Gnome Thief, rock and hard place. What would you do?

[BoloDigby]

Chelacough, a 17th-level Gnome Thief, has just got his hands on his first penetration/devastation - suffixed weapons in the two-handed sword, which he immediately rustproofed and blessed. Until this point, he has been working the crystal dagger or a stone spear. Chelacough received 'Whirlwind' as a drop, but possess no other non-autocursing artifacts. Weapon drops have been horribly mundane.

Chelacough is 'stuck' at Dwarftown. He did not have the moxie to take on the Pyramid, and has been unable to stay on the Big Room due to wave upon wave of Ice Vortexes (with no cold elemental resistance). Prior to the Ice Vortex onslaught, he was able to build a pen in an attempt to pacify the Big Room, yet, while trying to find a breeder, had to flee with 2 hit points left due to 3 Ice Vortex hits. Chelacough has been unable to find the target of Thrundarr's first quest, a Werewolf Lord. Chelacough has made two major mistakes--one of stepping into the enchanted forest prior to receiving the second Thrundarr quest, the second of killing multitudes of annoying cats. (Once you kill one, why bother trying to avoid them?)

Chelacough is considering making a run for the surface in order to go for some ID grinding in an attempt to obtain a Ring of Ice or some kind of item of invisibility. Chelacough has built up good poison/fire resistance, but has yet to obtain a waterproof blanket.

Any words of wisdom from veterans? (don't say not to play Thieves. It is almost exclusively the only class I play)

Having never gotten a character higher than level 19 or 20, I consider all plays at Adom to be a learning experience, and try not to be particularly attached to any character. My player's death only serves to hopefully teach me one more thing.

(if anyone wants the SVG, let me know. I don't save scum, just have it in the event someone is interested)

[JellySlayer]

General advice:
-Never skip the Pyramid. At level 16, even a poorly equipped character can finish it easily. With a two-handed devastation weapon, it should have been a pushover.
-Never pacify the Big Room. It is almost always more work than it is worth.
-Killing cats isn't a mistake. Don't worry about it.

On your specific situation:
-Ice vortices are quite slow. As long as there aren't too many and they aren't too close together, or all congregated around the stairs, you should just be able to outrun them and/or kill them with whirlwind. Make sure you aren't burdened or satiated/bloated. You mention non-autocursing artifacts. Does that mean you have the black torc? 10 extra speed could help here. If you have a wand of webbing (or there's been a spider factory around already), that could help immensely too.
-If you can sneak passed the Big Room, head to the Griffyard and get the elemental gauntlets for cold resist.

[BoloDigby]

I did not get the 2-hander of devastation until level 17. And I am very noobish at the Pyramid, probably getting to it with less than 2% of my thief builds (the rest die before level 13). I normally don't skip it, but my two most recent attempts at it meant my doom to stone golems both times. No penetration weapon in hand both times. The few times I've gotten past the Pyramid have been with the brainless (IE, not requiring a lot of creative inventory usage) invisibility and Thief's Heir in hand. I guess as a segue, what are no-fail Pyramid strategies?

[JellySlayer]

My usual approach to the Pyramid is to immediately move to the right-hand wall, and try to hide in one of the monster spawns. With a bit of luck/speed, it's not too hard to get to the top-right corner, where only two monsters can reach you at a time. If the monsters look easier on the left side, go that way instead... usually the monsters on the opposite side to you will take a long time to figure out what is going on. This reduces the danger considerably, except that if for some reason you desperately need to escape, you're kind of stuck. Having teleport (even uncontrolled) will help with this. With ~15-20 PV, 10 spenseweed and a few curaria mancox or pots of healing, you shouldn't have anything to worry about damage-wise unless you get a really unlucky spawn (eg. living wall).

If you can make it to the corner (or even in one of the areas where only 3 monsters can get to you), then with a weapon as weak as a blessed adamantium spear, you can probably clear out the mummies and the jackal daemons, at least. You don't need to kill everything. Ideally, you can leave relatively weak monsters on your flanks as blockers, and just keep killing the monsters on one side of you. Once mummy lord shows up, kill him quickly and claim your prize.

FWIW, I normally clear the Pyramid almost as soon as I hit level 13, unless my character is profoundly weak. Granted, thieves often are, but that's usually my plan regardless.

[Yinghei]

Well, nothing can be guaranteed, but some things that can help are getting the fireball wand from thrundarr before going to the pyramid (in p20, this is hard), going into the corner where you can only be hit by two enemies at once, using potion of exchange, and making sure you have plenty of piety to pray a few times. First aid has really been buffed since 1.1.1 too, so you can level up that skill and use it in coward mode after every hit. The guaranteed teleport wand is also useful.

[Maul]

I'm not actually sure how spoily you like your answers here. Mild spoilers, I guess.

-Never pacify the Big Room. It is almost always more work than it is worth.

It's not a lot of work and may be worth a damn lot for convenience. Even if I don't want to harvest any herbs, I often pacify it unless I have invisibility.

The Pyramid is best handled as follows: secure a source of teleportation, teleport next to Rehetep, use the wand of fireballs you get from Thrundarr, collect reward, teleport out. Depending on how buff you are, you can fight your way through, or kill Rehetep through melee or missiles. Stand in a corner behind those "pillars" if you are in an extended melee, because there you can only be attacked by 3 targets. Always be invisible, because the mummies are a much smaller threat than other monsters. In a situation like yours, with stone golems (do they see invisible? I'm not sure) teleport yourself in such a way that you are surrounded by weak monsters and Rehetep. Kill him, and there's nothing else to do.

You mentioned "no other non-autocursing artifacts". I'd be curious about what autocursing artifacts you have. Some of them are quite good, or even excellent (such as Kinslayer, which my current dwarven fighter is using).

Get the elemental gauntlets and tackle the water temple ASAP. If needed, go in with only waterproof equipment. The Snake is not usually that hard to slay, and even if it is, it's not hard to survive at least. The reward, the water orb, is important because it's infinite free healing, and not that corrupting with the gauntlets on (just don't get too addicted to it, because eventually corruption removal becomes more scarce than healing itself). After that, you can enter the Tower and even in the worst case, you should survive.

[JellySlayer]

-Never pacify the Big Room. It is almost always more work than it is worth.

It's not a lot of work and may be worth a damn lot for convenience. Even if I don't want to harvest any herbs, I often pacify it unless I have invisibility.

What convenience? In the time it takes you to build your doors and find your breeder, you've probably spent 5x as many turns in the Big Room as I will have in my entire game. If you haven't found herbs anywhere else and desperately need them, fine, you have to pacify. But under normal circumstances? It's much more efficient not to bother.

[sylph]

I play a lot of thieves these days (see my signature). Did you do the healing quest? Your mention of autocursing artifacts makes me immediately think of the black torc, which features both ice resistance, and a speed bonus, which is perfect for surviving the earlier dungeon levels including the big room.

Minor spoilers will follow, but I'm trying not to include any info that shouldn't be pretty 'common knowledge' - I doubt I'll be telling you anything you don't know if you already know about pacifying the big room...
Either way, I'd say that yes, you should be going to the surface. If you have the 'extra' quest from the dwarf, then you can complete it before coming back into the dungeon, but even if you don't, the safest way of playing most characters around your area tends to be
1. Get to dwarftown as quickly as possible, refresh your prayers by sacrificing at the altar, get lots of holy water, have your god help identify your equipment (it's usually fairly safe to put on any non-cursed items to identify them, and I often start to randomly read any stacked scrolls, to help identify my potions, identify my wands, uncurse my herbs, or any other small benefits I can muster).
2. Get teleport control from a blink dog. This can be gained from the infinite dungeon if you've been unlucky enough to have none spawn up to this point.
3. Venture into the dusty area next to the pyramid, and try to find (using magical means if possible) the wand there.

Controlled, on-demand teleportation is pretty much the turning point, at which any ADOM character becomes 'safe'. You're probably ready to acheive it with this character, and doing so will 'stabilise' your game - it's pretty much the biggest boost to survivability you can manage. Feel free to skip step 2 if you have other means to find the wand, because on-demand teleportation will save you from 90% of your deaths even when you can't control your destination.

While you're seeking that, you could always venture into the infinite dungeon, wander down to level 14 or so, and keep clearing level after level at around that depth until you complete your dwarf quest. It usually doesn't take very long.

[Maul]

What convenience? In the time it takes you to build your doors and find your breeder, you've probably spent 5x as many turns in the Big Room as I will have in my entire game. If you haven't found herbs anywhere else and desperately need them, fine, you have to pacify. But under normal circumstances? It's much more efficient not to bother.

Turns? Nah. Personally, I like the convenience of being able to cross the Big Room with a couple of walk-commands. I'm just lazy like that. The few IRL minutes spent pacifying the Big Room are, to me, well worth the joy of not having to bash or cast my way out of a 5x5 block of spiders and dire wolves every second time I cross the damn place.

[shockeroo]

What's your other equipment? If you need better defensive gear, you can hunt it above or below dwarftown. Your DV should be about 20 and PV about 10 I think. If you have the si you can let it replicate and sell them for lots of gold, and train toughness with Garth for more HP, and also sacrifice some at the dwarftown altar for lots of piety for a nice safety net. Your sword is ridiculously good and Whirlwind is very effective in the earlygame with a big stack of rocks - you really shouldn't be struggling.

I agree that pacifying the big room is never worthwhile. You can lure monsters off the level by going up/down stairs and pick them off in managable quantities, then just run between the staircases on coward tactics, luring more monsters off when necessary.

Pyramid is harder for thieves than most. The traditional easymode for the pyramid was to get the wand of fireballs from one of Thrundarr's quests and spam that on coward. That's a bit harder to do now Thurndarr gives out harder monsters to find, especially with gnome thieves who level very fast. If you can't get the wand then just have get good PV/DV and a blessed weapon, and fight in a corner.

Following up on JellySlayer's comments, if you do have the Torc that means you don't have healing. I would always do the Jared quest and get the healing skill as a gnome thief, unless I was born under the candle starsign. Otherwise your HP regen is miserable.

Send me the save, I'm curious to see your situation. -email removed-