YAVP: Yuh, Hurthling Farmer

[Joe]

Played for a regular win from start to end, playing very safe. Some interesting things:

My farmer started out with 7 strength and no useful skills (I made a farmer since i got sword and was curious if GM polemarm would be any good); managed to safe the carpenter. Found a lawful altar in lvl 2 puppy cave. Sacced the whole ant colony + lots more of corpses/creatures for a double precrowning: Crown of Leadership gave me my first PV. Second gift was Long Sting, which I considered useless until I found out it was a Pole Arm (thought it was a sword somehow).
Found Nature's Companion somewhere in a minor vault which has been my armor for most of the game. Did the Pyramid for the mummy armor + ankh for cold immunity. Got crowned with Skullcrusher and acid immunity (was wearing Nature's Companion, giving fire and lightning immunity). Found out that Skullcrushers damage was better (+ humanoid slaying!) and started using it with a nice 9/4 shield. Cleared the Dwarven Graveyard.
Encountered some pools and got a wish: amulet of life saving for the SoCRs. Went to Gremlin cave, got the RotHK, cleared DF with construct slaying ammo (my farmer went mostly archer-talents). Ring of invisibility + Elemental Gauntlets brought me safely to the top level of ToeF. Killed the Wyrm with a confusion potion, some dragon-slaying ammo, some wands of cold and some bashing with Skullcrusher.
The herbs were giving me good stats and I got all tools for the dive to D50. Didn't investigate most levels much: encountered a big vault with Giant-likes which Skullcrusher critted to death all (giants are humanoid?! And the balors on D50 also got critted.. I thought they were demons). Found Executor and in game finish it seems I also missed 'Protector' in the rubble (used a crystal shield 9/4 almost whole game).
Bought two rings of slaying in the casino (+10/+6 damage! best I've seen!) and got the RotMC. Most bosses were not much of a problem. Chaos Archmage was nasty with the lots of darkness (I didn't an amulet of light for some reason; only loads of wands of light) but I had heaps of humanoid slaying ammo + Skullcrusher. I was only level 35 or so when I entered D50 but the Balors brought me to lvl 50 quickly. (Didn't clear the whole level due to the heaps of ghosts in the center: age was the only thing that could kill me). Just patienty closed the gate again and again, killing the Balors one by one.
Fistanarius was the nastiest since confusing and blinding him makes him teleport away randomly. But 500+ hp and quite some potions of ultra healing in the bag pwned him easily. Got rid of all corruptions and fled the Chain. Got almost killed on the way back by an extremely experienced Ancient Red Dragon, who was a lot tougher than Fisty.

[Moeba]

Nice win, especially because of the class and race (wth, hurthling farmer? :eek:)
The report is pretty short, though: each half sentence seems to be another stage ;)

I like the last sentence in particular :D

[Joe]

Well, the farmer is pretty useless in general. Bad stats + bad skills. But somehow my bad chars always live longer than the good ones.
Food preservation at 100 is cool though, especially for hurthling since you gain heaps of corpses and you can cook and sac them all ;)
Strength went from 18 base to 25 base with the giant vault (+10 from orb, + 4 from Skullcrushes, + 4 from girdle of strength gave me a nice 43 strength).
Ogre Lords got somewhat scary though with their crits when they became extremely experienced (killed over a 100).
One minor detail that might be interesting is that I didn't get teleport control the whole game (and in fact teleported only once). Didn't even visit the Dwarven Mystic.

[JellySlayer]

Some notes:

Many monsters have multiple racial types. Any monster that looks like an H or an O is both a giant and a humanoid; monsters of the & variety are both daemons and humanoids; grues are both constructs and daemons; most undead are also humanoid--Z, z, L but not G. One of the reasons why humanoid slayers are so valuable is because the vast majority of monsters have humanoid as a secondary characteristic.

Farmers are very underrated IMHO. I would say that they are probably middle-of-the-pack for difficulty. Most start with a decent weapon and >3 herb seeds. If you true berserk early on and pump gardening for a couple levels, you can get a full set of herbs long before most other PCs would dream of being able to do so. With 32 To and 100 blessed spenseweeds, a level 8 farmer is pretty much unstoppable.

[Joe]

Thnx for the info! About the herbs: I've never considered planting any so far. Sounds like a cool thing to try some time though!

Is there also any point in planting trees?

[JellySlayer]

Trees don't grow at all (even after 30+ game-years of waiting), and planting the seeds doesn't even train the gardening skill. The only use for "plant seeds" is to give them to farmers in Terinyo for a lawful boost. Or to eat, I suppose.

Planting herbs for farmers is very useful if you know how to manipulate herb squares into useful patterns, because you can seed whatever starting pattern you want--in particular, you can build a T shape with 4 herb seeds, and from there, can generate bushes of every herb as long as you start in a 7x7 room. Or, if you prefer, you can plant herbs in safe areas like towns (only in areas that look like dungeon floors--Rynt's room in Terinyo will support morgia; Munxip's shop will support stoma) Gardening also turns herb-dead levels into herb-producing ones, unlike holy water, which produces bushes that will never regrow.

[stellian]

I'm currently playing a Hurthling Farmer, so I know how it feels to spend most of the game carrying around cooked corpses... D: I use them as sacrifices for now, until I can get easy money from the casino or from selling sis, but even though my goddess is very pleased with them, they don't seem to earn me a lot of piety.

How do you get new herb seeds? I wasted mine. ):

[ghostrobotmoonzombie]

herb seeds *i think* if you are bloated in wilderness and 'u'se the survival skill, instead of gaining sustanance you gather some seeds?

[stellian]

herb seeds *i think* if you are bloated in wilderness and 'u'se the survival skill, instead of gaining sustanance you gather some seeds?
Oh, you mean 'a'pply the Survival skill? ;)

Thanks though. I just used it 10 times (not counting unsuccessful tries) and got a bunch of plant seeds, but no herb seeds. Maybe herb seeds are just rarer...

[grobblewobble]

Yeah, survival only gets you useless plant seeds. Herbs don't grow in the wild.

Your best bet is restocking the food shop in Terinyo. Or starting a new character. :/

With the food sacrifices, if you cook all the summons of a couple of werecreatures you'll get there. It's faster than live saccing, at least. If you want really fast crowning, try playing an orc and sac a few artifact weapons.

[anon123]

Since my PCs never have the Gardening skill, I tend to find a lot of herb seeds in the ID. To farm herbs, I just hope to get lucky with herb-supporting levels, then 'U'se holy water until I have an L-shaped layout that will grow into a 2x2 square in the next generation. I'm a newcomer to this trade :p

If you're drowning in holy water and have a high enough Gardening skill, couldn't you use a single seed to make the level support herb growth, then create your favorite patterns with the pots of water?

[stellian]

Yeah, survival only gets you useless plant seeds. Herbs don't grow in the wild.

Your best bet is restocking the food shop in Terinyo. Or starting a new character. :/

With the food sacrifices, if you cook all the summons of a couple of werecreatures you'll get there. It's faster than live saccing, at least. If you want really fast crowning, try playing an orc and sac a few artifact weapons.
Thanks for the advice. (:

I would always cook every corpse I found, and upon reaching Strained! state, I'd go to the nearest coaligned altar and sac them all. However, it never got me enough piety to be crowned, and by the time I came back with a new set of cooked corpses, my piety had already dropped two tiers. |: So, screw that, I'm aiming for an ULE now, crowning will have to wait.

To be fair, I did get precrowned earlier (got the Bracers of War O: ), could that have increased the piety cost of crowning?


Since my PCs never have the Gardening skill, I tend to find a lot of herb seeds in the ID. To farm herbs, I just hope to get lucky with herb-supporting levels, then 'U'se holy water until I have an L-shaped layout that will grow into a 2x2 square in the next generation. I'm a newcomer to this trade :p

If you're drowning in holy water and have a high enough Gardening skill, couldn't you use a single seed to make the level support herb growth, then create your favorite patterns with the pots of water?
That seems like a good strategy.

[grobblewobble]

To be fair, I did get precrowned earlier (got the Bracers of War O: ), could that have increased the piety cost of crowning?

No, but I think it means you will no longer receive the "absolutely close" message. If you have already been precrowned, sacrificing will keep giving you the "extremely close" message, even when you are ready to get crowned. You will need to pray to find out if you have sacrificed enough yet.

[stellian]

Yeah I know that part. My prayers always remained unheard. ):

[JellySlayer]

Thanks for the advice. (:

I would always cook every corpse I found, and upon reaching Strained! state, I'd go to the nearest coaligned altar and sac them all. However, it never got me enough piety to be crowned, and by the time I came back with a new set of cooked corpses, my piety had already dropped two tiers. |: So, screw that, I'm aiming for an ULE now, crowning will have to wait.

Deaths using monsters are always a little tricky. It can take an awful lot of corpses/livesacs to get a crowning, especially if your altar isn't in a very convenient place. It is normally much, much, better, to use gold or huge piles of stomafilla herb to make this work easily. If you're losing two levels of piety in this amount of time, there might be something else going on as well though. Piety shouldn't drain that quickly unless your corpse farming is really inefficient.


To be fair, I did get precrowned earlier (got the Bracers of War O: ), could that have increased the piety cost of crowning?

I think precrown and crown are treated as separate prayer types. It should have no effect. The problem could be alignment, dooming from items, or just not enough piety.