[Broco]

Yeah Skeleton Archmages are a very common cause of death. As far as possible you should never ever allow them to use their staff on you. That means having the Echo Shield property ideally, or always using insta-death items on them as soon as they are in range. Your mistake was to wake the Archmage by regular attacking him (buy-timed enemies are paralyzed not slumbered, and so they never wake on their own); you should have either used your Buy-Time staff on a Death first so that buy-timed Archmages would not appear right on the exit, or used a Swap Staff or Slumber Scroll or something at the exit to not allow it to have any turns where it could hit you.

Starting at floor 26 of the regular dungeon it is best to not kill anything (as far as that is possible) and just rush for the exit. The final boss is fairly trivial to kill using one of any number of cheap tricks, so you don't need to have leveled.


Anyway, some of my funny deaths:

- Wanted to sell an item to the shop, by bad habit I threw it instead of dropping it. Unfortunately I was facing the shopkeeper.
- Hit a summon-monster trap on Floor 4, surrounding me with 5 haboons. No scrolls.
- Killed by O-Ryu after using a confuse scroll.
- Killed by leveled-up Master Chicken (i.e. Great Chicken) after using a decoy staff on him (same behavior as Confuse scroll, except permanent). I was standing 2 steps away from him and had full health, however I didn't account for the fact that he has double speed and hits for 200 damage.
- Ate Flame Priest 2 meat to become a Flame Priest 2. When I confronted an Old Man Tank, his explosion damage caused three unfriendly Flame Priest 2s to come out of me (one on the first attack, two the second time since we were two Flame Priests 2).
- Attempted to use Bufoo staff on Guard Dog (unfortunately there is no such thing as Guard Dog meat).
- Fell into Pit Trap while desperately running away from something; killed instantly by the 5 or so damage.
- A Super Gaze first made me eat a Poison Herb, slowing me down and giving it two chances to hypnotize me every turn. Then it made me, among other things, unequip my shield, eat my Revival Herb and then eat a Rotten Rice Ball (slumbering me).


A Lesson is Learned...!

[Broco]

[Broco]

Oh, and I just played my first game of Shiren DS! I died on Floor 25 of starvation. It may just have been the luck of the run, but I think Shiren DS gives you very few rice balls in the upper floors. It gave me tons of them on the earlier floors, so many that I was reckless with them (I gave a holding pot containing 5 of them to Gaibara for him to destroy it... really should've emptied it out first. I had 4 more so I thought I was fine...)

Actually I was short on everything and struggling for all of Table Mountain. I had lost lots of items to Monster Nigiri Beasts earlier -- they kept turning up on floors where I didn't expect them, due to the change of version. Then, in the upper floors, it was my unwillingness to wipe out Spinning Polygons with insta-kill items that led to them sucking out my satiation and leading me to starvation. So... Monster Nigiri Beasts led to my dying of hunger!