ChronoSoft

For this one brief fleeting moment, I am atop the Amulet-Quickest leaderboard.

A few notes about Jean Claude Van Damage

I found a +2/+2 Battle Axe of Fire within about 4-5 levels, and this helped to pave the way. Essentially a great offense can be more valuable than a great defense. I didn't find many enchant weapon scrolls, as it only improved to a +3/+5. Nor did I find any vorpalize weapon scrolls nor blessings during this run.

An early staff of cold with more than 20 charges on it allowed me to keep rattlesnakes, aquators and nymphs at bay. However my strength level was rather mediocre and never exceeded 19.

I had about 3 sets of banded armor that I was rotating thru, saving one until I found a scroll of protect armor. Overall my finishing armor was still a bit on the weak side, only about a +5 if i recall correctly.

Only one ring, a ring of searching. The hunger from it was minimal and I usually had over 10 food items at any point in the game.

One stupid mistake was paralyzing an Ur-ville and a Griffin that were on either side of me, stepping away, then chunking a potion of demolition at the wall in between them which took out... neither. So I had to dispatch them singly.

I had at least 3 occasions of "saving throws": Medusas would get me confused and when I was very low on life, as a last ditch effort I threw the battle axe at them, which always resulted in a kill. Despite being confused, items can still be thrown accurately.

I didn't spend any effort in walking thru mazed passageways as they rarely have items, so that may have contributed to the quick finish. And two staves of light with over 40 charges each saved a lot of time in the lower levels.

Van Damage wrote: I didn't spend any effort in walking thru mazed passageways as they rarely have items...

Congratuations on your win! A word of advice, however: while they rarely have items, mazes can also be "treasure rooms," and may also contain that pesky set of stairs, so there may be times when avoiding them isn't an option.

I won last night! I knew I had a good game going and was very nervous approaching lvl 26 then on every floor on the way up until lvl 10 or so when I began to relax. Whew.

Things I Didn't Have:
-Vorpalize
-Ring of Searching
-Much food. When I got the amulet I think I had 2 food and 3 mushrooms. Ended the game with 2 mushrooms left.

Things I Did Have:
-Protected Armor by level 10.
-Enchanted armor to AC 0 by around lvl 16
-Ring of Stealth early on, which was excellent.
-Wands of paralysis, potions of paralysis
-Ring of teleport (cursed). This proved to be a godsend around lvl 22 when I tried it on. Hadn't seen an Identify in a while, needed to take a chance. When I ran into a medusa? No problem, run until I get teleported away. Can't find the hidden door in the large complex of rooms? No worries eventually I'll teleport to an unsearched section. I only got teleported away from the stairs (in view) about three times, two of those on lvl 1 riiiight before the end.

I was lucky with many scrolls early on, though not many potions. When I had some decent armor and weapons (I used a 2 handed long sword) I tried all my unknown scrolls. Used identifies on rings and potions. One funny moment was putting on a ring of aggravate monster(!) but I had a remove curse scroll just in case on me. I also used my create monsters while on stairs for more exp.

On the scary levels, I paralyzed Griffons, Medusas, and Jabberwockies. If I were feeling lucky, I'd step back as far as I could and start hurling all my throwable weapons (two battle axes, a war hammer, a mace). Several times I used the run-away-until-teleported method. Sometimes I just took them down. I think jabberwocks give insane exp but I only killed a couple. Ur-viles, Vampires, and Xerocs I just killed without too much worries.

Oh, and I fell down a pit TWICE on the way through level 22 ascending. That was stressful.