Re: Can I kill a shopkeeper?
Kent Paul Dolan
> Thanks all, it sounds like there may not be much
> point in killing shopkeepers, but honestly, I'd
> gotten tired of using pets to steal all their
> stuff. I'm chaotic, so what the hell?
> Also, for some unknown reason I sold all my gems
> from the mines to one, and now I realize I want
> them back to throw at a unicorn since I lost my
> luckstone somehow (I think a nymph took it).
> I already have divine protection, so I don't need
> their money, but being able to freely root through
> their stuff is something I've wanted to do since I
> started playing Nethack.
Well, if you take up credit cloning (which see in
the NetHack wiki) you can quickly enough _buy_
everything a shopkeeper has to offer, using the
shopkeeper's money, then retrieve all the money and
cart all the goods off to the nearest altar to
BUC-id it.
This (letting your pet steal money you've dropped on
the shop floor to pay for the goods) is gobs faster
than waiting for your pet to steal one object at a
time from a shop. The only time I bother to do that
any more is if the shop contains an artifact, which
will have some ridiculously high price on it, one
higher than the shopkeeper's likely stash of
zorkmids (which seems to range from 1000 to 4000,
biased toward the high end). Then it makes sense to
move that one object close to the door and let the
pet bring it to you outside the shop.
As to killing shopkeepers, you're far better off to
polymorph a pet to some outrageously dangerous
monster (or charm such a monster), and then let that
monster do the killing.
xanthian.