Valpurus' timer is 50 hours AIR. I also seem to recall that you get some amount of bonus favor towards the first god you learn of, which seems to be borne out in my experience from the time a couple books of Atavus earned me a lovely arcanite platemail. As for your latest question, I'd say *technically* you may not even need to pray to him for the best ending (I take this from my wizmode experiences), as what seems to happen is that if you are his champion by dint of god relations it doesn't matter if you've confirmed it with him or not for the purposes of him granting you high priest status. I suppose flavor would be the biggest reason to use his items over the others; certainly in .50 Mortifer's Ne'erc Se-ulb is far more useful than the valpurium sword or shield that Valpurus hands out.

Does anyone know how much faster it is to run while levitating than it is to run normally (and how much faster running is versus walking)? The game says "very fast" when you run while levitating but that isn't really very informative and I've wondered sometimes what that actually meant. I think maybe running is twice as fast as walking but I don't recall where I got that impression and can't speak to its veracity in any case so I thought I might as well ask about that too.

Running will help with outmaneuvering enemies that move as fast or slightly faster than you, though you can only do it for a limited time before becoming exhausted.

Angels tend to make great pets, but you have to make a god pretty pleased with you to get one. You can buy a slave in Attnam at the general store for 50 gold who is able to wear stuff same as you, and there is also an elite guard who can always be found in a rather conspicuously empty spot within the cathedral who has rings of invisibility and infravision + a full set of mithril armor equipped, which is just as awesome as you might imagine it to be (requires a scroll of taming, obviously, but you can buy that from the bookstore).

No, that strategy will get you killed when you run into magic mushrooms, as well as when your stats are high enough to result in kamikaze dwarves saying hello. Armors of great health are only a bad idea because they raise the bar far higher than they are actually worth; if you find a stat-raising helmet there's no reason not to keep it on. If you are still paranoid, though, know this: most of the monsters in a level are generated when you walk in, so if you're feeling nervous because you have an octiron quarterstaff of wondrous smells, Saal'thul, arcanite chain mail, an amulet of ESP and/or other assorted bs-luck items you *can* just drop them on the stairs down, go downstairs and come back up for the loot and thus take away the risk. Monsters occasionally spawn in to levels if you're on them long enough, which means you can't stop magical mushies from suddenly ruining the place, but as far as I can tell 'bosses' like Sherry won't.


I'm fairly certain that material type and artifact/non-artifact status make for different danger levels rather than the different types having anything to do with it. I'm also fairly certain that whatever effect weapons have on danger levels is paltry compared to the benefits of having better ones.


One or two types. There are no characteristics that are important for the basic weapons beyond that of damage, accuracy, and strength (there is no blunt/slice/pierce damage game-mechanics-wise, there is only damage), which means that if you can enchant a whip enough to give it the damage of a basic mace there's really no reason to use the basic mace.


I always use them right away because I loathe raising them the normal way, as well as because a) I'm going to raise them in the normal course of the game regardless of whether I try to grind for them or not and b) the guaranteed encounters will kill me if I don't have good enough stats. The holy banana of Oily Orpiv is probably the only stat-booster I would ever wait on using, and that only because it doubles as a wand of fireballs.


RNG dependent. There is a ring of searching that boosts your chance of finding stuff and even *that* doesn't give you a 100% chance of finding mines before you step on them. It's pretty much agreed that if you really want protection from mine oneshots you need either a cloak of fire resistance (has to be at least +1 or it is no good), two rings of fire resistance, higher END, or a belt of levitation. Note the first three solutions will only save your life from the initial blast, and will not stop it from occurring nor stop your wands/mines/holy bananas from blowing up and possibly finishing the job. A belt of levitation will grant complete protection from active mines and bear traps as long as you're wearing it and it isn't broken. Searching rings can still help if you're missing any of the other, better solutions; it's just that there occasionally are times when you search 10 times with one on and still wind up asploded.


There is really no particular set of items that you cannot do without. There are certainly things that you can do to make your life considerably harder (use no scrolls of change material) or considerably easier (use artificial limbs with the aid of either gods or scrolls of change material), but there really isn't anything I can think of that by itself would make the game nearly impossible to win upon removal.


Well, there goes that suggestion. Fortunately I don't really believe it's necessary to do stuff like that (again, it's only if you're terribly paranoid that it might be worthwhile).

Further advice? Don't worry so much, dying is a big part of the charm of this game. If you're desperate to win, there are exploits of varying severity you can make use of (but mentioning that you made use of them in order to win will probably get you booed at). Gods are an important part of the game; knowing who does what and how often to pray can be the difference between living and dying. Speaking of which, Valpurus and Mortifer require a lot more attention than the other gods, and give appropriately awesome gifts once you've done enough for them (or disproportionately terrible punishments if you pray before you have). Also, if you intend to beseech gods regularly you had better not pick them too far apart on the alignment scale, otherwise you are likely to catch them in rather uncharitable states of mind. Also also, while books are pretty good for intelligence training reading them willy-nilly will totally screw up your god relations. Intelligence training is important because of scrolls of change/harden material; if you have enough, you can choose better materials for your armor and weaponry, and so enhance your chances of winning considerably. And so on, and so forth..

It's a shame there aren't any axe artifacts in vanilla IVAN.

A regular bone? No. Items made out of ommel bone or ommel tooth, on the other hand..

I recall someone tried once to see if feeding ommel bone chests to wolves would make them better pets; I think their verdict was that it wasn't, but I can't recall details.

..would basically be like giving yourself a second means of across-the-board stat-gains (the first being the holy banana), as this is exactly how it works when you are polymorphed into a dog.

Which would be nicer if a) mithril gave more than an extra 2 AV and b) octiron didn't require the same amount of Int to harden to (according to the wiki) as diamond does (and since diamond helmets give 6 more AV than the octiron helmets, generally speaking a more useful use of harden material). A scroll of change material and the right amount of Int will make all that a moot point o'course.

Understanding is indeed unicorn horn. Brilliance is made of arcanite.