SilverSliver's Guide to Ivan

This article is a work in progress by SilverSliver. Please contact on forums if problems arise

Spoiler Warning: This page contains spoilers which may affect your IVAN experience negatively

Many, many years after the creation of JoKe's Guide to Elpuri (Which I do recommend you check out), I have decided as to also add my 2 cents on the topic of how to progress through Ivan 0.50. Despite me being generally new around the community, I believe even the best of players can learn something from this. It also will be a compilation of several pages of other work, so if you're ever feeling too lazy to search up a specific page, you can take a look here.

This will be split into 2 sections:

1. A generalist guide detailing my opinions on literally everything and tips/trick for clearing levels all the way to Elpuri and even the Lower Gloomy Caves (though spottier in the latter section).

2. A spoiler guide chalk-full of dirtier tricks for everything allowed in the game. This means anything that the game allows is allowed, even if it's likely not intended. This section does not contain save scumming and code modification, which I don't bother to link as it completely takes the fun out of the game. This section will be marked with a second spoiler warning.

Many of these general tips are applicable through later versions, especially if you plan on taking on GC. Most of the exploits have been patched in the later versions, but feel free to experiment on any of them, wiz mode is great for testing out all your odd ideas (note that wiz mode in later version may allow some rules that aren't possible normally, such as wishing for ommel materials or cloning certain scrolls, so do be careful).

Enjoy ;p (and mind the humor, I don't mind)

General Guide

Keys

Though many people may simply not mention them because of how simple they are and that they can be accessed simply by clicking the '?' button, I feel that all keys need to be mentioned because not having the knowledge about one important one can hurt a run a lot. That said, let's go through the most important keys:

*Please message me in the forums If I get any key wrong, or I missed some vastly key changing game*

W,A,S,D: Self Explanatory, Movement keys. Also note that the w key, capital and lowercase, can be used to equip weapons, but it's more of a shortcut and doesn't have any major benefits.

Home and End (Located in the top right corner of the keyboard), Page Up and Page Down (Located in the bottom right corner of the keyboard): Not so self explanatory. These keys, which aren't mentioned for whatever reason, allow you to move diagonally. Homes moves you up and left, End moves you down and left, Page Up is up and right, and Page Down is down and right. Importantly, it's counted as a single move. Even more importantly, it allows you to interact with otherwise non-interactable objects, most notably being 2 of Haathbar's bookshelf. MOST IMPORTANTLY, and I cannot stress this enough because it makes your run so much safer, being at a diagonal greatly decreases damage from certain entities, including trapped door explosions, zaps from Wand of Fireballs and Wand of Lightning, and the Enner Beast scream.

WIP .

Weapons

Weapons are an invaluable component in IVAN, dictating how much damage you are able to do to your enemies (unless for some reason you want to smack people with a frog head or wield 2 shields).

WIP

Training

Outside of weapons, training abilities and weapon effectiveness is important to becoming the all-powerful Ivan player you were meant to be. Many of these stats can be trained without much difficulty, but beware it is also easy for them to drop. Do note that while you can train stats as much as you want, your gains will become nominally smaller over time, and they is only a shadow the power of cloning ommel liquids and artificial limbs bring.

Arm Strength

AStr, or the ability to wield heavier weapons and do damage, is important for maximizing attack power by being unburdened by weapon weight. They also allow you to dig faster and fatigue slower, but that is harder relevant in most scenarios. Many of the top tier weapons mentioned above require two handed usage, but if arm strength is high enough, one can wield them in one hand without any problems. Here is a chart of arm strength required to wield heavy weapons.

• Chart- To be inserted*

To train arm strength, it's best to use heavy weapons to be able to use heavy weapons (See what I did there?). Halberds, Polearms, and Large swords all work wonders if made of heavy materials, particularly ones in the iron family. So don't throw away that large, inaccurate 2 handed iron sword just yet, it may kick up your level a notch. Outside of heavy weapons, digging also helps to train Astr, but it requires a constant and large food supply, and isn't necessary.

Leg Strength

LStr, or the ability to hold more items and buff up these scratches, allows you not only to hold more items, but also to escape from certain traps more easily (which won't be a problem if you are able to acquire a belt of levitation). Being burdened and stressed decrease your combat ability by a whooping 25% and 50% percent respectively, not even including being overloaded, so avoiding such unfortunate circumstances are life-saving. Surprising, this attribute does not matter as much as others, as it can be mitigated by carrying only essential equipment (see miscellaneous for more info). Despite that, it's still a good idea to keep LStr at a respectable level, enough so that losing use of one leg won't bother you too much.

To train leg strength, the simplest method is carry as items until you are stressed, and run around with them. Train leg strength before agility if you can, because running around stressed hurts your agility while the reverse is much less notable. You will require a steady stream of food for this too.

Dexterity

Dex, or the ability to attack accurately and quickly (arm agility), allows you to have a greater chance of hitting your enemies and being able to escape certain traps. Despite not having many applications, this is a vastly important ability as it ends fights much quicker, leaving you more likely to be alive.

To train dexterity, use fast attacking weapons to attack enemies, with the former being too weak to damage the latter, and the latter being to weak to hurt the wielder much. The perfect balance for this seems to be banana peels and greater carnivorous plants, both which can be easily found every game. Pick up the peels from Huang Ming Pong's hut, then take them to UT3 and let Jenny spawn the greater carnivorous plants. Whack on them as you please, but beware your Stamina<-- Seriously, I mean it

Agility

Agi, or the ability to do things faster (leg dexterity), speeds up your actions and allows you to chase or flee (but mostly flee) enemies. It can also increase your dodge chances.

To train agility, just run around. Even normal dungeon exploration will train agility, but remember that being burdened or worse hurts that training, and being satisfied or higher also hurts that training. For the greatest results, run around in the world map with little materials except for necessary food, which should only be used to raise you up to barely satisfied every once in a while

Endurance

End, or the opposite of the beginning, the step after the middle, the... you know, is the ability to take a hit. It also increases your stamina and overall regeneration rate. This stat is the most controversial one here, as having high health does make fights safer, but also dramatically increase your danger level to annoying enemies like dwarves(ugh), mages(eugh), and named enemies(aeiou).

If you must train your Endurance, taking damage and healing it up generally will increase your health over time. Do not think this means you should chug sulfuric acid or eat 3 snakes in a row to get permanent poison, instead, take light damage from enemies and just heal it over time. School food is also useful increasing Endurance, but know that it only has about a 1/3 chance of success and will poison you regardless. At least it doesn't spoil...

Intelligence and Wisdom

Int and Wis, or how smart you are, have been grouped together because training Int almost always trains Wis at the same time. They do have different purposes though. Intelligence allows you to transformed items into a higher quality, see farther with ESP, read faster and teleport farther. Wisdom increase the rate at which your relationship will gods change. From reading, intelligence is obviously more helpful, but since both are trained at the same time, consider it a combined benefit.

To train the two, Science Talking will be the main method of slowly but surely upping your stats. reading scrolls and praying to gods will also help, if you have enough (See miscellaneous for maximizing scroll reading).

Charisma

Cha, or the ability to scam the scammers, allows you to sell items in shops for higher prices and buy them at lower ones. That's it

To train Cha, sell and buy stuff, talk with Richel Decos when you reach 10 int and 15 cha, and issue commands to your allies. It's a waste of time though, just letting you know.

Miscellaneous

This section contains various non-cheating tips that will just make your life 27% or more less frustrating, guaranteed.

Spoiler Warning: This page contains spoilers which may affect your IVAN experience negatively

EXPLOITS

As mentioned, beyond this contains many heavier spoilers and tricks that will lead to massive jumps in power and are generally exploits. You have been warned. These also have been helpfully organized in order of how powerful they are in my opinion, the earliest ones arguably not even being exploits but general tips and the later ones being able to completely transform a run. Many of these have been mentioned by JoKe, but I have somewhat differing strategies than him, so I have decided to mention them separately anyways

Genetrix Vesana exploit:

Many people likely are knowledgeable about the carnivorous plants that Jenny spawns around the player as they traverse UT3 and know how helpful they can be (see training above). Yet in order to pass her into Attnam to continue the quest, she must inevitably die or if the player is lucky enough to find a wand of teleportation, be forced to waste a zap to keep her- and her children -alive.

Not so, actually. If you are able to get the belt of levitation from Huang Ming Pong before you meet her, you will be able to completely bypass her without without anything else (not even a lantern!). Simply fly around long enough to find the exit to the underwater tunnels, then enter it. You will enter the room with the numerous greater carnivorous plants and Jenny will have disappeared! Of course, she isn't dead, instead having been teleported randomly to another open location on the level, usually in one of the wooden rooms. Not only have you achieved a free passageway from UT to Attnam, but you have an infinite source of training dummies (giant, evil, munch on your flesh dummies, but dummies nonetheless). Despite this wonderous result, The reason this is ranked the lowest in terms of exploits is because there's no need to drop down to UT3 if you've already gotten the belt of levitation, making this effectively just a small time save for going to UT4, if even necessary

Belt of Levitation exploit:

If you read the previous section, you're probably (besides reading this now) wonder how to even get the belt of levitation before encountering Jenny. After all, Huang Ming Pong is no joke, sporting far more powerful attributes that you could hope to get so early on and being forced to fight without any equipment. Fear not, adventurer. All you require is a lot of food. By dropping food a few squares outside his hut, Huang will move outside to eat you food. For me, this is best accomplished by dropping a piece food one tile above the banana grower path (easily marked by being covered in sweat and constantly having the banana growers walk through them) and another piece of food four tiles above the first piece of food. Feel free to drop another piece of food in between if you're feeling paranoid, and note that Huang will only eat unspoiled food.

From there, you can vomit on his square as many times as you want (JoKe recommends 14 times, I don't count), and when he gets back, the vomit will dissolves his legs. Eat up to bloated or more with the food you have, and wait until Huang either panics, loses consciousness, or loses both legs before challenging him to a fight. Do not wait too long, he might die, and you'll get no sympathy or the belt from me. The fight from there shouldn't be too hard, and you will become the proud owner of a phoenix feather belt of levitation, capable of avoiding virtually all traps, increasing dodge chances, and even being able to be sold for a pretty decent price if you happen to loot one off your ghost.

Guard Taming exploit:

WIP

Library exploit:

WIP

Infinite Banana exploit:

Taking the belt of levitation exploit about e^4.234106504 steps farther, infinite bananas provide infinitely full stomachs, infinite cash, infinitely happy gods, and infinite stalling. It's easily accessible and requires nothing but (albeit extreme) patience.

Ommel Cerumen exploit:

What could be even more broken than infinite of a lot of things? A few REALLY good items WIP