Bleeko the Chaotic Male Elven Ranger
2010-11-28: Ascended in 65743 turns
DevNull tournament server
version 3.4.3

Ranger Bleeko's Wild Ride.

My first game in the tournament was the Greedy Caveman.

The second game was an Orcish Ranger.  He did well, finding a cursed
shield of reflection on DL2.  I'll take that any day of the week and
twice on Sundays.  With a coaligned altar also on DL2 the sacrificing
began.  Hoping for Stormy, but got Grimtooth, Werebane and Dragonbane.
Soko yielded a bag.  Also managed to pick up a ring of free action.
IDed a touchstone, so I was only carrying gems.  Got reasonably buffed
up and was thinking about doing the quest, but wanted to work my way
down to Medusa.  Almost at Medusa, I got into a big fight which
included some create monster, so there was a troll, vampire, long worm
and some other bad stuff, including a cockatrice.  Good I thought,
maybe I can rubber chicken these guys.  I started hitting it.  With
all the other attacks going on wasn't really paying attention to the
messages, but "You Die ..." caught my attention.   Well, at least my 
clan duties are taken care of for the tournament!

Two weeks, all of the challenges (except ZAPM), and many dead rangers
later, I am playing an Elvish Ranger.  Named Sting on turn 1, and
working a big stack of daggers, keeping my arrows for emergencies.  A
shop provided an early wand of lightning which I used for engraving in
a couple of tight spots.  Also found a wand of digging.  The shop also
gave jumping boots, which came in handy as well.

No altars anywhere on the main branch and, minetown misaligned.  No
light and most of the mines dark, so I went back to the main branch.
I found a bones on DL5 and came up with a cloak of displacement, which
was helpful.  Went back into the mines to get the luckstone.  On my
way down I found both flint and touchstones, so I was pretty happy.

Below minetown I noticed a Gnome throwing eggs at my displaced image.
Eggs?  WTF?  This can't be good, I thought.  So I quickly perforated
that Gnome and ran over to grab those eggs.  Sure enough, when I threw
them at a nearby cave spider, they turned out to be cockatrice eggs.
Disaster thus averted, I worked my way to the bottom.  Happily, I
found a bag of holding in the mines.  Got the luckstone on the first
try from the catacombs mines end.   

Went back to the main branch, and happily soko yielded reflection.
Proceeding down, still without altars, somewhere around DL9 I found
an interesting potion of water.  Running back to the mines, it turned
out to be holy water.  Thus set, I was able to bless my bag, horn, and
ID all of my gems.  I also took the opportunity to work some vaults
and buy a bit of protection.

The altar scarcity ended then, because another level or two down, I
found a coaligned priest in a temple, and the level after that had
*four* altars!  Three were neutral and one was coaligned.  On my way
down, I took out a couple of throne rooms full of orcses.  The last
throne was worth it, with a wish giving me GDSM!

Thus equipped I started down to the next level and promptly fell
through a trap door to DL19.  I ended up right in the middle of a big
fight.  I killed a troll that was toting around a ton of armor, which
made me think it might be a bones level, but when I came upon the
statue of a Ranger named Bleeko, and saw the cockatrice, I knew that,
by Grapthar's Hammer, I would be avenged!

I had no way of uncursing the bag, so I just looted it.  Lost a few
potions of extra healing, food and other assorted things, but managed
to recover got most everything I would have wanted.  I genocided all
sea monsters with a blessed scroll, and then got to genocide
disenchanters from a throne.

At the castle, there was a mind flayer right by the stairs, so I ran,
engraved and then blessed genoed the h and L's.  Fought my way into
the castle slowly because I really didn't want to fire my daggers
without a way to get them back.  Got the wand, but wanted to ID the
things I had first.  It turns out that I had found a spellbook of ID
and that the wand was fully charged.  Gremlins were friendly but
filled Medusa to the point where it was tough to move.  Got a genocide
from the castle throne so took them out.

Wished for a magic marker and wrote 8 scrolls of enchant armor, then
got myself to AC -31 and went down to clear the valley.  Ended up at
AC -50 after everything was equipped and properly enchanted.

Dipped 28 blessed blank scrolls into a potion of polymorph and came up
with scrolls of charging!  That let me keep my wands of death working
overtime and each of the planes was a ghost town by the time I
finished.  I even used Stormy to level drain Famine down to Level 0,
but I could not tame it with a scroll.