YAFAP (LONG) shabble-Val-Hum-Fem-Law

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It was a dark and stormy night...

Well, it might have been. Unfortunately, this was mostly lost on the
heroine of our tale, who, for reasons of glory and fame, chose to
quest deep into the bowels of hell itself.

Hailing from the far away ice plains, Shabble the Valkyrie set out to
challenge the accomplishments of the Evil Witch King Norgg.

No mere quest for money or personal fame was this (well, ok, maybe),
not even a holy quest for Tyr himself, but a journey of personal
discovery and excitement. (Oh, and beating the score of the
aforementioned evil). Uncontrollable slaughter was expected, and
thoroughly hoped for.

Hoping to succeed where dozens of promising adventurers had already
met their gruesome death, brave Shabble descended into the darkness.

Horse the Kitten wandered off very early on, taking far more interest
in chasing rats and crawly things, leaving his poor mistress to fend
for herself. Eventually he was set upon by a horde of orcs, brutally
slain and left to rot in a puddle on the ground.

Poor Shabble was distraught, and drew herself into a bloodletting
fury, slaying the foul horde, and exacting great vengeance upon both
them and their corpses. After calming down, she descended, hoping her
own fate would not be so cruel and early.

Before too long, she came across a fountain, seemingly fed with water
from a great and famous lake. A hand reached out from the fountain
and took away her sword, pressing into her hands a far more worthy
weapon, the fabled Excalibur.

With this blade of legend, enemies fell before her, unable to fend off
its mighty blows.

Soon after, she came across a closed shop, which she sneaked into
after picking the lock with a handy creditcard, hoping the shopkeeper
would be away, and she could pick up a few bargains. As the door
opened, she realised the extents of the shop, a veritable dungeon
hypermarket, offering both budget and exclusive designer label armour,
ideal for budget backpacker and serious adventurer alike.

Whilst browsing the inventory, and dispatching various creatures
pretending to be highly desirable bodywear, Shabble came across a pair
of metal gauntlets which matched so perfectly with her sword and
shield, she had no choice but to buy them.

Taking a risk and wearing them, she was amazed to find that even the
heaviest items seemed to weigh but a feather in her hands.


<Ok, this roleplaying incharacter thing is harder than it looks.
That'll do for now>

At this point I'd made it to minetown, and I'd done fairly well so
far. Gauntlets of Power, +1 Excalibur, AC of about -3 or so (a nice
bit of mithril off a dwarf, I think)

The temple in minetown was friendly, but I'd spent all my cash on
shiny things on the way down, so protection would have to wait. AC
wasn't too bad as it was, so I wasn't overly bothered.

An unfortunate encounter with an orc with a wand of create monster in
the delicatessen led to me having to lock and quarantine the place
with 4 chickatrices inside, but I wasn't such a fan of overpriced
ready-meals anyway, preferring to dine on fresh meat.

A general store was touting a nice looking bag, for a mere 1300Zm,
which was a little steep even for foreigners to buy. I wondered what
might make a bag so desirable, when I realised it came with a free
starter pack of diamonds inside, and after haggling with the
shopkeeper for a more basic package, was a much more acceptable 90Zm.

Great, bag of holding down, things slowly coming together. Through
the descent of the mines, I came across a magic whistle, some nice +2
iron shoes, and a reasonable helmet.

An incident with a polymorph trap ended with my scurrying about as
some form of impressively puny rodent for a while, until I met a large
dog, which happily tore out my throat, and hassled me until I could
get back to the heap of my gear, at which point it took a few arrows
for its trouble.

Mines end was annoying, with several leocrottas, a personal nemesis of
mine, but ended without too much trouble.

Gems got sold, protection was bought, and I headed on down to sokoban.
No real excitement until then, when I managed to screw up several
levels in a row (too used to playing sokoban with an undo command, I
suspect) and some pickaxing was required extricate myself. The top
level yielded an amulet of reflection, which complemented my slowly
growing (sinking?) AC, and made me less scared of battering a few
dragons I'd seen a level of so below sokoban.

Somewhere down below sokoban I came across a bones heap from another
player, a brave warrior named Uberjoe, who for all his fancy dungeon
exploring toys, wasn't lucky enough to survive the aforementioned
dragons. Shamelessly rooting through his mouldering corpse, I
pilfered a very nice +2 GDSM, and elven cloak. Somewhere around this
point I accidentally became invisible whilst testing potions, too.

I've forgotten most of what happened in the next bit, but it was all
fairly straightforward, descend, explore, kill lots, find stairs,
repeat.

On the way down I found at least 3 temples, one of which was
coaligned. All my gold was sunk into that, since I was gaining levels
quite fast. I set up my stash in that temple, and all was going well
(got Mjollnir, snickersnee and demonbane) until something confused me,
and I nudged the priestess of Tyr.

I was hoping for a way to apologise, but it just wasn't happening, so
something had to be done. I got hit with a few beams of Angry God
Laser, but shrugged them off (happily, since I didn't intentionally
have any resistances that I can think of) until she went down, leaving
my stash in peace, except for the dozens of ghosts that decided to
take up residence until forcibly evicted.

I took the advice of various others, and decided to do Medusa and the
castle before my quest, neither of which were too hard with a ring of
levitation and reflection. I put on my trusty towel, nobbled Medusa
with some well placed guesswork and a big thunderhammer, and carried
on down. I left Perseus' statue intact, since I had no great need for
what was in there, and didn't have a pickaxe on me at the time.

Nipped round the back of the castle, met a few dragons in the maze,
dealt with them, and then cleared out the castle.

Wand of wishing only had 1 charge, but I already had a blessed scroll
of charging lying around, for a total of 5 wishes.

I think they were for speed boots, helm of brilliance, a magic marker,
and the last 2 for Grayswandir (didn't work the first time, but I'd
only found 2 artifacts so far, so I thought it wortht he try, and was
lucky)

Dipped all the useless scrolls I had lying around, and enchanted up
mojo, excalibur, grayswandir and all of my armour, taking me down to
about -45 AC, with all weapons at +6 or +7. Went back up, did the
quest without any problems, and snacked on various giants to build up
my intrinsic strength.

This was already far further than I'd ever been before, and I
foolishly presumed I was close to invincible. I tore through the
Valley of the Dead, accidentally offered something on Molochs altar in
an attempt to convert it, lost all my protection (10 points), but
carried on regardless.

A level or 2 into hell proper, I met my first mindflayer. And a lich.
And an arch-lich. In the same fight. My greased helm saved me for a
few hits, but the damn thing just wouldn't die.

Things went fairly badly, my brain was dripping out of my ear, I'd
forgotten almost everything I thought I knew, and had to label the
bits I could remember. On top of that, most of my inventory was
cursed from the Liches. I beat a hasty retreat back to my stash, when
Annoying Thing #2 happened.

A stupid stupid typo (put into bag, hit "automatically select all
items" as well as the subgroup I wanted, hit , and confirmed without
thinking) left me watching in pain as I scrolled through it putting
everything I wasn't wearing into my BoH, followed by a sack named
"WANDS OF CANCELLATION". The unsurprising happened, and I was left
with nothing. Well, almost nothing. I still had everything below the
sack in my tools group, and some useless gems. Thankfully, I still
had the orb of fate, but byebye mojo, excalibur, grayswandir, dozens
of potions, wands and scrolls, and a lot of nice gems.

Incredibly disheartened, I stopped playing that game for a week or
two, thinking I'd try to salvage it when I knew the game a bit better.

When I did come back, I headed back up to my stash, looted the chests
for scrolls and potions, and proceeded to smash all of the latter by
dropping them onto an altar whilst levitating.

I'd hit rock bottom, and now had nothing except for my armour, so I
was wandering around the dungeons with -38 AC and a cursed -2
scimitar, because I forgot to pay BUC it when I picked it up.

A regrettable (for him, at least) incident with the guards in minetown
saw me aquire a silver saber, but no ?oEW were forthcoming, so it
remained pretty poor, not least because I could only get basic in
saber, but at least it didn't rust, which was the way of all my other
weapons.

When I finally did find some enchant weapon scrolls, I used them all
getting a set of +5 daggers, in order to be able to kill things at
range.

I found 2 magic lamps, both of which gave wishes, and opted for some
scrolls of genocide, which took care of liches and mindflayers
permanently. I figured they really deserved it after what had
happened. The second lamp went on a new BoH, which was rapidly
blessed up and pressed back into service.

I needed some way to get back a reasonable set of equipment to replace
what I'd lost, and whilst reading around, came across the notions of
polypiling and pudding farming. Quite soon, I realised how well these
two fit together, and amassed some fairly tasty loot.

Mined out a whole level, filled it with about 1300 puddings, and
slaughtered them. Gathered up the shinies, used what I could, stashed
the rest, and repeated. I did this 3 times properly, plus a few extra
hundred puddings that I'd left on previous levels as I tried to get
them to follow me down to my farm level.

Most of what I found was trash, and I didn't have enough poly charges
to do something useful with it, so I concentrated on the potions and
scrolls.

Overall haul was at least 15 ?oGenocide, 20 ?oEW and EA, and 5
charging. I was making holy water by the bucketful, so I blessed
everything I could think of, and really tooled myself up.

A third lamp got me an amulet of reflection, since the original had
gone into my BoH earlier and been nuked, which meant I could remove
the ]SoR I'd been carrying, and start #twoweaponing.

+7 Frost Brand and +7 silver saber did quite nicely, and I could kill
vamps and demons in one or two hits.

Cleaned out hell, without any problems from the demons at all, apart
from Asmodeus, whose lair was annoyingly laid out, and some minion of
his put a hole in the ground in the doorway to his lair, for maximum
irritation. He also wouldn't stand still and get hit, and took quite
a bit of chasing around.

Orcus died in 2 hits, leaving a fully charged wand of death, which got
stashed in preperation for the Wizard.

Didn't notice Vlads stairs, so went all the way to the bottom,
cleaning out each level as I went. Being the impatient sort, and not
one who cares for mazes, rather more direct routes were dug from stair
to stair on each level. The bottom level of hell I mined out
entirely, after getting annoyed looking for the vibrating square. I
sat a boulder on it, and headed back up.

Found Vlad, killed him in a hit or 2, and took the candelabrum back up
to my stash.

Found a Ki-Rin prancing around in my stash, ignoring the carefully
burnt Elbereths everywhere, so I took the chance to play with my
newfound spellcasting ability (monks robe from another bones file, +5
Helm of brilliance, and blessed gain ability til stats were maxed)

Most level 3 and below were at 3% fail, and I could even cast Finger
of Death one in 3 times if I took off my gaunts. So, a few dozen
casts of charm monster later, I had a pet Ki-rin (named Angel Horse),
which I then dragged upstairs in search of the saddle I knew I'd seen
somewhere.

Took a while, but I found it, mounted it, and started flying around.
I cracked Perseus for some boots of levitation, found some water
walking somewhere, and stashed them in my bag for emergencies, along
with amulets of this, that and the other.

Genocided everything I didn't like the look of (including trappers,
but stupidly, not purple worms), and went back down.

Picked up a pet angel somewhere along the lines, and gave it a spare
+4 GreenDSM and some various bits that it seemed to like.

Found an archon somewhere, which I also managed to tame, and tooled
that up a bit too. We then went and cleared out the high altar,
grabbed the amulet, dodged a few death beams from Moloch, and

The wizard only hassled me once on the way back up, but I must have
climbed the same level at least 5 times due to getting thrown back on
the stairs. My original plan was 20 cursed !oGL to get out, and
probably would have been quicker, even considering the time to farm
them.

Hot footed up the dungeon, not stopping anywhere. Made it to the
plane of earth, dispatched the wizard pretty quickly, and then
something went wrong. Wuffles the Archon turned on me, beat up Timmy
the angel, and summoned a caverns worth of fairly tough beasties. On
top of that, its radiance was blinding me every round, so I couldn't
tell which it was. I spent a while trying to retame it, but with the
amulet eating my power, it just wasn't working.

Found the portal, and stepped into it without whistling, leaving Timmy
behind.

On Air, I somehow got knocked off Angel Horse, and my ring of lev got
zapped by something. I pulled out my boots, stuck them on, but by the
time I could get to him, poor Horsie had been eaten by a purple worm.
I made it to the portal, switched back to speed boots, shoved on my
magical breathing, and headed to Water.

The bubble took me almost straight there, with nothing for me to do at
all but sit around and be dragged there, fending off the occasional
water elemental.

Fire took some more levitation, and I stopped trying to kill
everything, settling for the occasional Charm Monster when things got
too crowded, and headed straight for the portal.

Met my angel on the astral plane, decided to head for the rightmost
altar, for no good reason. Went in with /oD blazing, cleaned the
place out, but couldn't figure out if the altar was mine or not (;
showed "aligned altar"). I couldn't decide if that meant it was just
generally aligned, of if it was aligned to me, so I decided to check
out the middle one, and see what message that gave instead (I'd
already killed death 3 times or so by this point, so I wasn't too
worried)

Bashed pestilence in the face a few times, killed all his mates, and
nipped into the central altar, where I discovered if you stand on it,
and use :, it works. Handily, the middle one also belonged to Tyr, so
I offered it up, and let the choir sing.


The End :)

Shabble the Lady St:25 Dx:18 Co:18 In:23 Wi:23 Ch:18 Lawful
Astral Plane $:0 HP:510(510) Pw:76(217) AC:-43 Xp:30/105159255
T:204571

Full dump at http://www.monkeyhost.co.uk/shab/shabble.lastgame.txt

For a game that I thought lost in the middle, I was amazed at how well
it came back together, although the pudding farming was a major
component of that. Still, its not quite outright cheating, and it is
my first ascension, so I figure I'll do it better next time.


Oh, and I achieved my goal as indicated at the top, too :D

No Points Name
Hp [max]
1 23223028 shabble-Val-Hum-Fem-Law ascended to demigoddess-hood.
510 [510]
2 5015218 norgg-Sam-Hum-Mal-Law ascended to demigod-hood.
225 [225]
3 3810168 norgg-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law ascended to demigod-hood.
133 [217]
4 676511 Shobble-Val-Hum-Fem-Law died in Fort Ludios [max 29].
Killed by a fall onto poison spikes.
- [147]
 
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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Congrats for your first ascension! :)

Tom Feist wrote:

> A stupid stupid typo (put into bag, hit "automatically select all
> items" as well as the subgroup I wanted, hit , and confirmed without
> thinking) left me watching in pain as I scrolled through it putting
> everything I wasn't wearing into my BoH, followed by a sack named
> "WANDS OF CANCELLATION". The unsurprising happened, and I was left
> with nothing. Well, almost nothing. I still had everything below the
> sack in my tools group, and some useless gems. Thankfully, I still
> had the orb of fate, but byebye mojo, excalibur, grayswandir, dozens
> of potions, wands and scrolls, and a lot of nice gems.

Hey, it's funny, I made my first ascenstion today also, and I made
exactly the same mistake than you! :)
Although since I played a wizard, my quest artifact was an amulet
and went in the bag of holding before it disappeared...
I guess this will make us remember our first ascenstions! :)

chlorine
 
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chlorine wrote:

> Hey, it's funny, I made my first ascenstion today also, and I made
> exactly the same mistake than you! :)
> Although since I played a wizard, my quest artifact was an amulet
> and went in the bag of holding before it disappeared...
> I guess this will make us remember our first ascenstions! :)

Hint: put tools up in your inventory, maybe even put it as the first
category to be shown (and processed). If your bag of holding is the
first item in your inventory, everything below it will be safe when you
put other tools inside. Put wands second, of course.

--
Boudewijn.

--
"I have hundreds of other quotes, just waiting to replace this one
as my signature..." - Me