YAAP: Ryan Arc-Hum-Mal-Law

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

My second ascension; my first was a month or so ago, lawful human
Valkyrie. Not that interesting of a story, but at least it won't be
long. Sidenote: how do you get the raw data dump at the end? I'm
playing on the regular Windows version.

A coaligned altar on level 1 gave me Grayswandir when I was about level
6 or 7. I spent so much time up there, I didn't even notice another
coaligned altar on level 3 until afterwards. This was the biggest
piece of luck I had all game, I think.

I went to Sokoban first, and picked up elven mithril, cloak of
protection, and some other uninteresting armor along the way, putting
me at about 0 or -2 AC. Sokoban gave me an amulet of reflection; the
Mines didn't give me much except divine protection which put me at
about -6 or so, all told. I explored the rest of the dungeon down to
Medusa's Island and came up with gauntlets of power and dexterity; I
wore the gauntlets of power and went on the Quest (without magic
resistance, not sure if that was a good idea). I survived though, and
the Orb of Detection gave me my magic resistance, so good enough for
me. I went to minetown and took away the watch captain's silver saber
(cursed -2), then cleared Ludios hoping for some dragon scales to make
into DSM. I got yellow scales, which were good enough for me. Then
cleared Medusa's Island and the Castle, switching to SDSM when I got
some silver scales. (Incidentally, this is the first time I've ever
made it far enough to kill a dragon without already getting dragon
scale mail from an early wish. It makes things different!)

Castle wand was (0:1); I wished for a magic marker and wrote my own
charging scroll, then wished for speed boots, 2 blessed scrolls of
genocide (h and L), blessed amulet of life saving, and a +2 helm of
brilliance (probably a mistake). I decided to save my last wish until
I cleared the Valley of the Dead; if the priestess of Moloch had a
robe, I'd wish for a T-shirt; otherwise I'd get a robe. As it turned
out, not only did she have a robe, but there was a blessed magic lamp
sitting in her temple. I not only got to have my cake and eat it too,
but I received a gift certificate for a THIRD cake, with which I could
do what I pleased. Nice. I wished for my blessed fireproof +3 T-shirt
and an extra blessed magic marker; I badly needed to enchant my weapons
and armor. I got Grayswandir up to +6 (wasted a lot of scrolls trying
to get it higher) and my other silver saber up to +4; rustproofed all
my armor and got my AC to -30. Finally, I wrote a scroll of charging
to charge my ring of increase damage to +4 (bonus applies to both of my
#twoweapon attacks?)

Gehennom wasn't very hard. For whatever reason, Orcus held off with
the wand of death; he never zapped me with it as far as I can tell, so
I got it at (0:5). An Olog-hai was carrying another one, so I got two
wands of death to play with; I saved them for the Wizard. In fact the
rest of the game was really way too easy. I guess #twoweaponing
Grayswandir and a silver saber is pretty powerful, as even with a -30
AC I was never in any real danger. The Wizard took three or four, but
most of the ten times I saw him I zapped him with a wand of death or
hit him with a c corpse. Even the Riders went down in only a couple
hits. This was much harder with my Valkyrie, even with half damage
from the Orb of Fate. Weird.

Pestilence went down easy, all three times I had to kill him, but his
altar was chaotic. Famine went down before he could even attack me,
and his altar was the right one. Game over.

I didn't save all the data, but here are a couple highlights.

Amulets:
-uncursed amulet of life saving (being worn) //another one in BoH
Weapons:
-blessed +6 Grayswandir (in hand)
-blessed +4 silver saber (in other hand)
Armor
-uncursed fireproof +0 robe (being worn)
-uncursed fireproof +3 speed boots (being worn)
-uncursed -2 oilskin cloak //found it cursed, kept it just in case
-uncursed +0 SDSM (being worn)
-blessed burnt fireproof +5 gauntlets of dexterity (being worn)
-blessed rustproof +5 helm of brilliance (being worn)
-uncursed fireproof +5 T-shirt (being worn)
Rings:
- +4 ring of increase damage (being worn)
- Free action (being worn)
- levitation, conflict
Wands:
- 2 depleted wands of death
- 3 wands of cancellation
- bunch of others
Tools:
-uncursed sack
-blessed bag of holding
-blessed +0 unicorn horn
-uncursed magic whistle
-blessed Orb of Detection (0:0)
Gems:
-blessed luckstone
-handful of gems
---
In the bag of holding:
-Amulets of life saving, magical breathing, and reflection (1 each)
-4 potions of holy water
-Bunch of old scrolls
-corroded very rusty +0 pick-axe
-tinning kit
-a lot of other stuff, I forget what

In the sack:
-2 potions of holy water.

Genocided all h, all L (11 types of monsters)
Used 6 wishes, no artifact wishes.

---------------

Notable things for me:
-Both of my two ascensions represent the only two times that I've been
able to wear an amulet of life saving instead of reflection; yet I
never actually NEEDED my life saved either time. Lucky me, I guess.
-All the advice I've read on here is to play the Archaeologist as a
fighter-spellcaster. Yet, I never really found much use for his
spellcasting abilities. Until I reached the Castle I had to wear
mithril, so I could hardly cast anything in combat. After that I wore
a robe, gauntlets of dexterity, and a helm of brilliance to become a
better spellcaster, but by that point I was a tank; I could fight
anything in the game with straight-up melee, and had no need for
spellcasting. I got a lot of use out of the "identify" and "magic
mapping" spells, but that's about it.
So for all you experts out there, what's the point in spells for an
Archaeologist? Would you have worn studded leather in the early game,
so you could cast "sleep" at monsters?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

rmcneive@andrew.cmu.edu wrote:
> My second ascension; my first was a month or so ago, lawful human
> Valkyrie. Not that interesting of a story, but at least it won't be
> long. Sidenote: how do you get the raw data dump at the end? I'm
> playing on the regular Windows version.
It will tell you everything if you do things like #conduct or use ^X
while in wizmode, and will display the same when you ascend/die/quit.
Just copy the stuff to Notepad or whatever then paste where you need
to. The rest of the information is stored in one particular file,
forgot what it's called, but it's in the Nethack directory, just a
normal file. Lists all of your characters with various info (time
played, version, etc).

> I guess #twoweaponing Grayswandir and a silver saber is pretty powerful
Lots of people seem to think that if you can, #twoweapon with a silver
saber. I'm just the kind of person who finds applying Magic Missile or
Fireball or Cone of Cold en masse to be more effective, I suppose

And I wouldn't call the Helm of Brilliance to be worthless...I almost
always use it. Gives a nice bonus to spellcasting, in the fact that it
doesn't give penalties and also gives bonuses to intelligence and
wisdom, which can benefit almost any class.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Magus Zeal wrote:
> It will tell you everything if you do things like #conduct or use ^X
> while in wizmode, and will display the same when you ascend/die/quit.
> Just copy the stuff to Notepad or whatever then paste where you need
> to. The rest of the information is stored in one particular file,
> forgot what it's called, but it's in the Nethack directory, just a
> normal file. Lists all of your characters with various info (time
> played, version, etc).

Yeah, I guess I could get my conducts, etc. that way, but I'm talking
about the data that everyone else puts on their RGRN ascension posts,
complete with a complete ASCII screenshot of the ending screen. I
don't know how to get that, and I can't copy/paste most or all of the
info at the end.
>

> And I wouldn't call the Helm of Brilliance to be worthless...I almost
> always use it. Gives a nice bonus to spellcasting, in the fact that it
> doesn't give penalties and also gives bonuses to intelligence and
> wisdom, which can benefit almost any class.
I agree in general, but in this game it was of no real use to me. I
had magic missile, cone of cold, fireball, charm monster, and lots of
other good spells that I could cast with low or nonexistent failure
rate, but by this point I didn't need anything but my melee attacks.
As I mentioned at the end of the first post, this seems strange to me.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

rmcneive@andrew.cmu.edu wrote:
> Magus Zeal wrote:
> > It will tell you everything if you do things like #conduct or use ^X
> > while in wizmode, and will display the same when you ascend/die/quit.
> > Just copy the stuff to Notepad or whatever then paste where you need
> > to. The rest of the information is stored in one particular file,
> > forgot what it's called, but it's in the Nethack directory, just a
> > normal file. Lists all of your characters with various info (time
> > played, version, etc).
>
> Yeah, I guess I could get my conducts, etc. that way, but I'm talking
> about the data that everyone else puts on their RGRN ascension posts,
> complete with a complete ASCII screenshot of the ending screen. I
> don't know how to get that, and I can't copy/paste most or all of the
> info at the end.

You have to get a dump patch (which you can get at
http://www.netsonic.fi/~walker/nethack.html#dump , amongst prob many
other places), although you'll need the source code and some means to
compile it back up. If you dont have that then I could email you a
compiled version of nethack with the dump patch.

Hopefully the next version of nethack will include it, as it is quite
handy to have.

Marky Mark

 

[seraphim]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

"Magus Zeal" <maguszeal@gmail.com> wrote in
news:1119303620.617085.139010@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

>> I guess #twoweaponing Grayswandir and a silver saber is pretty
>> powerful
> Lots of people seem to think that if you can, #twoweapon with a
> silver saber. I'm just the kind of person who finds applying Magic
> Missile or Fireball or Cone of Cold en masse to be more effective, I
> suppose

There are two possible problems that I can think of. The first is that
some tougher monsters are more or less magic-proof, the example that
springs to mind being Archons. The second problem is that your magic
regeneration rate goes down a lot once you get the amulet.
How do you get around these?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

David Damerell wrote:

> Quoting <rmcneive@andrew.cmu.edu>:
>> Magus Zeal wrote:
>>> And I wouldn't call the Helm of Brilliance to be worthless...I almost
>>> always use it. Gives a nice bonus to spellcasting,
>> I agree in general, but in this game it was of no real use to me. I
>> had magic missile, cone of cold, fireball, charm monster, and lots of
>> other good spells that I could cast with low or nonexistent failure
>> rate, but by this point I didn't need anything but my melee attacks.
>
> No cure sickness? Remove curse? Identify? Magic mapping?

I'd call these luxuries rather than needs. I've ascended a number of
combat-wombats who've only bothered reading any spellbooks in order to have
a forgotten spell in the endgame.

--
Benjamin Lewis

Seeing is deceiving. It's eating that's believing.
-- James Thurber

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Quoting <rmcneive@andrew.cmu.edu>:
>Magus Zeal wrote:
>>And I wouldn't call the Helm of Brilliance to be worthless...I almost
>>always use it. Gives a nice bonus to spellcasting,
>I agree in general, but in this game it was of no real use to me. I
>had magic missile, cone of cold, fireball, charm monster, and lots of
>other good spells that I could cast with low or nonexistent failure
>rate, but by this point I didn't need anything but my melee attacks.

No cure sickness? Remove curse? Identify? Magic mapping?
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Oneiros, Presuary.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

David Damerell wrote:

> Quoting Benjamin Lewis <bclewis@cs.sfu.ca>:
>> David Damerell wrote:
>>> Quoting <rmcneive@andrew.cmu.edu>:
> [Helm of Brilliance]
>>>> I agree in general, but in this game it was of no real use to me. I
>>>> had magic missile, cone of cold, fireball, charm monster, and lots of
>>>> other good spells that I could cast with low or nonexistent failure
>>>> rate, but by this point I didn't need anything but my melee attacks.
>>> No cure sickness? Remove curse? Identify? Magic mapping?
>> I'd call these luxuries rather than needs. I've ascended a number of
>> combat-wombats who've only bothered reading any spellbooks in order to
>> have a forgotten spell in the endgame.
>
> So have I, but I wouldn't say those spells are of quote no real use
> unquote.

Fair enough, although the OP was referring to the helm rather than the
spells with that quote. Still, I doubt an Arc could cast a 3rd level
healing spell at 0% with basic skill without the HoB.

> In particular, you might get away with it [1], but if you can get the
> failure rate on cure sickness below that of a unicorn horn, it clearly
> improves the chances of survival.

In fact, it saved my bacon on my last ascension (see my last YAAP) when
Pesty migrated over to Famines quarters. I don't know for a fact that I
wouldn't have survived without it, but even with the spell at 0%, things
were looking marginal for a while.

--
Benjamin Lewis

Seeing is deceiving. It's eating that's believing.
-- James Thurber

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Quoting Benjamin Lewis <bclewis@cs.sfu.ca>:
>David Damerell wrote:
>>Quoting <rmcneive@andrew.cmu.edu>:
[Helm of Brilliance]
>>>I agree in general, but in this game it was of no real use to me. I
>>>had magic missile, cone of cold, fireball, charm monster, and lots of
>>>other good spells that I could cast with low or nonexistent failure
>>>rate, but by this point I didn't need anything but my melee attacks.
>>No cure sickness? Remove curse? Identify? Magic mapping?
I'd call these luxuries rather than needs. I've ascended a number of
>combat-wombats who've only bothered reading any spellbooks in order to have
>a forgotten spell in the endgame.

So have I, but I wouldn't say those spells are of quote no real use
unquote.

In particular, you might get away with it [1], but if you can get the
failure rate on cure sickness below that of a unicorn horn, it clearly
improves the chances of survival.

[1] Almost always you do, especially given the other options for curing
sickness and the fact you might not face Pesty at all...
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Oneiros, Presuary.