The Tavern

Hi fellow crawlers.

I've been playing a lot of DSCK recently and have been really enjoying them. However I feel like I might be missing some tips on how to deal with Xom. The kind of things I'm wondering are :

- Should I quaff id some potions just to keep him amused ? Better yet, should I quaff id them in the middle of fights ? Same flavour : should I read id scrolls only in the middle of fights to keep him amused ? It looks like it generates more fun on his side whenever you do something when there's tension.

- Is it worth it to (manually :-/) pick up cursing scrolls to curse all your gear regularly (e.g. just before reading a remove curse scroll) in order to keep him amused ?

- Is it possible to game the gifts he makes by wearing cursed gloves to get rings or similar ideas ?

- Any good tip to avoid getting crushed by his mutations/statrot/crazy level drains/teleports just next to Sigmund ?

Well, I think that even if you fight with weapons of chaos and heal every second monster, he still may have a thought to suddenly summon a few more demons to test your strength.

You can amuse Xom by being in a dangerous situation (not only with trivial monsters) and doing one of the following:
zap an unknown wand
quaff an unknown potion
read an unknown scroll and getting a bad effect (this amuse him less since scrolls are rarely dangerous)
zap a wand of random effect

He's not amused by the use of identified bad items, so there's no point in reading curse foo scrolls once ided.

Yes, I think you can trick him into gifting you rings by wearing cursed gloves.

Not really, most of the time nothing major will come of his boredom. If you really want to keep him occupied, a weapon of chaos or tome of destruction is the way to go. Also, eat poison chunks without rPois.

See #1

It is to drop any items that might be cursed and read them to gain spellcasting anyway.

Theoretically yes, but I don't know the odds.

Be lucky.

There are three way he generally kills me. First is obviously demons, for which the best defense is hoping he gifts a rod with abjuration or teleporting. Second is getting confused in mid-battle, where I suppose clarity would help, or just have a potion ready. The third is animating a weapon, which all I can say is teleport and wait it out, and keep a spare.