recently found out that a wand of digging can neutralize orc mines that would otherwise be dangerous. If you get the orc mines that have a disconnected first floor you may have trouble with the second floor, because if some dangerous monsters or a dangerous group pushes you to retreat upstairs the usual move of simply returning from a different stairs may not be possible. but if you have a wand of digging you may be able to fix that! hopefully you managed to find the stairs on orc 2 to peek into the other islands on orc 1 so you can know where to dig, but if you’re desperate you can even use scroll of revelation (I did that recently, I think it was the previous run :D). very handy when you’re playing some underpowered caster that spends their entire MP bar to kill one enemy at a time xD
I don’t even use scrolls of revelation, I’ll just dig in a direction where I estimate to find other areas. If I have a wand with several charges, that is. Sometimes it’s a waste of charges, but quite often it works. I like to save my revelation scrolls for emergencies or the late game.
how do you guess where to attempt to dig? does the shape of the island actually tell you anything? to me it looks like the other islands can be absolutely anywhere, so if you don’t have that many charges (7 or less?) blindly digging could be a risk of running out and having to face whatever is camping your stairs or to leave orc
but it looks like 2 islands rarely (but not never) take more than 3 charges to connect, so you should be safe to try blind a few times and then decide if you want to use the scroll of revelation when you get down to 3 or 4. don’t know if that’s something I will do, but it’s an idea hmm
Usually I’ll just pick a corner and dig diagonally. If I reach the end of diggable area, I try the opposite corner. I won’t use the last couple of charges, though.
No choice. Must sail the rock walls to find the other cave islands.
No obligation to absolutely clear the Orcish mines or the Elven Halls tho.
Although, I am not experienced with speedruns (time/turns), but I may suppose that the Elven Halls is one of the key places to easily hoard resources without wandering around too much? ( I fear not so easily cause I fear one may be under-leveled for speedrunning? )
could be generally true, but I think many casters really really really want to see the 4 orc shops that are guaranteed to spawn. what spells are being sold in the book shops or if there even are any is a key piece of information about the run to reveal, you want to do it sooner than later. after you know what spells you have there (or that you’ll have to make it with what you’ve already got) you can finally know where it’s the best to commit. I think when you’re playing a caster with a subpar library and a god that doesn’t gift you new spells giving up on orc is a concession big enough that it’s worth using consumables to prevent it. if all you have to pay is a scroll of revelation and some wand of digging charges that’s a great deal compared to worse cases