Can I post this pre-emptively?

[gut]

Yeah, pools can really screw a PC. I usually don't
sip until I have near-crowning piety.

> auto-cursing ring - of the Fish

Yeah, I think 'of doom' is automatically ID'd upon equiping.

> if i should just stick with neutral now.

Personally, I don't pay much attention to alignment anymore.
I manipulate it based on what I need at any given moment and
just say screw piety all together. If you like being L though, you
might want to wait before converting. Only N PC's have the chance
to get SoCR from the dwarven mystic. Careful with any saccing
now though, as you might get your equipment dusted. Just put
everything in your pack and put a burb root in your missile slot
for the first sac.

[mike]

my cursed necklace seems to be a light source.

Good observation. Yeah, glass amulets are always amulets of light. Strained is fine, I guess, as long as you're not dying. It gives small penalties to DV, to-hit, and speed, and makes you hungry faster. On the plus side, you'll get slightly more exp.

Neutral is my alignment of choice because as Gut said, you can get some goodies with it. If you're really comfortable with law, though, you might as well convert. It won't take a lot to build piety back up to a decent level.

[Conundrum]

Oh well, told you I'd do something stupid... apparently Master Mimics are tough.

Flg is attached (slightly edited because of .txt and <19.5kb requirement)... almost everything there was identified because I'd just done Thrundarr's first quest (goblin rockthrower, so easy!). A bunch of the potions were stat gain or potential stat gain so I drank them straight away.

Then I went down through the animated forest, which wasn't overly tedious, but I'm guessing that was helped by the (perhaps not so temporary) invisibility.

Then I talked to Khelly and watched him die... he dropped the Cursed Amulet of Protection. Is it possible for Khelly to drop an AoLS when he dies? That'd be funny.

*Then* I decided to be a smartass and go have a look around DH2 since I was invisible, and needed to go back to Thrundarr anyway to turn in the quest. I kept getting Tension room messages but didn't think much of it since I was invisible. Opened a door - "This shop appears to be abandoned." Sweet, thinks I! Free items! Take two steps in:

A mimic suddenly attacks you! A master mimic suddenly attacks you! A mimic suddenly attacks you!
You miss the master mimic. The master mimic punches through your armor and hits you. Suddenly you can't move! etc etc dead in about 4 hits. Ouch.

Now, I'm gonna persist with some caster characters, because that fighter got *so* boring. \

Aw man, I hadn't killed any cats yet either.

The following two artifacts were generated during his adventure:
  the dwarven pick axe "Hammerhead"

lol, was in the Dwarftown shop. I spent a while trying to steal it since I was invisible, but every time I picked something up he'd move to the door and not move, whether he'd looked intensely at my position or not.

[JellySlayer]

Ouch, that's an unfortunate way to die. If you get the message for a tension room in DH, it is usually a good idea to flash a wand of monster detection (actually, it is a good idea to do that regardless, in case there's a greater demon or quickling queen on the level somewhere). You would have spotted those mimics with the wand, and could have safely avoided the tension room. Having a tension room on the level that you haven't activated actually makes DH generally very safe, since there will usually only be 1 or 2 other monsters on the level at any given time, so you pretty much have the run of the place.

[Conundrum]

Ah, fair enough. Another lesson learned.

My most recent character, a mindcrafter, was doing well until a Tension Room on VD:7. It was unavoidable (first room after the stairs), and filled with necromancers. I couldn't kill enough of them before they started summoning, spawning undead behind me and stopping me from escaping. Would've been fine IF my starting Wand of Acid had more than one charge, or if undead weren't immune to mindcraft

Slow, drawn out death >_>

[Sradac]

dwarftown dosent always generate the altar of your current alignment, or even your current god. i've had plenty of times where I did no diety changing and no alignment changing, got to dwarftown, and the dang priest told me "ye ought to convert" and noticed in front of me was a gray altar instead of white, or white instead of gray, or gray instead of black, etc. sucks.

i always thought it generated whatever diety you started the game with, but i guess i was wrong.

[Silfir]

The only thing that matters is what you are when you enter Dwarftown. Enter it neutral, you get a neutral altar. Enter it lawful, you get a lawful altar. Enter chaotic, you get a neutral altar instead because the dwarves would rather shove their own picks up their asses than worship a chaotic god. At least that's how it's been pretty much every time in my experience.