First Nethack of the season!

[Capntastic]

I just got 28k points with a valkyrie; bag of holding, blessed unicorn horn, platemail (and other neat armors for a total of -9 AC), and plenty of other goodies. I'd cleared out minetown, converted a few altars. Died, while caught in a bear-trap :( After losing my sword to a rather stupid mistake (tried using it to pry open a chest).

Oh well, better luck next time! Let's see if any of you can do better!
http://www.nethack.org <-- for those of you about to have kickin' rad fun.

[glu-glu]

your character's death amuses me.

[Ark]

Well my female archer made it all the way to Level three before being taken out by a visious Hobbit, who killed her while she was helpless, getting a total of 493 points.

This game reminds me of a ye old C64 game - including the ease of how I die.

[Justice Augustus]

I can't even make it that far! All my ending screens seem to say something like.

You killed a fox.
You were slain by a gobline.

You got 1 point!

[Archmage]

I just got hosed by a blast of frost from an unknown source somewhere in the mines. >.o

[Capntastic]

Keep at it, though, is the only advice I can give.
That, and have no shame in reading guides.

The more you play, the more the chance of your dead characters dropping their items for a later character to discover is. Nothing like finding some good items on a corpse, for free!

[Archmage]

Especially when all of them are cursed.

Then again, that's what carrying ten gallons of holy water is for.

[Spleen]

When is 4.0 coming out?

Seriously.

[Capntastic]

Especially when all of them are cursed.

Then again, that's what carrying ten gallons of holy water is for.

A cursed +2 silver dragon scale mail is more useful than nothing.
Especially if you have holy water.

[Archmage]

Don't I know it. I can think of more than one occasion where I found a cursed cloak of magic resistance, cursed bag of holding, cursed Mjolnir, or similarly useful item that, well, just happened to be cursed because it belonged to a previous adventurer. And being cursed is not that hard to fix.

I started another hackfest yesterday and was forced to save it for later; I'm totally convinced that Magicbane is the best artifact ever.

[Justice Augustus]

Ok, I've been doing a little better. If I survive level 1 then it seems to get easier for a bit. Question: how do you cure food poisoning?

[Archmage]

Don't eat rotten food. Basically, anything that you didn't just kill about a turn ago is not safe to eat; corpses rot very, very quickly, so don't carry them around for later (except lichen, which do not rot). Undead corpses are already unsafe to eat.

If you accidentally ingest rotten food and are poisoned, you can always #pray to your god; if you are in good standing, you might be cured.

[Spleen]

You may not always die from food poisoning, of course. You may just throw up.

[PriamNevhausten]

And then die.

Really, that phrase could follow any sentence regarding Nethack.

[Capntastic]

Your pets are smarter than you; they will not eat bad food, nor will they tread upon cursed objects willingly.

[Zemyla]

Also, they wouldn't go down into this dungeon of their own free will.

[PriamNevhausten]

And then die.

[Archmage]

I had my pet step on a falling rock trap and die after two turns once.

[Spleen]

Happens all the time.

Incidentally, regarding pets and stairs: They will follow you down if they are adjacent to you when you go down.

[Archmage]

About three wizards, an archaeologist, a samurai, and a priest later, I had a good run with a valkyrie. Died with:

+6 rustproof Fire Brand
+0 athame
Cursed +4 Mjollnir (damn you, Rodney)
Blessed amulet of reflection
2 amulets of life saving (GAH)
Amulet of ESP
Gray dragon scale mail
Gauntlets of power
Speed boots
Cloak of displacement
Two expended wands of death (one recharged once)
Wand of wishing (maybe one charge left)
Four magic makers
41,727 gold

Pious alignment, extremely lucky
Intrinsic fire, cold, sleep, disintegration, shock, and poison resistance
Intrinsic telepathy, stealth, see invisible, and invisibility

Killed the wizard of Yendor (8 times)
Asmodeus
Jubilex
Orcus
Medusa
Lord Surtur
Vlad
One high priest
Nine aligned priests
2 master liches
6 jabberwocks
6 disenchanters
20 quantum mechanics
5 master mind flayers
21 minotaurs
29 vampire lords
Total 2,285 creatures vanquished.
Genocided all L and all h (11 monsters), used 6 wishes, never polymorphed an object or wished for an artifact.

RIP, Freyja the (male) Valkyrie, killed by the Wizard of Yendor on floor 32 (max 47).
Total score: 1,768,359 points after 60,087 moves.
Level 20, maximum 140 HP.

[Archmage]

YAFAP (Yet Another First Ascension Post): On 3/23 at 11:16 PM, Ardam-Priest-Neutral-Male ascended to demigodhood!

I split this into two posts because it wouldn't let me post otherwise. Too long? o_O

THE STORY:

After a lot of deaths from various characters (maybe half a dozen wizards, that valkyrie I just posted about, I decided on a whim to try out a priest. I hadn't played a priest who accomplished jack shit in a while. My starting spellbooks: Identify and Remove Curse. Considering the fact that half the reason I had been playing wizards was the freedom to write my own book of Identify as soon as I got a magic marker, this seemed like it was totally cool. On the first floor, I found a blessed spellbook and read it. A book of sleep. Not bad, though priests are restricted to unskilled in enchantment.

I had no idea at the time how useful that was going to turn out to be.

I slowly made my way down the first several levels, letting my pet do most of the work to make up for my lousy priest fighting skills; the mace isn't a bad weapon, but it's not a good one. I made do with very minimal armor for a good while, and I discovered that I had a 0% failure rate on casting sleep because of my robe--even though priests can't advance enchantment. Score, I thought. My strategy became "put things to sleep and beat them senseless." Standing toe-to-toe with anything and fighting directly was suicide; I got very lucky and had some close calls with fast monsters like ants, but I made it out okay.

The minetown altar was cross-aligned and therefore useless to me. Shit. Nothing good for sale in the shops. I had my dog maul some guardsmen to fill out my armor a bit. Somewhere in here I wound up hitting rust traps too often and for what seemed like an eternity my weapon was a +1 blessed thoroughly rusty mace. The ONLY way to kill things was to put them to sleep and beat on them until they woke up, then sleep again and continue beating. I got a luckstone from the bottom floor, took my pick-axe, dealt with arranging my inventory a bit, and got thoroughly pissed that I hadn't even found a sack, much less a bag of holding. And all of the unicorns in the dungeon were gray; I saw like five gray unicorns before ever seeing a cross-aligned one, which meant I couldn't get a unihorn for use as a tool OR weapon for what felt like forever.

Did Sokoban. Got an amulet of reflection. OK, that's awesome, but I need a damned bag. I cannot carry all of this crap. Still wielding that rusty POS mace; no better weapon to be found anywhere. I got a scroll of taming and wound up having the Big Room get generated on floor 11 or so. Surrounded by monsters, I did the only sane thing and read the scroll of taming. Most of the critters resisted; I got a green-elf and a xan pet to replace my deceased cat. Somewhere in here I stepped on a fire trap and lost all the flammable shit in my inventory, including my precious spellbooks. It was at this point that I was sure I would die somehow.

Little did I realize that the green-elf could level up. It started slaughtering my adversaries, decked itself in all kinds of armor, and eventually became an Elvenking. I found a wand of polymorph and shot it at the xan at some point and after a couple zaps I had a stone giant and an Elvenking following me around the dungeon. <3 I had the elf kill a unicorn for me. He promptly ate the corpse and wielded the horn. Errr. I wanted that! These two were my faithful servants until a powerful troll killed the giant, at which point I had to dance around the troll while the Elvenking consumed the corpse of his fallen ally. Still stuck with my rusty mace, the only way I could kill trolls was to shoot them with drain life until they ran out of hit dice. This usually took like a dozen castings. The elf finally bit it fighting another troll, and I looted his stuff so that I could have a unicorn horn.

Still no altar. Damnit. Artifact required. I need a new weapon! >_<

I ran into a gray dragon out of sheer luck, dropped it, took its scales and enchanted them for mail. I later accidentally overenchanted it and vaporized my +5 gray dragon scale mail because I thought I'd removed it (I was trying to enchant my shoes). GAH. At some point I decided that I needed a bag of holding so badly that I needed to rush to the castle; I found a blessed scroll of genocide in the mines out of sheer luck, so I knew no liches would be waiting to screw me over, and I'd somehow gotten an amulet of levitation by kicking sinks desperately. Medusa's lair was unprofitable (boots of levitation, didn't need those). Got to the castle, hacked my way through hordes of bad guys. And I found a gray dragon in there--and he dropped scales! Armor re-get!

I swear that the soldiers had no less than three wands of death. HOARD. Thank you, amulet of reflection!

As soon as I got the wand of wishing the first thing was a blessed, greased bag of holding. FINALLY. Shoved all kinds of crap in there and made my second wish a good weapon--the healer quest artifact, the Staff of Aesculapius, probably the best weapon a priest can get. Lucky me, three wishes in the wand; I wished for a magic marker and wrote a blessed scroll of charging, recharged the wand, got myself some +2 blessed fireproof speed boots and shoved the wand into my bag, planning to save the wishes for a desperate time. A wand of polymorph and a little polypiling yielded a Hawaiian shirt and not much else; I took the shirt, planning to enchant it later, sifted through all the gloves and shields left behind by the soldiers hoping to find something worthwhile, and found a +2 small shield. That was the best I was going to get out of that pile, so I went back to do the quest.

[Archmage]

The quest home was the first altar I found myself really having access to, though I think there was one on a floor prior to the quest that I had accidentally overlooked. Thanks to starting with holy water and the priest ability to discern blessing/curses without an altar, I hadn't suffered much, and now I had a decent weapon. I converted the altar of Moloch in the quest home, got more holy water, and started cutting through dozens of wraiths and zombies. The quest was largely uneventful; after it was over I kept sacrificing and praying (thanks, create monster spell) until I got crowned Envoy of Balance. I didn't really need Vorpal Blade, but I wanted to unlock long sword from restricted and I thought it might be useful if I needed a desperate instant-kill weapon to bring down the Wizard of Yendor.

The four wands of death (Orcus coughed up one with 6 charges after I beheaded him with Vorpal Blade) proved more than enough, as it turned out. I also discovered that I could cast fireball at a 20% fail rate despite being restricted in attack magic, which came in handy in a few situations where I needed to attack at range. Mostly uneventful trip through Gehennom, thanks to the magic marker I'd wished for earlier; somehow I wrote a blessed book of magic mapping on my first try without wasting any ink (a 34% chance, hooray), so it was easy to navigate the maze, and I bribed 2/4 demon lords, which cost me less than 800 zorkmids in full. Killed Rodney, went down to the Sanctum of Moloch, found that Rodney had resurrected himself inside the High Priest of Moloch's little sanctum, and slipped on my ring of conflict. Rodney, the priest, and a bunch of demons slugged it out while I killed a nearby cockatrice, grabbed its body, and smacked the priest with it to turn him to stone before blasting Rodney with the wand of death again. I cleaned up the mess, locked myself in the sanctum, blew a couple more wishes to get magic markers so I could write 4 scrolls of gold detection for the planes and some enchant armor scrolls to improve my AC. I polypiled some wands and spellbooks and whatnot hoping I could get something useful; no, not really. No magic markers, either. Oh well.

The ascent was completely uneventful; I only had to kill Rodney like two more times. I cut through everything with Vorpal Blade without much trouble, and when I got to the plane of earth I zapped Rodney with the death ray again before attempting to cast an old spell to confuse myself before using my scroll of gold detection
. After locating the magic portal, I burned half a dozen wand of digging charges to get there. No hitches. Threw on my ring of conflict for the plane of air and slapped on a blindfold so I didn't have to get slowed down by watching the monsters fight each other. Located the portal on the plane of fire, threw on a blindfold again so I wouldn't have to watch all the damned "the THING is on FIRE" messages, hopped in.
More or less sat on my ass in the water plane, whacking the occasional kraken with my staff to keep my HP up, until I found the portal by sheer randomness.

The last time I was on the astral plane I was overwhelmed by how much STUFF was around. I checked the altars using Call and telepathy and figured out mine was in the center; better prepared for the experience, I noted the presence of Pestilence guarding my altar. I had no wands of teleportation (how did that happen?) to clear a path, but Pestilence was blocked from reaching me by some lesser monsters. I lead my guardian angel over to the door and displaced it so that he could tank for me. Pestilence ended up on the opposite site of him, and I squeezed through the door without ever having to deal with the mighty horseman of the apocalypse. I threw on the ring of conflict so I could cut a swath through the priests and insects in my way and made a beeline for the altar. I quaffed all of one of my eight potions of full healing in the process.

And thus Ardam was bathed in radiant light and achieved his eternal reward of demi-godhood.

Wielding and wearing:

Blessed rustproof +6 Vorpal Blade
Blessed +6 Staff of Aesculapius
Blessed +0 unicorn horn (bastard disenchanter dropped it from +4)

Blessed fireproof +4 speed boots
The blessed +4 Mitre of Holiness
A thoroughly burnt +2 small shield
A blessed +5 Hawaiian shirt
A burnt +0 pair of leather gloves
Fireproof +3 robe
Blessed +4 gray dragon scale mail

With protection, my AC was -24 when I ascended (wielding staff, no shield).

Amulet of reflection
Ring of conflict
Ring of free action

Other notable items:

Amulet of ESP
Amulet of magical breathing
Amulet of life saving (x2!)
Ring of slow digestion
Ring of levitation
Ring of teleport control

Wand of wishing (1:0, there's still one wish left in there)
Four wands of death (lucky me!)
A blessed figurine of a cockatrice (uh...I found this somewhere)
Blessed +0 water walking boots
+0 jumping boots
Blessed +0 oilskin cloak
Blessed +0 cloak of magic resistance
Blessed +0 cloak of displacement

5 dilithium crystals
Blessed luckstone

Skills:

Basic in long sword (thanks Odin) and clerical magic
Skilled at divination
Expert at unihorn, quarterstaff

Attributes/intrinsics:

Envoy of Balance (crowned)
Pious alignment, extremely lucky
Fire, cold, disintegration, poison, shock, level-drain, magic resistance
Telepathy, invisibility, see invisible, warning, conflict, regeneration, protection, very fast speed
I survived!

Noteworthy stuff I killed:

Orcus
Jubilex
Vlad the Impaler
Medusa
Wizard of Yendor x7
10 krakens
5 storm giants
5 balrogs
7 purple worms
11 baluchitheria
3 Nazguls
6 disenchanters
A shopkeeper
11 aligned priests
113 ghosts (!)
134 wraiths (!!)
237 human zombies (damned priest quest)
52 leprechauns (ahahaha)
11 quantum mechanics
15 minotaurs

Total 2701 creatures vanquished

Conducts:

Genocided all L (that's it)
Used 6 wishes

Final score:

3,585,726 points
5,6335 moves
Level 20, max HP 221

[Ganonfro]

...Crap. Another free, oddly addictive game to play.

THANKS GUYS....


Edit: I died by a kitten....

[Justice Augustus]

Brian....

I never new nethack had an actual plot! There's a way to win? I thought you just kept going....oh man....

[Archmage]

Ganon: Dogs and kittens are very fast and do a surprising amount of damage. They are, as such, deadly opponents for low-level characters, especially those without good armor or a decent amount of HP.

The best thing to do when attacked by a cat or dog is to throw a piece of food in your inventory at it; it will catch the food, eat it, and become your pet! Cats and dogs will eat any non-vegetable food, including pancakes and fortune cookies (but don't throw an egg). You can use the same trick with horses and warhorses if you have carrots or apples in your inventory.

Gus: You bet! Though most people never find out about it unless they read hint guides for the game or are extremely lucky. I must admit to having read an extensive amount of information on the game, and even then it took me a year of playing (with a 4 month hiatus in the middle because of frustration) to beat it (without any restrictions like not using wishes or other conducts).

[Adrin]

Dirty astral caller. =P


Congratulations, AM! Well done!

[Adrin]

I hear rumors of a 3.5 release... possibly as early as this weekend.

[Capntastic]

I hear rumors of a 3.5 release... possibly as early as this weekend.

Spleen will be pissing himself in anticipation!

[BrainWalker]

And then he'll die.

[Archmage]

I realize that this song is linked on the nethack.org main page, but I never actually listened to it before. And it caused me to laugh myself silly.

It's much better if you've heard the song "Pepper" by the Butthole Surfers, but even if you haven't, I imagine it will be entertaining.

[Archmage]

YAAP (Yet Another Ascension Post): On 4/3 at 5:30 PM, Ashley-Archaeologist-Human-Female-Chaotic ascended to demigodhood!

I swore I would ascend an archaeologist next and I did. It only took like a week and a half of blood, sweat, and tears. *ahem*

I didn't take very thorough notes while playing, so it's kind of hard to make a great story out of this one, aside from a few highlights. I did manage to get down to Minetown with a pile of gems and gold from working the vaults with my trusty pick-axe and after a lot of pain-in-the-assery I dropped my AC considerably with protection (though I didn't get down at level 1, it was more like level 2 or 3). I used a dwarvish mattock as a weapon for a while and advanced pick-axe to expert.

The first chance I had to start sacrificing I got pissed off when I got Snickersnee instead of Grayswandir. I was playing lawful so I could get Grayswandir in the first place, damnit! I figured having Snickersnee was better than nothing and used it as my weapon for a pretty long time. I was lucky about finding spellbooks and managed to get my hands on identify pretty early, so once I skilled up divination I was having a pretty easy time with items. I got a wish from a throne at some point, so I wished for gray dragon scale mail, since I had a robe (I forget how I got it) and wanted to continue using it to reduce spell failure rates. I didn't get reflection in Sokoban; I got a bag of holding instead. I wasn't about to complain, however, because at that point I was having a lot of trouble with inventory management because I had a lot of gems, scrolls, and spellbooks.

At some point before Medusa's lair I ran into a peaceful guardian naga. Guardian nagas aren't really that strong, but they have a paralyzing bite that lets them tear apart shopkeepers and other NPCs. Hmmm. I just so happened to have a scroll of taming. Hello, new pet! I dragged the naga all the way back to Minetown (I was on Dlvl 17 or something), locked Izchak up safely in his shop, and had the naga eat all the shopkeepers and other denizens of the town. I proceeded to donate all the money I had to the local priest for protection (I swear I'd lost it somewhere, somehow) and lowered my AC some more. Then I opened the door and had the naga eat the priest so I could get a refund.

You know, I think that's where I got my robe. Carrying on.

Luckily, Perseus' statue in Medusa's lair coughed up a shield of reflection, so there was my reflection source. However, the shield totally killed my spellcasting, so I had to take it off whenever I wanted to cast a spell (usually magic mapping). I never bothered with attack spells, mostly just identify and magic mapping, though I did cast jumping a couple times on the planes to try to outrun Death. I was burdened for most of the later game because of all the books and crap I was lugging around. I didn't want to try to manage the naga in Medusa's lair since they can't cross water, so I left it behind; on a later return to the floor it walked around with me some more and got itself turned into a panther by eating a doppelganger corpse. So long, good friend, it was fun while it lasted.

Once I got to the castle I realized that I had no means of levitation; I had crossed Medusa's lair with water walking. I didn't have a tonal instrument, either, and I wasn't having any luck finding one. I contemplated blowing down the drawbridge with a wand of striking, but I wasn't sure whether or not I would somehow manage to kill myself inadvertently in the process. I experienced YASD-by-drawbridge before and was not about to kill off a very promising character by doing something retarded like that. Eventually I realized I had a potion of levitation that I could use to get over the pits in the back, but I would have no way out...so I went up a few floors and started kicking sinks. Bam. Got a ring of levitation on the first sink after a few kicks. I was thrilled.

Usual castle stuff, grabbed the wand of wishing. It was only 0:1, so I only had one wish. I did have a magic marker, but I hadn't ID'd charging scrolls. Figured it was worth a try. Nope. Ran out of ink trying to write the scroll. Damn! So I had to burn the first wish on the 2 blessed scrolls of charging and then recharge the wand immediately. Next wish was for the blessed +2 rustproof Grayswandir. I was sick of not having the artifact I wanted and didn't want to dick around anymore. >:

I had to ration the other wishes instead of conjuring up a lot of sweet gear; luckily, I had most of what I needed, so I just wished for some blessed +2 fireproof speed boots as those are practically a necessity if you're going to run around burdened like an idiot the way I was. The quest was totally uneventful, though I found a Hawaiian shirt and some scrolls of enchant armor, improved my AC a little more, and tried to dump everything I didn't need to get unburdened. It just wasn't going to happen; I was way over the 1000 weight limit where you're burdened no matter what your STR is, and I wasn't going to get below it. Partially because I had a lot of gold. Whatever.

I found the portal to Ludios for the first time ever this game, so I tore through Ludios, tinned Croesus for humor value, and collected a whole ton of money. I had over $100,000 zorkmids, way more than I'd ever carried. For reference, that much money weighs 1000 weight units on its own (though it'd only be 250 in my bag of holding)...uh, yeah, forget about being unburdened ever again at this rate. Even stashing the gold wouldn't have helped.

Gehennom is boring, particularly if you don't have magic mapping. I did. Bribed several demon lords for less than 400 zorkmids in total. I struck down a cockatrice on the Orcus level, picked up its corpse, and used it to greet Orcus before he could even fire a wand of death charge at me. Oh, no, a -1 alignment penalty for breaking a historic statue of Orcus? Say it isn't so! Wand in tow, fully charged, I descended, grabbed the amulet of life-saving in Vlad's tower, and hacked my way through the wizard's tower.

Reading a scroll of taming while confused tames all creatures in an 11x11 area instead of all adjacent ones to your current location. Man, doing that in the treasure zoo in Rodney's castle was fun. Taming 75% of the monsters and watching the purple worm eat everything was priceless. Unfortunately, I didn't have a magic whistle, so there was no way to sort through any of those pets and take good ones (like the worm) with me.

Somehow I fucked up performing the invocation ritual to open Moloch's sanctum. I'm not sure what I did wrong, exactly, but I raised the dead instead of opening the way. In fact, I did this twice, and during the middle of it all Rodney showed up and cloned himself. I blew almost all of my remaining wand of death charges trying to get rid of him, knowing that wasting time with Rodney gets you killed. When I finally got down to the sanctum, I had the fortune to grab a cockatrice corpse and turned every one of the priests into statues. However, the corpse rotted before I reached the high priest of Moloch. No problem, I figured, he's not that tough.

As it turns out, he nearly killed me. Burdened and trying to deal with him and a red dragon at once (and not wanting to use a wand of death charge), I eventually got to where I realized that I was going to die--were it not for my amulet of life-saving. I had to drop my bag of holding to get unburdened, "die" so that my amulet would bring me back to full health, then loot the bag while it was on the ground to retrieve some potions of full healing that I stashed so the fire traps wouldn't boil them into vapor. I used at least a couple potions of full healing while hacking away at the high priest, but he eventually ate it. I toyed with the idea of playing around with my equipment in the locked sanctum, but ultimately had little to do since my wand of wishing was 1:1 and I wanted to save the reliable wish for an emergency.

On the way back up through Gehennom, the mysterious force that teleports you down several floors randomly when you try to climb the stairs was being a huge pain. Somehow I got like four floors above Orcustown only to end up about five floors below it not too long afterwards, and I think I crossed the floor containing the second level of Rodney's tower like six times. I knew that this was all kinds of bad; the longer I was stuck in Gehennom the more likely it was Rodney would kill me through sheer attrition when I ran out of death spells. Whenever I would, I carried a cockatrice corpse around; most of my Rodney kills were me whacking him with a rubber chicken that I had acquired out of sheer luck. I finally realized that I had a ring of teleport control and a pile of "useless" scrolls of teleportation buried in my bag. Score! Teleporting across every level I could saved me a lot of moves.

After I finally escaped from Gehennom the rest of the dungeon was no problem. I think I might've zapped Rodney once. When I reached the up stairs on Dlvl1 I evaluated my position. I had only one wand of death charge; if I fired at Rodney on the plane of earth and missed I would be totally fucked. I decided that the safest route was to wish for another marker and recharge the wand of death, just in case.

I'm glad I did, because when I blasted Rodney, I missed. When I blasted him again, he died...but he was wearing an amulet of life-saving. What the hell? What kind of sadist codes it so that he can spawn wearing one of those!? Whatever, I killed him again and used wands of digging plus the orb of detection's crystal ball function to find the portal. None of the other planes were very eventful; conflict, orb to locate portal, blindfold to avoid annoying messages.

I had vowed that this time I was going to play 100% fairly and not use the astral Calling trick. I saved the game for later since I knew I wasn't going to be able to be calm and focus right when I had ten minutes to go to class. Using telepathy, I determined that Pestilence was on the left and Death was in the middle. Famine was on the right. According to most guides, Pestilence is the most dangerous because he can sicken you.

My brain must've not been working properly when I came back to play again, because, er, I decided to go where Pestilence was first. I had some kind of irrational fear of Death because he's immune to the wand of death and I still had charges, but you can kill Pestilence and Famine with it. The irony of this is that the lawful altar was on the right, with Famine. I never got to it, but we'll get there in a second.

I locked the door to keep Pestilence out while I considered my options. Death, I noticed, was sneaking up behind me. I did not want to get pinched between them. Suddenly, the door became unlocked somehow and Pestilence rode through. A Jabberwock spawned behind me, among other things, and I started pitching potions of extra healing at Pestilence. After a close call with illness I just zapped him with a death ray. Hooray, he died. Now to use a wand of teleportation to clear a path.

Oops. I forgot. Shooting a teleportation ray at a rider corpse revives it.

So I had to kill Pestilence again (I am so glad I had about a dozen potions of full healing) and then I started hauling ass past his body and away from Death. His corpse was on the door, so I couldn't close and lock it the way I wanted to. Doh! I pushed past all the enemies, using wands of teleportation to clear a path, until I got to the high temple. Nasties got summoned (whew, archons are peaceful!) and I shoved past things, eventually teleporting the corpses and debris away from the door so I could close and lock it. I was in the sanctum...but which one. Neutral. Fuck. In the neutral sanctum with the high priest, a peaceful angel and a peaceful archon. Not terrible, but I couldn't slap on conflict and let other monsters kill each other without fighting the archon, and I did NOT want to do that.
It occured to me at this point that I could use my 1:0 wand of wishing to get one last item. What would help me at this point? OH! A helm of opposite alignment! That way, no matter which altar I found next (I'd go to the middle since it was closer) I would be fine. Not going to wish for it yet, though, just in case. I'll lock myself in the altar room and do it when I get there. I look outside with telepathy and both Death and Pestilence are milling around outside. Gah.

As Pestilence drew near, I threw my entire stockpile of extra healing potions at him except one, slowly retreating. His maximum HP reduced somewhat, I fought him in the doorway of the temple, being extremely conservative about illness; I had some potions in my inventory, dropped my bag, and meleed with him, quaffing a potion to heal my illness more or less every other round. He finally died, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I picked up my bag and maneuvered through the now-fighting enemies thanks to my ring of conflict, and I attempted to use jumping to get away from Death.

Well, it kind of worked. He caught up, somehow, and I had to melee him. I swear he died in like two hits, which shocked me, but he managed to reduce my maximum hit points by like 80 (I gained some more during the battle thanks to blessed potions of full healing) I got to the outer middle door before I had to deal with him again, and I carved through to the center temple. Chaotic. Works for me! After this whole epic quest for my deity, I am totally willing to change sides if it gets me immortality!

Due to conflict, I didn't realize the high priest was peaceful, and I hit him with a wand of teleportation trying to get him out of the room. Oooops. I barely, barely survived the fight with the high priest because of all my potions of full healing; it was like a repeat of the Moloch's sanctum fight. With the priest dead, I locked the door and zapped my 1:0 wand until I got what I wanted.

"What do you wish for?" A blessed +2 rustproof helm of opposite alignment, please.

And that's the story of how my girlfriend became an immortal demigoddess.

Wielding and wearing:

Blessed +7 rustproof Grayswandir

Uncursed fireproof +4 speed boots
Uncursed fireproof +0 oilskin cloak
Blessed +4 gray dragon scale mail
Uncursed fireproof +2 leather gloves
Uncursed +4 Hawaiian shirt
Uncursed +0 shield of reflection
A cursed greased rustproof +2 helm of opposite alignment

Other noteworthy stuff:

The rustproof +0 Snickersnee (first sacrifice gift)
An uncursed +0 robe (I used one for most of the game to reduce spell failure)
An uncursed burnt rotted +0 robe (Swapped this for my old, slightly worn robe in Moloch's sanctum)

An uncursed +0 pair of water walking boots
Uncursed fireproof +1 elven leather helm (Helm I was wearing before the [oOA)
+2 silver saber (I planned to dual wield and never did)
+0 pick-axe (Was expert skill in pick-axe)

At max, I had an AC of -30; I had a naked AC of 0.

Blessed ring of conflict (worn)
Uncursed ring of free action (worn)

Ring of teleport control (this helped me a LOT in Gehennom)
Rings of slow digestion and levitation
Cursed amulet of ESP (which I eventually realized I didn't need due to my quest artifact; cursed by Rodney)
An uncursed rusty lockpick (only mentioned because I used it to lock doors on the astral)
An uncursed very rusty stethoscope
Blessed bag of holding
Blessed +0 unicorn horn
Blessed luckstone
Uncursed touchstone

20 blessed scrolls of blank paper (I made a hell of a lot of these at some point)
*insert whole pile of silly scrolls here*

Money:

121,487 gold pieces
7 rubies
7 amethysts
3 diamonds
4 emeralds
2 jet stones
1 sapphire
*bunch of other less valuable gems*

Souvenirs:

An uncursed tin of Wizard of Yendor meat
An uncursed tin of Croesus meat
An uncursed tin of floating eye meat
The uncursed Bell of Opening
The uncursed Candelabra of Invocation
The blessed Book of the Dead

Skills:

Expert in silver saber and pick-axe
Skilled in divination magic
Basic in matter magic

Attributes/intrinsics:

Piously aligned
Fire, cold, sleep, disintegration, shock, poison, magic, hallucination resistant
See invisible, telepathy (intrinsic and extrinsic), searching, invisible, conflict, very fast, reflection, free action, very lucky, extra luck, no good luck timeout
Survived after being killed once!

Noteworthy stuff I killed:

Juiblex
Orcus
Wizard of Yendor (10 times, the bastard; stupid amulet of life-saving)
Death (3 times)
Pestilence (3 times)
Medusa
Croesus
Vlad the Impaler
The Minion of Huhetotl (Oddly, I converted to Huhetotl to ascend...uh...hmm)
2 high priests
19 aligned priests
5 shopkeepers (blame the naga for this)
3 master mind flayers
120 soldiers
60 leprechauns (did I mention that I really hate leprechauns?)

2137 creatures vanquished

Conducts:

Genocided all L
Used 6 wishes
Never changed form

Final score:

3,349,196 points, something like 58,000 moves
Level 17, max 143 hit points (of which I lost about 80 to Death's touch)

[Adrin]

Nice job on the second ascension!

Suggestions for the future:

1.) If you get Snickersnee, *keep sacrificing*. Grayswandir is *built* for archaeologists, with their ability to advance to Expert in silver saber.

Dual-wielding is your friend. +7 Grayswandir, and a +7 silver saber == two hits to take down the Minion of Huhetotl... or any other demon.

2.) Stash management is vital.

You don't need everything you're carrying. You won't need to reread spellbooks much, and most of those scrolls and potions are more use turned into blessed scrolls of enchant armor (potions => holy water, scrolls => blank) than sitting around in your inventory. Low AC saves lives.

3.) Wands have range.

What I usually do is scroll of earth the moat in front of the castle, then blow the drawbridge from three squares away. But tonal instruments are *much* more fun, because you can crush Things under the drawbridge.

---

I guess I could post my recent ascension...

[Archmage]

1) The Minion went down in like three anyway. *laughs* I know precisely what you mean, though. I feel like I screwed the pooch, planning-wise, but not doing the dual-wielding thing and getting stuck having to use the shield of reflection when I didn't even have an "oLS to make it a meaningful gesture.

2) Don't I know it. I'm getting better at this.

3) I wasn't sure on the precise distance away you had to be to avoid getting chunk of metal'd. Now I do!

[Archmage]

I should rename this thread "Archmage brags about NetHack."

Just ascended Seifer, Male-Knight-Human-Lawful. Knight was actually a pretty easy class to ascend overall; I ran into relatively few problems.

Somehow I found three bags of holding; two just randomly, one in Sokoban. There was a HUGE tool shop with two magic lamps in it, one cursed, one uncursed. It took me a while to find an altar, but when I finally did I was able to wish for +2 blessed gray dragon scale mail. The tool shop also provided me with the stethoscope and magic whistle I was going to need for pet/mount management. I used the other lamp as an infinite light source for the rest of the game, turned that altar into a stash level for my saddle (poor horse died somewhere) and spellbooks, went back to hit the mines, yadayada.

I went through several warhorses and had to abandon the last one at Medusa's lair. I didn't have reflection, and I got a shield from Perseus, but I wanted to be able to cast spells. Bleh. The castle's throne yielded a wish, so I used it to get my 2 blessed scrolls of charging. Wand was 0:3, so I wished up a blessed greased amulet of reflection so I could get my spellcasting on. I found a helm of brilliance and a robe in the castle armory. Yeah, the game clearly wants me to be able to cast magic.

I used my next wish to get a blessed figurine of a ki-rin, which became my mount. Ki-rin don't have to eat, can fly, are incredibly fast, self-heal, self-invis, and are otherwise really badass mounts. The third wish went to a magic marker; I had great weapons by this point, so I buffed out my AC as much as possible. The ki-rin (and saddle) unfortunately met their end in Vlad's tower due to a black dragon's disintegration blast. However, I did get to joust Orcus to death, pinning him down and preventing him from getting off a single shot from his wand, while mounted on Michael, my trusty ki-rin steed. Highly satisfying.

The most entertaining part of this whole scenario was when I found a polytrap in the quest level. I took a cat with me and did some whistling until I got a pet I wanted--ultimately, I got a purple worm. Magic whistle in hand to compensate for its slowness, I took the worm along. I also picked up a dragon pet of some sort using the same trap.

Purple worms can instakill monsters of sufficiently low level by simply eating them, so I let the worm get kills and level up for a while. When I got to the Valley of the Dead, I made an interesting discovery. Most of the time, pet levels are capped based on species. They can exceed this if they drink potions of gain level...or eat wraiths. The Valley is full of wraiths.

After feeding my pet purple worm the entire population of the Valley, I had a level 40-something purple worm with over 380 hit points. It promptly devoured the priest of Moloch (after I bought protection). I used the Call command to name it Kira. Hooray for Death Note references.

Kira later ate a doppelganger and turned into a lich, which I kept with me until it evolved into an arch-lich, and actually went through much of the rest of the game with (it finally got eaten by a trapper, SOMEHOW, on Dlvl 16).

Uneventful game otherwise. I blew three wishes standing on the high altar of Lugh to conjure up some dilithium crystals to increase my score and summoning a blessed greased ice box as a stupid ascension trick.

In an attempt to do some basic conduct stuff, I never genocided any species and never polymorphed an object, nor did I wish for any artifacts. I would've gone polyselfless, but I contracted lycanthropy at some point, so that blew that. I intend to try doing a vegan, weaponless, genocideless, polyless, polyselfless monk next.

Fun stuff I had:

+6 blessed rustproof Excalibur
A +7 silver saber
A +6 blessed rustproof lance
Blessed +5 helm of brilliance
Fireproof +4 speed boots
Fireproof +5 gauntlets of dexterity
Fireproof +5 robe
Greased +5 gray dragon scale mail

AC was -35 when I ascended.

A blessed greased ice box (hooray for the demi-god bar!)
4 amulets of life-saving
A blessed magic lamp
Bell, book, and candle

75,494 gold
5 dilithium crystals (this was Mike's suggestion; THE WARP CORE IN THE DEMIGOD STARSHIP IS FAILING)
Blessed +1 Demonbane

2,892,082 points after 39,730 moves (not quite a speed ascension, exactly, but not too terrible)
Level 20, max HP 159

[Idran1701]

So, when are you going to start ascending with more conducts? Maybe an atheist or extinctionist game someday? :D

[Archmage]

Extinctionism just sounds like it would be a huuuuuge pain in the ass. Maybe I'll try illiteracy. :D

Edit: And thus begins the Illiterate Valkryie Project. First attempt last night ended despite good progress when I accidentally engraved a letter "i" and quit out of frustration.

Second attempt is going much better. After a successful protection racket run (made it down at level 2) and testing piles and piles of armor I managed an AC of -14 (+3 iron shoes in there somewhere). However, I have since given that up in exchange for speed boots purchased at an armor shop.

Oddly, I have found both Sunsword and Mjollnir without sacrificing at altars, Sunsword on the ground in the mines and Mojo in a shopkeeper's inventory at the lovely price of over $32000 zorkmids. Thankfully, Precious was kind enough to carry it out for me.

[Archmage]

HAY IDRAN I ASCENDED WITH A CONDUCTS :(

On April 24th at approximately 11:58 AM, Freya-Valkyrie-Human-Female-Lawful ascended to demigoddesshood!

I decided I was going to ascend an illiterate character. I don't like barbarians and didn't want to tear my hair out doing something insane (illiterate wizard comes to mind), so I went with a valkyrie. Valks are really tough combat monsters, but I was wondering how well that would hold up without the benefits of literacy.

Before I started the game, I considered the drawbacks of not being able to read or write.

1) No spells. (Valkyrie was chosen for this matter. Don't need them.)
2) No useful scrolls. Enchant armor, enchant weapon, and identify are out, as are conveniences like magic mapping and gold detection.
3) No E-word.

Aware that I would not be able to use enchant armor to improve my AC, I decided I needed to maximize my divine protection. Credit-cloning from a general store got me a nice chunk of change. The general store also had Mjollnir for sale, so I got a good weapon long before I had any plans to use it or before I found an altar.

I got surrounded by gnomes at one point in the mines and panicked, since I was trying to maintain my low EXP level and couldn't write the E-word. Of all the things to save me, an expensive camera ran the gnomes off, allowing Precious to devour them.

I reached Minetown at level 2, bought some protection (I had enough for 5 points), quickly gained some EXP, and started trying on ridiculous quantities of non-cursed armor. Being unable to enchant my own, I had to find the best stuff available, even if it meant wearing every piece of armor in the entire mine. I found some +3 iron shoes, a +1 helmet, and a couple other worthwhile things; with protection I managed to drop my AC to -14. Not bad!

I had to rely very heavily on price-ID to determine the identity of items since I couldn't use scrolls. I never got duplicate rings, so I couldn't really use sink-ID for those, and I never got a throne ID blessing. I did find a wand of enlightenment, which became my best friend; I used it to ID rings via process of elimination, which is how I discovered late in the game that I did, indeed, have a ring of conflict. Most of the equipment I was going to need would auto-ID (like the boots of speed I found in an armor shop), but without #name to keep track of things, I would've been totally screwed.

I tried to find and ID the scroll of scare monster, the only scroll I could've reasonably used, but I never did. Oh well.

Somewhere in here I hit a polytrap and turned into a green slime. This was mostly aggravating because I lost my polyselfless conduct. Grrr. I would've lost it again later anyway; when I killed Medusa I was actually transformed into a silver dragon because of the scales I was wearing and the fact that I hit yet another polytrap.

When I approached the castle I had neither magic resistance nor reflection (Sokoban was a bag, and I already had one). At some point I acquired silver dragon scales and swapped them for my elvish mithril-coat just because of how desperately I wanted protection from wands. I'd had a close call earlier with a giant wielding a wand of death in Sokoban; somehow both the initial AND the rebound shot missed me, saving me from YASD, and the giant died from the reflected bolt. I used a flute at the drawbridge to crush the oncoming hordes. There wasn't anything of value in the castle armory since Perseus gave me levitation boots and I already had speed boots (there was another pair in there).

When I retrieved the wand, I thought carefully about what I needed. I still didn't have magic resistance, and that was a must. I had no way to ID how many charges were in the wand, and it was at this point that I realized I couldn't wish up charging scrolls and get guaranteed extra wishes. I was going to be limited to what was in the wand already. Valkyrie quest artifact doesn't grant MR, so I went with a +3 blessed greased fireproof cloak of magic resistance and got it. Woot. My second wish ended up being for blessed +3 silver dragon scale mail. Not so lucky; only got +0. Better than wearing scales, seeing as how I couldn't turn them into mail since I couldn't read enchant armor scrolls.

I found two cockatrice nests on my way through the dungeons. This was odd mostly because I'd never even seen one before. I left them sleeping and undisturbed until I found an ice box in the quest on the last floor. At first I thought nothing of it; later I returned to the quest floor thinking I could take the icebox with me to store a cockatrice corpse to use against Rodney.

It turns out iceboxes don't fit in bags. Aw, man! So much for THAT plan.

I lost a lot of random crap to a magical explosion out of carelessness and shoving wands into my bag of holding, namely a wand of death, Excalibur, Werebane, and Sunsword. I was still wielding Grayswandir and a silver saber, so I hadn't lost anything crucial, but I lost my holy water, a bunch of other potions, and let's not forget the bag itself.

The RNG, being kind to me, dropped a spare bag from a minotaur a couple floors below Medusa's lair. When this happened I left it behind, assuming I wouldn't need it. I was glad to be able to come back and retrieve it.

I got really angry when I found a wand of polymorph because I lost itempolyless conduct for polymorphing text on the ground during engrave testing. I didn't polypile anything anyway; no matter what the conduct record says, I did this the "hard" way. I didn't really need to polypile anyway, as it wasn't going to get me much of value. I recall finding a magic marker somewhere and just laughing at how useless it was; I just left it on the ground.

I mostly meleed Rodney to death; I only used Orcus's wand a couple times, namely because I couldn't recharge it and wanted to save it for emergencies. I had the Orb of Fate stolen by a double-trouble Rodney the instant I woke him; I whacked both of them with the cockatrice corpse I'd brought along and didn't realize it was missing until I was on the way out of his castle. It was in the moat, and freezing it wasn't sufficient to bring it up. No, I had to get my pick-axe and dig out the Rodney statue, break it, and THEN retrieve the Orb. Man.

I had to wrest one last charge from my 0:0 wand of wishing to call up 7 candles to do the invocation ritual, because Minetown only had 5 candles and I'd lost them in the magical explosion anyway.

Conflict got me through the sanctum, I used a cursed potion of gain level to escape, and then I got pissed off because I'd eaten way more mindflayer attacks than I would've liked and had lost my memory of a lot of floor maps. Getting out of Gehennom, even with my carefully dug tunnels, was kind of aggravating.

I had to locate all of the magic portals on the planes (except for earth) by wearing the AoY and playing portal hot and cold. I used the Orb of Fate on earth to locate the portal, and then promptly burned the remaining four charges staring stupefied into a glass ball (INT 8). Finding the portal on the plane of air was a BITCH; finding it on fire was a lucky accident. Speaking of lucky accidents, I found the right high altar on the astral on the first try (luckily guarded by Famine, no astral Calling involved). This is the second ascension in a row where it's been guarded by Famine and was the right altar first go. :D

The end-game was exciting partly because I got to identify my possessions!

Stuff:

+0 blessed Grayswandir
+0 long sword (my two weapons for most of the late game)

+0 blessed gauntlets of power (found in Gehennom)
+0 thoroughly burnt speed boots
+0 thoroughly burnt levitation boots
+0 silver dragon scale mail
+1 uncursed thoroughly rusty helmet
+3 blessed fireproof cloak of MR

+3 burnt small shield (yeah, the one the valk starts with)

Blessed bag of holding
Amulet of life-saving (worn)
Cursed amulet of life-saving (spare)
Uncursed rusty ring of conflict (worn)
Amulet of ESP (how did I not realize I had this?)
Three amulets vs. poison
Amulet of unchanging
Bell, book, candle
9398 gold pieces

Killed:

Baalzebub
Orcus
Yeenoghu (summoned by a lich)
Juiblex
Rodney (9 times)
Famine (3 times)
Medusa
Vlad
Lord Surtur
5 arch-liches
8 krakens
3 master mind flayers
7 Nazguls (so close!)
8 disenchanters (these things didn't scare me at all)

Conducts:

Illiteracy (woo!)
No genocided monsters
Used 3 wishes, no artifact wishes

Unofficially, I never polypiled, nor did I set up a huge pudding farm or anything (though I did play around with a little bit of pudding, I didn't go to extremes from it and didn't get anything really useful or use it to get near-infinite divine protection).

Survived after being killed once (by a troll, I think, in the castle; thanks "oLS)

57,483 moves, level 19, 166 max hit points and an AC of only -15 when I ascended.

Somehow I made first place on the score list; do conducts add to score? Because I wasn't carrying much in the way of valuables, since I had decided early on I wasn't going to pick up gems unless I found a touchstone.

I'm taking suggestions as to my next ascension; I'm thinking weaponless atheist wizard.

[Nick Shogun]

Your adventures are always so exciting, Brian. Makes me wanna draw a comic about 'em.

[Archmage]

I swear I do nothing but play NetHack anymore.

On 4/28/07 at 8:18 PM, Hakaril Wizard-Human-Neutral-Male ascended to demigodhood!

Conducts: Atheism, polyselfless, itempolyless, no genocides, survivor, used three wishes (Magicbane, a magic marker, and gauntlets of dexterity (didn't really need to do this, but I vaporized my +4 leather gloves by accident)).

I lost five or six wizards in the process of this eventual success, at least one to starvation. No startscumming. I didn't have spectacular starting equipment, though I did get a magic marker with like 50 charges, which was pretty cool, and I started with a potion of holy water (which made things a lot easier). About 2/6 wizards I played started with either a potion of holy water or a scroll of remove curse, and one of the wizards that didn't start with either found holy water in a shop (I got that one killed IN the shop by meatballing a bunch of rocks on the floor...uh, yeah, anyway).

Early on I relied on pet-testing to differentiate cursed items since I couldn't use altars. One thing that was interesting about the atheist route is that I often try to barrel down to Minetown, hoping it's an aligned altar. The idea of a protection run, like in the illiteracy game, was right out. I didn't even enter the Minetown temple.

I got myself a book of identify as soon as possible, which solved all my BUC ID needs, packratted away scrolls and potions and turned most of the potions into holy water. I got a book of remove curse very late and hung onto it for dear life, but I didn't really need it much. My second wish, for a magic marker, was used to write my spellbook of finger of death, since I couldn't get one via crowning. I wished for Magicbane from an early lamp I found in the mines and didn't really need any other weapons, though I did have a stack of 9 +4 elven daggers by the end of the game.

I found the bones pile of the valkyrie I made my first post in this thread about! Four magic markers, fire brand, mojo, and a bunch of gems and crap. Yeah, I took that stuff. I didn't actually need it by that point, but whatever. Before descending down that level I had an AC of like -14; as I told Koss, my valkyrie ascended with -14 AC, why bother buffing it? I decided I was going to buff up anyway and improved my AC to -38 via scrolls. That's without divine protection. Hoorj.

I noted I was short on several intrinsics by the time I descended into Gehennom; I didn't have fire or cold resistance, for starters. I did have teleport control from snacking on tengu during the quest, and I decided before going deeper that I was going to go nymph hunting so I could get intrinsic teleportitis. Delicious!

Charm monster is probably my new favorite spell. I've always liked it, but it's just the most incredibly fun thing in the entire world to charm huge hordes whenever an enemy reads a cursed scroll of create monster or whatever.

The wizard may in fact have hit me once. I gave Rodney the finger every time he showed up. I had three wands of death and never fired any of them. High level wizards are just obscene when they have 200+ MP and finger of death.

I also recall the days when I thought illithids and liches were fucking terrifying beasts and was under the impression the game would be impossible without genociding them. Now I've ascended three characters without genociding anything. Not nearly as bad I first imagined.

Gear:

The blessed Eye of the Aethopica (worn)

+2 blessed rustproof Magicbane (wielded)
+6 blessed rustproof Fire Brand

+4 blessed fireproof gauntlets of dexterity
+5 blessed silver dragon scale mail
+5 blessed fireproof small shield
+4 blessed fireproof speed boots
+7 blessed fireproof elven leather helm
+5 blessed fireproof cloak of magic resistance

+4 blessed rustproof Mjollnir (bagged)
Bell, book, candle (this is just part of the ritual at this point)
4 amulets of life saving
Amulet of ESP
Amulet of magical breathing
Amulet of reflection

23,266 pieces of gold

Killed:

Orcus
Baalzebub
Juiblex
Rodney x6
Medusa
Vlad
The Dark One
Death (only had to do him once)
2 arch-liches
4 krakens (cone of cold FTW)
4 disenchanters
6 minotaurs

1,991,510 points (only 5th place on my top score board D:), 39,180 moves, level 20 with a maximum of 146 hit points.

TAKING REQUESTS FOR FUTURE ASCENSION ATTEMPTS :D

[Spleen]

Naked ascension.

EDIT: And not as a monk, that's too easy.