Managed to down him. Interesting story this time:
First time I get to B15, I clear about 75% of the floor (up to around 1.9 million) and find another mysterious portal. I take it since I haven't skipped any of them to that point, and I figure why not.
So I take it and there's no fucking exit. At all. Luckily, the game makes an auto-save now when you descend a floor, so I load that and start B15 all over again.
This time, I clear maybe 15% of the floor, and the first damn door I have to kick down after running out of lockpicks, that fucker is right on the other side of. Literally one tile from him now, which is real bad. I go to leyline teleport the heck outta dodge and I click one square out of line, which is an invalid move (you can only go in straight lines with the leyline teleport) giving him a free turn, which he uses to hit me with thunder for about 70 damage. I wasn't sure if Dredmor could see through invisibility or not, so I gambled on dumping a Wyrmling in his face, thinking a healing item would do no good if he got a second turn with me as a target, which worked and he smacked it with his staff. Had he decided to just bolt me again, it would have been donezo, but instead I was able to make my teleport and invis him off me with a potion. After a few health potions, I moved back into that area leading with Wyrmling casts about 10 tiles out front, and once I hooked him on the line this time I blew his ass to kingdom come.
Unfortunately it cost me about 120,000 points since I wasn't able to go back for the rest of the level, but I'll take it. Stay free, Dredmor.
The new floors aren't too different overall, except for the diggle gods - if you happen to find one of their shrines, you can pray to it and gain their buff permanently (or until you choose a different diggle diety). I only had 3 in my game; War (which I didn't take, figured it was for melee), Digging (which was a bunch of pierce damage, health, armor and a couple other stats) and Death (which was an amazing grip of resists, 15 to just about everything, but prevented you from having health or mana regen).
Not sure if what I hit was a known bug, but I would warn everyone to ignore mysterious portals at least on B15. I did notice that the dungeon graphics were not like the other portals; it was using the tiles from B10 rather than the plain grey tiles. Be warned!
) to actually get hit with the added blocking, dodging and damage absorbtion. Remember that an unarmed character kicks enemies in the shins so he or she can carry two shields at once! Dodging has some awesome new abilities like short range teleporting or counterattacking when a dodge successfully takes place.
