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Thread: When you don't have the gear/resistance you prefer for _________

  1. #1

    Default When you don't have the gear/resistance you prefer for _________

    This is technically


    spoily


    since it talks about items/resistances that you might want at

    specific

    places.



    There are places in the game where there's an advantage to specific resistances or items . My favorite example is Griffyard....because death by paralyzation is a really high-odds risk if you don't have an intrinsic or an amulet of free action. I don't try to farm corpses anywhere; I just get the 'natural' drops as I proceed through the game. So I generally don't do the Portal quest until (a) I get an amulet, or (b) I'm overleveled for the quest, like level 18 wizard, to be cautious.

    Right now I have a level 23 grey elf wizard who is ALMOST ready for ToEF -- reasonable stats and equipment -- but no ice ball, no acid ball, and no lightning ball. I'm sure I could frost bolt my way through the first four levels, but I'm hesitant about the Fire Temple without ball spells (since I'm pretty sure that Fireball and Improved Fireball will work poorly....).

    But, I finished the Frost Giant caves (asterisk, I finished the vault, I killed a handful of Master Liches and ran the heck away before running into the Kings and Emperor of the Greater Vault), am level 23, have the mana orb. I started thinking that this is a cross-class issue--like if an Archer didn't have any of the right kind of slaying ammo, and so forth.

    So I'm curious how other people tackle this. Just tackle the dungeon (and again, I'm curious about this for any dungeon, there are a lot of places where specific things help you with specific enemies) and hope it goes okay? Burn a wish on something that in lots of games is pretty mundane? Go back below the water temple, hoping to get something good on D21-D26 even though you'll have to spend a bunch of time going down/up? Repeatedly clear the first 5 levels of the ID hoping for drops? Switch (e.g. in the Griffyard example) to employing corpse farming?

    I don't heavily farm herbs, I just try to make 2X2s in passing, and pick what I can on later passes by. In following that, I had one game where I did the Pyramid with no way to treat disease...got sick...didn't die, but it was stressful.

    I'm just curious how people approach the desirable-but-not-quite-required things.

    -Dan

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Posts
    701

    Default

    If my character is feeling weak (usually meaning low PV or low fireproof PV), I might clear out some of the random dungeons (shadowy/sinister mostly). You have decent chances to find vaults, which generate lots of items. The only thing I would scum ID for would be teleport control. And in general, the only non-guaranteed intrinsics that I worry about are teleport control and acid resistance.

    Incidentally, paralysis resistance is not something you should need to worry about for Griffyard. If you have decent PV and aren't doomed, it's pretty much impossible for ghuls to chain-paralyze you. So some of the "not-quite-required" things might not be quite as important as you think.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Location
    Berlin
    Posts
    366

    Default

    If I understand your question correctly, you mean what do I avoid if I haven't gotten a certain item/intrinsic yet?

    Well personally, I do not

    -meet Nonnak without -Cold. But there's the mummy wrapping which I always get right before that on the same trip to the surface.

    -get doomed without -Para or else a VERY short way to the next altar and piety already at very close. This applies to eating the oracle (every game for me) and pool sipping (maybe one in five games)

    -do the Ice queen area without +Invis and not kill monsters other than the prince there without a ring of fire

    -do the dwarven halls without +TCtrl. If not and I have a +Invis item I'll take the forest route (which I despise otherwise). If I lack both I go looking for a blink dog first.

    -enter ToEF without -Fire and blanket and don't tackle ACW without -Conf

    But I think that's about it for me. I left out items that I'll always have plenty when I need one (such as !ofCurePoison for the Snake) and late game there's nothing missing usually. With these few rules I don't get stuck in the game as there is always a place to go instead first (even more so now with the random dungeons).
    gremlin - karmic lizard, dark orc, acid vortex, staring eye - dragon turtle, fairy dragon, ogre lord, minotaur emperor - pit viper, orc butcher - greater mimic, dark elven wizard, carrion crawler, dwarven child - imp - ochre jelly, dark elven archer, king cobra, goodwife - kobold shaman, magebane eye, floating eye, quickling king - giant centipede, hill orc sergeant, mimic hivemind, greater claw bug, brown bear, large gnoll - giant bee queen, giant ant warrior, shadow centipede, kobold

  4. #4

    Default

    Those are exactly the kinds of answers I was hoping for. I have been playing on-and-off since about 1999...but used to, well, not be very good. I've improved my (planning and) play, and recently won for the first time, but I need to learn to how to actually play past the early game without being overly-conservative (e.g. in my win my elf wizard had 800 HP and, on D:50, never dropped below 700....so maybe I could have gone there sooner / without so much prep).

    As a specific note: huh! I have had several characters get chain-paralyzed on the first level of griffyard. I wonder how pathetic their PVs were...

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2014
    Posts
    426

    Default

    As a wizard, you always have the option to visit the library. I always do it as soon as i feel prepared. I usually spend some time in the first 2 ID levels to get some books and levels in the early game (right after getting the blanket in the SMC and killing the raider lord). And i usually farm herbs to get max Dx and Wi/To.

    I also always play Raven-born characters and always get the RCT at lvl 16, which is easy mode for Griffyard, regardless of resistances.

    This game gives you so many options to tackle different situations though... You might have the solution in your inventory .

    To answer your question though:

    I never go to the Ice Queen domain without +Invi (if/when i have =Cold and ring of fire, i kill almost everyone there, especially the Stalkers, for their yummy corpses); ToEF without enough -Fire is of course not a place to be too (although not much time is needed there to get intrinsic -Fire), as for offensive, i usually find the frost bolt to be enough to kill the ACW (especially if it's leveled).

    I always try to get +TCtrl and the wand of tele as soon as possible too.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Lithuania
    Posts
    4,280

    Default

    DH without teleport control... (other restrictions for wussies, IMHO). Now, I still could do without if I have magic map scrolls.
    So far rolled 15 casters with RoDS and shamelessly killed them within 200 turns. For eternium glory!
    (after 15 I stopped counting...)

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