So, I confronted Medusa. I put on my blindfold and started bashing on her. After a while, she disappeared from my telepathy. I figured, "All right! Got her! That was easy!" Remembering my YASD a few months back by walking over a chickatrice corpse while blind (and not wearing gloves), and figuring it'd be another YASD with Medusa's corpse, I took the blindfold off. No corpse. I think to myself, "How odd. She doesn't leave a corpse. I was hoping to sever her head or tin her as a trophy or something."

I proceeded to the next level only to find she'd escaped me by running down the stairs. I guess I didn't notice because I was blind. This new level (dlvl 25) is scary. There's minotaurs down here. (Gave me a good beating, but I won the battle.) There's other things that scare me. Where, exactly, am I? It's like a maze. It's annoying me becaus eit's hard to run directly to Medusa (who teleported away), and I have to work my way through this to get to her. Is this a special branch? I don't think I've hit Gehennom yet. I hope I haven't. I'm just curious if this maze area has a name. I don't think I should be in Gehennom with a -7 AC, if it is indeed that. (Though I do have resistance to nearly everything. Shock, Fire, Cold, Poison.)

Anyway, this place sort of freaks me out. As soon as Medusa is dead, I'm going up a few levels. I have altars to convert and polypiling to do.

I have a question for everyone.

Can someone explain altar conversion to me? It's confusing. The only coaligned altar in the game is in minetown, and it's a hell of a hassle to travel that far, since I'm in the low 20's in terms of dlvl right now. It'd be nice to have a closer altar for sacrificing and such. I'm chaotic and, what from what I understand, chaotics can sacrifice anything (except for certain unicorns) on the altar to convert it. I know if it's done wrong, I'll change alignment. This is really of no consequence now that my quest is completed... except I'd prefer not to lose the divine protection I was finally able to buy. (Naked AC of 7. Still, a long way to go... but it's looking better now in terms of my AC. Leprechaun Halls have a TON of gold in them. I got 12,000 from just one.) So, I just want to make sure I don't mess anything up if I try a conversion.

Also, is the bag of tricks good for anything? Anything at all? I've run across two and they've both just gone into the junk pile for polypiling.

As a super quick game update: Everything is going well. Found some Crystal Plate Mail... my jubilation at that died as soon as I found my +1 Dwarvish Mithril is just as good and WAY lighter. I sort of think I'm gonna be sticking with this Mithril until I get DSM. Other than that, doing just fine. Nothing big to report. I somehow ened up with a giant ant as a pet and managed to kill it with Stormbringer. Oh my, was my God upset at that. I think. He must have not been too upset, as I still have my protection... I think my alignment was high enough to absorb the brunt of the penalty. Killing all those leprechauns probably got it back up. (Since they're generated hostile.) Still hoping for a wish. And that's my final question: If I were to travel back to my quest level and sit on my Quest Giver's Throne, would that upset him in any way? Maybe I can sneak a wish out of that.

My quest is done. Toth Amon was surprisingly easy to kill. He cursed a bunch of my stuff... I wish I knew he'd do that in advance. Luckily, it's nothing I'm missing aside from my Ring of Conflict. However, I have several scrolls of Remove Curse to deal with it.

I have this weird Silver Bell which refuses to go into a bag. I don't know what it is, but I was once given this advice: "If you ever find something that won't go in a bag, guard it. It's really, really important." So, guard it I will.

Toth Amon also destroyed my helmet. This continues my trend of my AC slowly creeping in the wrong direction, because it was a blessed +1 Helmet and I can't find a replacement that's quite as good. I have a scroll of enchant armor that I feel I pretty much have to use at this point. I quaffed some smoky potions, hoping to get a djinn. No djinns were found. I stumbled across another Scroll of ID as well, so as soon as I get that blessed, hopefully helping me figure out what all these rings are.

I found some fire giants and tinned their corpses. (As well as a Tengu corpse, for when I get a method of controlling teleport.) A Tinning Kit is one of those things I've always wanted, but never run across before. I have two tins of Fire Giant left (I'm satiated, so I don't want to choke to death.) My strength should be around 18/30 or so after I eat both of them.

I guess it's time to go deeper after I finish my run of diluting potions and blessing the resulting water. I used up my last vial of holy water due to a mistype. I blessed Potions of Extra Healing. It wasn't my intention, but it's always good to have those around. I had intended to bless my smoky potions for the chance of a djinn.

I came across a long sword and decided to train that up, for an eventual #twoweapon with Stormbringer. Given what the Babarian is good at, long sword seems like probably the best choice. I really need to fix my AC, though. The only thing keeping it semi-acceptable is a shield. It seems weird to abaondon Cleaver, since Cleaver is my usual "staple weapon" with a Barbarian that I use constantly.

I donated a bit over 4000 gold to a priest, only to not get divine protection. Not sure what happened, but there wa sno protection. Guess I didn't give enough. The thing that annoyed me is, I went to my stash, and found another 4500 gold I'd forgotten about. DOH! Well, I've been collecting even more... but given the cost of divine protection at level 14, I'm not sure it's worth it anymore. Any opinions?

Anyway, I'm extremely pleased with this game so far, despite my armor related setbacks. As I've said numerous times, it's by far my best game ever. I think the secret here if I'm actually trying to do things in a new way. Normally, with the Barbarian, I charge through the dungeon with no regard for anything and try to kill everything immediately. I'm actually planning things out a bit and finding this works much better.

I'm having some serious problems with my quest. I can get to the levl with my Nemesis, Toth Amon... but there's so much going on there that it isn't going well fo rme overall. Nearly died a few times. I'm wondering if it's maybe time to put Cleaver away for a bit and bring out Stormbringer? Stormbringer, I noticed, drains life and gives it to me. That seems like it'd help a lot. Also, I can use a shield to help my AC out. It's at -5 right now, so there's some room for improvement.

Oh, and as for my last post about wands... I've definitely suffered an amnesia effect. (Even though I have no idea how.) I noticed that Wands of Nothing are also no longer identified. Now I'm just curious how this happened.

I think I may get a big pile of stuff together and start polypiling again. I could really use a magic marker, and I've come across several more Unicorn horns. I also have some rings that are no good to me. (For resistances I already have.) I also have more Wands of Make Invisible than I could possibly need. I mean, other than myself, what else could I possibly need to make invisible? This also frees up 2 rings of invisibility I have for polypiling as well.

And I'm going to bed now.

My game is going well. However, my magical armor pieces keep getting destroyed (golden naga destroyed my blessed +1 iron shoes) so my AC is very slowly going in the wrong direction. Other than that, I learned a Yeti is useless as a pet. (Found a figurine) I encountered Beehives and found yummy things called Royal Jelly. They seem to be increasing my strength, which is nice. 18/05 now and it started at a lowly 16.

Anyway, my confusion lies here: I've already identified scrolls of enchant armor. I found a random scroll and, after BUCing it, I decided to read it just for the hell of it. My armor glowed silver and became +1. Isn't this what enchant armor does? Are there multiple scrolls that can give armor +1 (or better)? As far as I know, I haven't been subject to any memory loss attacks. I did find some Dwarvish Mithril (finally!) and that's what got enchanted, so it isn't all bad. I would have wanted the Mithril enchanted anyway.

On another note, I've stumbled across a blessed potion of gain level. I'm level 13 now. Gonna quaff that and (finally) do my Quest. I'm on dlvl 21 now and on turn 37,638. Score of 204,242. In a way, I feel like I'm the slowest player ever as I read an ascension report where someone's acension took 32,000 turns and people were saying that was such a slow acension. I'm almost to 38,000 and haven't even done my quest yet! Weird thing is, I feel like I can't go any faster and remain safe. Should I ascend (and the thought makes me laugh, seeing as how little I know about the game), I have this feeling it's gonna be something like 180,000 turns, given the speed I'm moving at now.

I'm extremely lucky this didn't turn into a YASD, but here's what happened:

I was running around a level and ran into a nurse. I took all my armor off and such and let her hit me for a while. I ended up gaining about 3 or 4 HP before she teleported away. After she was gone, I decided to chase her for more HP.... without putting my armor or re-wieling my weapon. I have telepathy, so I figured I would run right to her.

Except for the fact I didn't look next to me and ran straight into a chickatrice. With no weapon. With no gloves on to protect me, either.

I have no idea how, but I somehow wasn't stoned. I haven't figured out exactly how that happened, but I turned and ran. All I know is I'm freaking lucky. When I can see every monster on the level, there's really no excuse to blindly run into one. I have to be more careful.

My game continues. This is, undoubtedly, more than I could have expected to get. However, it's getting a little boring. Due to my armor problem mentioned several posts ago, I've been afraid to go much deeper than about dlvl 12. I feel like I need some better armor before I resume going deeper. I've been wandering around the levels I already know, killing various things and hoping for better armor.

Let me go over my armor situation as it is now. I'm at work, so I can't get into my game to get the exact details, but this should be close. Right now, I have Orcish Chainmail, a regular Dwarven cloak, blessed leather gloves, blessed +1 helmet. (Though I forget what kind of helmet. Dwarven, I think.) and +1 iron shoes. I also have a Ring of Protection +1. For the record, I found all those items with blessed/+1 on them already. I didn't do any of that.

Now, the biggest problem here is I've completely lost MC. I always figured my Dwarvish Mithril would cover for MC if I ever lost my Elven Cloak. However, both the Mithril and cloak were destroyed by that polymorph trap. I scoured the Dwarven Mines from the top to Mine's End. There's no more Mithril down there. It's odd that only one piece was generated. I did find some kind of conical hat (whose name I can't remember) that gives MC, but it's more intended for wizards. I also take a considerable AC hit without my blessed helmet. So, therefore, I don't see the hat as a viable source of MC.

I have an AC of -2 right now, I believe. I was worried my old AC of -8 wasn't enough, I definitely don't feel safe with -2. Does anyone have any ideas of what I should do here? I was thinking that maybe I should go back through the Mines and other levels and pick up every piece of armor I see. After I've collected them all, dump them into piles and start polypiling in hopes of getting something good. Is this viable? Does anyone have a better idea? I'm really stuck here.

Thanks!