Skelemancer's Running Story
Well... he's not a sorc/wizard --- no teleport. But... the A1 monsters aren't that dangerous, so I decided to try some Andy-running today, which is pretty much a first for me.
Instead of taking the catacombs 2 waypoint, raising skellies, and walking to catacombs 4, I decided to just zigzag through the maps, postponing the skellie-raising until I reached catacombs 4.
I'm a TO user. I don't even know who that Trang Oul guy is supposed to be, but I stole some neat stuff from his Avatar, and so far he didn't come after me. What a looser.
As such, I don't use Stamina, I move very fast, and I'm usually long gone before monsters even start swinging at me. So, perfect conditions. I don't have blocking, but I have maxed resists, cannot be frozen, and even some physical resist --- not too bad for someone who never has to face monsters head-on.
All in all, it worked very well. I switched away the Arm of King Leoric after I got bonetrapped for the 2nd time, and I made some observations that I still don't quite understand:
1) Terror doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe I don't quite understand what it is supposed to do, but I had assumed I could terror anything that was cornerning me, to keep them away from me. Didn't work, monsters seem to ignore the green stuff on their heads.
2) Sometimes, when I got into a dead end with 273 bosspacks on my heels, I would kill them off before continuing, or at least kill enough of them to get a safe passage. For this, I would raise skeleton warriors, and sometimes a few mages. Now, the thing that surprised me: during my runs, I NEVER lost the golem, or any of the skeletons I raised in emergency situations. I never stopped and waited for them, I moved all the time, stopping only to open doors.
At the moment, I tend to think that the monsters in the catacombs prevented my skellies from vanishing --- maybe they don't vanish during a fight, so they would either fight or teleport to me, but never vanish. This is quite contrary to me loosing skellies when walking through an empty section in other maps.
I didn't continue running when someone managed to curse me (happened only once); I raised skellies and moved along as usual until the curse timed out. Since Terror didn't work, I used decrep instead, which also worked nicely to shake off minions from extra fast bosses.
I used only 2 red pots (nur purples at all) early on --- one was during a bonetrap incident, the other one was after I tried to move through a fanatism pack without any precautions.
I also used one blue pot --- in one run, I got hit by a manaburn minion shortly before I found the stairs to catacombs 4, so I was too low on mana when I arrived at the playground.
For now, this is probably as far as I can get with running --- even for Andy, I cleared out the first 2 rooms in catacombs 4 and raised a full army before going into andy's lair, and continued to mostly clear out the lower part before engaging her. I don't really see me using Gumby at her and casting firewalls while at the same time dodging all the other catacomb 4 creeps.
This could be a use for confuse; though --- while I still don't have my Gull, I should probably get a wand with +confuse for the weaponswitch to see if that is of use there (I have +6 in the curses tree, so a +3 wand should give a lvl 9 confuse...)
And I certainly don't see me running to mephisto, diablo or baal... This will still be a case of "where I walk, nothing else does".
Well... he's not a sorc/wizard --- no teleport. But... the A1 monsters aren't that dangerous, so I decided to try some Andy-running today, which is pretty much a first for me.
Instead of taking the catacombs 2 waypoint, raising skellies, and walking to catacombs 4, I decided to just zigzag through the maps, postponing the skellie-raising until I reached catacombs 4.
I'm a TO user. I don't even know who that Trang Oul guy is supposed to be, but I stole some neat stuff from his Avatar, and so far he didn't come after me. What a looser.
As such, I don't use Stamina, I move very fast, and I'm usually long gone before monsters even start swinging at me. So, perfect conditions. I don't have blocking, but I have maxed resists, cannot be frozen, and even some physical resist --- not too bad for someone who never has to face monsters head-on.
All in all, it worked very well. I switched away the Arm of King Leoric after I got bonetrapped for the 2nd time, and I made some observations that I still don't quite understand:
1) Terror doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe I don't quite understand what it is supposed to do, but I had assumed I could terror anything that was cornerning me, to keep them away from me. Didn't work, monsters seem to ignore the green stuff on their heads.
2) Sometimes, when I got into a dead end with 273 bosspacks on my heels, I would kill them off before continuing, or at least kill enough of them to get a safe passage. For this, I would raise skeleton warriors, and sometimes a few mages. Now, the thing that surprised me: during my runs, I NEVER lost the golem, or any of the skeletons I raised in emergency situations. I never stopped and waited for them, I moved all the time, stopping only to open doors.
At the moment, I tend to think that the monsters in the catacombs prevented my skellies from vanishing --- maybe they don't vanish during a fight, so they would either fight or teleport to me, but never vanish. This is quite contrary to me loosing skellies when walking through an empty section in other maps.
I didn't continue running when someone managed to curse me (happened only once); I raised skellies and moved along as usual until the curse timed out. Since Terror didn't work, I used decrep instead, which also worked nicely to shake off minions from extra fast bosses.
I used only 2 red pots (nur purples at all) early on --- one was during a bonetrap incident, the other one was after I tried to move through a fanatism pack without any precautions.
I also used one blue pot --- in one run, I got hit by a manaburn minion shortly before I found the stairs to catacombs 4, so I was too low on mana when I arrived at the playground.
For now, this is probably as far as I can get with running --- even for Andy, I cleared out the first 2 rooms in catacombs 4 and raised a full army before going into andy's lair, and continued to mostly clear out the lower part before engaging her. I don't really see me using Gumby at her and casting firewalls while at the same time dodging all the other catacomb 4 creeps.
This could be a use for confuse; though --- while I still don't have my Gull, I should probably get a wand with +confuse for the weaponswitch to see if that is of use there (I have +6 in the curses tree, so a +3 wand should give a lvl 9 confuse...)
And I certainly don't see me running to mephisto, diablo or baal... This will still be a case of "where I walk, nothing else does".
