I'm playing this game for literal months, hyperfixating on it for some weeks until I get into frustration cycle and abandon it for months.

Most of my characters meet their demise quite early on thanks to my impatience and bad risk assessment (permadeath isn't great for risky players like myself :p).

I was playing around the new species (mountain dwarf) and the reworked god, Makhleb, to distract myself from a recent stress and suddenly found myself in the Realm of Zot.

After getting my runes from the Swamp, the Spider Nest and the Slime Pit, I headed to Zot. The area was pretty easy for my character except for one thing - Protean Progenitor.

The enemy would quickly build up magical contamination on me leading to some nasty mutations. I got berserkis before I realized this and couldn't remove it with my pathetic supply of potions of mutation.

Nonetheless, I entered Zot:5 and very carefully cleared the East lung. Most enemies weren't a problem except, of course, Orbs of Fire. I coul