The best offense is a good defense.
I was walking through the wilderness from one town to the next, so I could hopefully drop off my latest cool weapon from the deep (a Holy Avenger). I was running along and was stopped by a Hill Giant. No problem. Whack him with a couple Mana Bursts, and down he went. He dropped some coin, so I was headed over to pick it up, when a Cloud Giant started coming for me.
Hmmm. OK. This is a bit tougher. Took that one out, still going for the coin…
Storm Giant. Storm Giants are about 10x tougher than Hill Giants, by the way. As he was closing in and I was starting to run low on mana from the 3rd fight in a row, I decided to try something…
Sleep Monster.
“The Storm Giant falls asleep!”
w00t.
Rest up, get “far enough” away, then take him out. So I rested. No problem. Killed him, no problem. Went to pick up the loot, and 6 more bad guys show up; 3 Storm Giants, 2 Cloud Giants, and a Cave Ogre. Wow. OK. That’s a lot.
Ok, so I had all my mana left, so I slept one, waited for the next to line up, slept him, too, lather, rinse, repeat, and before you know it, I have 6 guys all lined up sleeping peacefully and I rested up and got mana back.
Picking these guys off one by one, I woke up the first Storm Giant, only to find 3 more giants/ogres (I think it was a Black Ogre, a Hill Giant, and another Storm Giant) coming after me. One of the Storm Giants helpfully cast a lightning ball at me that woke up one of my sleepers. So now I have 5 guys after me, plus 4 more sleeping, and I’m starting to get low on mana again. I play some games with Phase Door, but I’m not really getting far enough away to help, and I end up Teleporting out. I rest and head back towards the fray, kill off a couple of straggler Hill Giants, pick up a little loot, and then have about 5 more Storm Giants coming after me. I slept who I could and had to teleport out again. This time, I couldn’t find the giants’ den again, wandered around for the rest of the afternoon looking. sigh.
When it got dark, I decided I didn’t want to run into a pack of angry giants at night, so I went to the nearest dungeon, where I ran into some unique Numenorian or another, tested out my “Teleport Away” spell on him; that gave me the breathing room I needed.
Went wandering around, trying not to run into the unique again, and found a roomful of Wargs. I was doing OK taking them out until someone walked in and cast Darkness. I did not want 10 wolves and a spellcaster to deal with, so I threw my Magic Statue of an Abyss Worm Mass down, and all of a sudden I had a *lot* of pets! Unfortunately, my pets did not appreciate my trying to turn the lights back on in the room (Flash of Light does damage to worm masses), and a couple turned on me. I got out of the room, went down the hall to rest, and
“you hear a grinding noise. -more-” a lot, and by the time I’d rested, I had about 10 worm masses who’d eaten their way through the dungeon to hang out with me, with some helpful wolves and the damn unique following their tunnels. I teleported again, cleared another room halfway across the dungeon, but I just couldn’t sleep with all the grinding noises, so I recalled out.
On the way back to town, a T-Rex started chasing me. They have a boatload of HP and I didn’t feel like dealing with it, so I just teleported away.
Sleeping Giants, worm mass pets, and angry dinosaurs stomping around. I’d forgotten all about sleep-and-teleport. I love this game.
I shudder to think what would have happened if I threw down the worm masses somewhere in the wilderness…