Originally Posted by
Jack the Ripper
What artifacts do you guys normally offer to the ratling? So far I'm thinking of giving him the black torc, the phial of Caladriel, the sword of Nonnak, Big Punch and Moonsickle. Which should be the 6th? Ankh / AMW / EG? Any thoughts?
There's also the option to get the Dwarven Rune Axe from the Mystic. That means forfeiting his POSSIBLE SoCR, which in turn means it wouldn't really be advisable to take the black unicorn quest and/or eat Keethrax's corpse? Is the quest / eating the corpse worthwhile for all the corruption it'll cause? I'm planning on getting the Weird Tome and probably doing BugVille for the extra scrolls and nice items anyway. This L22 gnome archer will, I hope, be my first ultra. How much of a worry is corruption on ChAoS?
Normally, I prefer Big Punch, Black Torc, the Phial, Moon Sickle, the Ankh/Nonnak and the RoTHK. Nonnak I try to save if I'm playing a caster or semi-caster, because I like the +5 Wi for ball spells. Often I end up with at least one junk artifact that I can sac in place of RoTHK so that I can pursue the quests sooner if I need to.
As far as corruption goes, my feeling is that if you are playing a lawful, it is a non-issue. You can go in with essentially no corruption, so you can get cleansed, dive to D:50, teleport to the portal, and probably get in with 0-1 corruptions. Unless your character is very ill-prepared (or hits something like stiff muscles right away), then you should probably be able to win without any additional corruption removal--and you have 6 SoCR from Khelly (plus a few potions) at minimum to play with if you need them. Neutral/chaotic needs a bit more since you have to go in severely corrupted, so it is nice to have at least a few SoCR to cleanse yourself a bit, just in case.
Hoping to win with every class, doomed. Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Beastfighter, Druid, Elementalist, Farmer, Fighter, Monk, and ULE Priest down.