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Posted by BDR, Nov 24, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I forgot about that extra bit. Thanks.
Posted by BDR, Nov 22, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Pssssh. Wands of cloning, mirroring, and polymorph are simple (after a fashion).

Step 1: Lay down the items you want to clone, mirror, or polymorph. For cloning and mirroring, you can get up to 5 items cloned/mirrored, and for polymorphing you can get up to 25 items polymorphed if you lay them down in a straight line, 5 per tile, over 5 tiles. Note: If you have more than 5 items in a tile you use one of these wands on, you'll only clone/mirror/polymorph the top 5.

Polymorphing example: @*****. (@ = player, * = batch of 5 items, . = floor)

Step 2: Stand next to the batch of items or on either end of the line you created, then zap the wand in the direction of the items/item line.

Step 3: Reap the rewards. Note: when picking up from a stack you used a wand of mirroring on, you'll see (for example) a second stack of 5 scrolls underneath the first 5 rather than a stack of 10 scrolls - the top stack is the original 5 scrolls, and the bottom stack is made up of the mirrored copies; this is important because the mirrored copies have a limited shelf life and you really don't want to use up the wrong scrolls when mirroring things!

Also: in the event you wish to clone/mirror yourself, you can lay items down on your square and reap the benefits of hitting them as well as yourself, but you count as one of the 5 items, meaning that you will only wind up with 4 clones/mirrored copies of whatever items are on your square.
Posted by BDR, Nov 22, 2010 at 1:06 pm
It'd be nice to know whether the code is more precise on that point, though.
Posted by BDR, Nov 22, 2010 at 1:29 am
Loricatus doesn't always succeed at hardening items worn, though. How is it figured whether he hardens an item or doesn't if not by Int or some variant thereof?
Posted by BDR, Nov 21, 2010 at 8:51 pm
I bet he cloned them up.

Pakhawaj: Library trick = step on the bookstore's doorway (the first place you can get the welcome message) and sell off any scrolls/books you're carrying, buy scrolls/books until you can afford no more, drop them on top of the stuff you had then move one tile up and kick the loot out of the shop. If you hit any roving citizens, you're probably boned and definitely are boned out of Attnam as a safe haven + the easiest win. Otherwise, rinse and repeat until you have all of Haathbar's stock and gold.
Posted by BDR, Nov 21, 2010 at 1:01 am
WRT gods:
1. Valpurus and Mortifer can only be prayed to once you are considered their champion. Praying to them without any alignment training/god-specific sucking-up at all tends to result in instant death. In the event you do pull that off, Valpurus will give you either a two-handed valpurium sword or a valpurium shield while Mortifer will give you Neerc Se'ulb, as well as maybe a pet angel. Prayer cooldown period for both of them have been clocked as around 50 hours vs. the 3 for other gods, so their help is limited even more than the nature of their gifts would suggest (although in order to get the best possible ending, you must be Valpurus' champion on top of possessing Petrus' left nut and having the Shirt of the Golden Eagle - good luck with slaying Petrus and Oree for those, though). As for your actual question, I believe I recall someone claiming that there was some kind of spread you could work with along the lines that you could have three gods more lawful and three gods more chaotic with one in the middle or something like that without having any negative god relations through prayer, but I don't recall it that well, so I'll just say that in the event you were going to revolve around Valpurus or Mortifer that you'd want to avoid praying to any god that was L- or more chaotic/C+ or more lawful (you can't revolve around that, of course, since the most benefit you can realistically get out of Valp or Morty is two prays for a sword and shield or dual Neercs, but we're going with hypotheticals here).

2. I never quite liked dealing a lot with gods; mostly because it seemed to me that the sanest way to train intelligence (by reading every book I could find) was also the worst way to handle god relations and I really wanted to get smarter faster so that better materials would be available for changing my stuff into sooner and give me the life-extension I'd need to win. But of course, by ignoring the gods I often got dead anyway. Since I'm not really going to be much help in the "lawful vs. chaotic" opinion bit, I'll just tell you what the main benefits of each god are:

Lawful
Valpurus - Has a valpurium two-handed sword and shield as prizes for two separate prays, championship is prerequisite for best (most impossible) ending
Legifer - Causes a massive explosion centered on you, which is fine since he protects you from the blast (leaving your enemies to take the damage). Also according to the wiki sometimes gives away helmets of piercing perception or scrolls of detect material.
Atavus - Become his champion and you receive an arcanite plate mail, which comes with 18 AV and is thus one of the nicest gifts you can get (it's also very light and thus not hard on the movement speed). Might give away a chest with random stuff in it too, but most of the time does nothing.
Dulcis - Mostly known for her taming effect, which results in everything next to you getting made into your pet. She may also give you a scroll of taming, a Lyre of Charm, a Horn of Bravery, or a Magic Whistle, but I've usually just gotten the song.
Seges - Is generally only useful if you're starving, as then he'll fill your belly to satiated. Piss him off if you want to starve to death.
Sophos - Teleports you to another part of the level. A ring of teleport control won't affect this mode of travel at all (and so Sophos transport is not recommended save perhaps when in dire straits that prevent simply taking off said ring and reading a scroll of teleportation).

Neutral
Silva - Summons pet wolves to do your bidding if above ground, and causes a level-wide earthquake while underground which destroys traps, explodes mines, and causes damage to the walls. Not my favorite goddess by a long shot.
Loricatus - Can harden anything you have equipped in your weapon slot, give you a scroll of repair or repair anything you have equipped that's broken. A very handy god to pray to IMO.
Mellis - Fills empty cans and bottles (up to 5 at a time) with random food/liquid. Sometimes you can get ommel fluids this way. Also sometimes boosts your relationship with other gods (or spreads rumors if pissed). Also very handy for both staving off starvation and putting more healing liquid/antidote liquid/troll blood in your game.

Chaotic
Cleptia - Will bestow haste, invisibility, or ESP on you depending on what you already have (in that order: thus if you have haste, you get invisibility, and if you have that too, ESP). Obvious benefits are obvious (and likely to add to monster difficulty if improperly applied).
Nefas - May grant you the use of one of her mistresses if you have her favor, said mistresses make strong and bloodthirsty pets - good for survival, bad for weapon experience/stat gain.
Scabies - Gives everyone on the level leprosy. Useless against those who don't use the limb system, and awful for the player character given the chances you'll catch the disease yourself (unless I guess you abandon the level for a while while everybody's arms drop off and then go blocking all the non-zombie bite attacks or something). Also can polymorph you into a random creature.
Infuscor - Grants you ESP, telecontrol, or polycontrol in that order depending on which you already have, similarly to Cleptia's gifts. If you have all 3 effects, she will give you 3 teleport scrolls.
Cruentus - Recommends you to Mortifer, gives you a bottle of troll blood or enchants your weapon. Possibly does more than that but I don't recall (as I'm not a very godly player).
Mortifer - As mentioned, giving you a Neerc Se'ulb is the main reason to pray to him (and having two of those is the main reason to pray a second time).
Posted by BDR, Nov 20, 2010 at 2:00 pm
My personal interpretation of magic resistance wrt wands of foo is that a wand of magical arrows is more "pure" magic oriented vs. a wand of fireball or a wand of lightning. The source of the power is still magic, but the effects are not, so the whole idea of "the lightning bounces off your chest because of your strong willpower" doesn't jive with me. Plus there's the part where if this particular stat is powerful enough the danger of mages goes down by a lot.

In my view, a wand of striking against a character with high willpower might not inflict more than scratches, but should attack/break armor. A wand of fireballs, as it causes an explosion centered on whatever it strikes, could perhaps be mitigated by willpower a bit but it should still inflict hefty wounds and maybe death if your endurance isn't high enough (since the environment gets seriously heated up and the force of the blast are side effects of the magic-induced blast), and if a wand blows up in your pack maybe willpower saving only counts for half thanks to the proximity of the blast. That would also take care of those who would count on their willpower alone to save them from the otherwise abysmally stupid measure of breaking a wand to kill foes. A wand of lightning might be mitigated more since it has less environmental damage than a wand of fireballs, but it could also inflict bonus damage to people wearing metal armors (since they're pretty conductive), as well as less by armors made of insulating materials, and also would still be mitigated somewhat better by an amulet of element protection or more HP than just a high willpower stat by itself.
Posted by BDR, Nov 19, 2010 at 11:59 am
That sounds better. Also what would be neat is if you could call shots with the command (aim for the head or specific limbs).

(I don't care if it's going off-topic, we haven't had any recent activity in the real ideas thread anyway)
Posted by BDR, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:13 am
I don't think it needs to be any simpler to break down doors or walls than it already is, other than perhaps enhancing control with the pickaxe so you can use it faster than you can now with the apply command. It's not like it's hard to find pickaxes!

(personally, were I in charge of developing and everyone pleaded with me to put it in anyway, I'd put it in with some hidden fun stuff causing weapons to degrade in quality from use on things that are decidedly unlike flesh [the harder the material you're trying to break down, the faster it goes] - to be fair, they'd degrade anyway from inevitable use upon armor, but those who went trying to break through stone walls carelessly would soon find their favorite weapons useless, and the change in quality would be far more severe for non-combat uses than combat uses)

(in the event you found a way to turn the walls into flesh, that would be just dandy - good luck with that though)
Posted by BDR, Nov 18, 2010 at 7:28 pm
I could see that being useful for a situation where you wanted to get stupid fast. Like, say there's an enemy that follows you like a pet as soon as your intelligence reaches a certain level and has inane enough conversation that your will to live (HP) drains away at a constant (high) rate and only stops when you either manage to slay him (not too likely) or become as dumb/dumber than he is.