Can you get to the Casino and cat lord's level this way? Because that would make a hell of a speedrun :)

This is how it seems to work from the issue description. Not sure if it provides much difference in terms of speedruns - you still need to obtain the Fire Orb.

Oops. We thought that we correctly had removed a redundant piece of code. Obviously it wasn't all that redundant :-)

Fixed for p22. By re-inserting the code as it was before.

Yes, you can. There are several implications for this, namely:

A careful character (preferably with a few scrolls of magic mapping and a wand of teleport) can get the cat lord's ring very, very early in the game. This makes the mid game a lot easier. (especially for my whip-wielding duelists :))

The Casino is very easy to access (just one floor up), so you have full access to the gift shoppe, and can usually find at least one of RoDS, AoLS, RDSM, GoGS, Whip of the Snake, a few PoGAs, or even a WoW occasionally, along with various slaying ammos and an artifact or two. It also makes training with Garth a lot easier, if you're into that kind of thing. (I see it as too scummy, YMMV) It definitely makes the game a lot easier - and both of these are possible more or less right after you do the pyramid. (or earlier for spellcasters)

I wonder if the benefits of that overcome the extra difficulty caused by the monster distribution in p21, plus fighting ubersummoners in D:50.

It's clear that p21 will not go down in history as a stable release, but it may be a cherished release for all kinds of speedruns and challenge games :)

If only it wasn't for the stupid #430 illegal monster irritation.

Thanks for confirming, that's what I had in mind. A careful player could get the RotMC at level one (when it will be a tremendous asset), and perhaps get some quick experience by dispatching high-DL monsters in a safe manner. Robbing the Casino sounds very far-fetched, especially with the changes to make that harder, but people have done more "impossible" things in this game... a speedrun that abuses this bug would be very cool to see.

To be clear, I wasn't talking about robbing. I was talking about gambling and buying.