The Sniper bloodline is a series of rogues undertaking a challenge to defeat Morgoth while killing as few total creatures as possible -- with the perfect goal being 2: Sauron and Morgoth. The kill count in the monster information screen is used to double-check, but it's honor system for reporting any unseen kills.
Obviously getting experience is very difficult; there are small amounts of points to be gained from id-by-use and casting new spells, but disarming traps is the major mechanism early on, with the ultimate goal being to gear up, dive, and scum for potions of Experience.
Sniper V is a gnome rogue; my original thinking that a half-troll would be good proved tragically misguided - stealth is incredibly important for this challenge and saving throw is also good to have.
I posted now because Sniper V has achieved the major milestone of gaining the Detect Items spell, enabling vastly improved scumming for stat potions & a source of TO -- good timing, since I'm just getting to stat-gain depth.
Looking around for traps in the early going was very tedious and dangerous with detection limited to scrolls, and the need to buy or find such scrolls. Using a shovel to dig out gold and ring of digging to enable creative routes to traps has been key. Oh, and I managed to buy speed boots from the armoury; only +2, but I can outdistance normal-speed monsters (or quick monsters if I haste).
A fun if dangerous strat has been farming traps from Wormtongue. I was very lucky to find a shield of resistance very early, but his stinking clouds remain dangerous. It's kind of bizarre to be trying to disarm traps while a unique is bashing at you.
One other thing that took me a while to figure out is dealing with quick-but-weak monsters you don't even notice in a normal game (like fruit bats). I can't kill them and they're faster than me, so even a very weak monster can kill @, and panthers/stegocentipedes etc are deadly. Early characters had tried wands of slow/confuse monster; these seemed minimally effective as they only seem to work for a few turns. For a stealthy gnome, though, sleep monster is extremely valuable as it puts the monster out of commission for potentially much longer.
Sadly, somewhat early on Sniper V couldn't hold up from shoveling a white harpy to death in one round coming around a corner, though he hasn't killed any unseen creatures so far (prior incarnations punched out a clear mushroom patch or two). So best case for this attempt is 3 kills.
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