cathbald

PFCB zone order guide of sorts
It's impossible to have a general, concrete order for every character since it mostly depends on which guarenteed items you want from
bosses/quests and to a lesser extent what resists and other items dropped, generally the order posted here is optimal though.
Note that most of my experience comes from playing demigods (>250% xp penalty) and sexy personality (constant aggravate) so you may be much higher level
even if the general order is the same, and have less difficulty with quests where monsters start sleeping.

Dungeons:
All dungeons give 1 stat potion worth of stat-ups so it's worth doing quick and easy dungeons just for that. I'll note any quests that occur, common
monster types and level generation .

Warrens
When: 1st dungeon
Where: Outpost
What: Mughash the Kobold Lord (easy fight for everyone, throw booze at him from trouble at home
 and his large kobolds if you can't just whack them), Potion of Speed.
Pest Control quest on floor 5.
Notes: Breeders might get annoying, but you can just walk away. There's almost nothing threatening to anyone in the normal spawns, even on nightmare mode.
Be careful to fight the wargs one by one, they're a nasty speed bump but will get you close to level 10 with how much XP they give.

Hideout:
When: 2nd dungeon
Where: Outpost
What: Meng Hugo and {ego} amulet, Southering bosses.
Notes: The first floor can generate the 4 earlygame DROP_EXCELLENT uniques, so scumming it from Outpost can prove useful. Meng Huo's escort is slightly dangerous
if it has illusionists/other enemies with paralyse and berserkers, but he falls to confusion as well and there's plenty of corridors to fight him.
Beware his summons, you don't want to get dropped in melee range of the variant maintainer or Untamo the Cruel this early.
The normal "southering" uniques only spawn here and they're all weak to confuse. The fast red p and the one that summons spiders are generally out of
the capability of a normal character without it though.

Angband:
When: Whenever
Where: NE of Morivant
What: Everything. Level Guardians every ~8 floors and Demon Slayer on 72.
Notes: Angband is Angband, it's that simple. The main feature is the level guardian quests, of which there are 11. They come every few levels,
the uniques selected for them never spawn outside of their level, drop extra ego+ items most of the time and you can leave the quests if one is too tough.
If you're not looking for anything in particular, it's a good bet to go down to the next level guardian in Angband.
Using the Trump Tower to recall to floor 98 to read ?Acquirement is a high-level, risky strategy but it can pay off if your stealth's good or you have
a reasonable amount of destruction and genocide sources.
Demon Slayer quest is on floor 72 and there is no real reason to do it unless you want to complete all quests, killing 10 pit fiends will
irritate the strongest of characters, chaos breath will destroy any loot they drop and the quest reward is questionably useful.
Morgoth only spawns on level 100 of here, and Zombie J only spawns on level 127.


Icky Cave:
When: Level ~15
Where: Thalos
What: Mushrooms quest on floor 10, Icky Queen and Quiver of Protection [120].
Notes: Enable easy_thalos if you're in FCB or roll the water Russian Roulette.
Mushroom quest is quick and easy, detect and kill them out of LoS with a stinking cloud wand -
not much of note spawns on floor 10, so you can do it right after Warrens on some mages for a big power boost from the wizardry ring.
Spawns are mostly generic, Icky Queen on 20 is confusable but her rBase and acid aura punish most methods of actually killing her.
Pick up a bow and shoot if you don't want your equipment degraded.

Tidal Cave:
When: Level ~20
Where: Straight S of Morivant, in shallow water.
What: Grendel and !Giant Strength
Notes: Boring dungeon, there's more undead and aquaticish monsters I think. The swamp outside it is higher level and can have fast hydras, approach with care.
Grendel comes with ogre mages that can summon so shoot/confuse and lure them away to fight one by one. He's confusable as well, but melee characters
should note that he's the first enemy most will meet that retaliates, meaning that he can essentially double the amount of hits he gets on you per turn
if you attack him (not while confused). If you don't mind being crushed by earthquakes, letting Grendel get summoned in the final fight will
stop anything more dangerous from coming out.

Labyrinth:
When: Level ~20
Where: Westmost dungeon on the main continent.
What: Minotaur of the Labyrinth and Rod of Recall
Notes: The Minotaur is incredibly weak for his depth, though he's faster than +0 hasted.
While there's maprot, detection and enlightenment staves both work for a turn or easy_labyrinth disables it.
This is where midgame staples like dark elven warlocks, ologs and high element breathers start to come in.
Don't slack on detecting monsters from here on and seeing if you can handle them
 unless dying to a pit of 77 skull drujs or 40 star blades sounds good to you.
Everyone wants a rod of recall but the black market might stock one before you even reach here.

----- MIDGAME ------
Orc Caves:
When: Level ~25
Where: Southish of Anambar, next to some mountains.
What: Othrod and a Ring of Combat. Troll Slayer quest on 30.
Notes: This dungeon generates levels that are far too big to bother with in my opinion. Obviously orcs giants and trolls make up a majority of the
monster population, and some walls are undiggable. Most melee characters will want a ring of combat, but Othrod is the first dungeon guardian
that could pose a threat to your character. His summons will almost always land on unique orcs with entire posses with them and the top tier unique orcs
aren't even confusable. Orc diggers also blow through antisummoning corridors so unless you find a perfect naturally formed set of permawalls the
best way to fight him is in an enclosed space with a staff of confuse monsters ready to stop orc warlocks and warlords and a wand of teleport other
for the unconfusable unique orcs.

Troll Slayer is mostly an annoyance to find the ologs. They're vulnerable to everything and won't kill you with boulders alone,
but unless your burst damage is strong for the level or you confuse them they'll go through potions like a hot knife through butter.

Zul:
When: Level ~25
Where: Highest point north, far east. Surrounded by mountains.
What: DSM and Dragon aux armor shop in the 2, stat potions and speed potions in the 5, healing potions in the 4, good jewellery shop.
Notes: Not a dungeon but the approach is worth mentioning. Go from Angwil and expect not to be able to fight anything, have at least rBase and some cure
poison mushrooms. If you get ambushed in the mountains, it's likely to be ancient dragons or worse; bird uniques and Midnight Dragon are quite frequent
with titans being less so. Haste up immediately to reduce likelihood of being one shotted and teleport yourself or them until you can leave, ASAP.
Spawns are less dangerous in Zul but ancient dragons are still possible, treat it with the same care.
You can't teleport to here until you finish the Eddies quest from the middle +. In compos, you don't ever get to.

Camelot:
When: Level ~28
Where: SW of Outpost if you cross a river, or S from Labyrinth. The most southwestern dungeon on the map.
What: Arthur Pendragon and Mirror Shield, Knights of the Round Table, assorted extra uniques.
Notes: Mostly normal generation, with a chance for Camelot Knights. The normal ones are extremely beefy for their depth and very common - if you can't
fight two of them at once I would go elsewhere. All the uniques here have blind, confusion and fear riders on their attacks so bring !heroism and
finish Barrow Downs for Cf and Shadow Fairies for Bl. Arthur is one of the easier ones and going straight for him is advised  since a few other
knights throw mana bolts for very heavy damage at this point. Teleport Away is your friend against all of these as none are resistant and
most will follow your own teleportation if you try. Don't fight Morgana or Mordred unless you're certain you'll win and don't fight the
Questing Beast without resistance to its breaths both for the damage and dangerous side effects, but the knights are an excellent early
source of artifacts and sticking around to kill them is usually wise.

Witch Wood:
When: Level ~30
Where: SE of Morivant in the forested area.
What: Gertrude and her sisters with the 3rd book of your primary realm, or of realms you can cast.
Notes: Only mages need apply, really. This is a large dungeon with open space perfect for the pack monsters like fiendish donkeys
and gravity hounds that generate here to shoot at you with and the trees don't much help. Gertrude on the final floor is much
easier for mages since melees need NxDi to melee her without being teleported, stat swapped or unhasted. (no disenchantment aura in composband)
If you're doing it early enough that you haven't found your 3rd book elsewhere, she's likely to summon her other unique sisters which only appear in Witchwood.
This dungeon is best done after Camelot since each of the sisters has a strong bolt spell and middling offense otherwise.
When they're summoned, Gertrude recasting the summon will teleport them back to her so teleport yourself and kill Aude when she follows, then
it's your choice of which of Helga and her to fight after since you can just teleport Helga any time she gets summoned.
Be aware that Aude can paralyse you on the turn she's summoned if you only have one free action source.


Lonely Mountain:
When: Level ~30-32
Where: SE of Outpost. Need Levitation to reach, but you can recall in normally after.
What: Smaug and Arkenstone of Thrain.
Notes: Generates fairly large levels and of course many dragons. They're all loot pinatas, especially ancient dragons which mostly breathe
common elements but beware balance and chaos drakes and such which don't and it's plausible you have a resist uncovered at this point.
Also, be careful on how many healing potions you use on big dragons since they're hard to replace this early into frog.
Smaug is a bigger ancient red with reflection, he'll probably two shot you so don't go in with low speed or less than 2 fire pips.
Every single character unless freak accidents occur wants the Arkenstone, it's usually better than your current lite unless the Feanorian quest
generated a great one, but more importantly it's clairvoyance on a stick many levels before a real clairvoyance source is found so it'll get
put into the inventory and swapped in to use on quests and important levels anyway.

Giants' Hall
When: Level ~34
Where: NE of Morivant but SE of Angband, need levitation
What: Utgard Loke and Paurnimmen, Giant Slayer quest
Notes: All permawalls and sparse level generation. Common uniques worth caring about that show up include Gazhak, Baba Yaga and Botei-Building.
Utgard is basically a greater titan with max damage frost breath and his drop sucks, so if you're uncertain you can kill him he can easily be saved for later.
He loves summoning Yibb-Tstll which can breathe 500 damage chaos on you even though he's immobile, and even though it looks like you can confuse
Utgard he shakes it off in 1-2 turns instead of it lasting so it's not worth the time to apply it unless you can do it with damaging chaos or confuse
attacks. Giant Slayer is mostly free loot with confusion, but titans hit hard and summon without it and the awkward angles make the staff hard to line up.
Come in prepared with AC and Sh.
Around this point dungeons start having entrance guardians. Unless they're mentioned specifically, it tends to be an unremarkable monster of the earliest
depth the dungeon goes to but stick to the level recommendations more closesly unless you want to get one shot by the ethereal dragon outside Crystal Castle.

Chameleon Cave:
When: Level ~33-35
Where: SE of Telmora
What: Chameleons, Chameleon Lord and ?Polymorph
Notes: No uniques spawn here, so it's bad unless you want to grind levels on Nightmare! mode (long story). e/n: It actually isn't, i wrote that
before winning nightmare.
Chameleons often turn into monsters >5 floors out of depth so take note. Chameleon Lord exclusively mimics uniques and can
become nasty ones like Garm or Jack of Shadows and also comes with a huge group of chameleons. Genocide R if you can, or try and split the group.
?polymorph is a gamble but most characters can use good mutations. Just don't use it before new lifing to a reasonable LR or it's a waste.

Crystal Castle:
When: Level ~40
Where: SE of Anambar
What: Crystal Quest, Diamond Dragon and Diamond Edge
Notes: Ethereal Dragon is the guardian and can be very very nasty due to being in a huge open field with no cover.
Enemies generate exclusively from "has rShards", "has a light radius" and "has a darkness radius" resulting in a very dangerous monster list
full of humanoids, several dragons and some undead.
All walls are see through glass but more importantly, all walls and the floor itself explode on being targetted by shards attacks.
This is absolutely devastating to your potions since you'll take multiple instances of damage from shards breaths but it also
makes the Diamond Dragon the single strongest enemy in terms of burst damage (it is capable of doing almost 800) and the great crystal drakes in the
quest much more dangerous than usual. Destructed terrain doesn't explode like glass though so with proper preparation this is just elementary.
Diamond Edge has some of the best base damage in the game and natural |S, so it's a great candidate for a ?crafting or a reforge.
I think ?crafting yields better results overall for them, on that note.

Eyrie:
When: Level ~33
Where: SW of Telmora (need levitation)
What: Thorondor and Potion of New Life
Notes: Some fairly dangerous monsters spawn, but it's just 5 floors and the boss is easy (confuse his buddies and just whale on him if you have a source of chaos
damage - normal confusion doesn't work on bird uniques very well)
If your life rating and stat caps are apalling you want to rush this. It's the easiest new life available since arena iron lich can breathe hard and will
likely outlast you, and the one in the wanted list is obviously very random.

Volcano:
When: Level ~35
Where: SW of Outpost in lava
What: Shooting Star and Mana Storm Staff
Notes: Need levitation to access it more or less but it can be done without. The lesser balrog guarding the dungeon takes some effort to kill though
and deep lava does a ton without Lv so it's not feasible.
Monsters are either fire immune or flying or can walk on lava tiles.
Shooting Star sucks, he's a slightly buffed great hell wyrm just whack him and take his 9d2 good items.
Manastorm staff needs a ton of device skill to use but can chip off more health than most casters can do at this point at range so it's okay to have
but not essential, and the fact that it destroys all items and can only be used near melee range makes it awkward.



Castle:
When: Level ~36
Where: NE of Telmora
What: Layzark, Scroll of Acquirement
Notes: Bog standard dungeon. I think demons and humanoids are more common? It goes down 25 levels, so it's probably worth skipping with the Trump Tower.
Layzark is 20 speed and can hit very hard with darkness storm as well as summoning, healing and hasting herself frequently but doesn't drop
anything worthwhile so it's fine to ignore this place unless you really need the XP or want to kill her before J. She has 100 tile vision and
teleport immunity so you really should.


Graveyard:
When: Level ~38
Where: NE of Angwil
What: Vecna and Soulsword.
Notes: All shafts, almost all undead. Lots of dark pits that need levitation to cross dispersed around; otherwise normalish levels.
Too many notable undead uniques and normal monsters to count, but Tselakus summons amberites all the vampire uniques summon each other Dio stops time
bone golems are assholes and i will end most runs with 0 killed max damage nether breathers become very common here always kill all Nazgul for cloak drops
and archliches are one of the first normal enemies that frequently dispel and mana storm + they wallwalk.
I think that covers everything. Vecna comes with a huge posse of archliches, black reavers and lesser Ls which is simply unfightable. It's unlikely that
you'll have a renewable source of genocide so use a staff of destruction to delete as many as possible. They have the same aggro range and similar
speed to Vecna so it's difficult to lure them to fight 1v1 and you definitely don't want to fight more at a time.
To an extent you can abuse the fact that black reavers disregard walls, vecna doesn't and archliches are slower to seperate them
but I would just destruct until it doesn't kill the yellow L for safety purposes.
Soulsword is a weapon of choice for most people who don't want to hit everything with weapons since it has Lf and great resistances and he also has
a 5% chance of dropping an endgame worthy crown since he's a raceboss.

Dragon's Lair:
When: Level ~40
Where: S of Angwil
What: Tiamat and a MHDSM, Dragon Slayer.
Notes: Similar generation to Graveyard. Obviously, lots of dragons here going up to great wyrms. Entrance guardian is an Ancient Multihued which is usually
worth killing early for the good items and the XP. If you can't take one max damage breath of every element, maybe even two, don't come here and the
Doom Quest 2 _Healing is advised since fights can drag on, especially in the quest for 10 multihued wyrms. Speaking of which, come in prepared with
teleport other wands to send wyrms of law and chaos away, potions of resistance, several superfluous potions of healing just in case and cure poison mushrooms.
WoMC quest is very difficult but completely worth it since the reward is an artifact dragon shield and their drops.
Tiamat comes with a huge band of dragons which you can feasibly lure one by one since they mostly don't summon friends. You can even kill them and
reenter the level without killing her to generate another set. Tiamat herself is fairly simple, she won't get in an ASC but you can move toward her
and only leave one tile open to be summoned on and just teleport the dragon that gets summoned away unless it's immune then you teleport her.


-----------Endgame/Postgame--------------

Mine:
When: Level ~33 to safely acquire....40-42 to have a shot at Polyphemus
Where: Island W of Angwil
What: Elder Storm Giant, Polyphemus and Potion of *Healing*
Notes: This is the second deepest spot that is
reasonable to use scrolls of acquirement in, the other being Angband 98 but this is much more predictable since you can leave without recall.
However you need to cross the ocean without being ambushed and kill the ESG which can deal 350 in one turn easily and sometimes double turn you
with the one turn slow from Storm Winds. Usual methods of avoiding fights don't work but you might be able to brute force it or find something to kill it with.
The actual dungeon generates the smallest levels possible, so teleport other is inefficient and you're likely to get swarmed.
This makes it fairly strong for grinding uniques since one detection will find them all and they can't teleport very far.
Polyphemus is extremely tough for his depth and even Ac3So2Sh2 can't stop you from getting items destroyed, not to mention how hard his melee hits.
What's most dangerous about him though is that he summons kin and there are many giant uniques tougher and impossible to teleport away at this depth,
that also summon kin to rub salt into the wound. He's still doable if you make liberal use of _Destruction to remove the other giants and slowly
chip away at him since he doesn't regenerate fast and you need to do it because he's J summonable and while his guarenteed drop is bad he drops 4d2 exceptional
items to go with it. If you have a renewable source of Chaos damage that can chain confuse Poly and remove most of his actions.

Dark Cave:
When: Don't, 40+ if you absolutely must
Where: SW of Zul
What: Bullshit, Null and 4th realm book
Notes: If you're not a ninja or rogue or wearing All Seeing Eye you're more or less blind to the monsters here. If you aren't one of those or can't cast
Stair Creation don't even bother entering - it's too late to get killed by a bunch of cyberdemons from out of sight. Maybe normal characters can use
rods of Getaway to create stairs to use, or you could trump tower to the bottom and flail blindly until you find Null hiding in a wall.
His aggro radius is small so you'll have to search. It's simply not worth your time since even if J summons him he sucks and you can kill him then instead,
or teleport him away.

Arena:
When: Whenever 35+..... see below
Where: W of Zul
What: 1v1 chambers, Metal Babble and Artifact Creation
Notes: Drolem guards the entrance, which is a joke for anyone that can use mushrooms of cure poison.
You can kind of enter wherever, but it spans 30 levels and Babble requires a specific setup at around 40. If you want to fight strong monsters and
don't care that the levels are massive so tracking teleporting is a pain and that no items spawn on the floor, you can come here any time.
For Babble you equip poison needle and dimension door to him until he dies. If you can't dimension door walk to him with fleet of foot demigod mutation
or phase door scroll with astral guide mutation. If you're not a demigod wallow in pain until you get a hit on.
Don't bother fighting it without Fi2, Ca2, Rf and several healing staves, the fight goes on until the babble chooses to die so you can't afford item losses.
If you have a lot of Forest Creation and a source of ~Nolv, you can stack two sets of trees on each other, stand on the furthest set, and wait for him to come to you then hit him with the needle.
Since he's technically trivial to kill even though the fight is bullshit, you can go fight him whenever you want the huge chunk of XP and exceptional
items he drops, though the artifact creation scroll is much more valuable when you have an endgame DSM or diamond edge or dragon item to use it on.

Numenor:
When: ~42
Where: Middle of the water, closest to Thalos
What: Awful generation method, Jormundgand and Spear of Wrath
Notes: Spear of Wrath is a reasonable endgame weapon, Jormundgand is a chump but bring So2 or you'll lose a lot of potions to whirlpool.
The levels are generated with huge open spaces and small "islands" with features on them. All the monsters here can cross water or fly and
there's no terrain whatsoever to help outside of those islands so just skip to the bottom with the trump tower.

Rl'yeh:
When: ~45
Where: W of Zul in the water
What: Cthulhu and Razorback
Notes: Generates as mostly normal levels with deep water in place of random tiles. Entrance guardian is a Warp Demon and it's in open space, so bring supplies that can tank 250 dmg plasma. All water monsters will be jokes by now, even krakens and
leviathans so that's no concern. Sanity blasters and demons are the main enemy type and vaults are likely meaning that even a casual run through
will tackle several high threat uniques but it also means that it's less useful to farm than Angband or Olympus unless you need to kill the
Cth or Balrog uniques because high level demons are obnoxious. Cthulhu needs to be killed for a smooth J fight and he's easy other than coming
with a huge posse of demons due to having such a bloated spell list. He'll probably summon something or breathe something dangerous once in the fight
then waste all his other moves. As for the posse, see my notes on Vecna although Cthulhu has a much higher aggro radius than some of his demons;
he tends to leave them behind.
Razorback is reforge bait unless you really want to use it to fight the arena shambler or Zeus.

----- At this point you should really consider killing J and winning -----
Mt. Olympus:
When: ~48
Where: NWmost on an island
What: Olympians and their artifacts.
Notes: Sky Drake guards the entrance which probably won't be a speedbump although it won't summon often.
Giants prefer to generate here, and the Olympians show up normally.
Demigods will always get the unique artifact from their Olympian parent, and others have a 20% to drop theirs for any character.
The artifacts are absurd but there's barely any game left to use them in, and almost all of the olympians are scarier than J.
The traits they have in common are a fear aura, being obnoxious to keep dead and having a bullshit Summon Special (athena summons ultimate magi, zeus
summons shamblers, hephaestus spellwarp automatons, hades summons greater balrogs + archliches and destroys walls, zeus summons shamblers).
Most follow teleport as well. Other than Hades, all of them can be teleported away so disengaging them is not difficult.
Don't die to Hermes in postgame like Deathspell!

Pyramidal Mound:
When: ~45
Where: SW of Angwil
What: Egyptian Gods and the Dagger of Amun.
Notes: Much longer than Olympus, some egyptian gods appear outside anyway so you don't have much reason to linger.
The only ones that do anything special are Seth (stuns every turn and has 21000 hp) and Amun (look at all the bullshit his melee does).
Ptah is like mini-Amun with more ranged damage, also.
The normal egyptian enemies, shas and serpopards, inflict several statuses every turn and are some of the only ones to appear so
dive as fast as possible to 92. For melee characters or mages that can't hit through his resistances, kill the other gods before Amun then equip a
bring potions of vigor to remove the slow his melee inflicts and his gimmick is defanged. He's completely vulnerable to Teleport Other too so you can freely
disengage. Even though he loves to teleport you around with gravity melee, he follows teleports so you aren't likely to lose him. Still, a [T item
could be a welcomed boon here.
Mummy King guarding the entrance is reasonably tough so screwing around in the worldmap square with this place isn't recommended.

Hell:
When: Postgame
Where: SEmost in the lava squares
What: Lucifer
Notes: Only enemies that show up here outside of summons and monster bands are greater balrogs, starspawns, warp demons, hell hounds,
great hell wyrms, elder fire giants and archviles. Has the single worst level generation method in the game, arena levels,
always use Destruction the moment you enter to get some cover unless you're standing next to an open air vault with 50+ greater demons.
Anything that can summon undead can summon Zombie J here by the way, since heaven and hell are internally depth 127.
Don't stick around for long here, it sucks for grinding 999999 and while it's not the Void in tome 2 it's very hostile to actually killing monsters.
Lucifer is bland other than retaliating and being in Hell so make sure you can take 50d20+ melee damage if you're going to melee him.


Heaven:
When: Postgame
Where: NEmost
What: Metatron and Longinus, then Resurrection Machine.
Notes: All walls except in theme rooms are permawalls. Only Good monsters here, which means a lot of angels and great wyrms of power as well as any
uniques you missed. The best place to max out on XP, since a cube of 50 gwops or starblades
can be taken down safely for millions of xp and you don't need to do it that much to max. Metatron is like Cthulhu in that he looks dangerous
but his moveset is massively bloated. Since he doesn't dispel it might be wise to use invulnerability if you can't take two consecutive manastorms
though, and he comes with a small posse of angels which you should just genocide.
The Resurrection Machine is so far the superboss of Frog. All it will do whenever it gets a turn is revive 1d2 non-evil uniques. They're immediately
summoned but can generate normally later too. I won't provide any more information because so far I'm the only person to have killed it (edit: by the time
of upload this is no longer true. Clouded and Alazif killed it,
and Deathspell probably will.) and wouldn't want to ruin the sense of pride and accomplishment for you guys :^)
There also really isn't anything else to say.


Side note: Anti-Melee and Anti-Magic caves - they sure exist and are reasonable for grinding. That's more or less it. I like to try and kill the Bazooker
outside anti melee cave for a quick surplus of XP on bad characters since he's confuse vulnerable.

About Composband: There's a lot less content in that, and some quest rewards are moved around. In general they tend to be better, however.


Quests: There are a lot of these, i'll be briefer than with dungeons. If a quest is mentioned in the dungeon section check there.
If a quest has an alternate version in Frog it's marked with a slash. The levels recommended tend to be the minimum where it becomes possible,
not the minimum where it becomes safe. If a class outright cannot use the reward for a quest it will be something else usually, but I don't know
where this is the case enough to document them all.

Do these at the start: Thieves Hideout -> Trouble At Home -> Pest Control.

Thieves Hideout: easy with a few cure wounds potions and heroism to shore up bad hit rates. focus on bandits then nibelungs then the others.
tax collector can't damage you. always search for traps. Reward is [good] long sword, if it's egoed it can carry to Sting.
Trouble At Home: better to do this after thieves so you have levels. the second room on the right has a random monster which can be dangerous at lvl1,
and the potions at the top are booze and boldness - booze trivialises early uniques because of Cf effect (throw it at a wall with v).
Reward is [good] hard studded leather armor, might be an upgrade for mages and such. Booze is the real reward, also gold.

Do these by level 15: Crows Nest/Bear Problem, The Sewer/Compost Heap, I Hate Snakes!, Mushrooms

Crows Nest/Bear Problem: as well as the _enlightenment, there's about twelve good items scattered around in the floor.
Crows is full of fast cause wounds casters with one miniboss carrion, most characters will need a ?speed for that but the crows of durthang can be
funneled into the starting corridor easily.
Bear Problem is absolutely filled with mad bears, probably around 20 and has no real chokepoints. Quaff speed, gear for AC, buy holy prayer and heroism
consumables and kill one by one and pray. It's much much harder than crows and you only really get a bonus filthy rag as a reward.

The Sewer: filled with a diverse cast of specific dangerous monsters. Puddles are immobile just shoot them and remember there are some off the beaten path.
There are 3 breeders in here that could make the quest unwinnable, in order of danger probably the blue icky things (bottom middle), gremlins (top right)
and nether worm masses (bottom right). White crocodile and bat of gorgoth and wererat in the middle section are dangerous for being
fast and strong melee, breathing PoDk and summoning respectively. Confuse shuts them all down though and only the croc has much HP.
You must kill these quickly to get to the blue icky thing before it breeds and before the devilfish breathe CaDiTi because those elements are dangerous.
Compost Heap: all enemies are rs, main danger are plague monks in one corner and Nizukil in another. Kill wererats first because of summoning, then either
isolate or confuse nizukil so he can't shriek to haste everything in LoS. If he's far away kill the one gray rat and plague monks first.
Reward - levitation boots, reasonably likely to be used for 15+ levels if they have their bonus high resistance.

I Hate Snakes!: Something like 3x12 room filled with snakes, they're bad at chasing but black mambas can hurt and king cobras blind.
Fairly doable to lure them out one by one and with potions of antidote for temporary rPois they barely do damage.
Jones whip is better than most non-ego equipment so if you're hurting for a weapon it might help.
It's also guarenteed Si so no dying to OOD shadow fairies anymore.

Do these around level 20: Shadow Faires, Tidy The Laboratory, Tengu & Death Swords, Mimic's Treasure, Old Barracks/Ghost Town, Old Man Willow,
The Stranger/Cyclops Lair, Orc Camp, Smugglers' Den, Doom Quest I

Shadow Fairies: Speaking of which. They can mana bolt for >100 and are fast, so throw on a !Speed and !Sight ASAP. There's only
three of them and they spawn fairly far away from each other, so you can confuse or just kill them seperately fairly easily.
Reward is a hat of seeing in Frog so a genuinely useful Si item and a beam of light rod in Compos which can facilitate ranged damage for quite
a while.

Tidy The Laboratory: More for mages but this quest gives a tonne of XP to everyone.
Air elementals confuse on hit, so use some kind of ranged weapon or a strong base element wand since they resist it and
so do the other elementals present.
Have at least 1 FiAc pip for here since the ooze and smoke elementals not only do respectable damage but shred your inventory.
It's fine if you use a potion for it since this quest ends quickly.
Reward is a huge power boost for mages, since the gloves of the wizard will likely be the only pair you can use though they're more likely to be
bad than good. The ring of wizardry and clarity rod in the corner with the disenchanter molds are always useful, though.

Tengu & Death Swords: Fun quest.
The first thing you'll see are some gelatinous cubes which can be reasonably easily killed with archery or
non-base magic. However, it's okay to melee them or drink a potion of speed and walk away if
you have acid vulnerable items in pack. You should not panic and teleport.
The eponymous tengu and death swords are in the middle box, with a secret door on a random side. If it's next to the entrance
the quest can become a lot more troublesome, although the strategy is always similar.
Don't let them get any turns to use their teleport-to or teleport away spells, since there's a high chance you land on the death swords.
All the swords in the middle section are death swords by the way, for the psychos playing without easy_mimics.
Deathswords move at 1.5x the speed of hasted characters and melee horrifically hard with dangerous rider effects so ending up in melee range of one,
let alone two, is basically a fail condition. Sleep and confuse can buy you time for killing the tengu and you should try to engage them at one of the
corners so only one or two are in line of sight at the same time. Don't waste turns walking up to melee them unless you're confident in your melee.
When everything else is dead, shoot the death swords with literally anything instead of meleeing them. It's never, ever worth it.
Reward is a ring of protection which varies wildly in quality but also a barbarian talisman and all the swords the death swords drop.
It's a rod of getaway in compos which is just sale fodder.

Mimic's Treasure:
Chest mimics summon and a lurker and a door mimic block direct fire.
Most characters should use ball or beam devices to get past this.
Even then it's not very hard though direct melee is a bad way to go since they confuse and paralyse.
This quest is very, very easy except for the occasional dangerous summon that happens since the chest mimics generally get 2-3 chances each to do it.
Reward is all the items at the end are something like DL+10 and GOOD guarenteed, so this is basically just a loot pinata. You also get another
ring of protection from the questgiver.

Old Barracks:
Full of Gs that drain xp and will attack you first, most aren't dangerous though but ghosts can evolve into spectres and then dreads
disturbingly fast from hitting you. Those higher tiers tend to be worth at least a potion of speed if not more. Dreads in particular
can be reasonably dangerous outside of melee.
The other half or so of the level has a couple dozen ghouls and ghasts which will kill you dead if you engage more than one without 2+ Free Action.
It's suicide to walk around with at least 1 by this point in general, but this is where it really shows.
The final two enemies are a ghoulking (very low hp but fast and summons and paralyses) and a spectre (fast and drains mp), and at this point
you just really have to hope the ghoulking doesn't summon much. It doesn't resist much other than normal undead resists so going at it
with devices and archery is always a solid plan. Its summons aren't very likely to cascade into more summoners but can happen.
Reward: Guarenteed Elemental Protection ego shield in the furthest room from the start.

Ghost Town:
Much harder than Old Barracks. Don't come in with at least ElCoNtHl and a wand of teleport other, and consider completing a lot of
other quests around the same level before this.
Enemies are all G and W, with standouts being headless ghosts and hissers for item destruction and lots of HP, a dread, a phantom beast
(incredibly strong melee), a black wraith and 2-3 spectres.
Teleport yourself and them often to clear some space, and remember that walls are not your friend. At least nothing summons.
Reward: Much better loot than Barracks due to the monsters being excessively OOD. Guarenteed Armageddon longsword and staff of earthquakes as well.

Old Man Willow:
Every single enemy is either immobile or >10 speed. All the fast enemies are vulnerable to confuse, and vorpal bunnies > sabertooth tigers
> sasquatches should be the order you prioritise kills due to HP.
This is mostly a straight slugfest with a lot of teleporting around to avoid being surrounded since all the monsters walk through trees.
The trees are immobile and use teleport to in order to bring you to them, but they aren't fast so you can walk away. You can sort of do this without
free action if you take a lot of care with Willow himself, who's harmless other than paralysing you.
Reward is an Elemental ring which might take care of some of your base resistances or be complete garbage.

The Stranger:
Antipaladin. Can hit for max 150 damage with cause critical (does like 10d15) and is fast but wastes most his turns and dies easily.
Reward is an Accuracy longbow which is probably an upgrade from your current shooter.
The real reward is knowing you don't have to do Swamp Lights.

Cyclops' Lair:  Cyclops, but also some mirkwood spiders and a doombat at the entrance. Don't melee the bat unless you want to lose items to its fire aura
and ideally you would teleport away from the spiders to try and engage them in a less crowded area. Cyclops itself should be confused unless you want to eat
100 damage + stun + cut + tip boulders, and it hits real hard in melee to boot. Reward is a sling of the hunter, which is probably not much
better than your current shooter but has random ESPs and stealth so it's a reasonable stat stick, especially if it rolls Nolv or full ESP.

Orc Camp:
Absolutely full of low tier orcs obviously, with the only cover being at the bottom left of the quest and full of snaga sappers. There are alarm
traps at the entrance in case you play without aggravate for w/e reason search for them. As long as you have
AoE confuse (sleep can suffice) or strong AoE damage or high durability and healing this is not dangerous.
Reward is a Frost Ball wand or a Sleep Monsters staff in compos, both fairly mediocre.

Smugglers' Den: Big important quest. The master rogues and thieves add up damage wise and will wreck your gold, but you'll earn more back anyway.
There is a clairvoyant in the far corner that must be engaged with and confused as soon as possible to prevent it summoning, and a death knight in
the top of the three rows that should be dealt with likewise. Note that the clairvoyant confuses you in melee too. Don't let it lock you.
Finally there's a black knight that blends in with the other black ps but is a lot more dangerous, it has low HP but can cause
wounds for a huge sum of damage but is also vulnerable to confuse and has low HP. Don't let them summon, i've seen shoggoths and ancient dragons
come out if they actually get one off. Reward is a mushroom of restoring but the quest itself has two sets of gloves of the thief (useful for both
mage and some melees with low amounts of blows), about 30k gold, a stone to mud wand and a nice chunk of strong random drops. In Compos, quest reward is
a wand of teleport other.

Doom Quest I: Don't come in here without stone to mud.
Right as you enter there will be something like 5 black knights next to you, you can solve this by teleporting or confusing them or killing them quickly
one by one since it takes some turns for all of them to enter sight. The rest of the level is easy except for an arch vile that won't approach and will
just blow your flammables up with its fireballs. The frost ball wand from orc camp or the acid ball from arena are perfect for killing this, but
if you have Fi2 or 3 you can just trade missile fire or walk up instead.
Reward: Staff of Teleport from the mayor, but also an elven cloak and a crossbow, blue dragon scale mail plus a set of healing potions are hidden
behind diggable granite walls. The staff's essential and the armors are likely to be worthwhile upgrades.

Do these around level 25-30: Dark Elven Lords, Vapor Quest, Clear The Tunnels, Dinosaur Quest, Old Watchtower, Djinni's Cavern/Swamp Lights
 Shopkeeper's Secret/Dwarven Embassy,
Sand Pit/Pit of Despair, Troll Slayer, The Vault, Barrow-Downs

Dark Elven Lords: Dark elven lords actually aren't important. Stone giants next to the entrance can do stupid damage + stun with thrown rocks,
you might not have Sh by this point too. The side that has stone giants also has dwellers on the threshold which you need to avoid LoS with until
everything is dead due to summons. The only cover you have is the entry but that is a reasonable place to fight everything in. Reward is an
amulet of trickery which is a crapshoot but might have Po or Cf or Nx and will probably be the first item you find with a chance for any.

Vapor Quest: Air elementals, shimmering vortex, weird fume, MP drain eyes. Confusion resist or strong ranged damage/100+ melee is madantory, the air
elementals will chain confuse you with their melee otherwise. You will want to kill the shimmering vortex with some kind of ball
wand to avoid it hasting the other monsters, then fight the elementals as they come out and try to make it to the weird fumes while they're still in the
left and right corners to avoid chaos or nexus breaths and both having LOS on you. Nothing does much damage here but you can get your game instantly
ended by that confusion or unresisted high elements. Reward is rod of detection, very useful, as well as some amulets and rings in the corners.

Clear The Tunnels: See orc camp but there are orc warlords and warlocks that are actually dangerous if you don't confuse them, especially warlord summons.
Just confuse them and slowly hack through, you get a sacred pendant in frog and a defender amulet in compos, on the ground is a potion stash and a morgul
weapon.

Dinosaur Quest: Lots of Rs with long reach and confusion vulnerability, all of them are more than 0 speed though and they collectively have a ton of HP.
Teleporting until you reach the place near the diplodocus helps a lot with controlling how many you fight. Don't let any ducks haste the dinosaurs,
and be careful with the pteranodon without a source of levitation. You get 1d4 potions of healing for this, several good scrolls (cpb has
guarenteed acquirement) and amulets and a ton of XP but none of the monsters are scary, it's worth slogging through the orc quests or logrus master
to do.

Old Watchtower: Vs, there's one of each except elder and also a banshee. Fire vampires are bullshit; plasma bolt for 100ish and stun,
high ac, auras, not even treated as undead. Teleport until you reach the trapped chest + star vampire room, the fire vampires
will teleport into there and destroy it if you don't make it there first, it's pretty much the main reward for this quest. The other one is a cloak
and ring in the room straight up from the starting point but that's less likely to be good. After opening the chest and TOing or killing the
star vampire you also have an ideal chokepoint to fight the rest. When everything is clear let out the vampire lord and be careful with his
brain smash and 10d15 cause wounds - melees can wear [M for it, mages can avoid the obnoxious melee. Potions of vigor in frog will cure
brain smash slow I believe. Reward is -vampirism (frog) or sacred pendant (compos).

Djinni's Cavern: Tiny room, 1 djinni and an air elemental plus some chaff that gets in the way of shooting the djinni.
Kill the air elemental ASAP unless you have Cf or composband super clarities and then start working on the djinni.
While its lightning damage and magic missile are essentially duds any summon here is troublesome and the other enemies don't do much.
As long as you can do ~50 ranged or ~100 melee per turn he will die easily even though his melee hits hard for this point (40 average, and he
gets frequent double moves).
Reward is huge; randart feanorian lamp. If it's not antimagic or anti teleportation or of darkness it will be an upgrade to a brass lantern
or the phial in some way. There's also a good chunk of gold, a wand of fire balls and a depth-boosted robe in the level itself.
This is easier than all the other quests on the list but i'm listing it here because of...

Swamp Lights: Terrible alt quest. Kill some lights that blink away from you constantly with whatever ranged weapon, some chaff like white crocs
and vampiric mists, there's a will-o-wisp that you might as well blast resisted ball wands into because it has absurd AC for the level but hopefully
you can cast spells or have beam of light from shadow fairies. Then there's a death pumpkin.
It's basically an ancient light dragon but its melee stuns cuts and drains life rating as well as doing a ridiculous amount of damage.
If you have 1 Li it can be reasonably fought at range, vampirism wand from old watchtower and cure wounds staff from arena really help
to ease the pain on your consumables here. Unless you have berserker tier melee, meleeing it is out of the question. 300+ versus
evil is just about sufficient but you still might need !Healing to avoid being killed in 2-3 hits and to clear heavy stunning.
Same reward, floor loot is a !Healing instead.

Shopkeeper's Secret: Golems. Only a drolem at the end and some silent watchers can do anything outside of melee and nothing moves faster than speed 10
so you can just kite everything slowly. Bring 30+ cure poison mushrooms and go in hungry for the drolem to avoid gorging later, then shoot or
wand it until its huge 3k HP runs out. Reward is 2 chests, 2 big scrolls, 2 !charisma, 2 chests and some random good items under the watchers and white
mithril gear for every slot. In CPB it's dwarven and can be really strong but the drolem has 195 AC so you should pick up and use the gear
which gives lots of slaying and AC to kill it at melee or range.

Dwarven Embassy: More of an actual quest but not much, bring Fa/Fi2/Po1/maybe Dk1 if you're frail and go to town. You get swarmed by weak monsters
but there are corridors at the start. One silent watcher is still there, and there's a beholder as a miniboss of sorts but it doesn't do much
actual damage, just confusion and stun. You only get 1 chest, only some mithril gear but it's dwarven and most of the gold.

Sand Pit: This is not an actual quest. This is basically a check for whether you have _confuse or not. If you do and your damage is not abysmal the
chthonians will die in one confuse cycle. The wand sort of works, too, but i wouldn't risk a character on it. If the chthonians summon demons then
you lose, chainsummoners are unreasonably common at this dl as are nasty uniques like GHMMWQ and daddy/mommy dagons. Dholes also do reasonable damage
and might blow up your gear w./ acid. Reward is a blade of chaos and there are a single digit amount of times in the history of the game where it's actually
been an item worth using.

Pit of Despair: Slightly more of an actual quest. Nothing summons so you can take it kind of early but you need a good supply of heroism or you'll
lose a lot of turns to fear. Instead of chthonians the big monster is night mares which are 100% vulnerable to tele other and have no
ranged attacks, and there's a chokepoint so you don't even have to fight both.
Magey characters with good MP regen sources can do this straight after DQ1, most other people should wait a bit or until they have Cf since nightmares
will lock you if they get a chance and have enough hp to make you go through all your ammo or devices. The other monsters are nothing burger,
level 20 characters with no equipment can kill deep ones and nightgaunts et al.

The Vault: All random monsters, Sting in the corner. Prepare for your best, teleport to the least dangerous side and kill things then start searching.
Teleport other can keep most dangerous spawns away from you long enough to find Sting and get out. Bring every consumable you can think of using like
giant strengths and resistance potions just in case.

Barrow Downs: Easier than the Vault by a mile, lots of weak Ws that can just cause wounds and a few emperor wights. "Difficulty" here mainly
depends on whether you're going to waste potions of speed or not. With a saving throw below 70 and no reflection i'd really consider it for the middle
barrow with 3 emperor wights in. Fighting the monsters here 1 v 1 is easy enough, each pile of rubble only has 1 tile to enter through so you can just
wait for the monsters to wake up and follow you there then hit or shoot the first one you see.
There are several guarenteed !healing and the Cloak of Merry generated in the quest; Merry is the first guarenteed source of Cf so very
handy, although the rings of protection and amulet of trickery might have spawned with it. It's also likely to be better than whatever cloak you
have on anyway due to giving speed.

Do these around level 30-35: Elven Embassy/Spider-God, Giant Slayer, Underground City, Eddies In Spacetime, Basilisk Cave, Staff Recovery, Dark Academy,
Cloning Pits, Clear The Wreckage, Crystal Quest, Old Castle, Haunted House, Dragon Quest, Fall of Micro$oft/Facing The Books, Doom Quest II/Doom Quest II

Elven Embassy: Nexus spiders (confuse, bring 1 Nx at least so you don't get shuffled around the map), Mystics and master mystics.
Normal mystics are fairly killable with high damage devices or archery due to low HP, few resists and terrible AC, but the
master mystic moves at +20 and has 4 digit HP as well as rBase. It will heal itself constantly and summon elemental spiders that necessitate
confusing and trend towards having dangerous auras as well. There is deep water near its starting position that it won't be able to summmon
anything on to, and if it wakes up just teleport other it and stand there in waiting. Beware that the nexus and phase spiders and move you off it, though.
Reward is incredible, it's a defender ring (FaSi and either base or high resists), elvenkind shield and an armor (Sl + base + 1 high each) and
elvenkind boots which are Sp boots with likely Lv and high resists, easily an upgrade to your boots unless you did cloning pits already.


Spider-God:
It's elven embassy but there's two master mystics, most of the spiders are different kinds more likely to kill you (venom, ice, undead...) instead of nexus
and the rewards are a useless lamp of darkness and cloak of shadows instead of the good stuff.
What the fuck Rodent?
EDIT: I'm actually a lot more fine with this quest than then. It is undoubtedly harder but you're still given deep water to kill the mystics from, and the
elven cloak of protection and hat of the vampire are fine rewards compared to elven shield/boots + you get 2 more chests and more xp.
But losing out on that elvenkind shield can really, really hurt your rBase until you get something better for that slot.

Underground City: Has something like 60 undead spiders in, bring restore life levels and 1-2 Nt and confuse monsters because they are obnoxious as sin.
Their nether aura does damage unreasonably fast, so you'll have to back down after about 5 of them each time - mages can get about 10 before their MP
runs dry similarly. But after the spiders die the quest has only really just started. There's 1 of each druj present behind hopefully closed doors,
and they also stand on DL 85 large chests so you can't use several attack types you would probably want to without destroying them.
Teleporting the drujs is also unwise since they could end up in even worse terrain easily. Matching their speed is non-negotiable if you want
to fight them at all and you should definitely have NtSo resists at the least (So stops you being stunned by whirlpool and plasma bolt), as well as
3 Fa so brain smash can't paralyse you. Melees still need a way of closing the gap, and outside of class based tools for that the main one is
a ring of archery or wizardry that activates to use dimension door. That gets you right next to them and you really just have to kill as fast as you can.
200+ damage per turn ranged spell or archery damage is usually enough to avoid summon storms. If dangerous summoner-summoners get spawned, go to the deep
water and fight them there before the druj.
Bring mushrooms of cure poison for spectral trex summons and a Dk source as at least a swap for elder vampire summons.
Reward: An absolute treasure trove. The chests are worth 200k+ in Frog and can drop some of the deepest artifacts (i've got jewel of judgement once).
There's a guarenteed speed ring with at least +4 speed. There's a crown (lordliness in frog, might in compos) that might have speed and strong resistances
on it. There's an item that might become a very strong artifact (mirror shield in composband, mithril plate mail in frog) finally. The questgiver will also
add a set of artifact mithril gauntlets on top of all of that, though that varies hugely in strength.


Eddies in Spacetime: Not in composband. Large open area that looks like a baseball court with two corridors to hide in. Monsters are 2 temporal
champions, 6 chronomages and several dozen time initiates. The champions and mages breathe 150 damage time and move extremely fast.
You should go in with 20+ speed, and still expect to be regularly double turned. Teleport the champion in LOS of you on turn 1 away (aim forward)
and then confuse
the mages and kill them at range so the next sets don't notice you. The champions are best killed with devices and archery (their AC is very bad
and they lack all resistances); the guarenteed ball and vampirism wands will provide most of the damage needed easily. Whenever they breathe, heal up
to over 300 HP and bring a mushroom/potion of restoring or two since your stats will be in the gutter after fighting one champion.
The reward is a reasonable volume of DL60 drops from the monsters, two cloaks of the bat, the ability to teleport to Zul(!!!!!) and one of 3 randart
baseball bats that are very strong stat-sticks for mage/archer like characters (one has -int and another has -chr though so not suitable for _all_
mages.)

Basilisk Cave: Fairly demanding quest that forces you to kill 2 greater basilisks, which can breathe near max damage darkness and heavy
poison/nether. Like all quests in this line, designed for casters to chip away at a distance since they deal absurd melee damage as well
and the breaths are infrequent enough to heal up from. Definitely bring your best devices either way.
Rewards are a few staves/rods/wands scattered around the floor, a wizardry ring and an amulet of the magi from questgiver.
In composband you get both this and Dark Academy (renamed to Renegade Sorcerer.) In frog they're alt-quests of each other
but one comes before staff recovery and the other comes after.

Staff Recovery: Goal is to just get staff of Mokomagi (strong statstick for anyone capable of using Es and Dm), position of it is random and so are
the enemy locations.
Enemies: random undead could be anything, winged horror (greater basilisk but bad melee and can be confused), black wraith and night mare,
zephyr lord; low health but filling the floor with inertia or gravity hounds is both annoying and dangerous, master lich; relatively high hp and
likely to cause a summon cascade though its other spells are fairly weak,
crypt thing; who cares, legate of the damned; might be first thing that melees to disenchant you see in a run, need resistance to melee it or you
will lose your temporary speed and die, necessitates Nt resistance also due to strong nether ball and very high HP.
There are guarenteed depthboosted rings and amulets as well as a healing potion in the loot.
In Composband, this is named Holy Vengeance, the guarenteed artifact is Bloodspike, and you have to kill all monsters instead.

Dark Academy: easier than basilisks i think. There's another master lich, an enchantress, a sorcerer and a demonologist present
and a silent watcher in the deep water in the center. If you kill the Watcher you can fight the sorcerer and master lich from there and
be mostly safe, but the enchantress will summon fastis (they're barely in depth). As long as your burst damage is servicable nothing
should get dangerous, and the reward is a large chunk of depth boosted devices, wizardry rings, 3rd spellbooks, scrolls, potions and a
Wizardstaff (Arcane). You get an amulet of the magi for completing also. In composband, only the sorcerer needs to die,
and a cloak of aman and crown of the magi are present in the loot. The quest reward is also changed to a robe of the sorcerer
which basically no one wants to use.

Cloning Pits: Top side: 3 of each of the following uniques - It, Gachapin, Jurt, Queen Ant, Father Dagon, Bokrug. 2 random DL 50 enemies on each side.
Bottom half, several clones of ultimate dungeon cleaner and rock throwing confusable uniques. Bring levitation, it's almost a must.
Detect immediately on entering and move toward the bottom side that doesn't have the queen ants on, as they can pursue through the trees.
The Its will likewise, but they have less focused offense, are slower, and don't have as much HP. You will need to regularly detect them
though, since they're invisible and immune to telepathy. Confuse whatever is on the side you went to since eating multiple boulders hurts;
they also have far too much HP and are too spread out to easily kill one by one. Kill the dungeon cleaners when they arrive, they don't
do much damage at this point but trample your loot and reflect bolts so if you want to shoot or device them you need arrows of endurance
or beams. If Its or Queen Ants arrive, hide behind the wall that borders the second set of enemies so not all your sides are exposed to summons
and you can close in more easily. Split them with teleport other if you can't engage them one at a time. Queen Ant summons are more annoying
than dangerous - exploding ants do severe damage and screw with your gear mainly; it's okay to let the area get filled with them since then
you can crowd control them with confuse or sleep and kill the queen. Don't engage the ants and any source of chaos damage at the same time.
After killing anything that pursues you down, you can either clear out the other bottom side with similar monsters and engage the ants + its
if you haven't, or dig upward and levitate above the pit to start clearing out the dangerous top side. Take it from right to left
or left to right. The only dangerous summoner left is Dagon, bokrugs can be confused and gachapins don't summon anything of note, but splitting the
enemies is still a must since chaos damage destroys loot and your character if you don't have 2 pips of resistance. For the dagons, they're not
teleportable so you have to either let only one of them into aggro range at the same time or hide behind the trees if you can kill them really fast.
Reward is a pair of artifact boots that could easily be used till endgame - Thror (best), Shiva's Avatar (great), Stomper (great), Aragorn (ehh),
Flora (okay), Bard (okay), a huge amount of random loot (gachapins drop up to 3 exceptional even) and 2 *healing* placed directly north of the entrance.

Clear the Wreckage: 2 lesser krakens, bring DkSoCf resist and a lot of AC. There are a lot of places on shore where they can't melee you if you want
to shoot them, including the spawn point; their melee hits like a train too so this is appreciated for squishier characters.
The middle of the map has a few ixiachitl priests and serpent men which summon but have horrendous HP and are weak to confuse; you can clear all
the serpent men out with a couple charges of a dragon's flame wand or such. Treat the lesser krakens like the greater basilisks in basilisk cave.
Reward is a tsunami wand (essentially Dragon's Water), a reliable ranged option that basically any character can use that also stuns hard.
There's also a depthboosted chest, a guarenteed artifact ring and a guarenteed artifact cutlass hanging around on the map.
In composband there are no serpent men or krakens, the quest comes before cloning pits and the guarenteed artifacts are just +10 depth items.
The biggest threat there are aquatic nagas, which can do 150 damage with CMW but that's basically all.

Old Castle: 1 ironlich, 1 dracolich, 1 sorcerer, 1 enchantress, wall monster infestation, 4 raal's tomes, 2 *healings*, some chaff, please bring
a source of confusion it's near necessary, deep water still works but caution advised. Check the files, this one's big:
https://github.com/sulkasormi/frogcomposband/blob/df91c9ffd8d419123955d0d88efc18d49eaea8d7/lib/edit/q_old_castle.txt
If you've beaten this, you've definitely basically won the game. Reward is an artifact tailored to your class; check the files.
Bringing a ring that activates for dimension door and going over to the wall monsters makes everything a lot easier.

Haunted House: Spectral tyrannosaurus - breathes close to max damage nether and max damage nexus, bring 1-2 pips of resist and ,cure pois.
Its melee sucks though.
Other than that, there are just some hounds of tindalos at the start and some ipssisimi (sp) hiding by water that you confuse and then it's over.
The hand druj is harmless but annoying, open the door from the top left and blast AoE effects like tsunami wand into it if you don't like
being teleported away. Reward is a fairly useful staff of banish evil, but it's difficult to actually have the skill for and fit a slot in for it
before final fight.
There's also a guarenteed Raal's Tome and some loot placed near the tyrannosaurus.

Dragon Quest: Dragons. 2 ancients of each base element color, 1 ancient gold, 1 ancient bronze. Ton of matures, even mature multihueds. You can
dig corridors so only two can breathe on you at a time. If you have even the slightest stealth you can also just kill them one by one.
This quest is just a slugfest and resist check, really. Reward are dragon wings which have the potential to be ridiculous but won't be and you can
buy them in Zul anyway.

Fall of Micro$oft: lol and extremely relevant
So there's a shit ton of money in here of course. All the huge single tile corridors are full of traps, so you can teleport
straight to the center with Bill in it. Kill the Internet Exploders - resist all elements but their HP sucks and they have no AC, even
terrible at archery characters can shoot them. Don't have a confusion or blindness resist hole here, and drink heroism for the boss if needed.
Bill is difficult to melee since he steals but his only other real move is summoning more exploders and despite his speed he won't do it often.
Unless your speed is absurd though they can easily explode on you turn 1 so caution is advised and mushrooms of restoring should be brought if
you have any left from Eddies. In Frog, exploders slow in addition to doing time damage and waiting off that slow lets him regenerate an undesirable amount.
Bill has very few actual resistances and bad AC so even weak devices such as wands of acid balls can take a chunk off him and the
ranged weapon you got to kill exploders can contribute nicely.
Bill drops some very high score weapons that are useless to everyone but the most desperate maulers, though you can reforge them without minding.
Also there are a bunch of thieves in the left and right corners that are worth killing for drops but Bill should be set free first in case
you lose your stone to mud wand and one of them ends up behind the granite wall you have to dig.
Reward is a Defender ring which is appreciated and might be better than the elven embassy one.

Facing The Books: haHAahhh
Tracking pixel - 50% summon demon summon monsters. Shriek. That's all they do. There are a bunch of them and they have stupid AI so will get stuck on
walls and force you to approach them. Their melee has some obnoxious riders too. The level will fill with hasted goats of mendes, lesser balrogs
and nycademons nearly instantly. All the money and thieves are still around from Microsoft as well.
Most demons are thankfully vulnerable to teleport other so you can keep them out of your face easily but that doesn't stop this quest reaching
critical mass easily. You only have to kill the boss, but he's a super raal's tome basically and comes with normal raal's tomes to boot and will
summon more tracking pixels. He's also placed surrounded by lava in a huge open area and can get a free hit on you as you approach.
Basically here you want strong ranged capability like dragons flame or meteor or tsunami wands and slay evil ammo on a good bow like robin hood
or your own 200+ damage spells and to teleport wildly hoping to get into the boss room to take shots at it then teleport out. Dimension door ring/spell
can let you skip some of the tracking pixels as well. Mug hits to steal in melee, so if you can somehow make it next to him - use staff of banish evil to remove his summons - you can force him off his position and into the side corridors where you aren't forced to approach as much.
Same reward, but the boss drop is a FaSi~TeleNolv artifact amulet so it might actually
get used (it's better than bad telepathy amulets of the magi you might have at this point and Nolv is supremely useful since most nonliving
monsters are golems and such which aren't detected by normal tele)

Doom Quest II: Prepare for iron liches, there's four in the easy layout and two in the hard one. Bring reflection and at least Fi2 in case you get the hard
one, as well. Easy layout is a fortress-ish structure with a bunch of chaff and some barons of hell that are obnoxiously hard to kill plus the
liches already mentioned - there's two lone ones and one group of two near the end. Also a maulotaur and hell knight at the very end, both weak to confuse
but easily taken out conventionally since the 'taur has awful damage and hell knight no HP.
Hard variation has a bunch of open islands with the only cover being rooms in the 4 corners - and an iron lich or baron of hell is placed at every one.
As well as that, there are arachnotrons that will kill you startlingly quickly with no reflection. You more or less have to suck it up and
teleport randomly until you end up next to some cover from one of the islands then go from there. EDIT: The arachnotrons are nicely lined up so that
if you approach one of them from the right direction they shoot each other instead of you, that can sometimes help. The maulotaur is back and somewhere on the level too, by the way.
Reward is a staff of healing which is a complete gamechanger if you have the device skill and no glaring weaknesses to acid fire or chaos.


Do these around 40-45: Apina Island/Lord Bovin, Renegade Sorcerer, Dragon Slayer, Mountain Shrine, Volcano/Thing Under The Mountain
Apina Island: No cover and several dreadmasters, an enchantress and a shadowlord. There's a chest in the center next to the rocks, and
you can try and hide in the trees since most of the enemies can't destroy them. This one's mostly about hoping nothing gets summoned
since the DL is even higher than underground city but the base enemy set isn't very impressive.
Reward is confusing lights staff of simplicity, more or less everyone wants it since it's a straight upgrade to confuse monsters due to stunning
and suspending as well.

Renegade Sorcerer: This quest is straight up unfair for melee characters. The Pattern stops you from approaching him (all the center
squares are not even teleportable to) and if you trade low damage shots or devices he'll win since he can summon Great Wyrms and
the Orochi easily as well as essentially being a mobile druj.
You can try walking to him if your melee is so dominant you can kill him in a couple shots, but
even though I advised against it the only way to kill him is really going to be throwing all your _tsunami charges out and
finishing the job with -meteor and ball rods. Walking toward him risks being blinked or teleported away and monsters can easily get summoned
in front of you and teleporting them away will keep them in LoS most likely since there is no cover other than the tiny crannies in each corner.
In Composband, there's an earlier quest that uses this layout with a single logrus master. While unresisted chaos is dangerous it doesn't
stop you doing vapor quest and the wand of tsunami is moved back as far, so you can just blast him with that and he dies in 3. He also can't
summon anything stronger than Shelob there.
Reward in Frog is a crown of the magi which most characters want due to having multiple base or high resists, possible Fa and possible speed.
It can spawn with -St, though. Compos characters get a rod of chaos strike, both have depth boosted devices in each corner of the arena.

Mountain Shrine: 5 nine tailed foxes and a similar number of nekomata. Latter is trash, former is kind of scary with a decent chunk of HP
and nasty melee riders as well as summoning monsters. There's enough room to maneuver and plenty of trees to block LoS so you won't usually
have to fight more than one at least but just make killing them quick. They don't do much damage but drain MP and charges and brain smash hurt your
other resources.

Volcano: Fire immunity doesn't really help but you should have 3 pips minimum and a chunk of sound res, as well as Rf.
For every monster that breathes normal fire here, there's two that breathe plasma. Hounds, vortices, elder fire giants et al.
Several others use bolts in addition which is why Rf is necessary. It's a large open area, so you'll need some kind of ranged tool to kill the chaff.
The two elder fire giants need to be seperated; if you have wands of dragon's frost this is also a good place to use them for several thousand
damage each on them due to weakness since they teleport around constantly and melee hard if you do get in range.
Reward is the Lava Lamp of Telmora, 1 Ch;FiSo|F A: Confusing Lights. More or less a novelty but |F on a lantern is a unique niche
and it may be a reasonable slot in for So compared to LiDk from arkenstone.
This is a level 30 quest in Composband, gives a cloak of immolation and focuses more on basic fire damage - lots of chaff and the strongest
enemy is one efreeti.

Thing under the Mountain: Greater Balrog. You have nowhere to prevent it summoning, and since it has reach you have to walk up to it to melee.
It also has a very respectable 4400 HP and more AC than the scale shows. However it's just one monster and can be teleport othered to seperate it
from its summons so it's not that dangerous to fight compared to the Volcano. Same reward, also you only have to kill it to win.

Do not do these unless you are absurdly overpowered: Lord Bovin, Killer In The Cellar, Demon Slayer, Royal Crypt, Spawning Pits, Eric's Stronghold

Lord Bovin: You are expected to take down several level 50+ demons/dragons and quintessential summoners such as sorcerers, enchantresses and high priests
in extremely close quarters. The boss himself is a wimp that can be confused at least. Do not attempt this without a dimension door ring or in-class
source, and use it immediately to teleport as close to one of the deep water pools as soon as possible.
Those block most of the non flying monsters from reaching you and
make this quest possible if you dig the granite wall corridors out. Rewards are same as Apina, but there are some guarenteed boots of speed and scrolls
of acquirement as well. This quest is a lot more doable than the others in its category but still much harder than normal Apina.

Killer In The Cellar: You fight Basement Cat. You can't escape. It hits like a freight train in melee, harder than the Serpent even and has 50% to
breathe from a nasty list of elements that thankfully do only ~250 damage, but it also heals itself and blinks constantly. It's fast enough that
gravity + another double breath is more than a possibility and the reward is just one high dlvl chest, 2d2 exceptional items from its drop
and a staff of destruction from the quest giver. Not really worth it unless you can deal >500 damage per turn without dying and even then i've
had trouble with it.
EDIT: Also, Basement Cat slows in melee! This can reduce your speed by up to 10 and it doesn't go away fast enough to lose it mid fight. Don't go in without potions of vigor, a speed surplus or an ironclad plan.

Royal Crypt: Full of dangerous L and G and some z, up to black reavers, mummy kings and shadowlords.
Quickly spirals into an unreasonable summoning storm if allowed; thankfully there is some deep water
if you don't care about enemy drops (all undead summons in deep water will be undead devilfish).
Even if summons get hairy, you might get enough extra archliches to clear the quest.
The only actual loot on the ground that isn't dropped is found in the middle rooms guarded by two sets of 2 eye and 2 skull drujs. You can teleport
past the first set by digging out all the walls and using dimension door (on a ring if necessary) into one of the dug out walls, but the second one
will need a way to deal with all the summons and hundreds of damage they are capable of dealing. I found that staff of banish evil works reasonably
well if you're tanky enough to survive 3-4 turns in front of everything that doesn't manastorm you, immediately teleport if one of those appears,
while you wait for the teleport to work on them. Actually killing them requires class-based bullshit like AM barrier or wraithform/invulnerability +
mana storm.
There's a guarenteed randart dragon armor, ring and amulet there which are usually extremely strong
but do not justify the immense work taken except in extreme cases.
Reward is Bilbo's chain mail, which is respectable for light armor characters and may be enough of an upgrade to justify just killing the archliches at
level ~45.

Spawning Pits: Chunk of random enemies of around dl 78, and several of each Q. Safest way to approach this is to dimension door to the center section or
walk down to one of the "teeth" in the middle segment. Kill good-aligned monsters ASAP, they will infight with the demonic and rotting Qs
and cause them to summon. Either way, it's not really reasonable to leave the place you chose until all mobile monsters are dead and then you can focus on
each Q one by one. This quest is still very difficult since there's no way to stop the summons other than "kill faster".
Reward is a balance DSM or very rarely a power DSM, which are reasonably useful in their own right and perfect targets for
artifact creation.

Eric's Stronghold: Absolutely full of mid/low level summoners like logrus masters and sorcerers, bordering the entrance with a moat.
There's nowhere to hide from the summons either, just some trees. Summon Dragons will always pull fastitocalons in deep water here, so you can't
stand in the moat and expect them to fizzle. You only have to kill Eric and other than 4 lords of chaos in the middle and the man himself none
of the enemies have 4 digit HP, but you need overwhelming offense or brutal cheese to kill them all in time. Eric also teleports frequently and
attacks to teleport himself in melee and has the ADC so getting into a situation where you can both kill him and not end up paralysed and dead is difficult.
All you get is a rod of angelic healing and a guarenteed randart on his level anyway. Even the drops are disappointing because of how low level the
monsters are; most will be around DL 55.


Oberon: If he casts Mana Storm twice in a row kiss goodbye to your run. In a vacuum, he does okay damage outside of manastorm but
resistances and reflection bring everything except Whirlpool and Psychospear down to reasonable amounts. He also has a more dangerous summon
list than the actual Serpent and of course a good list of auras. His HP is fairly low though, and most melee or magic characters will be able to kill him
in ~40 attacks, so it's not worth doing any special preparation for what he can summon other than ASC and some backup genocides. His disenchanting, charge draining melee requires resistance
to avoid losing your buffs, though do be aware that if you use more than just haste he will Dispel you constantly though that wastes his full turn.
Bring backup sources of teleport and destruction that can't be drained (scrolls). The final hit that drains mana makes him tough to kill on characters
that want to melee him and have an SP bar, or fight him in an antisummoning corridor for safety reasons. There, the best approach tends to be allowing
him to drain you to 0 SP and all your devices likewise since without him healing he will die quickly.
While Summon Amberites is annoying, he's much faster than all his brethren so they will seperate themselves and leave an opening for destruction.

Serpent of Chaos: Yeah. So he doesn't have any dud moves except Invoke Logrus, Breathe Mana and Breathe Toxic Waste really,
he's at enough speed that double turns are always a threat and his melee is horrible to fight even if it does only average damage.
2 Sh, Ca and Cf are musts to avoid dangerous side effects and at least one Nt so he can't double breath kill you. Di if you want to melee him too, and don't neglect other resists since he can summon more or less anything.
His summon list is fairly limited unless you have very few uniques alive because they're too dangerous for you.
Summon Dungeon Guardians becomes a wasted turn with all of them dead which is a reasonable goal. Likewise for Summon Uniques which is much
more difficult to achieve. Because of his wall breaking, fight in a destructed zone so phase door will take you out of his and his summons'
LOS easily so healing and genocides to be used away from his LoS. Dragons are usually trivial except spectral wyrms, most non uniques are weak to TO/Banish Evil
and all come on one glyph for genocide. Mighty Undead has a mix of glyphs and very dangerous uniques like tik's and kaschei (kill kaschei before fighting
J) as well as more or less every monster being difficult to teleport away, this is what you save mass genocide scrolls for. Cyberdemons are very variable
but usually non issues that reduce the space for other summons to show up on, as long as you have confusing lights charges you should burn them when they
show up. He's so much faster than other uniques that you can destruct those if they get summoned, but richard wong and gothmog and kronos are huge threats
to safe teleports (as well as kaschei kill kaschei) - kill them if you see them, or genocide their escorts and constantly tele other them when they show
up in the fight. Don't waste resources other than destro/geno/TO/confuse on monsters other than the J, it's a long, long fight and you'll need them for
his 30k HP. If your melee is worse than about 500-600 damage per round against evil, you should consider another method since you need constant !healing
to remove stun and confusion/aura damage.