The Weakest Link

First ommited because it discusses teams of players and I don't trust in enough participants for several teams. Second ommited because they wished for a bonus item and that's not hardcore enough.

3) Players play one after another, order is defined before the start of the game. You have 2000 game turns to survive, during which you have to descend at least once. Unless special circumstances, you may not ascend. If you do, you automatically die and everyone else is free to say what a shame it was to play with you in the same competition. If you die normally (that is, sliced, diced, roasted, crushed, frozen, electrocuted, choke on vomit, etc.) you are temporarily removed from your league. What happens next is based on what happens next.

4) Player Z plays his turn and creates savefile 1. Player A loads savefile 1 but fails to live through his turn, next player B starts at the same savepoint. If he dies too, next player C starts there. If player C succeeds and survives, players A and B are removed from their league permanently. Sorry, people. However, if the whole team dies (everyone after player Z), the likely explanation is that player Z created an impossible situation. He is given a chance to play from savefile 1. If he survives, he's proposed winner of the league and that league game is over. If he doesn't, he's cast into the Abyss (removed from his league) and savefile 1 is now officially a Trial situation. All other players from the league who tried to survive from savefile 1 and failed are resurrected and the game continues from a point before save 1.

4+) In case player Z survives, the other winner is decided by the following criteria:
1) Who descended to the deepest level wins
2) If equal depth, the player with most experience wins
3) If equal experience, the player with highest turncount wins
4) Note that you aren't required to reveal this information immediately upon your death.

4++) If only two players are left, both are considered league winners and advance to the next round. They will continue playing to determine who is overall winner for that league. In this case, the Abyss is not in play: If one player dies, and the other survives, then the surviving player wins. If both players die the same turn, then the winner is determined by the criteria above.

5) The situation which caused team death is promoted to Trial category. Anyone dead from other leagues has a right to try it (only once though). If he somehow manages to complete it, he is resurrected in the league where the Trial situation appeared in the place of player who created the Trial situation.

6) The first two rounds of the game (each league player successfully (or not) played 2 rounds) must be played without intentional character crippling. Examples may include dropping valuable equipment, equipping cursed fortune cookies etc. Players who indulge in such tactics will be removed without a second chance. After two rounds are completed, you are free to do anything. In shady cases, such as: player A accuses player B of chaotic tactics during first two rounds, player B denies that his tactics are chaotic, league moderator has the final word.

A few specific cases to keep in mind

-Diving more than 5 levels is considered chaotic. No exceptions. Even if you're starving or being chased or whatever. Doesn't matter.
-Be very careful discarding items. Different people have different opinions about what items are considered essential. You should not discard obviously high value items like your starting gift, wands, useful spellbooks, good weapons and armor etc. You can obviously discard trash items like sticks, [0,0] clothes, etc. with impunity. Between these is a large gray area. Generally, you will be granted leeway in terms of what you discard, but if it appears to the rest of your team that you are discarding items recklessly, then they can discuss it with the moderator. If you aren't sure if people want you to keep a specific item, you can always ask.
-Likewise, be careful using consumable resources. You are allowed to use prayers, wand charges, spells, potions, etc. as much as you need to survive your turn. At the same time, reckless use of these resources can also be treated as chaotic--if you have full HP and a good weapon, and use a bunch of wand charges to kill a few rats, expect to be called on it.
-Aside from the diving rule above, it is generally not chaotic to survive a challenging situation, even if the tactics required are extreme. If you need to use a corruption trap to get teleportitis and escape an unavoidable tension room, that's okay. This type of action obviously must be documented in as much detail as you can, because your team will almost certainly have a moderator look at it.


7) Last two surviving players of each league are proposed winners and get to play in the finals. Final game has only one winner.

7+) Players who die early will end up in some sort of wildcard game and will have a chance to make it back to the finals. Don't feel bad if you die early, you will have another chance.

You are obliged to describe your turn as thoroughly as possible. Base method is to post in the corresponding thread (these will be created). You may also record your game and upload the video somewhere, have a ttyrec on the server or do something else, but that is optional and do not eliminate the necessity to post here. Please consider this point very carefully: no one forces you to describe each individual turn, but such things as prayers, intrinsics, equipment changes, are quite important. Repeated or blatant disregard of this rule may result in your removal from your league. This is of course subjective and, as usual, league moderator has the final word.

A few specific cases to keep in mind:

-You MUST report any "chaotic" actions you do in as much detail as possible.
-For items that don't auto-identify, you are allowed to only report the message/description of what it did, even if you what that message corresponds to. Eg. if you use a wand and it generates a "buzzing sound", you can report that, not that the wand is trap creation. If the wand is out of charges, you should still report that you tried it and got "No effect". This holds generally for wands, scrolls and potions. For equipment that doesn't auto-identify, you should at least say if you put it on (ie. is it cursed or not).


8+) If you die on your turn, you may write only "I died" in order to let other players break the PC in the same pit you did.

9) There are time limits on your turn. Basically, noone wants to wait forever and this kills interest quite easily. You are supposed to complete your turn in 72 hours after the last player informed of his turn. If you have something important to do, please leave a notice here on the forums. We may wait for you, switch playing order within the league (if possible) or try to allow you to continue competition.

10) Turn count is very important. You are allowed to overplay by as maximum as 55 turns (base Recovery setting is 50). If you overplay by more you may technically be removed from your league. The decision is up to the next player and league moderator.

10+) You are allowed to make less moves if the player before has overplayed so that your 2 turns combined result in 4000 moves (practically, he played some moves for you).

11) Have fun playing. This is a entertainment for all of us, and if people start being bad sports, we are doing it wrong.

I got down, picked the lantern and opened a door – there was a zombie waiting for me. Great start! It ran after several hits, but I killed it. Our puppy promptly started to eat the zombie’s severed arm. Oh well…

I named our puppy Fleshraker, BTW

Exploder a bit, killed some carnivorous plants. Nothing exciting until I found a pair of broken mithril boots and was critically stabbed by a kobold while going for them. I will live, he won’t. Took bronze spear +1 from his cold, dead hands.

In the next room, I acquired a wand of teleportation and invisibility.

Picked some more weapons and broken Vermis. Still no armor except for the boots, though.

Then I found Turox. I’m not sure whether the RNG is smiling at me or I screwed at the script more than I thought.

Ate some magical mushrooms. „You feel quite happy!“ I hate being happy.

No! Magical mushrooms ganged on Fleshraker and killed it! I will try not to forget to take the corpse down with me.

Attacked a carnivorous plant and remembered why you don’t use Turox without fire resistance. *KABOOM* Thanksfully for me, I survived (barely).

I rested to full health and gained a point of End. That still wasn’t a good way of training End.

Next kobold killed dropped a hardened leather armor.

At turn 1227 I finally found the downstairs. Not going down yet, but I like knowing where to go.

Also found a room with single closed door, full of webs, but with no spiders… Maybe they managed to slip around me where I couldn’t see?

I got stuck in a web for way too long, then explored the rest of EA:1 a descended on turn 1632. About 400 turns left for me.

And of course I forgot Fleshraker’s corpse upstairs and I’m not breaking rules and returning. To make it worse, I found a wand of resurrection close to the stairs at EA:2. However, I also picked a book of Dulcis, so you can tame a new pet.

Killed a jackal and some bunnies, then found a scroll of repair. Bingo! I repaired Vermis and started using it, because it’s cool.

Found the next stairs down, but I won’t use it. Enjoy, whoever goes after me! Dropped some booty next to it so I’m not running around stressed.

Gah, two booby-trapped doors in a row! At least nothing caught fire. But I’m also hungry now…

Stopped playing at turn 2027, unfortunately very hungry. Don't you dare die from starvation yet! I could be eliminated!

Found a room with an altar of scabies. Two broken weeping blades and two bottles of poison. Not really helping with the hunger. It's partially locked and out of the way, so safe to drop some of the heavy junk that's making us burdened and consuming our food. I didn't actually go back to retrieve it, it was just a bunch of low-quality weapons. OK for offering to gods or selling to shops, but neither were really going to happen soon.
Found a loaf of pork! Saved! Also, other loot:
* can of banana flesh
* wands of fireballs, mirroring (!), haste, teleportation, acid rain
* scrolls of teleport, enchant armour
* stethoscope
* a decent helmet
* a terrible cloak
* bottle of troll blood
And we're already getting very hungry (and burdened again, even without random maces and quarterstaves weighing us down), so I ate the banana flesh. Haven't explored every room yet, but descended anyway, taking the small chest full of loot along.
I think the 64x64 levels are too large for this, the amount of food needed to explore them is more than the amount of food salvageable from the monsters and items. But, jackal corpse! And pork loaf! Om nom nom.
And, Seges at last. *relief* Offered a lantern to her to confirm that she's not angry. Haven't prayed yet, if you find Mellis there shouldn't be a problem. We're in mine town now, so I put on a second ring of fire resistance. We can unlock square locks now. We have a chameleon whip and a broken +5 chameleon whip, if you fancy RNG death.
And, I found a medium chest, transferred the heavy loot to it, and started carrying the small chest of wands and scrolls.
There's a little bit more exploring to do. Screenshots and save file:

Ran into a werewolf that took of my left arm with a crit, chugged some troll blood and killed it.
Discarded some useless stuff to get the loot chest weight down. (Most notably iron battle-axe +2, bronze axe +2, broken arcanite quarterstaff +1, boots of kicking, 2 silver stones)
Entered level 4 on turn 4380.
Found two altars of Atavus, both contained oil lamps out of which one had a friendly genie. Wished for a belt of levitation.
Found a steel chain mail +1, dropped the old hardened leather armor.
Picked up two more wands of mirroring, bringing the current total to 4.
Found two lumps of school food, which I ate. No End gained. Had the poison cleansed by Seges.
Decided to go lawful after praying to Seges and started working on getting that arcanite plate mail from Atavus.
Received an angel of Atavus from a prayer, promtly stole the angel hide armor for use until it disappears.
Entered level 5 on turn 5397.
Told the angel to piss off shortly after descending. (Don't follow, flee from enemies, don't change equipment)
Swapped the lantern for a weeping blue crystal blade. We've now got an indestructible light source with 200g weight.
Did some LStr training with the help of Seges, now at 11.
Found an altar of Cleptia.
Found an altar of Infuscor.
The angel hair armor disappeared.
Found an altar of Valpurus.
Received the arcanite plate mail from Atavus, the old steel chain mail +1 was ditched.
Saved the game at turn 6000 while in the middle of reading a holy book of Atavus.

I was a bit worried by the lack of gauntlets after losing an arm to the werewolf and debated wishing for a pair of strength increasing ones instead of a belt of levitation. The belt won, as it can't be found randomly. We've also seemingly got two rings of fire resistance, those should be enough for using Turox.

There's still quite a lot of level 5 left to explore. The loot chest is next to the stairs down. The screenshot for the loot chest was taken after saving.

Basically extremely lucky character, found some really nice loot and boosted our gear.

The room that JoKe stopped beside with the door closed contained a broken Saal'thul! Might make a nice secondary weapon when we get more arm strength

Found a lighter and stronger pick axe
Found scroll of charging!
Found leather cloak of electricity resistance
Encountered a blink dog but he died in an explosion and didn't seem to reproduce
Encountered a chameleon, fortunately only turned into a skeleton

Descend...

Found scroll of wishing! Wished for gauntlets of dexterity. Later I would find a pair , oh well
Found scroll of change material
-- 7000 turns --
Belt was a good call as a skunk just set off a mine on a step I was on earlier
Found wand of polymorph
Found scroll of repair
Decided to make use of some of our scrolls and wands.
Used 4 charges of mirroring (3 from one wand).
- Only read mirrored scrolls, saved the originals
- Repaired Saal'thul, mithril boots, and boots of agility
- Hardened boots, gauntlets, and cloak of electricity resistance to ommel hair
- Enchanted boots, gauntlets, belt, and Vermis
- Int is up to 16 after all the scrolls (from 12)

Have neglected prayer a bit but prayed to Seges and she's still pleased - filled me up and sent an Angel which I also dismissed
Found wand of resurrection
Found and drank ommel tears
Of course I find gauntlets of dexterity now

Next player will have to make some tough decisions on what to discard as our chest is too heavy to carry. I left it by the up staircase

Started out on level six

Found a broken mithril helmet +1
Found an altar to Mellis
Found an arcanite helmet
Offered a sapphire stone to Mellis and found they were very angry
Dropped the iron helmet +1
Had a little explore of the dark corners of level 6
Remove the mines from the chest of stuff to be able to carry it to next level

Turn 8740 -> went down to level 7!

Found another altar to Mellis, this time on this level
Found and consumed ommel tears in Mellis' altar room
Found a wand of invisibility
Found and used a scroll of repair to fix the broken mithril helmet, equipped
Offered a cheap copy of the left nut to Mellis, still angry. I suppose we will need his books
Found an altar to Silva

Chest is by the stairs-up