Bleeko the Tourist 2006-04-16: Ascended (first ascention) in 78834 turns nethack.alt.org public server version 3.4.3 Started out weak, as all tourists do, but managed to luck into some reasonable armor from whacking orcs and goblins. Got a +2 iron helm and +3 iron shoes, which were a big help. Didn't find much in the way of weapons (yet :-), so I was just using a dagger and worked up my proficiency with that a bit. Found an amulet of ESP which was great for keeping out of trouble! There was an altar on level 5, so I camped out and sacrificed until I got Giantslayer, practiced until I could twoweapon it with a dagger. Found two bones piles side by side in the Gnomish mines. Not much in one, but picked up a bag of holding, gauntlets of dexterity, a tinning kit, and a magic marker out of the other. The guy had been killed by his pet, which was still wandering around, so I adopted it :-) Picked up a touchstone and a luckstone before the bottom of the mines, but I went down anyway picking up stuff. Found 5 dilithium crystals! Did the protection thing at the co-aligned altar in minetown to drop my AC by 5, but I lost it when the guards got mad (saw me diluting potions to make holy water) and I had to whack them. Back in the main dungeon, I found a big ring shop with free action, slow digestion, and many others. Now that I could take my time, I did a little altar camping and got Magicbane next. That was when I found out that you can not twoweapon more than one artifact :-) Got a shield of reflection from a Aleax. Used that until I got an amulet of reflection so that I could go back to twoweaponing. Now it gets weird. On the first quest level, I found Grayswandir just lying around like an orcish dagger. I know it can happen, but it is like finding the Holy Grail mixed in with your coffee mugs! Picked up a second silver saber so that I could rock the double saber (Tourists can get skilled) or Magicbane and saber. Did Ludios for some protection money, tamed a red dragon which helped me clean out some things. Whacked a bunch of other dragons and made some blue dragon scale mail to upgrade my dwarvish mithril. Went down to the castle, worked my way around to the back entrance, but was not looking forward to dealing with the liches, mind flayers, and disenchanters in there. Forgot about the trap doors back there, so before I could do anything, I fell down to the Valley of the Dead. In the Valley of the Dead, I found a bones pile with some cursed gray dragon scale mail, speed boots, a scroll of genocide (which I hadn't seen yet), a wand of wishing (1:0), and a wand of polymorph. He also had the Master Key of Thievery, but I couldn't pick it up because of my alignment/class. Did a little polypiling and popped three more scrolls of genocide! Blessed 'em, then whacked the liches, flayers, and disenchanters. Did all the eels/krakens and wrote one more for trolls for good measure. Then I went back up to the castle and things were much simpler :-) Went down in Gehemon about 10 levels, then back up to my base camp at level 5 to take stock and freshen up some spells. Made a little more holy water and got crowned, given Vorpal Blade. Including my quest artifact, that is *SIX* artifacts before making a single wish! I was debating going wishless, since I didn't really need anything, but I got a djinn from a smoky potion, so I wished for a spellbook of magic mapping to help in Gehemon. I had seven wishes in th WOWs in my sack, so I also wished for the Eyes of the Overworld, because what self-respecting Tourist would go without sunglasses! It actually took two wishes to get them, since I had so darn many artifacts already. Figured that since I had tons of polymorph wands, I'd try to make some gems. Went all the way back up 30+ levels collecting worthless glass, then dumped 250+ pieces in one big pile and zapped it. I didn't realize that you never get more than 4 of a gem in a polypile. On the first zap, I got a glass golem and all that was left after I whacked him were six pieces of glass. Doh! A learning experience :-) Worked my way down to the bottom, insta-killed the wizard with a wand of death, then chewed through the baddies in the sanctuary until just the high-priest was left. Hung around outside the altar for a while getting my ducks in a row, polypiling for a few more gems (the right way this time!) and came up with four more scrolls of genocide! Didn't really need to use them, but figured it would be a waste not to. Blessed them and then whacked the Dragons, Nagas, and quadrupeds. Wanted to do golems but it would not let me. Since I was going for large numbers of species I did all the dogs instead. Ran into the wizard three more times on the way up, but kept zapping him back to oblivion. Camped out for a while on the plane of earth. Hollowed out a good chunk of it with many spare wands of digging, then just kept reading create monster scrolls and whacking the results. Had to kill the wizard a few more times and some Archons gave me a little trouble by repeatedly surrounding me with baddies, but nothing really serious. Polypiled a little more with all the glass that I picked up from the giants. I was really worried about the elementals on the plane of air, but it turned out much easier than I was expecting. Was able to sleep most of them before they got to me, and then beat them with a stick. Got engulfed once or twice, but the damage wasn't particularly bad. My AC was -41, but by casting protection I could temporarily get to -46, all without a shield! That takes a lot of the sting out of hits :-) The rest went like clockwork. Killed Famine twice without letting it even get a shot in. Bleeko the tourist ascended with about 6m points after ~80k turns. He finished with 6 wishes (a WoW (0:1) + lamp) that I never bothered to use. ==> See the final stats.