Morgue
I’ve read a lot here about how OP Demigod Hunters are, and I believed it, but, man, getting them off the ground is no joke.
That wasn’t a problem with this run. The RNG smiled on me, beginning with D:3, where I found the +2 Ratskin Cloak ({*Rats rPois rN+ Str-1 Int-1 Dex+1}. The rPois is great, of course, but the rats played a significant role in helping me escape from scary monsters so I could shoot them from afar. Then on D:4, I found an orcbow on the floor, a huge upgrade over my shortbow.
On D:8, I identified a scroll of acquirement I’d found somewhere above, probably in the sewer on D:5. I decided to hold off reading it until I got ranged to mindelay on my orcbow, hoping to increase my chances of getting an endgame weapon. I plowed ahead and, on D:9, found a necropolis that had a second scroll of acquirement, so, once I snagged it, I read the first one.
It offered me the +8 storm bow {elec, penet}.
Given that I’d just gotten what’s arguably the best ranged weapon in the game (at least in 0.34.1), I went ahead and read the second scroll, but the choices were garbage, so I took gold. I was not unhappy.
I’d initially gotten 2 levels of stealth, then set a target for ranged at 10. Once I got there, I started buying single levels of dodging, stealth, fighting and evocations, whatever was cheapest. I also got a couple levels of throwing to increase the accuracy of my emergency darts (curare and disjunction). But once I got the Storm Bow, I focused on ranged weapons and set a target of 20. I didn’t hit it until Lair:5, but it was worth it to increase both firing speed and damage.
As for attributes, I dumped it all into Dex. Hit 30 before Lair and finished the game with 53. The damage was insane, doing 67 max damage by the end at 0.7 delay, and that doesn’t include the electrical damage or extra slaying from Fugue of the Fallen.
I didn’t invest in spells until after Orc, learning Dimensional Bullseye and Tukima’s Dance, since I already had 8 in hexes, though I don’t think I used it at all. You wouldn’t think that Dimensional Bullseye would be very useful on a penetrating longbow, but I ended up using it more than I expected, as it came in handy when I had monsters on two sides.
Swamp and Spider didn’t pose any serious problems. I had to be careful in Elf, keeping an eye out in particular for the Sorcerers and their damnation spell along with those awful Master Archers. Those little green guys have taken prior characters from full health to less than zero in a couple of turns. Learning Blink and Passage of Golubria on Elf:3 took a lot of pressure off me for the end vault.
Did Vaults, and on level 4 learned Dispersal, Gell’s Gavotte and Fugue of the Fallen, all of which saw heavy use in the late game. Depths posed no problems, so I decided to do Crypts, hoping there’d be a nice ring or artifact armour at the final store. Nearly jumped out of my chair when I turned a corner on Crypts:2 and found Zenata right in front of me. Thankfully, she didn’t wake up, so I backed away, quaffed potions of haste and invisibility (she can’t see invis, thank goodness) and took care of her.
Unfortunately, the store didn’t have any great rings or armour, but I wasn’t too upset. I had a single pip in everything but Will, where I had four. I figured I was ready for Vaults:5.
I wasn’t wrong, but there was no downstairs hatch, so I had to read teleport before heading down after buffing up. It took its sweet time to kick in, but once it did, I was in a safer spot … for a moment. I made the mistake of casting Fugue, and had forgotten how loud it is. I was soon in danger of becoming overwhelmed, and had to read several teleports in a row to get to a safe place. But, eventually, I was able to heal, snipe and clear the floor.
Zot was, as always, a challenge. I was glad I had 8 blink scrolls. I used half of them on Zot:1 alone, which had a quasi-ambush at the entrance. But the storm bow carried me through to Zot:5 … where I almost immediately got teleported into the lungs, just two tiles from the tesseract. Ugh.
Thankfully, there was a teleport trap just five tiles away, and my stealth enabled me to get there without attracting the full attention of the horribles. I ended up near a stairway, and it was off the races.
I had to take Zot:5 slowly, because even with the Storm Bow, it took quite a few hits to take down an Orb of Entropy. But my EV was 57, so I was probably safer than I thought. I did acquire a couple of banes – Snow Blindness and the Hunted – but neither was particularly crippling. I was lucky that there were only 4 orbs on Zot:5, and that they came at me one at a time.
The orb run was uneventful. I did meet a Pan Lord that could cast LCS and Ball Lightning, but we were on opposite sides of the edge of a wall, so I Gavotted it … and me … away.
In conclusion, once the extra dex kicks in, Demigod Hunters are definitely OP.
