Death by bridges

[Urthdigger]

Ok, it was my furthest character I'd gotten yet. Managed to become crowned as a champion of balance (Getting fire resistance in the process), discovered the HMV, and then just below dwarftown is a river. So, I quickly finished up the carpenter quest, got my manual, but was too hasty to bother training (He never seemed to up my stats, even after training a lot then waiting...) or level, so I cut down a few trees and went off to give bridge building a try. Says I don't manage to make anything.

Now, I've never used bridge building before. I have no idea how it works. So I figured maybe I have to be in the water. Little dangerous since the whole reason I'm building a bridge is because I can't swim, but I'm a troll, I got HP, and it'll beep me if my HP gets low right? Start building and BAM, -14. Oops.

[ragface]

Best way to cross rivers is by casting frost bolt from spellbooks or wands of cold..
Never gotten the bridge building to work:p

[Silfir]

Bridge Building requires a log and a hatchet. Then you 'a'pply the skill. Your character will try and make a segment out of the log. He nearly always fails. Did I mention that logs weigh 800 stones each and Bridge Building is the most hideous waste of time ever? Look for other methods to cross the river.

You can give Blup a blessed potion of carrot juice to be taught Swimming.

[Urthdigger]

I was a troll, with single digit learning score. I really didn't think of spells as an option. Plus, I was more than capable of carrying a bunch of logs with me down into the mines without being burdened :)

[Silfir]

"A bunch of logs" doesn't cut it for a single-digit Bridge Building skill (which I assume you still had, since you only tried Yrrigs) - you need on average 10 logs for a segment. So for a three-tile-bridge you have to count 30 logs on average. Could take more. Maybe one level will let you boost Bridge Building to the thirties - then you might find more success.

[Lich]

If you have a wand of trap creation, make a teleportation trap to cross the river (you should have teleport control). Don't even bother with bridge building. If your character have that kind of time, scum for a wand of cold.

[Urthdigger]

Eh, it's not like teleportation control is a guaranteed thing. I wasn't able to get any from any of the pools I came across, and I wasn't corrupted yet, nor did I come across any items that gave it. I found no cold aligned spellbooks or wands either, nor a wand of trap creation. And I really didn't think running up and down the ID some more was going to get me one of those any time soon. Unless you mean I'm SUPPOSED to back up my save files every time I save to get all the desirable effects and wishes I desire from a pool, but then I could just do that to avoid any river filled floors anyway.

I basically decided to do bridge building because it seemed like the only way that wouldn't take me ages to do.

[Silfir]

I think there was one case where I decided to use Bridge Building. I had no carrot juice and I had no wand of cold, neither did I have teleport control or Swimming - but Bridge Building material. I wanted to make a three-tile bridge for just one river. I eventually succeeded, but it was extremely frustrating.

With scumming there's always the risk that you never find what you need, so I can understand the sentiment. But really - Scumming for items in the Big Room or similar places is far more beneficial overall than spending days upon days cutting trees for a bridge...

[Ars]

Even if you don't have swimming, you can make it to the other side by just going into the water if you have enough hp and regeneration to recover from it.

The only place where I'd ever consider using bridge building, would be the red water.

[Soirana]

i built bridges over pirranhias few times. Was not that bad. And i usually had skill <30.

Although i never cutted tree in wilderness. Animated forest is a nice source of logs.

[Silfir]

Personally I feel if you had to get logs to the Tomb of the High Kings, it would be much less time spent to go outside and cut trees in the next forest tile than it would be to go back to the Animated Forest repeatedly. Unless, of course, you can carry about 10 logs in one go, which might be enough for a three tile bridge with Bridge Building of about 20.