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As far as rotting in hells (and tomb, for that matter) goes, the easiest way to deal with it is to just let it rot your maxhp if it is yellow rot and you do not have a ton of curing. You will lose an insignificant amount of maxhp. Red rot is best cured though. This. The realisation that yellow rot ...

Or shift+arrow key. It amounts to "hold down arrow key in this direction but stop as soon as you see a monster". Or does shift only work with the vi direction keys (like 'y' and 'j')? For that matter, shift+X and specifying where you want to go works too ('point and click' without the need...

I have both crystal ball and sub. Is it still worth to have the staff? More like "now that I do have staff of channeling, I can use Crystal Ball with peace of mind". You're not serving Kiku, you will not have many corpses to use sublim on - balancing mp and hp with sublim + regen is certa...

The thing that really caught me off guard was that poison isn't the only thing they can do to you down there. It can be quite maddening (pun intended).

1) Explosion projectiles don't, I believe immolation scroll is also forbidden from burning items on your possession (not sure about floor scrolls). I assume you're well aware that flaming/frost projectiles DO destroy your consumables. 2) YES. Most guilty endgame spell: Shatter (i.e. do not cast this...

It also has a very unassuming-looking statue in the middle called Wucad Mu... until you meet some final boss, upon whose death the spawns will cease? Wucad Mu IS the final boss. If you don't have disintegration (or similar, e.g. LRD), you need both clarity and sustAb to have a chance. I once got se...

I have never passed the entrance of the hells, and was on my best run, so I didn't want to immediately perish. I was scared, despite rocking Pan, after my Zig encounter (2 pan lords that summoned in a wide open level was nearly my death). The Tomb, I went down to 2, and cleared probably 10 Greater ...

So I just cleared Vault 5, and it gave me crystal ball and book of necromancy. Guess it's time to train evocation then? I trained conjuration to 20 and now my fire storm can be casted with just 1% miss rate. My personal standard of safety for the crystal ball is "at least Evocations 10" a...

By the way, Sif Muna will hate you if you tear books to forget: you must rely on her invocation to forget. Vehumet doesn't care though. What's your backup plan for when you run out of mp? I haven't come across crystal ball or book with regeneration. So far I've been relying on Vehumet's mp restorati...

Wait does that mean enemy attacks never make noise? Every time I've done tomb it's in the noisy fashion, preferably with lots of water evaporation so the rear mummies can't see me.

Tomb 3 is actually much easier than tomb 2 as long as you don't make noise . If you do anything loud on tomb:3 you pull the entire level to you and you are in big trouble. Things that are loud include: lots of spells, shouting (including directing allies!!), some melee (I think statue and dragon fo...

Firestorm is Conj/Fire - seems to me that training Conj would be much more efficient for your current aim. I'm seeing redundant SInv - so that SInv randart ring is effectively just an Int ring for you. I feel there must be something better, considering you have no resists at all. There is no 'reflec...

Distortion Quickblade. *drools* I might have done the same thing. I don't have much experience using Lungou... I played around with an Abyssal Knight once and Touch of Corruption was pretty insane. Isn't he more of a melee god though? Uh, technically by an insignificant degree by lategame (i.e. you...

I'm just having too much fun with two regen rings + vampiric, I mean, that must be overkill, right? :) No, overkill is when you're a Stab-type Vampire with that vampiric dagger. There is nothing as satisfying as getting 100HP in one stab. Second to that: being a troll who can cast regen and with re...

The amulet question: clarity as your default is fine, but be sure to have that rMut ready when you meet Orbs of Fire.

Does clarity resist the crystal-ball's confusion? Regardless, the "0-mp if you fail" is too harsh, but still good to know. Yes, and sustAb is essential for Hell anyway. With both, you can basically get your buffs up 'for free' before you go downstairs or enter some hazard zone - cast buff...

Hmm well, if you knew you were deteriorating from that early on and you felt the RNG was being heartless at you, your other option would have been to go for the good gods and get "restore abilities" online as an invocation, then work your way to Zin cleansing you. Radical game changer, but...

Hmm, if the chances of finding slaying has increased, does that mean quickblades just got more attractive? The opposite, actually. The chances of finding high values of slaying were improved because melee slaying was nerfed. Quickblades are still quite good if you have the right sort of character, ...

Hells are actually significantly more dangerous than tomb for most characters if you know what to expect in tomb. I started to question the "significantly" but then realised that "dangerous" doesn't equate to "can be cleared quickly". I don't know whether to laugh or f...

I didn't know Pain could be branded to items via Vorpalize, same as Distortion. You can't - I'm saying I'd have been tempted to switch out of Ash, into Kiku just to run around with quickblade of pain in Zot. Not practical I know, unless I wanted to go extended with deep necromancy. Yeah, poison wou...

Hmm, if the chances of finding slaying has increased, does that mean quickblades just got more attractive?

3) Is there truly such a thing as a "dodgy" melee character? The idea seems absurd to me, but only because I've lost so many KoBe compared to MiFi. There is. Typically a hybrid-stabber-melee but stealth/stab is not a requirement for dodge-tank melee. I once ended up in melee range with th...

Deep Elf casters are all about not getting hit for the HP penalty to matter. Either because everything is dead before they attack or because you gave them other things to hit. Personally, I adopt both philosophies depending on the situation. Kiku at least doesn't leave Wizards hanging if you don't f...

Uh... you won't be getting many plain decks when your piety gets large - you'll be showered in legendaries and ornates. No, Nemelex was never designed to be a mutation roulette god - that's Jiyva's job. In older versions, Fulsome Distillation was much sought after to gather up 40+ mutation potions (...

Conjure flame and a quickblade of fire all the way into Zot:5? I appreciate IT'S A QUICKBLADE AND IT'S BEEN WITH ME ALL GAME, but I feel it's a missed opportunity to have gone quickblade of PAIN - I know, HE not good with necromancy but it's that rare to get a quickblade early. Makes me wonder what ...

Hmmmm, the art of a true ninja. Yes, by the time it's endgame a stabber should have all the EXP he needs and thus "eventually kill the majority of monsters" becomes an obsolete policy. Does that imply it may not be worth taking stabbing all the way up to 27 (and instead stopping at e.g. 20...

Abyss is the poor man's pan for loot - I suppose if you don't care about getting every pan rune you can go in there without being prepared to defeat or ninja past every pan rune boss (and their personal entourage). It's easier to exit the Abyss than pan.

Abyss seems like the next logical rune to get then: most monsters there should be popcorn for you and since you've been to Zot:5 you know how to treat the rare ancient lich. You desperately need some Fighting skill though, even if it's just so you have a bit more HP to soak up lich-form maxHP losses...

This is why I like carrying around 500 arrows/bolts when I first convert to Jiyva - the stack is so big it takes several turns for a jelly to eat through it all, each counting as a separate piety gain event.

I treat shields as insurance in case of a failed dodge. That's to say: if I don't have 30+ EV while wearing a shield by lategame, then I'm being suboptimal and the investment in shields was for style points. Unless it's an awesome randart shield with resists or has a useful evoke - i.e. AC+3 is not ...

The unique feature of Passage of Golubria is that it works on monsters too - in essence it's a controlled blink of a monster if used that way. Problem is, if you cast it in a corridor you don't know if you'll be on the wrong side of the near-portal.

Hmm, I find Wizard to be easier than Fire Elementalist but then Wizards aren't noob-friendly if the RNG hasn't given you another spellbook by the time you hit Lair (when both Sif Muna and Vehumet aren't quite ready to gift you yet but battles demand more than magic dart). Namely, Conjure Flame + Mep...

BlackSheep wrote:EDIT: Troglodytes have the nice ability to get a guaranteed rod by acquiring Staves. You've already got more Evocations than you should have, so maybe roll the dice one? Otherwise, I'd go for a wand hoping for Healing

They also get guaranteed manuals when acquiring Books.

I once had a flying, invisible, wall-passing, Ash-worshipping THING (Spriggan) that could tab-stab an entire corridor of draconians in Zot:1~4. One-shotting The Royal Jelly while it was resting was an electrifying moment. But by Zot:5 I lost confidence in the stab style - lots of things can see invi...

12 staves if using a staff for melee at all. As KoboldLord said, your top priority should be elemental magic skill and some 10+ evocation skill (the threshold where I start to trust crystal ball).

I am going to miss water potion evaporating, but I do agree distil->evaporate was OP and couldn't remain in its current form.

An AC/SH focus with rF+++ makes Cerebov himself relatively harmless. It's his summons that I find to be most troubling so I dig out a tight, diagonally bendy corridor and fight him there. I had a Mi who took 1 damage from one of his fire storms - lucky rolls but point still stands: he cannot kill yo...

That you're getting ammo at all means one of your ranged skills is Lv 8 or higher. That you get both sling and bow ammo is because you have skill in those two skills once either of them hit Lv 8. This gift dilution causes many melee builds to deliberately stop training ranged skills at 6 or 7 until ...

EV doesn't protect against Poisonous Cloud. That and Mephitic kept me alive in the spider nest portal vaults, and while I haven't hit the Spider branch yet, I imagine things won't be a whole lot different. (I may well be proven wrong.) True, but I ran out of MP and just about everything is fast (an...

I am reminded of an old YASD of mine: I nuked liberally with Fire Storm in Tomb:3 and found myself dead because I wasn't in lich form and the torment/pain death curse chain extinguished my foolishly disrespectful character. That might have been the character where I discovered Kiku blocks most of th...

In case you're not familiar, bend space is blink that costs hp. It also blinks others too at higher Invocations. Not as much use to a melee character but it's nice having a cheap scramble button.

I've invaded hell to fill my stomach before. Dis and Gehenna have hell hounds which leave (contaminated, poisonous) corpses and Gehenna even has hell hogs for more corpses. Of course, it's only worth it with Gourmand (I assume you have the amulet somewhere) and rPois (which you have innately). You'v...

Lesson the first: tarantellas confuse when they bite you. Not what killed me, but I really really should have taken the hint given the RNG decided not to give me a lot of !curing. Lesson the second: while most things are vulnerable to poison in Spider, they also have a lot of EV. Don't rely on curar...

Huh. That's actually a fairly interesting character. You took a fairly standard melee build, and basically turned into a hybrid stalker of Ash. You even decided you liked a shield more than a 2handed vampiric axe! Unconventional. I approve. Grats. 8-) Thanks. I actually used the vampiric battle axe...

Not my first win, but my first post. I played this run on and off over several days. It used to be trunk but got outdated long ago. I brought the most notable of my loot with me on the win just for my record. I had a concept in my mind to do an Ashenzari worshiping melee character. Stock standard Mi...

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