All 'special' levels may now show up flipped either on the X-axis, Y-axis, or both.
Ooh, I like that!
__________________
...d%.....Behavior
01-40.....Agrees with a previous poster (subtract 1d8 from current post number to determine target).
41-60.....Disagrees with a previous poster (subtract 1d8 from current post number to determine target).
61-90.....Posts one line of vaguely amusing sarcasm, contributing little to the topic.
91-95.....Posts 1d3 paragraphs of original and relevant ideas or information.
96-00.....Roll again twice.
Yay, touchstone! We'll be able to sort out all the good gems as soon as we find a source of holy water. Pity that filthy dwarf is only giving 25%, but we'll just have to rob him immediately after getting his money.
Looks like this visit to Mine's End is the Mimic of the Mines variation. One of the more annoying versions, because instead of having a flint stone as the false luck stone it has a load stone instead. The walls are not mineable, and a couple of the potential spawn points do not have space to kick-test your unknown gray stone.
This version seems to have polymorph traps fairly frequently, although that could be simply a high concentration of traps combined with random chance. Nefarious probably won't blunder into them thanks to intrinsic searching, but there are enough weak gnomes and dwarves around to make it highly likely that some will randomly polymorph into very dangerous enemies.
That's a relief. The kick-test confirms this stone to be a load stone, which means the other gray stone (somewhere) will be a luck stone. We'll try to kick-test that one too, just out of general paranoia, but it should be safe.
Ahaha! Another conga line of death! I love those spear traps!
This is one of the most obnoxious choke points in the game. There's a mimic back there right now, but sometimes there's a luck stone or load stone back there instead. You need 600 or less weight-units in your inventory to go back there, and a load stone is 500 of those if you're unlucky. No, there's no space to kick-test it. It is very possible to make your game unwinnable here if you have ANY sort of cursed metal armor or metal armor under a cursed cloak, and then pick up a cursed load stone from that little cubby. You have a slight chance to save yourself with #prayer, but load stones are considered minor trouble so odds are fairly high that your god will ignore your plight.
Of course, even if you weren't fool enough to go back there with cursed armor, if you pick up the load stone there you STILL have to throw almost your entire inventory through the gap before squeezing through yourself. Monsters love wandering by and grabbing your stuff to use it against you, and delicate objects can shatter when thrown.
Invisible stalkers hit harder than I remember… I'll have to tin that corpse, because if you eat it while invisible you can get the see invisible intrinsic permanently. It'll also give invisibility permanently, which will end the benefit of displacement, but see invisibility could get very important very quickly.
Soldiers! All right, time to run and cower for a little bit. Right behind that spear trap, to be precise.
One more soldier after this one. I think I'm probably going to feel brave enough to face it without the spear trap.
I swear, just standing next to one of these things and watching it at work fills me with joy.
Oh, hey. Didn't see that one coming.
Hill giant shaman was peaceful. NOT going to piss it off. Those things are much nastier than normal non-spellcasting giants.
Overburdened and with no holy water, Nefarious leaves most of his stuff in a sack in Minetown and returns to the main dungeon to see if he can't find an inadequately defended altar to make his own. Taking on the aligned priest of Mercury for control of the Minetown altar is a little bit too ambitious right now… On his way, he picks up this stray large dog, which he names Tuxedo Mask. If he finds any other shops in the main dungeon, Tuxedo Mask will be of great help. If not… Well, meat shield.
Sokoban's level seems a little bit more dangerous than I remember. I hadn't realized there was a third throne room here. The swarm of elves is probably the big trouble, but I think I can get to my captive Sokoban unicorn to max out luck without fighting them. Then I'll feed the unicorn to Tuxedo Mask.
That's five! Each #named non-glass gem is worth two points of luck, and Nefarious maxes out at 10. But this also means that this unicorn has five confirmed-valuable gems, which is where Tuxedo Mask comes in.
Problem solved! Nefarious still doesn't know how to distinguish yellow glass from valuable yellow gems, but all of the others are covered.
Oh, dear. This is rather dangerous now. This elf spawned with a wand of sleep. Nefarious' reflection will protect him… mostly, but getting hit will still knock him out for a few ticks since he doesn't have sleep resistance. The elves will not be inconvenienced at all by the reflected beam. This means that there is an excellent chance that they'll be able to surround and beat Nefarious to death while he's asleep. Good thing Tuxedo Mask is around, although he's likely to be distracted eating corpses.
Annoyingly, Tuxedo Mask scarfs up two of the three edible corpses the elves leave behind, so Nefarious' sleep resistance still has a long way to go.
This throne room isn't any harder to clear than the previous two. They keep coming into the firing lane, and they all pay with their lives.
I'll check out the surrounding area before waking up the others. Don't want any unpleasant surprises.
Kind of depressing, really. None of them can even get close.
The throne healed Nefarious, and then shot him full of electricity. At least it did SOMETHING. He also picked up an iron wand, which turns out to be a FOURTH kind of no-message wand. He's certainly getting a lot of these worthless things!
PACKED with mimics, for sure. But maybe this fool has something worth stealing.
Mostly trash, but there was a 200-zorkmid ring in amongst the mimics. Tuxedo Mask grabbed it and got whistled out.
Carrying capacity is once against just short of stressing, and still no suitable place for a permanent stash. Nefarious will put this chest next to the stairs so it can hold his excess loot. Left here, it will be easy to find, and since monsters don't spawn or move when you're off-level there is no chance of a gelatinous cube wandering over to find it even though Nefarious doesn't have a means of permanent Elbereth yet.
Fire elementals are NASTY if you try to melee them without fire resistance. Stand back and throw daggers unless you want to suffer their massive passive fire attack every time you attack.
It's about time! Now Nefarious needs to find a chest and haul it over, and then he needs to bring both temporary stashes over here where it's more convenient. Holy water!
Woo-hoo! 4 points for the first donation!
Picked up 2 chickatrice corpses on the level above, and I assure you that I am seriously tempted to use them on that dwarven shopkeeper. They're only 75% likely to hit, though, and shopkeepers hit rather hard. This will also alert the Watch, which means that Nefarious would have to fight his way to the exit. There is no urgent need to collect, and Nefarious almost certainly WILL return here to donate for more protection, so I think I'll wait until then to go on the inevitable killing spree. Better to shoot down the Watch with a hail of orcish arrows before going on to murder the shopkeeper.
Nefarious has swapped his +2 cloak of displacement for a lucky +3 elven cloak, which is a superior protective armor in spite of its lack of displacement. Since he won't be having displacement for the rest of the game, Nefarious has no further reason to stay visible. A shot of his wand of make invisible renders him permanently unseen…
And some tinned stalker meat gifts him with the ability to see invisible monsters permanently, including himself. It would be unreasonable to expect to continue much farther without the ability to see invisible. Nasty things happen when you have invisible enemy spellcasters running around.
Stalker meat stuns the eater for an excessively long period of time, but that's nothing a unicorn horn won't fix.
Next up: a water prayer produces two potions of holy water. The first one blessed Nefarious' bag of holding, and the second a stack of 7 scrolls of identify. With the latter, Nefarious checks out ALL of his equipment (with the sole exception of his stack of +0 arrows, which he'll leave unidentified for now so it'll continue to stack with new arrows). He proves to have rings of free action and slow digestion, an amulet of magical breathing, 50 charges in his magic marker, and not a whole lot else of interest. Mildly disappointing, actually.
What the hey? I'm no longer invisible. That's odd. Not particularly alarming, but odd. This must have changed since the last version, because I know I've used that method before in this thread.
Oh, a message from Orion… AAAH! Nymph!
Orion can take care of himself. I'm looking out for myself right now, and that means money.
A good throne room. A strange scroll, a strange ring, a MAGIC MARKER!!!, and some odds and ends. Once again, nothing of interest from the throne. It took all my money, except I had all of that in the bag.
What is that even supposed to be…? A zoo? It's not looking like a pleasant one.
I'm not even sure what the light blue U is supposed to be. Shambling horror? Sounds like something I want to shoot down from a distance, but I'll have to make a point in applying a stethoscope to it at least once.
I wanted to skip the zoo for now, honestly, but it looks like the down stairwell is past it somewhere.
Why is it a 'U'? WHY IS IT A 'U'?
Well, that's a surprise. Apparently shambling horrors engulf you. Excellent AC, but not terribly good hit points. Flying and stealth. Not sure how much damage it deals, but it seems like we're finding out RIGHT NOW.
Or actually, no we're not. It's apparently a fairly slow monster, and five blessed +2 daggers were enough to kill it.
Poor Tuxedo Mask. Filthy, disgusting elven scum, you will suffer the consequences for your impertinence! As soon as you decide to wander over here, where I'm waiting to ambush you. I won't be coming over to you, on account of the sleeping lich.
This is EXACTLY what I was worried about when I was talking about invisible enemy spellcasters! This blasted lich just popped my shield, and there's not really anything I can do about it.
It teleported away to heal, but once Nefarious caught up it actually wasn't anywhere near as bad as before. He could blindfold himself to locate it and keep out of reach while he killed it at range. No chance of waking up the rest of the zoo.
Not another spellcaster!
Woah, fast!
That pretty much killed my AC for now.
The rest of the zoo was cleaned up without incident. The only piece of remarkable loot was the shield of reflection taken off the Aleax, but there was also a decent amount of money and some odds and ends.
Oh, yeah. Shambling horrors? Spellcasters. This one blinded Nefarious with a spell as he approached to use his stethoscope. Next time I'm just going to shoot it from a distance until it dies.
I'm a little curious to find out what their corpses do, if in fact they do anything.
Fortunately it doesn't seem like I actually HAVE to enter any of those watery death traps. Eels everywhere! There's a clear path to the down stairwell, and I'm going to use it.
Medusa level… And the nastiest one! That titan is hostile, so RIGHT NOW is exactly the right time to gtfo!
Ladies and gentlemen, watch closely as Nefarious slowly stabs this giant eel to death with a corroded dagger! Please do not try this at home; Nefarious is an experienced professional with all the proper safety equipment, in this case an amulet of magical breathing. Equipment prone to water damage has been left behind.
Portal to Ludios is here. Which would be very convenient, if only Nefarious had a source of levitation. Swimming for the portal is… not sounding fun to me. At the very least, Nefarious will want to dump his scrolls and potions at his stash.
So… Once back at the stash, Nefarious prays for another small stack of holy water. This time, he's working on his weaponry. His largest stack of orcish daggers ends up at +6, which will do until he gets rid of them for good, and his stack of poisoned orcish arrows ends up at +5. Both will eventually be replaced, but he needs damage output NOW, not at the end of the game. Hopefully scrolls of enchant weapon will continue to turn up. He also burns some scrolls of enchant armor on his boots of speed, bringing them up to +5 and his AC down to -19.
Hmm… Looks like if you try swimming for the portal, you sink to the bottom first. Well, no matter; very little of Nefarious' equipment is subject to rust, and all of that will eventually be replaced anyway.
Ludios has black, red, orange, and gold dragons. Lame. But it might have some good attack wands! It also has a mind flayer in the zoo…
And THAT is how you deal with mind flayers. Hail of poisoned arrows until the instakill kicks in!
Nefarious is wielding his bow and throwing his daggers. He has to collect his ammunition again after every few soldiers, which is annoying but acceptable. Daggers are good enough for most soldiers, but if he sees one drop an interesting wand he starts spraying poisoned arrows everywhere until there's space to go over and pick it up.
Argh! Elbereth! Elbereth!
Wait, shambling horrors have deadly spores as a passive attack, too?
Yep, deadly spores. I'm pretty sure the last three didn't have this ability. Well, no matter. Nefarious has 20 ticks to heal the illness, so long as he doesn't attack the shambling horror in melee again.
Those last few soldiers were so tedious… Well, now on to the dragons! That's one of four down already!
The third dragon, this red, proved more resilient. It almost managed to die from damage before the RNG simply decreed it dead. And the soldier behind it.
And that's the last of the dragons!
Depressingly, it's faster to let the dragons kill the enemies inside than it is to kill them myself. Some idiot troll with a fire wand in there keeps melting the ice when I freeze a path.
Silver dragon is down! The rest of them are finally crossing out of the throne room, which means it is feasible for Nefarious to shoot them down. Archers have more difficulty when faced with massive crowds of dangerous opponents.
The situation is tricky largely because of the presence of the moat. Nefarious does not have so many good arrows right now that he can afford to lose them.
Gold dragon down! Now only the green dragon remains. Unfortunately, it is immune to poison, so Nefarious' poison arrows will only perforate it until it bleeds to death. No shortcuts.
Oh, hey! Never seen that before! Kind of unfortunate, too, since there were still charges remaining. It's going to be annoying having to eat those last two giants whole, since the first one will probably cause oversatiation. Fortunately, Nefarious' amulet of magic breathing ensures he won't die from cramming several times his own body weight in raw meat down his throat.
Die die die, etc!
Wait, what? I've never seen THIS before. Two thrones at once?
Didn't do much good anyway. Struck with confusion by the first, and then healed by the second. Both are now gone.
There go all the land mines… Those wargs are going to tear the place up by dumb accident.
Oddly, disarmed land mines only produce an armable land mine item about half the time. The rest of the time, they produce a two-handed sword.
Now, see there! Nefarious would have stuffed himself and died on that giant had he not been immune to choking thanks to his amulet of magical breathing. With the amulet, instead of dying he is merely incapacitated for a few ticks while he vomits all over himself. He still gets the strength from the corpse.
Two giants later, Nefarious' strength is now at his racial maximum! And he only vomited all over himself twice!
Counterintuitively enough, maximum orcish strength is lower than maximum human strength. In fact, of ALL the races only elves are physically weaker than orcs! The same applies to constitution. In all four other stats, of course, orcs are either dead last or tied for last.
You pay in the long run for that guaranteed starting poison resistance, but it's definitely worth it.
Orange, gold, silver, and green dragon scales… Which should I use for now? Gray is the only plausible long-term option, since Nefarious can't wish for an artifact for magic resistance. But right now, dragon leather of any type is better than nothing. Orange slows attacking monsters due to drowsiness, while green deals poison damage to attackers. I think I'll go with green for now. It's a good, orky color.
Mars grants Nefarious with the gift of Dragonbane, an artifact spear. As I've said before, vanilla bane artifacts are uniformly crap, but in Sporkhack Dragonbane in particular is startlingly good, especially early on. Wielding it grants fire, cold, poison, shock, sleep, acid, and disintegration resistance. No, that isn't a typo. You get all of them, and at 100%. Fantastic weapon for conducts. It also has the usual anti-dragon properties, like all bane weapons.
Nefarious will never be able to use it effectively, though. Into the stash it goes.
Time to wipe this place free of non-orcish life. Sipaliwini will be but the first!
Pathetic. Dead on the first volley.
Ah, now we can go on the Quest! First things first, though! There's dwarven life to purge!
Oh, wand of polymorph! Puddings often seem to drop nice things.
Humans are not orcs, so therefore they need to die.
Watch members are 'stalkers', which means that they will follow you to other levels if you use the stairs or levelport while they're standing next to you. Normally if you attack a Watchman, he will blow his little tin whistle and make all the other Watch members hostile to you. They can't hear him all the way up here, though!
In this way, you can see if you're up to the task before starting the process of shooting them full of poisoned arrows.
See? There goes the whistle. Now they'll all come and try to arrest (i.e. kill) Nefarious. He will show no mercy.
That's the last of them. They're really not all that hard; basic watchmen are about as tough as the soldiers in Ludios and the Castle, while Watch captains are about like captains. Too nasty for your first visit, but sword fodder later on.
So much for that racist shopkeeper! And with that final bit of money, Nefarious has 76,000 zorkmids ready to donate to the temple! With some fairly neutral real-life luck, Nefarious gets all the guaranteed points of protection, plus one extra that brings him down to a naked AC of 0!
Of course, the priest of Mercury? Non-orcish life. Also, he might have a cloak of magic resistance.
He had spellbooks of protection and create monster, both of minimal value. He also has an ornamental cope… It is probably a cloak of protection, but just maybe… Cursed, though, so Nefarious can't test it right away.
Wait… WHAT? I just sacrificed Mercury's own aligned priest on his own altar! And he's taking my allegiance?
That was probably a Bad Idea. Somehow I get the idea that maybe I shouldn't have tried the whole racial genocide/human sacrifice combo. But you know, I had this crazy idea that Mercury might be mad I just murdered everybody in town, killed his temple priest, and then sacrificed him on his own altar. But I guess here in Nethack the gods of law eat that stuff up. I should have known better.
Poof go all 10 points of divine protection… Also, unwinnable game, since I haven't started the Quest yet.
Well, this is going to be one awkward meeting with the Quest Leader.
The approach here is pretty unpleasant. There are centaurs everywhere, shooting you through the bars. You can shoot back, but then you can't expect to see your arrows for a while.
Normally, I say leave bear traps where they are. There's a guaranteed one somewhere on the level here that you might want to scoop up for a bit, though.
And here's the reason for the bear trap. There is a guaranteed minotaur here that hits rather hard. You set the trap as he charges, and he'll be stuck long enough for you to shoot him to death. If you don't, sometimes the Quest friendlies will stupidly wander in the way and give you the choice of either letting the minotaur approach or killing them.
Time to face the music…
That didn't go well. He booted me back outside.
Orion is apparently a spellcaster… And he turned hostile on his own.
He's worse than the Master of Thieves back from Mouse's journey. Much worse.
Ah, crap. As it got worse, it started to seem more and more likely that this would happen. And the monsters surrounding Nefarious ensured he couldn't even run away to try again later.
The loss of luck was from a long string of post-conversion murders, since the quest friendlies were originally peaceful humans. The loss of telepathy also prevented Nefarious from detecting Orion, who was the real threat. And of course, with luck shot it got harder and harder to hurt him, and he's got full spellcasting. Whenever he got hurt bad, he'd retreat to heal, and Nefarious' wild shooting would murder some more formerly-peaceful hunters. And even if he held his fire, the hunters would fall to Nefarious' armor. Green dragon scale mail apparently has a small chance to instakill monsters that attack you, which counts as an intentional kill on your part.
The conversion was the result of killing too many peacefuls in a row, specifically the Watch. I'm used to not worrying about murder while playing as a chaotic, but they still get the penalty for angering peaceful monsters, and the Watch are for some reason chaotic. Probably to punish chaotics for doing exactly what I did. So the altar conversion took place at negative alignment, a terrible condition to be in while messing with enemy altars.
In any version other than Sporkhack, that would have been game over. In Sporkhack, though, you can try (operative word: try) to kill your quest leader to force your way through and collect the Bell of Opening, which you need to finish the game. They're quite tough, though. Apparently Orion is much stronger than the Master of Thieves, who Mouse killed easily way back when.
The cause of the loss of this game, then? Goofing off, basically. There really wasn't any point in killing all the shopkeepers and watchmen, and there was no reason to try converting the Minetown altar, either. It seemed like the thing an orc would do, but it was also a pretty dumb thing to do.
Linear Mode
