how to dive?

[Djabanete]

I'll chip in here. I play Entro and not Vanilla, but some general advice might be helpful.

You were worried that you'd reach a depth where you can't kill anything. Don't worry about that. There will always be orcs and novice mages. Eventually you get to depths where wimpy monsters give nice drops. Play smart and you can hang out WAY below dl>cl and get good stuff off easy monsters.

You ALWAYS need to be able to escape. You will have to run often. Get used to running away. Be creative. Trap doors are down staircases in disguise. A Wand of Slow Monster can save your life when you're running from a pack of monsters in a corridor.

You ALWAYS need to be able to detect things. Traps, monsters, stairs, evil monsters, objects, you name it; you need to know what's going on nearby so you can pick your fights and plan your escapes. Detect Evil becomes really useful later on.

You ALWAYS need some means of healing handy.

[aeneas]

Originally Posted by Djabanete

...
You ALWAYS need to be able to escape. You will have to run often. Get used to running away. Be creative. Trap doors are down staircases in disguise. A Wand of Slow Monster can save your life when you're running from a pack of monsters in a corridor.
...
You ALWAYS need some means of healing handy.

I agree with most of that, but there are a couple of things that I think might be Entro specific that I don't find to be true in V, though YMMV. I agree you always need a means of escape, but past a very early level slow and sleep monster aren't very useful. They won't work on much, and they take too long. They are useful tactics before 1500', but not much past that. _tele is the first thing you need (and you need it till you have a lock) and ?tele, ?tele_level, -to, and *destruction* are the key item escapes.

Also, I tend to not carry healing for the sake of healing until quite late, when diving. If you're really diving you can't use up !Healing because you'll need them at the end- I tend to leave them at home so they don't get frozen. Everything below !Healing doesn't heal enough to do you much good. Curing is a different issue, and you definitely need !CCW until you have a lock.

[Colbey]

Originally Posted by Djabanete

There will always be orcs and novice mages. Eventually you get to depths where wimpy monsters give nice drops.

I think that was a key point I was missing. I didn't realize monster gen worked like that. Today I looked over the shoulder of a friend at 4950', and was shocked to see, like, a pack of Half-orcs or something. I didn't know they ventured that deep! (Of course, there were plenty of flashing multi-colored Zs and stuff like that too.) So the trick is to dive and then avoid basically everything in-depth, unless you have a particular good reason to think you can handle it AND that it might drop something?

aeneas (or anyone else), what is "a lock"?

[d_m]

Originally Posted by Colbey

aeneas (or anyone else), what is "a lock"?

from context, it seems like a lock is rconfuse, rblind, etc (the things that might prevent one from reading a scroll successfully, and thus needing _teleport as an escape option).

[Pete Mack]

A lock is rconf rsound and rblind. The only one for which a staff of teleportation is required is rconf. For rblind, ESP and a wand of TA is enough. For rsoound, scrolls are always a better choice. In fact, rblind is of limited use if you have rlight+rdark. In that case there are only a handful of monsters that can blind you. I value rsound above rblind.

As for survival at 4950', yes those orcs and novice mages are important. You need to get stat potions somehow. Do stay away from the Chaos hounds.

[aeneas]

Originally Posted by Colbey

I think that was a key point I was missing. I didn't realize monster gen worked like that. ...

aeneas (or anyone else), what is "a lock"?

d_m hit the nail on the head, but you need to add rSound to that list if you need to be able to cast spells reliably, so that's usually included. I was a bit imprecise in my terminology there. Note that melee stunning can still mess up your spells even if you have a lock.

The bit about monster gen is the basic principle behind diving, along with the way item generation works for monster drops (though floor finds are also important). Basically, a monster drops items of the depth (dlvl + monster lvl)/2. So an Uruk, which is native to dlvl 16 will drop lvl 23 items at 1500'- 2300/2=1150. That means he is not going to drop a stat potion unless you are extremely lucky. If you want him to drop a stat potion you want to be at 2200'- (2200'+800')/2=1500'. By the time you get to 3000' everything that can drop a potion can drop a stat potion.

As an example, my current character came down some stairs around 2500', detected a pack of ghouls in a room above him, with a down staircase just beyond them. Killing the ghouls (about 30 of them) netted him 4 !stat. Then he took the stairs down. That was a perfect level for him, but it would have been a real waste of time if he'd maxed his stats at 1500'.

If you play with autoscum off you will mostly be fighting the same monsters at 4000' that you would fight at 2000', but the drops will be much better. You just have to avoid the scary stuff, which is easier said than done, but possible.

The same logic applies to other things that can be dropped- if you play to just get !stat on the way down you'll get some other nice stuff incidentally. The advantage to playing this way is that every drop is potentially significant, because you might still really want (insert common ego item here). The disadvantage is that you will likely get killed a lot, particularly at first.

EDIT: and what Pete said- we wound up cross-posting there- I wouldn't have re-explained what he said otherwise. But I'm not sure I agree about not needing _tele with just rConf. If you wind up facing two or more things that can kill you the staff comes in handy. You shouldn't let that happen, but if you do you'll be glad to have the staff.