I've recently come back for IVAN and noticed there are apparently new versions in development. I tried to look at the IVAN development forum and any other locations I could think of, but didn't find any sort of changelog or a summary of what new things were introduced. Can anyone either point me to a changelog or write up one? Cheers!

This just happened, so it must not always be the case.

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Also, I just recently discovered that mistresses summoned by Nefas rarely spawn with a Holy Banana of Oily Orpiv in their inventory. So it's worth praying to her all the time.

Just to follow up on this, I finally got that High Priest victory with my latest character! My character was ridiculously stacked. I had 2 bone files, both of which got me several wands of mirroring and scrolls of charging. I found a cloning wand (2 charges) naturally, and also ran into ZQ-29 on GC12 who dropped a 3-charger. I also found two scrolls of wishing and two good oil lamps, altogether wishing up at least 2 amulets of life saving (and I also found one on GC, and even had one wish I could spare for a ring of teleport control (no other telecontrol means came up, no blink dogs or anything, and I didn't want to rely on Vermis either).

I cloned up like 40-50 wands of striking and fireballs altogether, as well as about 10-15 teleport wands or so, and those were enough to slay Inlux and Petrus after a long, long period of time. Though I did also manage to clone up quite a few SoCMs so I was running on all phoenix feather limbs by the end. Even so, Inlux killed me once (my other amulets were wasted on other stuff before clearing Attnam). I still wasted so many wands that the "wand of striking" method is clearly only applicable with incredibly, ludicrously stacked characters like mine - I still had some wands left to spare (as well as the emptied cloning wands), but I had to spend a lot, including piling up the empty ones and blowing them up as Petrus walked across.

Hmm, I wonder what I could do next. Maybe all natural limbs or something...

Scabies is useless and more trouble than she's worth - she recently transformed me into a pork golem and I had to summon a mistress from Nefas to keep me safe (granted, the floor was almost empty, but you never know when new monsters spawn). Does the monsters' leprosy spread to you if they hit you enough? Because if it does, then it makes her truly terribad. Also, the only way to use leprosy would be to cast it when you enter a level and then wait a long time, which is just not how I tend to play IVAN (particularly because you are eternally racing the clock for your AGI stat if you have natural limbs and aren't unburdened, or even if so).

Just a general tip based on a recent death: don't step into an armed bear trap in Merka's shop. If you break it while breaking free, Merka will attack you. I guess you might teleport out, although he might still persecute you for teleporting his bear trap away.

Update: I died. Things were going well, I think I killed Petrus once because at one point I didn't see an AoLS on him anymore, but maybe that just can't be seen anyways, I'm not sure. I had scitalked myself up to 40 Int but stopped there because giant light frogs were disappointingly bad at helping me raise my Int, so I just turned my swords adamant. I could kill everything except Inlux, which got a sneaky one-shot kill on me, but I had also found an oil lamp that gave me an AoLS and that let me escape. I cloned gazillions of wands of striking with 4 charges, and dropped the dead wands in one pile, occasionally luring Petrus onto them and zapping those too. That was my strategy. My death was actually the result of human error: at one point I teleported next to a kamikaze dwarf with a lot of striking wands in my inventory. I knew that my only teleport wand in my inventory was probably out of charges, and actually wanted to press 'a' to break it, but due to poor concentration I zapped it instead and it didn't work. I didn't survive the wand armageddon.

I also found out, with interest, that applying a wand of striking is likely to break stuff even inside your chests. I found a secret room on an already explored level by spotting a veteran dark knight walking inside thanks to my ESP, and I tried to break in, but had few wands - I decided to try breaking a used wand of striking and see what it would do. It was a terrible idea, as it broke several wands inside my chests, including a wand of polymorph and (fortunately only) one of my wands of cloning. Thus, two grizzly bears named Khagan VII cowered in fear, waiting for the polymorph to end, and fortunately survived that incident. (I had tossed away my pickaxe because it broke, and it took me a long time to find another and actually get into the room. Wasn't worth it.)

I'm glad that I killed Oree and learnt quite a bit about taking on Attnam too. I'll probably try more runs later.

Well then, I must have been the victim of accidental misinformation. Interesting to know that about the AoLS.

I'm not sure I want to try the "explosives" method because I'm bound to screw it up and it's kind of anticlimactic. Also, I threw away all my empty wands all over the GC.

So yeah, I always considered rings of infravision strictly inferior to ESP because in practice, I tend to be able to see fewer enemies with them, and also I can't see through the walls. However, I guess that these traits are less important in Attnam. Is there anyone there who I can't see with infravision, only ESP?

Also, as you can see I don't have any striking wands that are intact. Are wands of striking better in particular than the other two against Petrus and their ilk? I might scour through the GC and the tunnels once again for any errant offensive wands, since I really can't afford to waste a scroll of charging on recharging them...


Overpowered.

So - it's been a long time since I've played IVAN and I decided to give it another go now. I had once achieved a Freedom ending on another computer, and now I decided to go for one of the harder endings.

I haven't forgotten to play, apparently, or have just gotten lucky - out of 7 attempts, I managed to produce 2 quite OP characters who reached Elpuri without serious trouble (3-shot wands of cloning, plentiful random scrolls of charging and nice equipment, mostly). The first died in an accident involving Elpuri's powerful bite and a wand of polymorph. The second offed Elpuri with a combination of wands and, when they wore out, melee also helped. Getting a phoenix feather right arm helped a lot, after a giant dark frog severed the original and a prayer to Sophos gave me a hardened leather replacement instead of teleporting me away, as I expected it to. After somehow surviving, I decided to stick with it.

My gods were from Sophos to Legifer, helping me in various ways. While Sophos' arm helped me, I had no SoCM to change my other limbs to phoenix feather, nor did I really need to. Though I did get a SoCM after accidentally killing ZQ-29 - I was quite OP by the time I entered GC10 and killed it without any harm to myself at all, only realizing what I had destroyed by looking at the lootpile. Shererax was also close by, and no, I didn't dare take on that. However, I had two wands of cloning, each of them 3-shot, by this time, as well as several scrolls of charging, which I eventually started using to clone less valuable, but still scarce stuff like scrolls of detect material and (especially) wands of teleportation.

GC12 had the mage room right next to the stairs, which I noticed thanks to my ESP. I quickly teleported away and hacked my way through hordes of zombies that kept being raised again and again. Then, when the kamikaze dwarves started blocking my way (they couldn't see me, I zapped myself invisible, but I had never found a fire resistance cloak and had to rely on two rings to protect myself from mines - a big mine in GC11 took my torso down to the lower regions of red, so I was definitely afraid of mines) I teleported into the chamber with the portal and entered the lair.

I had found a functioning oil lamp in GC11 and used it to wish for a belt of levitation (I kept a scroll of wishing in reserve all the way through, never needing it). I mostly used Richel Decos' belt of carrying (as I didn't find any other good belt either), but I knew from long ago that Oree's level has blood pools and I might want to levitate through them - plus I had no idea what to wish for, aside from an AoLS, which I didn't really want as I figured that the increased danger level and not having ESP are more likely to hurt me than the extra life will help me. Indeed, for the most part I just used my plentiful teleport wands to hop next to the mages and kill them, then - deciding to play it safe - I slew Oree with wands of striking and eventually found the GEF shirt.

I returned to the surface and now here I am. In the link below, you can see the incredible amount of scrolls, healing liquids etc. I have that I didn't need. I was pretty buff all the way through - Richel Decos, Xinroch, most non-Shererax mistresses I met, Golgor Dhan, ZQ-29, the hordes of dark knights and orcs I fought (including an Ur-Khan with bugged -5 equipment that I spoke of in another thread), all non-valpurium golems, the angel of Cruentus on Oree's level, even Elpuri were pushovers. I'm not sure how powerful Oree would have been, but I didn't want to be vomited upon and have my equipment be destroyed, plus he had some pretty powerful gear.

http://imgur.com/a/sli4C#3eJ21Jl

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Now the story part is over. I'm standing in the Cathedral and wondering how I could take on the High Priest, or if I should just settle for Knighthood. I'll probably try to take on Petrus though just for the fun of it and then become Valpurus' champion. I just thought I'd ask for some advice as to how I should do this. As you can see, I don't have a massive amount of HP, but I have a lot of resources at my disposal. From reading the forums, I know that Petrus is not easy at all to take on in melee, and who knows how powerful Inlux is, but I have Sophos and a bunch of teleportation wands on me, so I could probably take on everyone else with ease and teleport away if anything goes wrong. Either way, though, my enemies in Attnam are fixed so raising endurance, wearing an AoLS and anything else that increases danger level strongly are not an issue - I know that. I'm not sure how I would go about raising my endurance, though, or even just my intelligence - I've already sci-talked the hell out of everyone and wandering the dungeons to look for mages to tame sounds extremely tedious (although Dulcis would let me do that as long as I have Seges to fill my stomach too). As for endurance, I'm not praying to Mellis and I don't want to switch gods, so I don't have infinite school food. What else could I do? I guess changing my limbs to phoenix feather could also help, although having 3 natural limbs and winning would be a lot cooler. If I do get the necessary intelligence, is it even worth upgrading to dragon hide limbs, or is the extra dexterity/agility more useful than the extra strength?

Any other tips are welcome too, of course.

He was using his native equipment (ruby halberd, spider silk boots etc.). It was in UT4, if that matters. Interesting about the higher enchants though - so does that mean a kobold lord will replace his iron spear +2 with a steel spear -4, for example? That's weird. Haven't noticed that happening before.

What causes monsters to spawn with ridiculously negative-enchanted equipment from time to time? I mean, sure, you see variable enchants on monster equipment usually, but then sometimes there is that one monster that has -4 and -5 on every piece of its equipment. It seems to most often occur on skeletons, but I recently killed an Ur-Khan whose equipment was junk like that.