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General Strategy

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This page is for general strategy applicable to any character or class. While some are for beginners, other may also be of use to more experienced players.

Movement and actions[]

  • Proceed slowly and with caution. Think. Go slowly. When in trouble, pause, think, check your inventory, etc.
    • When all else fails or seems hopeless, remember that prayer is an option. (results vary by belief);
    • Recognizing/anticipating (potentially) dangerous situations is a KEY skill to develop;
    • This is a game about learning and discovery. If you do die, reflect on what went wrong and learn. Odds are you failed at going slowly and deliberately.
  • Do not hesitate to go back up the dungeon if creatures become too hard;
    • (Roughly) 500ft, 1000ft, 1500 are interesting milestones. Should I go forward? if monsters get too hard, then go back up;
    • Resting is an option. Go back a level or two and rest when Health and Mana are low!;
    • The gnome mines (if you can handle the walkers) and the strange caves provide extra "easy" levels. Use them to level up XP, HP, mana, and skills.
  • Being burdened is NOT good and can be deadly!
    • Setup a stash location ideally in a sanctuary and network it with gems portals.
    • You are hauling stuff to sell it to a nearby trader, carry the extra weight in a sack and drop it at the first sight of an enemy. Pick it up after the fight.

Pets[]

  • Pets are essential companions and will help you greatly especially in the early game.
    • Some pets (canines and felines) can detect the Blessed/Uncursed/Cursed status of items. Have your pet pick up everything first then "take" it from them once in a while from the pet menu;
    • Make your life easier, program Pet actions "Fetch" on a hotkey, along with "Attack". Note: you can assign multiple pets to a single hotkey;
    • You can tame (adopt) a dog you encounter in the dungeon by feeding him food. This will turn him into a pet;
    • Hacker (hp, damage), mimic (storage), master lich (summons) make interesting pets;
    • Drop 20+ Blue Mushroom to spawn a Pixie pet that will heal you and attack with lightning.

Food[]

  • On food for sustenance and getting intrinsics:
    • Consider healing a fallen creature when harvesting (think Bit of Hill Giant Innards or Blob of Floating Eye Goo). You may get multiple bits per creature this way;
    • You can "cook" food with a Wand of Fire, increasing its calories;
    • You can "freeze" food with Wand of Cold making it last longer before going bad;
    • You can sell fresh, old, rotten or smelly food to the shopkeeper and buy them back as fresh. Use the shopkeeper as a magical refreshing freezer;
    • Food is better in your stomach then in inventory (where it goes bad over time) BUT do not overeat as to prevent you from drinking potions without choking;
    • Quaffing from a drain will make you vomit resulting in i) an EMPTY STOMACH ii) sickness. This allows the player to avoid choking from overeating. This is very useful when trying to eat high nutrition foods or quaff potions that give useful properties, such as hill giant innards to gain +1 strength or bottles of holy wine to increase max HP. Consider dropping a portal next to a drain for repeated use;
    • The Amulet of slow digestion reduces the "time pressure" to move downward to get more food. Only the fear of forgetting spells over time prevents you from "resting" between every battle.

Spells and spellcasting[]

  • Do not let mana go to waste, if you have spellcasting abilities. When mana is full, cast spells (even if they are useless) to increase skill proficiency;
  • Be strategic in your proficiency picks as the schools of magic are opposite (Life vs Death, Light vs Dark). Don't increase your Dark school if you want to zap every creature with the very powerful level 5 lightning spell;
  • Skill Life Level 3 is interesting if you intend to farm (items, XP, gold) creatures with the create monster spell;
  • You can bind a spell to a staff and cast it without possibility of failure or mana cost.
    • Bind a gem to a staff to "store" even more charges;
    • Think about a staff bound with a diamond storing 8 charges of identify spell. Clean wounds and healing are also strong options.
    • It is also a nice and easy way to improve your skill level in a school of magic.
  • Some spells are good retreat/defensive measures: teleport away, sleep, wizard lock (freezes monsters),
  • On polymorphing (with control) offers a lots of strategical options:
    • Offers a (limited) kind of life saving;
    • Allows you to learn some spells immediately (kobold shaman, lich, master lich, etc.) with no timeout;
    • Consider reading spellbook while polymorphed into a lich, or another high INT/WIS creature, they will be easier to learn and have a very long timeout.

Combos[]

Items[]

Identification[]

  • Identifying items is the KEY to surviving, and eventually winning.
    • Scroll of Identify and Spellbook of Identify (if you have the light skill level and can afford the mana) are great;
    • Scroll of identify are the cheapest and most numerous scrolls in the game; in the early game if you gather 3 scrolls of a kind they are likely scroll of identify;
    • Sanctuary are key locations in the game as their altar identifies the BUC status of items and the Friar can set the Blessed attribute on items.
    • Some Talents can help: Commerce, Literacy and Weapon knowledge;
    • Identifications services provided by Traders;
    • Throwing a wand at a creature may identify it (for some types only) without using any charges;
    • Wands have a different "beam" appearance when zapped. They are always the same between run, learn to recognize them;
    • Traders can help you with Price Identification. i.e. narrow down what an unidentified item is based on its price.

Scrolls[]

Bags[]

  • Bags are very useful finds. To identify them (in this order):
    • Put one item into the bag, if it turns to coins, it is a midas bag that allows you to easy convert items in to gold;
    • Become burdened (pick up a chest for instance), then USE the bag. if your burden level goes down then it is a Bag of holding;
    • otherwise, it is a leather bags and sacks. They are useful to protect your inventory from monster attacks; Perform the Use command on them. You can also drop one at strategic location to create a stash.

Potions[]

Dungeon features[]

Portals[]

  • Orange Portal Stone and Blue Portal Stone are extremely useful to move around the dungeon;
    • When close to the portal, use the "turn" option of the portals to avoid having Pets or Creature using your portals. Your portal will now offer a menu to choose which opposite color portal to go to;
    • Sanctuary with their Friar are great hub and stash locations;
    • If you have enough portal stones, consider dropping stones next to: Top of dungeon, Blacksmith, Shopkeeper, Baker.

Doors[]

Dungeon branches[]

  • The Gnome mines, a special dungeon branch, are important to increase your XP, HP, mana, and skills;
    • The Gnomish walkers (all variants) are dangerous and will cause gnomes to come of of the small doors;
      • Kill them quickly (or use them to farm gnomes for wands);
      • Lightning (either via spell or wand) is ideal to kill the gnomes riding the walkers.
    • If a Pickaxe does not spawn in the Gnome Mines, you can use a Firestone to explode the rocks are the end of every tunnel. You can also wish for a -9 pickaxe from fountains;
    • The wine cellar, at the bottom of the mine, has lots of bottles of wine;
      • Get the key from the Gnome King;
      • Get the potions blessed. Finally, make sure you at full HP before you drink them to receive permanent health.
  • The Strange Crystal Caves, a special dungeon branch, require a source of light to navigate;
    • They can help level up your character in the early game as the creatures there are relatively low level;
    • Provide a nice opportunity to level up your low-level weapon skills against the small crystals that do not fight back;
    • Provide a nice source of gems and blue and orange portal stone;
    • Have a strange contraption at the bottom that allow to make a very strong weapon;
    • Note: You do not need to run the cave in one go. The larger crystal create an additional risk. Consider turning around when reaching them and coming back later.
  • Fort Ludious is entirely optional. It can be pretty though, especially the Roman Archer - one of the few missile firing creature in the game.

Class Strategies[]

Refer to the strategy section of individual pages for each class.

Miscellaneous[]

  • Tub of Lard and Tub of Grease can be used to remove Cursed weapons;
  • Apply Tub of Lard or Tub of Grease your headgear to prevent Mindflayer and Master Mindflayer from brainsucking you;
  • Traps will eventually run out of charges if continuously triggered. The invisibility trap should be walked over repeatedly to prevent invisible creatures;
  • The Magic Whistle can be made into a mighty weapon and passively equipped on the wearer's back. This is in addition to any primary mighty weapon you may have;
  • If you play on a computer, consider running the game in windowed mode instead of having the game filling out the whole screen. This allows you to have a considerably longer width than height. This allows you to see much farther on the screen and the Player will therefore be less startled by enemies and can prepare better;
  • Ladders can be a safe place from flying creatures (ravens, bat, possessed weapon, etc.). If you position yourself between levels, they will not go UP nor attack you. They will go DOWN however. Shoot them with a range weapon;
  • In dark room, aim a range weapon or spell and scan the room with your pointer to reveal items and creatures that are hidden;
  • Be sure to read the article on fountain. In addition to being very useful to create blank scroll they might just grant you a wish!
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