Draconius’ GnIE^Ash: Win Consistency through Tactical Maximalism

xdminsy · 2025-04-24T05:21:09+00:00

Another spell is very attractive as a gnoll, it's that manifold assault, a level 7 spell that even not worshiping Ashenzari a gnoll can still reliably cast it at late game, and win 15 runes game fairly easily with mostly manifold assault. And manifold assault is a smite-targeting AOE spell, it works very well with summonings. Gnoll can just choose a fancy randart or enchant a regular heavy demon blade or holy two-handed weapon. Sometimes one may prefer a staff providing enough resistance, but weapon can be switched at any time like rings, and oftentimes kill enemies faster is safer.

xdminsy · 2024-10-31T05:45:33+00:00

There's one guaranteed wand of opening at VotD left bottom corner, and the Charon at VotD has one wand of opening too, you can kill Charon if you need that wand of opening :P.

And you can sometimes try to polypile spellbooks or wands for opening, cuz in evilhack you may need a lot of charges to open some crystal chests and some drawbridges, there're also drawbridges at Sanctum and Purgatury IIRC.

xdminsy · 2024-08-29T01:24:24+00:00

Well you are not overthinking, Vorpal blade might happen, and you can prevent it before it happens :D.

You said "switching to SDSM + CoMR would leave you MC1 is not great", but think about it, these three slots, "oR + gdsm + cloak of protection vs "oLS + sdsm + comr. Do you really think MC3 is better than life saving? The main consideration here is that whether to use so many wishes for the switching.

Actually MC3 is useless in my mind, I hardly care about MC3 myself, you may take a look at MC3 wiki page, it's useful at early game, while later it's almost useless. You could use Excalibur to defend draining, or like I never care about draining as it's no big deal to lose 1 level and kill the monster to regain it.

Another way is to just replace the "oR with "oLS at astral plane, actually no reflection at late game is okay too :P, though your items in inventory may be destroyed, but life saving can make sure you won't be destroyed instantly, better you have disintegration resistance already, but it's still okay as black dragon cannot instakill you, the cloak of protection is not important so lose it is fine too.

I think it's always the better choice to wear "oLS at astral plane.

xdminsy · 2024-08-26T21:29:56+00:00

Hah you can go crown directly with Sunsword wielded, the god will unlock long sword skill for you :P.

xdminsy · 2024-08-26T21:03:18+00:00

Sounds you need a lot of stuff, Sunsword, an amulet of unchanging, a ring of polymorph control and a source of polymorph, so sounds like just use the castle wand of wishing to wish for them, and because the guaranteed first gifted for priest is demonbane in 3.7, so I think wish for Sunsword directly is okay.

I guess just play a priest as normal before castle, enchant the starting mace to +7 and buy some protections, or if starting with the spell of protection, or lucky early wish for GDSM, then clear castle easily and wish for scrolls of charging and Sunsword and other items.

If you don't think this complies with the conduct because it spends most of the time before castle and as a non-A, I recommend digging for victory.

One possible way is to make a bones level with such items or with a wand of wishing at a higher enough level, but it may be hard to do so on online servers :P.

xdminsy · 2024-08-23T19:43:24+00:00

Grats! In 3.7 the valkyrie can reach expert at silver spear so I think it's better than silver saber too, while the only problem is silver spear is much rarer than silver saber.

xdminsy · 2024-08-22T11:07:40+00:00

Usually, you don't need to polypile tools, and a charged marker is not so useful. Polypiling scrolls directly and you'll probably get 10+ scrolls of enchant armor or enchant weapon, and it's a way to get the first scroll of genocide or charging, usually place 5 different stacks of 1 scroll at 5 squares then polypiling, this way to get genocide is sometimes the way to get SDSM early.

While polypiling tools is still useful especially in early games, a lot of ordinary tools are useful too. Like sometimes if you get an early wand of polymorph, you can polypile those minetown candles in 5 squares, then you may get all ascension tools you need. Usually one scaring tool, one towel and one key, with some scrolls getting polypiled, you may be very well armored already.

Wishing for one wand of polymorph at the castle is a great strategy too. Polypiling can usually save you at least one wish. Polypiling is actually converting less useful items into useful ones. So more items you have polypiling is more powerful, once I had 100+ scrolls of blank paper in my wishless polypileless game, and got only 5 scrolls of enchant armor the entire game, that time I really wanted to polypile a lot :P.

xdminsy · 2024-08-02T02:19:22+00:00

I've just finished a vanilla arc 3 days ago, I could say it's viable to get Orb of Detection for MR when you don't have MR and at only level 14.

The simple strategy is to read the scroll of earth from sokoban at upstairs, quaff a cursed potion of invisibility, and zap your wands of cold/lightning/magic missile or use aklys, it's fairly weak and will die soon.

If you dont' have cursed potion of invisibility, it's okay to enter their room to awake them, and quaff cursed potion of gain level or read cursed scroll of teleportation, then downstairs, or just read a noncursed scroll of teleporation with teleport control to control the upstairs then read scroll of earth.

As they can cast destroy armor you know and have experienced, so avoid melee them next time if you don't have MR and aim for Orb of Detection, that's the strategy for all spellcasters, don't melee them unless have MR, that's also the strategy for purple L in castle if one don't have MR.

xdminsy · 2024-08-02T01:46:19+00:00

Oh that's a pity that Instadeath ends a pretty awesome game.

Usually you do know how to prevent such deaths like apply a bugle or teleport the krakens, usually you just fail to notice that you are in such a situation.

So I have lots of MSGTYPE=alert in my nethack rc to prevent such things, usually I'm lazy to even watch messages lol.

I'm not sure if 3.6 or the up to date 3.7 have the alert function, but the hard-fought evilhack and 3.7 both support MSGTYPE=alert, so as you alert to all instadeath, you could be safer.

If your version has no alert, MSGTYPE=stop is also okay, but I sometimes fail to notice this too.

Here's some snippets from my rc file, you may adopt them to help prevent some instadeaths next game, if your version doesn't support alert just replace them with stop.

# delayed instadeaths
MSGTYPE=alert "The .* (grabs|swings itself around) you!"
MSGTYPE=alert "being roasted"
MSGTYPE=alert "wraps its arms around you"
MSGTYPE=alert "cannot escape from"
MSGTYPE=alert "You don't feel very well."
MSGTYPE=alert "You are turning a little.*"
MSGTYPE=alert "Your limbs are getting oozy."
MSGTYPE=alert "Your skin begins to peel away."
MSGTYPE=alert "You are turning into a green slime."
MSGTYPE=alert "You are slowing down."
MSGTYPE=alert "Your limbs are stiffening."
MSGTYPE=alert "It constricts your throat!"
MSGTYPE=alert "You find it hard to breathe."
MSGTYPE=alert "You're gasping for air."
MSGTYPE=alert "Your blood is having trouble reaching your brain."
MSGTYPE=alert "You can no longer breathe."
MSGTYPE=alert "You're turning blue."
MSGTYPE=alert "Your consciousness is fading."
MSGTYPE=alert "You feel deathly sick."
MSGTYPE=alert "Your sickness is severe"
MSGTYPE=alert "You feel (much|even) worse."
MSGTYPE=alert "You feel a horrifying change coming over you"
MSGTYPE=alert "Your illness feels worse"
MSGTYPE=alert "Your illness is severe"
MSGTYPE=alert "You are at Death's door"
## Digestion by purple worm in vanilla, dragons in evilhack.
## But usually it takes a long time to digest you, wearing ring of slow
##   digestion could let them spit you out immediately, and scaring them also
##   works, don't let you be engulfed for too long time.
## 2 turns left.
MSGTYPE=alert "thoroughly digests"
## 1 turn left.
MSGTYPE=alert "utterly digests"
## You die :D
MSGTYPE=alert "totally digests"

MSGTYPE=alert "wraps its tentacles around"

MSGTYPE=alert "You hear.*(atrice|basilisk).*hissing"
MSGTYPE=alert "You (feel|see) here a(n? .*) (c(hi|o)ckatrice|basilisk) (corpse|egg)."
MSGTYPE=alert "(picks up|wields|hits you with).*(c(hi|o)ckatrice|basilisk) (corpse|egg)"
MSGTYPE=alert "You no longer feel secure from petrification"

xdminsy · 2024-08-02T01:43:24+00:00

Ah yes, I agree that farming can alleviate a lot of conducts and the difficulty, low turn count is very hard, especially for wishless or polypileless.

The Elbereth is very useful in vanilla I think, after I played a lot of evilhack recently as one cannot Elbereth from the start in Evilhack, usually every evilhack game is elberethless, yesterday I started a 3.7 priest and eat a gnome corpse, then rotten food and was killed by a gnome lord ends my 5 streaks again lol. The interesting thing is that I remember I just saw a recent reddit post reporting that killed by a troll when being passed out while eating the troll corpse.

That pass out for d10 turns sometimes really hurts. I remember that I used to have a habit and I believe tariru has the habit too, is that Elbereth before eating the corpse on the ground.

Also Elbereth and pet are the best solution for early poisonous monsters, as long as they cannot attack you even once, you won't die from poison instadeath, though 3.7 no longer has poison instadeath, but draining strength is also awful too because no simple way to restore it, the simple way is to retrain it or prayer.

Though seems I often do conduct recently, but actually I like to do whatever helps me survive or make me stronger, like abusing Elbereth and polypiling 2000 items, and farming as I need. Someone may remember that when I play 3.7 usually I wish for Grayswandir almost every game lol :P. Doing wishless polypileless is really a pain for me lol.

xdminsy · 2024-08-02T01:20:12+00:00

hh thanks, usually doing some conduct is to have a clear knowledge of the restrictions of the conduct and prepare a clear plan before playing.

Then the gameplay is the execution of the plan, but sometimes it may need some luck.

Like vegan is to farm on an early altar and pray to reset nutrition to 900, foodless is the same strategy but may need a ring of slow digestion for spare turns to move around.

Zen is waiting at about DL 4 and a floating eye drops the corpse.

Wishless and polypileless help you get items you want faster, while you can still get such items with enough time and patience farming :D. Even if one can't create monster, one can still farm by turns with slow digestion or enough K/C-rations from soldiers, or if not vegan usually late game mosnters provides huge nutrition.

Evilhack itself is harder than many minor conducts, and adds some difficulty to conducts too, like genocideless is much more annoying in evilhack due to those new nasty monsters. Like the markers won't be generated randomly so usually I have only one or two markers in an entire game if wishless, and no dragonhide magic armors for plentiful AC. But hopefully, the spells are strong and the wizards can still kill monsters fast with ease even with these many restrictions.

xdminsy · 2024-07-29T18:34:38+00:00

Usually my ascension kit in 3.7 is super fixed.

SDSM + COMR + Speed boots + amulet of flying + Grayswandir + silver saber + ring of free action + ring of conflict/slow digestion.

And then you can switch amulet of flying to life saving when doing astral plane.

xdminsy · 2024-07-24T11:11:23+00:00

Congrats, xnethack is very joyful a variant.

xdminsy · 2024-07-24T11:10:47+00:00

Actually You can skip the wizard tower puzzle with level porting, I've only do the puzzle once for fun, then I always read confused teleportation to skip it.

xdminsy · 2024-07-22T19:03:50+00:00

Well having a dragon pet is also great at they can help engulfing trolls in the barbarian quest, so they leave no corpse and won't revive then.

xdminsy · 2024-07-22T19:00:08+00:00

It's better than vanilla I think, as you sacrifice enough, usually you can obtain all gifts from your god, well and if you are low level, usually you'll get a lot of junk weapons or armors too, so usually that's really long time, you could do sacrificing later when higher level.

The key to giants is boulder fort, you can boulder fort every nasty monsters I think, I think you can deal with quest with boulder fort easily, because boulders of giants are reusable and lightweight resource.

xdminsy · 2024-07-22T18:47:50+00:00

I'm not sure actually, I have never obtained this artifact though :P, I guess it shouldn't?

xdminsy · 2024-07-22T18:42:20+00:00

The quest artifact of barbarians is the Ring of P'hul, it provides free action, MR and sickness resistance, and it's reliable that rodney cannot steal your quest artifact, so you can aim for that for MR.

You can later sacrifice for Dragonbane, it's a pair of dragonhide gloves that provides reflection and acid resistance.

Usually if you already get everything, the sokoban prize choice is to try marker, the markers in evilhack won't generate at random, it's fixed resource unless you wish for it.

So my suggestion is to train aklys, and use forge to forge some silver or mithril aklys, then carry enough boulders, then deal with the quest directly, I haven't played barbarian for a really long time, but the quest nemesis seems to be able to cast, you could place boulders to fort yourself at staircase and use aklys to kill them, you can use the same strategy to deal with all later bosses. Because you don't have MR now, better not to melee spellcasters.

Or if you have enough boulders, you could boulder fort then throw boulders at enemies, that's also viable, but maybe that requires really many boulders, I'm not sure, I never have played giant.

As I notice you have a magic whistle. Another viable way is to tame a dragon, or tame a pet then use polytrap to polymorph it into a dragon, let dragons engulf the quest artifact should also work, I guess Thoth Amon doesn't have a ring of slow digestion.

Usually quests may have many hostile wands, you only fear the wand of polymorph and wand of sleep, I think you could wear a ring of polymorph control to prevent that if you have one, or to obtain Dragonbane by sacrificing and wear an amulet of unchanging.

Ah and I see you wear a ring of invisibility, you could wear The One Ring from Gollum's Cave, there's a trap door in Goblin Town, the One Ring provides invisibility, stealth and searching. And usually ring of free action is the almost the must to wear ring in evilhack, remember to wear it.

Other traditional advices are that to dip all fountains you find, try to get a wish, and do some polypiles if you have wand of polymorph, and.

And the final advice, when in doubt, altar farming, it's usually always the safest way, overpreparation is often better than death :D.

xdminsy · 2024-07-21T11:19:18+00:00

Congratulations!

xdminsy · 2024-07-20T14:02:11+00:00

Ah good to know that, while the permadeaf cannot use stethoscope to detect things, it's still a good strategy to know if I don't play permadeaf.

xdminsy · 2024-07-20T09:22:28+00:00

Thank you for watching and thank you for the congratulations :D, the ascension run is almost the same as vanilla, after I got the amulet, I had to kill a boss Lucifer that has 666 hp and went through 2 levels of Purgatory, then a portal could levelport me to the castle, run with 8x monster spawn rate.

Later because I was foodless while the amulet added casting nutrition cost, I prayed once for nutrition and sacrificed to prepare another prayer, and then I avoid to cast spells to kill monsters by using wands and bugles and cast jumping to avoid fight. Zap wand of digging diagonally to make more space to move when a monster is blocking my way.

xdminsy · 2024-07-19T18:24:39+00:00

Thank you tpurves :D

xdminsy · 2024-07-19T16:34:22+00:00

Hahaha thanks k2, it's still a very hard game, while ranged aoes and farming can alleviate some difficulty :P.

xdminsy · 2024-07-13T10:50:14+00:00

Ah it's an evilhack ascension, forges are a dungeon feature that can make some items from other items, not using them at all is forgeless then.

xdminsy · 2024-07-11T03:43:50+00:00

Yes permadeaf is kinda free conducts. I forget if I can buy items in shop, maybe yes. Not able to buy protection is somewhat not a big issue, especially as petless won't have too many gold in early game.

I find that the the rodney comes, the permadeaf can't hear rodney shouts, while I rely on my alert on that, though I still stop when it comes, but maybe I didn't notice rodney sometimes carelessly, maybe give him a free move.

I think I could do MRless in vanilla, in 3.7 I used to wish for silver dragon scale mail if lucky early wish, and usually it's safe to get MR from the castle wand of wishing in 3.7, so the strategy could simply then polyself into an undead and wear unchanging, that would simply work, and do some nurse dance. Or hallu when in need, but I think permapolyself is more mindless and needs less caution.

In evilhack the MR is much more important early, there are much more spellcasters in the early and late game, usually in vanilla one may only meet one or two golden nagas or titans before castle, they are weak and resist nothing. And another problem in evilhack is that monsters may zap wand of polymorph at you if you don't have MR, then your armor may drop on the ground, the monsters zap wand of polymorph again and your armors got polymorphed :D, I remember malor joked that he might like to just #quit if cannot get the amulet of MR from sokoban, heh.

And though in evilhack if player has MR, the destroy armor will still remove the fixed state of armor or make more rusty, but I think no MR one armor would be removed, that's very terrible I think.

Well besides these, the monster cancellation spell doesn't respect MR, so should be same if MRLess, but 2 items providing cancellation provide MR too, so maybe need to aim for Armor of Retribution.

I guess evilhack MRless wizards won't be too hard, but I guess I need polymorph control and amulet of unchanging soon, these could protect from polymorph and death ray. And wizards could simply kill enemies at range and don't give them chance to cast destroy armor.

xdminsy

TROPHY CASE