CrecelleHack/Standard Strategy
Overview
Early Game
Finding a Melee Weapon
Your first goal in the early game should be to acquire a better weapon. Your starting weapon is made of wood, which means that its damage will not scale with your ability scores. Good sources of early weapons are roaming packs of orcs and the gnomes in the gnomish mines.
Finding a Ranged Weapon
Because it is more difficult to gain immunity to a given type of damage, monsters that deal passive damage are a threat well into the late game. In addition, the presence of transmuters in Gehennom present a dangerous threat to the player's inventory. As such, players should consider bringing a ranged weapon with them in order to pick off dangerous monsters from a distance.
Specific Strategies
Wishing
General Wishing Strategy
Only items that are nonmagical may be wished for with specific properties or materials. It can sometimes be worth wishing for nonmagical items in order to shore up holes in an ascension kit.
Useful Wishes
In addition to those in NetHack, the following items are useful to wish for:
- Mirrored Glasses: Mirrored glasses occupy the face slot and provide extrinsic reflection, providing a great deal of flexibility in armor choice.
- Cockatrice Blood: Due to the coating system, cockatrice blood functions as an incredible area denial tool which can be used to stone many monsters at once.
- Elven Helm: Elven helms can be safely enchanted to a high AC value, and because they are nonmagical they may be wished for with specific materials and object properties.
Less Useful Wishes
Some items commonly wished for in NetHack may be less useful.
- Cockatrice Corpse: From slipping on oil and banana peels to being tripped by monsters, wielding a cockatrice corpse is far more dangerous in CrecelleHack than in vanilla. User discretion is advised.
Erasure Candidates
In addition to those found in Vanilla NetHack, the following monsters are good candidates for erasure:
- Black Hole: In addition to dealing a large amount of cold damage, Black holes can teleport any item they pick up to a random square. This behavior can be highly annoying, and may impede stashing.
- Poltergeist: Poltergeists will pick up and throw any item and are permanently invisible. While not terribly threatening, their tendency to throw items everywhere can be very annoying.
- Gator: Gators can spawn in very large numbers on the Plane of Water, hit hard, and can inflict illness.