YAAP - a Knight of firsts

[telegarn]

Ascended my first Knight today. Adventures along the way:
(aside - if there is a more acceptable way of sharing images here, I'd appreciate a nod in the right direction)

* minor rng scarcity: no amulets encountered until L21 when I was sacrificing at my main stash and someone dropped an Amulet of Magical Breathing. This is not an amulet I typically use but I got the chance here. Quite useful, especially as clumsy as I am around pools! I fell in several along the way, water and lava.

* longlongworm: (https://imgur.com/6w8mTsl) I think it's the longest one I've yet seen!

* a trap on the castle WoW chest: (https://imgur.com/Kn2LYzo) I had thought that a container trap was not possible here.

* for what is I believe the first time ever, I inadvertently caused a BoH explosion (https://imgur.com/Gb2v1VK). It was late, on the second floor of the Wizard's Tower, and I was planning on breaking after taking the Book, when I believe I fat-fingered the . when choosing what to put in the bag and quickly spaced the selection screen away. On the bright side, this would have been much, much worse if it had happened after dispatching Rodney!

So - most of main inventory into the bag, ending with a Bag of Tricks I'd been stupidly carrying around. It turns out to have been a boon, however, as I was also stupidly carrying around a Wand of Cancellation in a sack just one or two lines below the (oTricks and so the wand was preserved by ordering luck. A further silver lining, the WoW was in its own sack below the WoC sack.

Losses included the +7 Grayswandir, a +5 silver saber, +5 speed boots I'd removed to put on Water Walkers, all my open-inventory wands. Along with, of course, the contents of the bag, including my +6 lance, spare saber, Orcus' wand (0:8, and the only one I'd found), scrolls of charging, magic marker, and most of my stash<->Sanctum run gear (including >=14 candles!!), but (fortunately) not my Elemental/Astral stuff.

After an uneasy night's sleep, wielding my trusty, rusty pickaxe, from the Tower back to my L21 stash, where I'm hoping I left Excalibur . . . exploring many levels of Gehennom I'd not wandered along the way. BUC testing gear in Orcus town, a new stray BoH, a new sabre from a captain, greedily hording every candle I could find. Back home... the blessed rustproof +4 Excalibur, and a baker's dozen candles all told!

From the WoW (1:1): a new wand of death and a wrested magic marker. I twice-blessed a cursed magic lamp for a second marker, writing 4?Charging, 3?EnchantWeapon, 2?EnchantArmor. Back to it with +5Excal, +5SS, +5JumpingBoots, and a moderate chunk of my gear replaced (one lonely / of Teleport left!).

* another first for me: a purple worm ate the High Priest of Moloch (https://imgur.com/RzgNwp3). I had neglected to remove my ring of conflict and had a nervous moment wondering what might become of the Amulet, but of course all was well.

* and so, 1 turn shy of 60k, I began the run up (https://imgur.com/MP5erwQ) - which turned out to be remarkably uneventful. The mysterious force was very bad around Juiblex' swamp; I feel like I was sent back near a dozen times. Very little trouble with Rodney; I don't believe he ever got to act before he fell to the Wand of Death (5 times). I was well-equipped to breeze through the elemental planes, but of course I had to visit all three High Altars. At the end of this debacle, I expected nothing less!

All in all, a very fun game. It was the first time I've done a lot of jumping, riding, pounding and jousting, and overcoming the BoH mishap was quite satisfying. Lessons learned include being more careful around pools and fire traps, not carrying inter-dimensional junk alongside your BoH'd ascension kit, and having a plan to keep horses fed!! Twice (when wishes were plentiful) I wished for blessed figurines of ki-rin and ended with one hostile and one peaceful. Not sure if I did something wrong here or just got unlucky with the rng.

Dare I dream of back-to-back ascensions to start 2018?

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by telegarn
(aside - if there is a more acceptable way of sharing images here, I'd appreciate a nod in the right direction)

"tiny URLs" impose a security problem; we don't see what's behind the links
we are to click. An ASCII-map copy/pasted as plain text is certainly better
(presuming you're not playing a tiles version or something else graphical).

Janis

[telegarn]

Post by Janis Papanagnou

Post by telegarn
(aside - if there is a more acceptable way of sharing images here, I'd appreciate a nod in the right direction)

"tiny URLs" impose a security problem; we don't see what's behind the links
we are to click. An ASCII-map copy/pasted as plain text is certainly better
(presuming you're not playing a tiles version or something else graphical).
Janis

Yes, I suspected as much. I don't think these links bear transcribing, but I'll look into text capturing my PuTTY sessions for future postings.

Thank you!

[ManaUser]

Post by Janis Papanagnou
"tiny URLs" impose a security problem; we don't see what's behind the links
we are to click. An ASCII-map copy/pasted as plain text is certainly better
(presuming you're not playing a tiles version or something else graphical).

I wouldn't really class imgur as a "tiny URL", yes it uses cryptic
filenames, but it's just an image host. You see see an imgur link and
you know it's an image.

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by ManaUser

Post by Janis Papanagnou
"tiny URLs" impose a security problem; we don't see what's behind the links
we are to click. An ASCII-map copy/pasted as plain text is certainly better
(presuming you're not playing a tiles version or something else graphical).

I wouldn't really class imgur as a "tiny URL", yes it uses cryptic
filenames, but it's just an image host. You see see an imgur link and
you know it's an image.

YMMV, but I see just a _link_ posted and don't know anything else about it or
about the actual data behind it. This is sadly true even if one assumes it to
be currently (and also in future!) a trustworthy server. Given that security
fact, and from a usability view in Usenet, you would have to - if possible at
all in the first place - first check the domain and the service to make a
sensible decision about its trustworthyness before accessing sources from the
domain. Last but not least, it's decoupled from the Usenet article, so links
may not be available in the future and the article incomprehensible at such a
point in time. All these issues are no issues if you copy/paste the relevant
text map and maintain the Usenet post's integrity and completeness.

Janis

[jim in austin]

Post by Janis Papanagnou
YMMV, but I see just a _link_ posted and don't know anything else about it or
about the actual data behind it. This is sadly true even if one assumes it to
be currently (and also in future!) a trustworthy server. Given that security
fact, and from a usability view in Usenet, you would have to - if possible at
all in the first place - first check the domain and the service to make a
sensible decision about its trustworthyness before accessing sources from the
domain. Last but not least, it's decoupled from the Usenet article, so links
may not be available in the future and the article incomprehensible at such a
point in time. All these issues are no issues if you copy/paste the relevant
text map and maintain the Usenet post's integrity and completeness.

Link-rot is part of the price of having the interconnectivity of the
web. And thanks to Google Groups this entire thread has its own link:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/K2ex-WILWaM/discussion

Or for brevity's sake:

https://goo.gl/Dkv2V4

[Pat Rankin]

Congrats.

Post by telegarn
* for what is I believe the first time ever, I inadvertently caused a BoH explosion
[...] On the bright side, this would have been much, much worse if it had
happened after dispatching Rodney!

Why? You can't put the Book of the Dead into a container, so it is always
safe from this sort of inventory destruction.

[telegarn]

Post by Pat Rankin
Congrats.

Post by telegarn
* for what is I believe the first time ever, I inadvertently caused a BoH explosion
[...] On the bright side, this would have been much, much worse if it had
happened after dispatching Rodney!

Why? You can't put the Book of the Dead into a container, so it is always
safe from this sort of inventory destruction.

Yes, the Book would have been safe enough. But I don't think I could have (easily) run the Sanctum with my pickaxe and otherwise unprepared. I think I would have needed to run to my base on L21 and back with an annoyed Rodney dogging me . . .

[Janis Papanagnou]

* minor rng scarcity: no amulets encountered until L21 [...]

(Heh, my current Knight found four amulets until around dlvl:12, but all
amulets were of the same type; versus poison.)

* for what is I believe the first time ever, I inadvertently caused a BoH
explosion [...]
So - most of main inventory into the bag, ending with a Bag of Tricks I'd
been stupidly carrying around. It turns out to have been a boon, however,
as I was also stupidly carrying around a Wand of Cancellation in a sack
just one or two lines below the (oTricks and so the wand was preserved by
ordering luck. A further silver lining, the WoW was in its own sack below
the WoC sack.

I wonder why some folks do handle their inventory with so many sacks/bags
instead of using just one BoH (or sack if there's nothing better). In my
book it's better to see the (few) dangerous items than to hide them in a
sack (so that folks that use many sacks want to name them). But why that?
The only reason for _one_ extra sack could be to save your cancellation
wands (in case you have no reflection) to prevent their destruction from
shock/lightning.

Losses included the +7 Grayswandir, a +5 silver saber, [...]

Why didn't you wield those?

And congrats!

Janis

[telegarn]

Post by Janis Papanagnou
I wonder why some folks do handle their inventory with so many sacks/bags
instead of using just one BoH (or sack if there's nothing better). In my
book it's better to see the (few) dangerous items than to hide them in a
sack (so that folks that use many sacks want to name them). But why that?
The only reason for _one_ extra sack could be to save your cancellation
wands (in case you have no reflection) to prevent their destruction from
shock/lightning.

I think I started doing it largely to segregate relatively important/rare/difficult-to-replace items from the BoH in case of a rupture. In all my years of playing it had never happened, but when it finally did the other night, I was very glad to have had the WoW in another sack that survived!

If I'm encumbered, I will at times drop the BoH to handle some beastie(s) and there might be some item(s) that I want to keep on my person in the event that I'm forced to step away from the bag. These still need to be shielded from shocks.

I've taken to using a separate bag for treasure (gems, money, high-point items to ascend with) but that bag typically stays in a stash chest until the final run when it ends up in the BoH.

If I'm fortunate enough to pick up a scroll of Scare Monster, I usually try to bless it and keep it in its own sack for #tipping in case of emergency, especially with the word's reduced utility in 3.6.

I try to carry around an empty sack in which to stash all of my main inventory gear when I'm moving a bunch of stuff around, filling/emptying inventory several times, diving in pools, etc.

I feel like there may be a few other cases that I can't recall at the moment. Edge cases, but perhaps sensible ones. To your point, it does make inventory management a bit more tedious.

Post by Janis Papanagnou

Losses included the +7 Grayswandir, a +5 silver saber, [...]

Why didn't you wield those?

Alas, I was wielding those. Here is the result of my clumsy fingers:

What do you want to use or apply? [abgkmosuw-yB-DFGIKLU or ? * ]
You cannot stash something you are wearing.
You put a concave amulet into the bag of holding.
You put a blessed +1 elven dagger into the bag of holding.
You put the blessed greased +7 Grayswandir into the bag of holding.
You put a +5 silver saber into the bag of holding.
You cannot stash something you are wearing.
You put a blessed +5 pair of speed boots into the bag of holding.
You cannot stash something you are wearing.
You put an uncursed lizard corpse into the bag of holding.
You put an uncursed lump of royal jelly into the bag of holding.
You cannot stash something you are wearing.
You put a wand of cold into the bag of holding.
You put a wand of digging into the bag of holding.
You put a wand of fire (0:5) into the bag of holding.
You put a blessed wand of lightning (0:6) into the bag of holding.
You put a wand of sleep (0:0) into the bag of holding.
You put a wand of teleportation (0:4) into the bag of holding.
That would be an interesting topological exercise.
As you put a bag of tricks inside, you are blasted by a magical explosion!

I guess I should be happy that worn items aren't eligible to be stashed, or I would have been running out of the tower in even worse shape!

[David Damerell]

Post by telegarn
* a trap on the castle WoW chest: (https://imgur.com/Kn2LYzo) I had
thought that a container trap was not possible here.

It is, and if you are very unlucky it can destroy the wand. Take
countermeasures.

Post by telegarn
So - most of main inventory into the bag, ending with a Bag of Tricks
I'd been stupidly carrying around. It turns out to have been a boon,
however, as I was also stupidly carrying around a Wand of Cancellation
in a sack just one or two lines below the (oTricks and so the wand was
preserved by ordering luck.

It doesn't have to be luck - if such a mistake could be made, #adjust the
dangerous items so they'll go in first, minimising the damage.

Well recovered.

[telegarn]

Post by David Damerell
It doesn't have to be luck - if such a mistake could be made, #adjust the
dangerous items so they'll go in first, minimising the damage.

Interesting. I use #adjust quite frequently, but I've never thought to use it for this specific purpose. I'll keep it in mind when I am transporting dangerous items.

Post by David Damerell
Well recovered.

Thanks!