h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Ictoan, you may remember recommending this game to me many moons ag.

Thought I'd come and mention it as I seem to have (finally) got somewhere with it. I was inspired to play it again after reprising nethack on my new iPhone and discovering I could nearly ascend after very few games of it. Need a new challenge.

I'm currently playing with a Elven Wizard using Chaos and Sorcery magic and have got him up to level 30 and boy is he getting powerful now.

Still very dangerous to approach dungeons entrances in the wild with the number 6 labelling them on the map though.

I see the big difference with Nethack now - this game seems all about ramping up the quality of one's kit. I've now got about 4 artifact devices in my possession.
A sling called Catapult, a named hard leather armour that transforms me from about 45 spell points to about 130! (cool!), the Hard Leather cap of Thranduil, a ring called 'Pelmen', the set of gauntlets 'bubble' and I've sold a few other bits of kit.
I've just killed some dude in the wild called 'Groo the wanderer' (got me about 2000 experience points!) and he had an awesome katana (the katana of Groo - offered 30000 to sell it in some shops) on him which I'm umming and aahing about weilding. The trouble is I have a 'defender' weapon and I'll lose my heat, cold and lightning resistances if I do that. Although I'll gain speed and have a sharp cutting weapon.

Is there any major differences in the dungeons in the wild? I'm down to about level 43 in one and others I've dived a bit but they don't seem that much difference except some have differing creatures at the surface entrances. It seems a bit boring to be at level 10 though when I'm so much deeper elsewhere.

I'm on a mission to get potions of strength, wisdom, dexterity etc at the moment though to boost my stats. There doesn't seem to be much else to do with my dosh now.


Enjoying the new found freedom of not risking getting killed any time soon I have to say.
I'm sure there's a really bad nasty lurking to get me soon though...

Oh and one other thing.

Is it ever worth me reading a Scroll of Logrus again?

I found one in my previous game to this one and it just killed me instantly.
However I notice I can 'invoke logrus' in my spellbook of chaos when I get a bit more experienced.
I'm highly unlikely to even try if that's the result.
I find it hard to believe though that it's there if it is just going to kill one instantly every time.
(seems not worth the risk even so - I don't really see the point of the spell or wand of wonder as random isn't useful in a battle to the death).

Hmm, and now it's getting ridiculous.

I sacrificed a shield of relection so I could wear an artifact shield called Murbin which again increases my mana. I now have two artifact rings - the new one is called Oshoth and can be activated for *identify* which is pretty cool.
I've found a new pair of artifact gloves ('Cammitrhim) which can cast magic missile but I think I'll just drop them at the house for the time being, 'bubble' is better I think.
I've also got an amulet called Tinen which yet further increases my Mana.
However, I like my current amulet of Luck and I lost poison resistance if I take it off.
I have also found a ring mail called 'Myth' and is back at my house somewhere - it's pretty heavy (although it also boosts my strength - amongst other things) - but it fills in all the remaining gaps in my resistances. The downer is that I must give up my mana boosting hard leather armour for it.

I really begin to start to not to know what to do with them all.
I may go back to my house and see what a combination of 'myth' and 'tinen' give me. I don't want to lose all my mana - I can get it up to 147 now with the amulet 'tinen' and my armour 'camtar'.
It would be nice to be 'everything' resistant. Currently I'm missing sound, shard and chaos resistance although I do have a ring of shard resistance as a swap (and a sound resistance ring back at a house).
If 'Myth' gives me enough resistances I may drop the 'defender' sword and use the katana of Groo...


Please excuse my ramblings...

Hmm, no still lose poison resistance and if I give up my defender I also lost cold, fire and shock resistance. Wearing Tinen and Myth drops my mana down to a measly 67 too..

Myth is good though. Time and more play will eventually see it used I think.

The thing is with things like nexus and nether resistance is I've no idea what I'm resistant to. I recall getting killed by a nether bolt in an old old game a few years back though so I'm pleased that I'm resistant to that. One of my rings gives me that.

Ooops, missed this, sorry!

Thought the Logrus thing was a chaos ball with high damage - did you cast without targeting? Or maybe the scroll is different. Mind you, chaos stuff can be unpredictable (hence the name I guess!).

Been a while since I've played though. Mind you I played chaos knight which is rather unpredictable

Sounds like you're having fun though - lab work going a bit slow?

Heh, and I missed your reply.

Not slow, no, far from it - but this kept me going during a heavy work period as something to relieve the monotony and then kept going after the marking and script writing stopped.

This was a game that lasted more than a month also - this is a much longer game than Nethack I noticed.

As you can probably tell from my conext, this Mage was killed last night. I think it was experience level 33 at the time and I was busy trying to defeat a dragon camp in the wilderness when I was killed by an Ancient White dragon. I should have teleported away but thought 98 hit points was enough for one more doom bolt to be fired - clearly an incorrect assumption.
I had managed to kill quite a number of ancient dragons as well as many other high level kills.
I was psyching myself up for taking on a major demon called Strllgadwir or something (he was constantly hanging around one of the towns telling me I was going to die). I did briefly make an attempt on him a couple of experience levels back but one nether bolt from him was almost lethal so I teleported away most swiftly. But the dragons got me first.

I really am very pleased with that game. It was a _major_ improvement in any other game I've had though. I got as deep as level 50 and had almost explored the whole wilderness at the point of death.

It looks spectacularly hard to go any deeper though. These nether bolts and demons/worms that summon other demons are a bit of a problem. As was a giant I met called a bicyclops (even a normal cyclops was extremely dangerous).
I did come across many many artifact weapons, rings and pieces of armour though. Clearly this is what it's all about in this game. Nethack has a bit of that but not really. One gets a quest artifact and maybe one artifact weapon in that but other than that it's a case of getting dragon scale mail of some variety and you need reflection and protection from death rays/magic and you're sorted (plus a really good bag!).

I never did get to use that metal scale mail 'myth'.

I was slightly annoyed with myself at selling an Iron Crown of the Magi to get something else at one point though. It had the same effect on my Mana as that armour I had but I thought I could eventually buy another - nope. So I could have had in excess of 200 mana points had I been more cunning in my dealings.

Anway, back to the danger of green icky things for a while then. It was nice to take on real baddies. I'm not sure I'll get another game like that for a while.


By the way, the message I got when I read the scroll of logrus that time was kind of strange. It instantly killed a battle scarred veteran standing nearby (my plan was to use him as a test of such a scroll) but after he died the message looked oddly like an error code of some kind.
I do wonder if I managed to find a bug in the program. In nethack there is such a thing as "the dungeon collapses" which turns out to be a gaming euphemism for a programme crash. I slightly suspect such a thing here but it could very well also be that a scroll of logrus is potentially lethal anyway.


Biggest disappointment of the game? Finding a scroll of acquirement in the wilderness. It didn't live up the price tag I've seen in the shops.