Lord Surtur (monster)

He is generally considered one of the easier to defeat. Lord Surtur is one of the few quest nemeses who respects Elbereth. Novice players should still beware, however, as Lord Surtur may be the first enemy they encounter who teleports to the upstairs to heal. He is generated asleep at the center of his lair, surrounded by fire giants and a handful of squeaky board traps. A valkyrie is stealthy (even at level 1), so if she doesn't wake the nemesis by stepping on a squeaky trap or in any other way, she can clear out the fire giants before facing Lord Surtur in single combat. The player should stay on Elbereth on the upstairs themselves to keep Lord Surtur from teleporting away or from escaping upstairs. He has fire resistance but not cold resistance, so any cold attacks will do 50% extra damage. A wand of death is also effective. He is not a spellcaster, so magic resistance is not necessary, but the Orb of Fate does not grant it, either.

It is popular to tin Lord Surtur's corpse, whether to eat for the strength gain or simply to keep as a trophy.

Strategy
Lord Surtur can be defeated easily by any Valkyrie player of a high enough level to enter the Quest. There are several ways one might go about doing this:


 * Drawbridge. There are two on the level. Beware of them.
 * Lord Surtur does respect Elbereth, so one can engrave it on the upstairs and stand on it, rendering Lord Surtur unable to escape to the next level or teleport away to heal.


 * Zapping Lord Surtur with a wand of death can put him down quickly.


 * Lord Surtur will take additional damage from cold attacks. Zapping him with a wand of cold or a cone of cold spell will quickly finish him.


 * If you feel confident in your melee capabilities, or have a sufficiently low AC, you might be able to engage him by standing on the Orb of Fate. If you can deal a significant amount of damage to him without waking him (consider #twoweapon with an artifact weapon or otherwise highly-enchanted non-artifact weapons), his first action will be to teleport to the upstairs to heal. He will not, however, have time to pick up the Orb of Fate. If you stand on the Orb of Fate and engrave Elbereth underneath you, he will move next to you in an attempt to retrieve the Orb of Fate and will usually remain next to you without teleporting away to heal. You can then proceed to melee him down.
 * Make sure you take out his fire giant and fire ant minions before engaging him, if possible. Lord Surtur will hit fairly hard if he does hit you, and you don't want to be dealing with other enemies at the same time.