All 4 zen roles: sam, wiz, rog and tou
JoaoSantos
samurai, wizard, rogue and tourist, on this order.
My general strategy is starting without a pet (to avoid bumping onto
it and get the monster corpses) and camp on the early levels until
getting telepathy from a floating eye. Also, as soon as finding an
altar, camp until getting a gift artifact weapon (especially with
rogues and tourists).
Then, with the telepathy, locate and kill nymphs for their object
detection potions, and bless them with some holy water (potion
dilution + pray or price ID from shops). Quaffing a B!OD on same level
as stash will make every item there 'visible', so you can read scrolls
and starting to price ID stuff without actually having to sell them
on shops. I have to thank Kirubu for this tip: my zen games based on
shop identification were a lot slower.
After the identification of a first early stash the zen games are not
a lot different from regular ones, except that E-word is made useless
on dust engrave and more difficult with wands/athame.
Sometimes, on a zen game, a nymph or a monkey might steal the
blindfold or towel. When this does not happen a single time on a game
(and I do not remove the blindfold by mistake), I consider it to be a
flawless zen. If I have the blindfold stolen, and I have a backup
blindfold or towel, I immediately P)ut it on, to avoid looking at the
inventory. If I do not gain any information while doing this, I resume
playing (but consider it a flawed zen game). Otherwise I #quit.
The samurai and wizard are both flawed zen games, but since I had
already done those roles with the same conducts flawlessly on other
accounts, I did not bother much.
Both the rogue and the tourist are flawless zen games.
Finally, a difficulty comparison:
- samurai are really easy and straightforward, even with conducts
(ascended on first game with starting blindfold);
- wizards are a bit more tricky, especially since I'm used to abuse
E-word with normal wizards, but with zen that is only possible after
getting magicbane (and it still fails quite a few times). Starting
equipment can (as always) make a lot of difference, but I think the
most important part is the 2nd starting spell;
- rogues are quite challenging, with a great gap from wizards general
difficulty: magicbane is hard to obtain (cross align artifact), so
its stormy/frostbran/firebrand or burst. A large stack of starting
daggers is only saving grace, and starting as orc for poison
resistance is really worth it, but I ascended a human for the
slightly better daggers.
- tourists are a bit more challenging than rogues, but the starting
stack of +2 darts and 2 !oEH are still great assets.
Now for some brief notes on each ascention. The number of games with
starting blindfold/towel is to give a better figure than ascention
ratio, since that includes non-played games.
--------------------------
Samurai
Conducts: genoless, polyitemless, polyselfless, wishless
Dumplog:
http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/graysocks/dumplog/1211301652.nh343.txt
Games with starting blindfold: 1
Kick-off:
Found an early co-aligned altar on level 3 and, during the camping for
a gift, I got a floating eye corpse. However, I would only get
Snickersnee some time later, after doing sokoban (amulet of
reflection). The second gift was dragonbane.
There was also a general shop on level 4, which made ID a bit easier.
--------------------------
Wizard
Conducts: polyitemless, polyselfless, wishless
Dumplog:
http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/graysocks/dumplog/1219868768.nh343.txt
Games with starting blindfold: 5
Kick-off:
I chose an elven wiz for sleep resistance, and starting inventory
included scrolls of Identify and Charging, potions of speed, paralysis
and gain ability, rings of teleportation and slow digestion, spellbook
of cause fear and wand of cancellation, which was quite a nice
starting inventory.
Yet again, I started with a (very) early co-aligned altar, this time
on level 1. After a bit more exploring and a dangerous experience at
the mines, I camped on level 1 until I got both Magicbane and a
floating eye corpse (as a bonus I also got werebane), but even with
Magibane the camping was dangerous.
Sokoban was the "oR version.
--------------------------
Rogue
Conducts: polyitemless, artiwishless
Dumplog:
http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/graysocks/dumplog/1229617474.nh343.txt
Games with starting blindfold: 12
Kick-off:
The altar was on level 2, but this time it was cross-aligned (lawful).
Briefly after, I got stormbringer and things became a lot more smooth.
One problem I usually have with zen rogues is that ettin and giant
mummies/zombies do not appear with telepathy, and are drain-level
resistant, making stormy less powerfull on some critic situations.
However, on this particular game there were not a lot of those
situations.
Following the usual camp routine, I got the floating eye corpse and
could now enter 2 shops: one hardware shop on level 2 and a general
one on level 4. From the hardware shop I bought bag of holding and a
magic lamp (which did not give a wish, even after blessed).
After some exploration, and with the rogue already somewhat stable,
while zap-IDing some wands by level 14, I identified the wand of
wishing. My wish was 2 B?oC (got 2). This situation promoted some
price ID followed by an ID session. Luckily, the 1st B?oID identified
all my main inventory. Some important discoveries were: +4 stormy, +0
speed boots, =oReg, =oFA, =oLS, / oLightng(0:3) and Cursed /oWish
(0:1).
My next wishes were 2B?oGenocide (came one, used it on h), Magic
marker (reverse genocided silver D for scales), and fixed +2[MR.
After this the game was nothing special.
--------------------------
Tourist
Conducts: genoless polyitemless artiwishless
Dumplog:
http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/graysocks/dumplog/1234350520.nh343.txt
Games with starting towel: 36
Kick-off:
One bonus I started with was full moon. There were 38 +2 darts, and
the !oEH were uncursed.
Once again, there was a co-aligned altar on level 1, so after
exploring levels 1 and 2 I started my camping. Profit was floating eye
corpse and Mjollnir.
There was a double bones on minetown. The only things worth mentioning
were a sack, a CBoH (too heavy to pick up), a magic lamp (with all the
looks of just having been bought from Izchak), a [oDisplacement, and a
cursed unicorn horn. From the lamp, I got a SDSM, even before reaching
sokoban (I've been having quite a few wand and breath deaths lately,
so SDSM is taking priority over GDSM, even to the point of not waiting
to the end of sokoban on critical games). And yes, sokoban was the "oR
version, and yes, later I did fall onto a polytrap, breaking
polyselfless. I got the MR from the PYEC, and it was my only source of
it even facing rodney (although at that time I had "oLS and was dual
wielding +7 mojo and +7 silver saber).
Finally, with all the loot from the easy tourist quest (including
PYEC), I heavily enchanted weapons and armor, and alchemised more !oFH
than I ever had done before, so the rest of the game was pretty easy.
This was also the first game in which I applied either of the
following tricks: 'dancing' with a gremlin to get rid of aggravate
monster (there was a f$/&$&/ kitten corpse on top of some brown
pudding) and applying a cursed unicorn horn as a source of confusion.
solidsnail
Chaotica
> I finally managed to ascend a zen in each of the 4 possible roles:
> samurai, wizard, rogue and tourist, on this order.
Just for clarification, could you please post the requirements to
achieve a zen ascension?
purple arcanist
You have to be blind the whole game, except when you preform the
invocation.
JoaoSantos
*sigh*
by =LS I of course mean "LS
solidsnail
Patric Mueller
> I finally managed to ascend a zen in each of the 4 possible roles:
> samurai, wizard, rogue and tourist, on this order.
Congratulations!
> Then, with the telepathy, locate and kill nymphs for their object
> detection potions, and bless them with some holy water (potion
> dilution + pray or price ID from shops). Quaffing a B!OD on same level
> as stash will make every item there 'visible', so you can read scrolls
> and starting to price ID stuff without actually having to sell them
> on shops. I have to thank Kirubu for this tip: my zen games based on
> shop identification were a lot slower.
This is rather counter-intuitive.
That a B!OD lets you know the appearance of all visible objects on the
level and in your inventory is okay, I guess. This is a reasonable
added benefit from being blessed vs only uncursed.
But that it also reveals the appearance of objects in container is IMO
much more than one would expect.
> Now for some brief notes on each ascention. The number of games with
> starting blindfold/towel is to give a better figure than ascention
> ratio, since that includes non-played games.
Bye
Patric
--
NetHack-De: NetHack auf Deutsch - http://nethack-de.sourceforge.net/
NetHack for AROS: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nethack-aros/
JoaoSantos
> That a B!OD lets you know the appearance of all visible objects on the
> level and in your inventory is okay, I guess. This is a reasonable
> added benefit from being blessed vs only uncursed.
> But that it also reveals the appearance of objects in container is IMO
> much more than one would expect.
So, bug or feature? :)
Really, I can accept it as either, but that's not what bugs me the
most. What does bug me is that I can keep a stash with various pages
of identified items (even with ?ID), and I can remember the order of
all of them, charges and BUC included, after dozens of thousands of
turns.
solidsnail
Patric Mueller
> On Feb 17, 10:31 am, Patric Mueller <bh...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>
>> That a B!OD lets you know the appearance of all visible objects on the
>> level and in your inventory is okay, I guess. This is a reasonable
>> added benefit from being blessed vs only uncursed.
>
>> But that it also reveals the appearance of objects in container is IMO
>> much more than one would expect.
>
> So, bug or feature? :)
The do_dknown_of function that reveals the appearance of an object and
its contained object if it is a container has first appeared in
nethack 3.2.0 in 1996.
To me it looks like intended behavior although <blasphemy>I don't know if the
DevTeam has thought about how this would ease a Zen conduct</blasphemy>.
It is also not clear to me how a sighted player should benefit from
that.
> Really, I can accept it as either, but that's not what bugs me the
> most. What does bug me is that I can keep a stash with various pages
> of identified items (even with ?ID), and I can remember the order of
> all of them, charges and BUC included, after dozens of thousands of
> turns.
You don't have to remember the order. You just have to stack
everything on top of each other. ;-)
Matt Frisch
<joao.s...@gmail.com> scribed into the ether:
>> speed boots, =oReg, =oFA, =oLS, / oLightng(0:3) and Cursed /oWish
>
>*sigh*
>by =LS I of course mean "LS
I wouldn't mind a ring of lifesaving though...
hh...@thinksystem.net
> I finally managed to ascend a zen in each of the 4 possible roles:
> samurai, wizard, rogue and tourist, on this order.
>
Congratulations. That is a great set of, may I say, stupid ascension
tricks.
--
-Harold Hill
JoaoSantos
wrote:
ehem. ascention tricks are never stupid. only far fetched sometimes.
also, thanks :p
solidsnail
Geoffrey Eadon
> On Feb 18, 6:24 pm, "hh...@thinksystem.net" wrote:
>> On Feb 16, 3:20 pm, JoaoSantos wrote:
>>
>>> I finally managed to ascend a zen in each of the 4 possible roles:
>>> samurai, wizard, rogue and tourist, on this order.
>>
>> Congratulations. That is a great set of, may I say, stupid ascension
>> tricks.
>
> ehem. ascention tricks are never stupid. only far fetched sometimes.
Rast
> http://www.thinksystem.net/nethack/
"
20.1.3 Finished in less than 30000 turns Patience: Trivial Luck: Moderate
Planning: Slight
20.1.4 Finished in less than 25000 turns Patience: Trivial Luck:
Significant Planning: Slight
20.1.5 Finished in less than 20000 turns Patience: Trivial Luck:
Significant Planning: Slight
20.1.6 Finished in less than 17500 turns Patience: Trivial Luck: Heroic
Planning: Moderate
20.1.7 Finished in less than 15000 turns Patience: Trivial Luck: Heroic
Planning: Moderate
"
These overestimate the need for luck, and undervalue "Planning" (skill).
--
"Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness. Then I
am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a precious
commodity is so much misery." -- Jack Vance
JoaoSantos
[...]
> 20.1.7 Finished in less than 15000 turns Patience: Trivial Luck: Heroic
> Planning: Moderate
> "
>
> These overestimate the need for luck, and undervalue "Planning" (skill).
for a given (low) level of skill, there is a corresponding necessary
(high) level of luck required for any 'conduct'
solidsnail