User:EasterlyIrk/uh

early game

undead hunter is intended to begin the game as a run of the mill martial (similar enough to knight, samurai, valkyrie, etc.). similar to knights and monks, they have a minor early game "gimmick" (they are half-competent blacksmiths, and staunch atheists), but they otherwise mostly just use their starting inventory whatever else they find, until they reach the quest level, ish. the starting weapons are semi unique, but they're mostly just what their stats show - there's not a lot complicated to consider there. the nightmare bullet mold you have allows you to make bullets at the cost of experience (30% of the XP to from your previous to your current level), which is your ranged option.

smithing

for blacksmithing, UH start at unskilled smithing skill and able to reach basic. this uncaps as they progress throughout the game, loosely. any ability to smith allows you to melt down metallic items into ingots, and depending on your smithing ability you can craft (increasingly durable/strong) nonmagical armor, as well as tools. you can smith weapons as well, but you need to be skilled enough in that weapon skill, or have a copy handy, to do so. in addition, you can 'improve' items to +1/+2/+5 at basic, skilled and expert smithing levels. any metallic item can be improved in this way for free, and items you craft will automatically come out at that enchantment. all of this is possible for anybody with smithing skill, which all dwarves and gnomes also know how to do (in addition to the UH role).

however, for UH in particular, you you begin the game with basic smithing cap. and as corpses rot around you, occasionally their blood will crystalize into a "columnar crystal". the four kinds are 'columnar crystal rod', 'twin columnar crystal rods', 'columnar crystal chunk', and 'columnar crystal mass' (or something like that), in increasing potency. the tier is determined by monster difficulty, with early game monsters dropping rods or maybe twins, mid game monsters dropping twins, dragons and the like dropping chunks, and endgame monsters dropping masses. you can use these crystals to upgrade items past your normal limit, even if they're not metallic (though if they're not fireproofed, they'll burn up in the forge). rods upgrade an item up to +3, twins upgrade up to +6, chunks to +9, and masses to +10. when you first upgrade using a twin crystal, you will unrestrict your smithing to skilled. when you use a chunk, you will unlock expert. if you use a chunk without unrestricting to skilled, or a mass before a twin or chunk, you'll simply get it unrestricted to expert immediately.

atheism

for atheism, you have no gods (no gods no masters or something man). not that you're not a worshipper, but that you literally just don't have any gods up there watching you. you cannot pray, and altars you find are replaced with 'workbenches' instead (they will be relevant later, but are not relevant early game). you can still find altars to moloch or specific gods (like in the chaos quests), but all normal altars and temples will be workbenches. crossaligned workbenches can be converted without minions or other effects. workbenches cannot be used to BUC identify things, so you will need to play things carefully. identifying things and smithing yourself new items can help.

mid game

in the midgame, your goal is to enter the lost cities as soon as practical - you don't need to actually clear them, but you need to break the veil somehow. binding a spirit, reading the necronomicon/book of lost names, and invoking the fingerprint shield are other potential ways, but they are generally less consistent than just entering the lost cities, turning around, and leaving. you just need to break the veil and start getting insight to continue much farther in your personal goals. it doesn't need to be your #1 priority, but it's something you should strongly consider doing as soon as you can. otherwise, your overarching goals are mostly the same as normal, but with extra bonuses from your smithing and with extra objectives from your not-quite-atheism-at-this-point.

the quest

the quest home level is has a small 'home base' (with a workbench, a forge, an extra smithing hammer if you lost your first one, and a collection of weapons for you to use). the quest is mostly a run of the mill quest, but the undead part of undead hunter is a bit of a lie - in actuality, you're mostly a werewolf hunter. the quest enemies, including the nemesis, deal large amounts of cold and shock damage but are highly vulnerable (2x damage) to fire damage, which will be relevant. note that you will gain intrinsic drain resistance at xp14, but you will not gain cold resistance from leveling up. the quest artifact is fun, wooden stake that scare beasts when in open inventory, grants +1d10 fire damage to all attacks (not just with it, all while in open inventory) and then cold/MR when carried + drain damage when used as a weapon (but its a pretty mid weapon as a weapon itself). the quest itself doesn't have to be done with particular urgency, but the nemesis always drops a columnar chunk when killed, so you may want to do it when you can. the nemesis is called the 'index wolf' and can be looked up in the pokedex.

smithing

in the midgame, the part of your smithing that's unique to undead hunter (other roles and races can also be competent normal blacksmiths) becomes relevant. it's possible to do this at the very start, but since it requires finding spellbooks, it's a bit hard to get going. at any level of smithing, if you know an elemental spell, you can imbue it into a weapon. this will give the weapon a 2x damage object property of the type you imbued, but wipe your memory of the spell. so you can read a spellbook of fireball, and sacrifice any memories of it to get a flaming hunter's axe. fire, cold, shock, acid can be applied from the corresponding elemental spells, as well as magic (magic missile) and holy/unholy (remove curse).

you can remove the object property from your weapon to gain a crystal containing it, allowing you to transfer properties between weapons as you like. each weapon can only gain one property this way, and artifacts cannot be given properties. some specific kinds of weapon, like rakuyo or diskos, will only gain the lesser property instead (+2d6 damage, instead of +1x), but most weapons you find will gain 2x.

smithing a property into a weapon will also make it count as an insight weapon. this means they get benefits when wielded by a madman (generally irrelevant), somebody with ose bound (useful), or you (later in the game, see the lategame section for details). this means that you will functionally always wants to use a property-smithed weapon, if possible. gaining 2x damage is generally enough to make any mundane weapon type viable, particularly when a lot of the enemies in your future are weak to a couple specific damage types.

atheism

in addition to your smithing, the midgame means you need to start caring about those workbenches again. this is the most involved part of undead hunter by far, but it's required to ascend (you cannot ascend without completing your research).

this is where your starting alignment, and by extension your starting god, matters. each alignment is a distinct philosophy, and as you conduct your research, it allows you to perform new 'experiments' (mostly on yourself). all alignments must research, which is primarily done by #offering or #researching corpses on an aligned workbench, as well as complete a side objective/criteria specific to that philosophy. researching enough will unlock the next experiment, but unless the side objective has also been met, you simply won't be able to actually perform your experiments. you can still stockpile research, so you can potentially perform 2 experiments in a row later, but until that point - you're stuck. each 'experiment' is some form of upgrade, either to you, your weapons, or your pets.

none of your upgrades can be acquired before you break the veil (and gain the capability to raise your insight). lawfuls and neutrals require 10 insight to begin, and chaotics simply need the veil broken. you can gain research progress without the veil being broken, but you simply can't perform the experiments you need. each experiment performed also reduces your int and wis by 1, both current and maximum scores.

for all UH, you will need to perform 6 experiments to successfully ascend. if you try to leave the dungeon before this point, it's a loss.

lawful (the college)

lawfuls are aligned with the 'college', and focus on achieving enlightenment (and de facto godhood) by discovering the secrets of the world, both the beast plague affecting the quest & the higher beings you become aware of as your insight increases. your research requires corpses with eyes, so corpses without them cannot be researched. to perform your experiments, you must apply your portable electrode on a coaligned workbench.

your side objective is possibly both the simplest and the hardest: each experiment requires 10 more insight than the preceding one, starting at 10 and capping at 60. this means that you're effectively hard pace-locked to how strong of a build you can acquire at the time, since it's pretty much impossible to gain the insight needed without doing a full clear of the lost cities. however, for better or for worse your philosophy also provides the fewest "direct" combat benefits, so you're not relying on it to carry you through the lost cities in the first place

unlike the other two philosophies, you do have a unique way to obtain extra research when not at an altar. you can apply the portable electrode to resurrect a corpse as a tame spark skeletal construct, which reanimates the monster with a template that trades speed and intelligence for some resistances along with slowing and shocking touches. this costs power based on the monster's difficulty, but grants research for successful reanimations.

your experiments can be performed in any order, and you have 9 options. two of them are repeatedly selectable, but they also don't count towards your total experiments performed (either for insight requirements or for progress towards the 6 needed for ascension). they are:

• "Lightning resistance": intrinsic shock resistance
• "Water resistance": intrinsic waterproofing
• "Clairvoyance": intrinsic clairvoyance
• "Blood clone": grants you the ability to temporarily summon a tame monster from a potion of its blood, which requires a bell and costs power. this clone vanishes after 100 turns, and comes only with their weapons and armor (no extra equipment)
• "Weapon Skills": grants you the weapon skills for 3 random hunter weapons. this includes any possible undead hunter starting weapon, as well as any of the weapons found in your quest box. there are a lot of possible skills, and the odds are rather complicated, so just know that it's not super useful unless you really want to use a specific weapon. this upgrade does not count as an upgrade for insight or overall research progress, and may be reselected infinitely many times, but does cost research to perform.
• "Adjust your weapon to conduct the arcane": gives your weapon the "antenna" property. this allows it to "conduct arcane forces", giving it bonus damage equal to your int modifier as shock damage. this damage is doubled vs. mist wolves and the moon enemies you'll be fighting later. this upgrade does not count as an upgrade for insight or overall research progress, and may be reselected infinitely many times, but does cost research to perform.
• "Attune antennae to conduct errant thoughts": gives all weapons with the "antenna" property bonus damage, 1d15+enchantment bonus damage against telepathic creatures (20% for non-telepathic creatures, mindless creatures are immune). this is doubled vs. mist wolves & the moon
• "Attune antennae to conduct electrical static": gives all weapon with the "antenna" property bonus damage, 1d10+enchantment bonus damage against all monsters, doubled vs. telepathic monsters and again (to 4x) vs. mist wolves & the moon
• "Attune antennae to rebroadcast rejecting forces": gives all weapon with the "antenna" property a bonus effect - also tries to hit targets behind the struck target, dealing 2d(6 + 2*enchantment) damage and knocking them back 1d3 spaces
• "Reveal the insubstantial world": grants you the ability to phase so long as you have a temporary source of light or darklight. permanent sources of light, such as magic lamps, do not work. the valid light sources are: torches, shadowlander's torches, sunrods, oil lamps, potions of oil, wax and tallow candles, gnomish pointy hats, lanterns, dwarvish helms, and lantern plate mails.

loosely, these experiments are all minor utility effects - the weapon damage upgrades are nice, but don't hugely improve your offenses, aside from 'electrical static' (which is roughly as good as a +1x damage property on most weapons). they don't particularly point your build in a specific direction, but are useful to have. not all of them must be claimed to ascend - you simply need 6 of the non-reselectable ones. generally, shock resistance or clairvoyance is the most skippable.

neutral (the choir)

neutrals are aligned with the choir, and focus on achieving enlightenment through more directly communing with the things that've always been there that you just couldn't see. and by more directly communing, i mean putting worms in your brain. you're putting worms in your brain. because of this, your research requires corpses of non-mindless monsters. to perform your experiment, apply a trephination kit with a parasite in open inventory while standing on an altar

to find parasites to put in your brain, you must either #research/offer to dissect corpses on altars (10% chance to find a parasite for each corpse), or let non-dissected eligible corpses rot (1/100, or 1/66 with 27+ insight). when you have acquired enough research, you must simply have a parasite to put in your brain to claim your next 'experiment'. you do need 10 insight to be able to use a trephination kit, but after that you can basically just farm for corpses at your workbench to insert as many parasites as you'd like. there are no additional requirements besides simply finding the parasites, which #researching corpses will do for you.

however, to actually benefit from your experiments, you will need 27+ insight. almost all of your parasites are entirely non-functional until you hit 27+ insight and your Lumen thought (see lategame section) is activated. you'll gain generic spell success rate, but you won't get your extra attacks or your other spell bonuses. this functionally means you'll need 27 insight to progress through any meaningful part of your philosophy at all, though you can still put as many worms in your brain as you'd like.

unlike the other philosophies, your experiments are all repeatedly selectable, but your research simply requires 6 parasites put in your brain. you can put all 6 in the same experiment, if you'd like. your options are:

• "Suck out your enemies' brains": you get a 1d2 int-draining tentacle attack in melee, +1d2 damage for each parasite after the first
• "Empower charm spells": each parasite boosts your effective skill with enchantment spells by +1 level (up to expert), reduces your spell failure by 5% and your enchantment spell failure by an additional 5%. every 3 parasites, you gain an extra cast of charm monster when you cast it (targeted at the same monster, effectively giving you another attempt to beat the resistance check)
• "Empower explosive spells": reduces your spell failure by 5% per parasite. for spells that cause multiple explosions (fire storm, lightning storm), gives one additional explosion per parasite. for spells that cause a single explosion (blizzard, fireball, acid splash) instead functions identical to multi-shooting ray and beam spells (see below).
• "Multi-shoot ray and beam spells": reduces your spell failure by 5% per parasite. for ray and beam spells (magic missile, cone of cold, etc.), each parasite increases the number of rays or beams you shoot. For each additional ray/beam fired, requires +1 parasite from the last, starting at 2 parasites. This means your first parasite will be a 50% chance to fire a second beam, and your 2nd parasite will make that 100%. Your third, fourth, and fifth parasites become 33%, 66%, and 100% chance to fire a third beam. Your sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth parasites are a 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% chance to fire a fourth beam, and so on.
• "Sting adjacent enemies": gives you auto-attacking jellyfish tentacles. they attack every turn, and can hit up to 2 monsters per parasite. every 3 parasites, you gain an extra full attack, allowing you to hit the same target twice. the jellyfish tentacles deal 1d4 physical damage but cause the target to scream, reducing their speed by -6 movement points.

the brain-draining tentacles and the jellyfish stings are generally applicable, but this philosophy is particularly powerful for spellcasters, since gaining additional beams/explosions for spells like magic missile or blizzard is outstanding for your damage capabilities.

chaotic (defilement)

chaotics are aligned with... the concept of trying to remove the blood from your body, i guess. your main objective is to get rid of all of your blood and become functionally immortal due to no longer aging, hungering, etc. to do that, you need to study the impurities in the blood of corpses, as well as become impure yourself. you can claim your experiments by draining your blood with a phlebotomy kit while standing on a coaligned workbench - choosing to 'exsanguinate' yourself does the trick.

your only way of gaining research is researching corpses with blood, but you still do have an additional requirement to claim your personal experiments. however, this one is a little tricky, since there's not really a great in-game way of checking your progress. specifically, you need to go around performing ritually impure actions, so that you can become more like the undead you're trying to emulate. you have an impurity meter (this isn't unique to chaotic UH, but they care the most) that builds when you take specific actions. for each experiment, you need to have acquired 3 + 2 impurity per experiment previously claimed (so you need 3, 5, 7, etc. impurity per experiment). impurity cannot be reduced or removed

there are many categories of impurity available. each category can score up to 15, with you gaining an overall impurity point at scores 1, 4, and 15. however, every action that would increment your category score has only a 1/(category score) chance to work - so you'll always go to 1 on your first action, but then your next action only has a 1/2 chance of increasing it. at something like 4 score, you have only a 1/4 chance to go to 5 score on performing an impure action. this means, in practice, each category will only give you 1-2 points unless you've truly met its criteria an incredible number of times. the categories are (with non-exhaustive examples of what increments it)

• Meat: eating meat
• Blood: drinking blood (potion or vampire bite attack), having your blood drained, interacting with blood in most manners
• Bodies: interacting with corpses
• Death magic: using or having death magic (wands of death, etc.) used on you
• Theft: stealing or using stolen items (not being stolen from)
• Murder: murdering (and other similar situations)
• Bloodlust: killing peacefuls (and other similar situations)
• Graverobbery: digging up graves
• God anger: angering your gods
• Illness: becoming sick in any way
• Dirtness: interacting directly with filthy things, like having the Filth spell cast on you, eating filth-crusted items, applying a cursed towel (and other misc. sources)
• Disaster: experiencing disasters applied to your face, via the Fire Pillar, Lightning, Geyser, Acid/Blood Rain, Hail Flurry/Ice Storm, and Earthquake monster spells. Experiencing famine attacks also counts
• Seduction: seducing or being seduced, including nymph theft attacks
• Deep ones: being attacked by a deep(er, est) one, or witnessing a deepest one grow up into Father Dagon or Mother Hydra - not being attacked by them, though
• Betrayal: being attacked by a previous pet gone feral, a traitorous pet, or a befouled wraith
• Kuo toa: being attacked by a kuo toa or a kuo toa whip
• Ibites: being attacked by a being of ib or priest of ib
• Mind flayers: being attacked by any kind of mind flayer, including star spawn and great cthulhu
• Rot: witnessing corpses rot, binding ymir, seeing molds grow on corpses, seeing spore zombies revive, being bitten by rot caterpillars or being affected by the spores madness
• Poison: using poisoned weapons (poison or dire poison) if they trigger the severe effect, being affected by or using poisoned monster attacks
• Curses: Being affected (not immune to) curse items effects or mummy curses
• Great Old One Transcendence: Witnessing a Great Old One break the laws of reality. This includes witnessing a GOO (such as great cthulhu) resurrect, seeing a deepest one grow up into Father Dagon or Mother Hydra, being affected by madnesses from a GOO (asmodeus, baalphegor, blasphemous lurker, etc.), or witnessing nyar's avatars die (nitocris, the black pharaoh, and the good neighbor). unlike the other impurities, this can give up to 6 points, at score thresholds 1, 4, 8, 16, 32, 63. there is an 1/(score/2) chance to give an additional score point instead, as a result.

in the short term, the easiest way to get credit is to steal and murder. poisoned weapons and graverobbery are also great. bodies and blood will come with your research, and if you can get your hands on two unicorn horns (or a unicorn horn and another good way to cure sickness), you can try to curse one and farm illness off that. cursed towels are good for dirtiness. most of the rest are not super in your control, but there's things you can do to make it more likely. however, most chaotic UH won't actually need more than 17 to max out your research, so you don't need to go ham trying to be as impure as possible right away

unlike the other philosophies, you don't get to pick your experiments. instead, they are in order and you will always receive the next in line. there are 7, of which you only need 6. these are called the 'preservation' experiments

• "Your metabolism slows": you hunger at 1/2 rate
• "Your body becomes resistant to decay": you can no longer abuse ability scores
• "Your skin becomes tough": you gain +3 natural DR to all slots
• "You no longer feel cold": intrinsic cold resistance
• "You no longer feel sleepy": intrinsic sleep resistance
• "Your skin becomes tougher": an additional +3 natural DR, stacking to +6, to all slots
• "You become uninteresting to the undead": mindless undead all generate peaceful to you

These experiments are mostly inconsequential on your build, aside from the very first one or two (which are nice utility effects). None of these will really have any impact on your overall offenses, and unless you're going naked or playing an orc (who have nat DR from leveling, +3 at xp30) even the DR upgrades will likely not raise your overall defenses by too much (your overall DR is sqrt(natural^2 + armor^2)). the undead truce is helpful, but it's also the last, and you may not even feel the additional research and attribute penalty is worth it.

however, defilement comes with two other pools of experiments you can perform. the first is only available to vampires, and the second is available to all. both of these experiment pools DO count towards your max upgrades required, so you only need 6 out of the preservation, vampire, and rot lists combined.

vampires

the vampire upgrades focus on (instead of draining their blood) strengthening their vampiric powers. Vampires have an additional 5 experiments, but each one adds 5 impurity to the threshold for your next experiment, capping at 30 impurity. they can also perform the normal preservation experiments as well. the vampire specific ones are:

• "Better control your spawn": tame vampires (including all vampiric monsters) will not untame, and every 2 vampires count as 1 pet for your pet cap
• "Improve your spawns' attacks": tame vampires gain -5 AC, +5 accuracy, +5 damage, will follow you between levels from +1 space away, and increase the level threshold for gaining XP from kills by 5
• "Manipulate the blood of your victims": vampire attacks and hemargyos weapons have a 10% chance to deal massive damage to foes with blood, equal to 30% of their max hp (capped at 400)
• "Improve your blood-bullets": nightmare's bullet molds make blood-spears instead of blood-bullets, which deal 4d4+5/2d10+5 instead of 2d8+4/2d6+4, and use normal projectile mulch rules instead of always mulching like normal bullets
• "Hypnotic Gaze": you gain an active ability to gaze at monsters using a 1d4 paralysis gaze attack.

these experiments are substantially stronger than what's available in the preservation tree. in particular, blood-spears allow you to make a large stack of reusable bullets. since normal projectiles with object properties never mulch, imbuing these spears with any property will grant you an infinitely reusable supply of incredibly powerful ammunition. combined with the blood manipulation experiment to rip the blood from your victims, vampire undead hunter can use weapons like the chikage or evelyn (or two-weaponed together, even) to very powerful effect.

rot

the second alternative experiment path are the rot upgrades, which are not tied to impurity, but require that you have acquired the third preservation experiment (increased DR) to begin. when you perform this experiment, rotting corpses will begin to have a chance to drop a chrysalis. the base chance is 1/150 per corpse, but this goes to 1/100 at the 6th preservation experiment (second DR upgrade) or 1/50 with the 7th (undead truce). this chance is worsened 3x if the corpse is dissected and 2x if the corpse is drained, so researched corpses only have a 1/900 (or 600, or 300) chance to leave behind a chrysalis. as a result, these are more of an upgrade you take alongside the preservation tree, rather than purely instead of it (like the vampire experiments)

to perform a rot upgrade, you simply apply the chrysalis. each rot upgraderequires an additional chrysalis to perform, though - 1 for the first upgrade, 2 for the second, 3 for the third, etc. up to 9 for your final upgrade. chrysalis don't always stack, but it will consume the requisite number of chrysalis from your inventory when you perform the upgrade(and fail otherwise, without consuming anything). you may choose which upgrade you want, but there's also a high possibility you just get a random available upgrade instead. the chance is roughly 37%, 42%, 48%, 57%, 70%, 87% to get what you want, with 7 through 2 upgrades currently available to pick from.

there are 9 total upgrades, with 2 of them being locked behind prerequisites, so a max of 7 available upgrades at once. the options are:

• "Vomit rot": you gain a non-contact touch accuracy vomit attack, which covers enemies in rot caterpillars. This can be used as an active ability, but also triggers on 10% of melee attacks. The vomit effect clears vomitable sickness and costs 20 nutrition. While enemies have caterpillars, they take 3.3% of their max hp + 26 damage every turn. If they have disease resistance, they take 2% + 8 damage instead. Monsters with blood that lack drain resistance also have a 1/3 chance to lose a level, and all monsters suffer from reduced damage and skills (dealing half spell damage and losing projectile multishot, for example). This has a 5% chance to wear off per turn, and automatically clears if they take fire damage.
• "Rot wings": intrinsic flying.
• "Send forth a phantom duplicate": requires the wings upgrade. gain the ability to create a 'butterfly clone' for 45 power. this creates a summoned butterfly swarm monster (4d6 illness-inflicting weapon attack, 1d6 disease-inflicting offhand attack, 4d8 disease explosion on death, tiny with base level 15, resists poison) with a copy of your wielded weapon.
• "Become followed by the kindred of rot": the dungeon becomes inundated with rot monsters. eggs will always hatch as man-fly monsters, mindless monsters and animals generate as swollen (increasing their size and damage but decreasing their speed), silvergrubs generate from rotting intelligent corpses. in addition, monster generation has a 5% chance to begin a 'run' of rot monsters, where it exclusively spawns rot monsters for the duration. during a run, each monster spawned has a 1% chance to end the run. rot monsters are their own faction, and grudge on other monsters. importantly, this upgrade also doubles the spawn odds for chrysalises (so 1/150 to 1/75, for example).
• "Become uninteresting to beings of rot": rot monsters spawn peaceful to you. requires the kindred upgrade.
• "Feast on injury and destruction": you heal 1.6% of your max hp on successful melee hit (per hit, not per overall attack routine)
• "Seek saprovorous immortality": gain a form of intrinsic lifesaving, albeit not a very pleasant one, as well as an automatic 1d3 diseased bite attack every turn. on death, after all other forms of lifesaving bar the Black Mother's lifesaving, you instead polymorph into a centipede and drop every item in your inventory. this polymorph is temporary, so you will return to your normal form shortly (but you'll be naked with your gear on the ground beneath you). This upgrade is lost when the lifesaving triggers, but can be re-selected, and will not count towards your total upgrades (for chrysalises required, for example) unless you haven't spent it yet
• "Rot stinger": Gains a 1d4 poisoned and diseased rot stinger attack, both as an automatic attack and when you attack in melee
• "Rot spores": Gain a 1d1 disease passive attack (as in, when attacked by monsters rather than automatic)

these rot effects can be particularly powerful, but each upgrade requires increasingly more chryalis, as well as reducing your int by 1 and your max int and con by 1 (instead of int/wis, like the normal experiments). as such, they are not necessarily something you want to max out every game. in addition, since they're random, it can take until after you've already maxed out your defilement upgrade path to get what you want (since that increases the chryalis you find). in general, they're more useful for the strength of the effects they provide rather than for your win condition, the opposite of the preservation path.

lategame

by the late game, you probably have all or nearly all of your upgrades acquired. at this point, there's not too much else to say that's UH specific, besides 2 main points

your thought

each philosophy comes with a built-in thought, or glyph, embedded into your mind. the proper names for each are Rotten Eyes (college), Lumen (choir), and Defilement (defilement). The glyphs themselves, if you get a physical copy, appear as "vacuous glyph", "weed glyph", "defilement glyph". They are in your brain from the start of the game, but only activate at 27+ insight. this is sorted under late-game for two reasons: i remembered this after writing the midgame section, and generally 27+ insight is not something you have until at least the end of midgame. anyway, their activated effects are as follows:

Rotten Eyes:

• 5% more max hp
• 10% more experience gained
• 33% more items generated on monsters
• 33% more rot chrysalis dropped (if you have the requisite preservation upgrades)

Lumen:

• 33% more likely to receive item drops, including death drops and effects from rotting corpses (columnar crystals, parasites, and chrysalises (with requirements met))
• 6.4% more carrycap
• Activates all of your embedded parasites

Defilement:

• +0.33 hp per turn under 30% hp, increased to +0.66 under 20% and +1 under 10%
• +10 HP on a successful sneak attack
• Pets gain +3 natural DR to all slots
• 50% more rot chrysalis dropped (with requirements met)

your quest

one thing you may notice, if you don't play particularly fast, is that your quest is slowly going downhill. even after completing it by killing the index wolf, you may notice that the quest NPCs are beginning to succumb to lycanthropy when you return to the branch. after 28k turns, the stake of withering will begin to hint to you by displaying as "guttering" instead of "burning", and fails completely at 32k turns (swapping to aggravating beasts, instead of scaring them, and losing the fire damage). after 38k turns, you'll notice upon returning to the branch almost all of the NPCs have become werewolves, and even amalia becomes a massive werewolf when approached. by 48k turns, everybody alive is officially and totally gone, regardless of what you do after that.

however, all hope is not lost. the reason behind their downfall is because the beast plague wasn't exactly solved with the death of the index wolf. there is a specific being causing the problems, visible on the goal level with 27+ insight. once they've been killed, the lycanthrope-ification of the quest will stop where it is. the real nemesis is called the Moon's Chosen, and they are basically a giant evil werewolf tentacled horror that would like you dead. defeating them will reward you with a columnar mass, and progress your quest status to the endgame

until the moon's chosen dies, or the quest is totally failed at 48k turns, your game is unwinnable. after either one, the "moon will hang close". attempting to leave the dungeon without the moon being close will allow you to reach astral fine, but the altars will be incorrect (using the wizard pantheon instead of your philosophies), forcing a celestial disgrace ending.

with the moon being close, you have several effects

• The moon becomes a 'hunting moon', which acts as a stronger version of a full moon (+2 luck, lycanthropes are more likely to be in their were-form, etc.)
• You take a -10 penalty to sanity regen (which you already have if you've got 50+ insight as a UH, so this may not be new)
• You gain a bonus with insight weapons, identical to being a Madman/having Ose bound
• The Stake becomes "blooming", which now provides a measly 1d2 silver damage to all attacks - but also boosts your experience gained by 1.3x
• Wildly changes your Astral from vanilla, making it extremely dangerous.
  • Angels are swapped out for either foetid angels (disease and paralysis attacks) or aether wolves (angelic werewolves, basically)
  • All normal priests, player monsters, etc. become 'tongue-puppeted' versions, which are tankier, speed 15, and gain cold/poison/magic/stoning resistance, as well as a conflict melee tongue attack that gives all nearby monsters a free attack at you
  • High priests become high priest wolves when you enter their temples, hostile highly damaging wolves with their casting still intact (no lycanthropy attack, though)
  • Moon-entity monsters are scattered around - 3 Moon-entity tongues, 3 Moon-entity eye clusters, and 6 Moon-entity manipalps. Tongues possess 8d8 licking attacks and 8d8 digestion attacks. Manipalps possess 10d8 bites, 4d8 cold touches, and 8d8 grab attacks. Eye-clusters possess 8d8 study gazes and 1d8 passive paralysis attacks.

For the most part, the moon being close will have no major effects on your game pre-astral. However, Astral is now incredibly dangerous. it's highly recommended to put either flaming on your weapons via smithing, or shocking as a backup (better vs. the moon-entities specifically but weaker into the rest), due to them being cold-resistant but not fire resistant (and therefore take extra damage from fire, as per general dnh mechanics). line of sight management and a ranged weapon option are also incredibly helpful. unlike the normal astral, the casting is probably the least of your concerns - the sheer damage output from physical attacks is substantially more concerning.