Addicted to Lodoss

"Did I mention Lodoss was brilliant?

Good session today, took on the Giant Zombie King. Rooms full of headless walkers swarming around me, my two-handed Falks blade not making much progress into their hp. Chugged down half of my green fluid keeping me alive whilst downing a medium ogre guard with a combination of slashing at entrance of door and setting bonfires in corridor. Anyway, a swift re-animate to bring his lifeless corpse back under my persuasion. And I'm using him as an ogre-shield whilst he pounds the headless fodder with his pike. I still need to slash at their tails because there smackdown attack makes even this ogre fall flat on his arse at times. Using this heal and shield technique I clear the two main headless rooms.

We head off (pun intended) into the main Zombie King room. Now this is where my ogre friend meets his fellow ogres. He has a tough time. I cannot get deep enough into the room to help with slashing - without losing most of my hp and landing on my arse. We put up a brave fight, but I simply haven't got enough juice to keep him healed. Out pops three large ogres with mallets as big as me. Slamming them onto the ground causes visible shock waves that renders anyone close by useless (and on their arse!). My ogre bud is history. And I am followed into the corridor mallets smashing at my heels. I last only a moment longer to hear to whistle of the air expire from my lungs as the mallet crushes my chest. I tried varying tactics, my main goal was to get one of these mallet wielding maniacs under my spell. But my juice was loose. And the pounding was too much for any mob I could animate. Four attempts. Four crushings.

I went back to my smithy, to discuss the problem. He reminded me of a rune I'd got early on, that I'd not taken much notice in. Holy Photon I believe it is called. Seems its got a range attack, one that is good on undead and demons. So I spend a little mithril and my oriental gets a new engraving. This is my pride and joy very expensive oriental sword that has high chance of a critical hit! The range attack allows me to charge the sword, and direct a beam of light-based missile shards towards an enemy. So pulsing these things down the corridors is ideal. Flash a few, animate an ogre. Now he pounds em at the door, I'm at the back firing light-beams - and they are doing considerable damage, not only that but they also heal any animated mobs that they pass through! And I'm not using any magic points for this! It was precarious at first to get the aiming right, but this proved a valuable tactic for taking those ogres and zombies in the final room. In fact, it worked so good that I managed to re-animate a mallet pounding ogre! He was still taking a hell of a beating. My juice was still in short supply - but by carefully positioning myself behind the pounders, my mallet ogre took all the flak, and in fact was doing NO damage himself (he was on his arse all the time). I could burst my light through them doing about 600 dmg at a time, whilst healing my ogre with 200 hp. It took what seemed like an eternity to dispatch them this way - but the tactic paid off in the end.

After all this needless banter, it was to just highlight how involved and surprising some of the tactics can be. With the weapon/armour tweaks and the various attack and defence spells, not to mention the clever use of a re-animated patsy, this seemingly tedious diablo-hack-and-slash-clone hasn't ceased to amaze me. I'm level 20 with 12 hours on the clock. I've seen my first dragon, although I'm in no shape to take any on.

Did I mention Lodoss is a cracking game?"