Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)
Extinctionist ascent (long, spoilers)
I finally managed an extinctionist.. the last time I tried, I couldn't
handle the boredom and quit. Stuck it out this time, and complete
stats can be seen at this link:
http://homepage.mac.com/master_nethacker/PhotoAlbum1.html
I obeyed no particular constraints, and liberally used all usual tricks
including polypiling; did genocide mimics early in the game to maximize
items, although in retrospect that didn't matter and I shouldn't have
done it. I slew everything in the dungeon (including Izchak, although
that was a mistake and I raised him again, see below) but I did not
focus my efforts into getting 120 woodchucks created, or 120 water
elementals, and things like that -- just the regularly made monsters.
I also did not try to create all the water monsters, kill mail daemons,
or other esoteric things like that. I didn't try to kill the Riders
repeatedly as some have done, because if I messed up and died on the
Astral Plane after all the effort preceding it I probably would have
died in real life.
Oh, and I didn't kill my quest leader or the
other high priests, for whatever reason.
Game stats: neutral human Wizard, 222,000 turns, 68 million points,
7139 hit points and 6464 mana. Killed nearly thirty five thousand
monsters!
Main weapons: the Staff of Aesculapius and Frost Brand. Other
particularly useful artifacts: the Eyes of the Overworld, and of
course a huge pile of artifact weapons. I had an intrinsic +14 damage
bonus and a +5 ring I kept wearing -- so a total of +19, which was
nice. Had all the other useful intrinsics except searching and
teleportitis (see below); did have intrinsic water breathing, which was
handy.
Some random notes regarding this game, and regarding playing an
extinctionist in general:
1. It *really* helps to have the spell "create monster" on "z." It
seriously compromises your chances of finishing the game if casting
this spell is a difficult keystroke, and it so happened to fall on "z"
(no planning of mine). If I ever play an extinctionist again, I'd
recommend planning to get this spell on a good letter (like a, s, x or
d -- something close to the "z").
2. I accidentally killed Izchak while Kop-baiting.
I was plowing
through Kops and accidentally hit Izchak with my +7 Staff of
Aesculapius, and with the Very Large Damage Bonus two hits quickly
keyed was all he took. I thought about it for a minute, wrote a
spellbook of turn undead and learned it, and then raised him; locked
him in his shop and did not return to the Mines, instead doing my
Kop-baiting on level 19, which had a shop (better location anyhow).
3. It took a long time to get Demogorgon to show. I had prepared for
him by wishing up an icebox and putting in some cockatrice corpses. I
then stood on the stairs with a scroll of scare monster. I would stone
and unstone Demogorgon about fifty or a hundred times, then go
elsewhere for a while.
3. I lost all my intrinsic protection two or three times to careless
sacrificing of doppelgangers, which is a real pain. But actually
having aggravate monster helps, in this kind of game, and with the
number of HP I had the distinction between AC -40 and -100 didn't
matter much to me. Figure my end AC would have been -110 or so if I had
not made those mistakes.
4. I found out that protection gained by ring eating is lost along
with all other sorts of god-given protection if you anger your god. I
reported it as a bug, but was told that this was not necessarily a bug,
and probably would not be addressed.
5. One way to while away the time is to summon and charm a group of
mastodons (or whatever you like -- minotaurs, master mind flayers, or
anything else with horrific damage output. But I like mastodons...)
and to use them to kill summoned monsters for a while. Particularly
the co-aligned unicorns.
6. I used the first Sokoban level as an ammo dump, which is a great
choice in any game in which you have the Eye of the Aethiopica.
7. I kept the gems, gold, and the very large number of excess
artifact weapons and amulets of life saving in an extra bag of holding,
sitting next to the stairs out of level 1. Ended up not carrying the
gold; not worth enough for its weight.
8. I foolishly killed the last priest in the game fairly early on (by
turn fifty thousand I think). I wouldn't do that again if I could
change it. If you screw up and lose your intrinsic protection, it's
nice to have a priest around to get the first 8-10 points of it back
easily.
9. I advise using up all nurses early in the game, because once you
have thousands of hit points, the chance of getting more hit points
from nurses appears to be very small.
10. It's fun when rings of increase damage are edible. I would
recommend getting a large damage bonus in this manner as early in the
game as possible, to minimize the number of blows you have to strike
over the course of the game. By the end of the game, my damage bonus
intrinsic was up to
11. I chose the Staff of Aesculapius as my primary weapon; that's my
usual choice, as a wizard. I guess the intrinsic regeneration is most
helpful early on and becomes irrelevant later in the game, but it's a
hard habit to break. Plus I really like protection from level drain,
and having hands free for 0% chance of missing spells.
12. Probably it's better not to have intrinsic teleportation, but
instead to keep the teleport away spell memorized. The extra
keystrokes involved in just teleporting in place, given a game of
>200,000 turns, are not insubstantial. I had some nymph tins I kept around, but never used them.
13. If you do polypile, it's best to do it most efficiently (piles of
5 items, blessed) as the spoilers recommend. You get lots of potions
of full healing and gain energy that way, and more of those crucial
genocide scrolls.
14. It's useful to reverse-genocide both types of mind flayers while
standing on a scare monster scroll, to eliminate them all before you
can lose maps and identification of things to them. Remember that
"summon nasties" will still produce master mind flayers. When you're
killing Archons and Titans, look for the pink/reddish 'h' in the pack,
and kill it before it gets close!
15. It is *very* easy to miskey, and it's best not to carry anything
in your inventory that is really risky. I evaporated my Staff of
Aescaulapius at 200k turns by having an enchant weapon scroll in my
inventory, and I should not have been carrying it. I wouldn't keep a
wand of cancellation around, either, for obvious reasons; you can cast
the spell anyhow. No bags of tricks, etc.
16. Background music is key to surviving the tedium. I made up
Nethack playlists on iTunes. Maybe I'll put up a Nethack iMix on the
iTunes store.
17. Not sure where the ninth Nazgul went... bastard got away. Oh, I
get it; one of my pet Archons must have killed it... that must be why
the columns don't all total up to 120 (aside from the things that I
just didn't get 120 of, like water demons and water moccasins).
That was fun. Time to rest my tendons... ouch! =)
Extinctionist ascent (long, spoilers)
I finally managed an extinctionist.. the last time I tried, I couldn't
handle the boredom and quit. Stuck it out this time, and complete
stats can be seen at this link:
http://homepage.mac.com/master_nethacker/PhotoAlbum1.html
I obeyed no particular constraints, and liberally used all usual tricks
including polypiling; did genocide mimics early in the game to maximize
items, although in retrospect that didn't matter and I shouldn't have
done it. I slew everything in the dungeon (including Izchak, although
that was a mistake and I raised him again, see below) but I did not
focus my efforts into getting 120 woodchucks created, or 120 water
elementals, and things like that -- just the regularly made monsters.
I also did not try to create all the water monsters, kill mail daemons,
or other esoteric things like that. I didn't try to kill the Riders
repeatedly as some have done, because if I messed up and died on the
Astral Plane after all the effort preceding it I probably would have
died in real life.
Oh, and I didn't kill my quest leader or theother high priests, for whatever reason.
Game stats: neutral human Wizard, 222,000 turns, 68 million points,
7139 hit points and 6464 mana. Killed nearly thirty five thousand
monsters!
Main weapons: the Staff of Aesculapius and Frost Brand. Other
particularly useful artifacts: the Eyes of the Overworld, and of
course a huge pile of artifact weapons. I had an intrinsic +14 damage
bonus and a +5 ring I kept wearing -- so a total of +19, which was
nice. Had all the other useful intrinsics except searching and
teleportitis (see below); did have intrinsic water breathing, which was
handy.
Some random notes regarding this game, and regarding playing an
extinctionist in general:
1. It *really* helps to have the spell "create monster" on "z." It
seriously compromises your chances of finishing the game if casting
this spell is a difficult keystroke, and it so happened to fall on "z"
(no planning of mine). If I ever play an extinctionist again, I'd
recommend planning to get this spell on a good letter (like a, s, x or
d -- something close to the "z").
2. I accidentally killed Izchak while Kop-baiting.
I was plowingthrough Kops and accidentally hit Izchak with my +7 Staff of
Aesculapius, and with the Very Large Damage Bonus two hits quickly
keyed was all he took. I thought about it for a minute, wrote a
spellbook of turn undead and learned it, and then raised him; locked
him in his shop and did not return to the Mines, instead doing my
Kop-baiting on level 19, which had a shop (better location anyhow).
3. It took a long time to get Demogorgon to show. I had prepared for
him by wishing up an icebox and putting in some cockatrice corpses. I
then stood on the stairs with a scroll of scare monster. I would stone
and unstone Demogorgon about fifty or a hundred times, then go
elsewhere for a while.
3. I lost all my intrinsic protection two or three times to careless
sacrificing of doppelgangers, which is a real pain. But actually
having aggravate monster helps, in this kind of game, and with the
number of HP I had the distinction between AC -40 and -100 didn't
matter much to me. Figure my end AC would have been -110 or so if I had
not made those mistakes.
4. I found out that protection gained by ring eating is lost along
with all other sorts of god-given protection if you anger your god. I
reported it as a bug, but was told that this was not necessarily a bug,
and probably would not be addressed.
5. One way to while away the time is to summon and charm a group of
mastodons (or whatever you like -- minotaurs, master mind flayers, or
anything else with horrific damage output. But I like mastodons...)
and to use them to kill summoned monsters for a while. Particularly
the co-aligned unicorns.
6. I used the first Sokoban level as an ammo dump, which is a great
choice in any game in which you have the Eye of the Aethiopica.
7. I kept the gems, gold, and the very large number of excess
artifact weapons and amulets of life saving in an extra bag of holding,
sitting next to the stairs out of level 1. Ended up not carrying the
gold; not worth enough for its weight.
8. I foolishly killed the last priest in the game fairly early on (by
turn fifty thousand I think). I wouldn't do that again if I could
change it. If you screw up and lose your intrinsic protection, it's
nice to have a priest around to get the first 8-10 points of it back
easily.
9. I advise using up all nurses early in the game, because once you
have thousands of hit points, the chance of getting more hit points
from nurses appears to be very small.
10. It's fun when rings of increase damage are edible. I would
recommend getting a large damage bonus in this manner as early in the
game as possible, to minimize the number of blows you have to strike
over the course of the game. By the end of the game, my damage bonus
intrinsic was up to
11. I chose the Staff of Aesculapius as my primary weapon; that's my
usual choice, as a wizard. I guess the intrinsic regeneration is most
helpful early on and becomes irrelevant later in the game, but it's a
hard habit to break. Plus I really like protection from level drain,
and having hands free for 0% chance of missing spells.
12. Probably it's better not to have intrinsic teleportation, but
instead to keep the teleport away spell memorized. The extra
keystrokes involved in just teleporting in place, given a game of
>200,000 turns, are not insubstantial. I had some nymph tins I kept around, but never used them.
13. If you do polypile, it's best to do it most efficiently (piles of
5 items, blessed) as the spoilers recommend. You get lots of potions
of full healing and gain energy that way, and more of those crucial
genocide scrolls.
14. It's useful to reverse-genocide both types of mind flayers while
standing on a scare monster scroll, to eliminate them all before you
can lose maps and identification of things to them. Remember that
"summon nasties" will still produce master mind flayers. When you're
killing Archons and Titans, look for the pink/reddish 'h' in the pack,
and kill it before it gets close!
15. It is *very* easy to miskey, and it's best not to carry anything
in your inventory that is really risky. I evaporated my Staff of
Aescaulapius at 200k turns by having an enchant weapon scroll in my
inventory, and I should not have been carrying it. I wouldn't keep a
wand of cancellation around, either, for obvious reasons; you can cast
the spell anyhow. No bags of tricks, etc.
16. Background music is key to surviving the tedium. I made up
Nethack playlists on iTunes. Maybe I'll put up a Nethack iMix on the
iTunes store.
17. Not sure where the ninth Nazgul went... bastard got away. Oh, I
get it; one of my pet Archons must have killed it... that must be why
the columns don't all total up to 120 (aside from the things that I
just didn't get 120 of, like water demons and water moccasins).
That was fun. Time to rest my tendons... ouch! =)
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