SpEn and food

[Confidence Interval]

SpEn is sometimes spoken of as a pretty easy combination and even I, not very good at this game, find it quite handy. I have, though, been encountering problems with food in that my two most recent SpEns have run short. The first found a scroll of acquirement and I had to use that for food (which seemed like a waste of a S of A); the most recent didn't *actually* die of starvation but I got killed by the monsters who were chasing me around when I reached "Starving", no shops yet discovered (at D8), and I couldn't think of any option but to run round the dungeon hoping I'd find a loaf of bread or a grape or something.

Any suggestions about avoiding this kind of situation? Or is this just an occupational hazard with Spriggans? I know about trying to improve spellcasting and intelligence in order to reduce spell hunger cost but I need to cast spells to improve spellcasting, and casting spells makes me hungry...

(It also seems to be that Amulets of the Gourmand don't make any difference to Spriggans, i.e. even wearing one they can't digest meat at all - is this correct?)

[KoboldLord]

Be a little more conservative victory dancing your spell skills until you have your food supply in order, I suppose. Training spellcasting to zero spell hunger for all your spells doesn't actually help much, in the end, if you burn all your bread rations resting your mp back to full after victory dancing your xp pool. Mashing 5 once and running all the way to the end of the 100-turn resting period is generally a larger hunger hit than casting a third-level spell, even with a spriggan's reduced hunger rate. Resting is high-choko hunger for spriggans and high-honeycomb hunger for baseline humans.

[MonorailCat]

Victory Dancing for a SpEn depends on food-find luck in the beginning.

before lair/hive I normally only victory dance spellcasting until I can cast Hibernation Sultana/hungerless.
You dont need much more than Hibernation and a high stabbing skill until D:15 or so.
Just kite, put em to sleep, stab. Works even on hydras. It may take you 10 casts of hibernation, but since you are faster it's not much of a problem.

[Stormfox]

That's why you have Corona and good apts for early missile weapons -- darts, blowguns, slings. Use them. Especially when you run into things that you can't Hibernate and you can't afford the food cost of Confuse.

[LunarHarp]

Food is a great use of a scroll of aquirement if you need food.

In any case, you shouldn't need to victory dance very much as a spriggan since before many fights you end up casting EH with experience in the pool. Turn off hexes as sooner then you would like to get those xp funneling into spellcasting. Don't use confuse very much while it costs any hunger. And lastly, try not to get hit: resting for health is probably the biggest food drain for you, if you mess up a stab you may want to just go somewhere else and stab elsewhere. Sp are fast after all.

Lastly it is possible to get randomly screwed out of food. But this almost never happens if you are conservative with your spells. In every game where I got close to having problems (Ie. I found only a bread ration and two lemons before d13 or something), I just dived for the hive and had my fill there. Most games I just skip the hive since there is plenty of food in the dungeon for you once you get over the initial food hump.

[Bim]

Yeah, Taking the Hive Dive is probably the best thing to do if you're low on food, even if its a quite a few levels past D10 you should be fast enough to evade everything (especially with a few teleports in hand for if it gets tricky.

[smock]

VDing spellcasting is the key. Once stabbing is high enough, try to cast spells when you have XP in your pool. At this point you can leave on only spellcasting. Once hunger is low for hibernation, you're golden.