Looking for some advice: Frugal Wizard

[JellySlayer]

I've recently decided to try a challenge that I'm dubbing the frugal wizard: essentially, I'm playing a wizard who will only use his starting gear, plus guaranteed items (eg. quest rewards, fixed drops/items such as the black torc, large rations of Munxip and food from ratling trades), and herbs. I don't plan on taking any books from the library, except possibly the weird tome depending on my corruption situation.

The current incarnation is a Raven-born dwarven wizard. Starting stats were not as good as I would have liked, but workable: 15 St, 17 Le, 14 To, 15 Ma. Starting gear was similarly mediocre, and my spells are pretty terrible: quarterstaff, [2,1] robe, Magic Missile, Summon Monsters, Wand of cold and wand of ball lightning, some useless scrolls, a pot of water and an uncursed PoGA.

My starting strategy was to grab some food, get the waterproof blanket, then kill the raider lord. Using the money from that, I bought some keys, more food, then trekked over to bugcave. Levelled to 9 (didn't want to go higher because I can't risk bookcasting there), then dived into the CoC to the arena where I bought some more food. Found stable herbs for spenseweed, pepper, stoma, curaria on D6, and found morgia/pepper in Big Room (there may be more there; haven't explored the whole level yet). Scummed herbs for a bit, then got the Si and visited Dwarftown. Asked to kill a large kobold. At some point around this time my quarterstaff was destroyed, so I've been fighting unarmed. This, surprisingly, hasn't been as much of a problem as I expected it to be, most mobs I can safely kill on berserk, and my PV is respectable thanks to morgia buffed To and Mithril Skin. Tragedy struck when my book of magic missile was destroyed by a random trap, but I was able to kill the black druid to get a book of frost bolt, and the black torc.

My problem now is that I'm not sure what to do next. I'm level 12 right now, so the pyramid will be open to me soon, but I'm not sure if I can clear it without the wand of fireballs (although I'm looking forward to getting a pickaxe to fight with), but the prospect of doing the animated forest/DH without invis or darkness and with only 21/13 on coward is pretty daunting. I haven't used my big ID from Thundarr yet, so I'm considering getting a few hundred pots of booze from beggars and trading them with Yggaz for hopefully some pots of invis, but I feel using Yggaz is pretty scummy for this challenge and I'd rather avoid it. Prospects for the griffyard look a little better. I can hopefully make pots of blindness from alchemy with booze and one of the herbs I have available, which should deal with the necromancer (a large heap of spenseweed probably won't hurt here either). I may want to risk wearing the black torc for the extra speed and cold resistance, although I'm not sure if being cursed is worth that, especially since I need to use piety to uncurse items. I'm also not sure if I want to use one of the only two holy waters I'll ever get on Griff's grave.

[meh]

One option is to do the arena and use the gladius as your weapon, but I'm not sure if you can survive the final fight.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

1. Sac monsters
2. Get crowned
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!

[Covenant]

Not a bad idea by meh. But my own thought would be to save that until you're level 13, as then you can go to the pyramid, get the pickaxe, go to the DDL, get the wand of teleport, and have a means of teleporting cats out of the arena. As your equipment choices are very limited, you don't want to lose access to the RotMC.

Griffyard sounds like a good experiment.

[JellySlayer]

1. Sac monsters
2. Get crowned
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!

I'm not planning on using crowning gifts. The main reason I will want to get crowned at some point will be to keep my food consumption under control, since most of my gear is likely to be artifacts. I'd prefer to wait until after I have the mummy wrapping though.

[edit]Getting crowned also may cause a problem by reducing my booze supply. Getting large amounts of booze requires me to kill a lot of beggars, which will wreak havoc with my alignment.

I had considered getting the golden gladius, but I'd really prefer to get it once I have the Thundarr quest. As a lawful dwarf, I stand a decent chance of getting Rolf's Shield from Thundarr, which will be pretty amazing for me. Even the blankets and potions (or the armor...) would be pretty good rewards too.

[Harwin]

Depend on your fears about corruption, why not go for Rolf's axe from the mystic?

Is an AOLS from a Darkforge pool wish against the spirit of the challenge? (I've personally never gotten a wish from there in 3 characters worth of attempts, at which point I gave up, but it seems to work for some people)


(Edit: Removed a comment about darkforge - if you consider the crowning gift against the spirit then this would have been too)

[JellySlayer]

Depend on your fears about corruption, why not go for Rolf's axe from the mystic?

I probably will do this. I don't have teleport control yet (or the wand of teleport, for that matter), so this will have to wait for a bit. Since burden isn't a problem, though, Big Punch might actually be a better weapon for me. I'd have to check the numbers. Corruption is a problem I don't know how to deal with as of yet... I can't use thick gauntlets, for example. Getting 4 SoCR would be great, but getting stuck with the PoGA and pots of training would be terrible.

Is an AOLS from a Darkforge pool wish against the spirit of the challenge? (I've personally never gotten a wish from there in 3 characters worth of attempts, at which point I gave up, but it seems to work for some people)

I haven't decided yet. I will have to do some pool sipping at some point to get hopefully teleport control and invisibility. If I end up with a wish, I will honestly probably go for it. Getting that book of teleport would be amazing. If I'm lucky with wishes, a wand of destruction would be another very desirable choice for the long game.

[Soirana]

rolfs shield+axe is very ggod in combination. I used them on immortal necro [no spells were allowed]- dragged mid and some fo late game...

Overall, i would suggest not to improve Alchemy at all... Offnesive alchemy + guaranteed frost book+magic missile you started with basically grants ability to kill everything...

[Grey]

Not sure why you chose a wizard for this challenge - without spellbooks they're quite severely impaired. Melee classes seem the best thing for this sort of challenge. Dwarf doesn't make a great deal of sense either (drakelings would add Alertness, Food Preservation, acid spit, and easier tower time).

Anyway, getting a weapon should certainly be a priority. Rolf's set is brilliant, and the fire resistance would help you use offensive alchemy to devastating effectiveness. Works especially well in the Pyramid and dwarven graveyard.

[JellySlayer]

Not sure why you chose a wizard for this challenge - without spellbooks they're quite severely impaired. Melee classes seem the best thing for this sort of challenge. Dwarf doesn't make a great deal of sense either (drakelings would add Alertness, Food Preservation, acid spit, and easier tower time).

I don't like drakelings for challenges like this--acid spit provides an unreasonable advantage in this sort of limited resources approach that I don't feel is really appropriate. Dwarf I mainly chose for starting stats, mithril skin, and detect traps (which I can't get otherwise...). Mining will be nice to have too since I will only have one pickaxe. As for wizard, well, it certainly isn't the best choice for this challenge at all (beastfighter, barbarian, mindcrafter, or elementalist would probably work out much nicer). I would almost say I chose wizard because they aren't a class that is built for this sort of reduced play. Although my first attempt at this, I rolled my wizard with a [0,4] robe starting with lightning, invisibility, and cure light wounds, and should probably have worked out quite nicely had he not been criticalled for 80 damage by an ogre...