Down and down we go...

The diabolical aspect of NetHack never ceases to amaze me.

It’s enough that you have to handle with everyday problems of NetHack, such as trying not to be burdened all the time and staying properly nourished, but then something unexpected happens, maybe just the smallest thing, and everything starts to go downhill.

I started playin a game I saved a couple days ago, and didn’t quite remember what I’d been doing. Nevertheless I rushed into business, and decided I needed to get back to the shopping mall level few levels eralier, as my lamp had run out of oil.

On the mall, I bumped into a leprechaun, that turned himself invisible with a wand, and stole all my money (not too much though, just above 600 zorkmints, but enough to be annoying). As I hadn’t eaten a floating eye yet, I decided I needed to locate one so I could go on chasing the leprechaun.

I started searching the levels, and suddenly stepped into a level teleport trap, teleporting two levels down onto an unknown territory. I started climbing up again, but got into trouble on the way back. First I run into a rust monster, that rusted my +1 iron shoes and +2 dwarvish iron helm. A little while later, I stepped into a polymorph trap, and turned into a glass piercer, losing in the process my +2 bronze plate mail. Argh.

Apparently the piercers are also blind, as I am unable to see anything.

Maybe I just should have picked up the Excalibur few levels earlier, no matter the alignment and cursedness. At least I might have found the traps before stepping into them.

***

Later on:

I managed to gather up some armour (pretty good as well) and went to the bottom of Gnomish mines and back - still no floating eye though. (Or there were a couple but they didn't leave corpses, maybe daggers tear them up too badly?)

Picked up the Excalibur on the way back to the Dungeons of Doom and got zapped. Twice. The journey continues...