Talk:Gehennom

it should be noted that Gehennom is the Jewish version of hell. --84.229.49.241 11:49, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Uncursing two-handed weapons

Can you still apply magic markers when wielding a cursed two-handed weapon? If so, you could carry a scroll of fire, which will never be destroyed by a fire trap, and blank it when needed (either with a wand of cancellation or fountain/pool, such as in Juiblex's Swamp). Kind of an ungainly method, but when Gehennom is 20-30 levels deep I could see it being worthwhile. I could also see this being useful for an atheist who wants to wield a dwarvish mattock or a unicorn horn, or possibly the Tsurugi. -Ion frigate 05:48, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

If you had a wand of cancellation you could just drop your inventory and cancel yourself. It is possible to write without hands (but not engrave...). It's a good idea, but I think that in Gehennom water is rare enough to make blanking the scroll difficult, and outside of gehennom carrying around potions/scrolls isn't nearly as dangerous by the time cursing monsters become a threat. Another option could be to carry around blank paper; even if it burns away from a fire trap you can just take another one out, as blank scrolls are relatively plentiful and cheap compared to a written scroll.

Another way to free yourself from cursed weapons (and armor) is polymorph. Polymorphing into a tiny monster or one without hands will cause your weapons to drop; the tiny monster will also cause cursed armor to fall off as well. This would require polymorph control (or a good deal of luck) and a wand of polymorph, but fortunately wands of polymorph are safer to keep in open inventory and have other uses as well. -- Qazmlpok 12:33, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

Even if you had a wand of cancellation, canceling yourself might not be desirable - it will set the enchantment of your weapon to +0, which would require at least 3 scrolls of enchant weapon to fix for a +6/+7 weapon. Still, it's a good point that for somebody who ends up with a cursed 2H weapon that isn't their main one (using a mattock to dig, for example), self-cancellation is a good idea.

Gehennom has 3 or 4 sources of water: Juiblex's swamp, the two fake Wizard's Towers, and if you've done the Invocation, the moat around the vibrating square. They're not that badly spaced throughout the levels; it'd almost always be shorter to go to one of them than to leave in order to pray. Particularly in the endgame this might be useful, as Moloch's Sanctum is full of item-cursing priests of Moloch. But I can also see the logic that by this point you should have safe routes mapped out, and thus might as well just carry a scroll of remove curse in open inventory.

I certainly think this idea would have very marginal uses: non-spellcaster who wants to wield a 2H weapon, which would seem to mean samurai who want to wield the Tsurugi, possibly people doing a dwarven racial ascension, and anyone who really likes Cleaver. -Ion frigate 19:50, August 5, 2010 (UTC)

There is a better solution: Drop 1 holy water in Sokoban or the Castle, and carry the Eye of the Aethiopica. The Orb of Fate or a cursed scroll of teleportation also work. Even if you don't have teleport control, levelport will take you up - in that case, dig down with a wand and uncurse your weapon at the Castle. Tjr 00:39, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

What about just always keeping your weapon blessed, and taking the holy water (or scroll of remove curse) out of a bag if it happens to get unblessed by the black glow? That seems like it should happen rarely enough to make this practical. Slandor 00:46, August 6, 2010 (UTC)