The Quickling Tree can be found in any portion of the forested wilderness west of the river. This means that a PC should search for it in a convenient place, such as next to the Mad Minstrel's clearing, until a brown & shows up. It can be found at any time, but to actually enter it usually requires two corruptions: the extremely thin and nimble and the very light corruptions. This is because the PC must weigh no more than ten kilos to enter the tree. Hurthlings are often an exception: they can enter the Quickling Tree with only the thin and nimble corruption (which is required under any circumstances). Also, the weight of the PCs inventory is limited to 160 stones. This means eternium plate mails, crowns of leadership and the like are not going to be useful. In fact it is worth picking up any light armor the PC finds throughout the game and identifying all of it at some point in case any of it is useful in the Quickling Tree. The PC also cannot exit the level if she is carrying more than 160 stones.
The top half of the level consists of oddly shaped chambers, spelling the word "ZOOM". The bottom half of the level consists of a few rooms stuffed with quicklings, with a larger room at the end containing a quickling king and queen and the artifact Boots of Great Speed. Most of the "rooms" in the level are sealed off from each other by secret passages, so the PC will need to search a lot to get around the level. Teleporting straight into the bottom half of the level is also an option, though due to the masses of quicklings down there, there is a very high chance of either choosing an occupied tile or ending up helplessly surrounded by quicklings when trying to use teleportation. Better option might be to tunnel directly south from the entrance room into the room containing the high level quicklings.
Time passes very quickly in the Quickling Tree. It is not unusual to enter on day 70 and find that it is day 140 upon emerging. This means the 90 day limit has passed and background corruption will become faster. Ideally a PC will do the Quickling Tree right before the final dive to the lowest levels of the CoC.
Quicklings use hand crossbows and dark elven quarrels (tiny quarrels) as missile weapons and drop them as they are killed. Some prior experience with crossbows is therefore useful. Quicklings fall fairly easily in melee, with missile weapons or using magic. They are just very, very fast. Only the king and queen see in darkness and see invisible.
Quicklings generated in the Quickling Tree are: 75% quickling, 20% quickling lord, 3% quickling king, 2% quickling queen.
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Quickling: Level: 1, DV: 25, PV: 0, Hits: 10, Attacks: 1, Damage: 1d4, Speed: 400. Lord: Level: 1, DV: 35, PV: 0, Hits: 10, Attacks: 1, Damage: 1d4, Speed: 700. King: Level: 1, DV: 50, PV: 0, Hits: 10, Attacks: 1, Damage: 1d4+2, Speed: 1000. Queen: Level: 1, DV: 60, PV: 0, Hits: 6, Attacks: 1, Damage: 1d4, Speed: 1200. |
The original quickling queen stands on a pair of artifact boots, the Boots of Great Speed. Wearing the boots sharply increases speed (as the name suggests) but plague their wearer
with the severe disadvantages of Dooming, Cursing, and continuous corruption. The speed boost is +100 in R+, and +30 in previous versions. They slowly corrupt the PC even if they
just carry them. They appear as "hide boots" when unidentified.
------------------ boots of great speed [+5, +0] (+100 spd) ----------------- Weight: 20s When worn they modify DV by +5 and PV by +0. When used in melee combat they grant a +0 bonus to hit and cause 1d3 points of damage. When used as a missile they grants a +0 bonus to hit and cause 1d2 points of damage. They contains the essence of Chaos and Corruption. They modify your speed by +100. They grants bad luck. Wearing them makes you doomed. |