Colorless Green
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- Nov 5, 2004
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Re: OT: Nethack
Grats! Welcome to the midgame.
The two things I can think of that will really ruin your day right now:
(1) Do not attempt to enchant your GDSM any further. +5 is the maximum any non-elven armor can be safely enchanted. If you attempt to enchant it further, it will likely vanish.
(2) Do not put another bag of holding, a bag of tricks, or a wand of cancellation in to your bag of holding. It will explode, taking with it everything that's inside it. As an extension, do not put any unidentified wands in your bag of holding until you know for certain they aren't wand of cancellation. Bags of tricks can be automatically identified by looting them when they are on the ground (will hurt you slightly), or by applying them when they're in your inventory (will create a monster).
If I were you, my next step would probably be to hang out at that altar (assuming you've got a good stock of food, which you should) until you get Cleaver. Then, if you don't already have battle axe at expert, I'd hang around the earlier levels until you get battle axe to minimum basic, ideally skilled. After that, just proceed down through the dungeon. You'll find the quest on somewhere between dlvl 13 and 16 (approximate numbers, not exact) by way of receiving a psychic transmission from somebody. You'll find medusa somewhere in the low dlvl 20s (also approximate), which will be obvious in that the level is almost completely filled with water. A couple levels below medusa is the castle, which has a guaranteed wand of wishing and a lot of relatively unpleasant monsters.
Whether you choose to do medusa/castle or the quest first is ultimately up to you and it depends on a whole lot of different things. The barb quest isn't particularly hard (as compared to some of the other quests, at least), but it contains a lot of monsters with wands and such, so if you don't have reflection (which it doesn't look like you do) you might not do so well. I'd probably recommend clearing out most of the remainder of the dungeons (above medusa) before doing either medusa/castle or the quest.
You should now be at a point where you have a good bit of warning before dying in the conventional method, so any time you're fighting something that lasts more than a turn or two, keep a very close eye on your hit points and start retreating if it looks at all like you're going to die - as far as traditional death this is probably only going to occur if you're being attacked by more than one monster, but not necessarily. You may also benefit greatly from looking up "instadeath" (and delayed instadeaths) on either the wiki or the spoilers. The most likely way you'll die at this point is from something killing you with an instadeath attack, and they're all pretty much avoidable provided you know what you're looking for.
As for advancing your char, I'd personally say your #1 priority at this point should be trying to get reflection somehow. Unfortunately, there's only a few ways to do this: (1) silver dragon scale mail, which is out cause you have GDSM, (2) shield of reflection, which is likely to spawn in a statue near medusa, but can't be used with cleaver (or any other two handed weapons), (3) amulet of reflection, which is what you should use (if you can find/wish for one). If there is a shield of reflection on medusa's island, you may want to spend some more time sacrificing at the altar until you get a decent one handed artifact weapon. Actually, you may want to do that either way, since while cleaver is very good, using a shield for more AC might help you survive longer (particularly if it allows you to get reflection), and you'll also have the option of two-weapon combat.
There's probably a large amount of things I'm not saying here because the midgame is almost as complicated as the early game (and I don't consider myself capable of writing a general guide for it either), but by all means let me know if you've got any other questions or you run into a situation that looks scary.
-CG
edit: thought of something already. You can't start the quest until you're clvl 14, so that's something to keep in mind. You also probably won't be levelling from experience any more. Eat wraith corpses whenever possible (unless you're very satiated) - you gain a level for each one. Be quick about it, though, because they rot in about 2 turns. Dance with foocubi if you're in a situation where being naked isn't going to result in YASD (when fighting whichever of incubus or succubus is opposite your gender, you may feel very attracted to them, at which point they will start (attempting) to remove your clothing. For anything where you get a choice, allow them to remove your cloak and armor and decline everything else. If, at the end of their trying to get you naked, you don't have your cloak and armor, you two will have a bit of fun and something random will happen. One of the possible positive outcomes is gaining a level. Nearly all of the possible negative outcomes can be cured by a unicorn horn except losing a level, but losing a level places you at 1 exp below your previous level, so just go kill something.) You can also drink non-cursed potions of gain level, but if you're planning on making it through to ascension you'll want to save at least one to curse (a cursed potion of gain level causes you to rise through the ceiling and go to the next higher dungeon level - this is extremely useful in a couple places during an ascension run).
Grats! Welcome to the midgame.
The two things I can think of that will really ruin your day right now:
(1) Do not attempt to enchant your GDSM any further. +5 is the maximum any non-elven armor can be safely enchanted. If you attempt to enchant it further, it will likely vanish.
(2) Do not put another bag of holding, a bag of tricks, or a wand of cancellation in to your bag of holding. It will explode, taking with it everything that's inside it. As an extension, do not put any unidentified wands in your bag of holding until you know for certain they aren't wand of cancellation. Bags of tricks can be automatically identified by looting them when they are on the ground (will hurt you slightly), or by applying them when they're in your inventory (will create a monster).
If I were you, my next step would probably be to hang out at that altar (assuming you've got a good stock of food, which you should) until you get Cleaver. Then, if you don't already have battle axe at expert, I'd hang around the earlier levels until you get battle axe to minimum basic, ideally skilled. After that, just proceed down through the dungeon. You'll find the quest on somewhere between dlvl 13 and 16 (approximate numbers, not exact) by way of receiving a psychic transmission from somebody. You'll find medusa somewhere in the low dlvl 20s (also approximate), which will be obvious in that the level is almost completely filled with water. A couple levels below medusa is the castle, which has a guaranteed wand of wishing and a lot of relatively unpleasant monsters.
Whether you choose to do medusa/castle or the quest first is ultimately up to you and it depends on a whole lot of different things. The barb quest isn't particularly hard (as compared to some of the other quests, at least), but it contains a lot of monsters with wands and such, so if you don't have reflection (which it doesn't look like you do) you might not do so well. I'd probably recommend clearing out most of the remainder of the dungeons (above medusa) before doing either medusa/castle or the quest.
You should now be at a point where you have a good bit of warning before dying in the conventional method, so any time you're fighting something that lasts more than a turn or two, keep a very close eye on your hit points and start retreating if it looks at all like you're going to die - as far as traditional death this is probably only going to occur if you're being attacked by more than one monster, but not necessarily. You may also benefit greatly from looking up "instadeath" (and delayed instadeaths) on either the wiki or the spoilers. The most likely way you'll die at this point is from something killing you with an instadeath attack, and they're all pretty much avoidable provided you know what you're looking for.
As for advancing your char, I'd personally say your #1 priority at this point should be trying to get reflection somehow. Unfortunately, there's only a few ways to do this: (1) silver dragon scale mail, which is out cause you have GDSM, (2) shield of reflection, which is likely to spawn in a statue near medusa, but can't be used with cleaver (or any other two handed weapons), (3) amulet of reflection, which is what you should use (if you can find/wish for one). If there is a shield of reflection on medusa's island, you may want to spend some more time sacrificing at the altar until you get a decent one handed artifact weapon. Actually, you may want to do that either way, since while cleaver is very good, using a shield for more AC might help you survive longer (particularly if it allows you to get reflection), and you'll also have the option of two-weapon combat.
There's probably a large amount of things I'm not saying here because the midgame is almost as complicated as the early game (and I don't consider myself capable of writing a general guide for it either), but by all means let me know if you've got any other questions or you run into a situation that looks scary.
-CG
edit: thought of something already. You can't start the quest until you're clvl 14, so that's something to keep in mind. You also probably won't be levelling from experience any more. Eat wraith corpses whenever possible (unless you're very satiated) - you gain a level for each one. Be quick about it, though, because they rot in about 2 turns. Dance with foocubi if you're in a situation where being naked isn't going to result in YASD (when fighting whichever of incubus or succubus is opposite your gender, you may feel very attracted to them, at which point they will start (attempting) to remove your clothing. For anything where you get a choice, allow them to remove your cloak and armor and decline everything else. If, at the end of their trying to get you naked, you don't have your cloak and armor, you two will have a bit of fun and something random will happen. One of the possible positive outcomes is gaining a level. Nearly all of the possible negative outcomes can be cured by a unicorn horn except losing a level, but losing a level places you at 1 exp below your previous level, so just go kill something.) You can also drink non-cursed potions of gain level, but if you're planning on making it through to ascension you'll want to save at least one to curse (a cursed potion of gain level causes you to rise through the ceiling and go to the next higher dungeon level - this is extremely useful in a couple places during an ascension run).