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Yup.

65 (12.2%)

Not even close.

391 (73.4%)

Almost . . . but didn't

26 (4.9%)

Maybe managed halfway

51 (9.6%)

Total Members Voted: 530

[beorn080]

Wishing for blessed and cursed magic markers is a waste. Best to wish for a plain one, then you can write all three types of scrolls from one marker.

[JoshuaFH]

Wishing for blessed and cursed magic markers is a waste. Best to wish for a plain one, then you can write all three types of scrolls from one marker.

but only through great personal effort!

[LegoLord]

Maybe it would be best just to have all three?  (unlikely, but hey, you can try for it, right?)

[JoshuaFH]

Provided that you have a clear and defined use for them, Magic markers are always a great wish.

I still don't see the benefit of having a ring of free action. So long as you have good AC, most monsters in Gehennom won't get enough attacks in to deal serious damage to you in the span a thrown potion of paralysis will freeze you. The very worst that could happen would be if you ran into a mind flayer you weren't anticipating because it had spawned right next to you or something, and it throw a Potion of Paralysis, and it got to Mind Flay you in the 1 or 2 turns you're paralyzed.

There's also things like cockatrices, where every turn counts towards your survival, but they don't have hands for throwing, and the odds of you getting stoned in that specific frame of time are so slim, that they might as well be non-existant.

Unless, that is, you have some interesting stories you haven't told us yet Kc.

[Quincunx]

I still don't see the benefit of having a ring of free action. So long as you have good AC, most monsters in Gehennom won't get enough attacks in to deal serious damage to you in the span a thrown potion of paralysis will freeze you. The very worst that could happen would be if you ran into a mind flayer you weren't anticipating because it had spawned right next to you or something, and it throw a Potion of Paralysis, and it got to Mind Flay you in the 1 or 2 turns you're paralyzed.
Unless, that is, you have some interesting stories you haven't told us yet Kc.

I have one:

  The troll hurls a potion of paralysis!
  The bottle crashes on your head and breaks into shards.
  Something seems to be holding you.
  The troll hits!
  The troll hits!
  The troll bites!
  The troll hits!
  The troll hits!
  The troll misses.
  The invisible Croesus swings his two-handed sword.
  The invisible Croesus hits!
  The invisible Croesus swings his two-handed sword.
  The invisible Croesus hits!
  You die...

Farvel seahorse the Valkyrie...
You died in Fort Ludios with 589053 points,
and 1723 pieces of gold, after 31414 moves.
Killer: invisible Croesus, while helpless
You were level 16 with a maximum of 134 hit points when you died.

In other words, I killed a troll in Fort Ludios, and while I was dueling Croesus, the troll revived and immediately threw a potion of paralysis at me.  Croesus killed me in two hits, though I was at about half-health once the troll finished with me.

I never found a ring of free action that game, and it was my first promising game.

The rings of free action are useful for many things, including throwing potions of paralysis and fighting gelatinous cubes.  Not having to worry about those annoying floating eyes is nice, too.

[kcwong]

The rings of free action are useful for many things, including throwing potions of paralysis...

Not throw, wield! When throwing you might miss. The best way is have free action, wield it, and smash it on someone's head.

[JoshuaFH]

I've never had the liberty of fighting Croesus, is he really that tough?

[umiman]

I've never had the liberty of fighting Croesus, is he really that tough?

He hits very hard. But he's also a piece of cake. If you attack him from a distance you really have nothing to fear.

[JoshuaFH]

I am very upset that Kc hasn't updated us with his progress in so long.

[kcwong]

I am very upset that Kc hasn't updated us with his progress in so long.

She died... and accidentally placed a bag of tricks into a bag of holding shortly before that.

I haven't started a new character after that... because I was having some computer problems - likely related to my motherboard (Asus P5K) and its drivers. Vista's loading bar takes ages to appear after BIOS, and a lot of time spent on the loading bar itself. After logon it still needs time to finish up. In total it would take 4 to 5 minutes to boot up, and performance log would indicate completely random components causing a startup degradation. Sometimes it's svchost, sometimes a USB root hub, sometimes my virus shield (TrendMicro), sometimes USB HID.

I've checked memory and performed surface scan of my two SATA drives - no errors. I reinstalled Vista (32bit) to no effect (and boy, downloading 80+ Windows updates take a long time even with my fast connection). Then I flashed my motherboard BIOS, it's an update that's supposed to help with USB devices causing startup delays, and updated all my drivers (except the onboard network card, the one offered in Windows Update is causing problems for some people), but still no improvements.

I found disconnecting my PPPoE modem from the onboard ethernet card helps a bit on startup times tough. So maybe the driver from the motherboard CD is not the best choice either.

So now I turn on my computer and then go eat dinner or take a bath. The computer will be ready and running at full speed when I return.


I think my problem does not lie with my skill or knowledge of NetHack - I'm extremely spoiled. My problem is losing patience - I miss messages or miss things happening on the screen. I tried various ways to solve that; started logging data (switching to spreadsheet to slow me down), switching from tiles to ASCII, or using the non-GUI executable. Using ASCII has little effect on me it seems (as is my recent change to a large ASCII-like tiles), and the DOS interface drains my patience away even faster (too many ENTER to skip messages). I'm guessing playing on NAO will drain my attention away even faster...

I think I need to find a solution to that before I can ascend.

[JoshuaFH]

I'm not sure about the patience thing, I think I don't have enough since I never bother to take all the precautions you do (spreadsheet, writing down vital info, preparing for unlikely circumstances) as I usually just memorize anything truly vital, and then trust that I'm good enough that I never get caught in truly miserable situations.

I also make sure to not play if I'm getting emotional, or not in a good state of mind.

Also, if I think I missed any important messages, I use ctrl+p to rewind the messages until I see what I missed.

I can't stand playing on NAO. The control scheme is too different, and I make all sorts of stupid mistakes because my hand slips and I do things I didn't mean to do.

[JoshuaFH]

Monks are cool, they start with +2 gloves IIRC. Pretty nifty, but I can't remember if glove enchantment contributes to damage and to-hit... probably not, but it would be neat.

[timmeh]

Just started playing this again.  Never really got much past "maybe" floor seven, but pretty much only cause I have a tendancy to try stupid things...

My current character is a monk, but I play too slow for anything interesting to have happened over the last half-hour... actually, I found the boulder puzzle room, but I got stuck on the second one and accidentally rendered it unsolvable...

I may go back cause I seem to remember the Gnomish mines being higher up than this...

[JoshuaFH]

Both Sokoban and the gnomish mines are guaranteed to generate each playthrough, and if you hit Sokoban before you hit the gnomish mines, then you went too far and you'll have to backtrack to find the mines. The entrance to the mines can be anyway between floor 2 to 4, IIRC.

[kcwong]

Both Sokoban and the gnomish mines are guaranteed to generate each playthrough, and if you hit Sokoban before you hit the gnomish mines, then you went too far and you'll have to backtrack to find the mines. The entrance to the mines can be anyway between floor 2 to 4, IIRC.

The entrance to the mines, at an early dungeon level 2 to 4, is a devious trap by the devteam. Falling stones, rolling boulders, deadly poison darts or spikes, plus lots of enemies in an open area. All these can cause an early death pretty easily.

I always finish Sokoban before coming back for the mines. I may hang around the entrance to let my pet find me some starting armor or pick axe though.