Wishing

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

Wishing is an opportunity to gain any single item of the player's choosing.

Getting a wish

There are several ways to obtain a wish, including:

Using the (X) command in wizmode, through which you will gain 5 scrolls of wishing.

IVAN has many useful items, but the following are good and rare enough to be prime candidates for wishing.

WIP!

A magical weapon: Way more powerful than normal weapons. Some grant Status Effects, other have special effects on hitting a foe. It is sometimes wiser to wish for a broken weapon instead of an intact one, since the game often generates better materials for broken items to compensate the need of repairing.
- Note that since Release 0.50.9, artifacts are no longer wishable. You can still wish for a number of magical weapons, though.
- Good candidates for wishing are: Axe of Sharpness, Banshee sickle, Chilling axe, Flaming sword, Rune sword, Scythe of terror, Taiaha, Thunder hammer, Whip of thievery

Beast claw: A rare weapon using Unarmed Combat skill, you might want to wish for it if you plan to use unarmed for the whole game.

A good helmet: Helmet of brilliance, helmet of piercing perception, or helmet of telepathy are probably the best picks.

Cloak or Ring of Invisibility: Invisibility is a great tactical advantage, but it also causes much more dangerous monsters to be generated.

Ring of Polymorph Control: Very useful if you happen to have a way of polymorphing. Note that being very powerful may cause tough monsters like Dark Mages to spawn, which is not nice if you encounter them after you have returned to your original form.

Ring of Detection: Randomly prompts you to pick a material to detect. Very handy.

Ring of Unchanging: If you acquired a powerful polymorph form (eg. from prayer to Scabies), this ring allows you to retain it indefinitely.

Amulet of Elemental Protection: Grants resistance to all elements. As you can be easily obliterated by any mine in the Gloomy Caves, this may save your life.

Amulet of Phasing: Walk through walls freely! Note however that this amulet is temporary and will eventually disappear. Thus it should only be wished if you really need to be able to outrun and outmaneuver any monster for a while.

Armor of Great Health: If you have scrolls of enchant armor, this gives a huge boost to your HPs. Again, a broken one may have a better material, but usually you want to use a scroll of change material for this one, anyway.

Belt of Levitation or Cloak of Flying: You're flying as long as you have this equipped. Makes you tougher to hit and nearly immune to bear traps and mines. Make sure something doesn't step on a mine if you're near one, though; you can still be hit by the blast.

Pickaxe: Your source of unlimited digging. Polypiling for one may be better, though.

Scroll of Change Material: This is a great way of improving your gear and limbs. Which materials you can wish for depends on your intelligence; thus you may wish to polymorph to a more intelligent monster before using this. Good materials include eg. Phoenix Feather, Mithril and Octiron.

Scroll of Body Switch: Switch bodies with a powerful monster and get all their abilities!

Scroll of Taming: There is nothing like good pets but do not try to use this on any quest monster.

Scroll of Immolation: You will be able to send a fireball even through walls with this scroll. Sadly, it only works once per scroll, so it's best paired with a Wand of Cloning.

Scroll of Charging: If you have a good wand and want it recharged for further use.

Wand of Cloning: These by themselves are not useful, but if you do have some other useful item to clone, this is worth its weight in gold. With one charge you can clone a pile of five items. Note that certain items like wands of cloning, scrolls of wishing or scrolls of charging cannot be cloned because this could be abused. It is therefore sometimes wise to drop more than five items in pile in case the game doesn't allow some to be cloned. If you have a powerful pet like Ivan or a mammoth, you may lure it above the items so it will be cloned, too. You can also stand on the item pile and zap yourself, in which case you will be copied along with the stack. Note that when cloning a pet or yourself, the clone will be born without any equipment and only four items under it will be copied.

Wand of Polymorph: Especially early in a game, you can use this wand for polypiling to quickly gather resources.

Wand of Resurrection: If you have managed to get a unique monster as a pet, this may be extremely useful. It may also be used to quickly replace lost limbs.

Holy Banana of Oily Orpiv: Has terrific explosive power which can aid you in boss battles. Also trains all attributes when eaten. Be sure to store this in a hard container like strongbox, because if it explodes in your inventory, you're in BIG trouble.