Credit cloning

The strategy of credit cloning is simple:

• Move all objects in the shop to a single pile. Drop a cursed item to prevent your pet from moving on to it.
• Drop gold into the shop. The shopkeeper will give you credit for the gold.
• Let your pet steal the gold for you (a leash or magic whistle is very helpful here).
• Go to the pile and buy as much as you can from your credit.
• Sell all the recently bought items, even items that you own.
• You may need to buy and sell several times before you can exhaust your credit if you had a lot of starting credit.
• Drop the old + new gold in the shop and repeat from letting your pet steal it.

Repeat the technique till the shopkeeper has no gold--you will know this because the shopkeeper offers you credit instead of gold when you try to sell the item--and you have enough credit to buy everything that you want from the shop.

The technique is very time consuming and should not be done if you don't have slow digestion or a good amount of food.

Credit cloning is more effective if you have a sack--or still better, a bag of holding. You can put your gold into the sack, along with as many items as your pet can carry (preferably expensive ones). You can then have your pet carry the bag outside the shop and resell the items over and over to get all the shopkeeper's gold very quickly.

The best shops for credit cloning, therefore, are ones with lightweight expensive items like rings, wands and gems. Delicatessens are probably the safest, because they stock food, but are also very time-consuming because the items are so cheap. General stores are also good because you can sell many of your own items at the beginning, increasing the size of the initial pile of gold.

Be careful that your pet doesn't starve to death while credit-cloning. If you are just starting a game and plan to credit clone, try not to let your pet pick up any items until you have reached a shop. By keeping the pet's apport from decreasing prematurely, you optimize its shoplifting ability.

Sometimes your pet will not pick up your "stealing bag" because it is too heavy. Base monster carrying capacity is equal to human maximum carrying capacity, or half human maximum if not strong. This is then modified by the ratio between the monster weights and human weights. Corpseless monsters are given a capacity proportional to their size instead of weight.