Hi everyone. I've been playing IVAN off and on for about a year now. I've recently picked it back up and now I'm addicted. I made literally one or two posts on the old official forum in a 'Most Horrible Death' thread but other than that I've just been a lurker for the most part. But now the time has come, I think, for me to be a somewhat active member of this community, since this game is so fucking awesome and such. Don't worry this is actually leading to a question:

Okay so in my year or more of playing I've pretty much always sucked. Like, bad. Before I could hardly ever get out of the UT, now I'm doing a LITTLE better than that. I make it out about 50% of the time. Today I had my best game ever and made it all the way to the Enner beast. I prepared myself well, put everything in a chest and had about 10 cans full of healing stuff. So I run around randomly until I find the bastard (since I didn't have a scroll of Detect Material), healing when needed. I finally find him, zap him with a wand of striking, then he fucking kills me. AWESOME. Now when I restart I find myself dying in the UT again.

So my question is, what steps should a new player always take to ensure his survival in the UT? I'm sure there's something that I'm doing wrong here, or perhaps is it not all that uncommon to have most of your games end there? I'd like to get as much info on this as I can, then maybe write up a 'Beginners Guide', after i've learned a bunch, so other people like me don't consistently get fucked within the first 10 minutes of play.

Thanks everyone and sorry for my wall of text. I'm quite verbose.

Biggest enner tip:
Use scroll of detect material to detect "enner beast flesh", teleport near him (not right next to him) and use FIREBALLS not striking. Striking does no good against him, fireballs usually takes 2, at most 3 shots.

UT tips....
Use any armor you can find, no matter how crappy it is. You'll replace it as you advance. Even soft shoes work wonders when it comes to blocking weak enemies. Decide on one weapon type and stick to it, don't use swords at one point and then switch to spears. If possible, don't rest to heal, just walk around. That way your endurance won't go up too quickly and the enemies will remain easy. If your health is really bad, drink healing potions instead of healing. This will also keep your endurance low, and don't worry, you will always have plenty of potions.

I think a lot of people don't make it through UT most of the time, I certainly didn't. You'll get better with time and through browsing the forum. How do you usually die? If you tell us that we can give more specific advice.

Oh, and welcome. I'm the admin but I don't do much administrating

Ah, I was always resting to get my endurance up, since I thought more HP = better. I wasn't really thinking about harder monsters coming after me. Good tip. The most common way I die is being attacked by just about anything. I seem to have a critical hit magnet in my chest or something. Sorry that I can't be more specific but its like any monster i meet has a 40% chance of one hit killing me. I blame Jesus.

Oh and if it matters, I mostly play IVAN 3D, i don't know if there are any specific tips for that version. I always used to play the plain .50 version the first 2 years or so that i've played (yes turns out that I've played for more than 1 year as I originally thought), but this time around I tried the 3D version and i like it a lot. I don't really even use the 3D mode, it just seems that there's more variety in items/monsters. I could be imagining things, who knows.

Newbies welcome! Stop by the IRC some time.

I finally did it! Did the detect material Enner Beast Flesh thing, ran there, and nailed him with lightning and a fireball. Toasted one of my mistresses who so kindly got inbetween, but who cares. The bastard is dead.

Edit: Not long after this, I was killed by a multitude of wands exploding after a kamikaze dwarf had his way with me. Oh well. It was fun.

If you like the extra stuff in 3D IVAN, you might want to try LIVAN, it has even more neat stuff, and it's the most recently updated IVAN around.

And yeah; 2/3 of my deaths occurr in UT. That's why it's called IVAN.

Hmm, I once killed enner with a wand of striking, but that was on a bone level where he already got hurt before, IIRC. I also once got him killed, surprise surprise, by my agility-pumped mistresses.

(other than that, it's mostly luck for me, because I only got past enner a few times)

Ps. Does anyone know whether enner can be given leprosy by Scabies, or perhaps kicked around a bit by Silva's earthquakes? I've not much time to experiment right now.

Okay that makes me feel better, or atleast like less of an epic failure. My last few games I've been able to make it out of UT no problem, I'm hoping this streak continues. But odds are it wont since this game absolutely loves fucking everyone in horrible ways on a regular basis.

I've beaten the game a few times but I still find myself having 10-15 games in a row where I can't get past UT1, much less UT3

The furthest I've gotten so far is GC1. I started laying just last week (a 5 day trip interrupted that, which I just got back from on friday). I haven't really had much trouble getting past UT1, although I've only gotten past Genetrix Vesana twice.

I think one of the biggest things that's important aside from armor, is resting. Being prepared for an all out battle with just about anything is important, it seems, as well as having the presence of mind to take whatever action necessary to survive.

I recently died a slow and painful death by poisoning, during which I bled out almost all of my limbs before croaking. Entirely preventable too, as I was holding not one, not two, but three healing potions. So it's certainly important to take whatever actions necessary to stay alive. I was thinking about staying alive in the future when I was dying in the present. I suppose that lesson could be applied to real life as well.

>If possible, don't rest to heal, just walk around. That way your endurance won't go up too quickly and the enemies will remain easy
strange enough, i like to eat some spiders and then rest. and then don't rest to heal before it will be critical.
btw: don't eat snakes; usually you can survive after eating a spider, but you cartainly don't survive after eating a snake.

then, if you found a pickaxe, go to the secret level as soon, as you can, so it will be filled with weaker monsters. don't explore it! just in and out. you'll return there later.

if you got wand of teleportation, you are lucky: you can teleport Jenny away and beat UT.

remember, there is a healer in the New Attnam! she even can attach your bodyparts back (if you bring that bodypart to her).

don't even try to go to the Enner Beast without SoDM, WoT and WoF/WoL. it doesn't matter how cool you are -- you'll probably die.

hope i don't spoiled too much (it's well known things after all). feel free to edit my post if i am.

p.s. i'm playing IVAN 3 or 4 years now, and i never beat the game. and i don't believe thouse who tells they are. %-)

Then you're never going to believe the tales of the Heroes Fatty & Slob

if someday i'll beat the game, i will not believe even myself. %-)

btw, i've got everything to kill Enner Beast now. and the game goes so smooth... i robbed dwarf minefields, clean UT4... seems that i'll die in a very violent way very soon.

i think the game just wants to ruin my weekend. %-)