Foodless Wizard Ascension
Daniel Ligon
Long ago, during a discussion of vegetarian ascensions, Pat Rankin
suggested that it should be possible to ascend without eating at all.
Today I completed the ascension of a foodless wizard.
My basic plan was to begin by praying only when weak with hunger.
My top priority (after staying alive) was to gain both polymorph and
polymorph control, and then spend most of my time polymorphed into
monsters that don't need food. Food energy would be used by rings,
amulets, and spells, as well as during those times when I would be
in human form, so I would need to pray for sustenance every so often.
If in Gehennom, I would need to teleport out to pray.
Because of that last point, I decided to try with valkyries or
wizards, since their quest artifacts allow you to get the Hell out of
Hell in a hurry. I started playing with valkyries, but in a dozen games
or so I never found either type of ring (polymorph, polymorph control)
before I displeased Odin by praying too soon. So I switched to wizards,
and began "rolling" them and chose to play those who started with one
of the two ring types. I would then try to get a wish (via quaffing
from fountains or rubbing magic lamps) to obtain the other.
After many failures, I got a wizard who started with a ring of
polymorph control and, reaching Minetown, got a wish after blessing a
cursed magic lamp around move 25000. That was the only wish I used in
the game. After obtaining both rings, the game went largely according
to the plan, except that I found out (the hard way) I didn't necessarily
need to pray for sustenance. If I polymorphed into a human ("You feel
like a new man!"), the "sustenance counter" would be set to somewhere
between 500 and 1000, while praying sets it to 900.
I spent most of game as a winged gargoyle. They need no food, can
fly and are resistant to stoning. The latter is important when you
can't eat lizards and don't want to pray too often.
I never got sleep or shock resistance, since I couldn't eat anything
that would confer them. Crowning provided fire, cold, and poison
resistances.
Altars can be dangerous things for the beginning foodless adventurer.
If you sacrifice and get an artifact, your prayer timeout goes up,
and so you may displease your god when you pray for food. Failing to
convert a non-coaligned altar causes your luck to drop temporarily,
and it's not good to pray while unlucky.
Even with polymorph control you polymorph into a new human fairly
frequently (20% chance each polymorph), and this plays a fair amount
of havoc with your stats. I slowly dropped from strength 18 down to 8
during one stretch (and so wore gauntlets of power), and during another
stretch my dexterity dropped from 18 to 12. I used a little alchemy to
create a great many blessed diluted potions of gain ability, and began
to quaff them when my stats suffered too much. I also changed gender so
often I had trouble remembering what gender I was! OTOH, polymorphing
into a new human raised my experience level far more than it reduced it
in the early part of the game.
The only real spot of trouble I had was in the Plane of Air, where
a doubled Wizard and a horde of nasties dropped my hit points to 40
(from 280), and there was no relief in sight. Finally, I put on my
amulet of life-saving, and teleport myself (in a purple worm's belly!)
away from the crowd. The worm killed me but, reborn, I was able to
dispatch the Wizards and make it safely to the portal. That's my first
ascension where I actually needed such an amulet.
New strategy for this game: tame all the umber hulks in Gehennom,
and let them tunnel out the place. Every time you hit a dead end, blow
the magic whistle and let one dig you a new route. By carrying a lit
magic lamp, you can quickly cover most of each level. This also makes
the trip up with the amulet go a little faster.
Now for the truth in advertising: somewhere around 50000, I went to
engrave "Elbereth", and mistyped somehow. The end result was that I tried
to "e"at pack item "r" (a sprig of wolfsbane). I immediately passed out
from the rotten food! (I just knew food was bad for you.) I threw the
rest of the sprig away, and put my lizard corpse in a safe slot.
--
Daniel Ligon mak...@qis.net
I have known Geryon. He is not worthy of trust.
-- _Inferno_
pi
Daniel Ligon wrote:
> Long ago, during a discussion of vegetarian ascensions, Pat Rankin
> suggested that it should be possible to ascend without eating at all.
> Today I completed the ascension of a foodless wizard.
<...snip..snip...>
Congratulations !! 8-o
Ivan
Matthias Oettl
Daniel Ligon wrote:
>
> New strategy for this game: tame all the umber hulks in Gehennom,
> and let them tunnel out the place. Every time you hit a dead end, blow
> the magic whistle and let one dig you a new route. By carrying a lit
> magic lamp, you can quickly cover most of each level. This also makes
> the trip up with the amulet go a little faster.
>
Cool idea, but did you notice they leave boulders and rocks thereby
leaving them on the stairs sometimes which doesn't make it easier.
I usually dig my own escape route (in the main dungeon too as soon as i
believe that there's a chance to ascend).
Matthias
Daniel Ligon
In rec.games.roguelike.nethack, Matthias Oettl <matthia...@dlr.de> wrote:
>Daniel Ligon wrote:
>>
>
>> New strategy for this game: tame all the umber hulks in Gehennom,
>> and let them tunnel out the place. Every time you hit a dead end, blow
>> the magic whistle and let one dig you a new route. By carrying a lit
>> magic lamp, you can quickly cover most of each level. This also makes
>> the trip up with the amulet go a little faster.
>>
>
>Cool idea, but did you notice they leave boulders and rocks thereby
>leaving them on the stairs sometimes which doesn't make it easier.
They don't move the boulders onto the stairs, but they do occasionally
drop a pile stones there. Once they killed an elf lord on the stairs,
and that one took a while to find. I made sure that all the stairs were
visible before I went after the Wizard.
>I usually dig my own escape route (in the main dungeon too as soon as i
>believe that there's a chance to ascend).
I tend to travel between levels a lot in my games, so I tend to make
shortcuts as soon as I can.