From: teg@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu (Tim Gurbick)
Subject: the fighter's guide
Organization: The Bank of the Black Monks of St. Herod
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 05:53:12 GMT

A FIGHTER'S GUIDE TO ULTRA-ROGUE

This is directed mostly at players who routinely get down to level 40 or 50,
but then tend to get zapped "out of the blue."  Why a fighter?  Because the
special abilities of the other classes (those a fighter doesn't eventually
acquire anyway) don't compensate for the simple advantage of being almost
invincible in battle.  For a fighter, there are very few problems that
cannot be solved by the application of brute force.  This makes much of the
subtlety useful for other classes a waste of time.

Here are a baker's dozen guidelines which should enable a reasonably-
experienced player routinely to go in and get back out alive.

1. Blessed potion of gain ability

This applies to all classes, of course, and deserves to be number one.  Save
your enchant scrolls for potions of gain ability.  Save your potions of gain
ability until you can enchant them.  At a later phase (probably past level 80
or 90), when your abilities are all 25 and you're running out of things to
enchant, resume the enchantment of potions of gain ability -- aside from
improving your attributes (and thus granting you spells) the blessed potions
have a probability of improving your intrinsic armour class.  You ought to be
able to get your skin down to armour class 0 or so.

2. Artifacts

You need to carry one artifact in order to leave the dungeon.  Sell the others.
Certainly don't try to apply *any* of them.  The fact is that you will probably
win without the use of any artifacts if you don't expose yourself to silly
risks.  The prospect of being banished to level 250 is a silly risk.  It is
particularly tempting to apply the Purse of Yendor.  Don't.  Your pack is big
enough to hold the things you really need.  It's these 1 and 2 and 5 percent
chances of disaster that people take that get them killed.  (Having a few
million gold pieces on you is also nice.  The reason you're able to carry that
much is that what the giants and dragons and leprechauns are carrying is not
gold but *credit slips*.)

3. Phasing

The other traditional way to get zapped out of contention is to be informed
that a basilisk or medusa has just looked at you and turned you to stone.
This is preventable.  Save your potions of phasing until you get down among
petrifying creatures, then use them.  (At the appropriate levels, you should
routinely be detecting for monsters, so you'll know)  If you're out of
potions of phasing, but have the spell, use that.   (Otherwise, consider
bypassing those levels)  Don't use potions of phasing for *anything* else.
Especially not for going through walls.  It's a silly risk.

4. Blessed potion of clear thought

One of these gives you a game-long immunity to confusion.  You ought to find
one, but if you haven't by level 40 or so, it's probably worth your while to
enchant one.  Aside from helping against umber hulks, this lets you use pit
traps to leave mazes and lets you use teleport traps to travel around a level.
(If you're having trouble finding a door, just set your own teleport trap and
walk into it)

5. Healing

If you heal yourself when you're already at full hit points, you will *gain*
a few hit points.  Consume every potion of healing, mirruvor, and lemba you
find.  (It pays to uncurse cursed potions of healing)  You ought to get at
least as many hit points from healing as from going up in level.  In
addition, before going up a level, use all your hoarded prayer points on heal
spells, for the same reason.

6. Wand of drain life

For a fighter, especially one who's using healing to build-up his hit points,
the wand of drain life is the ideal tool for handling such troublesome beings
as black puddings, gods, evil sorceresses (if it comes to that), etc.  By the
time you're in the 600-1000 hit point range, this becomes a potent weapon of
mass destruction.

7. Ring of vampiric regeneration

This complements the wand of drain life nicely.  Enchant it up to +5 and wear
it when needed.  (Not constantly, because of the way it consumes food)  At
lower levels a normal ring of regeneration is relatively useless, but this
one will let you regain several hundred hit points worth of breath damage in
a small number of hacks.

8. Evil sorceresses

If you haven't found a scroll of genocide by the time you encounter the evil
sorceress, quit, and start again.  The only exception to this is that if
you've got your armour class down to about -20 (if your armour isn't too good
for the evil sorceress to hit, you're certainly wasting your time) you *may*
want to keep going and hope you find a genocide scroll.  This calls for
special tactics.  The problem with the evil sorceress, aside from theft, is
that they pick-up all the magic items they pass.  Then, when you kill them
(if you keep swinging long enough, they'll die) they try to drop them all in
one place and the items disappear.  So after a long battle at the door of a
party room full of evil sorceresses, you walk into an empty room.  You can
get most of the magic by luring them out into a narrow room:

-----------
|.....zzzz|
|....@zzzz+
-----------

The evil sorceresses won't advance past where they can hit you, so you can
concentrate on one and pick up her magic item when it falls beside you.
(Isolated evil sorceresses, like isolated black puddings, can be handled by
being led into the center of a room, where they can drop all their magic
when they're killed)

9. Potion of raise level

The practical limit of experience points you can earn by level 100 is about
40 million.  If the best score on your scoreboard is 500 million, then only
way you can beat that is by quaffing 2 blessed potions of raise level, each
of which will quadruple your total.  Keep going, past level 100 if need be,
until you've found them.  If the best score is 1 billion, you'll need to
keep going until you have the two potions and have earned about 65 million
points (it'll probably take you down to about level 140) or you've found
three such potions, and so forth.  Make sure to enchant them, and don't
drink them until you start back up.  Don't forget that each potion gives you
a whole new set of spell and prayer points to burn-up.  (Warning: some
installations can't handle too-large scores; it depends on word-size and
coding)

10. Scroll of acquirement

Don't use these for *anything* but potions of raise level, until you've got
enough of those, as potions of raise level are the game's bottleneck.  Don't
use them until they're needed, and don't forget to enchant them.

11. Going back upstairs

On your way back up, your aim is to get up as quickly as possible, not to
kill monsters.  Avoid fights.  Use wands of drain life or disintegration (if
you should be so fortunate as to have one) freely to wipe-out monsters you
can't go around.  You will be summoned by the occasional god.  There are two
ways to handle these summons.  If you have a blessed scroll of teleportation,
use it to go up a few levels.  If not, move *away* from the stairs, wait
until all the monsters have congregated around you, and them use a teleport
spell to get closer to the stairs than the monsters.  By this time, your
armour class should be too good for the monsters to hit.  Breath weapons
will be a problem; consider wearing your ring of vampiric regeneration
constantly as you go up the stairs.  remember, there's not much magic to be
found on the way back up, so don't start until you've got everything you'll
need.  Watch our for basilisks and medusas again; wouldn't you feel
ridiculous about being petrified at this late stage?

12. Useless items

The main difference between fighters and others is that fighters don't need
the help of magic items to win a fight or clear-out a party room. (just
stand in front of the door and start swinging)  This means that many of the
items which others might be tempted to carry around just clutter-up the
fighter's pack:

potion of superheroism
potion of disguise
potion of invisibility
potion of haste self
potions of phasing (but see above)
scroll of scare monster
scroll of electrification
scroll of petrification
scroll of sleep
scroll of hold monster
wand of striking
wand of blasting
wand of confuse monster
wand of paralyze monster
wand of slow monster
wand of teleport monster
wand of magic missile
wand of fire
wand of cold
wand of lightning
wand of antimatter
ring of stealth
ring of free action
ring of increase damage
ring of add strength
ring of add dexterity
ring of regeneration

13. a recommended packing list

(the numbers refer to notes, below)

armour (1)
weapon
artifact
food rations (2)
ring of lightning resistance (3,4)
ring of fire resistance (4)
ring of vampiric regeneration (5)
ring of wisdom (5)
3 rings of intelligence (5,6)
ring of protection (5,7)
ring of levitation (8)
2 or 3 potions of raise level, or
       blessed scrolls of acquirement (8)
ring of resurrection (5,9)
wand of drain life
ring of wizardry (9)
wand of disintegration (9)
ring of illumination (9,10)
blessed scrolls of teleportation

1. Mithril or crystalline armour.  If you don't start with these, you'll find
them on the floor sooner or later.

2. Hoard food rations and eat the other stuff.  That way you'll have one or
two hundred rations for the run back upstairs.

3. If you don't have crystalline armour.

4. You won't fined *everything* you want.  If you don't have protection from
fire *or* lightning, you're liable to be in trouble.

5. Enchant up to +5.  When your modified wisdom reaches 27 (21 with a ring of
wizardry) you won't need to take precautions against disease.

6. You need a modified intelligence of 36 to get enchant spells.  With a ring
of wizardry you only need a modified intelligence of 27, and one ring will do
though more are nice.

7. You want your armour class down below about -20, so that nothing can strike
you.  This might take more than one ring of protection, though it shouldn't.

8. Don't try to do without this.

9. You don't need this to win, but it will make your life much easier.

10. Whether to carry the ring of illumination or to use-up spell points on
light spells, or even just to go in the dark, is a matter of preference and
judgement.

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