The Sorceress' Tower/Old

NS Spoilers Navigation

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.
• Defeat two of the Sorceress' Familiars by bringing along your own specific 20lb familiars.
• 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 can only be defeated with a specific combat item. They have an extremely high Monster Level, so using even a low-weight Hovering Sombrero will radically increase stat point gains from them. This can be helpful for getting your off stats to 70, which is required to access the Sorceress' Chamber. The monsters are different for each player.

(Specifically, the tower monsters give 40 substats when defeated, but a hovering sombrero familiar uses their actual attack value of 100000 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.)

If you don't have the necessary item, run away, get the item by either buying it in the mall 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
best-selling novelist	plot hole	The Castle in the Clouds in the Sky	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
Bronze Chef	leftovers of indeterminate origin	demonic icebox	The Haunted Kitchen
concert pianist	Knob Goblin firecracker	Outskirts of Cobb's Knob	Sub-Assistant Knob Mad Scientist
the darkness	inkwell	writing desk	The Haunted Library
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	Ruins	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	black picnic basket from a black widow zapping dehydrated caviar or ancient spice	The Black Forest
Giant Desktop Globe	NG	N/A	meatpasting a lowercase N and an original G
Ice Cube	hair spray	N/A	Purchase from The Market for 24 meat.
malevolent crop circle	bronzed locust	The Arid, Extra-Dry Desert	plaque of locusts
possessed pipe-organ	powdered organs	canopic jar (obtained from a Tomb Servant	The Upper or Middle Chambers.
Pretty Fly	spider web	The Sleazy Back Alley	either spider
Tyrannosaurus Tex	chaos butterfly	The Castle in the Clouds in the Sky	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. It can easily be gained by taking a trip to the proper area of the shore at least 35 turns after your previous trip to the shore.

Defeat:	Using:	Shore Trip:
collapsed mineshaft golem	stick of dynamite	Distant Lands Dude Ranch Adventure
Enraged Cow	barbed-wire fence	Large Donkey Mountain Ski Resort
giant bee	tropical orchid	Tropical Paradise Island Getaway

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, different Truth-Tellers, and different Familiar Foes. 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 is:

• Cisco's

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.

Defeat your own Shadow

1. Boost your Initiative. You may also want to boost your maximum HP (see HP Increasers 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)

The Familiars

As her last line of defense, the Naughty Sorceress will send two of her pets after you. Clicking on the familiar names in the first column will take you to the battle description.

To beat the:	Use a 20 lb:
Angry Goat	Mosquito
Barrrnacle	Angry Goat
Levitating Potato	Barrrnacle
Mosquito	Sabre-Toothed Lime
Sabre-Toothed Lime	Levitating Potato

Both familiars are chosen randomly. These two tasks do not use any adventures.

Your familiar's effective weight must be at least 20 pounds in order to beat the enemy. That weight can be reached by buffs and other additions, but it can't be any lower than 20.

If you don't have the right familiar with you at the right weight, you'll get hit for 50 HP and have to repeat the battle. If you don't have a familiar at all, you lose 100 HP. If you are damaged to 0 HP by this, you will be Beaten Up for 4 adventures, instead of the usual 3.

Familiar Helpers

This tool can help you in efficiently leveling your familiars for the final battle: Familiar Arena Chart by Vladjimir

Retrofrog's tool has not been updated for some time, but it is usable for dealing with the tower monsters.

Tips

• For a complete list of familiar weight-increasing effects and items, see Familiar Weight. The most common are shown below.
• Familiar weight-increasing skills (Leash of Linguini, Empathy of the Newt, Amphibian Sympathy) increase weight by 5 each.
• For the tower familiars, familiar-specific equipment from The Cake-Shaped Arena give 5 pounds. A box of Familiar Jacks will produce the appropriate familiar equipment. (Just switch familiars before you use it).
• Alternatively, a sugar shield increases weight by 10 when equipped.
• Various Mr. Store familiar equipment (plastic pumpkin bucket, Mayflower bouquet, little box of fireworks, moveable feast) increase weight by 5. A moveable feast can also increase weight by 10 when used.
• Choosing to play aggressively at the Clan VIP Pool Table increases weight by 5.
• Irradiated pet snacks increase weight by 10.
• Green snowcones increase weight by 5.
• Knob Goblin pet-buffing sprays increase weight by 5.
• Love songs of icy revenge increase weight by up to 10.
• Disintegrating spiky collars increase weight by 5.
• Optimist Primal from the Arena increases weight by 5.
• Half-orchid increases weight by 3.
• Beastly paste increases weight by 3, but at the cost of 4 spleen.
• Green candy heart increases weight by 3.

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 Bees Hate You runs, the Sorceress chooses from a pool of only the Angry Goat, Barrrnacle, and Sabre-Toothed Lime familiar challenges, avoiding the two that would require the player to use a prohibited familiar.