Leveling Strategies

This page is meant to collect various player's favorite tips for playing the gods and classes off each other. The tricky part is getting the stats and abilities you want without having too many gods mad at you too early....

Mental Mouse's goal: A battle-mage with both combat and magical chops, and especially a fair bit of time with Pax, to get at least one big Sanctify boon and lots of spells.

I originally would start off with Quizar, who offers a mix of magic and combat abilities and decent starting equipment, with nothing actually forbidden. Once I'd worked up some hit points, I'd alternate wizard and fighter while making up with Pax. (A Scroll of Identify with a near-full knapsack should make Belweir happy enough to take you.) There are several downsides here.

• • H'ruth and Tlosh are both gonna hate you, and once you go to heavier weapons with Pax, it's easy to lose Quizar's favor too.
  • Also, your HP may be dangerously low by the time you start seeing dragons and the like.
  • Not only can an evil Helm of Draining ruin your game, so can evil Squeaky Shoes -- and you need to test boots, because you need Speed Boots to survive against Ghasts and Scorpions.
  • Quizar's starting equipment is iffy -- leather and dagger or worse is common, often without a weapon or armor skill.

My newer method is a little more indirect:

• Start with H'ruth, and stick with him for at least 2 or 3 levels, by which time you should be up to 50 HP or more, and likely down to level 5 in the dungeon.
  • Save any spellbooks you find, but don't actually learn any spells until you're out of this phase.
  • Go for medium armor up to mithril chain. Testing magical boots and helms immediately until you've found the helm of draining. (Then toss it and put on a helm of warning.)
  • Your weapons will be limited by circumstance, but try to get a double-skilled weapon if you can. If you don't start with weapon skills, go for big weapons -- warhammer or spear.
  • Collect everything you can. By dungeon level 5, you should have a mostly-full pack.
  • Hold off on testing your scrolls.
• Now comes the tricky part -- transitioning to the "mage" phase. Since you likely want to hang with Belweir soon, this is a good time to try scrolls and hopefully ID your now-full backpack. You've got three options:
  • If you're planning ahead, you can gently lose H'ruth's favor. Note that it's not enough to milk his God Points, you need to bring his Piety down too. Aside from playing with wands, now is the time to get into ranged weapons. Start even before you switch to another god, since those doubled penalties are what you want. You want to get H'ruth's piety down below 100, and ideally down to 0, before you cast your first spell, but you may be able to finish the job after switching gods.
  • If you've got appropriate countermeasures, you might be able to just switch gods, then tough out the punishments for your first spells. "Countermeasures" here means find a private room, set yourself up with regeneration, poison resistance, and fire resistance, plus disposable weapon and armours for him to disenchant. Also, you'll want some way to teleport away from a Creature Summon.
  • If you have at least one spellbook, just spend a level as an adventurer, and cast your first spell under the shelter of Agnosticism. Avoid getting surrounded, because that drains Belweir piety.
• At this point, you'd really like to go straight to Belweir for a while, but depending on your choice, you might have to make do with Quizar or even Xom. Even if you're eligible for Pax, don't go straight to him, unless you have at least one of the spells Heal or Preserve (perhaps from a staff), or the skill Endure Hunger. And even if you do, you probably want to get magic from Belweir first.
• Once you've got a few magic dice to match your hit dice, settle in to level up with Pax, with occasional visits to Klaskov, Belweir, and Quizar as seems appropriate.

• Advantages over my "old route":
  • This lets you test helms and boots early and without much worry, because you don't care about draining or noise, and by the time you do, you'll be getting uncurse boons.
  • By the time you get into magic, you should have enough HP to carry you for a bit. The high HP will also let you do things like filling empty bottles with water or even (with resistances and luck) lava or acid, and going head-to-head with monsters that most characters at this level would need to run from or dance around, like various dragons, Trolls, and Ghasts.
  • Between starting equipment and H'ruth levels, you've got decent odds of getting Endure Hunger early, and that totally changes your game -- you can just leave your rings of Regeneration and/or Invisibility on, not to mention running hungry for Pax's benefit.
• Disadvantages:
  • The transition to magery may not be so easy, especially if you haven't found any spellbooks! (If you have spare skill books, a wand of polymorph can help.)
  • Both H'ruth and Pax give a total of 2 dice per level, where other gods give 1½ per level. Those extra dice mean you'll be facing more and nastier monsters at any given time.
  • Also, H'ruth grants no spells, while Pax grants only one skill (Endure Hunger).
  • It's still easy to end up with H'ruth, Tlosh, and maybe Quizar all gunning for you. The first two are probably inevitable if you're hanging with Pax, but it may be worth sticking mostly to mithril chainmail and lighter weapons to keep Quizar happy.
• It occurs to me that this could also serve as a lead-in to a career with Tlosh instead of Pax.

See also: The Early Game for more hints.