The Great Pyramid

A party dungeon in the pyramid on the eastern skyline of The Golden Sands. Climb four chambers to a giant serpent at the top, for venom, gear and a pet you can't get anywhere else.

On this page: Before you go · How a run works · The Squeeze · Rewards · Limits

Before you go

• Two to eight of you pay an entry fee (the ante), get a private copy of the tomb, and climb. It works like the Crypt, built the other way up.
• The door and the fight are different numbers. At Combat 40 you land about 10% of your swings on the boss; around 76, about half.
• It pays fewer tickets than the Black Crypt on purpose: the Crypt is where you go for tickets, and this is where you go for things.

How a run works

• You start at the base and work up through four chambers, each smaller than the last, to the burial chamber at the top.
• A chamber's stone door grinds open when it's clear. The burial chamber opens at a lever once everyone still alive is standing in front of it.
• A chest on the way up is your bank, so you can restock.
• The first chambers are never quite the same twice: a run's monsters there come out up to 25% softer or harder. The burial chamber never changes.

The Squeeze

• A giant serpent at the top, behind four Risen Pharaohs at the chamber's mouth. You fight the pharaohs first, and it only reaches for you once you're within 4 tiles.
• Its health scales with the party: with 2 of you it has its plain 54,600, with 4 about 2.2×, with 8 about 4.6×.
• The coil. About every 21 seconds, after a 3-second warning, it grabs one of you. That player can't move, bleeds 9% of their health a second, and can't break free. The grip breaks when the rest of the party does 5% of the Squeeze's health to it, or after 9 seconds. So when someone is grabbed, everyone else stops and hits the snake.
• The burrow. At 70% and 40% of its health it goes under the sand for 5 seconds and comes up somewhere else in the chamber. Nobody gets to camp in a corner.

Rewards

• When the Squeeze dies, everyone who earned the clear opens their own roll: the clear's tickets, 1 to 2 serpent venom every time, then 2 to 6 more things: scarab shells, cobra fangs, drinks, dinners, clovers, casino chips, a horseshoe, now and then a piece of buff gear, and rarely the Coilling, a pet that comes from nowhere else (about 5.4% of clears).
• The venom is the reason to come. It exists nowhere else, and it's what Coilbreaker draught is brewed from, at Alchemy 99: one of the best potions in the game.

Scarab wraps come from this chest and nowhere else: Scarab headwrap, Scarab shroud, Scarab skirt, Scarab handwraps, Scarab sandals. Magic 60. Each piece has more defence than the outfitters' at its level; all five are +10% Magic damage and your spells leave venom: 25% of hits bite again for 40% of the hit, three seconds later. A chest never gives you a piece you already have (worn, in your bag or in your bank); own all five and that roll is tickets.

Limits

• Three paid clears a Chicago day each. After that a clear pays 25%, and its chest has 3 rolls with no gear or pet in them.
• Anyone who did under 10% of the boss's damage gets half pay.
• Leaving the game doesn't leave the party: your spot is held for three minutes.

More in Going further

Pets · The Long Night: Round Two · The Trailer Park · The Golden Sands · The Tower · The Carnival