The Tavern

I love this game, but I still haven't been able to progress past D7. And my prime cause of death is now my old characters' ghosts.

The ghosts tend to be fast, so out-running them is not usually successful. The best I can generally manage is to stay one step ahead, which just prolongs the agony. They hit hard, generally harder than I remember the character being able to! In the same vein, they are highly damage resistant.

In short, they're a nightmare. What does everyone else do about them?

Ghosts can't go up or down stairs, so you can run to another level, then come back by a different staircase and hopefully be far away from them.

If you want to kill them, try starting as a ghoul, vampire or mummy necromancer. You will get Dispel Undead, which is effective against player ghosts, and if you do fall victim, you are already undead so will not leave any extra ghosts.

GhMo is also good if you are having to deal with ghosts before you can get Dispel Undead.

Alternatively, a TrBe can demolish the game up until Lair without much effort. You can trade 1 ghost later for several ghosts earlier.

Another tactic is to use Berserkers. Berserk > early player ghost, most of the time. And ghosts can't berserk themselves, so if your Berserker dies, he won't compound the problem.

As mentioned already, continuing to learn the game with undead races (Mummies, Vampires, Ghouls) is another good idea, as those races do not leave ghosts when they die.

Or you could not go back up until you are stronger. Part of the game is that you don't have to kill everything, and you certainly don't have to kill everything the moment you encounter it.

ghosts are not faster than you are (usually). depending on their abilities (ranged or not) you can pull them to a set of stairs, go up, go down another set and circumvent them that way.

Play as a Necromancer, build up your Spellcasting and Necromancy early and learn Dispel Undead, then just blow them away.

Last time I made a ghostbuster like this (SENe), he got a bit carried away - he's still parked on Zot:1 with 4 runes some months later, awaiting the motivation to go back and finish the game!

Necromancers are cool.

Player Ghosts are like free experience to necromancers.

Troll Monks or Hunters (pretty decent damage right from the get go, fast regeneration) can clear the path to the Temple. After that, it depends on what kind of ghost it is and you probably have already found options to deal with the undead one way or the other.

But if you're playing online, just run. Mark the exclusion or something. Some early melee ghosts can be pretty weak, though, and worth a try for some xp. Just make sure that you can retreat upstairs if things get rough.

I've never managed to successfully use Dispel Undead on them, so I'd assumed that didn't work. My two most successful characters so far have been a Mummy and a Vampire, so maybe I should try a Ghoul. Living gets old!

Thanks all, most appreciated!

Delete your bones files and avoid the problem entirely.

Shh! Last time I said that, like three people came out of the woodwork to yell at me.

Let yell who will. New players should know about this option. I would have given up on the game without it.

why? in your particular case, i mean. if your ghosts are normal speed and can't use spells, you can just run away. they can't even use ranged weapons. low-level transmuters are another matter.

Running away from 6+ ghosts on every level quickly turns into being XL 2 on DL 9, and dying. I die often enough without help from ghosts, thank you very much.

Scum way: Delete the files in your morgue folder. + You dont have to fight any ghosts, - You dont get to fight any ghosts (xp!)

For early lvl ghosts: Dispel if caster. Melee? Berserk is usually a win button, as are pots of might. Agility doesnt hurt, either. or nuke it with a wand. They are usually easy to confuse as well, but wont stay that way for long. And like people say, they cant follow you up the stairs. So you can always ditch them and then come back after a level.

I used to hate ghosts. Now I like finding them, it usually means im going to level. Btw, if you mouse over them, you can get a feel for their experience. It can save your life.

One last thing of course, is holy wrath weapons. Nice to have around anyways, but double nice for dealing with your dead self.

It's also useful to know that a specific ghost is only ever generated once. No other character will see it again. So just running away from a ghost is just as good as killing it, as far as your future characters are concerned.

Unless you die on it's level. But, it's kind of lame a viable strategy for getting rid of ghosts is to wander down a few levels, find them, and then exit the dungeon.

Ghosts may not be that bad... but when I played a lot of wizards I was stuck with those annoying guys who spammed mephitic cloud and call imp like there was no tomorrow...

The advice that was already given is good: "cleaner" characters are the way if you wanna get rid of ghosts. Necro and Kiku worshippers are the way if you have a lot of fun playing them (as I do), but they are a bit slow if you need to clean up the very first levels... and if you still don't have Dispel Undead when you meet a ghost you risk to just add some other bones to the pile!

Troll/Kobold Berserkers (SpBe if you want to spice things up!) are the most cheap, easy and straightforward way to basically do anything in the game, so...

The good news is, once you escaped from the ghost, if you die even one level further, the ghost is gone forever. Of course, if you die, you leave another ghost, but the further you're in the game, the easier it is to deal with ghosts.

Avoid characters that leave strong ghosts. <-- somewhat unreasonable but beserkers leave crappy ghosts (as above) but are strong in life
Only fight ghosts while literally standing on a safe staircase
Know what you're up against: If you can remember what spellbooks you had on that character you can know whether to run or fight.
If you have a lot of dead VMs, play an undead (a good idea anyway)