Polymorph Quirks

There are a number of interesting quirks to being polymorphed. One of them is that any skills or spells you learn from reading books are kept when you return to your original form, even if you had no free skill/spell slots before polymorphing. This can be abused.

Prerequisites

A few things are needed to get the most out of this trick:

• One or more Wands of Polymorph, which are by far the most efficient way to morph yourself. A Ring of Polymorph might also work, provided you're incredibly patient.
• A Ring of Polymorph Control, so you can choose to morph into a powerful creature, and then back into yourself.
• Having killed a powerful enemy so you can choose to morph into it. There are a few good candidates but the best choice is a Lich, who can learn up to 8 Skills and 9 Spells. Convieniently, liches are also likely to appear early in the game (although killing them early is another matter). Their only downside for this trick is that they are allergic to silver, which could be a problem if your Ring of Polymorph Control is made of silver.
• One or more Books, so you can learn things.

Procedure

First, make sure you're somewhere relatively safe. Entomb or Sunfire can help with this, although just hiding in a small room with the door shut is probably good enough.

Next, you need to plan out what it is you want to learn. Remember that when you polymorph, you temporarily lose any skills and spells you know. So, for example, if you wanted to learn Impale, you'll also need to learn Large Weapons and Pointed Weapons first, even if you already know those skills before morphing. So make sure your books have enough pages that you can learn everything you need to. Be warned: forgetting skills also persists through unpolymorph, so anything you need to forget in order to free up while morphed to spell slots will have to be relearned. Plan accordingly.

Now morph into the creature of your choice. Assuming it's a lich, you'll have six spells known: Chilling Touch, Frost Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Teleport, Poison Bolt, and Poison Item. These are the lich's default spells, so you don't automatically get to keep these when morphing back if you didn't know them before. So, forget these spells to free up some spell slots. If you relearn them from a book, you will now keep them upon unpolymorphing. (The only exception to this step is if you want to learn something that requires one of the lich's spells without learning the prerequisite spell -- i.e. Fetch, which requires Teleport.)

Once you've filled up all your spell and skill slots, you can either polymorph back to your original form, or, morph into another lich (or other creature) and repeat the process.

Remember that forgetting spells or skills when polymorphed also makes you forget them in your original form, so the last things you should learn are the lich's default spells.

Tips

• Since Wands of Polymorph are usually pretty valuable, you should wait until you have a decent collection of books before trying this, and continually morph from lich to lich without returning to your normal self first. If you plan on doing this, you might want to write down which skills and spells you want and which you have beforehand, since you'll have no way of checking while polymorphed.

• Belweir's library is a great place to do this, since you're fairly well isolated from enemies, and there are plenty of books everywhere. Don't forget you can also polymorph books, to try to change one that you don't need into one that you do.

• One disadvantage to this trick is that you'll end up with a skill or spell slot debt (i.e. "You have -2 skill slots"). You won't be able to learn anything the normal way, including as a bonus from your Diety, until you're back above zero.