The adventures of Shenneret the Wizard: Day 2

[annathepiper]

Slapping a cut tag on this for length, too!


The plan to find Fort Ludios was foiled on the grounds that as near as I can tell, heading all the way down to level 23 in search of it, this game has no Fort Ludios. There have been a mighty dearth of vaults, or at least a mighty dearth of vault noises. I'll keep doublechecking once I'm done with the Quest, but I'm pretty sure it ain't here.

Anyway, I opted to skip Sokoban since it seemed optional. I did after all have SDSM and the initial bag of holding. This turned out to be the right decision.

Highlights of the journey down to 23:

• There was a temple on level 9, but it was Neutral. Baby silver dragon Iskierka took out the priest, which got me a spellbook of teleport away, and an extra one of magic missile.
  
• Shortly thereafter, unfortunately, Iskierka ate a chameleon corpse and turned into a winter wolf cub. Foo.
  
• Another ghost level on 10! This one was a former Faanshi the healer, which netted me a boatload of gold and some useful spellbooks (healing, extra healing, stone to flesh). Also, an extra BoH. There was a vault on 10, but no Ludios portal in it.
  
• 11 was the Big Room, the basic rectangle variety. Notable monsters: a fire elemental (taken out by a wand of cold), a sasquatch, four sergeants (one of whom leveled up to lieutenant before I could take him out), and a couple of long worms. Picked up a magic whistle, finally, off one of the sergeants.
  
• 12 was mostly notable for being the location of taking out a winged gargoyle and an invisible incubus. Temeraire got the incubus.
  
• 13 was a big ol' leprechaun hall, 3x12 in size. With two noisy pets, I soon had a swarm of l's all over the level. Took out most of 'em, nonetheless. As expected, one of the bastards had a wand of digging and escaped down to level 14.
  
• Something killed Temeraire on level 14; I don't know what. I suspect a werewolf. Sniff.
  
• Lost Iskierka on level 15--though it occurs to me as I write this that that's also the level where the Quest portal is. It's possible Iskierka went across the Quest portal. I'll have to check when I start this game back up again. There was a general store on this level too, but nothing hugely interesting there.
  
• 17 was the Rogue level.
  
• 18 had an armor store, nothing useful.
  
• 19 had a small throne room, and I killed a titanothere there. The throne sadly didn't do anything interesting; one #sit and it went poof.
  
• 20 had another altar on it.
  
• 21 had another, smaller leprechaun hall, which as of this writing I have chosen to leave be for now.
  
• 22 had a bookstore, which netted me a scroll of remove curse and a sorely needed scroll of enchant armor. I charged up one of my magic markers and made a bunch more scrolls: a new charging for the other marker, and enough enchant armor to get me down to AC -19.
  

That brings me to level 23, which was a massive JACKPOT. Dual ghost level, this: one of my old Natil the Rangers, as well as a ghost of one of my housemate's characters. Four bags' worth of loot and then some, including two more luckstones, two more magic markers, a gray dragon scale mail, and JESUS GODS three, count 'em, three more magic lamps.

I took the opportunity to organize the hell out of all this ghost loot, generating a lot of holy water as I went, and soon got the lamps all blessed up. Lamp #1 gave me a djinn that immediately vanished. Lamp #2 gave me 2 blessed scrolls of genocide. To wit: MUAHAHAHA. Goodbye, L's. Goodbye, h's. (Though not without a small sniff on that latter, since poor hobbits and dwarves and bugbears are hapless side victims of my eradication of mind flayers. But hey. This is WAR, I tell you!)

Got a lot of the loot ID'd, got a third bag of holding out of the deal, and blessed it up along with the extra luckstones. Used and discarded both the magic markers. Lamp #3 is in reserve; still pondering what to use that wish on, or whether it'll be better to have a permanent light source.

By then I also had about 40,000 gold, so I decided I'd better return to the temple in Minetown for some protection. That got me down to about 4K and AC -24. It still amuses me that you can do this with priests that aren't your alignment, too.

Just for giggles, I went down a few more levels past Minetown in the Mines, looking to see if I could find Fred--since he'd up and disappeared on me, unlike Polly and George, who I know had gotten killed. I found Fred. He'd been turned into a brown pudding, in fact. No wonder he hadn't followed me!

Tonight's save point: back on level 15, Quest portal located. I have picked up pet #6: a large cat named Australia.

Tomorrow, since Ludios doesn't seem to be an option: the Quest.

Comments

[avram]

Thanks to you I just downloaded a NetHack port for my Nintendo DS.

[annathepiper]

Har! Glad to be of service! ;)

And, in case you're not already aware of it, let me recommend the Nethack wiki, chock full of all sorts of helpful (spoilerrific) data on the game.

[janne.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Nethack for DS sounds like great fun. But how would one go about actually downloading something to a DS? Is that possible without special skills and equipment?

[avram]

You need special equipment -- a flash cart -- but no fancy skills. I wrote an article about it for Tor.com last week with links to more info.