Question Regarding Corpses

[BTA]

From what I've heard, when you fight a corpse of one of your old characters, they have a chance of dropping some of the stuff you had when you died.

Now, I'm wondering- is this abusable? Consider a contest similar to the one we recently had. Couldn't you purposefully take a secret character with an overly strong weapon, and keep dying on the same floor over and over, so at some point you'd basically have to run into a corpse? Then you'd be able to grab a great weapon right away and have a cheap advantage.

Or am I over thinking things, and there's such a low chance of corpses/dropping this would be impossible to do?

[NightOwl40]

Only if you can actually kill the corpse............no guarantee it will actually drop the desired objects, though

[jhawk]

I've killed 4 maybe 5 corpses, in probably at least 30 guys, and considering most people seem to get killed by them good luck in trying to misuse this, but yes it's possible.

[Elysium]

Now, I'm wondering- is this abusable? Consider a contest similar to the one we recently had. Couldn't you purposefully take a secret character with an overly strong weapon, and keep dying on the same floor over and over, so at some point you'd basically have to run into a corpse? Then you'd be able to grab a great weapon right away and have a cheap advantage.

Yes, this is easily abusable. I personally tried it out during the contest, and I would wager that some or all of the leaders did as well. First of all, there is ALWAYS a corpse when you die on level 2 or lower. The only chance is that when you hit it whether it will come to life or not. Second, if you take a special character with good equipment but normal levels of life to level 2, it is really easy to kill them.

Try it, pick a secret character with a nice weapon and armor, take them to level 2, do not kill anyone so you don't gain any XP, drop your food, potions, random stuff that could interfere with you getting the good stuff. Sit there and let someone kill you. Pick another secret character, search the entire first level, kill everything, go down, search the entire second level, kill everything. Level up 2-3 times. Find the corpse. Kill the corpse, grab awesome stuff (make sure it dies in a wide open area if you can). If the corpse doesn't come to life, or if it kills you, just start over. It takes ~1 minute to take a character down to level 2 and die, and ~5 minutes to load up a new character, search around, level up, and kill the corpse.

[jhawk]

but isnt running into your corpse a random event....

[Nighthawk]

Yes, this is easily abusable. I personally tried it out during the contest, and I would wager that some or all of the leaders did as well.

Not that you'll believe me, but I can assure you that I did not "skeleton scum" during any of my sub-10K runs, or any others for that matter. I'll let scotopia and the others speak for themselves.

There is a much more powerful (and legal) tactic when needing to move quickly.... and quietly.... that I (and I'm guessing scotopia on his sub-8K run) used. Besides, Athena's staring spear and armor are more than enough.... duplicates of those items are not useful.

[Elysium]

but isnt running into your corpse a random event....

No. There is ALWAYS a corpse on the level you died on. It doesn't show up on the map, you have to find it. You probably don't notice because if you die on random levels there is a really good chance you don't fully explore that level the next time down. Take a character, die on level 2. Start over and then go search for it, I guarantee it's there, somewhere.

There is a much more powerful (and legal) tactic when needing to move quickly.... and quietly.... that I (and I'm guessing scotopia on his sub-8K run) used. Besides, Athena's staring spear and armor are more than enough.... duplicates of those items are not useful.

Well, since there are no rules against it there's nothing illegal about this either, but I don't think you fully realize how powerfully this can be used. Sure, Athena has awesome starting stuff. But a spear is only 2d3 damage, whereas a 2 handed Sword is 4d4, so starting with Gareths +2+2 Blessed Two handed sword has to be an advantage over Athenas +2+2 Blessed Spear, and the fact that Gareth's weapon *isn't* pre-vorpalized is actually an advantage because when you find that scroll it's a +3+3 whereas with Athena's spear it's useless. The only thing that prevented me from doing this was a bug that mixes up the corpse gear (check the bug thread). You could get a char to drop better armor. Get "my precious" to drop 3 rings. Get Gandalf to drop 3 wands. There's tons of ways to get awesome stuff onto a Char that really shouldn't start with them.

I'd love to know what your tactic was though.

[Nighthawk]

There is a much more powerful (and legal) tactic when needing to move quickly.... and quietly.... that I (and I'm guessing scotopia on his sub-8K run) used. Besides, Athena's staring spear and armor are more than enough.... duplicates of those items are not useful.

Well, since there are no rules against it there's nothing illegal about this either, but I don't think you fully realize how powerfully this can be used.

I do fully realize (and "legal" was the wrong word.... "immoral"?), but I don't/didn't do it because
1) it's against the spirit of the contest, and
2) it was completely unnecessary (and, in fact, would have been harmful due to the extra turns wasted trying to kill the skeleton once you actually found it). My fastest run was completed with a +3/+2 spear... barely modified from its starting qualities.

I'd love to know what your tactic was though.

"Your overconfidence is your weakness."
"Your faith in your armor is yours."

[Elysium]

2) it was completely unnecessary (and, in fact, would have been harmful due to the extra turns wasted trying to kill the skeleton once you actually found it). My fastest run was completed with a +3/+2 spear... barely modified from its starting qualities.

I don't think it really wastes that many turns, on level 2 most rooms are lit, and it takes only a couple hits to kill the weak skeleton. You probably spend more turns killing monsters later with a weapon half as powerful than you do looking for the corpse. I guess if you didn't spend ANY time searching levels (beyond looking for the stairs) it is slightly a waste, but that makes the contest even more about luck then it already was. I was trying to search the first 5 or so levels for some stuff before I started diving straight away, but I guess just never searching and hoping you get lucky to find some stuff that will save your ass later is perfectly legit, and probably won you guys the contest. As for your tactic, if you're talking about going armorless for your innate stealth ability... I wouldn't really consider that some amazing tactic, I pretty much assumed most of the runs were done with a ring of stealth anyway.

[jhawk]

It isn't illegal, possibly immoral, but simply just an exploit

I've been corpse playing and yes it spawns, sometimes I don't find it because if the room lights up and I see nothing on the map I don't venture to the other end

But I've tried 5 times, one death, and have gotten one decent item this way, I dropped everything but 3 wanted items before suicicde and I get items I never had, sometimes nothing, and on my one partially successful attemp I got 1 ring drop

Usually when I pop my corpse items would go flying everywhere, I wonder if level/and or how much inventory are a variable in the drop

As for my personal leaderboard, once I got a spot I didn't try many more runs but an early ring of searching and somewhere after 20 some shokuzu armor to seal the deal