Okay, so why the fiddlesticks am I dying? +2 questions.

I don't understand this game at all. Why is it that I get down to something like 30/40 HP, then a monster hits me, and without getting a severed head or anything, I die? HPs aren't worth crap if I may get killed at any moment.

Also,

1. How do I even avoid dying in an efficient way?
2. And how do I avoid getting beheaded? Had a character killing the werewolf with the slave equipped with an iron 2-handed scimitar among other things, then a wolf comes, attacks me and I'm beheaded. Okay.

1. Not entirely sure how to explain this.
2. Try new tactics
3. Wear a helmet, that helps.

You die if the HP in your head, torso or groin reaches zero. The 'HP' is for torso. Rely more on the colours on your "body chart", when you reach red in one of the vital areas you should already be somewhere else.

1. Avoid hazards. IVAN is not supposed to or should be easy.
2. Yeah, a helmet, and again, avoid hazards.

It probably gave a crit to your head or groin when said bodypart was already damaged. Every body part has its own HP, and if your head, groin, or chest go to 0 HP, you die. You can't see the HP of your parts exactly, but you can get an idea of how damaged they are by looking at the picture of your character's body in the upper-left corner (it's *not* just there to give you a quick view of equipment or to look pretty). Light red is bruised, red is seriously wounded, and gray is 'close to death'/almost out of HP. Endurance (which affects HP) is worth having, because it makes all bodyparts more resistant to damage, and that extra HP is applied to all bodyparts.


One of the ways to handle this a bit more in your favor is to look at enemies before fighting them; that way you can tell whether you are fighting a kobold with a -2 balsa spear or a kobold with an octiron quarterstaff (protip: the one with the octiron qstaff will kill you in melee unless you are *very* lucky, throw daggers instead, or just run the hell away). Other things to keep in mind are not to get burdened or stressed (you will suffer a whopping 25%/50% penalty to melee, which will make you miss a lot and die), to carefully choose armor with weight limits in mind (more protection is great, but lighter is better), to avoid exploring new places after fights that leave one or more of your parts in the red (you may rest, or if you want to build Agi wander about somewhere you've already been), to avoid eating spoiled food (confusion can be deadly if you walk into the wrong fights), school food is nice for Endurance training but you better have spare food on hand (protip: cans of banana flesh are great, as they do not spoil), and you can store healing fluid in empty cans to make it last longer. I may have missed a few things but I'm sure someone will be along shortly to make them known.


You wear a helmet. You *need* to cover *at least* your head, your torso, and your groin; if those drop to 0 or below, you are done (your arms and legs are important too, but you can heal those back; your head, not so much), and a lucky crit or powerful blow is all it will take to get to that point if you are not/under protected in any of those places (ghosts are infamous for naughty groin touching deaths). Now, if you do that and you still get beheaded on a regular basis, you obviously have gone past the point where that level of AV will protect you, and need to get a better one (not that this can always be helped due to capricious RNG happenings). Be aware that this is not a complete guarantee of safety; crits to your head may still result in nasty effects like confusion or paralysis. This game is designed around the idea of a game where you're pretty close to never safe, but there are ways to be safer, which I've just told you.

Important when starting out: Equip EVERY piece of armor you come across, even if it's -8 enchanted. Only take it off when you find something better. Simply wearing ANY armor greatly increases your chances of survival.

By the way, does negative AV make that balsa spear -2 actually hurt you? As in if you wear a Leather armor -8 and someone stabs you, does the armor enchance the damage rather than preventing it?

Mmhmm. Thanks for the tips. Of course, I'm still dying - I had a mithril golem from UT2-ish last time, then a kamikaze dwarf ran into me, my wands broke, I polymorphed into a jackal, teleported elsewhere, then the wand of acid rain which broke dissolved my torso. Epic death, but watching the white guy top-right seems to help.

I don't think so, never seen a piece of armor with negative AV. Weapons, on the other hand...

EDIT: Since I like testing things out to prove them, I modded the PC to start with the mentioned Leather Armor -8. No negative AV to be seen.

Just in case -8 enchantment was too low, I added a zero behind it. Nope, no such thing as negative AV.

Maybe the game just can't display negative AVs? Nah, a carnivorous plant needed several bites to kill my character.

Conclusion: Negative armor value does not exist.

YES this is good advice, always wear every piece of armor you find.
When you get to the wolf level especially, make sure you have arm and leg protection. I think since their attack is "accurate", they have a higher chance of severing limbs (including heads apparently... I haven't been beheaded by one of those before)

No, I'm pretty sure it just means you receive less protection from the item. In the case of leather armor -8, far less protection (in fact, I think it might be worthless outside of possibly enhancing resistance to small amounts of damage). Also, yes; you will want your arms and legs to be covered as soon as you can find protection for them. However if you can get it in gauntlet/boot form, lighter protection is far superior to greater protection, as the AV increase in the latter case is brought far down by the decrease to your Agi (which controls how fast you are) and Dex (which governs accuracy and door opening/trap removal skills). The only time I'd suggest waiting on equipment is if your only option for chest protection is something *really* heavy like bronze chainmail (and if you reach Jenny without finding more than that, you'll probably have to suck up the burden, which will suck).

Hm, forgot to mention another reason burdened/stressed state is bad; it increases your rate of hunger. If you find yourself in the aforementioned situation, it's probably not a bad idea to get bloated on animal corpses so you don't starve too fast.

I haven't heard a very exciting death like this in a long-ass time.

It doesn't even matter if something provides 0 AV, it's still better than nothing. It won't stop direct damage, but fluids will splash on the item rather than you, which can save you from accidental acid spills. Also cloaks are possibly the single most useful piece of armor in the game, since their AV bonus applies to every body part.

Cloaks are also incredibly handy due to the fact that if they offer resistance to an element, enchanting it also enhances the amount of resistance offered.

I see. Another question: How the hell did a mystic dark frog get spawned on UT3? (I didn't even know why I got electro'd. I only knew after I looked at the hiscore.) I didn't have armor of great health, I didn't have artifacts, in fact, I don't think I had anything previous adventurers of mine didn't have. This shit ruins the game incredibly.

A mystic dark frog? Either that was really a chameleon in disguise, or you had some insane HP. Monster spawns are tied greatly to your max HP (and general power level, though everything else seems to have a minimal effect).

Either that, or there are some nasty magical mushrooms around.

yeah, most likely chameleon or magic mushrooms.. I've run into an valpurium golem on GC2 which was a chameleon

If you go into the game hoping that every character you get will succeed, you'll be frustrated easily

I'm not going into the game hoping that every character will succeed. I'm going into the game hoping that I won't have any off-screen instadeaths on which I can contemplate later on all I want, and still won't find any reasonable excuse for the computer to do it. Oh well, I guess it's just more characters into the meatgrinder - hope I won't get that one bone file, I don't want any more lightning strokes coming into me for a LONG time. *frantically tosses away wands of lightning - OK, not really*

Hey, I wouldn't throw those away; once I had a bones file with a dark mage (don't remember if it was a magic mushie originally or not) who showed up on UT2/3 near the start of the level and it was only once I came in there with a lightning wand that I was able to get rid of him. Just understand that if you fire them off and they hit a wall that they will bounce (and furthermore that if you are too close when firing straight at one that it will hit you, and hurt a lot; note this can be used to hit enemies twice as well, but you should take care to be far enough away that the charge fizzles before reaching you).

Well, I've tried several times to kill Jenny with wands of lightning from an angle, and sometimes it bounced, sometimes it didn't. Generally, the recoil hit me on the 2nd or 3rd time, if at all. Weird.

Not quite so. Assuming the room is in 100% perfect condition, the first shot won't ricochet back, but the following shots will, depending on the structure of the dungeon outside of the room where you shot.

Keep in mind that lightning bolts (and force bolts for that matter) will destroy walls.

I assume that a bolt has a given, numeric, amouunt of perwer. (assi in enegri) and is depleted eveyr bounce of a wall or passing through a creatire, so that it may ro may bkot reach the player given the amount of mass it passes during it;'s "journey"

Evolves into

I assume that a bolt has a given, numeric, amount of power. (as in eneegy) and is decreased every time it bounces of a wall or passes through a creature, so that it may or may not reach the player, depending on perhaps the sum of 'density' it passes through, during it's "journey"

EDIT: Sorry guys!

wath

too much fermented banana juice?