Help! Starving!

Nooby McNooberson here.

Where the heck can I get food? I made it through the tunnels to Attnam, and I'm starving. No place in Attnam sells food, and there's no way I can make it back through the tunnels to New Attnam to buy food. There's no monsters in the wilderness to kill and eat, and even if I did make it back to New Attnam it's pointless, I can eat in town but any food I carry with me is rotten after I take two steps, and I'll be starving by the time I get out of the tunnels again!

I must be missing something, how the hell can you play this game without starving to death?

A common occurence early on

you can eat corpses from the ground (beware some carry side effects)
and if you Pray to certain gods, they can reward you with satiation

Also the main shop in attnam always sells some food. It always seems to have at least a stack of bannas and lump of bear flesh.

finally your pet may be eating all the food on the ground, you may think about abandoning him for a while until food isnt an issue (or even better, you can kill him and eat him)

They key is to manage encumberance (IE no running around in the wilderness while strained) until food becomes more plentiful

Thanks for the advice, but the only one that really applies to me is encumberance.

My pet is dead so he's not eating stuff.

I know about eating bodies but they never seem to remove hunger, plus I've been through the tunnels and now enemies seem few and far between.

I can only pray to one of the chaotic gods, never gives me food.

I can make it back to New Attnam to buy food, but I'm always hungry again by the time I leave the tunnels to go to Attnam, and there's no way to get food once I'm outside the tunnels. Kind of a catch 22.

When exactly does food become more plentiful?

sometimes it doesnt! running back to new attnam isnt worth it usually. you would be better off going to the GC and trying your luck there.

and btw here is food for sale in Attnam.

Where? I can find the repair shops, library, goods (no food) and the cathedral. No food that I can see.

I usually never have a problem with this anymore. i only pick up what I absolutely need until I find a chest that I can stash it all in, and I eat everything I find immediately, unless I'm overfed; Then I hold off for a bit. Using a chest is awesome though since you only have to be burdened or stressed when you are ready to leave the level and have to lug the thing to the exit.

1. Don't get stressed in the UT if you can help it. It decreases satiation a lot and also hurts your combat abilities a lot (-50% modifier). Even though you may not ever see anything as cool as that mithril plate mail in the rest of your game, it won't really matter if you don't have the strength to carry the rest of the stuff you need, and when you could just put on some hardened leather armor instead there's not really any point to having it besides the gold it will fetch in a shop and the reasonably rare instance of a weak enemy finding something mean and nasty enough to break through said hardened leather armor.

2. Of the enemies you meet in the UT, hedgehogs and jackals are 100% safe to eat, and giant/magic mushrooms, while they give you some magical side effects, do not by themselves give you anything permanent. Kenny also makes good eating; IMO killing him as soon as you find a decent weapon, get good unarmed skill, or find some kind of body armor is a policy to live by (though if he eats a zombie corpse, you probably should avoid his meat since I believe I've caught leprosy from him that way).

3. Eat *everything* you come across that is undeniably food if you're not satiated (the holy banana is an exception [because it is a bit more like a real wand than other bananas], and you'll always want to eat carrots and ommel substances before non-stat enhancing food). The only other exceptions to this policy are terribly spoiled food and school food. If you are satiated, school food is a semi-reasonable indulgence for the reward of extra endurance (which has enemy generation risks but does technically make it easier to survive), but eating more normal food risks becoming bloated which penalizes Agi/Dex training.

4. If you find a wand of polymorph, you can very, very easily get overfed on all the loaves, carrots, bananas, kiwis, and pineapples that pop up. If you find a pickaxe it will be even easier to handle it properly (polymorph wands can polypile 25 items at a time, given that you put down 5 items on 5 squares in one direction or another and zap them all). Given that polymorph wands also tend to have more than one charge, you're bound to make out like a bandit.

5. If you find an altar or book of Seges, you can pray to him for instant satiation. He's probably one of the best gods you can get to know in the game for this alone. Loricatus will also, when angry, turn whatever you're wielding into banana flesh, so if you're really hungry wield a chest, pray a couple times, and boom! instant hunger destroyer.

6. UT3 has constantly spawning carnie plants which sometimes have kiwis that drop when they die. I don't precisely recommend this, but you can hang around and scum the level for food (and *why* I don't recommend this is simple; the plants get bigger and I've never had a lot of luck surviving long against giant carnie plants). The plants in Jenny's room, as well as Jenny herself, also have lots of food (and I definitely recommend eating as much of it as you can before going to Attnam; if you aren't at least satiated by the pineapples and kiwis in that room you have either done something wrong or passed up food elsewhere ).

EDIT: 7. If you have a pickaxe, you can mine your way to a secret staircase leading to UT4 that is usually available in UT2 (which is hidden within a diamond shaped wall structure in a distinctly unrandomly designed room). UT4 is notable for having lots of edible enemies as well as a high rate of enemy generation, valuable stones, and random stashes of food; however if you go in while weak, while this will set the majority of enemies up to be not quite as nasty as they could be, you are nigh-guaranteed to find at least one or two crystal light golems which will quickly end your game if you try to fight them. Run from them whenever possible instead if you want to live to the gloomy caverns.

Nice post BDR.

Oh man, BDR, thanks for that polypiling tip. I looked around for the proper way to do it and couldn't find it. I was piling up WAY too much stuff it turns out.

Wow, seconded. Thanks for the tips, most helpful!

One more newbie q, how do I sell stuff to the shopkeeper in Attnam?

Thanks again!

::edit:: nevermind, just gotta drop it!

::edit again::

Ok, a real question this time, how do I disarm or remove mines?

There is no real way to disarm mines. Removal can be accomplished by either taming something and letting your 'friend' walk over it, luring an enemy over it, or by zapping a wand of fireballs at a nearby wall. Note that usually it's easier and less costly to walk around the mines if possible, and that it's also possible to get a belt of levitation which (while unbroken) makes the problem of personally stepping on mines a completely irrelevant one.

Also, Silva's earthquakes are a pretty good way to get rid of mines.

While we're on the topic of food....why can't I eat carnivorous plants? Seems like I can eat everything else in there...Also, the time I was in Attnam I saw a stack of 200 bananas in the goods shops there.

If theres a mine blocking a path you want to go, consider of kicking it, not stepping on it. Since you are further away from middle of the explosion, you will take less damage.

Apple: I just now tested it in wizmode and kicking mines does not knock them away from you. It just makes them explode right where they were when you kicked them. Also, yes, this was in the town, and I kicked it in a direction that would have sent it flying if it worked like a normal item sitting on the ground while activated, with stats and enchanted boots of kicking that could shatter walls. Doing so blew off both natural legs (it was a big mine, after all, and I wasn't wearing anything else).

Yes, I know that you can't knock them away from you, my point was that you will be 1 tile further away from the center of explosion, thus dealing less damage to you than if you would stand in the middle of explosion.

If there's a mine in your path, just tunnel into the wall next to it, and step around it. Even if you have fire resistance, why take a chance? your equipment/items might be damaged

Apple: My point is that that trick will still hurt a lot, as compared to simply avoiding it or letting something else blow it up. As capristo says, why take a chance?

it is even less damage from the explosion if you are diagonal to the exploding square. While i have never used this trick to detonate a mine with minimum damage it has saved my ass once or twice when I find myself face to face with a veteran kamikaze dwarf before i have enough HP/fire protection and no invis/teleportation options. E.g. you think you have one last charge in your tele wand and the VKD is coming at you, you zap it and nothing happens and you either don;t have another wand or time to pull one out and you just prayed to sophos 15 minutes ago and like your limbs atached to your body.

Well, in that example you could still apply the wand. :wink: Now if you are trapped without a wand, then this would be a method. It is always good to have as many backup plans as possible in IVAN.

I think you can't eat the plants because that would make it too easy to get past the UT without starving. And there is always a stack of bananas in Attnam shop