YAWP - iron man dwarf priest

[SilasDies]

First iron man win from many recent attempts, second win overall.

Dump for the curious: DwfPrtIron

I decided to start with selling turned on and start equipment turned off. This way I could buy pb1 and pb3, a whip, some !clw, ?phase, a few !oil and get !boldness identified early.

Early game was fairly easy actually, I was lucky to find some elemental daggers fairly early, along with a defender cutlass. The ability to switch to the dagger and kill things was immensely useful. This kept me alive until I could learn ood and get it cast reliably.

Also a note for stats, I got to 18/40 wis, then 17str and the rest in con. For ironman characters I would forgo a bit of the primary stats for a character to get extra con. This helps get to the 18/x threshold much faster, which leads to many many hps.

I spent most of the early game at -1 or -2 speed due to all the crap I was carrying, mostly extra books. I prioritized pb1, 2, and 3 due to the useful spells.

After I had heal (c in pb4) castable to a lowish fail, I almost never used consumable healing and was able to keep a 40 stack of CCW for nearly the last 50 levels, only using one I think in dlvl 99 to heal stunning or something.

Priest is absurdly easy to win with, iron or not, if you can survive to orb. My only complaint was my low melee damage. I did not find any useful anti-morgoth bolts nor did I want to switch off cubragol.

Full disclosure:

I cast Alter Reality a few times on accident at the start of levels. I have a bad habit of using the inventory letter for books, so I would type mef to cause Clairvoyance. I typed mfe a few times instead. I doubt I gained anything from it.

Additionally I cast it on dlvl 99 on purpose after accidentally destructing Sauron. I'm pretty sure he respawns after a while, but I didn't feel like waiting.

I also casted it once before descending after I learned it for the spell xp.

[Thraalbee]

Well done! No worries about alter reality, it is certainly allowed.

I nearly only play ironman with randarts. That fits me best. How did you feel about it except for as a challenge mode? Would be interesting to hear your comments on the iron-man experience compared to normal mode. Does the home and shops really add to the game experience or just make it easier to win?

[SilasDies]

Well done! No worries about alter reality, it is certainly allowed.

I nearly only play ironman with randarts. That fits me best. How did you feel about it except for as a challenge mode? Would be interesting to hear your comments on the iron-man experience compared to normal mode. Does the home and shops really add to the game experience or just make it easier to win?

I actually ended up liking iron man far more. There are no "infinite" consumables from the shop. This has forced me to play better, pick my battles, etc.

I can't store things at home, so I had to make harder choices on what to wear or keep in my limited inventory.

It is nice sometimes to return to town and save things for later, but I did find myself missing this as much. It feels like a chore sometimes to save things and manage a home inventory, so not having it is quite liberating.

The only part about ironman that I found difficult was the start. At least for a priest, my killing power was quite low until I could get orb online. Thankfully I had multiple elemental daggers and a rod or two for a while which let me kill high value targets to get those sweet sweet levels.

I stopped dying when I learned to abandon tough fights or levels. Sometimes a vault is tempting but blowing all your consumables or risking an instakill if your TO wand fails will end in tears.

Oh, if you ever TO something that can instakill you, leave the level if possible. Otherwise you may forget it was there and get murdered.

TL;DR; I feel iron man is superior to normal. Town stuff is a chore and it's easy to survive once you learn to pick battles and abandon dangerous levels. Take with some grain of salt, I was playing a priest so I did not need many consumables except for the final fight. Also not caring about gold being stolen was a bonus.

I think I'll do a warrior next so I can really see what having no ready source of consumables is like, with no real replacement (i.e. spells). At least I won't have to run from soldiers.