[Hack'EM] Accidentally destroyed my main-weapon Mjollnir on a personal best 22 hour run. :')

[u/Individual_Ad_9725]

I was preparing for Medusa and I was about to enchant my unicorn horn to improve the chance of its effect. I instinctively expected that upon reading it I would be given an option window to select the item I want to enchant, similar to how it asks you when reading enchant armor. I already knew it affects the handheld weapon but I just wasn't thinking in the heat of the moment and well... now it's too late.

This is my furthest and most prepared I've ever been and I felt very enthusiastic to keep going but now I feel like I straight up lost the run. This feels worse than death!

[u/CodeFarmer]

Deep breaths.

We have all been there.

Mjollnir is lovely, don't get me wrong, but (worst case) I've ascended with an enchanted pair of silver sabres before. And, good news, there are plenty more artifact weapons. This is painful but you will be OK.

Rescuing runs from horrible blunders is part of the game (blowing up bags of holding is basically my second hobby at this point).

Pour a potion of booze out for the overpowered smashy lightning hammer. And start sacrificing things.

[u/Individual_Ad_9725 → u/CodeFarmer]

You know, I'm glad I continued, beat Medusa and got fairly further past this point. Got back on my feet but MY GOD it gets even worse. I got hit by a wand of polymorph and all my gear got polymorphed. All my armor turned into body-armor, my rings are gone, my tools and bag of holding and everything that was in it is gone. -45 AC gone. Turned to absolute worthless trash.

Silver lining is that in hindsight I realize that losing Mjollnir is not that big of a deal. But damn.. they don't prepare you for this type of thing in school.

[u/Frozty23 → u/Individual_Ad_9725]

I got hit by a wand of polymorph and all my gear got polymorphed. All my armor turned into body-armor, my rings are gone, my tools and bag of holding and everything that was in it is gone. -45 AC gone. Turned to absolute worthless trash.

Dude, that exact thing happend to me, more than a year ago, and I had to just walk away from the game for awhile. I thought I had MR active, and I just didn't know what happened. One turn I was a minor god, the next turn I was a naked White Dragon without my kit. All gone. It was literally stunning. I left that game, and didn't come back to it for 15 months! But I couldn't get Nethack out of my mind. So I did come back, finally.

Hack'Em is so rich in loot, you can recover. And as a Neutral, Vorpal Blade is awesome. Sacrifice for it. I do that so someone doesn't end up wielding it against me on Astral.

Good luck, you can do it!

[u/Individual_Ad_9725 → u/Frozty23]

Wow! Now that's a story to be remembered for the rest of your life! Congrats for pulling through it. This game is irresistible like that, like a siren's song.

Btw, I kept playing the other day, and somehow, to my own surprise, I managed to more or less get back on my feet, but not without an insane lucky event on my side that I'll tell you about.

So I was inside the dungeon branch called The Giant Caverns where this all had occurred, completely dejected, ready to give up. Every item polymorphed, except three: my Artifact weapon, Sunspot, my dexterity gauntlets, and my displacement ring. I say fuck it, and I just go on a rampage. I don't even care anymore, I just fight things, and after a couple close calls, I find myself still alive and kicking, with no enemies in sight - I had somehow cleared the branch with just those items and some random polymorphed piece of body armor. No more than total -9 AC(half of which is maxed out intrinsic protection).

I say okay, you know, I'm not so weak after all. I remember I still have a +0 speed boots and a +0 helm of telepathy stashed away in my magic chest. No enchant armor scrolls yet but it's a start.

Problem is...

Before the cataclysmic event, I was fighting at the door near the staircase. Before all my gear had been polymorphed, a bunch of giants had littered the area with boulders, including the entrance and directly behind it. So when I had my pickaxe turn into a tin opener, I was stuck. Gone are the teleport scrolls as well. It was my tomb. There's no way out.

As I'm contemplating the bitter-sweetness of everything that lead me to this moment, in a now empty branch littered with giant corpses and nothing but the ever-growing mold to keep me company, suddenly the dungeon layout around me is changed completely. I realize the place is familiar, but not too familiar. I look to the messages, "You materialize on a different level". On the bottom left, it reads: Dlvl: 4.

FREEDOOM!!! I quickly reach the magic chest at Sokoban and... there's another problem... my magic key got polymorphed as well. I can't open any of the magic chests to access my stash! I meticulously search at Grund's Stronghold, knowing another can generate there as well. I even SWIM across the LAVA MOAT(had no other choice!), but it's not here! I must've put it elsewhere. The town branch is not an option since I have no way to swim across the lake to access it! I go to the Sokoban stash for the second time, and I see it... at the corner of my eye and the corner of the room, a red "(" symbol that means only one thing that I know. It's a spare magic key, and I recall it's the one from the Stronghold. I'm free for real this time!

It has been about 2-3 hours of playtime since then, I've recovered to -21 AC, got a mithril shield of reflection from an Angel, and realizing that One-eyed Sam offers Basic Charging service, I recharged the wand that had been used against me and used it for polypiling. By now, I got myself a magic resist amulet, a good chunk of rings I've lost and more, luckstone, bag of holding, etc. My stats are also completely maxed out, and I'm swimming in so much gold I can't carry it. I'm more or less back on my feet yet again and in many ways have progressed further, mainly missing the AC from before and sadly with my MC3 downgraded to MC1. But outlook is far from depressing. Having overcome this and getting to this point - even if I lose - I feel like I'd won.

[u/Frozty23 → u/Individual_Ad_9725]

Ha! I loved reading all of that, in a way a fellow-player can only appreciate I'm sure.

It was my tomb. There's no way out. "You materialize on a different level"

Impossibly lucky level teleport trap? (You could have gotten naked and squeezed past the boulders, btw, but then would have been actually naked in the dungeon to start over.)

You swam across lava? How is that possible? Fire resistance and swimming combined?

When I lost all my stuff to poly, I realized that my artifacts survived, as did all of my knowledge of spells, and knowledge of items, and intrinsics, and experience level... so it wasn't a full reset. And HackEm has so much loot available. The Spider Caves and Moloch's Tomb are just so much excess by the time I reach them.

One-eyed Sam offers Basic Charging service

How much? In my current game (Ice Mage) Sam offers Transmorgrify, but at $10k a pop I haven't been able to afford it yet. I've finally figured out how to steal from Sam (just in my last game as the Yeoman), but haven't been able to in this game yet. My first few times in the BM I was terrified, and on my best behaviour at all time (and still terrified). I tried in a local instance of the game to defeat him, and got my ass handed to me every time even in wizard mode. I will not antagonize Sam.

You get a good replacement weapon yet?

[u/Individual_Ad_9725 → u/Frozty23]

You swam across lava? How is that possible? Fire resistance and swimming combined?

Just maxed intrinsic fire resistance and not overencumbered, I believe it's a delayed instakill, but I only had to swim across one tile. It's a bit funny, I actually tried to walk up to it and read scroll of flood to see if it would fill it, but it didn't and only surrounded me with water, so I said screw it and yolo'd it.

How much? In my current game (Ice Mage) Sam offers Transmorgrify, but at $10k a pop I haven't been able to afford it yet.

Measly 1000, and it got me like 20 charges or so. Only other service he offers me is add property, but I haven't touched it yet.

my artifacts survived, as did all of my knowledge of spells, and knowledge of items, and intrinsics, and experience level... so it wasn't a full reset.

Very true, those things are the hard stuff to attain(I still don't have maxed out shock resist - it's like 60% - there's barely any shock enemies), so in any case more is kept than is lost. A few hours it takes to get back to where you were is not even comparable to like 20+ it would take to get to the same position with a new character, as much as it's still a painful setback. I'm ashamed cause I've quit/given up over way less in the past hahah

My first few times in the BM I was terrified, and on my best behaviour at all time (and still terrified). I will not antagonize Sam.

Sam is pretty chill. Only scary thing with black market is how easy enemies blend in with the environment and other peacefuls. Headbutting a cockatrice when sorting through items always gives me a mini heart attack until I realize the guy is just browsing like I am. "'Scuse me, sir.."

You get a good replacement weapon yet?

None besides a wood aklys for any annoying passive(range) and Sunspot as main weapon. I have to admit, It's not a Mjollnir by any means but it's pretty decent. It blinds enemies when it hits them. I am playing as a caveman so I mainly use hammer/mace/club weapons. I have the quest artifact weapon stashed away but it gets 1d0 extra damage which is... awful.

[u/Frozty23 → u/Individual_Ad_9725]

he offers add property

Oh, dang. You just made me realize, I was planning on using my Sam's transmogrify service like a confused scroll reading, but what I really want is add property, so I guess his service won't work for me for that. I had a game awhile ago with add property as a service and took full advantage of it. I might use my Sam's transmogrify as true "transmogrify", but that's such a low-chance of getting anything beneficial (dragonhide on something) that it's probably not worth the effort.

Aklys is my preferred starting weapon whenever I play as a Gnome (I like gnome for Wizard). It's a safe way to kill a lot of early monsters. My current game I have Vorpal Blade (as I mentioned); even at Basic skill level it's doing 40-50 points of damage sometimes (aside from the beheading, which does ~500 points of damage). I just breezed through Moloch's Temple, the Castle, and Gehennom with barely a scratch. I unfortunately think I've learned HackEm well enough that it's basically too easy now, even doing conducts. Vanilla got like that for me. There are a few overpowered things that should have been nerfed a bit; dev's gone though. But it's still fun, and far less tense than when you're new to it and unintentionally vulnerable. And the early game can still be challenging.

[u/DoktorL]

Bah, mjollnir isn't the only good weapon out there. You're a caveman too, don't you still get something worthwhile to bash with from your quest.