/dev/null/nethack Tournament 2009
Dec. 1st, 2009 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gullwhackerAnother November gone, and I've finished roughly where I did last year - top 5% by my estimate.
I did a little better than last year. Four ascensions instead of three, and three of those with no deaths in between. I just had some horrible luck with Gnomes that broke the streak. For the first time, I did some non-human ascensions; in particular, every race but elf. I ran out of time.
Some notes:
ZAPM: Easy enough. Hit Robot town, nuked everything, grabbed some useful disks. Spammed Portable Holes to go straight to the endgame, and landed next to the item. Easy peasy.
New Challenge: Beat DigDug before digging is unlocked. Okay, easy enough - except for a bug that makes it so that only killing enemies with the provided Weird Wand counts. And those miss sometimes. Somewhere, a character of mine is locked in that level, having destroyed everything there and still unable to leave...
Grue Challenge: Wand of Light, some lamps, bam.
Fruit Challenge: I tried actually using the pellets this year. Yay instakills on the ghost-demons!
First Ascension, Dwarf Caveman: Revenge of the Mysterious Force. Seriously, I lost count of how many times I got pulled back. Also, ran into reason for panic while in Moloch's Sanctum - the Wizard made a comeback, and swiped my Scepter - my only weapon, and an artifact that grants the holder Magic Resistance (and thus immunity to death ray). And then he summoned Minotaurs around me. I managed an escape, and came back with a big stick to bash him with. Hey, I did say caveman.
Second Ascension, Human Samurai: RNG didn't like me. Zero random altars generated, just about every shop generated was a semi-useless food shop. I think this was the run that didn't even have seven candles generated by endgame - I had to burn a wish to get some. Might I add that Minetown was cross-aligned? That took some finagling to get holy water. I managed, though. Eventually. Many failed artifact wishes, so I stuck with Excalibur and a silver saber. Challenging, but managed.
Third Ascension, Orc Barbarian. Yeah, it's cliche, but it worked. I feel sorry for all the pets I accidentally killed off, though. Stormbringer is absolutely fun. If I remember correctly, this is the one game I actually went with a Vladbane. Vlad the Impaler, lord of all vampires! As this includes Twilight-vampires, I decided to destroy his dignity by beating him to death with a stethoscope. It worked.
Fourth Ascension, Gnome Wizard. Wizards and healers are hard to start. Get started, though, and you're nigh-unstoppable. In this run, I absolutely broke the game in every way I could. My starting pet? Polymorphed into a Minotaur, destroyed every shop save Izchak. My starting quarterstaff? +6 before I really got going. My armor? What wasn't +5 was +6. AC -39. Spells? I polypiled in Minetown and wrote a few later on. Identify showed up early, a Wizard's Magic Missile is freaking powerful, Finger of Death kills half the enemies in the game in one shot, and Fireball/Cone of Cold clear out crowds with laughable ease. Magic Mapping made Gehennom a breeze, teleport control let me mock it even more so, the planes took two minutes apiece, and I rounded it all out by just abusing the call bug on Astral. This run broke the game. Easily.
If my luck had turned that Gnome's way before the last day, I might've had time to run an Elf through as well for the Hat Trick. Alas, I ran short on time. Still, a good year, and I know I'm improving.
So, time to take a break for another year. I might pick the game back up in a few months - Archaeologist, Knight, Monk, Priest, Rogue, and Ranger are the roles I haven't ascended yet. Should give some of 'em a shot.
Seriously, though. Wizard? Breaks the game over its knee. It's not really fair.
Any NetHack questions? Ask away.
I did a little better than last year. Four ascensions instead of three, and three of those with no deaths in between. I just had some horrible luck with Gnomes that broke the streak. For the first time, I did some non-human ascensions; in particular, every race but elf. I ran out of time.
Some notes:
ZAPM: Easy enough. Hit Robot town, nuked everything, grabbed some useful disks. Spammed Portable Holes to go straight to the endgame, and landed next to the item. Easy peasy.
New Challenge: Beat DigDug before digging is unlocked. Okay, easy enough - except for a bug that makes it so that only killing enemies with the provided Weird Wand counts. And those miss sometimes. Somewhere, a character of mine is locked in that level, having destroyed everything there and still unable to leave...
Grue Challenge: Wand of Light, some lamps, bam.
Fruit Challenge: I tried actually using the pellets this year. Yay instakills on the ghost-demons!
First Ascension, Dwarf Caveman: Revenge of the Mysterious Force. Seriously, I lost count of how many times I got pulled back. Also, ran into reason for panic while in Moloch's Sanctum - the Wizard made a comeback, and swiped my Scepter - my only weapon, and an artifact that grants the holder Magic Resistance (and thus immunity to death ray). And then he summoned Minotaurs around me. I managed an escape, and came back with a big stick to bash him with. Hey, I did say caveman.
Second Ascension, Human Samurai: RNG didn't like me. Zero random altars generated, just about every shop generated was a semi-useless food shop. I think this was the run that didn't even have seven candles generated by endgame - I had to burn a wish to get some. Might I add that Minetown was cross-aligned? That took some finagling to get holy water. I managed, though. Eventually. Many failed artifact wishes, so I stuck with Excalibur and a silver saber. Challenging, but managed.
Third Ascension, Orc Barbarian. Yeah, it's cliche, but it worked. I feel sorry for all the pets I accidentally killed off, though. Stormbringer is absolutely fun. If I remember correctly, this is the one game I actually went with a Vladbane. Vlad the Impaler, lord of all vampires! As this includes Twilight-vampires, I decided to destroy his dignity by beating him to death with a stethoscope. It worked.
Fourth Ascension, Gnome Wizard. Wizards and healers are hard to start. Get started, though, and you're nigh-unstoppable. In this run, I absolutely broke the game in every way I could. My starting pet? Polymorphed into a Minotaur, destroyed every shop save Izchak. My starting quarterstaff? +6 before I really got going. My armor? What wasn't +5 was +6. AC -39. Spells? I polypiled in Minetown and wrote a few later on. Identify showed up early, a Wizard's Magic Missile is freaking powerful, Finger of Death kills half the enemies in the game in one shot, and Fireball/Cone of Cold clear out crowds with laughable ease. Magic Mapping made Gehennom a breeze, teleport control let me mock it even more so, the planes took two minutes apiece, and I rounded it all out by just abusing the call bug on Astral. This run broke the game. Easily.
If my luck had turned that Gnome's way before the last day, I might've had time to run an Elf through as well for the Hat Trick. Alas, I ran short on time. Still, a good year, and I know I'm improving.
So, time to take a break for another year. I might pick the game back up in a few months - Archaeologist, Knight, Monk, Priest, Rogue, and Ranger are the roles I haven't ascended yet. Should give some of 'em a shot.
Seriously, though. Wizard? Breaks the game over its knee. It's not really fair.
Any NetHack questions? Ask away.
