Strangled screams of agony.

[gridlore]

So, I'm playing Nethack. This is no big shock to anyone, right? I've been trying to ascend a Wizard, but decided to have a good, old-fashioned, kick-ass, kill the monster fest. So I played a Barbarian, Grangar by name.

Long story short, Grangar is looking like he's ascendable. Got everything he needs to get the Amulet and survive the trip back upstairs. I'm even in the freaking Sanctum, a few rooms away from one of the two big fights you get there, when I fight a scroll of genocide.

Nethack uses ASCII for all characters.. elves and humans are @. Dragons D, and so on. blessed scrolls of genocide allow you to eliminate entire classes of monster that share that symbol. So I blessed the scroll, and was thinking which class I should eliminate..

Hmm The priests in the Sanctum will summon insects (represented by the letter 'a') or snakes "S" and of the two, the snakes are so annoying, so I'll genocide S...

As I am thinking this, I press "r" for read, and then S. But S wasn't the inventory slot for my scroll of genocide. It was a scroll of enchant armor I had picked up along with the genocide scroll. Funny thing about armor.. if you enchant it too much, it vaporizes.. just like my grey dragon scale mail did! The bulk of my protection, and all my magic resistance, gone in one key stroke.

Argh.

Comments

[hlw.livejournal.com]

Hence the theory of save-often and save early, backup files of the save game can be restored!

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Thst's considered cheating. I'd rather do it straight through, no save-file fiddling. Makes the ascension all that more satisfying.

[isomeme.livejournal.com]

So, how long did he last before becoming Purina Monster Chow?

The whole incident is almost worthwhile just for the opportunity to picture the look on Grangar's face...

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

To quote Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song", that amazing thing is I didn't die. See my follow-up entry for the tale of Grangar the Unstoppable!