annathepiper | The adventures of Shenneret the Wizard: Day 1 (Reply)

Very, very promising Nethack game in progress tonight. (ETA: slapping a cut on this for length.)

Important note of backstory for this game: I'd had two previous seriously nasty ghost levels. One was down on the Oracle level with a polymorph trap, where a red dragon had been generated, and which had caused the death of Harry, a previous promising wizard. Of note there was that Harry had also scored a pet djinn out of a magic lamp, so there were two reasons to be quite disturbed by that ghost level. Nasty ghost level #2 was Minetown, where a roving pack of soldier ants had taken out Natil the Ranger and Sokka the Barbarian.

Shenneret, Chaotic elven wizard, didn't start off any more impressively than many wizards--and as of this writing she's managed to lose three different cats as pets. However, she had a 20 INT. And a ring of slow digestion as well, which has proven a super-useful item for a wizard to have in her starting inventory. Notably, the game handed me an early altar on level 3, one level up from the Gnomish Mines. This scored me Magicbane, which makes a wizard game ever so much more entertaining.

So. Since I was very leery of triggering the early ghost levels, I sent Shenneret into the Gnomish Mines rather than heading down to Sokoban like I usually do in the first leg of the game. And, even though it meant crippling my spellcasting, I armored up from the first well-armored dwarf I managed to kill. Between that and Magicbane, I managed to work my way down to Minetown without much difficulty at all.

And there, I took out the soldier ants and the two ghosts that had previously haunted the level. This scored me absolute boatloads of ghost loot: including three, count 'em, three magic lamps. The first of these was quickly blessed, and got me blessed +3 silver dragon scale mail. I also managed to swap out my other metallic armor items, and along with throwing enough gold at the (cross-aligned) priest in Minetown, got my AC down to -12.

I'd lost cat #1, Polly, very early--I think a trap took her out in one of the upper levels. On my way down to the bottom of the Mines for the luckstone, I proceeded to lose cats #2 and #3, Fred and George. I believe I took a quick break to duck back out and head to the altar on level 3, as I recall, to generate some holy water so I could bless stuff. That scored me blessed +3 fireproof speed boots, though the third of the magic lamps actually spat out a peaceful djinn.

Once back in the Mines, I scored the luckstone fairly easily, and on the way back up, amazed myself by killing an air elemental.

And, once out of the Mines, I did actually trigger the second nasty ghost level. The red dragon was short work with hurled magic missile spells from a distance, as was my former wizard's pet djinn Lasciel. There turned out to be a second red dragon, too, though I only kept one souvenir set of red dragon scales.

Thanks to trying to quaff a few unidentified potions in the interests of lightening my load, I got polymorphed into a silver dragon--thereby losing the second of my cloaks of magic resistance (I'd had to swap out due to the first one getting damaged). For giggles, I dropped two eggs while polymorphed, and that resulted in baby silver dragons Temeraire and Iskierka.

A potion of gain level got me up to level 12. By then it was pretty darned late, so I figured it was a good point at which to save the game!

Wish me luck, folks. Tonight, I'm heading to Fort Ludios.

(x-posted between my journal and