Haha yeah, well i've never tested it out myself but I'd imagine there are some monsters it wont let you zombify.

You zap it towards a corpse of something and it turns it into a zombie pet. I've only used one a few times so i don't know if it does anything more than that, because a zombie pet really isn't that useful.

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.

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.

Okay that makes me feel better, or atleast like less of an epic failure. My last few games I've been able to make it out of UT no problem, I'm hoping this streak continues. But odds are it wont since this game absolutely loves fucking everyone in horrible ways on a regular basis.

I finally did it! Did the detect material Enner Beast Flesh thing, ran there, and nailed him with lightning and a fireball. Toasted one of my mistresses who so kindly got inbetween, but who cares. The bastard is dead.

Edit: Not long after this, I was killed by a multitude of wands exploding after a kamikaze dwarf had his way with me. Oh well. It was fun.

Ah, I was always resting to get my endurance up, since I thought more HP = better. I wasn't really thinking about harder monsters coming after me. Good tip. The most common way I die is being attacked by just about anything. I seem to have a critical hit magnet in my chest or something. Sorry that I can't be more specific but its like any monster i meet has a 40% chance of one hit killing me. I blame Jesus.

Oh and if it matters, I mostly play IVAN 3D, i don't know if there are any specific tips for that version. I always used to play the plain .50 version the first 2 years or so that i've played (yes turns out that I've played for more than 1 year as I originally thought), but this time around I tried the 3D version and i like it a lot. I don't really even use the 3D mode, it just seems that there's more variety in items/monsters. I could be imagining things, who knows.

Hi everyone. I've been playing IVAN off and on for about a year now. I've recently picked it back up and now I'm addicted. I made literally one or two posts on the old official forum in a 'Most Horrible Death' thread but other than that I've just been a lurker for the most part. But now the time has come, I think, for me to be a somewhat active member of this community, since this game is so fucking awesome and such. Don't worry this is actually leading to a question:

Okay so in my year or more of playing I've pretty much always sucked. Like, bad. Before I could hardly ever get out of the UT, now I'm doing a LITTLE better than that. I make it out about 50% of the time. Today I had my best game ever and made it all the way to the Enner beast. I prepared myself well, put everything in a chest and had about 10 cans full of healing stuff. So I run around randomly until I find the bastard (since I didn't have a scroll of Detect Material), healing when needed. I finally find him, zap him with a wand of striking, then he fucking kills me. AWESOME. Now when I restart I find myself dying in the UT again.

So my question is, what steps should a new player always take to ensure his survival in the UT? I'm sure there's something that I'm doing wrong here, or perhaps is it not all that uncommon to have most of your games end there? I'd like to get as much info on this as I can, then maybe write up a 'Beginners Guide', after i've learned a bunch, so other people like me don't consistently get fucked within the first 10 minutes of play.

Thanks everyone and sorry for my wall of text. I'm quite verbose.