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In terms of the best depth to find something, unique or artifact, again it's a hard question to answer. You want to be at at least the native depth of the thing you want to generate, because otherwise there's an extra check the thing has to pass. Once you've done that, generally as you get deeper into the dungeon more monsters/items get generated, so there are more opportunities to generate the one you want, but also more competition for each "generation slot": more potential monsters/items that can be generated.
My guess is that for killing a specific unique, you should head to that unique's native depth. The theory there being that you just want to clear levels as efficiently as possible until they finally show up. Alternately, preserve Qlzqqlzuup and abuse his unique-summoning spell. For artifacts, you should head to the depth where you can most efficiently generate good items that are of a level within the artifact's depth range. Note that vaults tend to contain exceptionally high-level items and thus may have less of a chance of producing your artifact if its max depth is <100. Being able to spam Enlightenment helps with this of course, though not as much as it did in the days when it didn't do fuzzy detection.
I remember once as a kid learning that longswords were native to dlvl 20, and therefore heading there with a paladin and level-scumming: enter level, cast Clairvoyance, check every '|' on the map (manually, because this was the days before you could 'l'ook at items outside of LOS), and repeat. It was extremely tedious but did eventually net me Ringil. Doubtless I could have gotten it faster if I'd known what Ringil's native depth was.
My guess is that for killing a specific unique, you should head to that unique's native depth. The theory there being that you just want to clear levels as efficiently as possible until they finally show up. Alternately, preserve Qlzqqlzuup and abuse his unique-summoning spell. For artifacts, you should head to the depth where you can most efficiently generate good items that are of a level within the artifact's depth range. Note that vaults tend to contain exceptionally high-level items and thus may have less of a chance of producing your artifact if its max depth is <100. Being able to spam Enlightenment helps with this of course, though not as much as it did in the days when it didn't do fuzzy detection.
I remember once as a kid learning that longswords were native to dlvl 20, and therefore heading there with a paladin and level-scumming: enter level, cast Clairvoyance, check every '|' on the map (manually, because this was the days before you could 'l'ook at items outside of LOS), and repeat. It was extremely tedious but did eventually net me Ringil. Doubtless I could have gotten it faster if I'd known what Ringil's native depth was.
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