Power Gaming

Welcome to Svendre's guide for power gaming POWDER!

This guide is intended for advanced players who are perhaps going for a new high score or just a good chuckle. Being that this is an advanced guide I will be skipping over many of the how-to details and getting right to the strategies.

First we begin the game with Tlosh, primarily because we want a Tome of Necromancy or a Familiar Tome. If you are willing to lower yourself to near save scum levels, then restart the game until you get either with at least 4 charges (and do not use.) Our task then begins with the routine gathering of items and climbing down levels. My suggestion is to stick with Klaskov initially so that you gain at least around 50 or more hit points and get a weapon skill level to one or two before anything else. This allows our character to survive the majority of random events which will end your mad dash downward too quickly such as fireballs from imps, bolts from dragons and the like. Mostly you will be killing everything in sight with melee and running away from whatever you cannot kill yet.

Wear all equipment: rings, etc. then test, test, test. Hold off on scrolls until later. Amulets you will want to wait until you are ready to read many at once looking for a Scroll of Identify unless you have a spare Acid Potion and you don't mind dipping the amulet in case it is a cursed Amulet of Strangulation. Wands: each time you come to a room with only one door: place a junk item or something that could become more useful such as a Wedding Ring on the diagonal inside position from the door (verify you won't get hit by a bounce!), walk back to the doorway and fire the wand at the item. If nothing happens, next point the wand at yourself and zap away. This method exposes Wand of Polymorph early on without much risk as about the worst thing that can happen to you is creating a fast creature, slowing yourself or teleporting into death. Because you can run outside and shut the door if it is a monster, your chances for survival are fairly good and it is worthwhile knowing those wands. For potions: start dipping something like a Short Sword to test for a Acid Potion, then a Long Sword if you have for Bottle of Greek Fire. Getting these two out of the way will let you dip a Wand of Polymorph or either of your books to test for a Mana Potion and gain more charges without burning them up.

Once you have a stash of items and a few solid hit points, start reading off scrolls looking for the Scroll of Identify. Between this, and even if you don't find identify, all the testing and zapping should allow you to switch to a wizard easily enough after the few levels of Klaskov beat-downs. Continue mashing critters until you have at least one more spell and 20 mana points. Once you do, you are going straight for Diagnose and Possess. Remember back to your book with at least 4 charges? This pair can be learned one more time and you will need that for later. Alternately, if you found a Wand of Polymorph, a Ring of Polymorph Control and any amulet you can polymorph the amulet until it shudders (thus it is now an Amulet of Unchanging) then yourself to something like a Kobold Mage. Likely it is going to be easier to rely on your Klaskov levels to simply level a wizard once or twice more.

At this point you should be somewhere between level 5 and 10, with at least 50 hit points, 20 mana points, diagnose, possess and a book or books with more charges to learn the pair of spells again. Since we are raiding the dungeon this game, skip most everything and head downward quickly. A Wand of Digging pointed two spaces down will drill holes and take you down quickly. Wear cloth armor and go invisible if you can - combined with jumping around you can be very annoying to kill. The two most important items you will need for further down are Boots of Water Walking and a Ring of Fire Resistance. If you don't have either of these then keep running around collecting items and testing until you get them. Use wands of polymorph on rings and test for fire by throwing a torch up in the air to see if it burns you. Throw boots in the water, it's fairly easy to test for Boots of Water Walking by process of elimination after you examine the other types. Swiping items, running, digging down and jumping down holes you should be able to fly from level 10 to 20 in little time. Kill what you have to but don't bother fighting a lot as the XP will not matter in this stage of the game.

During this fast descent your primary tool of survival from problem creatures (or holding a juicy artifact or item) is to drop a couple junk items such as shields or dead wands, possess the creature and 1) make it forget all of it's dangerous spells, 2) pick up and wield the junk items in main and off-hands, 3) drop all it's nice inventory at your feet, 4) optionally go take a dive in some lava or drown itself (you are still low to mid level so it may take a long time to kill the creature even if you can and we are in a hurry ;) or 5) Tell it to beat on something else annoying so you can be on your merry way, or whack them both out.

Once you get to Belweir's library on level 21 you will have to decide whether or not to go after the books and scrolls based on: what you have, how easy you can get to it, and what is guarding it. The stash inside is fairly useful but not absolutely necessary. It does not usually take that long and if you have not found the ladder down yet, you can almost as quickly pop down the hole at the back anyway.

On level 22 (Quizar) you will absolutely need those Boots of Water Walking and hopefully fire and acid protection. Although it is possible to get by with Jump Boots and at least fire protection I do not recommend it. If you are going for mad score then I would just ignore this level and go straight down (keep to the middle and go up or down for stairs) although you can fairly easily steal the artifacts in the corners by possessing the elementals and dragons and making them kill each other and/or go for a lava swim. Remember for each nasty boss down here if you possess, force forget spells and make them wield garbage - they can be easy kills or just ignored in most cases. If you don't have Evade Traps then possess the Earth Elementals from a safe distance and don't stand next to a pool of lava or acid while attempting it. They are stupid one-shot possess creatures but it will ruin your day if they get a pit underneath you filling up with lava just before you can possess them. If you get the possess off first then make them forget rolling boulder first or you could spend a long time down there ;) There are always at least a couple more artifacts in the side room. The thing you want to be careful of is that these creatures are pretty stupid and they like to die while over the acid pools.. this can lose you some nice loot. Diagnose them first and if they have nothing then let them chew themselves up with warning+possess fights you start. If they have something nice I would either entomb over the acid pools or fetch them out of the area with acid. Even if you try and get them to chase you out, they hit themselves with acid breath and wind up fighting themselves anyhow.

Level 23 (the challenge) is our key power level. You need some form of warning. If you do not... then you didn't gather enough items on the way down and you probably need to go back up for some more bopping around pilfering things. It's fairly unlikely you won't have one by this point though. What you are going to do next is a series of possessions using warning through walls and doors. First drop some junk items, have them come in and forget spells and wield garbage then press q and kill them. Rinse and repeat. Alternately have them go farther into the combat arena level to fight the next group and get them killed. Do not get the iron golem killed!

When you get to the Iron Golem or are just able to find him through a wall) we are going to perform a body swap here. Dump most of your items near the entrance of the level (except perhaps shock protection and warning) then go drop your book(s) with diagnose/possess and a spare warning item if you have it near the golem (or toss them through a doorway and slam the door in time.) Possess the golem, grab the book(s) and the warning item and have him learn diagnose/possess. If you reached him early on through a wall you can still possess him and make him kill all but one other target somewhere close where you can walk to him. Wait about 20 or 30 turns then have him possess another critter. Beware if you possess a Kobold Fighter as your third in rooms beyond the iron golem that it may be tough to stay alive long enough for the body swap process to complete. It is easier to use the orcs before him as the third target. To do that simply have an orc chase you into a previous room, jump/run away and slam the door on him. Musical rooms for musical bodies... Everyone shifts back a room and the bodies shift too. If a possession doesn't work the first time it shouldn't be a big deal as you ideally are using possess on the iron golem through a wall or door therefore you can simply charge up and try again. He is easy to possess from an adventurer. Once you have him, you'll have at least 5 tries (from 100 mana) to do the third target. For anyone not already familiar with the body swap technique, in summary it is: possess target, target learns spells, wait 20-30 turns, target possesses 3rd target, stay alive until possess wears off first target. If you succeeded, now you are an iron golem! Go pickup your items you stashed near the entrance and snicker quietly to yourself as you pound your old adventurer body to sand (it's probably wiser to save it but good for laughs squashing it.)

From here it is not too hard to finish the game. Go stomp the Kobold Assassins or for more fun throw a Bottle of Greek Fire or zap a Wand of Fire into their room filled with trees and slam the door shut till they cook...ding! You will have made fried crispy critters (I love doing this.) The unique Large Turtloid at the end is a snap because if you make him wield junk he cannot do any damage. If you raided the library now is a good time to use polymorph tricks to learn more skills and spells. Polymorph books with 1 charge or rings for more variety of protection as needed. If you managed to get a holy Bottle of Water, the most important use for it is to charge normal stacks of Bottle of Water then your Mana Potions so they give the polymorph wands more charges. You will have defeated a kobold assassin and so this is a natural choice to polymorph into for hyper skills/spells learning. Your most important spells you want to try and make sure you get here are: 1) Heal, 2) Cure Poison, 3) Major Heal. If you have any rapiers make sure they are charged up using his natural lightning bolts.

Crushing orcs on the next level 24 is amusing. My favorite tactic is to lead with a holy poisoned Smoke Potion, then toss in a (holy) Bottle of Greek Fire or two. The potion bombs are better if you bless the smoke potion by dipping them in a holy Bottle of Water, (before or after you dip it into poison) The smoke potion's blessing will give it radius 2. However, the poison potion's blessing doesn't matter, as this just creates "poison smoke" anyway. Half the orcs will be dead before they reach you and your Iron Golem fists will make sure work of any that survive the potion bombs. They are really just fodder in any case, not too difficult in your new body. Having them chase you into the forests with speed boots or quickened then lighting the forest on fire is also a nice orc BBQ.

Preparing for the final assault: I recommend dressing as a wizard for your Iron Golem as he already has some natural armor and does not need to eat, so fast mana regen plus Major Heal makes him a real tank. He is also Breathless - so provided you have fire protection (as stated important earlier on) you can cruise around under the lava even if you *still* don't have water walking. Get to full health via heals and mana. Fire off a Wand of Speed and a Wand of Invisibility if you have them, then jump into Hell!

The assault: Lead with a holy Scroll of Magic Mapping if you can. It's rather amusing "sharking" up on the big guy from underwater or under lava. As I said earlier finishing the game isn't too tough from the point you get the Iron Golem. You can possess Baezl'bub and make him forget spells/wield his The Black Heart in main hand, or just beat him down and heal fairly easily as well. Your biggest threat will be Kobold Assassins and Soul Suckers. If you see either of these, possess them immediately and make them forget spells. If you get into a bind, use a Wand of Digging and drill yourself a hole to camp in. If you do this awhile eventually you can draw Baezl'bub to the entrance of your hole then just toss Poison Potion and Acid Potion on him and/or zap the now charged Lightning Rapiers, cast Lightning Bolt, zap Wand of Ice (or any other number of cheap easy kill methods.)

The return: Not much can hurt a healing resisting Iron Golem. Just walk out for the most part. Again watch out for those Kobold Assassins and Soul Suckers and make them forget spells. If you get Track put on you, consider taking a defensive position until it wears off.

The payoff: You went fairly normal speed levels 1-5 and medium speed 5-10 but you flew like a bat from 10-20. This means you should definitely be under 20,000 turns and depending on how hard core you played it, since you did not fight much to attain your finishing level 25 body + 20 mind (45 levels) you should have a nice combination of low # of turns plus high finishing total level. I have a hard time not going after artifacts for fun but an example recent score using this tactic was $14,375 t:11,709 121/25 100/20.

If you've come this far then I hope you enjoyed my power gaming for POWDER guide :) Many thanks to Jeff Lait for a great game! -Svendre