Abe was I correct in my hunch that if I waited till level 8 to pop the potion of experience I would get the most free XP for my buck?

Or should I have used that up a long time ago?

I thought Divinity and Wizardry might not be powerful enough and both of the winners that could cast either choose it. I learned that they were good after all.

I expected chesapeake to go with Divinity set to Ring of Divinity, memorize Cure Moderate Wounds, but he went with Mace of Banishing instead. That way he could actually be a threat in combat, so I respect it.

No.

Once you got to a certain level, 7 or so, the amount of experience you had to get/level was the same. That's why you saw players on level 9 for the shortest period of time. the monsters are giving more Xp and are harder, but the length to level had not increased.

Actually, let me verify:

Difference between level 7 and 8 for a cleric was 23k

Difference between level 8 and 9 is 25k

Difference between level 9 and 10 is 25k

My initial expectation was that the game would last between 4-5 weeks, and it did, so I'm happy about that.

Alright one more. That cleric was doing twice as much damage to me as I was to him and I'm in magical plate. What was that mace of his I found during the morning action? Looked like it would be fun to play with.

It was another mace of banishing. Same room KWhit found the first one in, and it regenerated when the dungeon reset.

For the record, knowing every single rule, I would have played:

Human Mage - Being human gives you 15% bonus in XP, helsp to offset a bit the heavy XP requirement of magi.

Spell Progression:

Armor
Magic Missile
Mirror Image
Acid Arrow
Stoneskin
Lightning Bolt - Tough, D Magic is also really good.
Icy Blast AND Floating Disk
Globe of Invulnerability
Finger of Death

I removed the DM RAR sig and went back to my usual one, in case anyone was annoyed by it.

If you have any suggestions about the game - what to keep, what to change, what to enhance or remove, I would LOVE to hear your comments over at:


Changes for the Next Dungeon? - Front Office Football Central

Congrats chesapeake! I figured you would win if you didn't go to the room with the beholder and even then thought you *might* have a chance. Glad to see two guys who helped me at various points in the game pull out the last couple winner spots.


Two reasons. One, good equipment wasn't cheap to come by. Two, after I hit lvl 5, it became fairly easy (for me at least) to kill the monsters with the spells / equipment I had and it was more a matter of "Can I survive their special attacks?" That was my viewpoint especially after my fight with the demon spider when it wrecked me with a magic missile and acid arrow. Instead of saving up hoping the Plate of Ablation would show up at the Djinni market, I wanted something that could help more immediately. I lucked out with the glasses too, not knowing what they did, and being able to buy that scroll of passwall from The Jackal. Without getting that scroll of passwall to go with the glasses, I would've lost a lot of time backtracking.


To be fair, I had already figured I wouldn't take it unless I found an incredible wizard item. As it turned out, I took it even with only a moderate wizard item (trading a lvl 4 cleric spell for a lvl 2 wizard spell...maybe that says something about how good they were). But in the end, I never even used the spell I gained from it by the time I had won.

Yeah, but imagine doling out mage spells that deal damage based on your hp with the cleric hp? Acid arrow would deal 48 damage the first round, and 48 the second at level 8 for a cleric. Nasty!

That was the first spell I thought of actually, death in 2 rounds to most monsters, but combat was going well enough as it was plus I had picked up a wand of lightning. I just didn't want some cheapo trap to kill me. Another consideration was just picking harm, with the ring of memory that's a 75% chance to kill a monster in 2 rounds if it's vulnerable to it.

Sphere of Annihilation?

Ahem I was level 6. :) And that was with a potion of experience. Grouping was just not the way to go, at least not for very long, just for early survival at the beginning.

Thanks, all.

And thanks very much to Abe for running this. I spent a bunch of very enjoyable time playing and following this. I imagine this must have darn near taken over your life for the last 3+ weeks.

To reinforce a point Abe made, I still had my original robes on. If it got to a fight where my AC mattered, I had already lost. So investing in better armor seemed like a poor investment.

I owe JAG an apology. My evil started much earlier than when I killed the Jackal. I switched a potion on him that he sent me to ID. It was a Potion of Revelation, which Abe said would provide information on the dungeon. It was way too good for an artificer to pass up, so I switched it with a potion of healing.

The joke was on me. That potion was what made my level appear on page 1 of the thread. Karma is a bitch.

Congrats Chesapeake. Back to the Magic Shop for me.

Great game Abe!

Yes, about that Sphere...

I can see why you would have thought I might go in that direction. But I was hit in combat only once in the last two weeks -- the fight with the dragon. It seemed far more likley to me that I would use the mace before the end of the game than the healing spell -- especially since I still had 2 or 3 healing potions in my pocket.

lol, too funny in retrospect. I actually figured I wouldn't get the ring of memory returned once you ID'ed it.

Dubb's disappearing scroll was really a scroll of understanding. I wasn't going to give him two of those, not when I was fighting for existence in the game at the time.

I don't recall Abe penalizing me for that. Then again, I never traded anything back to Dubb. I briefly thought about buying a scroll and sending it to him, though.

Congrats and thanks Abe on a very fun and well-run game. To keep track of all that stuff for these weeks had to be tough at times. I would certainly play again if there's a second one. (and probably not pick an artificer lol)

So what spells were in that Wizard's staff or whatever that you never would tell me Chesa? :)

I lied to no one and did nothing mischievous. Good guys FTW!

Great build, but in practice, stoneskin was superfluous if you already had mirror image -- assuming you had picked up a wand or two along the way to provide a little supplemental offense. I had a single casting of stoneskin since I picked up the wizard staff and didn't use it until yesterday.

I think taking Lightning first and then Dispel Magic would have more value to this build. You've got enough defense and a huge amount of offense, you need to be sure that your opponent can't prevent the beatdown.

It didn't occur to me that I could pull a switcheroo until that potion appeared. I couldn't have done it with the ring, though. I had nothing to switch it with.

yeah I just had to make that decision when I went up to 6th level. Stoneskin is a cool spell, but given all the images you have by the time you can cast it, decided it wouldn't be used much. So took True Sight.

And yes I am very very interested in what the sphere would have done. I hated like heck to pass it up, but if as I suspected the monster's items got sucked up with them, then I'm not sure how helpful it would have been. But damn it would have been cool to wander around the dungeon with the sphere at my side.

Magic Missile
Spook
Invisibility
Icy Blast
Stoneskin

I used everything but Spook in my battle with the dragon. I may be missing a spell.

cool, I figured there might be a spell or two we artificers normally couldn't use in it.

So what abilities did that lute have Poli?

Yes. I think there might have been a lightning bolt in there too.

You attach the branch of the evil plant to the gourd. The gourd makes a nice sound. You place the celestial harp string in the appropriate places and then use teh tuning fork to tune the lute.


You have completed your prestige item


Lute of Attraction - 1500 gold - Bard. When you have this item, you have a chance to enspell enemies when you fight. All enemies will be a bit easier to hit, and a bit worse to attack you. You also might affect them with a Charm effect causing them to not attack you for a brief period of time, or even a chance to outright Paralyze them. There is a random chance of this happening each round of combat.



For that reason alone, I was super interested in saving the town and going after Q-Bert.

Official Final Rankings of Winners

1. Danny
2. Poli
3. Jag
4. Kwhit
5. Chesapeake

I may want to save the Sphere for next game., so I'm going to hold onto it and its mechanics if you don't mind.

The other prestige item:

Helm of Smiting - 1500 gold - Paladin. When wearing the Helm of Smiting, the Paladin’s damage and armor against evil monsters increases massively. +4 damage, -4 AC).

Griffon’s Mane
Plain Helm
Pine Sap
Dyes


Almost everything is evil in this game.

Oh, and the dungeon was a 13x13 grid for those who are interested in that kind of thing.

That answers what was in the forest area.


I was curious, thanks. Especially after I asked my Orb question.

Abe's Five Favorite Rooms:

1. The Tomb of Avantish III
2. The Barrow-Downs
3. The Tavern (a.k.a. Saving the Town)
4. The Castle Kitchens (Solving the Murders!!!)
5. The Celestial Cloudscape

Other top mentions:

The Sea - forces many to lose their armor ad then attacked by Sea Serpent
The Field of Grain - Complete with Grain Nymph which chesapeake refused to attack because she wasn't hurting anybody. He could not bring himself to attack her for the life of himself.
The Arena - Very fun!
The Island - Where you have to boat to an island and fight the green giants.
The Cabinet Room - Cabinet Mimics Attack!
The Corpse and the Hole - My favorite 1st level room and no one went there
The King's Court
The Gem-Cutting Room
The Workshop (which no one ever found)
The Bard and the Stool (which no one ever found)
The Control Center
The Room of Secrets
The Forge of the Gods
The Sphere Room
The Prison of Xeenthrax

The outer two rings were level 1, so that leaves a 9x9 grid in the middle


The outer ring of that grid was all level 2. Leaving a 7x7.

The corners of that 7x7 were still level two.

That ring with the corners missing was all level 3.

Corners of the next were part of level 3.

Then the rest was all level 4.

Level 4 looked like a Civilization City's area of influence, where is can place things. If you put the city in the dead middle, all of the final bricks were within two of it in every way you can count except diagonally. That gives you 21 black rooms. All were discovered by players.

About half of the dungeon is level one. Many rooms there were not discovered, probably 10-20.

You also got a very tasty meal of maple syrup. Yum. Syrup.

One of the fun meta things I did was to change the nature and power level of things from D&D to here, when I took things from another source. For example, anyone familiar with D&D probably knows monsters like the Carrion Crawler, Annis, Grey Ooze, Gelatinous Cube, Invisible Stalker, and so forth. So, one of the things I did was to change some of their power levels. A Carrion Crawler became very large and dealt damage, the Annis was weakened to a 1st level monster, (with just 3 HP and 9 AC, but both Magic Missile AND Cause Light Wounds), Grey Ooze was weakened, Invisible Stalker was raised, etc.

Some monsters I left at their power level, like Beholders and Wights and Mummies and a Mezzodemon and Water Weird and so forth.

Obviously that was before I turned to EVIL.

Yeah, while initially I was confused, I did the math and figured you either really went crazy with a map or went 13x13.

Now that's just mean. :) Guess I'll have to actually try to control it in the next game to find out then.

can you tell us what happened in some of those favorite rooms that people visited but we didn't get much detail on? Figure you'd want to keep the others to yourself, but I'd love to hear why you liked the Tomb of Avantish so miuch, what was the story behind the castle kitchens, did anyone go to the Celestial Cloudscape? Was there anything else that could have happened in the room with the buttons that got pushed? what happened with the wheel of fate or whatever? Most of the rooms I and the group entered were pretty straight forward, so would like to hear about the more involved rooms. What happened in room 9E once the person in there was freed?

Well, let's see. Two people were at the Celestial Cloudscape. That's the cloud place with angels and the harp.

The Castle Kitchens is where KWhit won the game by solving the murders of the castle staff. I rolled 1d6 to see what the result was, and then modified it bu Luck spell or Ring of Fortune, which KWhit had. One result was 10k and you solved the murder. Another was 10k and you solved it, but it was another player, so that player would be jailed for one day. A third result was you solved it but it was the baron, so you had to fight the baron, a fourth was what KWhit rolled, you go to find a high level cleric to raise the dead, they solve the murders and you get some gold in return. Another result was that you were the murdered, you became evil, and stole all of their possessions. Finally, there was abject failure, and you were immediately sent back to the room you came from.

I liked that, I thought it was a cool mechanic.


The Tomb was cool because of flavor and it was the first room I made with repeating monsters. Many rooms saw monsters respawn when you entered, but this room had you get a new monster whenever you took an action - Open a Sarcophagus. It led to the Barrow Downs and other rooms with a similar theme, like the Cabinet Room and the Bee Hive Room and The Armory.

The Control Center, saw KWhit push all four buttons. One button he pushed activated the star rooms, the original rooms. When anybody took an action in the star rooms afterwards, they got a ton fo XP, gold and a magic item. This was designed as a way to get players who were behind to catch up. Additionally, every other star room would have an item Of Knowledge that would let everybody know the levels of players when used.

Twice after KWhit activated the Star button players were in star rooms and took the action there and got a ton of stuff and never announced it in thread. Qwikshot was the first and boberot was the second. In fact, the Gong of Knowledge that boberot rang was just in one player;s starter room that they had rung earlier, but it had not been turned on by anyone pushing the star button/

Oh, there was a number of rooms with a random element. The Wheel of Fate, The Astrologer, The Fortune Teller, The Deck of Many Things, etc. I think there were just five or six in the dungeon. Luck spell or Ring of Fortune helped on these.

Oh, and to answer your question about 9E. There were rooms ahead of time where there was a trapped fairy. Evil Druid Grove, Evil Temple, The Dark Maidens, and The Fairy Prison. In each of these rooms, the player had the option of interceding on behalf of the fairy. If they were successful, then the Fairy blessed the room and made it a sanctuary for the adventurers to gain XP, healing, or other things.

9E was the only room where that was successful, but someone tried to fight the Evil Druid and failed to free the fairy early in the game.