We're back! I still haven't drawn Irimë II, though I still intend to, but I have a new character in the dungeon right now. As a reminder, the current criteria for getting a portrait and ending the line is to reach Dungeon Level 40 or Character Level 35.
Elwing I
... is on DL40 right now.
As discussed above, she's a Half-Elven Priest. That means she has a boosted Wisdom stat (used for spellcasting), and... very little else, she's a very middle-of-the-road character.
Priests are spellcasters. Technically her spells are prayers, but it amounts to the same thing. Elwing has three spellbooks now: one for basic utility spells (Detect Evil is the only one I use any more), one she found in the dungeon for bigger utility spells (Word of Recall to return to town, and Remembrance for restoring any stolen XP), and one of basic battle spells. She's got three effective combat spells: Dispel Evil, which hits all evil creatures she can see; Dispel Undead, a cheaper variant only for the undead; and Orb of Draining, which costs a third as much and does about twice the damage to clustered targets.
As a Priest, she also can't use edged weapons. Or rather, she can - but just holding them pushes all her spell failure rates up to 50%. The last time she intentionally hit something was 30 levels ago, so yeah, she's casting a
lot of Orbs of Draining.
Elwing has had good luck with the unique artefacts - she's wearing six right now, which along with her other gear gets her general resistance coverage (including Poison!), decent boosts to her key stats, and... basically she's doing okay.
Until she meets something nasty. The current level spawned the Balrog of Moria (native to DL50) just outside her staircase in. She used her wand of Teleport Other to blip it away, but just ran into it again. It breathed a single jet of flame which took her from 373 health to 40, despite her resistance to Fire. Yeah, she teleported right out of that battle.
Elwing is fragile, and if she's not careful she'll run into a Death Drake or something and die in one hit.
But that's for the future. For now, we've got treasure to find and monsters to kill.
hS