Wow, clearly I have to try this crawl thingumy. Once I've got today's exam out of the way I may give it a look at the weekend!
But on NetHack, I think I can potentially be helpful:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alizona
My only complaints are (1) there's never enough Identify spells around and most of my stuff remains unknown until I end up dropping or selling to clear up inventory space,
There are a whole bunch of ways to ensure you have enough ways to identify. In order of usefulness:
Firstly, if you're a wizard, you can obviously start with a spellbook of identify which is a huge benefit.
Secondly, checking the prices of scrolls in shops can help since identify scrolls have a base cost of 20, while the next cheapest (light) has a base cost of 50. Any very cheap scrolls around 20 are going to be scrolls of identify.
Thirdly, identify scrolls are the most common, so if you've gone a while and collected a lot of scrolls but don't know which is identify, I think it's sometimes worth the risk of reading one of your most common scrolls (unlikely to be amnesia, therefore) and checking if it's identify.
Fourthly there are a bunch of obtuse ways to identify certain items; for example, all cloaks except a cloak of magic resistance automatically identify themselves when worn; thus you know what a cloak is when you wear it, and if it doesn't tell you, it must be magic resistance. Another example is boots - you can tell you've got fumble boots on when you keep falling over, levitation when you fly, jumping when you can #jump further, etc. You could drop spare rings down a sink and the message gives you a hint as to its identity too, or engraving with a wand often gives you a hint about its identity. Relying just on scrolls makes the game tougher.
Fifthly, thrones sometimes give out the equivalent of a blessed scroll of identify.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alizona
(2) sometimes I just can't find enough food and die of starvation,
It's useful to know which corpses are harmless (the majority, though not overwhelmingly so) and early on - or until you get a large backup supply of food - I suggest just eating every corpse you find as long as you aren't already satiated. Obviously locating a ring of slow digestion deals with this problem instantly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alizona
(3) the real way to win the game is to build up a few characters, have them die and then create another character and go find your own ghost to get all that equipment.
The 'real' way?!?! I have bones turned off since that rather defeats the point of the game in my view - if you're playing on an online server, that's ok, but playing offline makes it a far too easy way to complete the game. Also, if you've created a few characters who are close-ish to being strong enough to try and complete the game, why go and kill them off?