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I didn't locate a page for this on the Wiki, but it seems like the sort of thing that somebody would have brought up in the past so I figured I'd bring it up here first, where it can be buried if I'm excavating zombie horses. I am of the opinion that the early game is unreasonably hard, and more imp...

I assume you haven't used a weapon of pain in Zot. "Up to Zot and Slime" was inclusive, hence the "after which". Pain brand is excellent in Zot. Once you've cleared out Zot and Slime, you've only got Tomb, Pan, and Hell to do, and in all of those places it is completely worthles...

Vorpal brands aren't that bad, either. They don't crap out on you the moment you leave the area where they're optimal, and you really don't have the resources to pump up weapons situationally depending on where you want to go. Memorizing the Fire Brand and Freezing Aura spells and using them situati...

Gehenna is probably the best place to try to force generation of a demon trident. The first six floors are relatively safe as long as you can handle the occasional Executioner. It's actually probably safer than the main dungeon below the point the Vestibule becomes accessible, although you cannot si...

I suppose the first issue that would need to be addressed is the fact that a goddess who rewards you for avoiding all sorts of risk would encourage players to camp on a cleared level as long as possible. The direction of development is to make sure every deity forces the player to, you know, actuall...

Is it worth it to just enchant the hell out of my generic trident right now, or is there something more impressive I should hold out for? Ehh… That depends. Is this trident your main source of damage, or is it for poking rats to train fighting while your Throw Icicle and Bold of Cold spells do most...

No bonus damage, but they don't have all that many hit points to begin with and they're too dumb to move out of the steam clouds if there's something they want. The acid is really their main defense, and it doesn't apply to steam clouds. Evaporated potions of water are actually very helpful pre-Temp...

First, dump the Robe of the Archmagi. It won't be useful for you until post-endgame content. Ice dragon armor is rC++, not rC+. It's two levels of cold resistance in one, so if you have some good jewelry to counter out the rF- it also provides it's worth using. It might be a little heavy, though -- ...

Congratulations! So… What did you think of those Orbs of Fire? Fun, aren't they?

If you can't handle Elf, then you wouldn't survive Zot anyway. Draconians are basically top-end elves, only with more hit points, and they're popcorn monsters in Zot. Even the end vault of Crypt should be manageable. Zot has Curse Toes and Ancient Liches already, and Crypt can't really field any non...

Your weapon is excellent. You should have no complaints about it; you can pump it up with more enchant weapon scrolls but otherwise it's probably the best possible non-artifact axe. Crypt is easy. Very easy. There's no reason not to sweep through, and there's some potentially good loot on the fifth ...

Funny thing was I had 5 lev potions. You always get four potions of levitation before you encounter the siren. I checked in wizard mode twice… Once before posting before, and once just now to verify that I wasn't imagining things. No potions in the first treasure room. Wizard magic mapping didn't r...

Assuming all other qualities of the item are equal, +n to evasion will give you more evasion than +n to dexterity. Dexterity has some other effects, but if evade is your highest defensive stat you'll definitely want the evasion boots.

I hate that sewer vault. If you're not a caster, you might be completely hosed. And death by starvation while mesmerized is a particularly tedious way to go. Assuming you don't have a lucky item like your potion of levitation, your only vague hope is that when the mesmerization breaks (which will ha...

Boris is better at handling his Orb than you are. If you blink to the opposite side of him in a crowded chamber, not only can his Orb make a 180-degree U-turn, it can also negotiate a path through those monsters without hitting anything. If you teleport instead, the Orb will make the journey across ...

Try spamming Freezing Aura uselessly whenever you have a bloody chunk of meat in your inventory and more than 0xp in your pool. You only need one level of either enchantments or ice magic to get Freezing Aura to good, and your other staple spells will follow shortly afterward.

It's harder to raise fighting than spellcasting because training dummies are a limited resource. If you want to raise a magic skill that's too low to be of use, you cast a spell of that school against a wall until your xp pool is empty. When you're trying to train fighting, though, you need a non-th...

Oh, they certainly can dissolve doors. Only the lowest-level ooze can't eat doors. That particular vault will usually have a relatively harmless ooze in it, which you can let out when you're done with the rest of the level for free xp, but if it has a jelly and you can't separate that jelly from the...

No, not entirely safe. But not doomed, either. The jellies won't actually eat anything while you're off-level, so if you set up a stash on the single entrance tile of the Temple or Hive or something, you'll block access to your stash the moment you enter and they won't move onto it while you're gone...

Yeah, deep elf mages are the worst kind of popcorn elf. Paralysis is the nastiest status effect, and there are enough of the mages down there that you can't feasibly swap in an amulet of stasis just because one wanders by. Putting on whatever magic resistance items you have will help somewhat, but d...

I don't know how easy it would be to code a context-sensitive floor loot generator. When I'm scraping the first two floors for an edged weapon of any kind for butchery, I'm happy with any old piece of junk. When I'm looking for a long blade, that -1/+0 orcish falchion is a treasure. When I already h...

Basically, count up all the hostile monsters in line-of-sight of your character. Rank them according to difficulty, and add them all together. Then, give your own character a number based on level, skills, and whatever other easy-to-code data you want to compare. Give that a numeric value. Add up th...

If I'm playing as an elf caster of any kind, is it advisible to wear elven armours of leather and above? The benefit is not so much that you'd notice. If your eventual target is to train up to being a medium-armor caster, you'll be able to switch to the next level up slightly earlier without losing...

IMHO, if you're going to add more summoning spells that give us more access to a greater variety of powerful monsters, those powerful summoning spells should become harder to find. Collecting all of the powerful summoning spells should be difficult, even with Sif Muna. Otherwise, that school could ...

The word 'grinding' is sometimes horribly abused in discussions like these, often meaning little more than 'gameplay I don't like'. You can sweep through the whole of Orc 1-4, picking up all potentially-branded armors, and check them all for curses with a single scroll. Then, hit two buttons for eac...

Thanks for your earlier replies! I am back with two new questions. :) 1. I haven't found a single interesting helm, buckler/shield, pair of gloves or pair of boots in the game so far (D16, Hive, Orcish Mines, Lair). Is this just bad luck, or are there specific branches where you can find such items...

Actually, you can die from trying to disarm blade traps; try it in wizmode. Oh? Under what conditions? I've preferentially trained with blade traps in dozens of games. Dart traps, bolt traps, arrow traps, and spear traps all occasionally ding me or level up shields or dodging. Blade traps have neve...

I'm naturally a little bitter about the things right now, but what is the reasoning behind blade traps? They don't add much flavour, you just occasionally lose a big chunk of health. They're of no significance when you're healthy, but when you're truly desperate, they might just kill you out of now...

I would go so far as to say that grinding for Necromutation before entering Pan or the Hells is a clearly suboptimal strategy for the majority of characters. Necromutation is a very high-level dual-school spell, and while Necromancy is generally useful Transmutation is almost useless unless you've a...

If a spoilery vault is useful because it prepares the player for more spoilery vaults, that means there are too many spoilery vaults. I don't think learning to use the search function in an unfamiliar vault constitutes a spoilery vault. it's arguably common sense. Teleport traps letting players out...

+str is of marginal use, while SInv is huge. Being able to see the orc wizard or unseen horror reaming you lets you kill them without luring them into a corridor, which is not always available. The second robe is better even without considering the extra AC and the other three abilities. As long as ...

Unmappability without changing dungeon shape is nothing more than an interface burden and should die painfully, so I hope you mean an unmappable Pan would shift and deform (though if levels retain their general shapes, Pan should remain mappable). I mean, when you're facing Cerebov, you don't have ...

I don't really see the problem with the vault. A spoiled or semi-spoiled player will know to mash 5 to search every few steps when entering an unfamiliar vault, particularly in a level where teleport control is either unavailable or blocked. An unspoiled player should be grateful to learn to search ...

I agree with the analysis. I also believe that the abyssal rune could be removed. Regarding the extended endgame, there is the question if we really want infinite xp in the game. I don't think so (anymore). This would not affect the hells, but I believe that among Pan, hells, Abyss the hells work b...

re: troves I'm willing to assert that troves are too good. If you have the cash on-hand to get in, you should spend it on the spot no matter what your situation because you'll get enough gold acquirements from the trove itself to make all that money back anyway. And if by some chance you don't, then...

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early game balance

Re: What Brand for SpEn

Re: What Brand for SpEn

Re: Which weapon should I use?

Re: God of pleasant life

Re: Which weapon should I use?

Re: Potions and transmuters: how to use appropiately?

Re: Armor and Spellcasting

Re: What to do? Where to go?

Re: What to do? Where to go?

Re: What to do? Where to go?

Re: How is one to deal with sickly sirens?

Re: Evasionboots or dexboots?

Re: How is one to deal with sickly sirens?

Re: I think we learned an important lesson today.

Re: Merfolk Crusaders?

Re: How much to train fighting w/ casters

Re: YASD - Jellied on D:1

Re: Jiyva Stash

Re: YASD - DeWz,lvl20 was paralyzed at Elves 7

Re: Glowing / runed / cursed / branded items

Re: Tension?

Re: Non-body armour and spellcasting

Re: More non-demonic Summonings - Lead the Holy Crusade

Re: Glowing / runed / cursed / branded items

Re: Need some item advice

Re: YASD: Gods I hate blade traps.

Re: YASD: Gods I hate blade traps.

Re: Underlying design ideas endgame.

Re: New labyrinth end? Highly inappropriate

Re: Need some item advice

Re: What is overpowered?

Re: New labyrinth end? Highly inappropriate

Re: What is overpowered?

Re: Selling Stuff