🚀 go-pugleaf

>    My favorite candidates for genocide are, in order:
>         1. Cockatrices (c) - [...]
>         2. Xans (x) - [...]
>         3. Nymphs (N) [...]
> [...] 
> P.S. If you have extras, you might want to consider:
>         4. Rust monsters (R) - flighty, obnoxious armor-hosers
>         5. Acid blobs (a) - obstructions at best, weapon-destroyers at worst.

I think that if Killmond had placed Vampires a little higher on the list
and acid blobs a little lower, his local score would be a little higher.
Acid blobs are cute, sweet, lovable and bring you up a level every time you
kill one in those first few crucial moments of the game.  Genociding rust
monsters should only be considered if you have a helmet.

Keep in mind that Nymphs can be very useful for removing cursed items.

>Acid blobs are cute, sweet, lovable and bring you up a level every time you
>kill one in those first few crucial moments of the game.  Genociding rust
>monsters should only be considered if you have a helmet.

I have bad news for you. Killing acid blobs (or any tame creature) is
bad luck.  As in uuluck--.

-- 
-  Sean Casey				UUCP:	{cbosgd,anlams,hasmed}!ukma!sean
-  Department of Mathematics		ARPA:	ukma!sean@ANL-MCS.ARPA	
-  University of Kentucky

I went through the source to 1.0.2 looking for all the ramifications of
luck.  The following is what I learned.

Initially your luck is 0, unless you play on a day when the moon is
full, in which case your luck is initially 1.  When the moon is new,
you get a "be careful" message, but your luck is just set to 0.

Unicorns and gems:  the unicorn must not be tame.  (If you polymorph
your dog into a unicorn, giving it gems won't help you.)  You give a
gem to a unicorn by throwing it to her.  If you have identified the gem
and it is valuable, your luck increases by 5.  If you have not
identified the gem, your luck increases by 1, whether or not the gem is
in fact valuable.

When you kill a blinded (defenseless) floating eye, you have a 1 in 500
chance of losing one point of luck.

If you kill a human (shopkeeper, guard, etc ... any '@') you lose any
telepathy (the ability to see monsters when blind) and your luck goes
down by 2.

If you kill a monster that's peaceful or tame (like your dog), your
luck goes down by 1.  But acid blobs aren't peaceful or tame; they just
don't have any way to attack you!  Killing an acid blob does NOT
diminish your luck.

If you kill a unicorn, you lose 5 points of luck!

That's how to change your luck.  Luck affects your game in three ways:
in your chance to hit a monster, in zapping a wand of wishing, and in
wishing for +3 items.

The chances of hitting a monster are based on your luck, your level,
the monster's armor class, your strength, and the weapon you're using.
Additional modifiers are -1 for two handed sword, +2 for dagger, +3 for
crysknife, +2 for spear against monsters 'X', 'D', 'n', and 'e'; +2 if
monster is sleeping; +4 is monster is frozen (but hitting a frozen
monster gives it a one in ten chance of coming unfrozen); +2 if monster
is fleeing; -3 if you are trapped; and there's a sliding scale of
diminishment if you're carrying too much luggage.  Hack adds together
several numbers, then picks a random number from 1 to 20; if the random
number is less than the sum, you hit.  This formula gives you an
average 10% improvement of your chance of hitting for every point of
luck (or a 10% degradation if your luck is negative).

When you zap a wand of wishing, hack picks a random number from 0 to 4
and adds your luck to it; if the result is negative, you see
"Unfortunately, nothing happens.", and the number of charges is
decremented.  Because of the formula, this can only happen when your
luck is negative, and if your luck is less than -4 (e.g., you killed a
unicorn), the wand won't work at all.

If your luck is negative and the wishing wand zap works, then if you
wish for a +3 something, you will get a -3 cursed something.

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)       [UUCP]
                        (orca!andrew.tektronix@csnet-relay)  [ARPA]

In article <1790@ukma.UUCP> sean@ukma.UUCP (Sean Casey) writes:
>I have bad news for you. Killing acid blobs (or any tame creature) is
>bad luck.  As in uuluck--.

Nope. That's simply not true. u.uluck is unaffected when you kill
an acid blob. Perhaps they aren't considered tame.

-- 

Fletcher Mattox, fletcher@ut-sally.ARPA, {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!fletcher

> From: andrew@orca.UUCP (Andrew Klossner)
>
> If you kill a human (shopkeeper, guard, etc ... any '@') you lose any
> telepathy (the ability to see monsters when blind) and your luck goes
> down by 2.
>
> If you kill a monster that's peaceful or tame (like your dog), your
> luck goes down by 1.

Just to make it quite explicit, note the combination of the two
statements above.  If you have a wand of death and you want to kill a
shopkeeper, just zapping him (her?) loses you 3 luck points (2 for '@'
AND 1 because he's peaceful).  A better move would be to throw an arrow
at him to get him mad, THEN zap him.  Only 2 luck points lost.

Contrary to popular belief, killing a wild dog or a nurse does not lose
you any luck.  Eating the corpses, on the other hand, is like swallowing
a ring of aggravate monster.  Not nice.
-- 
Ron Wessels	Computer Systems Research Institute	University of Toronto
UUCP:	{decvax,floyd,ihnp4,linus,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsri!ron
CSNET:	ron@Toronto
ARPA:	ron%Toronto@CSNet-Relay