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From sfg at eecs.berkeley.edu Wed Jul 23 13:26:27 2003 Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 09:06:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: nethack ascension number two So normally I send out mass mails that tell you what I've been up to lately. This email sort of does that :-) Bjorne, level 30, Male Chaotic Orcish Barbarian str:25 dex:18 con:18 int:21 wis:21 cha:16 AC: -48, 330hp, turns ~79000 I had around about 4.8 million points. genocided: green slime, L, R, h, c, ; -- they are all just too much of a pain (screw the poor hobbitssesss, the mindflayers gotta go). used 4 wishes (gdsm, speed boots, magic marker, candles) -- yes, I was too lazy to go all the way back up to mine town to get candles. I had 4 more wishes left when I ascended (I found an extra /oW randomly). I altar-camped, polypiled, wraith-lured and nurse-danced. I did not engrave Elbereth. (warning: some spoilers ahead -- it's probably mostly stuff you know) At dungeon level 4 I found an altar and camped out. I got Cleaver (and Grimtooth and Ogresmasher and Dragonbane and a blessed spell book... of blank paper -- thanks, god). I was level 10 or 11 by this point and the mines down to minetown were a breeze. I got a wish from a magic lamp for the GDSM. Sokoban, bottom of the mines, blah, blah. I found a graveyard and lured some wraiths upstairs. I think I got like five levels from that graveyard. At some point I got a /o create monster and did yet more sacrificing to eventually get Frostbrand which I kept throughout (by the end of the game I'd also had, but not used, vorpal blade and demonbane). I think I got the bag of holding from sokoban and the shield of reflection from a statue. Once I have a BoH, the junk collecting begins. This game I was very careful to never be burdened (except on levels I'd already pacified, I was especially careless when moving stash items or hauling corpses to the altar). I bothered with gems and spellbooks which was mostly a useless waste of time (actually having force bolt came in handy for clearing boulders a few times even if I had to take off my shield and gloves and still had a fail rate of 66% -- that and the confusion thing means spellbooks are almost, but not totally useless). I also carried a lot more food than I really needed. Just to gauge, I think from Moloch's Sanctum to the astral plane I ate maybe like 3 K-rations (and lots of corpses). I got teleportitis some time before the quest from eating a tengu. I lucked out and got a =o teleport control not long after. With teleport control, teleportitis is fantastic. The rogue level and the big room were unnotable. In the big room stayed on the stairs and avoided gang-banging. I also threw tripe to all the cats and dogs I could find, but later left them. I'm not much for pets when I play B, V or S. They're more useful with M and W imho. I was pretty buff, so I did the quest before the castle or medusa. The trolls were a big pain, but the a tinning kit helps. I had to be careful not to be surrounded and gang-banged, but other than that and the trolls, the quest was easy. The barbarian quest artifact is nice -- you can #invoke it to levitate. Good for all those water levels. Next I did Ludios which I found more or less coincidentally (I wasn't doing a thorough search for it). With all that gold, I got protection down to base AC 0. Medusa and the castle were thoroughly routine. Monsters were kind enough to leave me gauntlets of power and a helm of brilliance. Some polypiling, cancelling, water prayers and magic markering later I had lots of blessed scrolls of enchant armor and enchant weapon. Slightly later I had +7 frostbrand, +4 or +5 hawaiian shirt, gdsm, cloak of prot, speed boots, shield of reflection, gauntlets of power and helm of brilliance. I also had a blessed amulet of life saving (I found another one later -- I never needed them). The wraiths were kind to me about leaving corpses. That and all the !oGainLevel I found / polypiled for got me up to level 30 by the middle of hell. Some wankery with magic traps and blessed potions of gain ability maxed my base stats (18/50, 18, 18, 16, 16, 16 for orcs). Hacking through hell was mostly just boring. Some same-species sacrificing (I was chaotic) had summoned Jubilex and Yeenoghu earlier, so even the demon levels weren't so bad. I think it was Orcus that had two nice shiny /oDeath for me. those came in lots of handy later. As soon as I found the stairs I just went down -- no reason to explore any further. I used my wands of digging to clear a path sometimes (in contrast to my first ascension where I painstakingly cleared the shortest path between the stairways). Some of my path clearing happened while I had the amulet. I didn't do the cursed scroll of genocide trick, but I did play with a couple of the nurses I found. Blah, blah, Vlad, vibrating square. I just toasted rodneY with a /oDeath. He got another taste on the few occasions when he came back. Blah, blah Moloch's sanctum, /oDeath the high priest, grab the amulet and trudge back up. I used ^T a fair bit on my way back up through hell. Being surrounded by lots of monsters (usually dragons, minotaurs and other nasties like that) on the way up was a pain, but I had no reservation about running (or teleporting) away. The elemental planes (air in particular) were a bit harder than I remembered (from my two other visits). A monster was kind enough to drop me a crystal ball on the plane of earth. That helped quite a bit. Earth started with a bang, but was then just lots of digging. I wouldn't have survived air without my handy ring of conflict and liberal use of my /oDeath. Air elementals are bad enough when they have 50ish hitpoints. When they have 180hp and they're all over the place, they get the /oDeath and the =oConflict. Fire was uneventful and Water was boring as usual. (Guess what I remembered to take off before I entered the astral plane, Zach -- in fact, I got rid of it on Water). The astral plane was a bit rough, but I used a clever trick (see below) I read in http://homepage.mac.com/mhjohnson/mag-r2.html (which I recommend). I went for the Famine branch (which was on the right) first. The angels were no problem and famine goes down quick with a /oDeath -- tho actually melee with him isn't so bad if you have some food on you. I wouldn't do it with magicbane, but frostbrand ripped him a new one (I cleverly had the blessed +7 demonbane in my BoH the whole time). The priests were a slight pain, but later on they summoned lots of insects -- for which I was grateful. The Riders can't move through insects. Being surrounded by lots of easy monsters which can't hit you (or can, but do less damage than normal regeneration fixes) is a nice way to avoid all the nastier monsters that would otherwise surround you. At the first altar, I gave some thought to forsaking Set for Crom. It's still an ascension after all. I went onward to Pestilence's branch (on the left). The insects mostly kept Famine off my back. When I realized how little the monsters actually hurt, I just waded right through the sea of insects, /oDeath for Pestilence (he got a wizard of mine a while back, that bastard) and checked the altar. Mitra. That sucked, but I realized that if I was fast enough, I should only have to drop Death once. I read a blessed scroll of confuse monster (which are not to be underestimated) and pressed onward to the middle branch. I hit a priest in the door and confused him. He was kind enough to then read a scroll of create monster (which just about every monster on the level had) which summoned lots of unintimidating acid blobs. A titan was kind enough to repeat the trick, allowing me to sneak right by Death (evade Death, ha-ha), run up to the altar and sacrifice the Amulet of Yendor. Yay!