Hack 1.01: Not the bees!

They just showed up out of nowhere!

What do?

Even with (or perhaps because of?) an anchor save on level 2, surviving level 3 with my new non-teleporting caveman was tough. I entered with experience level 4, 18 strength, a +1 enchanted mace, bow, and arrows, leather armor, and a few knick-knacks; some white gems, a magic dog-summoning whistle, a "wand of light," and a fortune cookie. It took me a whole bunch of tries to reach the next level with a satisfactory outcome.

My biggest enemy here was starvation. I must have entered a bit snackish, because it never took long to reach a state of hunger that my meager fortune cookie could not assuage, and not long after that to weaken and eventually die. Food is scarce, much scarcer than in Hack121, and you all but have to eat monster corpses to survive, but monsters do not spawn reliably, when they spawn they are not always edible species, nor do they always leave corpses, and sometimes the corpses are rotten to begin with or sometimes the dog eats them before you have a chance. Hack's tendency to generate mazes with long, winding tunnels with lots of secret doors further slows things down and makes you waste time and energy backtracking to forks in the tunnels and repeatedly searching every time you encounter a dead-end, which usually means a secret door but occasionally just means you waste 20 turns looking for one (and never know for sure that there isn't one).

My second biggest enemy was orcs. Each attempt at the level spawned a pack somewhere, often in corridors where they'd surround me and splash my unarmored guts on the wall. Frustratingly, orcs aren't good to eat; every single one of them yielded a rotten corpse, though the dog didn't seem to mind.

And lastly, my third worst enemy was my own carelessness. Never mind nasty surprises like equipping cursed gear, drinking poison potions, or stepping into traps - with so much tedious walking around and backtracking, I'd inevitably attack and kill my own dog, or run into something in a corridor I really didn't want to fight and attack it by accident. Or I'd just immediately descend the stairs after reloading and realize I left the dog behind.

But eventually, I had a run where everything went right. I killed and ate a hobgoblin, I encountered the orcs in a small room without too many of them, one of them dropped rations instead of rotten orc meat, I gained a level, I made no mistakes, and I found the stairs without any real setbacks. I didn't find much to help on the next level either - just some dog food and a red gem - but at least I had more food than a lousy fortune cookie.

Some notes, observations, and incidents that occurred over the next few levels, during which I continued to make anchor saves before each descent:

• I found a wand of magic missiles, which I saved for the giant ants.
• Armor can be both good and cursed at the same time. Unfortunately, this means identify scrolls won't identify curses; a +2 banded mail identified this way turned out to be cursed which meant I'd be screwed if I found something better, or got it badly corroded. I starved to death while wearing the cursed armor anyway.
• On the other hand, scrolls of destroy armor are one way of removing cursed armor. It's just a bummer news if you discover these scrolls while wearing something good.
  
• I did eventually locate +1 splint mail on level 6, which finally gave me some decent protection.
  
• Zombies are actually pretty good to eat.
• Fortune cookies always give me the exact same fortune: A fading corridor enlightens your insight. No idea what this means.
• The dreaded cockatrice showed up on level 8.
  
  
  
• Killer Bees showed up on level 9 and are nasty at my relative power level at the time of the encounter. They attack in swarms, attack multiple times per turn, and each hit has the possibility of strength-draining poison infliction, which means immobility and death given the amount of stuff I lug around in hopes of hocking some. And sometimes it kills instantly. The only way I survived level 9 was by using a wand of speed monster on the dog and then hitting the bees with every remaining magic missile charge, and even then this took me a few reloads.
• Sometimes blindness makes you see all the monsters on the level.
  
  
  
• The small dog became a "large dog" at some point.

 

As of this posting, I have an anchor save right before descending to level 12, and apart from my armor I haven't found anything really awesome yet, or even any shops to spend my cash at. Experience level is 8, strength is still at 18, and I don't know how I'd cope if I had picked a class with less.

My inventory, excluding vendor trash:

• +1 mace
• +1 bow
• 33 +0 arrows
  
• +1 splint mail 
• Ring of cold resistance
  
• Wand of light
• Wand of speed monster 
• Wand of digging
  
• Magic whistle
• 3 scrolls of identify
  
• 2 potions of levitation
• Potion of monster detection
  
• Food ration
• Tin
• Fortune cookie