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Everything up until the Astral Plane was totally smooth sailing. Never had any problems. I think that made me a little overconfident. I ran into Death pretty much immediately on the Astral Plane. I thought he would be hanging around one of the altars, but I guess he comes after you. I also didn't realize he had this life-draining attack that would suck away so drastically from your max HP. So I lost a lot of max HP dealing with him. I also stupidly zapped him once with my wand of death even though I knew that makes him stronger. I eventually battled my way into the rightmost temple, but it wasn't the right one. I thought it might be the right one because when I identified the altar tile it said "aligned altar", but that doesn't mean it's the altar of your alignment. I got stuck in a corner next to Death and was stunned by something so I couldn't fight or move in the direction I wanted to go. Realized soon that potions of healing don't cure stunning. I eventually read that a unicorn horn should cure stunning, so I applied one, but it didn't seem to do anything. Not sure why. Went through multiple AoLS and eventually died.
I think next time I would:
1) Wear a ring of Conflict. I realize that gives you four hostile angels rather than one tame one when you enter the plane, but I think that's worth it. The four hostile angels will fight one another, right? Will other monsters fight the Riders as well? Will the Riders fight someone other than you?
2) Run away from Death.
3) Use ESP to identify where the riders are.
4) Use Create Monster scripts or wands to block the spaces around me.
5) Use wands of teleportation to move nasties away (not the riders) and clear a path for myself.
6) Keep all the things I need in main inventory.
7) Not zap Death with a Wand of Death.
Ouch
That's why I asked you if you had a towel/blindfold etc so you could use telepathy to see which altar Death was at, and visit that one last. I'm impressed you made it that far through the game if you didn't know in detail the uses of unicorn horns; did you use it to cure you from Juiblex's disease-attack? And what did you use before to cure stunning/blindness/confusion etc?
Also:
1) Conflict is a good idea - oddly, though, I haven't used it on the Astral Plane in any of my 3 ascensions, so go figure. I'm genuinely not sure if it affects the Riders...
2) Yes. This. Famine isn't too deadly, Pestilence can be a problem if you can't heal fatal illnesses, and Death you only want to go to if you have to.
3) Definitely this
4) Interesting idea. It's worth noting the priests/priestesses mostly use Summon Insects which actually fills a lot of the Plane up with harmless junk for you, making things a fair bit easier if you try to cleave a path through the insects,
5) Possibly a good move; again, personally I've never used it.
6) Did you have useful stuff in your BoH?
7) Also a good plan.
That's still seriously brutal; I really can't imagine what it would be like to get that far and not make it, so you have my sympathy
Also, unicorn horns sometimes take multiple uses to cure things - also, if it wasn't blessed/uncursed, that won't have helped either.