So I have recently beaten IVAN. And I decided to look up and test a bunch of stuff on it, pretty much left almost no stones unturned but there is something that still bugs me.

What effect does time have on the difficulty? I think I once saw a picture of some guy fighting a dwarf on day 200 or something and it bit him in half even though he was wearing fancy armor and had crazy limbs. Ever since I have been rushing through the game as quickly as possible hoping that I don't end up like that to some named monster.

I just want to know if it's ok to slow down a bit when playing.

Also, belts count as groin armor right?

I'm fairly certain the guy you saw getting killed by the dwarf was killed because he was crazy powerful (but not in enough ways to handle the enemy boosts), not because of the time factor (enemy strength scales to player power/stats - if you were to stockpile and clone up a bunch of ommel fluids, the next time you hit a new dungeon floor you might find yourself staring down Shererax).

And yes, belts are groin armor. However, they tend to be considerably less powerful than even helmets, so ideally you want a nicely enchanted cloak to go with that (as well as the other non-body armors).

Yeah I had a feeling that had more to do with stats. That's a huge relief. Things will be alot easier without me having to rush through the game trying to avoid the evil crotch biting dwarves.

Although there has to be some kind of effect based on time. Otherwise I could just sit around in town praying for days without having to worry about anything.

Hunger, maybe?

Depends. If you have seges you can feed every 3 hours. Though I might need to test how long you can go after satiation.

If you have both seges and silva you can be guaranteed to not starve though Im sure.

Having a few cans and melis might be doable, but iffy. You might get school food and that's no good.

If you have all three then you're pretty much set for life.

On groin armor: Belts contribute exclusively to groin armor. Cloaks apply armor to all body parts. Torso armor applies fully to torso, as well as partially (I think half?) to arms and legs, and at least partially (possibly fully) to groin.

Doesn't the dark archmage spawn on day 40 or so even if you don't meet the power requirements?

I would think that by 40 days he would have already appeared anyway.

Either that or you're dead by then anyway. Unless you've been praying in Attnam the whole time of course

Oh also in relation to time-based effects, your weapon skills go down without practice over time, as well as AGI and DEX. Maybe some other stats like LStr and AStr but i'm not sure. That would leave you pretty screwed for the rest of the game if you've been praying for days on end in Attnam, unless you plan on getting gods/WIS gain + sci-talk + SoCM to gain artificial limbs to avoid DEX and AGI loss of course. (This also generally more than makes up for lowered weapon skill too)

Weapon skills - yes. But simply running around, while neither hungry nor satiated, would actually train Agi. Running while satiated and burdened would train LStr. As would simply kicking something once in a wall (a wand-spawned door for example).

I spent several (don't remember the exact number, but it could even be 10-20 or so, days constantly praying to Seges, Nefas, and all the neutral gods, until Loricatus finally upgraded my armor and Saal'Thul (and helmet? I don't remember...) to adamantium. I had trained my Wis enough to talk to mystic light frogs with a not breathtakingly enchanted helmet of understanding, my Int also went up a couple of points (I could talk to greater dark frogs I believe...), had an army of wolves and mistresses that I think I posted a screenshot of (I'll look around), and both my LStr and Agi went up from all the running I did while waiting for the cooldown.

So yeah, cowofdoom78963 is thinking the right way, staying home will make you a badass. Welcome to the forums

thanks.

Yeah that does make grinding easier. One way I like to grind is to sit within a group of giant mushrooms and just let them beat the crap out of me. It trains up endurance and agility. Also perception for some reason? Does anyone get why that is? Also I can eat them to keep from starving. I just always had kept it short becuase of time limitations. Now I can probably skyrocket my endurance.


Another thing that time seem to directly effect seems to be the carnivorous plant level in the underground tunnels. The longer you wait the more powerful the plants are. I don't think that your stats have much to do with it.

Mushroom wise, I think that would be because of eating the mushrooms. In my experience getting hit with magical effects has some small effect of your perception. Like when I went up a PER level from teleporting. Otherwise I can't think of any logical answer unless there's actually part of the game code that raises PER through fighing and/or dodging.

With the carnivorous plants, yes they do get stronger (and change colour) over time. I had a theory going that they got stronger when you got closer to Genetrix, but usually that takes enough time anyway for the purple plants to show up.

I believe blocking trains PER. Don't quote me on that.

Yeah. They get stronger according to the ammount of time you spend in the room with her(alive) I think. It gets real fun when giant plants start showing up.

I think Im going to try and see how long I can last in her lair. Maybe other kinds of stuff might appear after those, I doubt it though.



Also I think it's due to blocking, as I gain perception when hit by the shrooms and not when I eat them.(these are just giant shrooms, not magic)

Giant shrooms give you magic effects when you eat them too. Seemingly random, although I seem to get levitation or "jumpy" quite a lot.

Yeah. I mainly said they were only giant shrooms to rule out the possible effect of magic spores.

So I tested this in wizard mode and found that after being hit without eating any shrooms my perception went up.

I then created a ton of magic mushrooms, and had new attnam kill them all. I had no contact at all. And then after they were all dead I ate them but there was no perception gain.

But you're also kind of right... I zapped myself with a modded 50 charge wand of teleport and my perception went up as well(very slowly that is, after maybe 20 shots). But I also just shot the wand off at nothing and my perception went up. Im guessing that the perception gain is from "aiming" the wand rather then its magic effects though.

And just to be sure I read 50 scrolls of teleport and my perception didn't even budge.


Oh and that brings up another question. Is stat gain effected at all by how high the stat is? Or just that secret stat increase setting?

With respect to the carnie plant spawns, I believe that while time may play a factor the bigger one is how many plants you've killed on a square. When I've sat in one place, I see giant spawns after a while, but when I moved away the normal carnivorous plant spawns come back into play. It's possible it could just be how long you've sat in one place too, but when I've been down there it seemed more that, after a certain number of corpses were piled up the plant spawns got stronger (one at most for greaters, sure, but giant carnie plants only spawned for me after some time hanging out in the same spot in a corridor and slaying greaters).

For your most recent question, yes it is. Try holding 1 down a while when in wizmode 'til you hit the hundreds, then see how long it takes to gain a point of AGI. If you raise it high enough it will go down even if you never stop moving around.

Alright. Thanks for the help everybody. Im all out of questions. If I think of anything else I'll ask.

That didn't last long...

Recently there has been an epidemic of negative enchanted items in my game! Normally those -5 - -7 weapons are rare, but I have been finding one in the corpse of every enemy, and just lieing around.

Now here's my guess what happened, I tamed a skeleton. I have played IVAN for years and have never tamed a skeleton or seen a weapon so negatively enchanted it has negative damage values. Yet in this game I have seen every weapon disenchanted. I think that taming a skeleton has had some kind of effect on enemy generation.

Or it could be becuase Im spending more time grinding and thus could be some other infulence, but Im not sure.

What do you guys think?

Nah, I doubt it's caused by taming a skeleton. I've recently been getting levels with only negatively enchanted gear without taming skeletons at all. Causes some silly results when a named mob happens to spawn on the level, too.

I vaguely remember something of this nature being discussed here before... try digging through the "Anything relating to IVAN you're too lazy to make a thread for" topic.

It looks like the newer levels I just entered are functioning right. Though the ones I was grinding at were completely bugged out.

I guess Im going to retreat to the earlier levels around day 40.




It lead to a kind of bitter sweet run in with xinroch...

Oh well, at least Im still alive, I can deal with the crap gear. Mine is already pretty decent.

Dodging does, 200% sure about it. Not sure about blocking.