Elpuri bites the dust
Finally, I emerge as a victor! Elpuri, the foul image of evil is slain and the phoenix feather limbed John Holmes is the celebrated hero of the day. I was rather fearful of my encounter with the beast after reading countless descriptions of great heroes falling before it. It seems to me that the trick is that there is no trick. After cleaning the zombie level I descended to the mysterious dark frog level. Conviniently, the mean frogs lair happened to be right next to stairs. I killed it with ease and quickly descended to Ivan's level without even searching the rest of the level. Ivan was right next to me, so I grabbed him and the bunny to accompany me and my loyal elite guard. I descended to Elpuri's level and my ESP revealed he was somewhat next to me. A mystical dark frog teleported me, but a blink dog had given me telecontrol. I teleported right next to Elpuri and squashed the mystical dark frog. After that, I just whacked Elpuri. No wands, no pets, no tricks. Just pure dual adamantine bastard sword +2 action. Elpuri fell surprisingly fast. He did get a few nasty attacks at me which destroyed all my healing potions even when they were in a box. Also, my wand of door creation was destroyed by his last attack. Nevertheless, he died. I took his head and teleported out. I tried to drag Ivan and the rest with me, but it took too long. I was somewhat low on HP with my ground being all greyed out and stuff. I figured they'll make their own way out and tactically retreated to the surface. I strolled to Attnam and I was hailed as a hero. Too bad that I only found Rondol and Xinroch of the uniques. Then again, I guess its better than having Sherarax whip my head off, which by the way happened to my last promising character. I also did liberate New Attnam. My gods were Loricatus, Silva and Mellis. What a bunch of nice fellows they were.

Now try it with no fake limbs. I personally only got to the ENNER BEAST once, but that just shows how awful I am at Roguelikes.... Then again I never have used fake limbs myself...

Woot! The first time is always the best!

It's strange that you did not meet other uniques, you were strong enough to handle them. If I am strong enough (PF limbs and a good helmet like +5 brilliance), I love meeting ZQ-29, for its wand of cloning and spider silk armor. And the last game when my limbs were all PF I dumped Silva and started worshipping Cleptia (I think I could worship both, but wanted to play safe, and Silva is no longer beneficial), throwing whips of thievery at all humanoid uniques (except Ischaldirh (wizard) and Petrus (protected) and Oree (no weapon); very good against Sherarax), they are no problem and give great equipment. EDIT: whips of thievery do not help against some humanoids

Come to think of it, I don't believe the game would be any harder without any artificial limbs. Just transform 4 boxes to icky icky ommel goo, and you'll have your stats raised to artificial limb strengths and agilities. The only downside of that compared to real artificial limbs is that you might end up with less hit points and more easily damageable limbs. And as a side note, I really liked my super-long beard. Much bigger than that of Petrus. Well, before my attack against Elpuri I did take a backup save for the purpose of testing how I would have fared against the uniques if I had died. After I won the game, I did some testing with the said backup save. And to my surprise, Ur-Khan, Spider Silk Golem and Sherarax were spawned normally. It seems that I avoided them in the real game by moving through the levels really fast. I did not explore GC 7, GC 8 or GC 9 (Elpuri) at all. I just blazed for the stairs on every level. So who knows, perhaps some of the uniques did spawn but I just didn't meet them. On the testsave none of the uniques were hard. Except Sherarax who killed me with one hit.

Dual vermis mets elprui
I nailed the bastard with melee tactics (no wands or explosions) with Vermis +7 and Vermis +8, and no pets. I'd get 1 or two hits in and he would get teleported away, as he would come towards me I throw my two phoenix feather whips of thievery +8 at him and then my adamantine Turox +5 (which missed half the time). All natural limbs, AS 25 (20 and phoenix feather gloves of strength +5) Dex 32, End 22, arcanite platemail, Helmet of Piercing Perception +5, Belt of levitation +5, Phoenix feather boots of strength +5 (LS 20 total) 26 Int and 21 Wis, 18 AGI. I also wore two rings of teleport to help me move around a lot, and drank a few cans of healing left over from Mr. Enner. I didn't even haste myself, all my wands except two tele's were on GC8 (along with IVAN and VLAD and and Archangel of Seges). I just went down to Elpuri's level to clear out the smaller baddies by myself so that I would get the kill credits and was going to go back up for my posse but I never really got hurt when Elpuri came at me because my twin Vermis's kept sending him on a sudden journey. I had no problems getting back up to Attnam because I had already killed Rondol, Gugzamesh, Xinroch, Urquan, and Golgor Dhan - actually my archangel killed golgor dhan :) I think I wasn't dangerous enough to generate Sherarax.

Was the second Vermis mirrored? Or did you just get lucky like that?

No I found two Vermis, I also had Mjolak and Sa'al thul but didn't use them. Every game I play I usually find Vermis and Turox and Mjolak if I live long enough, and if I don't find Turox and Vermis I will wish for them.

I mostly find Turox, or sometimes Vermis. haven't even seen saal' thul before, but I probably don't need it, since I find wands of invisibility very easy to get.

Weird. There must be more chances to get turox or vermis because that's the 2 i usually get too. Also very rarely had saal'thul.

Vermis loves me!
I once found 5 Vermis in a single game. Only one in a store, and only 1 broken! Twin-fisting Vermis is pretty nasty. Double the pleasure!

5 Vermis in one game :!: :?: You shoulda posted that in the crazy finds thread. (That reminds me, I once found three mithril spears in UT. I found one on UT 1, and came across a chest in UT 2 that held the other two, one broken)

the mods should let there be only one of each artifact per game, or else people can become VERY overpowered with a Mjolak in each hand. off topic: blob, you've turned into a cave bear!

omg *ROAR* Oh noes ! Now ischalrdisch 's gonna spawn :U *runs*

off topic: blob, you've turned into a cave bear! A blobby cave bear? :P omg *ROAR* Oh noes ! Now ischalrdisch 's gonna spawn :U *runs* *meets evil copy of himself* (Hey, we could do a story on this. The mighty cave bear blob!)