Forum:Escape from the Master Assassin's lair in dNethack
I've never done the Rogue Quest before, but apparently a level teleport will get you out of the Master Assassin's lair. Except it doesn't. Is that a dNethack thing or is it also like that in vanilla? Playing as VoR at nethack.dank.ninja.
I finally got out of there after ~100,000 turns. Ate chameleon corpses and tin in hope of polymorphing into Xorn. That obviously didn't happen. I should have saved the tin in the event of later discovery of =oPC. Then a long phase of waiting and fainting and praying to see what monsters would spawn for magic treasure. Lots of Quest monsters spawned, mainly leprechauns, guardian nagas, and naiads. Interestingly, there was a single mandrake.
Death drops were predominantly potions of healing-type, and object detection, occasional gain level. A water elemental blanked a couple of potions. I achieved skill with matter spells, but could not cast polymorph even with a robe. I learnt to fight with longswords and crossbows, and how to two-weapon. A slow rise in levels made me anxious about inadvertent crowning.
Then a black pudding spawned, and I had my first go at pudding farming. I filled up the whole level, including the inaccessible parts, with puddings. But they had zero death drops. That was a disappointment, so I got rid of all the puddings. By this time the room had mostly filled with leprechauns. I was pretty fed up and at the point of chaotic risk-taking.
So I slew that mandrake. Everything on the level died, apart from some autons in the other rooms. Luckily (12/13) I survived. That netted a whole lot more potions, including a swirly one that turned out to be polymorph, but minotaurs can't phase.
100,000 turns in the Master Assassin's jail had taken me from level 14 to level 26. Then I recalled a blessed scroll of remove curse in my inventory. Using the blanked potions I was able to convert about 30 object detections into water. I named 20 of them individually, cast a forgotten first level spell for confusion, and read that ?oRC. Several items became cursed, but there was no change in the status of any of my water. Failure!
But then I thought, how about taking the names away and seeing if they will stack? Sure enough, the !oW divided into 3 stacks. I dipped a single potion of gain level into the smallest of the water stacks. "Your potion of gain level glows with a black aura". Hooray! Rogues have to be resourceful, even after 100,000 turns in jail.
Wikid (talk) 01:30, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
How many times did you try to level teleport? There is a one in 5 chance of failure, I think. Catullus (talk) 22:34, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
3 times! Also, I let myself be whacked multiply by a Weeping Angel, but no levelport either. Wikid (talk) 22:48, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I, uh, broke this recently --'. I stopped levelport from working in anything other than the main dungeon, on the grounds that it didn't really make sense for most of the quests. I forgot that this would have a bad effect on the closed portions of the Rogue quest. I should probably revise that change to limit the RANGE of levelports outside the main branch. --Chris (talk) 23:14, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I quite liked the idea of being sent on a looong mission by the Master of Thieves, with a nasty surprise at the end :-) Wikid (talk) 23:35, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
Chris I reckon should you just add the new rule to the Quest Leader's monologue -- that'll check if people are paying attention! "And by the way, if you're thinking of getting back here with a cursed scroll, think again. I sent that sonufa- called "VOR" on this mission 3 years ago, and he's still down there." :-) Wikid (talk) 02:08, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
