Unfair UD

[blunk]

So my troll assassin is stomping into SMC and got a very winding path which is no big deal since exp is soooo slow as troll.
(ooh I realised that trolls actually by far have the easiest ride in SMC, how's that for a slow learner)

Down in ud and I get an N altar which I switch to and I find a penetrating spear!
However, ud5 was a river lvl and troll assassin don't have no swim so every water square hurts.
I can survive 2 squares drowning barely w/o dying and I explore most, sadly the downstairs is in an akward spot where I need to use 2 water squares and open a door (still in water).

I sacrify what I think is enough at altar go back and drown, drown pray open door.
Of course a monsters steps on that spot so I pray again to be able to drown drown back but alas note nough piety and my lvl 8 troll assassin drowns

Even with swimming, those river levels in ud are soo painful.

[pjsb1]

Since trolls start with Bridge Building maybe since you knew where the stairs were in smc it might have been less dangerous to go pick up some logs than to try your luck at swimming.

[Blasphemous]

He would have been better off doing the druid quest and choosing power reward over knowledge to get a wand of cold.
Herbalism/gardening is probably a better choice but this is the case of life and death so I guess it should at least be considered.

[taickyto]

You have to be quite lucky to get a hatchet, enough food to chop enough trees to get enough logs to get enough reliable bridge parts to get to the other side...
Even with a Troll, logs are super heavy, and as you start with 30ish bridge building you need a dozen of them to cross 3-4 water tiles. It makes you go back and forth between forest and UD:5 a lot of times, at least strained.
If the skill made a super duper bridge, like something that automatically goes to the other side, 2 tiles wide with stone statues as decorations, I might want to use the skill over a wand of cold, mainly for swag points. But right now I'd rather grind a few thousand turn for a wand of cold, even if I had 40+ strength, a blessed girdle of carrying, 60+ bridge building and the river was right after the animated forest. The skill is that bad.

[Blasphemous]

Actually, just getting swimming from Blup, which is an easy task, is sufficient in the vast majority of river cases.
You'd have to be extremely unlucky to not make it past the river with swimming even at low scores like 10-20.
If you can sacrifice a potion of holy water then a ring of the fish is perfectly fine and not a particularly rare item.

[blunk]

I should have walked back up and got swimming, however SMC was VERY snakey and I had basically have to go in a zig-zag pattern, this was no issue when going down since trolls have slow exp but going back out this would have been as risky as the swim (from my guesstimation).

[Burb]

then in all honesty your best bet would have been to leave SMC until later. Once you get tp control + wand of tp you can revisit at any time, or some form of invisibilty + healing so you can kill monsters one by one.

though i can't fault you that much, it's fun to go for the risky play sometimes