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==Equipment and items==
====Armor====
When choosing armor, you should aim to strike a balance between enough armor value and mobility. Leather branch armor is very light and doesn't limit your stats too much, whereas iron alloys weigh a ton and cause a large hit to your stats. Arcanite alloys come between the two - they are decently strong while remaining light and flexible enough to not be a hindrance. For the most part discluding UT1-3 and the end-game, you are usually best off with the third option. Leathers should be avoided except for when nothing better is available, as the loss in AV in comparison to arcanite alloys is too high for the few points of agility or dexterity. Likewise, iron alloys tend to be too restrictive and heavy for the AV they provide over the arcanite branch. Iron alloy chain mails lessen the effect on stats and can generally be safely used as an alternative to arcanite. However, since the gap between meteoric steel and adamant intelligence requirements is so large, arcanite alloys pull ahead with the possibility to upgrade into mithril or octiron.
For very high-end materials, the best choice for armor is valpurium + golden eagle feather for cloaks at 55 INT for a SoCM. One tier down, octiron + spider silk at 45 INT for a SoCM (40 for harden from mithril). Two tiers down, dragon scale + angel hair at 40 for a SoCM (35 for harden from phoenix feather - dragon scale). Three tiers down, mithril + phoenix feather at 25 for a SoCM (20 for hardens from arcanite - mithril and ommel hair - phoenix feather).
Note that when using phoenix feather of any sort, you will need to take care to not get acidic substances spilled on your equipment. PF breaks very easily on contact with dark frog blood, slimes or even vomit.
==Named NPCs==
[[File:kiting.gif|200px|thumb|right|This image doesn't seem to be working.]]
The named NPCs are without a question the toughest opponents you will face during any run. Luckily, most of these can be defeated using a variation of the same tactic: kiting. See the following gif for how to do it properly: [[Media:kiting.gif]] (The thumbnail doesn't seem to be working for a preview, Cap?)
====Rondol====
[[Rondol]] is rather weak, but very capable of killing you early on without good enough armor. Easily killed with the elite guard's equipment. Cannot see the invisible, so use that to your advantage. Drops a nice wand of polymorph for some hot polypiling action.
====Guugzamesh====
[[Guugzamesh]], like Rondol, is not a match against a properly equipped player. Cannot see the invisible. Drops nothing of real value.
====Xinroch====
[[Xinroch]] is the first rather dangerous unique NPC. His flaming longsword does damage through armor, so wear some fire resistance for him. Landing a hit on him can be difficult due to his very accurate shield, so you may wish to consider hitting him with wands instead of melee. Note that being undead, he does not regerate HP and as such is vulnerable to hit-and-run attacks and traps. Can see through invisibility. Drops a wand of resurrection.
====Ur-Khan====
[[Ur-Khan]] is a very powerful melee combatant that can and will one-shot you given the chance without very good equipment and HP. He is also relatively fast, but can still be outrun with a haste/slow combination and some 16 agility.
no edit summary
* elite guard taming
==Equipment and items==
====Armor====
When choosing armor, you should aim to strike a balance between enough armor value and mobility. Leather branch armor is very light and doesn't limit your stats too much, whereas iron alloys weigh a ton and cause a large hit to your stats. Arcanite alloys come between the two - they are decently strong while remaining light and flexible enough to not be a hindrance. For the most part discluding UT1-3 and the end-game, you are usually best off with the third option. Leathers should be avoided except for when nothing better is available, as the loss in AV in comparison to arcanite alloys is too high for the few points of agility or dexterity. Likewise, iron alloys tend to be too restrictive and heavy for the AV they provide over the arcanite branch. Iron alloy chain mails lessen the effect on stats and can generally be safely used as an alternative to arcanite. However, since the gap between meteoric steel and adamant intelligence requirements is so large, arcanite alloys pull ahead with the possibility to upgrade into mithril or octiron.
For very high-end materials, the best choice for armor is valpurium + golden eagle feather for cloaks at 55 INT for a SoCM. One tier down, octiron + spider silk at 45 INT for a SoCM (40 for harden from mithril). Two tiers down, dragon scale + angel hair at 40 for a SoCM (35 for harden from phoenix feather - dragon scale). Three tiers down, mithril + phoenix feather at 25 for a SoCM (20 for hardens from arcanite - mithril and ommel hair - phoenix feather).
Note that when using phoenix feather of any sort, you will need to take care to not get acidic substances spilled on your equipment. PF breaks very easily on contact with dark frog blood, slimes or even vomit.
Always look to have equipment that boosts your stats, with the exception of armor of great health. More info on why in the section on Danger Level.
====Weapons====
In early game, use whatever weapon is best. Some considerations on choosing a weapon with end-game in mind with very spotty reasoning:
* Daggers are fine initially, but don't do enough damage to be worth enchanting later on.
* Shortswords are very similar to daggers, don't enchant them unless you absolutely have to. Saal'Thul only gives you invisibility without much additional damage, which is already readily available through the use of a ring or wands. Don't waste your time with it.
* Mundane longswords are good enough to be used if nothing else is available. Try to get your hands on the flaming variants for the late-game weapons instead if you can.
* Bastard swords are better than longswords, provided you have the arm strength to dual-wield them properly. If you can't, leave them.
* Two-handed swords are too heavy to be dual-wielded, and do not provide any true advantages over other choices. They deal rather heavy damage, but not enough to warrant being wielded with two hands.
* Two-handed scimitars fall into the same category as the normal two-handed swords, not worth the weight.
* Mundane spears are not very damaging, and should be avoided. Vermis can be used, if you don't mind having your opponents teleport all over the place just as you're about to kill them.
* While mundane halberds are not effective enough for a two-handed weapon, Mjolak is an excellent candidate.
* Hammers are like blunt daggers with a bit more damage and less accuracy and generally shouldn't be used. Thunder hammers can be used as main weapons as long as you take care to not get hit unnecessarily by the bouncing bolts of lightning they occasionally emit. Position yourself diagonally in relation to walls when fighting if you can.
* Maces function as more damaging but less accurate versions of longswords, and can be used if nothing else is available. Note that adamantine maces require a high ASTR to dual wield. Neerc Se'Ulb is arguably the best weapon in the game, while Turox should generally be left alone due to its propensity to break your wands and burn your scrolls.
* Staves cannot be dual-wielded properly and do not provide enough damage, skip them. Same goes for staves of wondrous smells.
* Normal and runed whips shouldn't be used and chameleon whips are too risky, but whips of thievery are very good weapons when enchanted and cloned.
The best choice for weapon material is adamantine (45 INT for SoCM). For whips you should strive for golden eagle feather at 55 INT for SoCM. Octiron is a workable choice as well for weapons that would be too heavy as adamantine. Accuracy should not be an issue once you enchant your weapons high enough.
==Danger Level==
While I generally despise the manner the so-called danger level is portrayed as a horrendously dangerous thing to be avoided at all costs, it is absolutely something worth mentioning.
Danger level is a hidden statistic that attempts to portray the current combined strength of your character's stats and equipment, which is then used to tweak the difficulty of the game. This is best visible through the generation of tougher NPCs. Most of the time it works rather well, by giving you NPCs that remain challenging yet are not impossible to overcome through either direct confrontation or disposable resources like traps, mines, wands etc.
However, there are some actions the player can take that will raise the danger level disproportionately high in relation to your actual strength. You should take care to avoid the following:
* Spending much time polymorphed into very strong creatures or moving to a next level as such. I once went down to UT1, drank from a fountain right next to the stairs and got polymorphed into a valpurium golem. UT1 was piss-easy that way, of course, but the moment I went down to UT2 and the morph ended, I died to an errant fireball from Ischaldirh. Case in point, polymorphs are bad when you're weak.
* Stacking endurance. While having enough HP is essential, endurance is one of the primary stats danger level scales by. You will not want to have any more than around 250 HP at any point during a freedom run.
* Armor of great health. This ties very much into the point above: increasing HP causes danger level to shoot up. The actual gains you get from using one of these are too low to properly account for the increase in danger level to be worth using. Moreover, the armor values of these are lower than their respective mundane counterparts.
The use of amulets of life-saving is debatable early in the game, as these too cause an increase in danger level without actually giving you a bonus in combat. They are very valuable for taking on dangerous named NPCs and other risky things, but you should try and use an amulet of ESP everywhere else.
Most importantly, don't ever pass up a piece of equipment other than the two mentioned here for "too high danger level". Every single one of them gives you enough bang for your buck to be absolutely worth it.
==Upgrading your equipment==
To efficiently upgrade your gear, you need a several things.
# Good base equipment (see sections above for recommendations)
# Wand of cloning/mirroring (2-3 charges)
# Scrolls of charging, more the better
# Scrolls of enchant weapon/armor, 2-3 each
# Scrolls of harden and/or change material (latter is better), enough to upgrade each piece of equipment to desired level
# Enough intelligence for material changes
# A safe, quiet place
Enchanting and upgrading equipment properly requires a large amount of scrolls. Normal bones file-less playthroughs do not have enough naturally for it, so the only possibility is to make more. This is what makes 3-charge wands of cloning and scrolls of charging the most valuable items in the game.
You should strive to start enchanting as soon as you manage to find all the necessary stuff. Find a nice safe corner, dig one if you have to, then drop a total of 5 scrolls in an otherwise empty square. Only the top 5 items of any stack will be cloned, newly cloned or mirrored items will go on bottom of the stack in the same order as the original items were.
If you're cloning and aren't overflowing with SoHMs or SoCMs, clone enough to upgrade every piece of equipment (armor+weaponry). Rest of the scrolls should always be enchantment scrolls. Take a step back from the stack, stand next to it, then zap it with the wand. Revise the stack order to suit your needs (pick up everything if you have to), then zap again. Continue until you've got only one cloning charge remaining.
Example:
* 6 scroll of enchant weapon
* 4 enchant armor
* 4 harden material
* 1 change material
* 2 charging
* 3-charge wand of cloning
* whip of thievery as main weapon
* 45 INT
# Clone 2 EW, 2 EA and 1 CM -> stack is now 4 EW, 4 EA, 2 CM -> pick up 3 EW, 2 EA (6+2 EW, 4+2 EA, 1+1 CM)
# Clone 1 EW, 2 EA, 2 CM -> stack is 2 EW, 4 EA, 4 CM -> pick up 2 EW, 3 EA (8+1 EW, 6+2 EA, 2+2 CM)
# Clone 1 EA, 4 CM -> stack is now 2 EA, 8 CM -> pick up 8 CM, drop 1 EA, 2 EW (9 EW, 8+1 EA, 4+4 CM)
# Recharge wand
# Clone 2 EW, 3 EA three times -> stack is now 8 EW, 12 EA (9+6 EW, 9+9 EA, 8 CM)
# Recharge wand
# Clone 2 EW, 3 EA two times -> stack is now 12 EW, 18 EA -> pick up 12 EW, 14 EA (15+4 EW, 18+6 EA, 8 CM)
# Change materials on armor to octiron + spider silk, whip to spider silk
# Enchant all armor to +5 first, then all stat-boosting items to +6, then armor to +6, then rest to +6, repeat until 4 scrolls left
# Use all SoEW on the whip
# Clone 4 EA, spider silk whip +11
# Read rest enchant scrolls, you've now got spider silk whips of thievery +11 with other equipment octiron +6 to +7.
Wands of mirroring aren't as effective for upgrading equipment, as they are incapable of copying scrolls of harden material or change material. This also means you can just dump your 5 enchantment scrolls in your desired ratio on the ground and zap a wand dry without worrying about the stack order. Pick up and read the mirrored copies between each recharge, as they will disappear after a short while if unused.
This may sound difficult, but in practice it's very simple. Just drop scrolls, make sure you're cloning the right ones, clone enough of everything and bueno, you're well-equipped.
==Named NPCs==
[[File:kiting.gif|200px|thumb|right|This image doesn't seem to be working.]]
The named NPCs of IVAN are without a question the toughest opponents you will face during any run. Luckily, most of these can be defeated using a variation of the same tactic: kiting. See the following gif for how to do it properly: [[Media:kiting.gif]] (The thumbnail doesn't seem to work for a real preview, Cap?)
====Rondol====
[[Rondol]] is rather weak, but very capable of killing you early on without good enough armor. Easily killed with the elite guard's equipment. Cannot see the invisible, so use that to your advantage. Drops a nice wand of polymorph for some hot polypiling action.
====Guugzamesh====
[[Guugzamesh]], like Rondol, is not a match against a properly equipped player. Cannot see the invisible. Drops nothing of real value.
====Xinroch====
[[Xinroch]] is the first rather dangerous unique NPC. His flaming longsword does damage through armor, so wear some fire resistance for him. Landing a hit on him can be difficult due to his very accurate shield, so you may wish to hit him with wands instead of melee. Note that being undead, he does not regenerate HP and as such is vulnerable to hit-and-run attacks and traps. Can see through invisibility. Drops a wand of resurrection.
====Ur-Khan====
[[Ur-Khan]] is a very powerful melee combatant that can and will one-shot you given the chance without very good equipment and HP. He is also relatively fast, but can still be outrun with a haste/slow combination and a go
==Various hints, tips and recommendations==
====Loot====
* Every run has a limited amount of items spawned. Use polypiling to increase this amount for more chances at those great items like ommel substances, scrolls, wands and magical equipment (5*5 items in a row for 25 per zap). Get a pickaxe and mine out some rocks for easy items and a safe room for polypiling.
* Pick up the first small chest or lockbox you find, and keep your fragile items like wands, scrolls and ommel liquids in it. Lockboxes are smaller than chests, and in my experience do not seem to provide any additional protection. When you find a normal sized chest, start keeping most of your fragile things, foods and such there and only keep the bare necessities on your person in the smaller box. Keep the larger stash on the previous level you cleared on the stairs down to avoid possible spoilage, accidental explosions and such.
====Gods====
If possible, I suggest praying to everything from Seges to Cleptia if you do not wish to go for Valpurus's or Mortifer's rewards. The Mellis-Seges combination is too strong to pass up easily. Having a broader range of gods to pray is possible, but requires you to carefully manage your standing. If going fully lawful or chaotic, you can safely pray to all aligned gods.
==Walkthrough level-by-level==
