Naked Run

[Tyrnyx]

So off of another thread jellyslayer said that he had tried running the game without wearing anything. I tried it out and made it through the UD once. He said he had made it up to the ToEF. Impressive.

My strategy was to run a tree-born dwarf monk. I was thinking with bonuses from Toughness, +1 pv from tree and another from immune to pain and then mithril skin you could get up to 12 - 15 pv and monk bonuses for DV and damage. This breaks down later though because my learning and mana scores were pretty bad and you would need spells to take on enemies later - 15 pv just isn't going to cut it. My monk couldn't even read knock at level 10.

In order to do the ToEF you would also need to be crowned fire immune which is a 1/4 chance from crowning. (Not an atheist monk). It would be terrible to get far then get the wrong crowning...

Ideas? Strategies? I assume wizard but spells for every little thing would be challenging in its own right.

[JellySlayer]

So off of another thread jellyslayer said that he had tried running the game without wearing anything. I tried it out and made it through the UD once. He said he had made it up to the ToEF. Impressive.

My strategy was to run a tree-born dwarf monk. I was thinking with bonuses from Toughness, +1 pv from tree and another from immune to pain and then mithril skin you could get up to 12 - 15 pv and monk bonuses for DV and damage. This breaks down later though because my learning and mana scores were pretty bad and you would need spells to take on enemies later - 15 pv just isn't going to cut it. My monk couldn't even read knock at level 10.

In order to do the ToEF you would also need to be crowned fire immune which is a 1/4 chance from crowning. (Not an atheist monk). It would be terrible to get far then get the wrong crowning...

Ideas? Strategies? I assume wizard but spells for every little thing would be challenging in its own right.

The run I was doing was actually not using items. As in, a completely empty inventory for the whole game, only eating food off the ground (you also have to pick up the Orbs, of course, and on my runs I allowed myself use of a climbing set, beeswax, and carry, but not wear, the RoTHK). If you're allowed to use items from your inventory, then yeah, probably a spellcaster is the way to go. Elementalist or wizard seems sensible.

For the ToEF, with Immune to Pain + Intrinsic Fire resist, the damage is... almost tolerable. With inventory items, you can cover the damage with a pile of spenseweed or Cure Light Wounds or something.


[edit]Put this into a new post to make this more sensible.

[Tyrnyx]

Did you use the same strategy of a dwarven monk? Even without spells I can't imagine there would be anything better. Actually it would have to be a monk in order to kick down walls.

Also you could still get crowned if you had a good alter... Hmm. You'd have to pool sip for just the right intrinsic at the very least -death. And hopefully see invis and cold res for getting the ice bridge. I'm imagining the silly instance of getting a wish while pool sipping. If you got a wish what would it be for? Weapon marks? Ugg. Barf.

[JellySlayer]

Did you use the same strategy of a dwarven monk? Even without spells I can't imagine there would be anything better. Actually it would have to be a monk in order to kick down walls.

Also you could still get crowned if you had a good alter... Hmm. You'd have to pool sip for just the right intrinsic at the very least -death. And hopefully see invis and cold res for getting the ice bridge. I'm imagining the silly instance of getting a wish while pool sipping. If you got a wish what would it be for? Weapon marks? Ugg. Barf.


Play Drakeling Monk. Drakeling taking extra damage will be a pain in the ToEF, but the benefits in early game allow you to get there. I know Sami has tried this challenge using a Gnome Monk spamming Ventriloquism and got quite far, farther than I have, so that's presumably a good option too.

I usually aim for 20 St/15 Le/15 Wi/20 To on stats, with a To potential of at least 35, but that's a very tough roll for a Drakeling monk. I like the idea of taking Tree starsign for the extra stats and PV, but I've since become convinced that you need Candle more for the extra regeneration in midgame. To potential is key, since that directly impacts your maximum PV score.

First kill may as well be a rat or jackal or something so you can get Courage. I usually visit SMC to check for stairs, then do trainer dungeon -> DD -> PC -> UD. Early skill upgrades go into Food Preservation and Athletics, then Healing, First Aid, and Find Weakness. DD:7 will guarantee poison resist, and give you a shot at acid/fire resist (and acid immune, though it's very unlikely). PC gives a good shot at acid resist, of course. PC:5/6 altar is of course very desirable for getting at least Fate. Early pool roulette is pretty much required. You need ideally -SeeI, -Para, -Stun, -Death, and +Invis. And a full set of elemental resistances, of course, though you can get those elsewhere. Only things worth wishing for are Tactics and Ventriloquism if you happen to get a wish. I guess a wish later in the game could be put directly into To. After UD, I usually visit the low level random dungeons looking for altars, pools, and more XP. There's a few statues that could help a lot too. Although I never used it, in one game I had found the statue that cures 5 corruptions, which could have been a lifesaver.

At some point before level 15, you will need to scum Swamp Hydras (above level 15 a bunch of extra wilderness encounters get added, which really slows the process). Each Swamp hydra corpse gives 2-3 points of To. If you aren't crowned yet, you can use undead corpses too up to 25 To at least. Hydras can be killed with acid spit, but maxing your To here will take over 100 days unless you doom yourself, but this makes the hydras quite unforgiving to kill. With 35 To plus talents, you'll have about 15 PV, which is not nearly enough given you will also only have like 30 DV. But that's what you have to work with.

At this point, you can clear Griffyard (Griff is tough, but manageable). Pyramid, I've determined is not worth the risk since there's no reward for doing it anyway, though if you're letting yourself use a climbing set, you may as well grab it. With care, you can kill Snake around this point, though it's quite brutal. Ditto with Skeletal king, if you can find a friendly Ogre Magus to freeze all of the ice. In one game where I had invis, I managed to visit the Ice Queen (if you don't kill much, your speed is only reduced to 50 as a drake, so it's tolerable). She gives some nice stat boosts if you can finish her quest. I was hoping to use frost giant corpses to max out St, but they were just too strong at that point. Same problem with ToEF. At this point, I think the best way forward is to play corruption roulette. A perfect set of corruptions probably gives you everything you need to progress further--acid skin alone would make an enormous difference, but you can also get extra damage, extra PV, extra DV. Of course, you can also get immediately screwed with no chance of recovery, so there's that.

[Tyrnyx]

Dwarven mithril skin would lose you the ability to spit but would you then have to scum for hydras? Also didn't spitting down hydras kill your satiation levels? Prayer to the rescue? I guess you need spit for things like the snake... Chaos rullete?

Also the first/last time I tried the ice bridge ogre magi method with a drake I ended up with 10 speed and an inability to make a bridge since he was right next to me at all times and I couldn't freeze more tiles. How would you deal with that?

[JellySlayer]

Dwarven mithril skin would lose you the ability to spit but would you then have to scum for hydras?

It'd only gain you 3 PV. Dwarf monk has a bit higher To, maybe 24 on a decent roll, but there's a huge difference between 24 and 34 To, not just in PV, but also in HP. I think you'd have to do the hydras either way. Of course, with Dwarf, you could corruption roulette for acid spit without the downside of cold-bloodedness. Not having food preservation is a bit of nuisance for this kind of game since you're reliant on corpses for food, stats, and intrinsic. But it's wishable, I suppose. You also don't have swimming as a dwarf, so rivers are very problematic. You can't get piety particularly efficiently, so you don't have enough healing prayers to spare to be using them for crossing rivers. Even setting the hydra thing aside, spit helps for dealing with things like karmics, ghuls, etc. that are problematic in melee.


Also didn't spitting down hydras kill your satiation levels? Prayer to the rescue? I guess you need spit for things like the snake... Chaos rullete?

From bloated, you can kill a hydra, sometimes two if the fights are close together, with spit without getting hungry (I usually leave the last hit to melee, since my impression is that spitting reduces corpse drop rate, though I'm not actually certain about this. I'm sure Soirana will show up to tell me if I'm wrong). Might be worse with dooming, dunno, didn't try that on my games. Then you just grab a non-hydra wilderness encounter on another tile and get some food from that. At max Food Preservation, a group of frogs/jackals/lizard men will usually yield enough corpses to get bloated.


Also the first/last time I tried the ice bridge ogre magi method with a drake I ended up with 10 speed and an inability to make a bridge since he was right next to me at all times and I couldn't freeze more tiles. How would you deal with that?

With max alertness and decent speed, you should be able to dodge the majority of the bolts. Alternately, you can use a baby white dragon or ice lizard, or even a couple ice vortices.

[Soirana]

At some point before level 15, you will need to scum Swamp Hydras (above level 15 a bunch of extra wilderness encounters get added, which really slows the process). Each Swamp hydra corpse gives 2-3 points of To.
Is that still true in r50+? (or whenever the latest stat training rework happened )
I don't recall getting anything after eating them in Steel man (got few increases through orc sergeants, but 3-4 are needed for one point of To)

[JellySlayer]

You can't push above potential, but I've definitely got a couple increases from swamp hydras in these sorts of games. At least up to ~32 To, I think.

[Carter]

why is elementalist ruled out? not enough castings?

[Soirana]

You can't push above potential, but I've definitely got a couple increases from swamp hydras in these sorts of games. At least up to ~32 To, I think.

Which version it was?

Cause, I definitely have not got increases from hydras. (and yes, I know what stat potential is)

[JellySlayer]

I've got it in r60, for sure.

[Soirana]

I've got it in r60, for sure.

Maybe I had bad luck with them:confused:. I think I ate just a few.

[grobblewobble]

Play Drakeling Monk. Drakeling taking extra damage will be a pain in the ToEF, but the benefits in early game allow you to get there. I know Sami has tried this challenge using a Gnome Monk spamming Ventriloquism and got quite far, farther than I have, so that's presumably a good option too.

I witnessed Sami making it past the ToEF with an itemless drakeling monk. Unfortunately he gained a bad corruption or two at that point and got killed by the banshee (no beewax..)

First Aid was a major help in making it through the tower.

[JellySlayer]

I witnessed Sami making it past the ToEF with an itemless drakeling monk. Unfortunately he gained a bad corruption or two at that point and got killed by the banshee (no beewax..)

First Aid was a major help in making it through the tower.

Sami is too good at this game for his experiences to be relevant ;)