Diving with mage.

[Pete Mack]

Light rods are important for long corridors so you can see what you are shooting. If you don't have detection or rPois at drolem depth, it means they only get one free turn (warriors are noisy enough they are guaranteed to be awake. Same for priests and paladins

[MattB]

but I found for the warrior its not enough charges to use constantly and not much point if used only occasionally, so I have come to quickly squelch light wands.

Rods of Light recharge so quickly that you only need a stack of 3 or 4 before you have infinite uses whenever you want.

[Estie]

True about the rods; its just that by the time I have a few rods of light, I dont need them anymore.

I used to stay at early rod depth untill I found a rod of treasure location before diving, but I am not doing even that anymore; and deeper, the low rods are very rare. So I basically never have multiple light rods early on.

With trap detection having lost its importance, warrior can make a living without a single rod for a long time. Detect evil, map and illumination is sufficient and sold in town.

On a side note, has there been a change to rod of mapping frequency ? There have been many games now where I have found more restoration rods than mapping.
I seem to remember mapping being a mid frequent type, not ultra rare.

[Pete Mack]

Part II

From 55 to 76 things got crazy, as I found plenty of speed items but almost no !Con. I didn't have the equipment to take me above 500HP where big breathers could no longer single-move me, and without ESP, there was always something would get me between detects. So I was at +29 speed hasted, 340hp at one point, using speed to offset the chance of being ambushed in a hallway before illuminating it. A big speed ring(+12) at 3250 from *Acquirement* helped here. Eventually founder another good CON ring that could put me at +22 Con from equipment, at 3 permanent speed and 18/199 INT. Getting the HP seemed worth 1% fail, and by 4100 I had 18/200 of each at permanent speed 5, and A cap of ESP at 4200 finally let me drop mb2.
Then a Divisi vault at 4400' had !Con, !Aug, and ?Mass Banishment as literally the first 3 thing in one of the doors, and the game was essentially won. One drop was a Sling of Buckland <+2,+4>; together with Berserk activation, I could kill most any monster. Kelek showed up in a medium vault (Lair) right after recalling to the dungeon, as something of an anticlimax, at Cl 41.

[robbiodobbio]

I've just been binning all the light rods I've found, didn't realise they were so important. D'oh!

[Pete Mack]

Only if you don't have ESP. They are a pain to use, but they are valuable especially for characters vulnerable to one shot deaths