POWDER: Attempting a Pax ascension with a familiar

[Sparro]

So it looks like the only way to do an exclusively Pax run is to
startscum until you have a book of healing. I like starting with
better weapons and armor than Belweir, but when one of the very few
ways to curry favor with Pax is to cast healing magic, and only two
books provide healing out of a truckload of spellbooks, it can be a
bit frustrating. For that matter, the only way to reliably get favor
with Pax is to start with a healing book, isn't it? Killing undead
depends on finding a lot of them, dressing well depends on finding the
right armor and equipment...

I finally determined that the only way to get sufficient XP is to
either 1) counteract slaughtering everything with healing yourself
after every fight, occasionally depending on throwing objects at the
ceiling to stab yourself, or 2) have a familiar and sic it on
everything that moves. I am choosing to take the second approach.

The gods are laughing at my feeble attempts.

My single biggest fear is getting nailed by a godcurse. I tick off
Tlosh so much, both with melee combat and healing, that I can hardly
get through two dungeon levels without suffering in some fashion.
I've been slain by flamestrikes at least three times, by poison more
times than I care to recount, and even by sudden nightmare-filled
sleep once thanks to a conveniently-placed enemy. I try to ameliorate
it by throwing weapons when I get the chance, but in the first several
levels I don't typically have enough of a stash of junk to throw to
take on much of anything. And since half of my XP is given to my bat,
I don't usually have enough HP (or appropriate spells) to deal with
the curses I wind up with. The favor I gain with Pax isn't nearly
enough to counteract the hate I draw from the rest of the pantheon.

Once I get to the labyrinth levels, the acid dragons in particular
play havoc with my bat. I often wind up frantically calling for it to
guard me while I book it down the corridor, especially considering the
difficulty of scaring up some acid resistance for it. I've pumped up
the bat to vampire status plenty of times, which is very convenient
for not having to feed it; all that food goes into my (usually empty)
stomach. It still dies with alarming frequency though. Twice I
managed to get Resurrect, a spell that is incredibly useful for
familiar-users, especially when paired with Preserve, but it's been a
long time since I managed to get that far again. Either I'm playing
very poorly after so many failed attempts, or the random number
generator hates my guts.

Any suggestions for play-style? Equipment I should focus on? I'll
try out most anything and report back the results.

[Adam Boyd]

I actually wrote an incredibly long reply to this, but after rereading
it, it made me sound like a tool going off on a tangent (like I
usually do), and it detailed at great lengths my moderately effective
cleric playstyle. I took it down because I have a strong anti-familiar
stance, and the comment felt off topic after I went back over it. I'll
repost it if you like, but it's full of spoilers (which may or may not
matter to you) and it's REALLY long (which I have a tendency to do.) I
just wanted to make sure I wasn't just blurting out something that
wasn't useful to you at all.

[Meddyan]

On Jan 30, 1:14 pm, Sparro <sparroh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Any suggestions for play-style?  Equipment I should focus on?  I'll
> try out most anything and report back the results.

Not too long ago someone wrote up a very nice guide to using familiars
which you might find interesting/helpful. You can search for it here,
or just look at the copy on the POWDER Wiki here -
http://www.armoredtactics.com/powder/index.php/A_guide_to_familiars

I've had pretty much the same experience as you for trying a pure Pax
run - its just too difficult to gain piety with Pax and its often at a
net loss as T'losh gets much more angry than Pax gets happy and so Pax
won't be able to protect you from him. Even statscumming for a book of
healing and purposefully injuring yourself just to heal will end up
with you dead at T'losh's hands.

My only idea was to only bother making Pax happy enough that you can
gain his bonuses at level up and not worrying about racking up the
piety untill later on in the game when you've got yourself set up a
bit more to deal with your problems.

[Sparro]

Hey - that's what this topic was created for. I'm just trying to
ascend as a Paxite, not necessarily restricting myself to being a
familiar-user. If you have a compelling argument for ditching the
bat, spill it! I'd love to hear it!

[terry....@gmail.com]

I mained as PAX for a bit and it's not so hard. The only fustrating part is leveling up. I'd advise you to start as a BELWEIR worshipper, so that way you have a better chance to get a TOME OF HEALING or TOME OF FAMILIAR, or both if lucky.

When it says that clerics are DISCURAGED FROM INITIATING COMBAT, they mean that they are discouraged from starting a fight. Let hostile enemies attack you first THEN YOU CAN ATTACK THEM WITHOUT LOSING RELATIONSHIP WITH PAX.

You can command your familiars to ATTACK ANYONE since the rules ONLY APPLY TO YOU; in other words you won't lose relationship with PAX for commanding your familiars to attack. Just make sure to look at their status during their battle and HEAL them to keep them alive.

If you can't find a hostile enemy, simply get anything to throw to the ceiling and hurt yourself then heal just to kill several turns. That way you're more likely to encounter hostile enemies.

That's all I can say for now.

[sulai]

Interesting, I recently tried to go with PAX, too. I played a game
starting PAX and keeping with PAX all the time, whatever comes. I
learned RESURRECT, and ended up having a Green Dragon as a pet.
Everything was really cool with such a killing machine by my side, until
my dragon poisoned an enemy, and ate the poisoned corpse afterwards.
Green dragons do have poison resistance, but the last wrack of the
poison did kill my poor friend.

> ... Let hostile enemies attack you first THEN YOU CAN ATTACK...

Not exactly. You don't loose piety, as long as your target is hostile
towards you. If so, you also can do first strike.

> If you can't find a hostile enemy, simply get anything to throw to
> the ceiling and hurt yourself then heal just to kill several turns.
> That way you're more likely to encounter hostile enemies.

How comes you more likely encounter hostile enemies if you do that?

[nobbyno...@gmail.com]

I just got an ascension with most of my levels as Pax. I didn't startscum, and I was pretty unlucky on artifacts. (the only artifact I had until Quizar's level was a longsword with strangulation on it...) So it's not like it depends on good fortune. It took me a lot of tries to get it, but my deaths were pretty much always my own fault.

If you go barbarian/fighter, you have to get pretty lucky with equipment. A wizard just needs to be careful and clever. IMO a Pax follower is basically a wizard who uses a familiar to get through the difficult early levels. At least until you've got some killer spells, a wizard's uniform, and the all-important Endure Hunger. Oh yeah, and the HP is nice.

Then the familiar suddenly finds itself ordered to attack a cockatrice... and soon finds itself a statue tucked safely in its wizard friend's pocket for the rest of the game...

Knock, Force Wall, Acid Pool, Sticky Flames, Living Frost, Poison Bolt (if you abandon Pax), Disintegrate. These are all very, very powerful and require no special gear - just worship Belweir if you don't get the books you need. Getting lucky on things like artifacts, rings, etc just means that you get to start abusing the really overpowered stuff sooner, like Chain Lightning, Sunfire, Blizzard, Corrosive Explosion...

(the rest of this is about my ascension. TL;DR: see screenshot at bottom)

So on the H'ruth level I was in the forest with the two kobold assassins. I closed the door and used Force Wall, which did a bunch of damage by itself, but it also shattered the entire forest into arrows. Killing two assassins instantly for a mere 10 mana? Nice. I gathered up all the arrows, as Corrosive Explosion fuel.

I get to the bottom floor, and Baelzabub is RIGHT in my face. Big open area. Not only that, but there were several iron golems, fire elementals, even a soul sucker (yikes!). So of course I went right back up the ladder, hahaha

Then I thought EFF THAT. Equipped acid resist, zapped myself with a speed wand, and went back down. I dropped all my arrows... about 200 of them, and cast Corrosive Explosion. Just 20 mana.

I had only detonated it on two or three items at a time before. I was not expecting it to, oh, INSTANTLY WIPE OUT EVERY MONSTER ON THE ENTIRE FLOOR.

See for yourself:

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/6070/powergoboom.jpg

If only we could see the look on that lone surviving acid dragon's face.

[sulai]

This is just epic! Thanks for sharing the story!

[Jeff Lait]

On Monday, November 5, 2012 2:55:43 AM UTC-5, nobbyno...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Then I thought EFF THAT. Equipped acid resist, zapped myself with a
> speed wand, and went back down. I dropped all my arrows... about 200
> of them, and cast Corrosive Explosion. Just 20 mana.
>
> I had only detonated it on two or three items at a time before. I
> was not expecting it to, oh, INSTANTLY WIPE OUT EVERY MONSTER ON
> THE ENTIRE FLOOR.

Yes, that is why I really, really, love Corrosive Explosion :>

Of course, one time I had planned just such a mega explosion.
I teleported into a mob of hill orcs. I dropped a huge pile of
stuff on the ground. Then one of the hill orcs threw a blindness
potion at me.

Did you know you can't target corrosive explosion if you can't
see the target? Yes. Stuck in a cloud of hill orcs wearing wizard
armour and having just lost the 20MP I meant for the explosion,
I swiftly died of shame.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)