SLASHEM SURVIVAL & STRATEGY GUIDE
Updated 10/10/99
By Dave (Rodneybane@aol.com)

If you want a basic explanation of how to move around and what all the symbols
mean, first read one of the other help files.

If you understand how to move around, but are ready to try to increase the
survivability of your characters through strategy, you are in the right place.

I have ascended all 23 of the classes in SlashEM and the primary thing this indicates
is that I spend too much time playing computer games, but I think it also means that
I have some good techniques that I hope will help others play the game.

Thanks to Warren for taking time to make the game cooler!

_________________________________________________________________________________
So you want to be an Amulet recovery professional?

Follow these 22 "easy" steps and I guarantee you will ascend within 30 days.
(see disclaimer at end)

1) Use the hallways to fight only one creature at a time.
Suppose you're out in the middle of a room and a horde of orcs come piling through
a door. The best way to minimize the damage taken from a group of monsters is to
retreat into a hallway so that only one can hit you each turn. Some of the
others may throw their weapons at you, but generally you are much better off.
If you back up a few squares into the hallway, the monsters may line up nicely in
the corridor and allow you to hit a bunch of them with one well-placed spell or wand.
If another monster comes up behind you, try to dispatch that one first so that
you are not fighting a war on two fronts. Inevitably, though, a situation will
arise in which you estimate your chances of surviving are low and you will need
an escape route.

2) Try to always leave yourself an escape route.
Items such as wands of teleportation (zap yourself with it) and wands of digging
(zap it downwards) are excellent means of escape from losing battles. But the
beginning character is unlikely to have these things, so more conventional means
of planning are in order. Try to fight battles in an area where if it goes badly
you can retreat upstairs.
The vast majority of monsters will NOT follow you upstairs, some do and you will
learn which ones the hard way : )  When you get upstairs, if you are very badly
hurt keep on retreating upwards until you get your health back. The monsters
randomly generated over time have their difficulty determined by an average of
your character level and the dungeon level you are on. So if you heal up while
on level 1, the monsters created will be significantly easier than if you were
on dungeon level 7.
Once you do have wands of teleport (or digging), keep one of them out and ready.
A ring of conflict can give you time to zap yourself with a wand of extra healing
a couple times if you can't escape

3) Hit and Move: Intrinsic or magical speed is VERY important.
There are different speeds that characters move at in the game. The game
represents this by somtimes allowing you to move while everything else stands
still if you are fast or very fast.
Zapping a wand of speed monster at yourself will give you intrinsic speed.
FAST: If you are fast, every third move is a "free" move. As decribed below,
you can use these free moves to hit a monster without it even being able to 
attack you.
VERY FAST: If you are very fast, every other move is a "free" move.

If you don't understand how to "hit and move"...read on:
First, let the monster move up right next to you.
Then move away three times, you will notice that if you are fast or very
fast the monster did not move on all three of your moves. You can use
this fact to allow you to move away on the turns when the monster gets attacks
and attack on the turns when the monster can't move.

If you are fast (but not very fast) then you move away twice, hit once,
move away twice, hit once, and so on...
If you are very fast, then you move, hit, move, hit, etc...
This is most effective when combined with fighting in a hallway so you only
have to fight one monster at a time.
This is particuarly important for monsters that steal stuff and monsters that
can turn you to stone if they touch you.
NOTE: There ARE monsters that are "fast" also. The game represents speed
differently for monsters though. Fast monsters get to attack you on the
same turn that they move next to you. This neutralizes the effectiveness of
speed in hand-to-hand attacks, but not for ranged attacks such as missiles or
spells. Just don't let the monster ever move into the square right next to you
if it is fast and use the same strategy as above to maintain the distance.
There are also a few monsters that are "very fast" and can move more than one
square per turn. The best strategy against a group of these monsters is to move
into a hallway where you can dispatch them one at a time

4) Prayer and Starvation
These two things are often very closely related at early levels. Food is often
a problem at early levels because you need to take time to heal up between fights
but you also need to keep exploring new territory to find food and corpses to eat.
The best way to increase your food supply is to wait until you become weak from
hunger and pray. But DON'T PRAY TOO OFTEN. How often is too often? Usually 1000
turns between prayers is enough for lawfuls, 1200 is enough for neutrals, and 1400
is enough for chaotics. There are lots of things that affect the actual length of
time between your god allowing you to pray, so my estimates are somewhat
conservative. Usually you can pray safely about every 700 turns or less, but I do
not recommend risking it unless you are in very bad shape.
***Always pray if you don't see any other way out of a situation, if you are low
enough in hit points, your god may have some pity and heal you up or more...
So, especially for chaotics, having a supply of food is imperative.
Buy food rations in shops before anything else except tripe rations, assuming
you don't already have a bunch of food. Use tripe rations to have your pet rob
the shopkeeper blind of course... (see #5 below)
Sacrificing on a coaligned altar will let you know if you can pray safely. If you
have a "hopeful feeling" you can not safely pray yet. Note also that once you are
"crowned" (see other spoilers re: crowning) your prayer timeout increases because
your god figures you are strong enough to take care of yourself for a while.

5) Stealing from shops
There are other spoilers written that tell you how to train your pet to steal
stuff from shops, but I'll make some recommendations of what to steal.
Items such as Gauntlets of Power, Cloaks of Magic Resistance, and Speed Boots
will drastically increase the chances of a low-level character surviving.
It is extremely rare to just find this type of stuff lying around, but it is
somewhat more likely to find one in a shop.
***So always buy or steal any unusual boots, gloves, and cloaks in a shop.
This is more important than buying scrolls, or wands, or rings. Although a good
wand can whup some ass...
As always make sure armor you have bought is not cursed by having your pet
walk on it. (Non-god-granted pets will not walk on cursed items (except undead.))

6) Effective pet management
Pets can be extremely helpful if used properly. When I started playing I always
just left the pet behind because it annoyed me waiting for it, but I have seen
the error of my ways. In addition to stealing, pets provide extra attacks per
round on difficult monsters and are very helpful in killing nymphs, pixies, and
unicorns if you don't have speed yet. I try to keep my pet at least until I have
stolen anything useful from minetown and the "mall" (a store level around level
5 or so of the main dungeon, it is not always created in every game.)
Zapping a pet with a wand of speed monster will make it fast unless it already is.
***LET YOUR PET KILL ANY MONSTERS THAT ARE LOW EXPERIENCE VALUE
Pet "experience" points and character experience points are done very differently.
A pet gains hit points any time it kills something. So if your pet kills five
newts it has gained 5 hit points, if you kill five newts you have gained almost
nothing. A pet gains the same hit points for killing a newt or a dragon. So, you
kill the dragons and let the pet kill the geckos, when possible.
Large dogs and cats are pretty good fighters so take the time to develop them.
Once I get speed boots I usually ditch the pets though.

SPOILERS AHEAD              SPOILERS AHEAD
This is the point in the program where I feel obligated to warn people that after
this there are alot of spoilers. Stop reading if you don't want spoilers.

7) Identifying unknown wands
Engrave with your fingers a few letters in the dust, e.g. "ssssss"
Then engrave with the wand on the same square, the message you get (if any) will
help you figure out what the wand is. It'll take some time to figure them all out,
but many of them are straightforward. Engrave with your fingers with the command
"E", then when it asks what to engrave with, choose the dash "-" key.

8) Unknown potions and scrolls
There are two ways to figure out what an unknown potion or scroll does. One is the
fun way, the other is the smart way. Fun way: Read or drink whatever you come
across. Odds are it will help you, but it can also screw you royally.
Smart way:
Potions: Wait until you get a unicorn horn before testing any new potions, and
only drink uncursed or blessed unknown potions. Take off your body armor and cloak
in case the potion is a potion of polymorph.
Scrolls: Don't read scrolls until you figure out if they are uncursed.
Put all flammable items down or away before reading unknown scrolls, until
you ID the scroll of fire. Only wear one item of armor, preferrably expendable, when
reading unknown scrolls until you ID the destroy armor scroll. Save identify scrolls
until you can get them blessed and use them to identify rings and other stuff that
you can't figure out by other means. Blessed scrolls of ID tend to identify more
items per reading and have a 20% chance of IDing everything you have out.

10)What branches should I do in what order?
Generally I recommend staying in the main dungeon until you are 6th level or so.
Then go back and clear out the mines down to the mine town. Then try to
make it down to the Sokoban levels. Sokoban is found via an extra up staircase
down around dungeon level 9 or 10 of the main dungeon. It will provide you with a
good supply of food, some rings and wands, and a worthwhile bonus if you complete it.
Then go back and clear out the mines all the way down. Get the luckstone. If you
haven't found a coaligned altar by now, that becomes your first priority. Convert
an altar, though preferably not the Minetown altar because that priest will probably
kick your ass still. Get some holy water and a unicorn horn. Always keep an eye out
for healthstones. An uncursed healthstone will make you regenerate hit points MUCH
faster and is a big help. Healthstones are always cursed when you first find them,
and cursed Healthstones make you regenerate SLOWER until you get them uncursed, so
put it in a bag until you can get it uncursed.
Do the first few levels of the quest, but most quest villains should not be faced
until you have Magic Resistance. Don't do the beholder level until you have Magic
Resistance. Don't do the Dragon Caves until you have reflection. (Nighthorn can
help with this.) Avoid Vecna until you have magic and drain resistance, or avoid
it altogether. Do all these things successfully and you will have a good start : )
And there is much more to do...

11)Use Unicorn horns to cure what ails you
Apply a unicorn horn when you are Stunned, Ill, or otherwise incapacitated and
it will have a chance of curing you. A higher + on the unicorn horn will increase
its likelihood of curing you, and a blessed unicorn horn will also increase the
chance. So a blessed +6 or +7 unicorn horn is practically a requirement for
surviving Demogorgon, unless you have another way to repeatedly cure sickness.

12)Monsters that teleport away to the upstairs when wounded
Monsters such as the Quest nemesis, the major Demons, and Liches will tend to
teleport away to the upstairs on a level when they are wounded. Then if you get near
them while they are wounded and on the upstairs they will tend to escape upstairs.
The best strategy is to try to get onto the up stairs so the demon cannot escape. A
good way to do this is to go to the DOWN stairs and wait for the creature to come to
you then go down one level and it will follow you. You will then be on the upstairs
and have the escape blocked.

13)Quality Ascenscion Kits, Wishes and Polypiling
An Ascenscion kit is a set of armor that will tend to give you an excellent chance
of ascending. Slashem has added some items to allow some variability in what people
choose as their favorite kit.
Here are my recommendations:
Silver Dragon Scale Mail, Cloak of Magic Resistance, Speed Boots, Gauntlets of Power,
T-shirt or Hawaiian Shirt, Helm of Brilliance, blessed luckstone and healthstone.
Keep rings of regeneration, free action, and levitation close to hand.
Have an amulet of drain resistance ready for vampires and wands of draining.
Keep a blessed wand of extra healing in your bag just in case.
Spellcasters may wish to hold off on using the Scale Mail and opt for an amulet
of reflection and a Robe of Power and may want to substitute Gauntlets of Dexterity
in place of Gauntlets of Power. If you get the Gauntlets of Defense which are an
artifact then I recommend using them as you only take 50% physical damage when
wearing them. These substitutions will allow much better spell success rates.
A Helm of Brillance is not a big deal unless you are a spellcaster.
I don't include a shield in my ascenscion kit because if you can use two-weapon
style (see below, Two-weapon Usage) you should, and if you are a spellcaster a
shield will hinder your spellcasting.
Of course, all items should be enchanted to max, blessed, and rustproofed if possible.
The maximum safe enchantment level for almost all armor is +5. Elven armor can be
enchanted to +7 but I generally don't include this armor my Ascenscion kit.
WISHES
If you are lucky enough to get a wish early in the game, I recommend wishing for
speed boots unless you already have intrinsic speed. If you have speed, then I suggest
wishing for a cloak of magic resistance because it protects you from randomly generated
wands of death, polymorph traps, level teleport traps and other annoyances.
Later in the game use wishes to fill in the gaps in your ascenscion kit, wish for
scrolls of charging to recharge wands of wishing or polymorph, or wish for candles
which I almost always forget to collect during the game.
I NEVER wish for artifacts because if I did I would tend to always use the same weapons
and I think it is more fun to have some variability in the weapons between games.
POLYPILING
Polypiling is considered by some to border on cheating. I mention that because if you
can ascend without polypiling it is an achievement. That said, I tend to use it
because Cloaks of Magic Resistance and Gauntlets of Power are usually tough to find,
and it is very possible to go through an entire game without finding them.
Polypiling consists of dropping a bunch of items and zapping the pile with a wand of
polymorph. This will change the items into other items of the same type BUT some of
the items will not survive the change and will be destroyed. SO...the best way to
polypile is to locate a wand of polymorph and wait until you encounter a bunch of
soldiers since they have a bunch of armor. Pile it up and zap it, then check the items
created for new stuff like snow boots and dirty rags, etc.
I also sometimes use polypiling to turn bunches of less useful scrolls, rings and
wands into more useful stuff like scrolls of enchant armor or rings of regeneration.
Items which have been created by polypiling have a chance of reverting to their original
form over time so anything especially useful like Gaunts of Power can be dipped into
a potion of Restore ability to make sure it does not revert. If it wasn't going to
revert then the potion will not be used up, if you get a message that the item
looks "less fuzzy" then you have saved yourself some hassle later in the game.

14)Two-Weapon Usage
Two-Weapon style is activated with the #twoweapon command. People seem to get confused
by it alot so I will run through the commands to get it going.
1)Wield the weapon you want to use as your primary weapon
2)Hit 'x' to switch to your secondary weapon slot
3)Wield the weapon you want to use in your "off-hand"
4)Hit 'x' to switch back to your primary weapon
5)type "#twoweapon" and hit enter
Using a twohanded weapon like a pick-axe or unicorn horn will tend to take you out of
two-weapon mode so you will probably have to go through the process above to go back
to using two weapons. I do not recommend using two weapons until you are already an
expert in your primary weapon because you will miss alot otherwise. Once you get
expert in your weapons and with two-weapon style, you will do alot of damage.
The current version of SlashEM allows you to use 2 artifact weapons simultaneously,
this seems excessive to me, but it can be done, but may be removed in the future.

15)Nymphs, Pixies, Green Slimes, Stoners, Liches, and other strange beasties
There are monsters that use unusual abilities to make your job more difficult.
Stoning Monsters: Carry a lizard corpse. If you start "slowing down", eat it.
Note that when you "slow down" you lose intrinsic speed if you had it.
Nymphs: If you are fast, nymphs will not present a big problem. Use the "Hit and
Move" techniques above to kill them without letting them hit you. You may find it
helpful to throw something at them to wake them up from a square away, then move
away a couple times to see which turns you will get the "free" attacks on.
Pixies, Brownies, Aphrodite: These are monsters that steal stuff from you and are
also fast so if you let them move next to you they take your stuff. Wands and spells
are the best way of dealing with them, especially sleep wands. If you cannot see
invisible and something steals your stuff it is probably a pixie, either try to let
your pet kill it or cut your losses and leave the level until you can see it.
Telepathy and a blindfold can also help you see it.
Green Slimes: Beavis said it all, "Fire! Fire!"
Liches: Blessed scroll of genocide. Read it. Choose "L". Ring of conflict can help.
Trolls: They follow you upstairs and this can be used against them if you run
into a large number of them. Get one to follow you up and kill it until it stays
dead. Then go get another one and repeat. You can also eat them and drown them and
tin them and lock them in chests and other fun stuff.
Engulfing Monsters:Keep your good scrolls and potions in an Oilskin sack inside your
blessed Bag of holding and they won't get destroyed. If you are low on hit points,
using spells or wands on acidic or fire monsters will lessen the damage you take.

16)Scrolls of Genocide
Not a very nice thing to do to a species but...
If you can get a blessed one, use it on the L species. Getting rid of all the Liches
will greatly decrease your hassles.
Then use an uncursed scroll to get rid of Vampire Mages.
If you find one early and don't have magic resistance, getting rid of catoblepas can
save you a stupid death later. If you have extras, getting rid of Rust monsters and
green slimes can be helpful. I've even genocided pixies when they pissed me off once.

17)How do I get a +7 weapon (+8?)
Blessed scrolls of enchant weapon are the key. If your weapon is +5 and you read a
scroll and it becomes +6 then you need to engrave with it to knock it back down to
+5 and then read another scroll on it. Engrave with your +6 weapon, but engrave ONE
letter only. Eventually it will jump directly from +5 to +7. Never read a scroll of
enchant weapon on a +6 weapon, it will go away.
NOTE: If you have a +7 weapon wielded and you then get crowned then it will become +8.
This is the only way to get a +8 weapon.

18)Bags of Holding
A blessed bag of holding is nearly a necessity.
If you turn on the "showweight" option by using the capital O command, it makes it
much easier to tell if an unidentified bag is a bag of holding. Pick up the bag and
put something with a weight greater than 1 into it. If your weight decreases or
increases then the bag is a bag of holding. If your weight decreases by half of the
weight of the item then the bag of holding is uncursed, if weight decreases by 3/4
of the weight of the item then the bag is blessed. If weight increases then the bag
is cursed! If the bag is cursed do not use it until you can get it uncursed because
the items in it will not only weigh more, they will somtimes be destroyed.

19)Chemistry
Blessed potions of extra healing will increase your max hit points by 5 if you drink
them when fully healed. Potions of Healing can be dipped into a potion of Gain
Energy and most of the time will create "diluted" potions of extra healing which can
be blessed and will still give you 5 hit points. Collecting potions for a while,
using chemistry I have gained up to 300 hit points on my max, and had a Gnome get to
747 hit points (without nurse dancing).
Or you can take it one more step and make Extra Healing potions into Gain
Ability potions with one more potion of Gain Energy.

20)Gehennom (Hell), Rodney and the Invocation
The keys to exploring hell are: make sure to bring a good supply of holy water,
don't even think of going until you get magic resistance, don't disturb Rodney
until you have located the Vibrating Square and marked it by dropping something on
the square NEXT TO IT (it moves if you drop something on it), and don't pray.
Rodney does not trouble me very much any more because I save up any wands of
death I find for the sole purpose of waxing him. It is especially effective to 
take an extra turn or two and get him lined up on a square where if he gets missed
the first time he can get hit by the ricochet, and maybe even by a second bounce
when it bounces off your silver dragon scale mail. (You DO have reflection, right?)
Reading the book of the dead without light and music is ill-advised.

21)The Endgame
I won't give away TOO much because this is supposed to be the hard part.
Wish for a blessed crystal ball (7) just before entering the endgame, and use it
to find the portals. Classes with poor magic ability may have problems with the
crystal ball though, so cursed scrolls of gold detection may be helpful and wearing
the Amulet can help in desperate straits.
Amulets of flying are very helpful. An amulet of drain resistance and ring of free
action are nice on the Astral Plane. Amulets of Life Saving are nice while you are
learning, but I don't use them any more: they lead to carelessness.
There are better ways to deal with the Riders than fighting them...

22)Options
Use the capital O command to access the options menu.
I recommend turning on these options: showweight, showdmg, checkpoint, lit_corridor,
number_pad,safe_pet,showexp, invweight
I recommend turning off these options: mail, autopickup (you'll end up carrying
around crap you don't want or picking up stuff and not noticing otherwise)

PRIMARY THINGS TO REMEMBER:
Surviving is the better part of valor. Keep an escape route ready and use it.
Use speed to not let monsters even take attacks on you whenever possible.

Highly Recommended Spoilers from other sites:
Magic Cancel value of armor
Training pets, Crowning, Thrones, Mixing Potions

Disclaimer:
Okay, so maybe the steps aren't really that easy, but there are 22 of them.
And as to that whole "guarantee" thing, if you didn't ascend within 30 days, you
probably didn't really apply yourself: you probably did unnecessary stuff like
going to work or school, eating, talking to people, or sleeping. If you had played
non-stop for 30 days you could have ascended by now, so stop wasting time reading
this nonsense and start playing.   : )
