From sfg at eecs.berkeley.edu Wed Jul 23 13:26:27 2003
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 09:06:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: nethack ascension number two

So normally I send out mass mails that tell you what I've been up to
lately.  This email sort of does that :-)  

Bjorne, level 30, Male Chaotic Orcish Barbarian
str:25 dex:18 con:18 int:21 wis:21 cha:16    AC: -48, 330hp, turns ~79000

I had around about 4.8 million points.

genocided: green slime, L, R, h, c, ; -- they are all just too much of a
pain (screw the poor hobbitssesss, the mindflayers gotta go).

used 4 wishes (gdsm, speed boots, magic marker, candles) -- yes, I was too
lazy to go all the way back up to mine town to get candles.  I had 4 more
wishes left when I ascended (I found an extra /oW randomly).

I altar-camped, polypiled, wraith-lured and nurse-danced.  I did not
engrave Elbereth.

(warning: some spoilers ahead -- it's probably mostly stuff you know)

At dungeon level 4 I found an altar and camped out.  I got Cleaver (and
Grimtooth and Ogresmasher and Dragonbane and a blessed spell book... of
blank paper -- thanks, god).  I was level 10 or 11 by this point and the
mines down to minetown were a breeze.  I got a wish from a magic lamp for
the GDSM.  Sokoban, bottom of the mines, blah, blah.  I found a graveyard
and lured some wraiths upstairs.  I think I got like five levels from that
graveyard.  At some point I got a /o create monster and did yet more
sacrificing to eventually get Frostbrand which I kept throughout (by the
end of the game I'd also had, but not used, vorpal blade and demonbane).  I
think I got the bag of holding from sokoban and the shield of reflection
from a statue.  Once I have a BoH, the junk collecting begins.  This game I
was very careful to never be burdened (except on levels I'd already
pacified, I was especially careless when moving stash items or hauling
corpses to the altar).  I bothered with gems and spellbooks which was
mostly a useless waste of time (actually having force bolt came in handy
for clearing boulders a few times even if I had to take off my shield and
gloves and still had a fail rate of 66% -- that and the confusion thing
means spellbooks are almost, but not totally useless).  I also carried a
lot more food than I really needed.  Just to gauge, I think from Moloch's
Sanctum to the astral plane I ate maybe like 3 K-rations (and lots of
corpses).  I got teleportitis some time before the quest from eating a
tengu.  I lucked out and got a =o teleport control not long after.  With
teleport control, teleportitis is fantastic.  The rogue level and the big
room were unnotable.  In the big room stayed on the stairs and avoided
gang-banging.  I also threw tripe to all the cats and dogs I could find,
but later left them.  I'm not much for pets when I play B, V or S.  They're
more useful with M and W imho.

I was pretty buff, so I did the quest before the castle or medusa.  The
trolls were a big pain, but the a tinning kit helps.  I had to be careful
not to be surrounded and gang-banged, but other than that and the trolls,
the quest was easy.  The barbarian quest artifact is nice -- you can
#invoke it to levitate.  Good for all those water levels.

Next I did Ludios which I found more or less coincidentally (I wasn't doing
a thorough search for it).  With all that gold, I got protection down
to base AC 0.  Medusa and the castle were thoroughly routine.  Monsters
were kind enough to leave me gauntlets of power and a helm of brilliance.
Some polypiling, cancelling, water prayers and magic markering later I had
lots of blessed scrolls of enchant armor and enchant weapon.  Slightly
later I had +7 frostbrand, +4 or +5 hawaiian shirt, gdsm, cloak of prot,
speed boots, shield of reflection, gauntlets of power and helm of
brilliance.  I also had a blessed amulet of life saving (I found another
one later -- I never needed them).  The wraiths were kind to me about
leaving corpses.  That and all the !oGainLevel I found / polypiled for got
me up to level 30 by the middle of hell.  Some wankery with magic traps
and blessed potions of gain ability maxed my base stats (18/50, 18, 18,
16, 16, 16 for orcs).

Hacking through hell was mostly just boring.  Some same-species
sacrificing (I was chaotic) had summoned Jubilex and Yeenoghu earlier, so
even the demon levels weren't so bad.  I think it was Orcus that had two
nice shiny /oDeath for me.  those came in lots of handy later.  As soon as
I found the stairs I just went down -- no reason to explore any further.
I used my wands of digging to clear a path sometimes (in contrast to my
first ascension where I painstakingly cleared the shortest path between
the stairways).  Some of my path clearing happened while I had the amulet.
I didn't do the cursed scroll of genocide trick, but I did play with a
couple of the nurses I found.

Blah, blah, Vlad, vibrating square.  I just toasted rodneY with a /oDeath.
He got another taste on the few occasions when he came back.  Blah, blah
Moloch's sanctum, /oDeath the high priest, grab the amulet and trudge back
up.  I used ^T a fair bit on my way back up through hell.  Being
surrounded by lots of monsters (usually dragons, minotaurs and other
nasties like that) on the way up was a pain, but I had no reservation
about running (or teleporting) away.

The elemental planes (air in particular) were a bit harder than I
remembered (from my two other visits).  A monster was kind enough to drop
me a crystal ball on the plane of earth.  That helped quite a bit.  Earth
started with a bang, but was then just lots of digging.  I wouldn't have
survived air without my handy ring of conflict and liberal use of my
/oDeath.  Air elementals are bad enough when they have 50ish hitpoints.
When they have 180hp and they're all over the place, they get the /oDeath
and the =oConflict.  Fire was uneventful and Water was boring as usual.
(Guess what I remembered to take off before I entered the astral plane,
Zach -- in fact, I got rid of it on Water).

The astral plane was a bit rough, but I used a clever trick (see below) I
read in http://homepage.mac.com/mhjohnson/mag-r2.html (which I recommend).
I went for the Famine branch (which was on the right)  first.  The angels
were no problem and famine goes down quick with a /oDeath -- tho actually
melee with him isn't so bad if you have some food on you.  I wouldn't do
it with magicbane, but frostbrand ripped him a new one (I cleverly had the
blessed +7 demonbane in my BoH the whole time).  The priests were a slight
pain, but later on they summoned lots of insects -- for which I was
grateful.  The Riders can't move through insects.  Being surrounded by
lots of easy monsters which can't hit you (or can, but do less damage than
normal regeneration fixes) is a nice way to avoid all the nastier monsters
that would otherwise surround you.  At the first altar, I gave some
thought to forsaking Set for Crom.  It's still an ascension after all.  I
went onward to Pestilence's branch (on the left).  The insects mostly kept
Famine off my back.  When I realized how little the monsters actually
hurt, I just waded right through the sea of insects, /oDeath for
Pestilence (he got a wizard of mine a while back, that bastard) and
checked the altar.  Mitra.  That sucked, but I realized that if I was fast
enough, I should only have to drop Death once.  I read a blessed scroll of
confuse monster (which are not to be underestimated) and pressed onward to
the middle branch.  I hit a priest in the door and confused him.  He was
kind enough to then read a scroll of create monster (which just about
every monster on the level had) which summoned lots of unintimidating acid
blobs.  A titan was kind enough to repeat the trick, allowing me to sneak
right by Death (evade Death, ha-ha), run up to the altar and sacrifice the
Amulet of Yendor.  Yay!