[ndnh] Neutral quest - dangerous or deadly areas?

[Janis Papanagnou]

In my notDNethack game I returned from the Castle to the neutral quest;
previously I had missed its entry.

This quest is very convoluted, with many side branches. I abstained from
one branch (with some dangerous level '5' foe, tried out the (endless?)
spiral branch, and reached at a place where beneath some Cthulhu statue
there's a stair that said upon a try to descend:

You are standing at the head of a strangely-angled staircase.
You feel reality threatening to slip away!
Are you sure you want to descend?

This appears quite scaring. In other circumstances the game only asked
in situations where I would have got some harm or severe disadvantages,
so I'd be curious whether descending would outright kill me or what I'd
have to expect there.

Janis

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by Janis Papanagnou
In my notDNethack game I returned from the Castle to the neutral quest;
[...]

It seems that the neutral quest in notDNethack (mostly?) comprises the
levels that I found documented in the Lethe patch.

Alas, it seems that I met a lot of extreme monsters not documented in
the Wiki about Lethe. - Is that a correct observation concerning that
Nethack Variant?

It would require too much time to enumerate every threat I met in the
lower levels, but the result of my visits is that I cannot complete
these levels; I nearly died a couple times. An extremely tough giant
variant that comes in hordes, per se a threat, but one I met with two
"gigantic +10 thrashing bone arms" for example. Extreme spell-casting
demons and tough resurrecting undead creatures, some disintegrated my
highly enchanted magical armor, hordes of summoned vortices that seem
to curse a lot of my inventory; that way, since I missed one too much
curse at my Wallet of Perseus, lead to my yet unused wing of wishing
(from the Castle) to vanish and leave me back wishless. - Is all that
standard in the Lethe patch or has notDNethack greatly increased its
difficulty?

Janis