The Sorceress' Tower/Old

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Entrance The Three Gates The Perplexing Door The Stone Mariachis The Hedge Maze Tower The Tower Monsters The Heavy and Light Doors The Shadow Defeating The Naughty Sorceress

Tasks

• Defeat the six monsters on The Stairs using specific combat items.
• Determine the code needed to open the Heavy Door by listening to the guards, and open it.
• Equip the huge mirror shard to deflect The Electrical Attack.
• Defeat your own Shadow by healing yourself.
• Continue by Defeating The Naughty Sorceress!

The Sorceress' Tower (The Stairs)

The Sorceress' Tower contains a series of six randomly-selected enemies, each of which has enormously high stats but can be defeated with a specific combat item. The monsters are different for each player, and each ascension.

Due to their extremely high Monster Level, even a low-weight Hovering Sombrero will radically increase stat point gains from them. Specifically, the tower monsters give 40 substats when defeated, but a Sombrero uses their actual attack value of 99,999 to determine the bonus stats you receive from the familiar. With such high ML, even a 6-pound sombrero gives almost 78 bonus stats, and heavier ones give much more.

Resourceful players can sometimes kill the Tower monsters, but most players cannot. If you are faced with a Tower monster for which you don't have the necessary item or the resources to kill it, run away. Get the item by buying it in the mall, pulling it, or adventuring until it drops, then return to the Tower.

• For Bees Hate You runs, all the monsters in the Tower will be giant bees. (This can be countered by obtaining a packet of orchid seeds.)
• The first 5 tower monsters will be randomly chosen from the following chart:

Defeat:	Using:	Found in:	Obtained From:
Beer Batter	baseball	Guano Junction	baseball bat
			Using a Ten-leaf clover with a Sonar-in-a-biscuit in inventory
best-selling novelist	plot hole	The Castle in the Clouds in the Sky (Ground Floor)	Possibility Giant
Big Meat Golem	meat vortex	The Valley Beyond The Orc Chasm	me4t begZ0r
Bowling Cricket	sonar-in-a-biscuit	The Bat Hole	various
			Using a Ten-leaf clover without a Sonar-in-a-biscuit in inventory
Bronze Chef	leftovers of indeterminate origin	The Haunted Kitchen	demonic icebox
			Using a Ten-leaf clover
concert pianist	Knob Goblin firecracker	Outskirts of Cobb's Knob	Sub-Assistant Knob Mad Scientist
the darkness	inkwell	The Haunted Library	writing desk
El Diablo	mariachi G-string	South of The Border	irate mariachi
Electron Submarine	photoprotoneutron torpedo	The Penultimate Fantasy Airship	MagiMechTech MechaMech
endangered inflatable white tiger	pygmy blowgun	The Hidden Park	pygmy blowgunner
fancy bath slug	fancy bath salts	The Haunted Bathroom	claw-foot bathtub
Fickle Finger of F8	razor-sharp can lid	The Haunted Pantry	various
Flaming Samurai	frigid ninja stars	Lair of the Ninja Snowmen	various
giant fried egg	black pepper	The Black Forest	black picnic basket from a black widow
			Zapping dehydrated caviar or ancient spice
			Using a Ten-leaf clover
Giant Desktop Globe	NG	N/A	Meat Pasting a lowercase N and an original G
			Each letter can be zapped individually
Ice Cube	hair spray	N/A	Purchase from the General Store for 24 meat.
malevolent crop circle	bronzed locust	The Arid, Extra-Dry Desert	plaque of locusts
possessed pipe-organ	powdered organs	The Upper or Middle Chambers	canopic jar (obtained from a tomb servant)
Pretty Fly	spider web	The Sleazy Back Alley	either spider
Tyrannosaurus Tex	chaos butterfly	The Castle in the Clouds in the Sky (Ground Floor)	Possibility Giant
Vicious Easel	disease	The "Fun" House	disease-in-the-box
		Cobb's Knob Harem	Knob Goblin Harem Girl

• The sixth Tower monster will always be defeated by an item from The Shore, Inc. Gift Shop. It can easily be gained by taking a Shore trip to obtain 1 Shore Inc. Ship Trip Scrip, then purchasing the appropriate souvenir crate from the shop.

Defeat:	Using:	Obtained from:
collapsed mineshaft golem	stick of dynamite	dude ranch souvenir crate
Enraged Cow	barbed-wire fence	ski resort souvenir crate
giant bee	tropical orchid	tropical island souvenir crate

The Sorceress' Chamber

Like the stairs, the adventures are randomized for each player. To an extent, that is. The events appear in the order below, but all people have different Codes and different Truth-Tellers. Note that you must be level 11 and have at least 70 of each stat in order to progress further than this point, else you will see only the following message:

You're not tough enough to fight up here. You need to be at least level 11, with at least 70 in all of your stats.

Of course you most likely will be level 13 or higher at this point, but the message about "level 11" is a holdover from before NS13. Regardless, this restriction rarely comes into play, except for those doing very fast normal or casual ascensions.

The Heavy and Light Doors

Click on the Light Door, and the four guards will be happy to give you the info you need to get the code. It's different every ascension, though, so it is useless to ask other players what the code is.

One guard is telling the truth, one is lying, another is alternating between lies and truth, and the last is craving human flesh. You have to use their answers to figure out who's telling the truth and who's lying, and what the code is. (The one who craves human flesh only says "Graaaaagh.")

The player Poochy says that the truth-teller is the only one who says "You're full of it." In fact, a simple truth-table analysis of this problem confirms this, and this insight offers the fastest route to solving the problem each time. Sometimes, however, none of the guards say "You're full of it."

If you want to solve it yourself, the best way to figure it out is to list what each of the guards says in a separate text window, or on a piece of paper. Deciphering the Door Code explains how to use logic to figure out the code.

Also, several online door code solvers have been created to solve the door riddle.

One of them (Cisco's) can be found here.

Once you have the code by whichever method, click on the Heavy Door and enter the code. If you're right, the door will open; if not, you'll lose 50 HP.

The Electrical Attack

Equip the huge mirror shard to deflect a burst of energy. If you don't have the shard equipped, you'll lose 50 HP. The shard must be your main weapon; it cannot be wielded in your offhand or third hand. This task does not consume an adventure. If you lose all HP from this, you will be Beaten Up for 4 adventures, instead of the usual 3.

On the Way of the Surprising Fist runs, you do not need a weapon. The normal text is replaced with the line:

You've never met a beam of energy you couldn't punch, and this one is no exception. You draw back your fist and punch the beam as hard as you can, which turns out to be exactly hard enough to reflect it back down the hallway. You hear a muffled curse and the sound of breaking stone.

On Avatar of Boris runs, nothing special needs to be done. The normal text is replaced with the line:

You laugh as the beam of energy harmlessly bounces off your powerful chest muscles and shoots back down the hallway. You hear a muffled curse and the sound of breaking stone.

Defeat your own Shadow

1. Boost your Initiative. You may also want to boost your maximum HP (see HP Modifiers for skills and items that will boost your HP). This is not always necessary.
2. Before going into battle, make sure that you are fully healed.

The Shadow starts out with 400 hp.

Note --- Healing yourself with skills or items is the only way to hurt this opponent. ---

The damage dealt by the shadow is 90-100 + (Max HP/6), rounded up.

Four red pixel potions are enough to win, although healing items from the level 11 and 12 areas that heal similar amounts of HP (such as gauze garters or filthy poultices) also work. Try to raise your hitpoints as high as possible with equipment and potions that boost muscle and health.

It is very difficult to defeat with very low hit points – at 126 hit points, it will take virtually all of your hit points away with each hit.

If you have the Disco Bandit skill Ambidextrous Funkslinging you can dual-use red pixel potions, gauze garters and filthy poultices recovering 160-240 HP per round.

The easiest way to defeat your shadow is to have a high max HP: go into the battle with low HP (ex: 200/600 HP) and use a scented massage oil to recover all HP.

An alternate way to defeat your shadow is to equip the navel ring of navel gazing; doing so will allow you to avoid most of your shadow's attacks and allowing you to use lower-level healing items to defeat it. This only works in softcore or casual ascensions since the ring is a Mr. Store item. The ancient stone head will block attacks and is available in hardcore (provided you have a Baby Sandworm)

Clancy

On Avatar of Jarlsberg runs, you will fight the final boss's companion before the final boss:

Clancy -- (edit metadata)
	Item Drops: None Meat Drop: None Monster Level: 150 • Substat Gain: 37.5 • Moxie for No Hit*: 160 Monster Defense: 165 Hit Points: 500 Initiative: 90 Elemental Alignment: None Damage Resistance: 25%

Defeating The Naughty Sorceress

Quest information continues in Defeating The Naughty Sorceress.

Notes

• For Way of the Surprising Fist runs, you do not need to equip the huge mirror shard to deflect The Electrical Attack.
• For Avatar of Boris runs, you automatically deflect The Electrical Attack. Also, you do not need a Wand of Nagamar.
• For Avatar of Jarlsberg runs, you fight Clancy before the the final boss.

History

• Before a trivial update on November 7, 2014, players had to face the Naughty Sorceress' familiars before fighting the Sorceress herself. Two out of her five familiars had to be fought, which required a certain familiar with at least 20 pounds to be defeated. Certain Challenge Paths that restricted familiars were able to bypass this challenge or required alternate means. See here for more info on this section of the Quest.