Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)
Okay, where to start. I felt that it was time to go for illiteracy and
decided a monk would be an okay class to do that with, one reason being that
he starts with the sleep spell, which would prove useful against his quest
nemesis, provided I could make it to said nemesis within 20,000 turns. Since
it is a monk after all, weaponless and vegan are pretty much givens with
certain compensations made, namely taking a bit longer to kill monsters, and
having to forego the telepathy intrinsic unless you find an amulet of ESP
(which didn't happen this game) or you get lucky with a prayer. Since I was
illiterate, enchant armor was out of the question, so I opted to get as much
divine protection as early as possible.
Using my protection racket know-how (and a few opportune prayers to
simultaneously raise max health and fill the stomach) , I pillaged the two
shopkeeps that took residence within the first 5 dungeon floors of their
gold, a pair of power gauntlets and a pair of +4 jumping boots, the latter
two of which stayed with me to the very end. After containing the pet inside
of a room and waiting 400 turns to recover it's health, I then
proceeded -carefully- into the mines with said pet by my side.
Lack of lighting didn't make the descent any easier, and being illiterate,
Elbereth wasn't a possibility. Careful pet handling and movement were
required, but in good time I managed to make it to minetown without any
inopportune bones files being loaded (like ones by some overambitious player
levelling up as fast as one can, and dying to a swarm of soldier ants due to
having 8 AC). Thanking the RNG for not throwing any ridiculous curveballs my
way, I then proceeded towards Izchak to buy some light since the 'Grotto'
minetown is darkened. Not a single oil lamp or lantern were had, so
candlelight would have had to do. From there, a bee-line to the hardware
shop afforded me a magic whistle and a sack, the first of which was very
useful in speeding up the credit cloning process. I made my way to the
priest, bought 9 AC worth of protection, then proceeded to credit clone
every other store in minetown while remaining at XL 1. 14k gold was had this
way, and with that 5 additional levels of AC were bought, for a naked AC
of -4, which proved immensely useful. After suiting up in the good pieces of
collected armor minus the body suit, an AC of -16 was had, which was more
than enough to handle the castle, but not before getting the luckstone. I
needed all the luck I could get. A final persual into general shop to item
ID some things and pick up anything useful yielded a bag of holding which
just added to my good fortune.
The descent towards the lowest mine level is difficult without MR if you
want to preserve the "form change" conduct, so 3 searches per square of
movement were made, which made the whole process very strenuous. Finally
finding the last level, the one where the luckstone is on a levelporter, I
enabled autopickup for gems, stepped on one of the two gray stones, and flew
back a few levels. #naming the found stone "The Heart of Ahriman" caused my
hand to slip, which confirmed that stone to be a luckstone. This might seem
a little exploitative, but I didn't feel that there was any problem in doing
that.
Anyways, I then proceeded towards sokoban, completed that without any
problems, and found a reflection amulet, which was great since I wasn't
interested in starting a BoH collection. Gathering the various sink-spewn
and randomly generated/dropped rings strewn about, I headed back to the
minetown general store to price ID the lot. Finding some 200 and 300 gold
ones made me excited at the prospect of what they could be, and quickly
wear-testing the 300 ones (which was kind of risky since they were found
cursed, and getting polymorphed wouldn't have been good) identified a
conflict one! That in itself makes the game a lot easier.
That was a good a time to storm the castle. The turn count was a little over
10k at the time, so efficiency was needed to make it from there to the quest
before the sleep spell expired. Only searching for the down steps on each
floor, and digging when it took too long, I then made it to the medusa
level. Without levitation, it was a bit of a wonder as to how I'd make it
back up, when I remembered there being a cursed potion of levitation in my
bag, which was the return ticket. Killing the titan before he could do
anything evil, I dug down and went towards the castle drawbridge. Carefully
figuring out the pass tune, while staying away from the eels, the drawbridge
finally fell and the monster horde spilled out. Conflicted, the horde were
too busy battling it out amongst themselves to notice me, so I helped them
out, while identifying another 200 ring as regeneration and finding a
partially used wand of death. Eventually the majority of them fell. Thanks
to an early wizard bones file (containing nothing notable aside from the MR
cloak), liches weren't a morbid threat. so I meleed the remaining ones. I'd
made it this far without MR in previous games, so even without that it was
doable, with more care taken. The armory yielded only a +1 hawaiian shirt,
but that wasn't a problem as this trip was mainly for finding potions to
alchemise. 90-ish health isn't nearly enough to face the big bad Master Kaen
with.
Down into the VotD, luckily no purple liches spawned which would have been
agitating since I didn't have any scare monster scrolls yet. Slogged through
the masses of undead and gathered everything usable I could find, then b/u/c
checked them. A +4 helmet was found this way, while the other 50-odd armor
pieces checked up to that point were +2 at most.
Headed up towards the quest portal, checked potions on the quest leader's
alter, alchemized some full healing potions and managed to attain 168 health
while saving 3 blessed full healings for the coming fight, it was time to
finsh Mr. Kaen. Hopefully -21 AC and that health was low enough to withstand
some of his beatings. I went to the final down stairwell in the quest,
quaffed a speed potion (which only healed my legs that were wounded from a
landmine and didn't give "very fast", ugh), took off my MR cloak and wore
the robe (sleep spell failure went down to 0% from 100%, the spell was more
important than MR for this battle), then waited some turns so that there
would be a free move as soon as I descended. Using that free turn I zapped
Kaen with a death wand, hitting and -not- killing him. How convenient. First
a -completely- empty Perseus statue, and now the 1 in 13 odds of Master Kaen
starting with an MR cloak play out. I felt the RNG had it in for me this
game. A sleep spell was used, in hopes it would hit with 18 DEX and maximum
luck. It missed, and a pissed of Kaen whacked me twice and casted "open
wounds" which took more than half my total health away. Quaffed a full
healing potion, then got hit again, for a bit less damage this time
thankfully. Another casting of "sleep" was made, hitting him but only
lasting 1 turn. I hit him once, he woke up and hit me for 40 damage, then
said "I feel your powers failing you, Student of Waters. You shall die now."
which summed up how I felt at the time. Right after that, -something- threw
a potion of paralysis at me, and I was reduced to 64/176 health. Quaffed
another full healing potion, tried zapping sleep again, missed, then he
sliced me down to 100 health again. Tried casting sleep again, and
missed -again-. Bit the bullet and tried doing it again at 83 health which
could easily have ended the game right there, and it hit! This gave me the
chance to put on my ring of regeneration and pummel him a few turns. I only
had one potion of full healing left, and didn't want to squander it. 5 hits
in a row reduced Kaen to a bruised lifeless mass, and a triumphant monk took
the spoils of war to an elated quest leader, who in turn wished the monk
success in his main journey. He then took a long break, mentally readying
himself to head towards hell, not wanting to make any lapses of judgement
that result from lack of awareness, or sleep, for that matter.
(Part 2 tomorrow)
Okay, where to start. I felt that it was time to go for illiteracy and
decided a monk would be an okay class to do that with, one reason being that
he starts with the sleep spell, which would prove useful against his quest
nemesis, provided I could make it to said nemesis within 20,000 turns. Since
it is a monk after all, weaponless and vegan are pretty much givens with
certain compensations made, namely taking a bit longer to kill monsters, and
having to forego the telepathy intrinsic unless you find an amulet of ESP
(which didn't happen this game) or you get lucky with a prayer. Since I was
illiterate, enchant armor was out of the question, so I opted to get as much
divine protection as early as possible.
Using my protection racket know-how (and a few opportune prayers to
simultaneously raise max health and fill the stomach) , I pillaged the two
shopkeeps that took residence within the first 5 dungeon floors of their
gold, a pair of power gauntlets and a pair of +4 jumping boots, the latter
two of which stayed with me to the very end. After containing the pet inside
of a room and waiting 400 turns to recover it's health, I then
proceeded -carefully- into the mines with said pet by my side.
Lack of lighting didn't make the descent any easier, and being illiterate,
Elbereth wasn't a possibility. Careful pet handling and movement were
required, but in good time I managed to make it to minetown without any
inopportune bones files being loaded (like ones by some overambitious player
levelling up as fast as one can, and dying to a swarm of soldier ants due to
having 8 AC). Thanking the RNG for not throwing any ridiculous curveballs my
way, I then proceeded towards Izchak to buy some light since the 'Grotto'
minetown is darkened. Not a single oil lamp or lantern were had, so
candlelight would have had to do. From there, a bee-line to the hardware
shop afforded me a magic whistle and a sack, the first of which was very
useful in speeding up the credit cloning process. I made my way to the
priest, bought 9 AC worth of protection, then proceeded to credit clone
every other store in minetown while remaining at XL 1. 14k gold was had this
way, and with that 5 additional levels of AC were bought, for a naked AC
of -4, which proved immensely useful. After suiting up in the good pieces of
collected armor minus the body suit, an AC of -16 was had, which was more
than enough to handle the castle, but not before getting the luckstone. I
needed all the luck I could get. A final persual into general shop to item
ID some things and pick up anything useful yielded a bag of holding which
just added to my good fortune.
The descent towards the lowest mine level is difficult without MR if you
want to preserve the "form change" conduct, so 3 searches per square of
movement were made, which made the whole process very strenuous. Finally
finding the last level, the one where the luckstone is on a levelporter, I
enabled autopickup for gems, stepped on one of the two gray stones, and flew
back a few levels. #naming the found stone "The Heart of Ahriman" caused my
hand to slip, which confirmed that stone to be a luckstone. This might seem
a little exploitative, but I didn't feel that there was any problem in doing
that.
Anyways, I then proceeded towards sokoban, completed that without any
problems, and found a reflection amulet, which was great since I wasn't
interested in starting a BoH collection. Gathering the various sink-spewn
and randomly generated/dropped rings strewn about, I headed back to the
minetown general store to price ID the lot. Finding some 200 and 300 gold
ones made me excited at the prospect of what they could be, and quickly
wear-testing the 300 ones (which was kind of risky since they were found
cursed, and getting polymorphed wouldn't have been good) identified a
conflict one! That in itself makes the game a lot easier.
That was a good a time to storm the castle. The turn count was a little over
10k at the time, so efficiency was needed to make it from there to the quest
before the sleep spell expired. Only searching for the down steps on each
floor, and digging when it took too long, I then made it to the medusa
level. Without levitation, it was a bit of a wonder as to how I'd make it
back up, when I remembered there being a cursed potion of levitation in my
bag, which was the return ticket. Killing the titan before he could do
anything evil, I dug down and went towards the castle drawbridge. Carefully
figuring out the pass tune, while staying away from the eels, the drawbridge
finally fell and the monster horde spilled out. Conflicted, the horde were
too busy battling it out amongst themselves to notice me, so I helped them
out, while identifying another 200 ring as regeneration and finding a
partially used wand of death. Eventually the majority of them fell. Thanks
to an early wizard bones file (containing nothing notable aside from the MR
cloak), liches weren't a morbid threat. so I meleed the remaining ones. I'd
made it this far without MR in previous games, so even without that it was
doable, with more care taken. The armory yielded only a +1 hawaiian shirt,
but that wasn't a problem as this trip was mainly for finding potions to
alchemise. 90-ish health isn't nearly enough to face the big bad Master Kaen
with.
Down into the VotD, luckily no purple liches spawned which would have been
agitating since I didn't have any scare monster scrolls yet. Slogged through
the masses of undead and gathered everything usable I could find, then b/u/c
checked them. A +4 helmet was found this way, while the other 50-odd armor
pieces checked up to that point were +2 at most.
Headed up towards the quest portal, checked potions on the quest leader's
alter, alchemized some full healing potions and managed to attain 168 health
while saving 3 blessed full healings for the coming fight, it was time to
finsh Mr. Kaen. Hopefully -21 AC and that health was low enough to withstand
some of his beatings. I went to the final down stairwell in the quest,
quaffed a speed potion (which only healed my legs that were wounded from a
landmine and didn't give "very fast", ugh), took off my MR cloak and wore
the robe (sleep spell failure went down to 0% from 100%, the spell was more
important than MR for this battle), then waited some turns so that there
would be a free move as soon as I descended. Using that free turn I zapped
Kaen with a death wand, hitting and -not- killing him. How convenient. First
a -completely- empty Perseus statue, and now the 1 in 13 odds of Master Kaen
starting with an MR cloak play out. I felt the RNG had it in for me this
game. A sleep spell was used, in hopes it would hit with 18 DEX and maximum
luck. It missed, and a pissed of Kaen whacked me twice and casted "open
wounds" which took more than half my total health away. Quaffed a full
healing potion, then got hit again, for a bit less damage this time
thankfully. Another casting of "sleep" was made, hitting him but only
lasting 1 turn. I hit him once, he woke up and hit me for 40 damage, then
said "I feel your powers failing you, Student of Waters. You shall die now."
which summed up how I felt at the time. Right after that, -something- threw
a potion of paralysis at me, and I was reduced to 64/176 health. Quaffed
another full healing potion, tried zapping sleep again, missed, then he
sliced me down to 100 health again. Tried casting sleep again, and
missed -again-. Bit the bullet and tried doing it again at 83 health which
could easily have ended the game right there, and it hit! This gave me the
chance to put on my ring of regeneration and pummel him a few turns. I only
had one potion of full healing left, and didn't want to squander it. 5 hits
in a row reduced Kaen to a bruised lifeless mass, and a triumphant monk took
the spoils of war to an elated quest leader, who in turn wished the monk
success in his main journey. He then took a long break, mentally readying
himself to head towards hell, not wanting to make any lapses of judgement
that result from lack of awareness, or sleep, for that matter.
(Part 2 tomorrow)
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