Freaky items

[Grey]

Actually I never bother with the SMC blanket for precisely that reason - I'll find one eventually anyway. More due to pickpocketing than TH though. Besides, water traps are rare and rivers can be dealt with, so the only real nuisance is rain in the wilderness. And the SMC is a fecking deathtrap.

[_Ln_]

the only real nuisance is rain in the wilderness.

I once lost a hell load of my books and scrolls due to rain, got really angry and went to ToEF to die there and accidentally cleared it... Oh, sweet times with spellcasters...

[garyd]

Hooded cloaks will help with the rain in the wilderness as well. No other cloaks do however. Passing strange that, you'd think a leather cloak would be as good at least in real life...

The chief problem with the SMC is that the monsters are always scaled to your level. A goblin that would last about one swing against a 10th level paladin in any othr location can kill him in the SMC. That's why two of my prerequisites for the HMV run provided the down stair case in the SMC isn't fairly near the entry is a blink dog hunt and a dead pixie or two... or scroll or wand of teleportation.

[Erik Piper]

My favorite is a wand of trap creation, freeing up my charges/readings of teleportation for unexpected teleport needs, unlike this expected one.

[flibble]

I usually save the SMC until I have controlled on-demand teleportation and a blessed scroll of magic mapping. At that point I never have any trouble with it.

On the original topic of freaky items, I just found a light crossbow of accuracy (+11, +1). I never saw one that goes above +9 before.

[RndmNumGenerator]

SMC is always the third place I visit(after Terinyo and Bandit Town). I usually leave by around level 4 if I haven't found the stairs yet, but it's a nice place to start out, with the good items and access to the UD.

[Erik Piper]

What RNG said. (But in my case the level 4 thing is partly because my start pattern is actually kind of ridiculous, with me only very rarely not trying to do *both* (the cheesy solution to) saving the puppy *and* Kranach.)

[BoloDigby]

Raven-born thief found Quicksilver in SMC. I hate it when I am compelled to not wield a shield, but come on, Speed 121 when strained? I decided to become a kiter. I also found Staff of Smiting at Dwarftown with the same character, but I did not buy it. Not very freaky, but the RNG certainly was behaving freakishly.

[Phoobnahr]

SMC is always the third place I visit(after Terinyo and Bandit Town). I usually leave by around level 4 if I haven't found the stairs yet, but it's a nice place to start out, with the good items and access to the UD.

I do the same thing... but food and get assigned quests in Terinyo, make my first kill in the outlaw village (anything in there will do), then I head back to Terinyo and name the tiny girl after my first kill, then into the SMC for the blanket and the down stairs (a character who doesn't survive this generally wasn't worth the trouble anyway), after which I'm in a desperate rush against time/levels to both save the cute dog and kill Kranach (if I can only do one I'll kill Kranach), after which I'll go get healing if I don't have it already, and dive through the UD to HMV.

Yeah... a lot of characters don't make it.

Additionally I always let [f]ate decide my character's race, class, starsign and gender.
But I've got a few wins so I must be doing something right...

[anon123]

What weird items have you had? I just found a +0, +3 medium shield.

The small shield [-1, +0] and ring of protection -1 are my all-time favorites.