It just extends the duration. You really don't want it to run out mid-fight, plus charging a wand of haste just isn't worth it. Might as well just break it.

This may or may not be of use for some people. (Spoilered for gif)

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

No, forgetting to change the material would've meant the staff would just rot away completely. Not something you'd want to happen with a +15 enchanted weapon, is it?

Around 3 days for agility in the start, a few days to get LSTR up around GC1 before getting the wand of cloning for urine. Training dexterity or ASTR wasn't needed seeing how well banana peels and corpses train the two (lots of hits needed to kill anything + wieldable in one hand despite heavy weight). Sci-talked with banana growers, the NA village elder, Decos, normal and greater light frogs, the librarian, mystic dark frogs and both necromancers - i.e. not as much as I could've.

Most of my SoCMs were cloned, so one is really all you need to get going with a wand of cloning.

OP updated, high priest victory complete!

You know, I did think about throwing my own walkthrough to an Elpuri win together after seeing the abandoned WIP guides on the wiki. Might do that at some point. A video walkthrough wouldn't be out of question either, for that matter.

In other news, Elpuri is down. Going to head on downwards for a knight/high priest attempt.

So yes, felt like playing IVAN a bit again, this time with a "slight" self-imposed challenge. Initially I intended to limit the allowed equipment to fruit-based materials for weapons, but that quickly expanded to all flesh materials.

Rules:
1) Fighting in melee may only be done with fruit or flesh material weapons. Fighting unarmed is restricted to cases when neither is available, and should be avoided as much as possible by stockpiling corpses/limbs/kiwis.
2) Using offensive wands is prohibited for everything except the enner beast and named monsters.
3) Throwing non-fleshy weapons is prohibited.
4) No pets.
5) No artificial limbs.

My own run:

Just to throw a heads-up, there'll be spoilers here should someone wish to avoid those.

I started the run as normal, stealing some bananas and training agility to 16 before heading underground armed with two banana peels. Armed zombies caused some headache to take down, otherwise UT1 was a breeze with some retreats to heal.

Come UT2, the peels rotted away at some point and got replaced by a pineapple and a kobold's leg from a spawned bear trap. Neither seemed to be nearly as effective as the banana peels were (you'd think they would do more damage than a rotten mushy banana peel), so I was forced to find alternatives. These eventually ended up being a dead hedgehog and a rat's corpse. In addition to being much better weapons than limbs, loaves of bread or similar, they seem to train ASTR even faster than halberds or two-handed scimitars.

UT3 was pure hell. Killing greater plants takes ages, plus they deal a lot of damage should you not have enough armor. I ended up having to burn a scroll of harden on leather armor just to survive a 1v1 fight with one. Luckily there was a second wand of polymorph and a pickaxe lying around on the level, which in turn I managed to get a mithril chain mail with. Taking down Genetrix was easy after that. (Normally I'd have left her alive to spawn some training material, but with perishable weaponry spending time on training isn't really ideal.)

No pics for UT, sorry!

I tamed a veteran guard for his armor and ripped off the librarian in Attnam before heading to GC1.

Due to the very heavy ASTR training (natural 28, not gifted in STR), I encountered my first apprentince necromancer on already on GC1. Despite spending around an in-game day on beating it with severed limbs, the damage simply was not enough with all the blocks and misses. I ended up skipping him for now and headed down, only to find a scroll of wishing from an Atavus room and a SoCM later on. Having gotten two scrolls of charging from the library earlier, I wished for a wand of cloning (3 charges, lucky me) and cloned the SoCMs along with some ommel urine and scrolls from another few wands of polymorph.


Rest of GC didn't differ all that much from any usual run after getting a real weapon aside from taking ages to kill humanoids with the player preferring to sever all the limbs before a killing blow. Enner beast got blasted with a wand; didn't wish to take the chance of taking him down in melee. Found Danny on GC9, who got killed in melee after around 8 hits (severed both arms and a leg).


Elpuri died very soon afterwards. I was a bit worried he'd negate the wand of slow zap with haste from the blue clouds while backing up to avoid being hit, but seemed my agility was high enough for it to not matter. The spider silk golem went down almost accidentally while exploring the level. Used the wand of cloning (2 charges) from him to clone a bunch of ommel sweat.


Another stroke of luck on GC10, found a third bones file that had gotten killed by Sherry. 7 SoCMs, a spent 3-charge wand of cloning, a few scrolls, 2 AoLS and a helmet of brilliance +10(!). Spent some scrolls to bump my INT up by two points and suddenly valpurium gear. Things are looking rather swell. Sherry herself is still alive.


Sherry is dead, only took 4 hits. Even with her slowed and me with haste, she still moved faster than I did. Luckily my DEX was high enough to land a hit by waiting for her to move with 's'earch, then teleport away with a wand. With telecontrol, I kept hopping a few squares ahead to not get hit. (Notice how I forgot to put an AoLS on. :x)


Oree is dead. I didn't dare to take on the mage room with all these limb hits, there's just no way I could've killed them fast enough without wands of striking. Still haven't met Urky or Izzy, so up to Petrus we go.


And Petrus is dead. My staff kept breaking each time he managed to block, which made the fight rather difficult. Eventually got a severing blow on his sword-hand, quickly snagged Justifier to keep anyone from using it and finished him off. High priest run with flesh material weapons only complete!



Final score: 893510

I've got to say, while I did get pretty lucky with finding bones and enough wands of polymorph early on, I certainly didn't think a high priest victory would be possible with flesh weapons only. The hardest part of my run was a tie between UT3 and GC12.

Prayed to everything from Mellis to Seges currently (that school food -> purify from praying to the two in succession is wonderful). I've been avoiding losing the staff to rotting by alternating its material between Elpuri's flesh and enner beast flesh whenever it's got 3 flies around it. Takes a large amount of SoCMs, but it's the only way to keep using a single weapon. Currently standing at 7-8 left IIRC. Found three bones files: the first was that lightning-in-a-doorway-guy I posted a screenshot about with hardly anything useful, second one with a 1-charge wand of cloning and 7 SoEWs with other assorted scrolls, third in GC10 with some rather neat stuff.

None of the spellcasters can actually cast a spell to polymorph you, the only way for that to happen is to get hit by a fireball or such and have that break a wand of polymorph.

Nice! Next up, high priest ending without pets or artificial limbs.

Did you sci-talk your way to 55 Int/Wis or was there ommel cerumen involved? Also, seconding Batman's question on the necessity of polycontrol for Elpuri. Is this against poly wands breaking or?

The town does turn hostile when you challenge him, but returns to neutral once Petrus is dead.

Yes, the light frogs are tameable.

I always head for Oree first, but that's your call. If you intend to head on downwards, depending on your current wand status you might want to stash a wand of slowing and a few teleports along with a healing potion or two on GC1 in case you lose your wands and potions on the way.

Going down you'll want to have at least a few scrolls of detection with you, or alternatively very high INT with ESP. The mage room is completely capable of ruining your day regardless of your current gear, so you'll want to be able to skip it should shit hit the fan. Oree himself is piss-easy, getting there alive and clearing out the casters on the level safely is the hard part.

With enough AGI and DEX (around 30+) and sources for both slowing and haste, Petrus isn't very hard to take down if you take it slow and never let him hit you. Never take your chances head-on, and be mindful of the AoLS he's wearing as death clears status effects. Clearing out Attnam before engaging is very helpful.

Or of course, if you've yet to complete the Elpuri ending, that's also something you may wish to take. Being able to say you've won in IVAN is already worth it.