ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello!

I'm in the middle of one of the best runs of TOME version 2.3 I've yet had, and a few problems have cropped up I hope somebody can help me out with.

Fumblefingers quest on level 6 Barrowdowns, 18 Air Spirits. Damned things are invisible. I can kill up to 12 by getting lucky and running into them, but it gets impossible after that. Is there somewhere I can go and get intrinsic/extrinsic permanent See Invisible at this point, fairly safely, or am I going to have to wait in order to complete this damned quest?

And does anybody have a link to a damned map of the overworld? I'm not going to have this guy starve to death trying to find the next damned city. Or the Orc Cave. But the Barrow Downs are pretty much my bitch at this point, and I won't get any further staying where I am. I just want Fumblefingers so he can potentially up my Mindcraft gains per level. I want to get it to at least one point per level before I bother dumping points into it.

Here's the equipment I currently have available to me:

In House:
- Rune [Knowledge]
- 5 Rations of Food
- 19 Flasks of Oil
- 23 Scrolls of Satisfy Hunger
- Ring of Fear Resistance
- Ring of Invisibility (From Smeagol) (Not the One Ring)
- Shard of Pottery
- 2 Empty Bottles

In Pack:
- Pendulum
- Weakness Mushroom
- 16 CSW Mushrooms
- 2 Flasks of Oil
- 5 Various Unknown Potions
- Slime Mold Potion
- 2 CSW Potions
- 2 Phase Door Scrolls
- 11 Scrolls of Word of Recall
- 8 Scrolls of Detect Invisible
- 14 Scrolls of Satisfy Hunger
- 1 Unknown Scroll
- 1 Unknown Wand
- Staff of Disarm
- Levitation Ring
- 2 Unknown Rings

Equipment:
Weapon- Tulwar of Life (2d4) (+10,+10) (20% HP Boost)
Ring 1- Ring of Strength (+5)
Ring 2- Ring of Protection (+12) (Cursed)
Light Source- Brass Lantern
Body Armor- Gold Dragon Scale Mail (30,+19) (Breath Sound, Flight, Immunity to Sound)
Various other armor and a pick

Stats:
Level 23 Human Swordmaster
Str- 25
Int- 10
Wis- 10
Dex- 17
Con- 15 (Damaged)
Chr- 14
AC- 78
HP 285/285
SN 120/120
SP 17/17
PT -2963

36 Free Skill Points
Combat, Weapon-mastery, Sword-Mastery, and Magic Device will go no higher.
Mindcraft is available, but only increases at a rate of .300.

there are several options:

potions that can help you might be found in the alchemist shop or the priest shop (not sure on this one)

sadly, mindcraft lets you have see invis around lvl 15 or so, but you say you want to wait, which is understandable (and advisable).

towns: there is a town to the NE. west and a tad south, over the mountains. And finally, SE.

The second is probably your best choice due to its closeness to another dungeon which can have Fumblefingers quests.

Well, my info may be a few revs old, but....

If you seriously load up on satisfy hunger scrolls (23 should be enough, though more is better) and pack along enough light to use them all (easier if you take off your lantern when not reading scrolls - but bring along some oil for when you forget) and switch out of running (I believe that conserves food) you should be able to explore pretty much the entire map - and you'll certainly be safe enough from hunger if you start heading back to town when you have 5 or so left.

Side note - at this poitn you should be fine for shallow water, but avoid the overland deep water, as deep water ambushes can still kill you quite dead.

Best bet for permanent see invis before mindcraft would be to pick up an appropriate ring (or other magical item) from a store or princess quest. For the princess quest side of thigns, it's worth noting that helms are particularly likely to have see invis.

Thanks for the advice so far. Sadly, I've blown through all the quests available in the Barrowdowns, barring this one FF, so I won't be aqcuiring any further unless I find a new dungeon.

I don't really like the idea of blindly exploring the map, but it looks like that'll be my best bet.

I did know about the see invisibility bonus from Mindcraft, but even if I dump all 36 points into it, I only get to level 11. That's far too much of a waste for that gain.

Unless they have moved (last one I played of the 2.x.x was 2.2.7 I think) the Orc Caves are just slightly up the overland map and left, against a tiny mountain chain. There's a really *nice* early artifact for swordmasters down there deep enough and it's a pretty safe dungeon for someone with your stats. And if you're quite lucky you could find one or two dungeon towns too.

You will want to complete your overland map eventually. Right now, you're string enough to handle everything except deep water (particularly if you pack a few teleport scrolls just in case) and you can afford about as many scrolls of satisfy hunger as you want. The only thing you're missing that you might want before mapping the entire thing is a permanent light, and that's not that big a deal as long as you stock up a bit on oil.

Deep water ambushes really will kill you, though, and some of the deep water squares look suspiciously like shallow water squares, so that's something to be careful about..

The (l)ook command works in the map mode, so you can use this to tell if water is deep or shallow.

For see invisible the simple stuff is potions of "See Invisible" (obviously) and also potions of "Invisibility".
Other harder to find items:
- helms of seeing
- weapons of westernese, gondolin, defender, and *slay undead*
- rings of see invisible

Orc caves are just north of bree, no princess/ff quests but you could get lucky with items.
Mirkwood is south-east atound the mountains and then north again, has pricess/ff quests

A spoiler page with a full wilderness map
http://killerbunnies.org/angband/#tome

The full wilderness map (and all the other maps) is in tome/lib/edit.

I suggest that you sell all your unidentified mushrooms, potions, scrolls, wands, and rings (unless you got a ring from a princess).

Look for a place where you can enter a mountain square (get next to one on the overhead map, then go down to the regular map. Slaughter dragons. You have a good chance of getting a ring of see invisible (as well as other useful stuff and ten levels or so).

I agree with the advice to go the Orc Caves. The guaranteed artifacts on the special level are great for a swordmaster. Also, you may get a dungeon market with useful stores.