You have a room that looks like this. You are the ever-classic @ symbol in the upper left corner. Don't just proceed with a search that goes from left to right, down two lines and right to left - you'll be wasting turns that way. In the examples below, the "." is the player path.
Code: Select all
Example Room
+----------------+
|@ |
| |
| |
+----------------+
Code: Select all
Bad Way
+----------------+
|@...............|
| .|
|................|
+----------------+
Code: Select all
Good Way
+----------------+
|@ . . . |
| . . . . . . . .|
| . . . . |
+----------------+
Searching for Doors
Searching for secret doors follows similar patterns. If you simply follow along a wall, mashing the search button several times every few squares, you're likely to waste a lot of food. Instead, practice the following:
- Know where to search. If you're in the south west corner of the overall maze on a level, you won't find any doors on the south and west walls. You won't find any secret doors on the wall you entered in on - one door per wall. The rooms of the maze are laid out in a 3 x 3 grid and there may or may not be interconnections between each adjoining rooms (though all of the maze will be accessible _somehow_) If you were in a room adjacent to the room you are in and it didn't have an exit to your room, chances are you won't find a secret to it. Pay attention when drinking potions of clairvoyance. As you roam the level, you can see where passages are - the monsters give them away as they move.
- When searching, your character simultaneously searches all of the squares immediately surrounding him. So, when searching a likely wall, search several times in a location. When you are satisfied you didn't find anything there, move THREE squares away on the same wall and search again. If you don't, you will have wasted your effort on searching the same wall squares twice.
Code: Select all
Good Way
+----------------+
|@ @ @ @ @ @|
Code: Select all
Bad Way
+----------------+
|@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ |
Other Miscellaneous Things:
Don't drink your potions of gain strength when weakened by poison. They will bump you up a point of strength, but when you drink that potion of restore strength, you won't get the permanent bump that a gain strength potion should provide when healthy.
Save your high power magic for lower levels when you need them. It might be fun to zap that hobgoblin with a staff of flame or cornucopia, but you'll regret it when you're going after bigger game such as griffins and trolls.
Take your time and rest if you need to. Don't barge into the unknown with low health. Surprises are bad when you're in poor health.
If you have the food to spare, need experience and have quaffed a potion of clairvoyance, stick around on the level. You can see when monsters repop every so often and you can go pick them off.
If you're not searching for traps at deep levels, pay attention to where you walked as you traverse a dark room. If you retrace your steps, you won't encounter nasty pit traps.