Source
r/nethack•
theProject

YAFAP: when the RNG gives me a game even my incompetence on Astral can't mess up

Mon-Hum-Mal-Neu playing without bones files on my local machine. First time making it past Juiblex's Swamp (I died there the only previous time I made it to Gehennom). Destroyed my robe thanks to an unfortunate polymorph trap somewhere around DL9. Encountered a pair of speed boots early on - it wasn't until later on that I realized how helpful this was. Sokoban had the bag. Sacrificed for Magicbane. Got nine points of intrinsic protection, then still had too much gold, so I kept donating and lucked into another point. Received a total of eight wishes: smoky potions were, quite conveniently, potions of fruit juice, so I got one wish from alchemizing potions of confusion and booze and blessing the resulting fruit juice. The other seven came from the castle wand, which was discovered at (0:3). Near-suicidally played with a magic trap which produced a Nazgul and an Ogre King and decided that was enough.

Wished for a replacement robe, scrolls of charging, a magic marker, a helm of brilliance, amulet of reflection, another magic marker, scrolls of genocide (after running into a master lich and deciding "nope"). Wrested the last wish later for free action. Consistently had weight issues in Gehennom, probably caused by my habit of picking up every last gold piece on the ground, so occasionally returned to the Valley of the Dead (the long way) to donate to the Priest of Moloch on the offchance that I luck out and get some more protection... which I did for an additional two points. On the way back I took the time to dig tunnels between staircases on each level of Gehennom.

Took care of the quest after dealing with Vlad. Ran into a third magic marker on the way back. Alchemy, wraith corpses (I'm a bad monk) and dancing with more nurses than a doctor under ethics review got me to almost 400HP. Invaded Rodney's tower, he cast Double Trouble, I killed both of them ... and then I never saw Rodney again, until his mandatory appearance on the Plane of Earth. Mysterious force wasn't too much trouble. Elemental planes were straightforward. Then I got to Astral - with five blessed !ofFH, two /oD (Orcus wasted all of his charges, of course, but I wrote charging), two "oLS, AC -29 and XP 29. Change out reflection for life saving because I think maybe I'll need it (even though I've been getting by just fine so far).

First try: left temple. It's guarded by Death. Okay, don't zap death at Death, got it. Don't zap teleportation at death either, got it. Decided to zap teleportation ahead of myself and try to outrun Death instead (this is basically my real life philosophy too). "Yada yada Priest of Chih Sung-tzu something something." SWEET! Found the right altar on my first try.

Get up to the altar, take a closer look at the high priest, and ... something something Huan Ti. Wait, what? Oh, that was a PRIEST of Chih Sung-tzu. Not the HIGH PRIEST of Chih Sung-tzu. Never mind. Make my way back down to the lobby. Quaffed one of the !oFH just in case - Death had reduced me down to ~270HP max. Took the second !oFH out of my bag and into open inventory in case I needed to quaff right away. "Yada yada the bolt of something hits you." "Something something your potion of full healing explodes!" Dammit. Okay. Try second temple. It's guarded by Famine. Famine kicks my ass because I can't stuff my face with the ~20 lumps of royal jelly I brought AND cure stunning AND heal myself at the same time. I've also run out of charges on my wands of teleportation because I was quite liberal in using them to get around Gehennom on the ascension run (to avoid encountering Rodney too much).

Get to the altar, and it's Shan Lai Ching, because of course. So now I gotta deal with Famine again on the way down, and two !oFH later, I'm still trapped next to Famine, and I have a bigger problem because I'm also fainting from hunger so I stuff my face with the royal jelly and figure that the "oLS will act as a de facto !oFH. I die. I come back. I still gotta clear the path in front of me, though, and I have no teleportation, so I just zap death in front of me instead. (Death is just teleportation to the afterlife, right? ... For those of you who see the silliness in this strategy, keep reading.) Escaped Famine with one !oFH, one charged /oD, and one "oLS (worn).

Make my way over to the third altar. "Wait, wands of death work on the other two Riders that aren't Death, right? Why didn't I just zap death at Famine? Gosh, I'm so stupid." Okay, gonna zap death at Pestilence the moment we meet.

"The bolt of lightning hits you! Your wand of death explodes!"

...

...

...

Look at inventory. It was the spent /oD that exploded. Cannot believe my luck. Change out "oLS for "oR, zap death at Pestilence, race to the altar, drain that last !oFH just for the heck of it, and offer the Amulet. I think next time I'll just keep reflection on.

Posted Feb 3, 2019, 8:17 AM UTC

127
Widmo•

Neat, congratulations! Royal jelly is nice but is not that much nutrition. I prefer lembas wafers for nourishing after confrontation with Famine. From 400 max health down to 270 is tough though, Death is no joke.

2
Arlnoff•

K-rations can be eaten in one turn and are very filling btw

2
Cupules•

<- This. The only ascension-worthy food.

Unless you are in a variant where a monster can genocide all the humanoids before any soldiers are generated. Which of course I am :-P

1
AmyBSODSLEX dev, 23 ascensions across various variants•

Wait, you weren't wearing reflection on Astral??? That's just begging the game to kill you. Amazed that it didn't happen. And congratulations! :)

2
theProjectOP•

My thought process at the time was "the Riders will probably hit very hard and they don't use ranged attacks so reflection won't help against them and it'd be really stupid if I died with two "oLS still in my posession". (Incidentally, had I known the Riders have such low HP I might've tried my luck in melee instead of running away. Part of my problem with Famine was focusing exclusively on clearing the escape path while Famine continued to wail away at me.)

You'd think I would've seen the flaw in this thinking after the first bolt of whatever destroyed my !oFH, but nope. I did panic and put on reflection when I saw a black dragon up around the second altar, then swapped it back out for life saving again after it died... looking back now and having learned from this, I feel like Astral should have gone a lot more smoothly with two charged /oD and five !oFH. Turns out all that preparation wasn't for the Riders - it was for my own incompetence.

2
AmyBSODSLEX dev, 23 ascensions across various variants•

Yeah the amulet of reflection kind of sucks, reflection can also be gotten from the armor slot while the only available slot for life saving is the amulet, but in vanilla NetHack, item destruction runs SO rampant, as in "get hit by an elemental attack once, ALL vulnerable items that your strategy depends on immediately go poof with laser-point accuracy" kind of rampant. You simply don't run around without reflection, unless you want to play without your rings and wands :P Having potions and scrolls in open inventory is still a bad idea even with reflection, at least in the 99% of the game where fire traps (or magic traps that can randomly give the "lol-I-act-like-a-fire-trap effect" when triggered) can spawn, and I do seem to recall somehow losing potions and scrolls to fire even in astral despite having reflection (don't remember how that happened)...

Keeping a hostile rider next to you is just asking for stunlock, and also they deal tremendous amounts of damage in melee, up to 128 per round if they get the best roll I think? I've died to Pestilence's stunlock before. Potions of full healing very annoyingly don't clear the stun and he was killing me so fast that I ran out of such potions and died. :(

1
theProjectOP•

I was playing as a Monk, so I didn't bother with body armor. I suppose given that the only other source of reflection was from the amulet that I had a choice to make between reflection and life saving. If I had to do it again I'd probably make the better choice. :)

I wasn't carrying the potions in open inventory until I got to Astral because of the fire traps, but after that I figured I wouldn't want to burn a turn getting stuff out of a bag if I were in the middle of an emergency. Turns out it just made the emergency even worse.

2