Mindcrafter

How to play mindcrafter, including some basic routing ideas.

Starsign

Good Starsigns

Raven
The most powerful starsign for mindcrafters (and everyone else). High speed lets you run from monsters that are resistant or immune to mindcraft. An early rune-covered trident is helpful with a few end-game areas (Tower of Eternal Flames, Earth Temple, D:50), and is very powerful in general. You'll probably want to take the Healthy talent early-on to compensate for the worse regeneration relative to Candle.

Candle
Perhaps the most comfortable starsign for the early-game. Candle regeneration means you won't be spending much time at low health, even prior to picking up the Healing skill. An extra starting talent is quite nice as well.

Tree
This starsign offers a lot of extra attribute points and helps shore up low elven toughness scores, as mindcrafters get a toughness penalty. The +1 PV is very helpful in the early-game, especially for elven races that don't start with enough toughness to finish the PV talent line. You'll probably want to take the Healthy talent early-on to compensate for the worse regeneration relative to Candle.

Other Starsigns

The remaining starsigns don't offer enough to be worth taking over these three.

Race

Races are roughly in order of increasing difficulty. Listed point buy totals are for an adult male, and will likely need to be adjusted to get an extra talent.

Drakeling

Drakelings have decent starting attributes and access to acid spit. Acid spit gives them a ranged attack that can be used in coward tactics against monsters resistant or immune to mindcraft. Unfortunately, Drakelings level up relatively slowly. Their cold-blooded nature can be quite inconvenient in certain areas, although it tends to be a great advantage in the Tower of Eternal Flames.

Added skills
Alertness: very useful for dodging combat magic, and mindcrafter gets excellent dice.
Food preservation: nice for getting extra corpse drops, but difficult to level to the requisite 60/90.
Swimming: very convenient for early-game rivers, but easy to get in-game.

Point buy
St: 19, Le: 6, Wi: 10, Dx: 10, To: 23, Ch: 1, Ap: 1, Ma: 18, Pe: 10

Ratling

Ratlings have great starting attributes and no particular advantages or disadvantages.

Added skills
Appraising: somewhat useful for assessing whether to equip un-identified gear.
Detect item status: similar to appraising, but helps in a more clear-cut fashion.
Swimming: very convenient for early-game rivers, but easy to get in-game.
Survival: time-consuming and pretty much useless once you are familiar with the game.

Point buy
St: 16, Le: 6, Wi: 10, Dex: 16, To: 24, Ch: 1, Ap: 1, Ma: 18, Pe: 10

Human

Humans have great starting attributes and level up quickly. This makes the early-game fairly easy, and means you acquire new mindcraft abilities faster. Their extra skill increases mean you can dump Learning to 6 with little consequence.

Added skills
Food preservation: nice for getting extra corpse drops, but difficult to level to the requisite 60/90.
Swimming: very convenient for early-game rivers, but easy to get in-game.

Point buy
St: 17, Le: 6, Wi: 15, Dx: 16, To: 20, Ch: 1, Ap: 3, Ma: 18, Pe: 10

Gnome

Gnomes have good starting attributes and are the quickest-leveling race. They get an additional starting talent, making the early-game easier.

Added skills
Mining: makes pick axes less likely to break. Useful if you are trying to farm crystals of power (or other gems).
Pick pockets: easy to get in-game, and not very good unless you have a lot of patience. Somewhat helpful for gaining admission into the thieves guild.
Ventriloquism: a nice skill, but very much outclassed by confusion mindcraft.

Point buy
St: 14, Le: 6, Wi: 15, Dx: 16, To: 20, Ch: 2, Ap: 2, Ma: 18, Pe: 10

Dwarf

Dwarves have good starting attributes, but level relatively slowly. They have a small chance to receive a racial crowning gift that's worse than 5/6 of the mindcrafter crowning gifts.

Added skills
Detect traps: useful for checking doors before you get telekinetic blast, and very handy for areas with a lot of traps. Fairly easy to get in-game.
Metallurgy: nice for wiki maintainers; rather useless for practical purposes.
Mining: makes pick axes less likely to break. Useful if you are trying to farm gems.
Smithing: powerful, but very tedious, and easy to get in-game.

Point buy
St: 19, Le: 6, Wi: 9, Dx: 10, To: 23, Ch: 1, Ap: 1, Ma: 18, Pe: 10

Hurthling

Hurthlings have weak starting attributes, but decent toughness. They level nearly as fast as gnomes and also get an additional starting talent. Their most noteworthy perk is starting out highly trained with thrown rocks and clubs. A quick trip to Goblin Camp will give you a very strong ranged attack, which works well with confusion.

Added skills
Archery: provides some minor bonuses to missile attacks, and can open up some talents, but difficult to level to the requisite 60/80.
Food preservation: nice for getting extra corpse drops, but difficult to level to the requisite 60/90.

Point buy
St: 10, Le: 6, Wi: 16, Dx: 19, To: 21, Ch:2, Ap: 2, Ma: 10, Pe: 10

Troll

Hit thing with club: good. Hit confused thing with club: better. Trolls have a very easy start due to their incredible toughness. Although their extremely slow leveling reduces the variety and power of mindcraft, it's not a huge issue as the best mindcraft is available from level 1 (confusion blast). They unfortunately have a quite short lifespan.

Added skills
Athletics: somewhat useful for getting extra attribute increases, but it's very difficult to level it up to the point at which it provides a speed bonus.
Bridge building: useless; not enough room to hide under bridge.
Food preservation: nice for getting extra corpse drops, but difficult to level to the requisite 60/90.
Mining: makes pick axes less likely to break. Useful if you are trying to farm gems.

Point buy
St: 20, Le: 6, Wi: 10, Dx: 10, To: 31, Ch: 1, Ap: 1, Ma: 10, Pe: 10

Orc

Orcs have good starting attributes, but level relatively slowly. They are despised by dwarven shopkeepers and suffer annoying penalties in outdoor areas. They suffer from an extremely short lifespan, and there's only one mindcraft power that's of any use against ghosts (mental shield).

Added skills
Backstabbing: decent with Stealth, deadly with blindness, but easy to get in-game.
Find weakness: mindcraft is rather inefficient at dealing damage, so this a great skill, even with poor dice.
Metallurgy: nice for wiki maintainers; rather useless for practical purposes.
Mining: makes pick axes less likely to break. Useful if you are trying to farm gems.

Point buy
St: 20, Le: 6, Wi: 10, Dx: 10, To: 23, Ch: 1, Ap: 1, Ma: 10, Pe: 10

Dark Elf

Dark elves have decent starting attributes, but low toughness. They are despised by dwarven shopkeepers and suffer annoying penalties in outdoor areas.

Added skills
Alertness: very useful for dodging combat magic, and mindcrafter gets excellent dice.
Find weakness: mindcraft is rather inefficient at dealing damage, so this a great skill, even with poor dice.

Point buy
St: 14, Le:15, Wi: 11, Dx: 16, To: 18, Ch: 1, Ap: 4, Ma: 18, Pe: 10

High Elf

High elves have decent starting attributes, but low toughness. They have a small chance to receive a racial crowning gift that is of comparable strength to the normal mindcrafter crowning gifts.

Added skills
Dodge: provides nice defense boosts at high levels of the skill, but good luck getting there with mindcrafter.

Point buy
St: 16, Le: 15, Wi: 13, Dx: 18, To: 15, Ch: 1, Ap: 5, Ma: 18, Pe: 10

Gray Elf

High elf, but slightly worse.

Added skills
Dodge: provides nice defense boosts at high levels of the skill, but good luck getting there with mindcrafter.

Point buy
St: 14, Le: 15, Wi: 17, Dx: 16, To: 14, Ch: 1, Ap: 9, Ma: 18, Pe: 10

Mist Elf

Mist elves are the most fragile race by far, and level quite slowly. They have a small chance to receive a racial crowning gift that's worse than 4/5 of the mindcrafter crowning gifts. That's out of 5 because mist elves' iron allergy locks them out of one of the better crowning gifts, in addition to making it harder to build up PV early-game. On the plus side, confusion prevents ranged attacks, so they will get the benefit of their melee damage reduction most of the time.

Added skills
Alertness: very useful for dodging combat magic, and mindcrafter gets excellent dice.
Dodge: provides nice defense boosts at high levels of the skill, but good luck getting there with mindcrafter.
Necromancy: homunculi from white necromancy can be modestly useful early-on, but lumps of clay aren't guaranteed and companions are stupid.

Point buy
St: 13, Le: 15, Wi: 14, Dx: 16, To: 12, Ch: 7, Ap: 20, Ma: 18, Pe: 16

Talents

Good Starting Talents

PV Line
Hardy: +3 HP
Tough skin: +1 PV
Iron skin: +1 PV
Steel skin: +2 PV

PV is incredibly useful in the early-game, so you can't go wrong with this line of talents.

Speed Line
Quick: +2 speed
Very quick: +3 speed
Greased lightning: +4 speed

Being able to act more often is useful in general, and very useful when you need to run away from things. This line is a lower priority for Raven-born characters, as they already have +10 speed.

Healthy
This more than doubles the rate of natural regeneration, meaning you spend less time at low HP. Not really necessary for Candle-born characters.

Strong Legs
Turns kicks into a reasonable form of offense that, like mindcraft, can be used with two shields. The in-game tooltips are incorrect; it actually gives +5 to-hit and +5 damage rather than +4/+2. A safer alternative to true berserk, but will be obsoleted in the long run.

Interesting Starting Talents

Missile Weapon Master Line
Alert: +2 perception
Good shot: +1 to-hit/damage with missiles
Keen shot: +2 to-hit/damage with missiles
Affinity with missile weapon x3
Missile Weapon Master: +6 to-hit/damage/range with missiles

Missile Weapon Master is extremely powerful, but also expensive. It probably only makes sense to go for if the character starts with at least four talents, so that it can be acquired by level 9.

Tough
+2 toughness might be worth considering for elven characters, especially if it can get them to qualify for more PV talents.

Skilled Line
Skilled: +2 to starting skills, 1 step better skill dice
Very skilled: +3 to starting skills, 1 step better skill dice
Extremely skilled: +5 to starting skills, 1 step better skill dice

Mindcrafter suffers from poor skill dice in a lot of skills. Taking one or two of these talents might be good in the long-term.

Heir Line
Charming: +3 charisma
Boon to the family: double starting money
Heir: start with empowered robe of protection [+0, +5]

While the robe is a decent armor piece, it's probably better to go with PV talents. The PV talents net you less PV, but can be used in conjunction with true berserk.

Other Good Talents

Missile Attacks
Good shot: +1 to-hit/damage with missiles
Keen shot: +2 to-hit/damage with missiles
Quick: +2 speed
Quick shot: missile attacks take 10% less time

Confused monsters can stumble into you, but that's not an issue if you can kill them at range. These are good talents in general, and especially good for Raven-born characters with the rune-covered trident.

Heavy Weapon Line
Basher: +1 to-hit/damage with >100s weapons
Powerful strike: +2 to-hit/damage with >100s weapons
Mighty strike: +3 to-hit/damage with >100s weapons

If your end-game melee weapon weighs this much, this is an excellent set of talents. Mindcrafters do most of their damage with physical attacks.

Affinity for Axes
Or affinity for whatever your end-game weapon type is.

Shield Line
Shield specialist: +1 DV with shields
Shield expert: +2 DV with shields
Shield master: +3 DV with shields

DV is good, and in most cases you should be using a one-hander and a shield.

DV
Careful: +1 DV
Quick: +2 speed
Defensive fighter: +2 DV

PP Regen
Potent aura: +3 PP
Charged: +1 PP/15 turns, natural PP regeneration recovers +2 PP per tick

Charged can be quite good, but only if you are close to the minimum natural PP regeneration interval (5 turns).

Long stride
This is useful for similar reasons as the speed talents. It's of somewhat less general use as it only speeds up movement.

Starting Out

Mindcraft Basics

Mindcrafters are able to invoke their special mindcraft powers with CTRL+i. As this is an awful keybinding, you should edit your adom.kbd file and change it to something different. I recommend binding it to tab:

#  Invoke mindcraft
INM:\t

As mindcrafters gain levels, they get access to more powers. These powers are separate from the standard class powers gained at levels 6, 12, 18, 25, 32, 40, and 50. Mindcraft powers fall into three general categories:

Telepathic: these powers affect the minds of monsters. Undead, unlife, plants, and various mindless monsters are immune. You take around 10 damage for every undead monster you attempt to affect. These powers travel through walls and are subject to magic resistance.

Telekinetic: these powers exert a physical force on monsters or terrain. Monsters that can pass through walls are immune. The damage from these powers is reduced by monster PV.

Utility: these powers don't directly attack monsters, and thus don't care about monster type.

Activating any mindcraft power takes a turn. If you attempt to activate a mindcraft power you don't have enough PP for, it will fail and a turn will still pass. It's possible to use mindcraft while stunned and/or confused without any chance of failure.

Base Skills

In order of importance:

Concentration: of critical importance for PP regeneration, and much better at high levels; get to 100 ASAP.

First aid: helps survive poison, and recover from critical hits and other major damage.

Herbalism: herbs are useful, and this skill gets you more and better status herbs.

Stealth: helps in getting backstabs, avoiding monsters, and shoplifting with invisibility potions.

Gemology: helps identify gems and causes them to generate from mining. Crystals of power (PP restore) are of particular interest to mindcrafters.

Haggling: at around 80 it starts being useful for getting discounts in shops. Mindcrafter actually gets good dice, so it's feasible to get the skill that high.

Listening: affects your chances to hear various noises (traps, shops, etc). It tends to train up by itself.

Music: confusion tends to be sufficient for dealing with animals.

Climbing: mainly useful for getting to the sinister library, which is not terribly attractive for the spellcasting-inept mindcrafter.

Literacy: as it's almost impossible for mindcrafters to learn spells from books, this skill is of little use. It starts at a high enough value anyway.

Starting Equipment

There's little racial variation in starting equipment, but random consumables make up a large portion of mindcrafters' starting gear. Make sure you check on your potions, rings, scrolls, and wands; there could be something there that can get you out of a jam.

After you're done checking over your starting items, take off your shirt and shoes and get ready to rage; mindcrafter starting armor sucks, so you should opt to true berserk. True berserk means fighting in berserk tactics with a weapon, but no helmet, body armor, girdle, cloak, gauntlets, or boots. This greatly increases your melee to-hit and damage. Once you gain a few levels and find something like 5 PV worth of armor, consider calming down.

Early-Game

For this guide's purposes, the early-game consists of levels 1-12.

Class Powers

Ability to Use Mindcraft
Level 1

Don't forget this one. CTRL+i or whatever you bound the invoke mindcraft command to.

Reduced Confusion Duration
Level 6

Not terribly useful in the early-game, but it will come in handy later-on. This stacks with the confusion resistance intrinsic.

Detect Number of Hostile Monsters
Level 12

Probably one of the worst ways to spend 16 PP. Unfortunately, in addition to failing to detect monsters immune to telepathic mindcraft, this power also fails to detect monsters in un-opened tension rooms, threat rooms, and vaults.

Mindcraft Powers

Teleport Control
Level 1
Type: Utility
Cost: N/A

Mindcrafters always have the teleport control intrinsic. Although this intrinsic is fairly easy to get in-game, it is one of the most important ones. Later on you'll need this to get several important items. Although this power doesn't cost anything and can't be turned off, it is still possible to "activate" it. This is a fairly convenient way to pass a turn without stumbling if you are confused.

Confusion Blast
Level 1
Type: Telepathic
Range: 3 + (Willpower + Level) / 8
Duration: Level + 1dWillpower - 1
Cost: 8 - Level / 3 (minimum: 3)

This is the best disabling ability in the game. It attempts to confuse monsters in a straight line. Provided a monster isn't immune to telepathic mindcraft or confusion, you only need to beat its magic resistance (often 0) to affect it. Confused monsters are unable to cast spells, summon, or attack at range, and will stumble around randomly. Use this on anything threatening.

Confusion Wave
Level 3
Type: Telepathic
Radius: 1 + 1 (if Willpower + Level > 7) + 1 (per 16 points Willpower + Level exceeds 8)
Duration: Level + 1dWillpower - 1
Cost: 25 - Level/3

Confusion in ball form. This is very expensive when you get it, but it's useful if you are being swarmed or if you don't have time to line up a confusion blast for whatever reason. This power sees the most use in early wilderness encounters.

Mind Blast
Level 6
Type: Telepathic
Range: 3 + (Willpower + Level) / 8
Damage: [(Willpower + Level) / 6 + 1]d5
Cost: 20 - Level / 3 (minimum: 5)

Mind blast deals damage in a line. It's expensive and the damage is low. Still, it's useful for dealing with monsters that are unpleasant to melee, and sometimes for killing monsters through walls.

Mental Shield
Level 9
Type: Utility
DV bonus: (Willpower + Level) / 5
PV bonus: (Willpower + Level) / 8
Cost: 6 - Level / 5 (minimum: 2) per turn

Mental shield is a continuous power, meaning that it costs PP each turn it remains active. Activating or deactivating it takes a turn. Activate it when fighting monsters with nasty melee attacks, particularly undead monsters, since you can't yet affect them with other mindcraft powers. As you gain levels it becomes more powerful and practical, and should be second only to confusion blast in terms of how much you use it.

Mind Wave
Level 12
Type: Telepathic
Radius: 2 + 1 (per 16 points Willpower + Level exceeds 8)
Damage: [(Willpower + Level) / 6 + 1]d5
Cost: 52 - Level / 3 (minimum: 15)

Mind blast in ball form. This costs far too much to be of any real help in the early-game. Keep in mind that it has a larger radius than ball spells (or wand of fireballs). Later-on this makes it useful for clearing out vaults, usually in conjunction with scrolls or crystals of power.

Routing

1. Start out by visiting Terinyo. Pick up a few rations, talk to the village elder to get the carpenter quest (don't talk to the druid first). Talk to the tiny girl to get the puppy quest.
   
   
2. Wander around forests until you find the Goblin Camp. As this area becomes unavailable at level 3, try to avoid killing anything in other wilderness encounters.
   
   
3. Collect everything useful from the camp's three treasure piles. Once you are familiar with the layout, this will only require fighting 3-4 monsters.
   
   
4. (Optional) Scout the SMC (Northwest of Terinyo) for the stairs and the blanket. Avoid this if you gained more than a couple levels in Goblin Camp.
   
   
5. (Optional) Visit the bandit village (Southwest of Terinyo) and talk to Hotzenplotz. Mostly of interest for chaotic races that haven't converted to N or L yet.
   
   
6. Clear out the VD (Southeast of Terinyo). Lead the carpenter from VD: 7 to the healer on VD: 4, and pick up the Healing skill. Confusion should make this quite easy.
   
   
7. Clear out the PC (Northeast of Terinyo).
   
   
8. (Optional) Go through the SMC and into the UD. Only do this if you've scouted the SMC and the stairs are close.
   
   
9. Scout around the wilderness map looking for the Moldy Dungeon. Descend to the 5th level. If possible, pick up the Tome of Donors, but be prepared to run from the stone golem guardian. Leave this for later if this dungeon is behind mountains.
   
   
10. If you have a scroll or wand of item detection or a blessed scroll of magic mapping (or are willing to harness the power of bugs[www.adom.de]), visit the boring cave (on the central road), and retrieve a wand of teleportation from the down stairs on VDDL.
    
    
11. If 8000 turns have passed, pay a visit to the borderland settlement (West of the pyramid), and pick up some potions. If you haven't made any commitments to other gods, this is a fine time to convert to lawful by sacrificing one gold at a time on the altar here.
    
    
12. Enter the Caverns of Chaos (West of the pyramid).
    
    
13. Once you reach the arena level, buy all the cooked lizards from the ratling traders.
    
    
14. On D: 8, look around for a strange item and pick it up. This is a self-replicating artifact that will make you a lot of money.
    
    
15. Descend until you reach Dwarftown.

Mid-Game

For this guide's purposes, the early-game consists of levels 13-25 (or until you get to the Tower of Eternal Flames).

Class Powers

Extra PP
Level 18

Nice, but not a game-changer.

Willpower Bonus
Level 25

This is a one-time increase to your base Willpower score. Finish up any morgia training before you get this.

Mindcraft Powers

Telekinetic Blast
Level 15
Type: Telekinetic
Range: 1
Damage: (Willpower / 5 + Level)d3
Cost: 60 - 2 * Level (minimum: 18)

A melee-range telekinetic attack. This is a usable form of offense against most monsters that are resistant or immune to telepathic mindcraft. Using it on a trapped door will break the door down without triggering the trap. If you are invisible, using this power will often not reveal your presence, unlike with standard melee attacks.

Eyes of the Mind
Level 18
Type: Utility
Cost: 12 - Level / 3 (minimum: 3)

This reveals the presence and location of almost all monsters on the level, including most types of monsters immune to telepathic mindcraft. Use this upon entering every single new level, as it prevents all sorts of nasty surprises from tension rooms and threat rooms.

Greater Mental Blast
Level 25
Type: Telepathic
Range: 3 + (Willpower + Level) / 8
Damage: [(Willpower + Level) / 6 + 1]d9
Cost: 35 - Level / 3

Bigger, badder, more inefficient mind blast. Nice for one-shotting more powerful quicklings, but not that great otherwise.

Routing

This portion of the guide assumes you are lawful, and interested in getting Rolf rewards. Being neutral is perfectly fine, but the Rolf rewards make the mid-game go very smoothly at the cost of some potential inconvenience in the Tower of Eternal Flames.

1. Talk to Thrundarr about "quest", "portal", and "rolf", and start working on the "quest" quest line. Avoid descending past D: 12 until you have completed the first "quest" and have received the second.
   
   
2. If you have a source of teleportation, teleport to the closed-off room in Dwarftown and talk to the dwarven mystic to get the dwarven rune axe "Rolf's Companion". You'll be using this pretty much the entire game, unless you find some nice random artifact.
   
   
3. Some time before level 17, head to the pyramid (at the end of the central road). Pick up the climbing set and pick axe from PY: 1. Reach PY: 3 and get the ankh and ancient mummy wrapping from Rehetep. You should first collect the wand of fireballs from Thrundarr's second "quest" as insurance against any nasty monsters generating on PY: 3.
   
   
4. Head to the graveyard in the Southeast. Get to the second level and kill Griff and Nonnak. Mental shield will be quite helpful here, as will wand of fireballs against Nonnak. Also find the secret door on the right side of the second level and pick up the elemental gauntlets.
   
   
5. (Optional) Descend to the Fungal Caves (stairs in the top-middle of the Animated Forest). Have good PV and toughness (or paralysis resistance), and kill the fungal overlord with fire. Take his artifact and mushrooms.
   
   
6. (Optional) Find the underwater dragon cave. Teleport 36 squares West and talk to Blup's mom. Talk to Blup in Terinyo. If you are Raven-born, you'll get a nice returning missile (rune-covered trident) a little while after you hit level 16. Otherwise, you'll get it at level 36 (good way to remember the teleport distance).
   
   
7. Finish up Thrundarr's quests if you haven't yet. Use the dwarven shield "Rolf's Saviour" in your right hand and the rune axe in your left.
   
   
8. Go to the ice queen area in the West. Avoid killing monsters as much as possible, except on IC: 5. Talk to the ice queen on IC: 9 to pick up her first quest. Invisibility makes this area really easy, and if you are a drakeling, you should avoid doing this area without it.
   
   
9. Reach level FGJC: 6 and kill Haggar. Confusion and wand of fireballs will be quite handy here. There's a greater vault on FGJC: 5 that you may want to come back to later. If it's a giant vault you can try to ninja the artifacts with the help of invisibility and swapping (only the titans see invisible).
   
   
10. Turn in the ice queen's quest and kill the chaos diplomat with one of the potions you got as a reward.
    
    
11. (Optional) Head to darkforge (nondescript tunnel; South). This is mainly of interest if you don't have a good body armor yet, although the golems are worth a decent amount of XP as well.
    
    
12. (Optional) If you have some form of cold damage, parting water, or levitation, head to the tomb of the high kings (UC; mountains in the Northwest). Retrieve the ring of the high kings.
    
    
13. (Optional) Clear the Shadowy, Sinister, Putrid, and Antediluvian dungeons. This is mostly for some extra experience or gear if you are feeling weak. Don't go to the Sinister or Antediluvian dungeons if your character is under-leveled for them (the game will tell you).
    
    
14. Head down to the water temple and clear it. The Snake from Beyond doesn't have any magic resistance, so confusion will be quite effective. Thrown potions of cure poison are an alternate approach.

Late-Game

Class Powers

Corruption Reduction
Level 32

This power greatly reduces the amount of corruption you receive when using telepathic mindcraft on corrupting monsters. In general, you shouldn't be too worried about this penalty anyway, but at level 32 you really shouldn't be worried about it. You still probably want to avoid using confusion on balors.

Extra PP (again)
Level 40

Nice, but not a game-changer (again).

Reduced Undead Damage
Level 50

This power halves the damage you take from using telepathic mindcraft on undead monsters, reducing the damage to around 5 points per monster.

Mindcraft Powers

Greater Telekinetic Blast
Level 30
Type: Telekinetic
Range: LOS
Damage: (Willpower / 5 + Level)d6
Cost: 120 - 2 * Level (minimum: 25)

An insanely-powerful telekinetic attack. This power can affect any monster within your line of sight. While this starts out incredibly expensive, almost every monster gets wrecked by this, including the Ancient Chaos Wyrm (if you hit level 30 before ToEF), the Chaos Archmage (if you can deal with the magedoom eyes), and the great gray wyrm.

Regeneration
Level 35
Type: Utility
Cost: 8 - Level / 10 per turn

Regeneration is a continuous power, restoring 1 HP per turn while active. Very expensive for what it does, but if you don't have anything better to do with your PP...

Teleport Self
Level 40
Type: Utility
Cost: 35

Does what it says. Compared to the Teleport spell, this power is quite cheap, as its cost isn't increased in more dangerous areas.

Teleport Other
Level 45
Type: Telepathic
Range: 1
Cost: 35

Does what it says. This is something of an odd power out, as it doesn't come with any of the negative consequences that telepathic powers normally have.

Greater Mental Wave
Level 50
Type: Telepathic
Radius: 2 + 1 (per 16 points Willpower + Level exceeds 8)
Damage: [(Willpower + Level) / 6 + 1]d9
Cost: 50

Bigger, badder, more inefficient mind wave. Unfortunately, mind wave is only of practical use in situations where you need to spam it, so the inefficiency of this power is a big strike against it. Use this to get petty revenge on wilderness encounter trash mobs.

Routing

Pretty much all that remains is Tower and the final Caverns of Chaos dive.

1. Tower of Eternal Flames! It's on fire, and the Ancient Chaos Wyrm is immune to confusion, so this can be a bit tricky. If you have both a ring of ice and a fireproof blanket you're pretty safe bringing in whatever consumables you want. If you only have one or the other, scout to the top level before bringing them in. If you have neither, no potions for you, and you'll need high piety to pray for a pick axe on the top level. Thrown potion of cure corruption, cursed potions of invisibility, and the rune-covered trident can help a lot with the Wyrm. Offensive wands, especially lightning if have shock immunity or sufficient resistance, are reasonably effective. Telekinetic Blast is decent if you must go into melee range without disabling it.
   
   
2. Remember to put beeswax in your ears for the level that has all the bodies of the monsters that didn't know to put beeswax in their ears.
   
   
3. Get past the eternal guardian with the ring of the high kings. If you didn't get the ring, aggro him and then teleport to the stairs. Avoid taking the second up stairs on D: 32 if you didn't get the ring.
   
   
4. Fill any gaps in your equipment/consumables by gambling and shopping at the Casino.
   
   
5. Shortcut to Darkforge is on D: 32 if you need to get to the surface for whatever reason.
   
   
6. (Optional) If you get to level 30, you can head back to Terinyo for a quest from the Druid. Finishing the quest the lawful way gets you one-time full corruption removal. Finishing the quest the chaotic way gets you a bunch of potions of gain attributes and a corruption.
   
   
7. On the "intense tension" level, teleport or dig to the South side immediately.
   
   
8. Yulgash can't summon while confused, so confusion blast him several times before opening up his room. Alternatively, greater telekinetic blast can be used to pick him off through whatever garbage he summons.
   
   
9. Use mental shield for Earth Temple. The Ancient Stone Beast has no magic resistance and can be confused. Wand of fireballs can come in handy here.
   
   
10. If you can clear out the magedoom eyes, greater telekinetic blast can wreck the Chaos Archmage. Wear the ancient mummy wrapping if you don't have see invisible and death resistance from other sources. If you can't keep your PP, standard tactics like cursed potions of invisibility and excessive boost potions work.
    
    
11. Use mental shield for D: 50. Greater telekinetic blast (or rune-covered trident) for balors. Wand of bunny summoning, door creation, and confusion make life easy if you aren't interested in killing everything.

Mindcraft Details

Mindless Monsters

Certain monsters are immune to telepathic mindcraft, despite not being of a monster type that's immune by default (plant, undead, unlife/construct).

• Jellies (except for gelatinous cube and gibbering mouther)
  
• Insects (except for ankheg, giant ant queen, giant bee queen, and giant bee warrior)
  
• All Worms
  
• Bulette
  
• Carrion crawler
  
• Chaos spawn
  
• Dorn Beast
  
• Hydra
  
• Moloch
  
• Rabid dog
  
• Swamp hydra

Monsters Immune to Confusion

• Ancient Chaos Wyrm
  
• Eternal guardian
  
• Big casino guard
  
• Chaos Archmage
  
• Gray master scribe
  
• Gray scribe
  
• Great gray wyrm

Monsters Invisible to Eyes of the Mind

• All golems
  
• All statues
  
• Animated armor
  
• Green blob
  
• Green slime
  
• Steel horror
  
• Steel zombie
  
• Zombie

[Yulgash]

You are missing elemental gauntlets, truesilver cap (from Rolf cousin grave), and 1-2 PV from Rolf axe bonus toughness (usually). I didn't include cat ring as it comes post-casino/tower.

[Cletus]

Yulgash, is it
ring of the High Kings [+2, +3]
ring of the master cat [+0,+5]
eternium chain mail (-1, -2) [-1, +11]
"Rolf's Companion" (+3, 3d6+6) [+4, +4] {To +3}
"Rolf's Saviour" (+2) [+9, +6].
ankh [+2, +2]?
31 PV total. Am i missing something? Btw, eternium chain mail is not 100% reliable. It can spawn with nasty prefixees/suffixes like antimagical or worm-ridden. It's super rare, but can happen.

Your game progression route is a guide inside a guide. I use it now for other characters. 2 of them successfully closed the chaos gate. It was Gn Wizard and Ge Priest.

[Yulgash]

I'm more win rate focused, I suppose. Relying on good luck to get through the early game is only going to make the inevitable death to carelessness or ignorance more painful.

As for mindcrafter specifically, I don't find it to be particularly grindy or item-dependent. Confusion even lets you get away with much worse equipment in some cases. Perhaps the quality of guaranteed items is just too high nowadays. There's something like 32 PV from guaranteed equipment, with 16 of that being available fairly early on (eternium chain mail + rolf axe).

[malleus.petrov]

Its much easier to restart from first levels.
Unlike many other classes, mindcrafter cant pass without good items until very endgame. With same level and equipment and attributes quality - wizard or duelist will have much easier time on same difficulty. So you will have to spend more time on lower danger levels with greater risks, and better item selection will give you additional options.

[Yulgash]

I think Treasure Hunter is bad in general, but especially for classes with a less-than-stellar start. Early game is the most difficult, and every talent counts there. Once you can consistently survive the start, winning is more a matter of knowledge (which hopefully the guide should help with) than luck with item drops. Especially in modern versions where there are more guaranteed items (goblin camp, Rolf set, potion shop, etc).

[malleus.petrov]

good guide. just want add few notes:
- Survival and levels before all. use any trick you now. And increase loot generation - treasure hunter talent, pick pocketing, milking, etc.
- Milestones : level 15 ( full melee attack, regardless of coward tactics ), level 18 ( no more unexpected encounters or invisible monsters ), level 30 : GTB.

- saving mad carpenter very easy ( confuse blast works well on him ) and healing skill very useful.
- don't use mind wave, there are can be cats. Confusion wave better if you are lazy to check

- don't read books. never. ( you still can have bad result even with 99 learning ), just keep useful utility ones ( strength of atlas, especially)

- GTB - is a great tool. With invisibility and confusion - cheat, really. Only the Andor dragon immune, other bosses can be killed with it

[Cletus]

Really cool guide. Thank you. Need more high quality up-to-date guides like this.

[Macho Mandalf]

My best playthroughs are with mindcrafters. truly a fun class to play

[Wyyrm]

wow this was exhaustive! and fun to read too xD