So I took my little party down to level 7. I had a medium level Ranger, a good Fighter a couple of nice Priests, a Thief and a decent level Mage. I was doing pretty well, and though to myself, "well this isn't so bad'. Suddenly up popped 3 Undead Bears (along with a couple of other lesser monster groups). Taking a look at what they can dish out I see 'Critical Hit', not a problem. Uh Oh, 2 Drain options which meant that I really needed to take these buggers out in the first round. Well, I though, no problem, these are undead, and my Priests should be able to use their Sheinoget (Holy Word) spells and dispatch them back to the nether world.
The first Priest fires off his spell, and the three Undead Bears simply look at each other and laugh. Hmm, I thought, that was a bit of bad luck, I was sure I would get at least one. Oh well, I had cranked the game speed down to the minimum and still had time for a second spell. The second Priest stepped up to the plate, and let loose his Sheinoget. The Undead Bears just laughed again, and said "After that first Priest failed, did you really expect us to be impressed by you?".
Now I knew I was in a bit of a bind. I needed something that would drive all the Undead Bears away, and I had little time remaining before they attacked. Unfortunately both my Priests were locked up in recovering from the spells they had just fouled up. While I was pondering my next move, the Bears attacked, and suddenly my Ranger was one level lower than he had been.
That did it. I needed to do something and I needed to do it fast. My Mage fired off one of his Fireballs, and fried the buggers. Unfortunately he fried the rest of the party as well. No one died, but all the healing really drained my remaining resources. I decided I needed to get off level 7 now. Unfortunately my Priests had blown their level 6 spells trying to take out the Bears, and no longer had any Home spells. I decided that I really needed to get out, so I burned my precious Patriarch's Gem and restored one of the Priests spells. I used Home to pop up to level 6 then managed to work my way back up to the castle.
My Ranger managed to make the lost level back during the return trip, so all was not lost.