Protection racket

The protection racket is a strategy for reaching the temple in Minetown at a low experience level with lots of gold and purchasing a large amount of divine protection for a small amount of money.

Strategy

Use of your starting pet is essential, as killing monsters yourself will soon raise your level, and not killing them will result in your swift death. Healers are widely considered best for this task, as the healing spell can be used to keep your pet alive while they do the fighting. Two more advantages of Healers are the large amount of gold they start with, and their starting potions that can increase their maximum HP without levelling up. Gnomish Healers have an extra advantage: more of the monsters in the mines will be peaceful. Their stone to flesh is helpful in obtaining gold by credit cloning.

The stairs to the Gnomish Mines can be found on dungeon level 2, 3, or 4. On dungeon level 1, take the down staircase as soon as you find it. If you make it to dungeon level 5 without finding the mines, you've gone too far and must go back. Pacifists might want to go get the Sokoban food - they often lack the alignment to reliably pray.  Healers should cast stone fo flesh on boulders (for huge chunks of meat) and piles of rocks (for meatballs) instead of taking the risk of going deeper into the dungeon.

To avoid death by pits, gas spores and the like, you might want to gain 1-2 levels before entering the mines and then level drain yourself in the minetown temple. How many depends on your means, e. g. prayer if you do not mind your god's anger, the spell or reverse-genociding wraith.

Race and Role

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Someone with practical experience needs to review the following for balance. I think it leaves the impression the protection racket is easy for any role. Some advantages (knights jumping but starving, wizards pawning starting equipment versus credit cloning, arcs starting vs. anybody finding a pick-axe) are vastly exaggerated."

Arguably, being a gnome makes the mines easier, but being a human makes you capable of carrying more junk to make credit cloning easier. Being encumbered is almost always a big mistake, but more so when doing the protection racket. You are playing a near-pacifist, so you'll have a hard time finding food. If you are encumbered, you are making the problem worse. You can usually get to Minetown with the required credit without eating anything at all, just praying when you are weak. (Kill one wimpy monster to get the necessary alignment.) But if you ever get encumbered, the praying timeout won't match the hunger timeout.

Speed is also a key intrinsic for survival for your way to mine town.

Most roles have specific advantages at the protection racket, and all of them are perfectly capable of achieving it. The classic protection racket character is a gnomish healer, let's see how it compares to a:

• Archaeologist:
  • Fast. Easy escape, remember: for now you are a pacifist
  • Stealth. Easy to avoid monsters
  • Touchstone and sack. Ridiculously easy credit cloning.
  • Pick-axe. Can dig to Vaults for money and holes in the floor of the mines to get to Minetown easier.
  • Starts with some food.
  • Chances of starting with a lamp, which makes the mines much easier.

• Knight:
  • Starts with a horse and apples. Which means that credit cloning is trivial. Horses are also extremely fast and strong compared to cats and dogs, allowing them to protect you better.
  • Herbivorous pet. The food problem won't be much of a hassle, because your pet will let you eat most corpses. In fact, your pet will be the one with a food problem.
  • Can jump, which is a good way to escape (and starve).
  • Starts with a pretty good set of armor.

• Monk:
  • Fast
  • Decent initial set of armor.
  • Starts with some food.
  • His initial spells (either healing, protection or sleep) are very useful for a pacifist.
  • Chances of starting with a lamp, which makes the mines much easier.

• Ranger:
  • Starts with some food.
  • If not elven, the cloak of displacement is useful for avoiding early monsters.

• Tourist:
  • Starts with lots of food. Usually, he starts with some tripe too, which makes credit cloning very easy.
  • May start with a leash, and always starts with an expensive camera and 2 potions of extra healing, all of them very useful for a pacifist.
  • His initial scrolls of magic mapping will make the Mines a breeze
  • Starts with a decent amount of gold for credit cloning.
  • Stack of +2 darts can be sold for a few hundred additional gold.

• Wizard:
  • His initial cloak of magic resistance nullifies the most dangerous Mine's traps, which is a common way of dying or losing your pet.
  • The rest of his initial inventory may be of some help for either credit cloning or the pacifist conduct.

Surviving the Mines

The mines can be very hard for a low level character for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that the mine residents can often kill a level 1 character in a couple of hits and there are lots of them. This problem is made worse because the mines are frequently dark, making the monsters difficult to avoid and the stairs hard to find. There are several things one can do to make the chances of survival greater.

• Get as many pets as you can. Not only will they be able to kill monsters more easily, but having more targets to attack increases the chances that enemies will attack them instead of you. Also, it's good to have a backup in case one pet falls into a trapdoor or is killed by another trap.

• If you have 15 or fewer hit points, consider praying with 5 or fewer points left to increase your max HP by up to 5. Do this before quaffing any potions of healing, which will raise your HP even more.

• If you have any scrolls of magic mapping, save them for the dark mine levels.

• Choosing a race with infravision will help you avoid monsters even when in dark levels. Gnomes are the best choice since the mine residents are more likely to be peaceful as well.

• The tourist starts with several items that can help with the protection racket. The potions of extra healing can be used to raise starting hit points. The scrolls of magic mapping can be used to locate the downstairs in the mines. And the camera can be used to blind attacking monsters without killing them. Additionally, the large amount of starting food permits a more conservative approach than might be possible otherwise.

• Remember that if it is a choice between gaining a level and killing a monster to live, gain the level. Paying for only 5 or 6 points of protection at level 2 will still save you a lot of protection money down the road and help a lot as well.

Determine how much gold you need

Divine protection costs your level times 400, but not more than your level times 600. If you have no divine protection, a single donation will buy you 2 to 4 points (it's random). After that, each donation will buy you 1 point until you have 9 protection points, after which you only have a 1-in-protection chance to gain another point for every donation, up to a maximum of 20 protection points.

This means that if you make it to the temple at level 1, you'll need to donate 400 gold between six and eight times to acquire the maximum easily obtainable amount of protection. In other words, you'll ideally want to have about 3,200 gold when you get to the temple.

To donate the gold for protection, #chat with the priest. He will ask you how much gold you want to donate.

Level	Gold Required per donation	Level	Gold Required per donation
1	400-600	16	6400-9600
2	800-1200	17	6800-10200
3	1200-1800	18	7200-10800
4	1600-2400	19	7600-11400
5	2000-3000	20	8000-12000
6	2400-3600	21	8400-12600
7	2800-4200	22	8800-13200
8	3200-4800	23	9200-13800
9	3600-5400	24	9600-14400
10	4000-6000	25	10000-15000
11	4400-6600	26	10400-15600
12	4800-7200	27	10800-16200
13	5200-7800	28	11200-16800
14	5600-8400	29	11600-17400
15	6000-9000	30	12000-18000

Getting the gold

There are many ways to get the gold you need:

• Start as a healer or a tourist. Healers start with a large amount of gold (1,001 to 2,000 at random), and tourists with some (1 to 1000 at random) as well, which can be donated to the Minetown priest.

• Credit clone. That might not be a viable option if you don't have enough food for yourself and your pet (although there is usually a delicatessen in Minetown), and some might consider it cheating.

• Loot vaults. You'll need some means of digging and maybe a scroll of magic mapping or two. Other means of finding a vault can be found on the vault page.

• Sell junk to shopkeepers. This requires extensive knowledge of item values since you don't want to carry 20 items to a shop just to find out they are only worth 1 gold each. Finding a bag of holding will help you carry more junk to sell.

• Polymorph your pet into something strong enough to kill shopkeepers, then clear out the Minetown shops. This is dangerous for several reasons: you risk killing the priest, leaving you with no way to donate; you risk losing your pet and therefore your source of income; and you risk killing Izchak.

What to do after

• Use that protection you just spent all that time and money on and get some levels.

• It might be a good idea to make your way back to the top of the dungeon and explore the rooms you haven't been in yet. At this point you might be low on food. Now that you can start killing stuff, hope for some lichen.

• Sokoban is also a good choice as the next step, if you haven't done it already.

• Continue downward to Mines' End to get the guaranteed luckstone.

• Combine this strategy with the digging for victory strategy for the ultimate metastrategy experience.

• Take the racket to its logical extreme and go for a pacifist ascension.

No matter what you choose to do, the extra AC you got from protection will be a big help in keeping you alive through the rest of the game.

Safer alternative: Level drain

Some players recommend becoming level 3 before entering the mines to avoid death by traps and give you a hit point cushion.

If you do not want to risk a near-pacifist playing style or have already leveled up somewhat, you can still drain yourself to experience level 1 near the temple. You might want to unlock the stairs down from the quest beforehand if you are more than about level 10. First, get the gold, obtain a good pet for protection, lure most of the watch to a different level or lock them away, and clear out all monsters in mine town while you are still powerful.

Next, drain yourself to level 1 near (in) the temple. Feasible ways:

• dance with randomly generated wraith in a small, locked room on a semi-permanent Elbereth.
• lure up a vampire or wraith from the maze version of mine's end
• reverse-genocide wraith
• pray too often if you only need to drain 1-2 (more) levels
• cast drain life at yourself, provided you can still do so at low levels
• more esoteric: do it in the Valley of the Dead; transport wraith from the wizard or priest quest; throw Stormbringer up (<).

Even low levels of magic cancellation encumber this process - know what to take off. Make sure your hit points after the level drain will be enough to cover the maximum physical damage from the drainer's attack.

After you "donate" the gold, level back up very cautiously, and fix any remaining anger if applicable.

Other information

For characters other than Healers and dwarven Archeologists, the chances of surviving the protection racket are slim, and hence it is a metastrategy. Some classes have a comparatively good chance, such as Knights due to their horse's ability to kill the mines' denizens (and not stop to eat each corpse), their ability to jump, and having lots of starting armor, but even so, it is still difficult. Conversely, it is arguable that the protection racket is actually the best strategy for gnomish Healers.

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, it is also possible for Rogues to attempt the racket, due to the significant boost in their starting gold, giving them more gold in the beginning than even Healers. Unfortunately, most of the inhabitants of the Mines have also been replaced with far more hostile undead, making the strategy far more difficult for all dwarves and gnomes, and Healers in particular.

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