Where would you go with this?

[GordonOverkill]

You're right of course. I just wanted to finish this quest now that I already was down there. Actually for my lovely wizard the forest was no problem anyway with invisibility, farsight and teleport. Just killed Rehetep... dwarven graveyard, druid dungeon and tomb of the high king next to come. Then I will decide if I'm strong enough for darkforge and maybe even the tower. Actually my only problem at the moment is shortage of offensive spells. I decided to play without stair-hopping and at the moment I only have around 600 magic missile, 150 burning hands and 100 frost bolt. But I won't complain because I got many nice defensive spells and good equipment instead.

[Pim]

I've got no prayers ("ground rumbles" on sacrifice), and I don't remember if there were
any altars outside the Chaos Dungeon that I could use, besides the Dwarven Altar,
and I'm not sure how well luring monsters down there will work ....

Remember it isn't necessary to use live sacrifices. All gods enjoy food and gold. (But not ratling food or corpses that match their alignment.) You could sacrifice your iron ration, elven bread, sausages, melon, and loaf of bread, and see how far that gets you. Cooked lizards are all you will ever need to actually feed yourself.

Also, iirc once your Food Preservation skill passes 60, you get an increased chance for monsters to drop corpses. You might be able to train that faster if you pick up every corpse that does drop, and keep it in your pack till it rots away entirely.

Between corpses and picking up other junk, see if you can get yourself Strained! in order to train your strength until it reaches 18.

to cross the animated forest or Dwarven Halls. But I'm not sure if I'd be in good
enough shape to do that, since those trees can do some damage and the DH is pretty
much suicidal, isn't it?

Trees aren't much of a problem in my experience. You've got a shield and good DV. Only a small minority of the trees will become hostile and you are under no compulsion to fight back. Just move around when you can, and if you can't, wait a turn, or a dozen, 'til an empty spot opens up.

[Silfir]

The thing dual shields used to be great for was avoiding attacking trees in melee by accident. With a weapon equipped or an empty hand, it's very easy for that to happen. 120 HP and 14 PV are fairly good, but not what I'd consider completely safe.

I forgot to mention: With 19 blink dogs on the kill list, I'm assuming you have teleport control by now. That's ordinarily your cue for a detour to the VDDL - though without item detection or magic mapping, that might be a bit more of a hassle than you'd like. Monster detection might also work, though, if you spend enough time on the level killing monsters - eventually one should be created in the wand chamber. Wands of digging and especially pickaxes can also help. One pickaxe should be in the pyramid unless I've gone completely senile.

[mike3]

I think you're just strong enough that you don't need to be particularly afraid of the Big Room - go farm some morgia and buff up. I also think the Animated Forest should be doable if you don't mess up along the way; i. e. use two shields.

You don't seem to have a lot of items in general. If you usally get "stuck" at this point in the game - have you tried playing with Treasure Hunter and/or starting in the UD?

As for not a lot of items -- hint: Carrying Capacity.

[mike3]

I would:

1. Wear the bracers of protection.
2. Sacrifice enough gold on the dwarf altar to get deity very pleased, selling some of the less useful stuff if needed.
Then bless water.
3. Pick some morgia in the big room without pacifying it. All you really need is like 20 morgia roots to train toughness up to decent levels. After that, bless + drink PoGA.
4. Griffyard and Pyramid. With better toughness you are very ready imo.

edit: make sure to get a few curia mancox for the pyramid too, just in case

Problem with the Big Room is Breeders & Summoners. Add the Uberjackal effect to that and... Already came across some green worms trying that, and blink dogs, just now.

EDIT: I was able to get to very pleased status with my deity, and was able to get enough holy water to bless my gain attributes, booze, and wand of digging and decided to attempt to pacify the room.

[Silfir]

As for not a lot of items -- hint: Carrying Capacity.

If what you're saying is that you have a stash somewhere that we can't see, I'd reply that it would be rather unfair to expect of us to assume what the items in that stash are and how they influence your character's chances. The lack of items I'm talking about is a relatively small assortment of useful potions and wands, which I don't usually drop for weight issues since they represent a lot of power for just a few stones each.

Your strength is 16, on a Fighter. You should be walking around Strained, because that way you'll get it up to 18 relatively quickly.

[Stingray1]

Your strength is 16, on a Fighter. You should be walking around Strained, because that way you'll get it up to 18 relatively quickly.

Silfir means Very Strained.

[Kyreles]

I'll bust out my terrible German to mock Silfir on your behalf.

Sie haben einen Fehler gemacht. Du bist ein Narr.

[mike3]

If what you're saying is that you have a stash somewhere that we can't see, I'd reply that it would be rather unfair to expect of us to assume what the items in that stash are and how they influence your character's chances. The lack of items I'm talking about is a relatively small assortment of useful potions and wands, which I don't usually drop for weight issues since they represent a lot of power for just a few stones each.

Your strength is 16, on a Fighter. You should be walking around Strained, because that way you'll get it up to 18 relatively quickly.

I usually don't drop potions/wands -- usually I pick up all I can find in that department. Though, I didn't have TH for the earliest parts of the game, I think I only got it at level 12 or so. I spent the earlier talents on speed, since I like being able to run away from things if I have to.

[mike3]

Don't have any magic mapping -- should I give up on the VDDL (I had some unknown scrolls but apparently my Literacy wasn't good enough and they all disappeared now)?