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bork bork bork Darren Grey bork 10:06:48 PM bork 3/16/2005 bork bork:
> Hello, and welcome back. You will need more than just luck to
complete that
> quest, but good luck to you all the same. I'm currently trying every
now
> and then to do the ToEF challenge (I can never remember the proper
name of
> it - I always just call it Asbestos Man in my head...) which is
proving
> rather difficult, even though I'm letting my characters take
advantage of
> every wilderness encounter on the way to the tower.
Hmm, I wonder if this is the ToEF challenge that arose during a
discussion
here on r.g.r.a between me and that Danish fellow, or if there is one
that
predates our discussion and we didn't know about it. In any case,
although we
never agreed on what is a good ruleset for the challenge, I think we de
facto
agreed on the name Brimstone Man. But maybe not even on that; it's been
a
while. If you're interested in reading that discussion (and notes from
some
test runs by the other fellow), well, Google is, as always, your
friend.
[...]
> Why are you going for elven wizards though?
I was a bit surprised as well.
> I don't see what advantage they have - surely they'll just starve to
death
> eventually?
In my opinion, the GEWi [1] would, like every other "attacker" based on
raw
force, be likely to die of being slaughtered long before dying of
starvation.
But if that happens to not happen, then yeah, the lack of food
preservation
is fairly problematic and I always tried to avoid it in my combos for
attacking EM unless I thought there was something else about the combo
that
was overwhelmingly great.
> An hurthling
> elementalist might last a little while, since they get spells
automatically
> with each level, and so don't rely on spellbooks...
Same problem; in both cases, some good strategic manevering could
prolong the
agony, but the further you get, the more hideous it all gets, until you
eventually cook up your own death -- in the sense that you're doubling
your
opponents' level whenever your own level goes up.
That's why one classic school of thought in Eterniology has been the
pet
approach. a) Pet kills, b) you eat, c) you take drops, you go to
school, you
keep repeating steps a), b), c), you finish school, you keep repeating
steps
a), b), c), you found an IT business, you keep repeating steps a), b),
c),
you retire, and in the meantime, you've collected enough stuff to
safely
raise your experience level to 10 or so.
In the heyday of my eternifying, I had a quite well-developed strategy
involving the farming and exploitation of a certain pickpocketable
breeder,
based only on things that are relatively (*relatively*!) easy to find
in the
SMC. Pickpocketing is a fabulous way to gain more power faster without
gaining experience...
The trouble with any approach is that -- whether by design or just
accidentally -- Biskup has done something that makes monster generation
in,
at least, the SMC grind to a halt after about a week of game time spent
nonstop on the level. At least sometimes. Some folks have reported it,
some
haven't, some inconsistently; I personally have encountered it
consistently
on the few occasions where I've survived for many days in the SMC. It's
kind
of hard to reach the point where you can repro the behavior, but once
it
arrives, the only way to return monster generation to normal is to take
a
staircase (you can then immediately return, of course), and IME you
will find
that some people will tell you in advance that they won't find your
eventual
win valid if it includes such a step, so... well, it's all rather
discouraging.
Here again, Google is your friend. I wrote treatises on Eterniology
much
longer and winder than the above back in the day (very, very roughly a
year
ago).
> Hmm, spellcasters I
> suppose would be a decent choice overall since they can stay on
Coward,
> keeping their DV high, and still cast lots of destrctive spells...
It's something that (if you ever try Eternium) you should try at least
once
-- and try as cleverly as possible -- just to understand why it will
never
work. (Or prove me wrong.)
> I've never tried for eternium myself - I have enough difficulty going
> through there normally without some invisibility... Hmm, a wizard
who
> starts off with the Invisibility spellbook might obviously have some
> advantages...
IMO no, because he still has to fight in order to generate corpses
and/or
rations to eat; eventually he is going to run into the wall of his own
experience level (by, though not only by, taking things up to the point
where
nasty things that see invisible are generated).
> --
> Darren Grey
--
While many of the era's musical works strove to simulate the narcotic
experience, [The Eight Seasons of Chromalox] PROVIDES ONE!
[1] Crawl notation for "Grey Elven Wizard" -- hey, it's not my fault
nobody
ever invented a standard combo notation for ADOM