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Gnome mage just wandering around on DL69 - saw a Great Wyrm of Venom, so wielded my Scythe (serpentine) for rPoison...
Oh no.... as you wield the scythe it changes horribly....
Ended up with a Scythe of Savagery - which among other things aggravates, prevents spellcasting and severely reduces int and magic device skill.
So... as I was relying on Mordekainen's Escapes for WOR, I had no detection except ESP, no way to get back to town, a weapon I had no skill in, and a rapidly dwindling supply of escapes and healing (my 2 ?tele level and 1 ?alter reality didn't last long) and no rPoison. Even my attack wands and rods were unreliable as I had a much greater chance of failure than usual thanks to the Savagery.
Playing with disconnected stairs, so no way to stairscum my way out.
I figured my most likely way to survive was to take stairs up whenever possible (shallower level = less likely to meet something that will instakill me) and when possible kill monsters that might drop something that could get me out. I did a lot of teleporting with the staff, whenever it looked like I could not avoid something too dangerous, but my supply of ?recharge was nearly out.
And, amazingly, I survived - I made it up to about DL60 then found a rod of recall on the floor.
Character dump here
I know I'm often complaining about hidden curses, and I would have been annoyed if I'd lost this character because of one - but now maybe I'm changing my mind, as this made for a very exciting couple of hundred turns.
However, it will probably just mean that I always test-wield new items for the first time in town, to avoid nasty surprises like this... and hidden curses will be practically instadeaths in ironman, but only an annoyance in normal play.
@ camlost - if you want to be really sadistic, maybe hidden curses should not reveal themselves until you are wielding the item in the dungeon. But this might be too nasty and drive some players away from the game when it happens to them.
The only other comment I have is that this game is going MUCH slower than my last Beorning winner - the early game in particular was painfully slow. At times I was finding it almost impossible to kill anything that would give reasonable amounts of XP and was gaining most of my XP from use-IDing items.
While this was probably partly due to my skill choices (it may have been a mistake to use melee at all as a gnome caster,) I suspect that the reduction in amount of XP gained for killing low-level monsters relative to power has exaggerated the difference between those characters who already have an easy time in the early game (eg due to good HP or fighting ability) and those who find it hard.
Oh no.... as you wield the scythe it changes horribly....
Ended up with a Scythe of Savagery - which among other things aggravates, prevents spellcasting and severely reduces int and magic device skill.
So... as I was relying on Mordekainen's Escapes for WOR, I had no detection except ESP, no way to get back to town, a weapon I had no skill in, and a rapidly dwindling supply of escapes and healing (my 2 ?tele level and 1 ?alter reality didn't last long) and no rPoison. Even my attack wands and rods were unreliable as I had a much greater chance of failure than usual thanks to the Savagery.
Playing with disconnected stairs, so no way to stairscum my way out.
I figured my most likely way to survive was to take stairs up whenever possible (shallower level = less likely to meet something that will instakill me) and when possible kill monsters that might drop something that could get me out. I did a lot of teleporting with the staff, whenever it looked like I could not avoid something too dangerous, but my supply of ?recharge was nearly out.
And, amazingly, I survived - I made it up to about DL60 then found a rod of recall on the floor.
Character dump here
I know I'm often complaining about hidden curses, and I would have been annoyed if I'd lost this character because of one - but now maybe I'm changing my mind, as this made for a very exciting couple of hundred turns.
However, it will probably just mean that I always test-wield new items for the first time in town, to avoid nasty surprises like this... and hidden curses will be practically instadeaths in ironman, but only an annoyance in normal play.
@ camlost - if you want to be really sadistic, maybe hidden curses should not reveal themselves until you are wielding the item in the dungeon. But this might be too nasty and drive some players away from the game when it happens to them.
The only other comment I have is that this game is going MUCH slower than my last Beorning winner - the early game in particular was painfully slow. At times I was finding it almost impossible to kill anything that would give reasonable amounts of XP and was gaining most of my XP from use-IDing items.
While this was probably partly due to my skill choices (it may have been a mistake to use melee at all as a gnome caster,) I suspect that the reduction in amount of XP gained for killing low-level monsters relative to power has exaggerated the difference between those characters who already have an easy time in the early game (eg due to good HP or fighting ability) and those who find it hard.
)
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