Just spellcasting... In the future, for a venom mage Vehumet is a better choice, imo. It's easier to transition to the other elemental schools(which you def want to do) with him. Sif is doable but slow for VM.

Ok, but by what means and on what events does he give me stuff? When do I pray and why? What do I do at an altar?

simply casting spells will raise your rank, eventually he will start giving you books. it'll happen right after you cast a spell. dont think you ever need to pray/altar

I'm still playing Dwarf Fortress and am through a few years now. Things are not going too badly despite some raids and cave ins, I await some unexpected doom! This game is very addictive, although the learning curve is even more vertical than Nethack.

Here's a good link about a succession DF game played on the Something Awful forums. http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/

Getting back to NetHack for a second...

I've got a character in pretty good shape who's made it all the way through Gehennom, but I'm wondering what I need to beef up (if anything) before I take on Rodney and start my ascension. It's a level 30 Valkyrie w/ 417 HP and AC -10. I have gray dragon scale mail, Excalibur, Mjollnir, an amulet of reflection, gauntlets of Power, speed boots, ring of conflict, ring of levitation, 3 wands of death (but some or all may be largely used up), one partially used magic marker and two wishes left on a wand of wishing - among other things. Some questions:

* Do I need a much lower AC (given that I have 417 HP)?
* Do I need a lot of scrolls of remove curse and/or holy water to deal with Rodney cursing my belongings?
* I'm planning to use one wish on a bag of holding. What to do with the last wish?
* Anything else I absolutely need, or that is strongly recommended?

I've read an "ascension kit" spoiler but my sense is it recommends more things than are strictly needed.

*Raises hand*

I LOVE that game. Still one of the best ever.

I can never get past level 7 though.

I would try and get a bit of a lower AC if you can. When you meet something doing proper damage to you it all really counts. The other thing is to make sure you have all the main resistances, fire, electricity, cold, magic, sleep etc. Get as much of that as is humanly possible before going for Rodders and the astral plains.

Blessed scrolls of remove curse are a massive boon as well if you can get a few of those written. Holy water is also good but the blessed scrolls are better since they fix everything. I'd save your remaining wish for disaster recovery, it's always good to have a spare wish in the bag.

For my two cents:

Making it that far with only -10 AC is pretty good, but you definitely want to make it a bit higher. I believe -25 is considered a reasonable standard for an ascension run, and I did it was -43 as a wizard, -32 as a valkyrie (cleverly threw away -10 of divine protection by angering my god...) and -39 as samurai.
If you don't have holy water, I'd definitely get some and use your magic marker to write some blessed scrolls of enchant weapon/enchant armour. What's your excalibur/mjollnir at, and have you trained those skills to maximum?
The problem with having an amulet of reflection is that you can't wear an amulet of life saving at the same time, and (perhaps being a nethack nit) I like to have 2 or more of those before I try to ascend.
In my view, the essentials for ascension:

+6/+7 weapon
-25AC or better
Levitation (ABSOLUTELY vital on the plane of air, very useful on the plane of air and very very useful on the plane of water if you haven't genocided sea monsters)
Obviously reflection and MR...
Wands of death are handy for dealing with the dealing air elementals (who will DESTROY you on the plane of air if you have only -10AC, they nearly killed me on my valkyrie run) and rodney/famine/pestilence
Amulets of life saving. If you don't have one (there's one guaranteed in vlad's tower, at least), wish for one.

Wishes: I'd suggest using your last two wishes on amulet of life saving if you don't have one/aren't burdened, and another magic marker. Your AC really needs to be higher to deal with the ridiculously powerful air elementals on the plane of air...

One or two other pre-ascension notes:

Do you have a way to blind yourself so you can use telepathy? When you reach the Astral plane, it's a good idea to do so and see which altar is guarded by the weakest Rider (probably famine) to go after that one first. You really don't want to have to deal with Death unless you have to.
More AC is needed!
If you already have an AoLS and have enough charges in your marker to raise your AC to ~25, you might want to consider leaving one wish to wish for a cockatrice corpse on the astral plane...
When you get the Amulet of Yendor, be sure to name it REAL or something to ensure you don't get it mixed up with a fake one later.

CONCLUSION:

If burdened, wish for a BoH or drop stuff you don't need.
If not, AoLS + magic marker are probably best.
RAISE AC!!!

Let us know how it goes!

EDIT: as eviltwin said, be sure you have resistances to everything, though you probably do by now.

Thanks for the tips guys. Really appreciate it. To answer some questions:

* I do have all the normal resistances (fire, cold, sleep, shock). And magic (from gray dragon scale mail).
* I do have a couple of amulets of life saving, but I was planning to wear my amulet of reflection instead because reflection seems like an absolute must. Maybe I should use a wish on the shield of reflection (didn't get it from Perseus) and then wear a life saving amulet instead? That will prevent me from twoweaponing, but maybe that's OK. Will also help with AC.
* My Excalibur is only +1 sadly. I've had some run-ins with disenchanters. That's partly why my AC is not better also.
* I have a towel.
* I didn't realize you had to do the #enhance thing to raise your skills. So I'm "basic" in long sword which is presumably the main one I need to advance since I'm using Excalibur mainly.

Getting to AC -25 is going to be a pain. I think I'll need to use a wish on another magic marker if I want to get there.

Can I get a cockatrice corpse in the main dungeon and carry it up into the planes? I realize I need to handle it carefully (not go downstairs while burdened, etc.)

That's the reason why silver dragon scale mail + cloak of magic resistance works better, imo, since it leaves your amulet free.
Thing is, the amulet of reflection will save your life many times while the amulet of life saving will only do it once; however, amulet of life saving keeps you alive after stoning, fatal illness etc which reflection does not.
Another magic marker may be a good idea, yes; presumably your character knows how to write the appropriate scrolls?
Corpses decay after a certain amount of time; if you had a cockatrice on DL1 and killed it, instantly went to the planes, you might just make it to the astral plane before it decayed - sadly that's never realistically going to happen, and I don't *think* cockatrices spawn on the astral plane, so you need to wish for one if you want one.
Also, disenchanters can only disenchant your armour if you don't have high magic cancellation (different to magic resistance)...
What's your robe?
(And yes, as you say, DO NOT pick up the corpse unless you have gloves; don't stop levitating while on top of it; don't fall into a pit/down stairs... etc)

I have a cloak of protection now, but I may not have been wearing it for whatever reason when I had that encounter with a disenchanter.

That gives you magic cancellation 3 (the best) so disenchanters shouldn't do anything to your armour any more when they hit you. If you encounter one, instead of attacking it as normal, try dodging around it, or firing a wand of digging to get past it, or zapping it with a wand of death, or throwing junk at it, or...
You could just kick it, but make sure to take off your boots otherwise those will be disenchanted. Same applies if you wield nothing; you can punch it, but your gloves will be disenchanted.

Wow, firefox REALLY doesn't like the word 'disenchanted'.

Crap, I might have just died. I got grabbed by a giant eel while in Fort Ludios. There are actually two eels next to me and I have no way of knowing which grabbed me. I could zap one with a wand of teleportation, but it's only 50/50 that I get the right one. Same problem with my wand of death.

I could pray, but I think I prayed pretty recently and I don't think it's been long enough that I can safely pray again.

I'm not carrying the Orb of Fate so I can't level teleport away. Anyhow, the Fort is a no-teleport zone.

I don't have an amulet of magical breathing or a scroll of earth.

I think my best option is to engrave Elbereth. Better to do it with a wand of fire than my fingers?

Other options?

I would love to try a game like this but I hate the idea of food
I hace read that a mummy doesnt need food but is weak.

I searched for comparable games but from what I saw they all have some kind of food system?

I want to be able to walk around however I like without danger of running out of food,
this is essential to me..

any help?

Thank god, that worked.

Sorry, I was on a rebuy FT trying to un-downswing myself. Wands of death/lightning should always be used for the e-word in times of panic - such as, for example, being grabbed by a sea monster...

Er, if you download nethack and Ctrl + X (I believe) you enter 'Explore mode', where you can wander around, and if you die, it says "die : y/n". Though, obviously, completing the game in explore mode somewhat defeats the point, but you can basically play the game and choose when to die/not die. This includes, I believe, dying of hunger...

[Crawl] Mummies are weak if you dive at normal speed. If you don't mind putzing around a lot, you can just level up and train your skills before you dive. I don't see why food is a big deal, tho... once you get the hang of roguelikes it's a non-issue past the early game.

Genocide? Burn elbereth? Been forever since I played NH, tho.

ty but thats too easy again, I dont want to "cheat" (and thats what it is for me)
or have it easier than its suposed to be, I just hate the idea
of running around for food "just because", I cant explain it better..

@jeff:
ty yeah I will give it a try, download ws like 400kb anyway

Well, having considered it further, eating particular corpses to gain certain abilities is a fairly vital bit of the game (unless you're going for vegan conduct), so it probably wouldn't have worked anyway...

ok that mummy is really weak I already died 7 times,
how do I use stairs?

If it's anything like nethack, > and <.

I just killed a L27 SpEn. http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Gr...512-180435.txt

I had 10 runes and was trying for my first all rune game. That is the second time I have destroyed a winnable character by messing around in Pan.

That seems like a rly tough char to attempt Pan with... low hp, low ac, low damage output. Also, afaik Sabre or even Short Sword of Speed does a lot more damage than a quickblade, esp. when you stack with Might and/or Haste.

Anyway, my condolences. SpEn is one of my fav. roles... <3 stabbing orbs of fire to death in 1 turn.

With spells up that character had 60EV and 30AC I wouldn't really call either low. I could kill things just fine the major problem was the berserking mutation and the resulting slows. I would of been fine but I ran into a custom vault that had smiting demons on the sides behind translucent walls and I didn't realize I was getting smited to death until it was to late.

Died on the Astral Plane... so close and yet so far. Ugh.