Friday, 10th May 2019, 09:53 by sanka
You are way too worried about resistances. You not only do not need to cover everything, but having a lot of resistances won't make winning so much easier as you think. If you can win, you can win with just rF+ easily, and you only need rF+ in Zot, at the end of the game, as swappable ring. I mean this is not a feat of a very experienced player who can win despite not having resistances. Instead, I think most of the time you should choose more damage/AC/EV instead of resistances, to have an easier game as a beginner.
In particular, poison resistance is not important. Poison does not kill you immediately, if you get poisoned lethally you can still kill the monster and quaff a potion of curing, use ambrosia, put on regeneration (Trog's hand for example saves you: use it instead of worrying of poison resistance). The "poison branches" are misleading: the most dangerous monsters do not deal poison damage there. If you can kill those, then you can kill the poisonous ones without poison resistance. If you worship Trog with a minotaur, then most likely you do NOT want swamp dragon armour: they do not give enough AC. You want a well enchanted plate, or some heavier dragon armour if you are lucky.
Multiple levels of the same resistance are also not important. The first level of fire/ice resistance gives the most protection, you should not worry about having more than one level.
I agree that this is not something easy to believe when you are new to the game, especially since you have already died to Nicola! What I suggest instead of lamenting too much on resistances is:
1. When you meet a new monster/unique, check her abilities. Nikola can deal extremely high damage: big danger!
2. When you face danger do not tap buttons widely, running away. Instead, open your inventory first, checking what you have. Blink out of his line of sight (he can't damage you if he can't see you), quaff potion of resistance, quaff haste, etc.
3. You do not need to kill everything. If you successfully escaped from Nikola, do not get back to that part of the dungeon until you have items to deal with him (potions of resistance, for example), or, more likely, ever. You can simply leave him alone in his level.
Remember: most resistable attacks are not more dangerous than non-resistable ones. So if you have a strong character then having resistances is just icing on the cake: you turned some normal monsters into weak monsters. AC/EV/damage helps against much more things. Potions/scrolls/evocables/god abilities should cover the few cases where you need something more.
It really helps if you actually know which monsters can deal dangerous damage. I think Nikola has the chance to deal the highest damage in one turn in a three rune game - so he is the primary example where resistances actually help a lot. But he is only one monster: surely you should be able to win without permanent electricity resistance. I usually carry a staff of air just to switch to it while running away from him, if I do not have potions of resistance. Potions of resistance are in the game for Nikola.
An other monster which is very dangerous without resistance is orb of fire. There are more then one in Zot, so you would like to have rF+ there - arguably the most important time you need a (permanent/switchable by ring) resistance in a normal game.