User:Chris/dNethack/Undead hunter

Undead Hunter spoiler free summary

 Undead Hunters don't have normal gods and have non-standard progression
through the game. Roughly, the early game revolves around smithing and
gaining weapon skill to become more powerful, while the mid to endgame
revolves around special research paths that replace normal gods.

 You will want a forge early on, there is a guaranteed one in minetown
and the quest home level. You can safely forge any fireproof item. 

 To forge metalic items, dip them into a forge while wielding a smithing
hammer. This brings up a menu. Metal weapons and armor can be improved
up to a limit based on your smithing skill (+0 initially). Melt down
unwanted items using this interface to produce ingots. You need ingots
in open inventory to smith items.

 Create new items by applying a smithing hammer while standing at a
forge. You will need a stack of ingots in open inventory of equal
weight to the item you wish to forge. Increase your skill in smithing
to unlock better armor.

 Your smithing is capped at basic at the start of the game, upgrading
items with columnar crystals can unlock higher skill caps. Let corpses
rot to find columnar crystals. Metal items can be improved up to limits
based on your current smithing skill, non-metal objects can only be
improved using columnar crystals. All items can be improved past your
current skill limit through the use of columnar crystals. Basic crystals
allow improvement to +3, twin columnar crystals to +6, columnar chunks
to +9, and columnar masses to +10. Find more powerful crystals in the
rotted corpses of more powerful monsters. In a pinch, larger crystals
can be broken down into smaller crystals via the forge item menu.

 You can improve basic weapons to 2x energy weapons by forging with the
appropriate spell known. In my opinion this plus the ability to apply
multiple cult oprops to the same item adds up to being able to make any
half-way decent base weapon type USEABLE in the endgame. My experience
is that they're not the best thing I've ever used but they also aren't
totally crippling.

 The quest is designed to be done ASAP, at around 14th level. The quest
home level is generally a good home base, especially after you have
permision to enter the quest. There is a guaranteed general store on
the first filler level. It is heavy on werewolves so you need some means
of dealing with lycanthropy. 

 You must advance your research path to ascend, but you can only advance
your research after you've pierced the veil. Once the veil is pierced,
#offer or #research corpses on a philosophy altar to build research 
points. How to do the research paths are explained hopefully-fairly-well
by the research progress self exam option (Ctrl-X h). Very roughly, the
lawful philosophy offers weapon improvements, the neutral philosophy
offers spellcasting improvements, and the chaotic philosophy offers
(crummy) defensive improvements to everyone and (strong) offensive
improvements to vampires only. You can advance multiple paths with
the aid of wishes but only your starting path otherwise (even if you
change alignments).

 Full scoring ascension requires piercing the veil, completing a
quest-related step, and purchasing 6 upgrades from one upgrade path
(the self-exam menu will refer to this as "a breakthrough in the
philosophy of X").

I recommend adding the following auto-pickup exceptions:

AUTOPICKUP_EXCEPTION="<*parasite"
AUTOPICKUP_EXCEPTION="<*parasites"
AUTOPICKUP_EXCEPTION="<*crysal*"
AUTOPICKUP_EXCEPTION="<*chrysal*"
AUTOPICKUP_EXCEPTION="<*columnar*"