldanger. Fighting all these high health broke our axe, and unfortunately our god can only repair armour parts, we still have our old kestros but it does not make a lot of damage, hopefully we'll eventually find another missile weapon, or at least some forges to repair the axe. Forges allow to try and repair pieces of equipment until we ruin the forge, which unfortunately as a rogue, who suck at repairing, often happens before we repaired anything at all.

Finding a map reveals buried objects now, but to dig you'd better have a shovel or you'll likely get damaged hard, as long as we haven't got a shovel we won't dig.

Killing animals can give us an expensive trinket but if no smuggler is close we're not going to do anything with it.

We ask our god for some reparations.

We gain a level, raise our health to 186 and learn basic and advanced disarming.

This kind of books which increases the cost of some spells and decreases the cost of some other is not always anodyne when you're a mage.

Cooking time.

We leave some stuff we probably won't use, including our book of expert assassination and take some trinkets with us instead just in case we would meat a smuggler. Then we descend.

Jumping over pits won't be anodyne anymore, it's cool that we have got our wallpass spell.

Here we are, this wendigo can cast high power offensive spells, like death or heavily damaging (~100) spells. And a simple wendigo would already be a threat, we never like to be drained from our spell points before being sure we can safely reach an exit from the level and won't have to cast our descend spell.

Since we're not lacking of faith points, we ask Lastiviark to summon a hero who'll get rid of this wendigo, I think we're about the middle point where the hero is still strong enough but it does not seem like a waste of faith points anymore. The wendigo actually casts a death spell at some point but the hero has 50% resistance to magic and resists it.

The hero is strong but he's half dead and probably won't manage to get rid of this mindworker and of another wendigo, even if this one can't cast spell. We cast our mirror image spell and help him with the fight.

We gain a level, learn expert disarming, which does not prevent us from trigerring a trap spreading lava just a few steps further. With our full health and our descent swimming skills we manage to exit from the lava with minor damage.

We ask for a cheap miracle which should prevent this wendigo from draining all our spell points.

 

[CryptRat]

Oops, edited my previous post, I really thought I descended when in the lava since it was a logical thing to do and the next screenshot did not suggest I did not (it did not suggest I did either) but it turns out I did not, it seems like two days are enough to forget all of what happened during a play session.

Spoiler

With the high odds and our full health it would be worth praying to this shrine if there were enemies nearby but there are not.

Performing a ritual can be useful for a mage who is out of spell points, if there's no pentagram in sight there are even ways to directly create one.

We won't take a useless risk of waking up a dragon, this one is not even guarding a treasure.

We find a smuggler and can sell him our pelts.

We also sell him some junk we find around, he can only buy a few items but we don't have a lot to sell to him anyway.

We meet a smith and ask him to repair our different weapons.

We really descend this time.

 

[CryptRat]

This weak one grants us faith points as we kill it, Lastaviark is really easy to satisfy.

Spoiler

However this one can be annoying since being hit even once will be penalized, but with our high defense and missile weapon at least we're minimizing the risk.

60 XP are better than nothing I guess.

We avoid this demon, both our ring and our crown grants some resistant to diseases (bonuses are not added, you roll multiple times for resistance) but it's a useless risk.

We repair our throwing axe a bit before ruining a forge, we'll never try to repair our armour parts before all our (actually 2) missile weapons are fully repaired since Lastaviark can repair our armour parts.

We're still quite stronger than most enemies we face, and regarding our own chances to hit we'll still be able to raise our dexterity but regarding their chances to hit they will slowly raise as we progress deeper and there's not much we'll able to do to change that.

We gain one level and raise our health. Let's learn basic Geography now that we're expert in Cartography. Geography grants a chance to find a map when entering a new map, cartography does not reveal the location of monsters but it reveals the location of traps (trapped "objects", trapped containers ...) which is actually a bigger deal, we have the time to react when seeing an enemy in a distance.

Advanced swordplay (a warrior skill which makes you better with swords) is not something we're going to learn. This kind of skills is useful for a warrior if only for a bonus to the chances to hit because he or she needs to upgrade strength and max health which does not leave many points to put into dexterity.

Not a good idea to get hit by a Night hag.

Another dead trainer.

Two strong enemies in this room, this spectre who can kill us is actually the less threatful of the two since he can not move.

However this worm can make us lose spells when it hits and has a decent attack so we're going to avoid at all cost to cross its way, we really don't want to forget our wallpass and descent spells.

We descend.

 

[CryptRat]

Air elementals are very annoying because they can spread the content of your inventory all over the level.

And that's exactly what it did. We tried to flee from it but it's fast and after it hit us a couple of times we just have our poor tome of advanced swordplay left. It can't deal huge damage but without a weapon nor can we, we need to do something or we will end up wounded.

Spoiler

Let's see. We have a confusion spell which would make it wander around instead of following us if it succeeds. It fails.

We have enough mana to cast it once more but not twice, fortunately it succeeds this time.

Obviously any monster is a threat without any of our equipment, not only this shambler is no exception but its damage can be permanent so we really don't want to get hit by it. Fortunately it's slow so turning around it is possible.

While fleeing and gathering our stuff we fall into a pit, fortunately it's just a damaging pit and not another kind more harmful, we're able to sustain some damage.

This teacher teaches us basic alchemy which not only is not anodyne but is actually great. No way would we have spent 3 skill points for it but it is exactly the level we want for this skill, it allows to identify potions which cure poison and potions which cure diseases which means we will carry only this type of potion from now (and the health ones we've already been carrying) and will just discard unknown ones. It's not that rare to find this kind of potions, the problem is actually that you can't carry all of them so if they're not identified you just either carry a random bunch or none to keep rooms for other stuff. Note that there's a chance these potions are befouled and we won't know, we would need the expert level for that, be it's a small chance so it should be alright.

This is the kind of pits we want to avoid, and we've yet to be find back a big part of our equipment, hopefully we won't have to cross this pit to find more, we won't cross it unless we really, really have to, this poison could actually kill us in the worst case.

We gladly find back our cracked halo, facing an instant death trap in the meantime would have been quite unfortunate.

We've been followed by two shamblers. We wear a disguise, I'm not sure how it actually works, I don't even really know how enemy behaviour works, anyway it'll just get quickly destroyed but no biggie.

We find our crown back, another item it would have been sad to leave here.

I'm not sure how we regained some but we've got enough spell points to cast wallpass twice to check the part behind the poison pit and get back safely. We even find a resting potion there so we rest for a while to get back some health and spell points.

We've got our equipment back and can descend to the lower floor. We can almost safely use this shrine which grants an echanted piece of equipment even if there's little chance we'll be able to equip it.

As expected we can't use it, it's a spear.

Let's fight this dog, it's an animal and we can't really avoid it, by normal means at least, anyway.

At least let's cast our mirror image spell which will reduces its chance to hit.

However this wolverine is very weak.

This snail casts "only" middle power spells, we really have the needed health to fight this sort of monsters now.

He blinds us, which won't last long but is very annoying anyway since while we won't manage to hit it he's going to cast more spells.

He casts lightning bolt, we take some damages and are chocked for some turns.

When it's finished we flee, a snail is slow as expected. This yeti and this ant are not a threat, the yet not dead snail is, kind of.

We eventually kill it, also find a Cause disease spell book that we won't use and a rod that we won't carry with us but can at least try to use now. There are three charges but we fail thrice. No problem. The wandlore skill increases the odds to succefully use a rod or wand and to regain charges when entering a new map.

We have no spell point left and will have to try to get past a dragon without disturbing it.

At least the odds are not that bad.

We succeed.

One of the possible miracle to ask from our god is to be transported to the temple, the temple is on our current side of the dragon as well as the downstairs so it could help us to get back there.

Anyway we have a lot of faith points and there's this enemy which can drains our health, we ask Lastaviark to repair our armour parts but also summon a hero which will lost his own strength while we won't. We find a useful item which grants a chance to paralyze enemies after they hit us (which means they can't walk over the map, they can still fight back if we're on the same tile).

We also find a ring of regeneration, which will be great as long as we don't forget to put it each time we want to leave a map and put our ring of disease resistance instead after entering the new map.

 

[Kabas]

I rate wand lore rather highly as far as the wizard skills go.
Necromancer starts with it.

 

[CryptRat]

We take the small risk of getting a disease by passing through a wall of corpses, we still have no spell point to do otherwise.

Spoiler

Our way west is blocked by an immobile instant killing specter.

Our cracked halo still have its three charges and we're slightly protected against instant death, he's immobile and won't follow us, and its odds to kill us are very low since it needs to hit to roll for instant death (gorgons as well as basiliks just need to be on the same tile so they're much more dangerous) so we can cross its way.

It seems this yeti killed a smuggler, we're going to avenge him.

It's a spellcaster, you may also notice the sign left of its head, it means our glove paralyzed it.

It casts fireball and we eventually take some damage from burning.

It blinds us, but its defense is very low so we kill it anyway.

We find this scarf, it does not have to be worn to grant its bonus so it's alright but it's still possible we'll eventually drop it for one more inventory slot.

By crossing the specter again on our way out we deal some damage to it again and eventually choose to take the time to kill it.

We fall into a pit then instead of trying to get out of it we use our miracle to get back to the temple, equip our ring of regeneration since we are injured and descend.

This ring is already proving useful, 69 is more than the amount one of our current best health potions would give back.

We're in a small closed area, there must be a secret door somewhere.

Ouch. Not a bad thing that we regularly repaired our weapons and even asked a few times for some more max health points.

Looks like the architect who designed this level was very uninspired, the secret door is actually in the most obvious spot.

A basilisk, now that's getting serious, if it was not for our cracked halo we would probably instantly descent to the next level.

Oddly enough this steel ant may be the first enemy we encounter that can not be hit by physical mean (better said we won't be able to hit it), we may have not met any scarecrow or homunculus.

We meet another harsh taskmaster, alive this time, and since we're deep into the dungeon we will be able to trade up to 100 health points for 1000 experience points, which will bring us one level further so the health will be regenerated. How it works is that each turn we can trade one point granted we're on the same tile.

The ant eventually kills the taskmaster before we trade all our health. Crossing his way and paralyzing it made us realize that we could have just walk onto it so it get paralyzed before killing the taskmaster. It's definitely a small mistake although the loss is not that big.

We find a shovel, we take it although it's not sure we're going to keep it forever. We paralyzed the basilisk after opening a container. There are Enchanted Manacles there, it is an engaging name but I have got no idea what they actually do, we're going to get back later once the basilisk can walk again and has left the tile.

This trinket is sort of cool, 350 gems for only one slot in the inventory is good. We take it instead of our ring which increase XP in temples and that we never think of equipping between entering a temple anyway.

Enemies which can only cast defensive spells are not a threat. At very worse they'll become very hard to hit (and/or eventually heal themsevles to full health) but we can always walk back (OK this one is fast).

By the way this one is an animal and killing it grants us one more level. We need some more dexterity, not every enemy is a wyrm or an animal and our odds to hit are not 100% anymore against other types of enemies.

Many enemies hate use now. However some gods love us which is better news.

We upgrade geography to expert, we want less and less to trigger traps and also will probably visit less and less parts of maps, so revealing if there's anything really interesting we could miss is good.

Our cracked halo saves us once from death, it still has two charges left and we won't spend the entier rest of the game next to basilisks.

Well they're alright I guess, in case we're surrounded by enemies it could prove useful, otherwise we're going to use those in the last floor to be able and focus our efforts on Xaskazien.

We descend, and gain some welcomed faith since we've recently lost it all.

Our geogaphy and cartography skills grant us a map of the level. The level contains several forges, there are also some buried items that we're going to unbury now that we have got a shovel.

An armour merchant is here, but as we could have expected he does not sell anything we could wear.

Thanks to our glove we now have a small chance to open locked containers and doors despite not having learnt the lock picking skill, in both case you can retry until the lock gets jammed, the difference being that you can try to bash doors whose lock is jammed by trading health.

With all that junk we're carrying we don't pick this third curative potion (which cures poison). What could prove more probablematic is that we don't have even one restorative potion (which cures diseases).

This steel ant will probably kill this smuggler, we've got nothing to sell anyway. We unbury what's here but unfortunately there's nothing.

We're going to chase this land shark wherever it's heading for.

This night hag drains some dexterity from us, we should have avoided it.

We repair our throwing axe as much as our luck allows it. It would still be good to find a better missile weapon at one point.

We had no helmet so we'll keep this weak improvised one since our god can repair improvised armour parts.

We unbury some gems.

If our cartography skill would have not allow to detect this trap we would still have had some significative chance to disarm it, but it's still better this way.

Legendary enemies give several rewards, and when it's a banal land shark it's even better news.

This spell could also have been a good last one to learn, it allows to directly turn a trinket into gems without having to find a smuggler. As a mage finding this spell relatively early eventually grants a lot of extra experience, trinkets can be expensive but even a late good weapon can be worth more than a hundred gems.

For now we just expect the current level smuggler is not dead yet so we can sell him this jewel.

He is not. Nice.

A container reveals three magic items. The Glove of violence increases unarmed damages and the chance to bash door so we won't bother to take it. However the two other items are very useful. The first one can be used once a level and summons a copy of an encountered monster which will fight for us.

The second one can be used once a level too and reveals every enemy or merchant in the level so we know if a level is even worth exploring and we can try to reach teachers before they get killed. It also increases the light and sight range, which is useful if only because the game can become really dark when descending deeper to the point where it's unpleasant to our player's eye.

We won't carry a single use scroll which upsets good gods and hasn't even half a chance to succeed but the damages done by this prayer are significative, I don't think it's the exact same thing or maybe it is but the high power fire damaging spell deals about the same amount of damages which explains why we're careful when encountering enemies which can cast such spells.

We descend.

 

[CryptRat]

Let's use our just found gem of true seeing.

Spoiler

The map contains a trainer but his life expectancy does not seem high considering how close to him a monster is.

Several rakshasas are there, they are immune to spells.

At this point of the game we won't enter this kind of pools. It can destroy two objects in our inventory, and dropping our full inventory before entering is out of the question because we can also be swept one level down and then our equipment would be lost forever.

A meal container contains two gooses, which will grant us a minimum of 300 faith points in total if we find a cooking fire. We're walking along an ice river, there's a bridge but it's currently lowered (there is a lever somewhere to upper it), and we won't cross the river because we would suffer freezing damages.

To perfectly illustrate this statement a necromancer chooses to cross the river and it's almost dead before we even damage it.

Using our wallpass spell we find some important treasure.

We manage to pick a vault but won't open it anyway because the odds that such vault is trapped are huge.

We find a gladly welcomed cooking fire which will allow us to free some slots in our inventory.

We find some trinkets among the money.

And what's cool is that there's a smuggler just one wallpass away from the treasure area.

We trade all this money for experience, gain a level, and raise our strength up to 50 so we can wear our hood.

We also use our just gained faith to repair it and our other armour parts as well before we loose all our faith again.

Our spell points won't allow us to visit more of the place and we won't cross the ice river so we descend.

Our gem of true seeing reveals enemies which won't leave us unwounded, our chances to hit are very high but so are their chances to hit and their health. We'll avoid fighting this giant spellcaster but other enemies are not miles weaker.

We've got quite a lot of faith points, our health is low and our next level of experience is far away so it's worth asking our god for combat bonuses before fighting this rakshasa.

We try to flee as we can from the giant spellcaster.

Unfortunately it's much faster than us when we have to deal with bushes (they require to pass a strength test to progress) and it catches us up.

Our current situation is perillous so we ask Lastaviark to teleport us to the temple, which is not very far away but it's alright. This outlaw is more in the range of enemies we can fight without risking our life.

We find a shrine to summon Fivriaskus, which is great since he loves us.

Or not, we fail the check and all our attributes slightly decrease, the most annoying part being that with our strength dropped we can't wear our hood anymore for now.

We flee from a dragon,

and kill a gargoyle instead, which is weaker and is a goblinoid so Lastiviark is happy. We equip our ring of regeneration and descend.

We're immediately attacked by a strong spellcaster.

We're surrounded by monsters we don't want to deal with, with our now low defense and damage this steel ant which we cannot hit is like the least harmful monster in the room since there's like 100% chance we would eventually get poisoned by the lizard man,

or would contract fragilitas (which halves our strength if I'm not mixing things up) if we get to fight against this bargest. The only good news is that we're close to another level up, so at least our health won't melt now.

We ask for a Battle Plan miracle and kill the barghest.

Many things happen as it dies. It's a goblinoid and they hate us harder,

it's also an animal and we find both a piece of meat and an expensive pelt which uses three slots in the inventory. We also gain a level.

We break our throwing axe, that's a bit problematic at this point.

Here's why we keep upgrading our max health and try to keep our health high as much as possible, a trap just dealt us more than 100 points of damage. This kind of traps is a very common way of dying.

We've got two available skill points, let's get advanced poison resistance and fight this snake man, we have a curing potion in case our plan does not work as intended.

OK, it's a total failure but let's kill it anyway before curing ourselves.

This tiger just beyond the west wall looks like an enemy we should be able to kill, it's an animal and we're craving for health and then for experience.

This glyph is annoying if you don't pay attention (or if you've never faced one), it damages you each time you find gold. Like other glyphs destroying it is just a matter of a monster or you walking onto it though'.

Killing the tiger gives us a piece of meat, we can take it since our curative potion left a free slot.

Lucky time, in the next container we find another curative potion. This unknown potion may be a potion which gives spell points back or gives a temporary bonus to some base stat, nothing which would make it worth taking given there's a also small risk it's befouled.

We don't forget to put our ring of regeneration on since our health is low and we descend.

 

[CryptRat]

Spoiler

Ok, except there's none in the level :

We'll exit the level by this vortex, it may move us to a level lower just like stairs but also to a level higher or to a special level.

We ask Lastiviark to summon a hero, he should kill this snake man which won't poison us then, and if he is unable to kill the ghost below as well then we will kill it ourselves.

The hero eventually dies from poison but the lizard man is dead too.

We find a tome of expert demonology, it's a mage skill so we won't use it but it raises the efficiency against demons, and Xaskazien is a demon, a giant/demon to be precise.

We use our wallpass spell to progress and finally find a new missile weapon. It's very good, actually so good that our current dexterity is way too low to equip it now,

but it turns out we also just found a ring which increases our dexterity, now that's some high luck, one more level will suffice. We won't be able to wear our disease resistance ring anymore.

This mirror is cool, it can increase our intelligence or move us to another level on the same floor, which means that even if we chose to look inside it then we would have explored the rest of the current map before anyway. We're not going to look into it because we will enter the vortex instead. It can swap our strength and intelligence, which can sometimes be a problem but in our case it would not change anything, they are both somewhere around 25.

We find a curative potion so we can fight this snake man.

We also find a potion of poison immunity, we won't take it because unless I'm mistaken it does not cure poison if you've already suffering it so it's useless against traps and we won't fight any more snake man on this map. It'd be useful against Xaskazien though', he can inflict powerful poison.

The characters remaining on the map are a bear, a phantom and an item merchant.

We kill the bear, gain a level, upgrade our dexterity and equip our crossbow.

We buy a whetsone from the item merchant, directly use it to repair our weak weapons and leave it there.

We also ask Lastaviark to repair our armour parts while we're into that sort of things.

We enter the vortex,

and exit on the same floor, it's not the best thing which could happen but it's cool anyway.

We passed our geography check. The first relevant spot on the map is a cart which can carry us to a mine granted we manage to leap aboard it, and since the chances are based on dexterity we will eventually manage to, at worse we'll have to try more than one time and the damage for failing is sustainable.

We'll need to cross a not completely safe bridge. We'll likely take some damage from heat when walking into the smoke close to the lava river, but at least our wallpass spell will allow us not to directly have to move into lava.

The last point of interest is a coat of arms which can grant a lot of experience and justifies for a mage to learn the history skill (a mage skill) as much as the moderate protection it grants against some bad outcomes.

We find a shield we could use but our crossbow is a 2-handed weapon so we won't take it.

This demon is strong.

We cast our wallpass spell a first time to flee from it.

We leave our ring of resistance to diseases behind to take one more health potion instead.

After one more passwall spell and some damage from the smoke we manage to cross the bridge. There's a dead fiend here, and a knight. Knights have no stats but when they cross any enemy they have 50% chance to kill it and 50% chance to be killed by it. There's a mid power spell which can summon knights for a few spell points, it makes clearing all the maps from the enemies very easy, with two limits, first summoned knights, unlike other summoned allies, don't grant experience when they kill an enemy, and secondly knights can't kill Xaskazien.

We can thanks our cartography and geography skills once more.

We need to cast our wallspell once more, no problem we have 70 spell points now since we get some additional spells points based on the floor.

Sadly we fail the test of the coat of arms and don't earn experience. However we won't fail to enter the cart.

We're on our way to the mine.

It's a gold mine, if it was a gem mine we would have considered learning mining now, a gem mine can give ton of gems to trade for experience.

We won't fight those cockroachs.

Our geography check was successful again. We won't waste a lot of time in the level, but what's really cool is that there's a ladder which should allow us to ascend one level upper, which will allow us to gain some extra experience. There's a small chance it breaks when trying to ascend it.

We find another crossbow but they take three slots so we can not carry both. This is some cool enchanted spear, not something we could ever use though'.

Baloraasin is not joking, if you fail to pray to its shrine then you plainly die.

We won't fight this bandersnatch simply because the cockroach is not far behind it.

We cross the river of lava because we want to reach the ladder rather than descending but actually take a lot of (much more than 100) burning damages in the process, even after using a health potion we're still relatively low on health. If we survive then we won't regret this but it was maybe not the right thing to do.

We find 149 gems in a secret compartment. This pit trap is visible due to our cartography skill (and to our geography skill as well in this case).

We turn around this other cockroach,

and use the ladder.

 

[CryptRat]

Our gem reveals a cleric just ahead, and he heals us for a small fee. This hero specter is strong, but fortunately specters can't move.

Spoiler

Weed! No need for it when we have our gem though'.

We cast Mirror image to deal with one more ape.

This is cool when your character is agnostic, trades his or her faith for experience and can then have none to lose, in our case we will leave the prayer scrolls where they belong.

At least two apes we've killed in this floor left a pelt, it's a bit sad no smuggler's there.

There's no smuggler but there's a smith, which repairs our crossbow.

There's no monster in sight, or we could use the polybolos to damage it a bit. Anyway, we descend to the 25th floor, again.

Not really welcoming.

Even using our wallpass spell we won't be able to visit much of the level. Let's just descend one level lower.

It does not really look better at first glance.

At least we'll be able to reach the entrance to a lair using our wallpass spell, but since traps were revelead by our mapping skill we know for sure that the objects on the upper area are not traps so it's worth going and see.

We've no real reason to fight this monstruosity. Note that even if it's not deadly since it has no special power it's still quite harmful because aberrations already disliked us at the beginning and now that we've killed several of them they hate us and get a bonus to their chance to hit and damages.

There's a smuggler on the bottom side of the floor but we can't reach him and haven't got anything to sell anyway. We're close to the end now, it's only natural that there are a lot of monsters we want to avoid, especially with our defense of only 100 when the monsters henceforth have an attack of 200 and will automatically hit us.

We decide to fight a cockroach for the two reasons that killing it will grant us a level and we've got a restorative potion to cure a potential disease.

We raise our dexterity to 188 if only because a small loss for whatever reason could prevent us from using our crossbow.

We'll use our wallpass spell once more to avoid passing through some garbage, the spell is really one of the reason we're still alive.

The lair is a phantom lair, that's good news, phantoms don't do anything strong, they just do phantom stuff like walking through walls and appearing from nowhere which not only we don't care about but I'm almost certain our gem even reveals them. So we enter the lair ... and the game crashes. For a moment this game became the single game I hate the most, I really thought it was dead. It turned out that after relaunching the game we can reload just like we quit the game just here.

We try to enter again but it crashes again. So anyway, let's descend.

A watcher is there, it makes all monsters see us from anywhere in the map but to be fair I don't think you really care about that in this game.

That's some cool item and we take it.

There's another ladder in this level, it looks like we're not that close to reach the lowest floor and it's a good thing, our crossbow is intact so we're using the forge to repair our throwing axe even if there's little chance we ever use it again.

This bet can sometimes be worth taking, but now it's really not.

A bogeyman, which is another kind of monsters we're always going to avoid fighting. Let's just ascend the ladder.

The monsters in that level are not too dangerous in the sense that they don't do much more than only damages but with 200 hp and an attack of 195 this roc can still be harmful.

With our Battle plan miracle and after casting mirr ... oops, there's an anti-magic glyph in the level.

This smuggler could be useful since the roc is an animal and may drop a pelt.

A rakshasa, which is immuned to these spells we can't cast.

We find a map of the level, that's great, now we're going to know where the anti-magic glyph is, it turns out there's also a lair just behind us so we can flee if the situation becomes serious.

Behind a stone door we encounter a weak undead monster and another roc.

As it dies the roc drops a pelt and fortunately the smuggler was not killed in the meantime.

Lastaviark is happy, and so are we.

The lair is a guivre lair, not sure we'll spend a lot of time inside it but we've got a curative potion so we can at least enter it and see what's going on there.

The first guivre to welcome us is a spellcaster.

There are mosaic walls, if we're going to explore the level then it's worth use some until both booby traps and pit traps are revealed, in the process our base stats slightly decrease but we also earn some gems.

A knight is fighting against the wyrms.

A very improvised weapon.

Besides guivres there are also some water monsters which are more in the scope of monsters we would fight, and we've got several skill points available so we can spend 1 to learn expert swimming. Let's go to this part of the level. There's not too many guivres this way and with the traps revealed we can safely collect junk on our way. The knight does not appear on the map so he must have been killed.

We're going to take this trap kit. We're in good shape but don't have a real plan to fight Xaskazien, he's got 400 hp and can cast high power spells so at this point we would likely die before he does. A couple of high damaging traps could be a way, although we won't use this one without being expert at trap settings.

In fact the water monsters are in partially frozen water and near lava so we're not going to fight them.

A cave-in. We lose our map and we were not going to explore much further anyway. Let's just descend.

"You know this place!" That's what we want to hear.

 

[CryptRat]

There's another entrance to a lair, not totally unexpected since our concerned perk now grants 50% chance any map contains an entrance to a lair. There's also a glyph damaging us when taking gold, that we did not notice before taking our first gold, the damage taken is not that high so it's alright.

Spoiler

A weapon merchant sells a slightly more powerful missile weapon than our current one, we buy it since we have the needed gems.

There used to be a cleric but he's dead. We don't particularly need his help now but we could have killed a couple of monsters and get back to him if he was still alive. The ward just behind us can't be crossed by monsters.

We cast Mirror image and defeat a colossus.

This black knight, in the case he does not kill us with spells, will drain more experience than what we would get for killing him. So we just enter the lair.

It's a cloud giant lair.

They make lightning damage and then can shock us, which unlike paralysis prevents from doing anything. One possibility would be to flee, but since we're not cowards (or actually we are, but only this time we won't be) and have some unspent skill points then we'll rather learn advanced electrical resistance and clear the level of the giants hopefully without issue.

Since we get shocked anyway, we raise our resistance to expert just to be sure, we did not just spend 2 skill points to leave the level with all the giants still alive.

That's kinda sad because we probably lost at the minimum some experience before but we suddendly remember we've got a mirror which can be used once each level and copy monsters.

The map contains a lot of gold and gems, and a way to another mine, which makes our choice to stay in the level a bit less of a waste of skill points.

An apothecary table can be very useful if you're a mage because you're likely to brew quite a lot of potions.

We take some time to slaughter more easy preys.

This bed is comfy, but we've just gained a level.

A giant beam will bring us two floors higher when we finish exploring the level, that's much better than jumping onto a car travelling to a mine on the same floor.

We succesfully answer a magic mouth's riddle. You'd expect a mithril armour to be lighter than that though'.

These dragons hide a treasure that we won't take the risk to try and take.

An armour merchant sells only heavy helmets.

We ascend the beam.

+10 to attack won't make that much of a difference at this point, even if we're one more time in the 25th floor so it's possible that there are monsters roamming the area that we could kill. Our next level of experience is far away so if it was not for our ring of regeneration we would consider stopping fighting any monster from now on to keep our full health for the ending fight in the case we never gain another level.

Now that's a legit plan against Xaskazien. It's much more reliable than our spear trap for two reasons, first the spear trap will likely not be enough to kill him while the 6 charges of this one should be enough to make sure he'll become uneffective and secondly we don't have 3 skills points available anymore and, if we wouldn't use the spear trap without being expert at setting traps, this one we can use even with basic trap setting, at worst we will trigger the trap several times before managing to set it up but it will only drain our spell points which we don't really care.

A dodo. It can be pretty annoying by the way.

That's not where we're going to. We cast Wallpass and head towards east.

There are more cockroaches here, and we still have our restorative potion so we're going to fight againt this one.

We descend, and it's festival time so the gods grants us some food to party.

Here comes some dilemna. It would be cool to kill this turtle? and get the rewards, we're going to summon our hero but we don't want him to fight the other one and if he does not kill it we'll likely be near a big pool of acid unable to finish it off.

At least he's fighting the right one.

The level is quite empty, past these two monsters there's only one more.

I guess it worked as expected which means badly, the monster is paralyzed above a pool of acid, hopefully we'll have an opportunity to finish it off later.

It's not exclusively the acid pool itself, acidic vapour regularly appears and disappears near the pool.

There's acid everywhere, no wonder why there's no place for more monsters.

We finally kill the all-eater.

It leaves a few gems and a map of the level. It was not worth the risk of having an item (like our crossbow or our cracked halo) melted but we're safe so it's not that of an issue, we mostly wasted some faith points.

Nagas are weak. We're next to an elevator, which randomly brings you one level upper or one level lower.

Assassins are strong.

On a weapon rack we find what'll likely be our final weapon. We'd even have the choice to take a chakram instead, it's one-handed and deal a bit less damages, we've got no shield so obviously we're going to use the crossbow.

There's a fumarole then smoke this way, let's take another one.

We're not miles away from gaining one more level, we cast Mirror image and defeat a black knight, and, let's go, we make some real damage now and can still avoid some potential instant death, we're going to kill this assassin.

We find some man flesh, and get back to the elevator.

The elevator bring us one level lower. We're surrounded by ice, which we won't cross, and walls that fortunately we can cross.

We're in the 28th floor now and some monsters here are not joking. Anyway let's just cast Descend.

And, well, our geography didn't trigger, let's just descend again before triggering some nefarious trap.

Here we go, that's the last floor, we did not pass our geography check but Xaskazien is quite close, hopefully he's not beyond a river of lava.

He's right here, and the monster following him is a, colossus I guess, I am not sure of the name but what's sure is that he can't do anything really harmful.

We cast mirror image, since we're likely going to lose our spell points when setting the spell draining trap. The colossus comes out of the room, and it gets paralyzed when hitting us. Good news, we even gain some health as it hits us, which means there's a healing glyph in the level which does exactly that, healing us when we're hit by monsters (it works only this way, monsters don't get healed when we hit them).

We had one skill point to learn basic trap setting and after 3 tries we finally manage to set up our spell drain trap just before Xaskazien reaches our tile.

We summon our hero, because why not, it's not like we're going to make much use of our faith points from now.

Then, well :

 

[CryptRat]

That was unexpected, it was an offensively lucky run, we got a full package of game breaking stuff and never faced any awful series of bad events.

Technically this is the end of the LP I guess, I took some screenshots of other rogue characters who died very early before this one and discarded those because I wanted to show only one long enough rogue character run and then switch to a mage or warrior, but since it went longer than I expected I guess we've already seen a lot of what the game has to offer. A warrior creates, repairs and wears heavy armors and rushes through enemies until he or she triggers an instant killing trap while a mage can in theory do anything, granted he or she finds the rightful spell or at least the rightful wand that is. Hybrid classes exist, such as the dragon slayer who is a warrior/mage but can't learn general skills efficiently. We only travelled through procedurally generated maps during the run, and I think the generation is very good, but the game contains some handcrafted maps which are unsurprisingly even more interesting.

The first main reason why I love the game is all the available utility skills. I'd say technically dodge, archery and trap settings at the very end are the only pure combat skills we upgraded during the run, which meant we spent most of our points on utility skills. The character system works great and is very P&P-ish and so is the level design, which is the second main reason why I love the game, environment is interesting, interactive and acknowledges the character's stats. The different races, classes and especially gods are cool, you can find very powerful items and spells as well as you can face unfair situations and you have opportunities to take more or less risky bets. Also you roll dices, a lot of dices, I highly recommend this game.

 

[Virtua Sinner]

Dude, you totally made my day. I'm the creator of Caverns and it's great to see not only someone playing it, but winning it

I've taken the last couple months off from coding as I recover from an injury, but will resume shortly as the healing finishes up.

I wanted to address a couple things you brought up in your playthrough:

1. Magic Resistance grants a chance to avoid the effects of enemy offensive spells. and will reduce damage of the Magic type. (On monsters this indicated by a hand symbol, and some traps cause magic dmg too. I think spells like Drain Life do, too, but it won't prevent damage from a fireball that you fail to resist, for instance).

2. A few times you mentioned monsters as being animals when they weren't. (Slug and Jelly, I recall). Those have Animal Intelligence which affects how they detect you and sometimes their movement patterns, but a Slug is still Insectoid, and a Jelly is still Aberration.

3. The Scale Coating perk reduces incoming Acid damage, and as a result can sometimes lower the chance an item is destroyed. But if a trap or something (Acid Splash Trap, maybe?) just destroys items automatically, it won't help against that. Acid Resistance skill would do both, however.

4. I'll check out the Phantom Lair map generator. Not sure what happened there!

Thanks so much for playing and posting!

Cheers!

 

[CryptRat]

Hey, thanks, love your game, best wishes for the end of your recovery.