ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

HI @

A new challenge...

You are at heart a pacifist and a lover of all creatures great and small.

Can you complete ToME and what is the fewest number of creatures you have to kill in order to do so?

One last thing... You must post what creatures and so on.

From memory I think someone killed 8 creatures to do it! I could be wrong!

OK, to expand a little on this...

You probably do not want to take any Princess/FF quests at all.
Special levels need to be avoided so Ironman is probably out.
You don't do any town quests since most of them involve killing.
You would obviously not want to use Area effects so the use of Ball Spell, View and Area effect spells and beams should be avoided. So perhaps the Thaumaturge is going to be a problem.

You need to confront the Necromancer, after that it then becomes a matter of getting to Sauron and Morgoth...

One possible ploy is to scum for Potion's of Experience and Stat Raising Potions... With very high Stealth...

I think this challenge is a little too hard core.

You have to kill one of what, eight different really powerful uniques to get the Ring, unless you're lucky. You'd have to be an escape artist, so you'd need to get tons of ! of teleport/phase door. You'd need really high stealth, but that's not going to help you against creatures that never sleep. You'd have to be incredibly lucky to get this kind of a build to work, especially since getting gold to identify things will be a real pain in the beginning.

I agree! I did say it was insane...

That sounds awesomely hardcore. It is also a traditional roguelike challenge. I believe Nethack even records it in your conduct as 'you are a pacifist'.

It might be 'easiest' with an alchemist (make your own potions of experience and stat gain).
Other options might include lots of banishment and teleport away.

Oh... Does genociding monsters add to the kill list?
And how about setting traps? Does that count for kills?
Also.. I can see pets. Lots of pets.

Unfortunately, even with meticulous planning, it comes down to luck in terms of how many monsters you have to kill before a particular essential-for-game-completion item drops.

Killing Sauron a sufficient number of times will yield the ring (see src/q_one.c) regardless of whether the other potential guardians have been killed. This is because the dropping of the ring is not determined by allocating the ring to a particular monster, but rather by a "chance to drop upon death of monster X" which is rolled for every time you kill a potential ring-bearer. (And of course only Sauron can be killed multiple times).

Whether killing Sauron multiple times counts as killing one monster or many, I don't know...

If you kill him and he resurrects, then you have not killed him...

I was working on the assumption that every Sauron kill counts as a distinct monster kill.

Actually there is a bug that lets you get the ring fairly easily without killing anyone. So theoretically you could win by only killing the Necromancer, Sauron, and Morgy.

well after a couple hours I now have a level 50 orc rogue. 0 kills listed by game. I might start over and change to an orc assassin, but that would require a lot more patience. I thought my strategy would work with any character, but apparently only rogues gain xp from stealing.

The only piety gain possible without killing something is from Eru, so I chose him.

So now I need to start maxing stats and finding equipment.
My character is currently wielding a cursed spear to get Eru's non-blunt weapon penalty and to not get his sword-mastery bonuses. That ought to help prevent accidental kills. I need to find a nice dagger of aman for the end game and some nice dungeon towns for equipment.

You should post the character!

I just thought of something. Could an Antimagic user be just as good for this? I mean, sure, you'd have to load up on scrolls, but you equip yourself with a foo of nothingness and that should help do the same thing. Plus you shouldn't have to worry so much about things killing you with magic. Gaining experience would be a pain though.

I think the major problem is gaining the experience. The rogue is the obvious candidate for this since stealing gives XP. Using Anti-Magic comes down to personal preference - I think in this case since our hero is being very personal and highly selective in what is being killed then anti-magic is certainly an option!

the easiest IMO is a lost soul symbiant...

with luck you can get just the 3 kills.

my lowest I think is around the 8... I think I did get more though (got either 9 or 10)... but that was a while back.

the only problem is that poison and shard kills count as your kill even if you had nothing to do with it.