Drain for gain
Drain for gain is a strategy that increases your maximum hit points and power by losing experience level (through some method of level drain) while having lower stats (in particular constitution and wisdom), then leveling up while having higher stats. By manipulating your stats before and after level drain, the amount of maximum HP and Pw you lose when losing levels could be made much smaller than the amount you gain when leveling back up.
Contents
Benefits
At the beginning of the game, characters usually start with lower stats. Applying this strategy would allow your character to reach and exceed the maximum HP and Pw potential for average characters of the same level. It has effects comparable with or even surpassing those obtained through alchemy, nurse dancing and foocubi, without requiring the same resources.
This strategy also allows you to play the game as a relatively low level character (but with a lot of HP and Pw) for a long time. This has several advantages:
- You can buy a lot more protection for cheaper. Self draining to XL1 allows you a chance to receive protection for only 400 gold, makes even naked AC -10 possible through donation if you have finished Ludios.
- You can reassign your skill slots.
- You can explore deeper dungeons while avoiding tougher monsters. Monsters with difficulty higher than (your level + dungeon level) / 2 are considered too strong to be generated. So if you drain yourself to XL1 before descending down every staircase, while keeping pets around to do some killings for you, you may be able to descend really deep with a much smaller chance of seeing tough monsters such as mind flayers.
- You may use the polyself bug.
Basically, if for any reason you want to drain your own level, you might as well try reducing your constitution and wisdom before doing so.
Risks
Attempting to drain multiple levels for the first time in the relatively early game may cause you some low HP concerns. But after two or three cycles you will probably end up being XL1 with 40+HP, with at least 9 points of protection, making HP a much lesser concern from then on.
When you have only limited method of reducing stats (e.g. cursed and non-cursed unicorn horn which is usually only good for 1-pt CON reduction), the effect of HP gain may not be very obvious (or sometimes even a slight HP reduction). But if you keep gaining several experience levels before draining, eventually you will find your maximum HP increasing. Switching to methods of greater stat reduction later in the game (e.g. rings of gain constitution) will accelerate your gain by a lot. Note that you can combine multiple methods of stat reduction to achieve a greater effect. e.g. Applying a cursed unicorn horn while wearing a -2 ring of gain constitution until you get an extra -1 CON.
If you choose to play as a low level high-HP character for an extended period of time, there are also several disadvantages, but most of them can be mitigated:
- It might become more difficult to hit monsters. Having a blessed luckstone and maximizing your luck greatly improves your chance to hit.
- You may not have enough skill slots for spells. Simply drain level again to switch to a different spell class when you need it, gaining yourself a few extra points of maximum HP and power while doing so.
- You may die to monster's level drain attack more easily. Having MC3 reduces this risk to almost negligible, and having level drain resistance (such as when wielding Excalibur) removes this risk completely.
Execution
To use this strategy, you first need to find some methods of reducing stats, and a method of level-draining yourself. Then you need to find a way to increase your stats and level back up. In most situations, the resources for doing those only need to be obtained once, and then the cycle can be repeated indefinitely (and in some cases rather quickly, too).
Reducing stats
The following methods can be used for reducing stats:
- Abusing them.
- Applying a cursed unicorn horn. Two of the possible effects of cursed unicorn horn are reduce constitution ("You feel fragile!") and reduce wisdom ("You feel foolish!"). You will need a non-cursed unicorn horn to cure other bad effects including sickness.
- Wearing a negatively enchanted ring of gain constitution to reduce constitution, or removing a positively enchanted one.
- Removing a positively enchanted helm of brilliance to reduce wisdom, or wearing a negatively enchanted one.
- Engraving on co-aligned altar will reduce wisdom by 1 without any other penalty. You can easily reduce wisdom to the minimum of 3 this way. Note that engraving on cross-aligned altar will only reduce your luck by 1, not wisdom.
Draining your level
The following methods can be used to drain your level:
- Throwing Stormbringer or The Staff of Aesculapius up and hitting yourself.
- Removing MC3 and dancing with a level-draining monster such as Wraith, Vampire or Barrow wight. A relatively safe way to do this is to lure a wraith into a locked room, engrave Elbereth in front of the door with an object on top, then stand diagonally next to the door outside so that when your level is low enough, you can just step away and the wraith won't ever come out.
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- Casting drain life at yourself.
- Dancing with foocubi at low charisma, which may either drain you or lower your stats further, both of which are actually desirable at this stage.
Increasing stats
The following methods can be used for increasing (or restoring) stats:
- Exercising them. Note that donating to priests for a lot of clairvoyance is a good way to exercise wisdom to max in the early game.
- Applying a non-cursed unicorn horn.
- Drinking a potion of restore ability, preferably blessed.
- Using the spell of restore ability.
- Wearing a positively enchanted helm of brilliance, or removing a negatively enchanted one.
- Wearing a positively enchanted ring of gain constitution, or removing a positively enchanted one.
Leveling back up
After fixing your stats, just kill some monsters to level up and watch as you get more maximum HP and Pw than before.
Stats and HP/power gain per experience level
The HP and Pw gain per experience level for different roles and races is covered in detail in [1]. Constitution is the only character stat related to HP gain per level. The effect of maximum HP bonus per level due to constitution is summarized in the following table:
| CON | Bonus |
|---|---|
| 3 | -2 |
| 4-6 | -1 |
| 7-14 | +0 |
| 15-16 | +1 |
| 17 | +2 |
| 18 | +3 |
| 19+ | +4 |
Wisdom is the only stat related to power gain per level. Every 2 WIS points has the approximate effect of adding d1 to the amount of power gain per level, this effect could be further multiplied depending on roles. (e.g. wizards get a x2 multiplier)
