Octagonal/Hexagonal chests

I am not sure if this has been mentioned but the wand of poly trick on locked chests makes the octo/hexa keys basically unimportant despite their rarity. Should chests me made un poly-able, or perhaps have the poly affect the items in the chest as well?

If i was a first-time player I'd be inclined to think zapping a chest - or a door for that matter - would change the lock type. But that still wouldn't help to keep oct/hex locks secure.

How do we know the chest polymorph doesn't affect the items inside already? (I'm being purposefully ignorant by not looking at the code to check)

Well, you can test it pretty easily by putting a variety of items in a chest with a broken lock, and then polymorphing that.

Oh yeah, I didn't think of that. I really need to play more often. Maybe certain chests or lock types should have a flag which says whether they are encrypted or not. If not encrypted, then you can polymorph the lock.

I don't see why chests would be treated differently from other items when polymorphed. Is that a nethack thing?

As it is, locks and keys are almost entirely useless because you're the only one that can open chests.

They're very useful for doors. A locked room can give privacy when science talking, security when cloning/mirroring, storage space when available chests aren't enough, and safety from monsters while healing. It can keep interlopers from setting off the minefield while you clear it, imprison slow monsters, and keep pet spellcasters safe. Under time pressure, unlocking can be much faster than kicking a door down. Especially with strong doors like the mage room's.
A lot of these applications fade on GC7 and lower, as monsters that can kick down doors become more prevalent, but in general I get a lot of use out of keys if I find them.

I also use keys a lot early. I would like to set keys disarm door traps as well.

And allow stethoscopes to be applied to doors to gain info like whether it is booby trapped, or whether a monster is in the room.

What even is a "room" when you can dig holes and summon doors?

Oh yes, very useful regarding doors, hence "almost". As far as chests go it's nigh useless.

Is the mage room even possible? I always just teleport past it. If you have beaten it I would love to hear your strategy

The first time I saw the mage room, in wizard mode, with great gear, they killed me before I could make a dent in them. Since then I've favoured the overkill approach:
Amulet of elemental protection, as many other sources of electricity and fire resistance as possible. permanent invisibility, haste, telecontrol, phoenix feather and gef limbs, resurrected Sherarax, high endurance, dead or resurrected Ischaldirh, octagonal key, Turox/thunder hammer, lyre of charm, dulcis, scrolls of taming, explosives. Some of these are optional.
SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.
Not all characters get enough wishes/cloning charges for that collection to be really feasible, and the mage room is dangerous enough that so far I haven't even gone to GC10 in a normal game without being confident that I can handle them.
With natural limbs I don't know what the agi/dex requirements would be to take them on effectively. You need to be able to kill a mage and step on its corpse before a zombie is summoned.
I've never actually bothered to clear out the mage room - they teleport all over the place. I just kill the most dangerous ones to make sure the threat is neutralised.

As it I have trouble with just one mage (especially mystic frogs) so if I can help it I won't touch the mage room with a 10 foot barge pole.

Meanwhile I have been considering whether it's possible to polymorph into a golem and gain temporary invisibility so you can reap the benefits of being truly invisible, for times such as that. After all, they can't blast what they can't see.
I'm thinking maybe a prayer to Cleptia might do it?

Well currently golems are detectible with ESP.

Guess I'll have to try back in 0.50 then

Actually, ESP detection is reliant on intelligence. Not all golems can be detected by ESP.

They all have 4 intelligence according to the datafiles. The available ways of decreasing intelligence seem to be more or less incompatible with being polymorphed into a golem.
Creatures with 1 int like a veteran kamikaze dwarf or enner beast might work better - although their stats would be less impressive than, say, an invisible valpurium golem.
Oh, veterans have 3 int. They're still undetectable by ESP, though.

So If am assuming correctly you have to have Int of less than 4 to be invisible to ESP? Are VKD's and the spoily golem special cases for that? If you Poly into a golem of the spoily material does it also make you invisible to ESP or is that a special case for the special Spoily?

I can't find the relevent line of code, but the cases of golems with int 4 and veterans with int 3 suggest that the minimum intelligence detectible by ESP is currently 4 (and anecdotal evidence suggests it's intended to be 5).
I'm not at all convinced that any golems exist with an intelligence other than 4 - outside wizard mode, at least.

INT >= 5 allows ESP to work. As far as I can tell there are no special exceptions for being Spoily.

https://github.com/Attnam/ivan/blob/master/Main/Source/char....

So for the first time I actually checked one of these ESPable golems with a stethoscope. Turns out the visibility condition hasn't changed, it somehow got bonus points of int, wis, per, cha. Which is still pretty mysterious. I zipped a copy of the savefile.
This doesn't seem to happen when summoning enemy golems, reading scrolls of golem creation, or polymorphing into a golem in wizmode. reading several scrolls of wishing will train your intelligence up to 5, but I don't think our jasper friend here did that.

I wonder if the monster generator has increased the attributes of the golem after generation? The generator can do this to player ghosts to increase their base attributes relative to the deceased.

That sounds plausible. Might explain why it's my more powerful characters that have found ESPable golems, and my more troubled ones that have had ZQ-29 sneak up on them.
Strange that the game's attempt to compensate for the player's danger level actually makes the game easier in this case.