Running out of food in Dungeon Hack!

[Shadari]

Hi all. Playing on normal difficulty it's only a short matter of time before I run out of food due to having to rest so often. Any suggestions?

[Darke]

There are rings and ioun stones of sustenance that can stop you from starving, but you'll likely need to be lucky to get one early in the game.

The cleric has two food spells, one a 3rd level and one at 6th level, so assuming you're cleric or multi-class cleric there shouldn't be an issue. Paladin however gets the first food spell pretty late (13th level?) so will probably have problems long before then.

But if you're playing cleric you're probably not running out of food due to be able to cure-light-wounds your way through your rest period.

I normally only play custom games, but I don't really think the game can be won on any default difficulty without cleric spells somewhere in the mix. Natural healing is way too slow in D&D to heal up in a dungeon without spells. :(

Maybe try a custom "normal" but with max food availability and minimal food consumption? You'd get the same difficulty level but at least you'd not starve to death if you're not playing part-cleric.

[Shadari]

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll give a cleric, or cleric multi-class, a try. I'm a bit reluctant to change the settings to make the game easier. Once I go down that path, I'll probably end up making the game too easy. I think for now I'm going to stick with normal difficulty without any custom settings, but I will consider changing these things in the future.

[Darke]

IMO, the difficulty levels don't really make much difference in 'difficulty' rather in the amount of variance of experience. What makes or breaks is the character class you pick and whether you max/max the character starts at the start or just leave whatever random rolls you get.

If you play a cleric or some variant, you're basically playing easy mode. You don't need to worry about food (create food spells), you don't need to worry about healing (infinite healing spells); spiritual hammers are about the best item in the game (dual wielding ranged!) so you can avoid most of the nasty effects like level drain (and you've got negative plane protection for that anyway); and you get true sight spell later on meaning illusionary walls/traps/cursed items are irrelevant.

I vaguely recall getting a mage through the default difficulty a few years ago. The detect magic and identify spells work well, and if you manage to find a ring/ioun stone of sustenance early on you can burn the 70+ hours required to full-heal regularly.

Anyway I don't think you'll have any issue getting through normal with a cleric; but playing hard you'll probably want to custom game anyway since it enables perma-death and quite frankly single-character D&D is not balanced with lots of random save-or-die effects for that sort of gameplay.

[Redwood]

Fighter mages are playable but you need to get lucky with the food. If you are not playing a cleric it helps to get your hit points back by coins as much as you think it is safe--that way you will not be using up as much food.

[Shadari]

I appreciate all the advice. I made a fighter/cleric and am doing a bit better as far as food management goes. But I think I'm still going to run out pretty soon. The create food spell isn't available until I get cleric to level 6. I don't know that I'll make it that far.

UPDATE: I spent a good hour or more running around with almost no hit points throwing spiritual hammers until I got to level five and got the create food spell -- and let me tell you, it's a game changer! I was apparently wrong about needing to be level six to get the spell. Maybe some bonus or something is letting me get it early. I'm a bit rusty at my AD&D knowledge. At any rate, now I'm ready to kick it into gear and kick some monster butt!

[Darke]

Originally posted by Redwood:

Fighter mages are playable but you need to get lucky with the food. If you are not playing a cleric it helps to get your hit points back by coins as much as you think it is safe--that way you will not be using up as much food.

Yeah, I think my 'mage' win was actually a fighter/mage as well. You really have to be lucky on the food drops, or on the sustenance magic item drops I think. Any other items are nice-to-have, but food is unusually critical in this game.

Also it might be just the way I usually play (max monsters, max monster difficulty) but I rarely had much luck with optimizing for using the healing fountains. Having to run over half a level and back with respawning wandering monsters usually leaves me with not much difference in health afterwards.

Originally posted by Shadari:

I appreciate all the advice. I made a fighter/cleric and am doing a bit better as far as food management goes. But I think I'm still going to run out pretty soon. The create food spell isn't available until I get cleric to level 6. I don't know that I'll make it that far.

UPDATE: I spent a good hour or more running around with almost no hit points throwing spiritual hammers until I got to level five and got the create food spell -- and let me tell you, it's a game changer! I was apparently wrong about needing to be level six to get the spell. Maybe some bonus or something is letting me get it early. I'm a bit rusty at my AD&D knowledge. At any rate, now I'm ready to kick it into gear and kick some monster butt!

Yeah, any food creation spells are basically an "I win" button in this game.

In AD&D 2nd Ed clerics get 3rd level spells at level 5, the manual is actually wrong for this game. Basic D&D is the one where 3rd level spells come in at 6th level; but I think there's only been one CRPG that used that ruleset.

Anyway, have fun. :) Dungeon Hack is a pretty unique game that I don't think has really been replicated since.

[Redwood]

I use the healing fountains by going with about half hit points until I run across one. Does not work well on dangerous levels.

[InfernoX250]

If you are playing as a cleric or cleric dual class hybrid create food and water is your key.

You can however do custom settings to make food consumption low and availability of rations high.