YAAP

Only my second and with an archaeologist no less!

I need that program that gives you a nice list of everything but until
I get and implement a copy I'll just give you it in brief.

I've been wanting to ascend an Archaeologist for a while now, mainly
because they're an inbetweeny class and they have a bit of everything,
intrinsic speed, expert in pick axe (and hence dwavish mattock), and
they're powers not terrible so they can cast a few decent spells.
They seem like a good choice but the early games a killer and until
you get your stats up and find a dwavish mattock, (of which I found
about 4 all game 3 of which went rusty), it's damn hard.

Pets are your friend though. and mine was no exception, handily
helping me rob a couple of shops on the way to the mines, got some
protection at exp 1 and I was away. Most of it was fairly straight
forward, did sokoban early on and then back down the mines to bless a
flint stone that I carried around with me for ages Stupidly I only
found out when I rubbed it on my touchstone by accident... I didn't
know you could identify stones with your touchstone too.... well...
you live and learn I guess... Found a Bag of holding in the mines
somewhere and a amulet of reflection in sokoban. Aces! I also found a
bones file from a valkyrie who was wearing suspicous gloves that
turned out to be gloves of dexterity and also a sword .. Excaliber!
Which I was restricted in... bummer.

So back down the mines and then onward... Bit of luck in that there
was an alter on the same level as the sokoban stairs and then another
on about level twenty something a level above medusa. Handy
placement!

Did a bit of alter camping, just walked around for what seemed like
ages to find any potions to convert to holy water, and scrolls to
blank and write enchant armours on. Was finally awarded with
Trollsbane, Sunsword, and finally Grayswandir! Yay! Just what I'd been
waiting for all along. Bumped it up to +5 then did medusa and the
castle.

At this point I was carrying Grayswandir in hand, alternative weapon
was a dwarvish mattock (rusty) and I had Excaliber +2 in my BoH.
(Excaliber was now unrestricted as I'd been awarded sunsword) So I
took Excaliber out and read a scroll of enchant weapon. "Grayswandir
vibrates rapidly and then evaporates" or words to that effect. Boobs!

I used my last wish from my wand of wishing (from the castle) on Frost
brand to give me a bit of ummph in the finale and then down into hell.

I actually don't find this bit as boring as everyone makes out, of
course I had magc mapping at this point which obviously helps
alot.....

Killed the demons and stuff no problem, the worst bit was when I
killed Rodney, picked up his corpse along with the amulet and promptly
forgot I had jut taken of my ring of levitation and dumped myself in
his moat. Fortunately I survived but I dropped his corpse, the amulet
and my beloved frost brand in the briney waters. I had to go up ten
levels back to the alter and find a wand of cold 0:3 go back down
freeze everything and dig it up again with my mattock (which was +0 as
I had had a run in with a disenchanter).

It was tense but with an armour class of -36 you're not going to be in
too much trouble, I did a bit of nurse dancing before hell just to
make sure too. And genocided just about everything I could think of.

Purple worms as pets are great. They must have killed Rodney about 4
or 5 times on the way up. The planes were fairly easy, found a scroll
of gold detection on the plane of earth which helped as I hadn't got
any. Just had to search the hard way for the other portals.

First alter I came too was lawful, job done.

Jommy the Spelunker
St:18/** Dx:23 Co:18 In:22 Wi:21 Ch:14
Hp:231 (237) Pw:62 (132) AC:-36 EXP:21 T:68439

amulet of life saving (being worn)
amulet of reflection

+0 dwarvish mattock
+5 frost brand (wielded)

Rustproof Helm of brilliance +5
Hawaiian shirt +3
fireproof speed boots +3
fireproof cloak of displacement +3
grey dragon scale mail +4



Vanquished creatures:

Asmodeus
Baalzebub
Orcus
Juiblex
The Wizard of Yendor (8 times)
a high priest
4 mastodons
Medusa
an Archon
2 iron golems
14 storm giants
2 titans
4 balrogs
The Minion of Huhetotl
10 purple worms
a gray dragon
a silver dragon
9 red dragons
6 white dragons
2 orange dragons
7 black dragons
4 blue dragons
4 green dragons
3 yellow dragons
13 minotaurs
3 jabberwocks
7 baluchitheria
Vlad the Impaler...

....88 leprechauns - ( i came across at least three leprechaun
halls!)

2784 creatures vanquished.


Genocided species:

hobbits
dwarves
bugbears
dwarf lords
dwarf kings
mind flayers
master mind flayers
liches
demiliches
master liches
arch-liches
gray oozes
brown puddings
black puddings
green slimes
jellyfish
piranhas
sharks
giant eels
electric eels
krakens

21 species genocided.

You went to your reward with 3428708 points,
Excalibur (worth 4000 zorkmids and 10000 points)
Frost Brand (worth 3000 zorkmids and 7500 points)
The Orb of Detection (worth 2500 zorkmids and 6250 points)
16 opals (worth 12800 zorkmids),
13 rubies (worth 45500 zorkmids),
7 aquamarine stones (worth 10500 zorkmids),
7 fluorite stones (worth 2800 zorkmids),
6 turquoise stones (worth 12000 zorkmids),
6 amethyst stones (worth 3600 zorkmids),
5 jacinth stones (worth 16250 zorkmids),
4 emeralds (worth 10000 zorkmids),
4 chrysoberyl stones (worth 2800 zorkmids),
3 diamonds (worth 12000 zorkmids),
3 garnet stones (worth 2100 zorkmids),
3 jasper stones (worth 1500 zorkmids),
3 obsidian stones (worth 600 zorkmids),
2 jet stones (worth 1700 zorkmids),
2 agate stones (worth 400 zorkmids),
1 citrine stone (worth 1500 zorkmids),
2 amulets of life saving (worth 300 zorkmids),
1 amulet of magical breathing (worth 150 zorkmids),
and 22849 pieces of gold, after 68439 moves.
You were level 21 with a maximum of 237 hit points when you ascended.

And I left behind 40000+ gold because I was too burdened


No Points
Name
Hp [max]
1 3894372 Poppy-Val-Hum-Fem-Law ascended to demigoddess-hood.
260 [270]
2 3428708 Jommy-Arc-Hum-Mal-Law ascended to demigod-
hood. 231 [237]
3 792003 Mr Beats-Hea-Gno-Fem-Neu died in The Quest on level
19 [max 30]. Drowned in a pool of water by a
giant

eel.
141 [143]

Woot!

> At this point I was carrying Grayswandir in hand, alternative weapon
> was a dwarvish mattock (rusty) and I had Excaliber +2 in my BoH.
> (Excaliber was now unrestricted as I'd been awarded sunsword) So I
> took Excaliber out and read a scroll of enchant weapon. "Grayswandir
> vibrates rapidly and then evaporates" or words to that effect. Boobs!
>

Grayswandir had to be at least +6 to evaporate. It wasn't still +5,
was it? Anyway, if you *really* want to enchant a +6 sword to +7,
[E]ngrave a letter first to bring enchantment down to +5. You could
also alleviate the rusty mattock by [a]pplying random potions to find
oil. Only oil can be applied, and dipping weapons in oil removes rust.

> I used my last wish from my wand of wishing (from the castle) on Frost
> brand to give me a bit of ummph in the finale and then down into hell.
>

Since you had two free hands, it would have been a good idea to
#twoweapon with another silver saber or a crysknife. Since you get a
full +6 strength bonus for your offhand weapon, twoweaponing two +7
long swords actually beats *any* single artifact, even the Tsurugi of
Muramasa!
Oh well, with AC:-36, you can afford to take your sweet time killing
things.

> I actually don't find this bit as boring as everyone makes out, of
> course I had magc mapping at this point which obviously helps
> alot.....
>
> Killed the demons and stuff no problem, the worst bit was when I
> killed Rodney, picked up his corpse along with the amulet and promptly
> forgot I had jut taken of my ring of levitation and dumped myself in
> his moat. Fortunately I survived but I dropped his corpse, the amulet
> and my beloved frost brand in the briney waters. I had to go up ten
> levels back to the alter and find a wand of cold 0:3 go back down
> freeze everything and dig it up again with my mattock (which was +0 as
> I had had a run in with a disenchanter).
>
Ugh, I hate those things. If you get a single genocide from a throne
("By thy imperious order, Sir..."), get rid of disenchanters.
Alternatively, if your luck and dexterity are good enough to hit
something with -10 AC, try using combat wands on them; you'll be
swimming in attack wands by the time you reach the castle.

Also, why the heck didn't you have a wand of cold in open inventory?
It can be a lifesaver if you get stuck in lava on a no-teleport level,
you know.
I always prefer to have wands of fire, cold, digging, teleportation,
and death in open inventory. Aside from the wand of death, these wands
are so common that there's no reason *not* to be carrying them.

> It was tense but with an armour class of -36 you're not going to be in
> too much trouble, I did a bit of nurse dancing before hell just to
> make sure too. And genocided just about everything I could think of.
>
Bad idea. Genociding a bunch of the "nasty" monsters increases the
chance of encountering archons among Rodney's pets in the main
dungeon. Genociding H won't take care of titans, so it increases
*their* frequency. Finally, since cockatrices are no threat to a
careful player, and a cockatrice corpse can clear Moloch's sanctum or
Astral and kill several Rodneys, I would *never* genocide c. In
general, I stop genociding at h, L, and maybe green slimes if I have
purple worm pets like you do.

> Purple worms as pets are great. They must have killed Rodney about 4
> or 5 times on the way up. The planes were fairly easy, found a scroll
> of gold detection on the plane of earth which helped as I hadn't got
> any. Just had to search the hard way for the other portals.
>
Yikes! Scrolls of gold detection are one of the cheapest scrolls. If
your luck is at maximum, you have a 1/3 chance of "blind-
writing" (i.e. attempting to write "gold detection" with a magic
marker) the scroll, so there's literally no reason not to. Spending
too much time on the planes because you lack a single scroll is a
*definite* no-no; at the very least you surely had a wand of secret
door detection to help, didn't you?

If you didn't have a marker, you could also polypile for gold
detection. Polypiling blessed scrolls works very well, because enough
scrolls of identify are generated during polypile for you to identify
unknown ones. Just #name the nth scroll you drop "n" for each n, and
you'll have a bunch of *non-stacking* blessed blank scrolls, giving
lots of opportunity to generate new ones.

Alternatively, if you *saw* the scroll of gold detection and didn't
identify it (say, because you blanked some unidentified 100 ZM scrolls
early on), you can write a scroll by its description ("DUAM XNAHT",
etc.) if you've seen it. If you had pressed "\" to page through your
discoveries in the late game, it's likely that you saw it at some
point.

> First alter I came too was lawful, job done.
>

Congratulations!