While I know the general layout of drow tower area pretty well, I don’t know all of its secrets and I tend to avoid some things in there.

To take a small break from the normal exp, I ended up exploring those less visited rooms and also tried to solo Ebon Bane.

Immolation, blockers of Ebon Bane

Before Ebon Bane, there are a couple of drow magicians as blockers:

House Hlaund study.
This room is curved -- it is mostly aligned northeast-southwest, but the south
end bends towards the east. The floor is coated with a bright scarlet carpet,
quite thick, and the walls have curtains and tapestries with simple patterns
in black, violet, and scarlet. There are some massive oak tables here, four,
each with two padded chairs and an unlit lamp.
Blue cobalt door (open) leads southeast.
Polished onyx door (closed) leads northeast.
Obvious exit is: southeast.
a low-cut black robe
a huge pile of mowgles coins
a small pile of copper coins
a pile of tin coins
A robed drow is standing here calmly.
A robed drow wanders about, mumbling something.

I noticed that at least one of these casts Immolate:

Drow magician shakes with firey rage and yells 'fah relep krlnpth'
Suddenly flames shoot from the floor!
You burst into flames! Your gear is set ablaze!
Your boots gets damaged; it's now in great condition.
Your marvellous sense of combat prevents your torn leather muscle shirt from getting scratched.
Your Bracelets of Darkness gets damaged; it's now in incredible condition.
Your glove gets damaged; it's now in exceptional condition.
Four Spr [Made by: Thelo] labeled as [4spr] loses its blue glow.
shadow headband loses its blue glow.
Your marvellous sense of combat prevents your shadow headband of Curath, the Designer of Deception from getting scratched.
Your marvellous sense of combat prevents your Bracelet of Despair from getting scratched.
Your Bracelet of Despair gets damaged; it's now in outstanding condition.
Your Orc prince Belan's belt gets damaged; it's now in exceptional condition.
Felidae's sparkling crystal amulet loses its blue glow.
Your shovel gets damaged; it's now in good condition.
Your purse gets damaged; it's now in poor condition.
Bandolier of the hellish warrior loses its blue glow.
Your ring of see invisibility gets damaged; it's now in fine condition.

Now I remember why I haven’t killed these drows usually when doing solo exp in the drow tower…

But since I had started killing the monsters, I wanted to get them down. In the process I ended up receiving the immolate spell once more:

Drow magician shakes with firey rage and yells 'fah relep krlnpth'
Suddenly flames shoot from the floor!
You burst into flames! Your gear is set ablaze!
Your torn leather muscle shirt gets damaged; it's now in incredible condition.
Your glove gets damaged; it's now in exceptional condition.
Your marvellous sense of combat prevents your glove from getting scratched.
Your shadow headband of Curath, the Designer of Deception gets damaged; it's now in exceptional condition.
Your marvellous sense of combat prevents your ring from getting scratched.
Your Bracelet of Despair gets damaged; it's now in incredible condition.
Your big sturdy pack gets damaged; it's now in spectacular condition.
Your marvellous sense of combat prevents your staff of olympus from getting scratched.
Your marvellous sense of combat prevents your Orc prince Belan's belt from getting scratched.
Your HUGE sturdy pack gets damaged; it's now in incredible condition.
Your shovel gets damaged; it's now in fine condition.
Your purse gets damaged; it's now in bad condition.

I probably need to replace my purse at some point. Otherwise, the eq conditions did drop that much luckily.

Prince Masoj and Ebon Bane

After the blockers, Prince Masoj went down reasonably fast and then got converted into Ebon Bane:

Prince Masoj exclaims 'You weak pathetic surface-dwellers!'
********************** Round 3 **********************
Prince Masoj misses.
Prince Masoj perforates you.
Prince Masoj misses.
You grab Prince Masoj.
You shove Prince Masoj.
Bleeding heavily and mortally wounded, Masoj stares up at you defiantly. With
his last breath, he curses, 'You fools! Now see what you have forced me to
become!'

With a sickening squelching sound, Masoj's skeleton rips free of its tattered
flesh shell and wails like the winds of hell. As its wailing rises in volume,
a second pair of skeletal arms pull free of the spinal cord, and a bloody
longsword materializes in each hand.

Masoj has become the Ebon Bane, Vhaureen's master slayer minion.
Ebon Bane wields drow longsword in his first arm.
Ebon Bane wields drow longsword in his second arm.
Ebon Bane wields drow longsword in his third arm.
Ebon Bane wields drow longsword in his fourth arm.
You miss.
Prince Masoj parries.
hp: 1122 (1204) [-57] sp: 477 (1216) [] ep: 375 (411) [] cash: 8115 [] exp: 168240 []
Ebon Bane is in excellent shape (100%).
A chilly breeze comes from the darkness downstairs.

Ebon Bane itself proved to be too tough for me at the moment. I managed to get it down to 90% every now and then, but when I had to stop for a bigger regen (meditation), Ebon Bane regenerated back to 100%.

If you wish to see successful Ebon Bane kill, check a log from my old blog.

Monk updates

I have three monk combo skills at 110%:

Falling boulder strike           110
Geyser force kick                110
Wave crest strike                110

And a few are over 95%:

Avalanche slam                    95
Earthquake kick                   96

If I manage to stay in my current reinc about one more week, I think I get also those skills maxed out.

In Scarlet Lotus monk (and tiger) sect, I am now studying Jaguar Fighting skill and its cultivation is about 50% done. Otherwise, the progress in the sect has been pretty modest:

+----------------------=( The Sect of Scarlet Lotus )=-----------------------+
|                                                                            |
| Sensei Shozai thinks the wisdom of the sect of Scarlet Lotus may help you  |
| reach your full potential. Shozai has estimated the progress you have      |
| made with the Warrior Brotherhood and he thinks that your combat skills    |
| are exemplary. Shozai is very happy that you truly master martial arts     |
| and there isn't much for you to learn within the Warrior Brotherhood.      |
| Shozai thinks you should cultivate calm before storm, focused vitality,    |
| heart meridian, inner peace, jaguar fighting, sharp rose petals, spleen    |
| meridian and sweeping kick and learn what these new skills will allow you  |
| to do. After that, you should come back to him to learn more.              |
|                                                                            |
| Way of Meditation:                                                         |
| ------------------                                                         |
|                                                                            |
| Mantra of Body Flows (body flows)                       1 %                |
| Mantra of Introspection (introspection)                 13 %   (Active)    |
|                                                                            |
| Way of Epicenters:                                                         |
| ------------------                                                         |
|                                                                            |
| Lung Meridian (lung meridian)                           5 %                |
|                                                                            |
| Way of Fire:                                                               |
| ------------------                                                         |
|                                                                            |
| Breath of Aeo (breath of aeo)                           1 %                |
|                                                                            |
| Way of Water:                                                              |
| ------------------                                                         |
|                                                                            |
| Rain Drops (rain drops)                                 1 %                |
|                                                                            |
| Learned, but needs practice:                                               |
| ----------------------------                                               |
|                                                                            |
| Heart Meridian (heart meridian)                                            |
| Jaguar Fighting (jaguar fighting)                     (Cultivated)         |
| Mantra of Inner Peace (inner peace)                                        |
| Calm Before Storm (calm before storm)                                      |
| Focused Vitality (focused vitality)                                        |
| Sweeping Kick (sweeping kick)                                              |
| Sharp Rose Petals (sharp rose petals)                                      |
| Spleen Meridian (spleen meridian)                                          |
|                                                                            |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

NOTE: From the normal monk guild quests, I have done only the first two. My idea was that I will reinc out as soon as possible (to take advantage of my reinc ticket), so there is no point to spent effort on the quests.

Random tell of the week

I ended up writing this post after some prodding:

 @E bonks you on the head.
 E tells you 'onko blogi päivitett'