stairscumming

[B_C_]

How many ppl do it? I pretty much can't live w/o it. I always play gnome/elven wizard and hang around until i get the necessary books and lots of h2o potions maybe even a PoGA or 2. I know wizards are known for being somewhat overpowered but I've never gotten past lvl 30 and I can't stand spending hours getting decent chars to the CoC and dying just b/c RNG didn't make enough decent spellbooks.

Anyway I'm just trying to gauge how scummy ppl consider this and how common similar tactics are.

[omega_red]

Never bothered with ID/gremlin scumming. Won with wizard and druid so far, had more books than needed. Hopefully mindcrafter will come next.

[Baranor]

How do people Stairscum? I never did it until I heard of it on these forums. The only way that I can think to do it would be to repeatedly pres < and > until you find a room with stuff in it. Collect the stuff. Rinse. Repeat. Ad Nauseum. Is this what people do? Even now that I have done it, I can barely stand the boredom of it.

[LFk]

I think that if i had the patience to stair scum, I would much rather gremlin bomb instead.

There's more advantages to that, i think:

- The possibility of an artifact.
- Trains a skill to 100.
- Trains weapon skills.


I do scum the ID with some characters though. In particular, necromancers that start with the tract of chaos, its nice to have at least SOME spell to get you out of a jam. (Slow monster, Calm monster, Darkness etc.)

[gut]

Depends on what kind of a game I'm playing, and whether or not I
need the benefits it gives, namely books and blink dogs. With the
option of book-casting, combined with the waterproof blanket from
the SMC, I really don't need the ID for extra spellbooks. Blink dogs
usually turn up in short order also, so there really isn't a need to
stairhop for that either.

All that is for a 'normal' game. For challenge games like limited turns,
the ID is a great place to pick up hard-to-find books, very quickly. I
also think that all players that have yet to win a game should also
stair hop, even if it's just for a while. The extra items/books/blink dog
corpses can help a lot.

[vogonpoet]

Well like gut, I certainly dscum for teleport control dthere, but only if my PC gets teleportitusd from pool/codrpse/corruption and I don't yet haved a means of controlling my jumping around - findingd a blinkie elsewhedre in the game when you are bouncing around all over the place can be dangerous as well as frustrating. Jump up djump up and get down.

[LFk]

Sometimes, though, there really is just no way to make the character work, ID or not

[vogonpoet]

I had one elven wizard start with To 2 and St 3. Made it to level 5 I think in the ID before dying.
On the other hand, I have had another make it to Level 10, but still die from a stone block whilst at full HP.

Stone blocks suck. ^

[warheart]

I usually stairhop in the ID for blinkie corpses as well, if the PC has no food preservation it can be very hard getting a corpse if I don't stairhop (don't know why but blink dogs tend to not summon anything for me whenever I need them to summon, and then surround me asap when I already got a corpse :P).

[Silfir]

ID - Bleh. Stairhopping - ULTRABLEH.

(Don't mind me by any means. Though if you're on the "I can't live without" trip, I'd advise just playing without it for a while and learn to be more careful.)