Digging for victory

Digging for victory is a strategy in which the player aims to quickly reach the castle and obtain its wand of wishing by digging down as soon as possible. The resulting game is called a dig for victory. In addition to a digging instrument, the player needs a tonal musical instrument (not a leather drum or a bell) in order to open the castle drawbridge. Since elven wizards and priests are guaranteed to start with an instrument - and instruments are normally rather rare - an elven wizard is a popular choice of character for this strategy, due not only to the starting instrument but to the large selection of other magical equipment with which they begin.

The dig for victory strategy is mostly preferred by players who find it an exciting way to reach the castle in a high percentage of newly begun games. However, many strong players do employ a controlled dive to the Castle if they do not yet have magic resistance or reflection after completing Minetown and Sokoban. This dive can take a variety of forms, from simply not exploring every dungeon level thoroughly to actually digging down all of the way. A player making the dive after getting some protection, building up a set of armor, and collecting wands is much more likely to succeed. Reasons to do this include the avoidance of traps which are painless with magic resistance (especially polymorph traps, which can destroy armor, and teleportation traps and level teleportation traps) and being able to obtain relatively early immunity to the touch of death (for which some players would preferentially genocide master liches over arch-liches because the former is more likely to appear at the castle).

Execution

A dig for victory usually starts with the player entering the Gnomish Mines and searching for a pick-axe, where such tools are plentiful. If the player did not start with an instrument, he or she will also usually look for one in the Mines (Minetown can have instruments in the hardware store). The player then returns to the main dungeon, and digs down until the castle.

Digging with the pick-axe requires multiple turns, so occasionally monsters will appear and halt the digging process. These must be scared off with Elbereth or otherwise dealt with. Worse, the player may encounter a minotaur (which ignores Elbereth) in a maze either just before or on the castle level.

Once at the castle, the drawbridge can be opened and closed at will by playing the passtune, crushing anything that stands on it, which will hopefully be everything. Once the castle is clear, the wand of wishing is available for the taking.

Recommended items

The following items are extremely useful for a player who is attempting a dig for victory. Although they are not essential in the same way that the pick-axe or the musical instrument is essential, it would be fair to say that a player needs to accumulate at least a sizable fraction of these items in order to have any chance at success.

A wand of digging is a highly desirable escape item, because the direction of escape (i.e. down) coincides with the direction that one needs to travel. If the game contains a Big Room, then a wand of digging will in all likelihood be essential for further progress, since a pick-axe takes too many turns to dig through the floor, and one is likely to be overwhelmed by monsters in the interim. A wand of digging is also very helpful for evading really tough monsters (such as minotaurs) in the levels above the Castle.

A source of permanent Elbereth, while helpful for any character, is especially helpful when digging for victory. Sources of permanent Elbereth include:

• A wand of fire or lightning,
• A scroll of scare monster,
• An Elbereth engraved by any other method, together with some means of levitation in order to avoid smudging out the word.

It is highly recommended to establish a permanent Elbereth on the upstairs of the Castle level, and on a square within a knight's move of the drawbridge. The former will protect against the touch of death and destroy armor attacks of any higher level liches that teleport to meet you in the Castle. The latter will protect you from melee attacks from xorns and eels while you are opening and closing the drawbridge. Make sure the second Elbereth is exactly a knights move away from the drawbridge. If it is any closer, either the falling drawbridge will kill you or you will be in the direct line of fire of ranged attacks from within the castle. If it is any farther, you will not be able to control the drawbridge.

A scroll of earth builds a defensive fort of boulders around you, preventing most monsters from coming near you or attacking you with ranged attacks. It also provides a method of crossing the Castle moat if the drawbridge gets destroyed for some reason. If the Castle level contains a minotaur, the boulders can help block the minotaur from attacking you. However, xorns and giants can traverse boulders, so some other defensive mechanism (such as Elbereth) is still needed.

Having a source of reflection or magic resistance contributes greatly to survival in the castle. Of course, the ideal is to have both, but in most cases a character with both is better off employing a more cautious strategy than digging for victory. However, a character with neither reflection nor magic resistance is extremely vulnerable to soldiers carrying wands of death or other attack wands. Magic resistance can be obtained by starting as a Wizard. Reflection can be obtained either from the amulet of reflection in Sokoban or the shield of reflection in Perseus's statue. A character without reflection and magic resistance is advised to at least obtain invisibility or displacement in order to minimize the chances of getting hit by a death ray, although one needs to be aware that invisibility and displacement are of limited use in the long corridor leading to the wand of wishing, which contains a number of soldiers that cannot be killed at the drawbridge since there is a locked door in the way.

A wand of teleportation is useful not only as an escape item but also because it can be used to teleport threatening monsters away from you. It is best to save this item for really dangerous monsters such as minotaurs or soldiers with a wand of death.

Some method of monster detection (such as potion of monster detection, or telepathy) is helpful in order to receive advance warning of dangerous monsters such as minotaurs and liches. Similarly, some method of object detection is useful so that you know which of the four towers contains the wand of wishing.

Criticism

Much like the protection racket, digging for victory is nice when it works. Unfortunately, low experience level, interference from monsters, lack of equipment, minotaurs, collapsing drawbridges and purple liches all conspire to make the fatality rate very high, leading to the strategy's nickname of "dying for victory". As such, it is really a metastrategy (a true strategy aims to maximise the survival chances of a particular character, not maximise the chance of at least one of many characters surviving), and even considered by some to be a form of scumming behaviour.

History

Digging for victory is not a new strategy; however, the first mention of it by the name "dig for victory" was in #nethack on May 19th, 2006 by SpeedEvil.

External links

• A humorous graphical criticism by GreyKnight of the strategy