Talk:Wizard of Yendor

14 July 2008‎

It is now 14 July. Is the featured article going to update this month, or is Rodney's page the featured article in perpetuity?

Losing the Book of the Dead?!?

I finally made it my first time to the correct Wizard's Tower and pulled out my handy Wand of Death. I dug a small hole in the walls around him and aimed...

I missed Rodney with my first shot, and he teleported next to me (on the moat surrounding the walls). I then hit him with the second shot! My celebrations were short lived though as the Book of the Dead dropped in to the water and I got the message along the lines of "The Book heats up! Steam rises from the Book!". Problem is, I can't for the life of me find the book. It appears to have dropped in to the moat and disappeared!

I have tried freezing the moat and digging down in a pit, using a grappling hook from the shore, water walking boots, fire to evaporate the water, everything I can think of to try to get the book back. PLEASE tell me if I can get it! Alternatively, if I am barking up the wrong tree, please let me know what happened to it (TP'ed off with Rodney? When does he come back?) I do NOT want to have to abandon the first game where I have made it to the Bell and Candelabrum, only to be symied by an... "undocumented feature"! --Kalon 03:39, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

This happened in my game and I was able to freeze the moat where he was last standing, and recover the book. It appeared on the square once the moat was frozen. Maybe try magical breathing if there's any water sqaures left to search... and it might be worthwhile to quaff a potion of object detection if you have one, I get the impression that book is pretty durable. MysterX 04:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Unique items can't be destroyed, so it must be somewhere. Keep looking! :) Fredil Yupigo 21:54, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Having managed to ascend once, I decided to fight the Wizard this time. So I dug into his lair and started swinging (I had a +5 Stormbringer, gauntlets of power, and was very fast). I hit him a couple times, then he teleported and came back a few rounds later. This senario repeated twice, and then the Wizard disappeared and did not come back. He didn't die, he is just gone. I have searched much of the Underworld for the little coward and he isn't showing his ugly face anywhere. And I wouldn't care, but he still has the Book of the Dead with him.

Last time after I had his book, I kept hoping he wouldn't show up all the way to the Astral Plane. Now I *want* to find the sucker and he just isn't around. Any thoughts on how to locate him? 172.166.142.91 03:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The Wizard has fled downstairs from me at least once. If all else fails, you might head down to the vibrating square level (you have found the vibrating square, haven't you?) and climb back up with a blindfold on. Look for @ on the up-stairs.--Ray Chason 03:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Parting the live wizard from his book

I can think of two ways to get the book without killing the wizard:

• teleport both away before he picks it up, and go fetch the book before he gets to it. He will always land on the down stairs of his tower.
• polyself into a nymph and steal it

In both cases, it is much safer to dig one corner of his tower without waking him up, jump right next to him, and hit him with a potion of paralysis right away. (Phasing as a xorn should also work, but abusing the speed system is not possible.) Level draining him is not necessary, but maximum luck is.

The first method does not break polyself conduct. Playing around in wizard mode, it is sometimes possible to pull this off. Does anybody have any suggestions how to make him less likely to wake up (and pick the book up) when jumping right next to him? -Tjr 12:01, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The solution with a pet wood nymph and a ring of conflict only works if you level drain the wizard or have lots of gain level for the nymph. Weaponless or both atheist and wishless, polyselfless, and no wizard harassment seem to exclude each other pretty much. Anybody any better ideas?-Tjr 14:43, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Double trouble moves a pre-existing double wizard

The article said:

He will not use this spell if there are already two of him in the world.

I believe double trouble does work, but acts differently: It levelports the pre-existing clone next to you unless it has the Amulet. The other invocation artifacts don't count. I know this for sure for the randomly summoned Wizards.--Tjr 22:44, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Clonewiz simply calls makemon, and doesn't have any code to move an existing monster. Furthermore, spell_would_be_useless will reject Double Trouble if there's already more than one Wizard in

existence (mcastu.c#line733). --Darth l33t 00:47, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Polymorphing the Wizard

I have a couple questions about polymorphing/level-draining the Wizard:

• Given that polymorphing him usually requires level-draining him repeatedly, wouldn't it be better to simply let the level 0 hostile Wizard follow you? He's a non-threat in melee, and now unable to cast spells. The worst that can happen is he steals something, although if you've already done the Invocation you don't need the bell, book or candle, and you can always bag your quest artifact to keep it safe. Even if he steals something you need, you can just trivially kill him, and are no worse off than normal.
• If you do polymorph into a zombie and pacify him, can't you bring that zombie with you, thus preventing the Wizard from being revived hostile and in his normal form?

Also I think that whole part should be broken off into its own section; the intro should just say it is normally impossible to tame or pacify him. -Ion frigate 23:03, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The wizard will continue to gain levels if you kill him, so he won't perpetually be unable to cast spells. I'm not positive on how levelgain works with leveldrain, but from the source he should always have a level of at least the number of times you've killed him. Furthermore, level draining him requires damaging him (unless you're playing SLASH'EM, but then you can just polymorph him outright), and even with his regeneration and a -3 stormbringer you will be doing damage, so it'll be difficult to actually get him all the way down to level 0. Even if you don't kill him yourself a pet could. If you don't have pets then at such low levels he would just be a nuisance, not an actual threat.

I'm not sure. It's strange, but while I was testing these methods in wizard mode I'm fairly certain that the wizard was "reviving" while he was on the same level. I did notice him using the "So you thought you could elude me" message multiple times while I was resting for several thousand turns. The code looks like it checks for whether or not the wizard is on the same level (loops over migrating_mons, 'elapsed = monstermoves - mtmp->mlstmv' > 0L check), but I'm not an expert on how the migration code works so I could be misreading it, and misinterpreting the wizard mode results.

It probably should be put into it's own section somewhere. The article is surprisingly short for how important the wizard is to the game. I stuck it in the intro since I didn't see any close to an existing section, and plenty of other miscellany was put into that intro as well. I also didn't expect to find as many different ways to pacify the wizard. This is definitely a bit of trivia; the amount of effort needed to leveldrain the wizard AND polymorph him into a pacifyable form is quite high, so it's not really a strategy someone could use to avoid fighting the wizard. Except of course in SLASH'EM, where all you need to do is polymorph into a genetic engineer and smack him with a potion of amnesia. -- Qazmlpok 23:54, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I managed to get the WoY down to level 0 with -3 Stormbringer. The key was to NOT use the Gauntlets of Power, because you will always end up killing him around level 2 or 3. Then, it took about 10 zaps of a wand of polymorph to get him to change form. Now, I'm wandering around the dungeon, and every now and then a Red Naga called "WoY" will say "So thou thought thou couldst elude me, fool." We'll see how long this lasts. ——Davek (talk) 17:53, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Other forms of harassment will still continue, it's only the appearance of the wizard himself that is effectively neutralized.

Polyself fighting form

What's the best polyself form to fight Rodney in a "typical polyself-based wizard speed run"? I've been trying master mind flayers, but I'm not sure I'm doing it right.

Touch of death means the polyform has to wear the starting cloak of magic resistance. Getting Magicbane or the Eye usually takes too long, and wishes are reserved for magic markers and means of polyself. --Tjr 02:03, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Black dragon might be worth considering. You won't have MR, but you should be able to get at least one shot off before he moves, and even if that misses he isn't guaranteed to use the touch of death right away. Might at least be worth wiztesting it to see how reliable the breath is against him.

Otherwise, I'd say a master mind flayer is probably the best option, even when taking into account non-medium sized monsters. He'll never be wearing a helmet so you get an additional 5d10 + 5d2 damage per turn, and I don't think you'd be able to surpass that. -- Qazmlpok 12:15, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Why won't Orcus bring me the Book?

Orcus and arch-liches are covetous and desire the Book of the Dead. So I'd expect they attack Rodney as soon as I bring then onto his level. (This mirrors the well-known Amulet Delivery Service in the Sanctum.) However, that doesn't happen in wizmode. Why? --Tjr (talk) 21:40, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

See also http://nethackwiki.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Wizard%27s_Tower&diff=83897&oldid=83892 --Tjr (talk) 21:50, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

It seem to be because: Rodney doesn't start with the Book in inventory --Tjr (talk) 21:56, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Strange. According to Source:NetHack 3.4.3/src/wizard.c line 363 ff covetous monsters should be able to approach monsters who are standing on the coveted item. There is however nothing about actually attacking this monster but this could maybe handled with confusion or conflict. - 79.210.10.215 20:01, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Abuse of Wizard Mode

Having noted that Wizard Mode enables to to create monsters of any sort, and specify them as tame, can you cheat your way out of being harassed by conjuring up a tame Wizard of Yendor and keeping him alive? Or will the game count him as the double instead? Or will the game bug out and ignore the existence of a tamed Wizard when deciding to respawn him? --24.153.238.56 21:24, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Testing this seems to indicate the game will summon the wizard to your level and make him hostile again if you left him on another level while you're safe from reappearances (but not the other harassment effects) if the Wizard is on your level.

I don't see how this is "abuse" of wizard mode or "cheating", though. —bcode ^{talk | mail} 21:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

As I guessed. It would seem notable to me that this would pretty much be the only way to get rid of the Wizard with any degree of permanence save level-draining him to render him spell-less. Given this method's only possible in Wizard Mode, anyone feel that it's worth mention in the main article? Or would be best saved for the page on Wizard Mode, if at all? --24.153.238.56 23:52, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd not include it in the article. BTW, there is a second way to get rid of the Wizard: enter the Astral Plane. --Tjr (talk) 20:24, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Rodney escaping the dungeon.

I hung around on dlvl 1 for a while just to give Rodney a beating before going to the planes. After a while, he showed up, cast Double Trouble, and then fled to the upstair. I gave him a beating, and then he escaped the dungeon completely, leaving his double behind. After that, I never saw the wizard again, not even when I first entered the Plane of Earth (though other harassment continued). Was I just lucky, or is this a reliable way of avoiding his appearance on the planes? --Davek (talk)

It is, in fact, a reliable way of preventing his appearance for the rest of the game. And this info has finally made it into the article! Furey (talk) 02:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Article layout

The article was recently edited to place the Strategy section above the Harassment section. I think that in general, objective information about game mechanics should precede subjective strategies. A player who's having trouble understanding the Wizard will probably first want to understand how he works and what he can do, in order to figure out how to deal with him on their own. If they still have difficulty, they can read further down the article to learn what has worked for other players. Putting the strategy before mechanics will lead a player to spoil themselves without ever having a chance to figure out their own strategy. --Darth l33t (talk) 16:06, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, hard info before soft info. --Testbutt (talk) 18:07, 31 August 2020 (UTC)