• Spoilers
• Subraces
• Lost Soul

Lost Souls

There are haunting whispers of souls that have come back from the Halls of Mandos, for purposes unknown. These are called Lost Souls, for it is presumed that their real body died off long ago, leaving only a soul to wander forever... or until killed again.

Lost Souls start at level 98 of the Halls of Mandos. Very few ever make it out again. Those that do can continue as a fairly normal character, but with the advantage of any treasure and experience gained.

A Lost Soul starts the game with:

• Some torches.
• Over thirty scrolls of Identify.
• Over twenty scrolls of Satisfy Hunger.

As mentioned above, a Lost Soul starts at the bottom (Floor 98) of a special dungeon, The Halls of Mandos. This dungeon is unique to the Lostsoul subrace, and cannot be entered in any other way. The major chalange, and benefit, of the Lostsoul subrace is escaping this dungeon -- and, in the process, fighting monsters and finding items of significanly higher strength than they would normally be able to at level 1.

Those of us who play lost souls do so for the challenge. Are you ready to die literally dozens of times an hour before you can have a character sheet even faintly worth seeing? Can you actually get out of the Halls of Mandos with that most precious treasure possible -- your life?

---

---

The Halls of Mandos

Until you escape the Halls of Mandos, you get a few benefits:

• See Invisible
• Wraithform (but it does not drain life while you're in the wall, as is the case with Spectres)
• A full map of every level including all objects (but not traps)
• You also get a decent stack of Identify and Satisfy Hunger scrolls

As should be obvious, you can't use a Word of Recall scroll or similar items to escape the halls. However, magic that transports you up (or down) one dungeon level at a time still works. Scrolls of Teleport Level aren't much good for this because you go up or down with equal probability. If you're lucky enough to find a staff of Probability Travel (or learn the spell, etc.), you can basically escape immediately...but be sure you want to, before you do! Once you hit the surface, your wraithform is gone, and you must dive back down the hard way (read: delve Moria, Mordor, Angband, etc) for a chance at deep-level goodies.

• PermanentInk: What about DeathMolds' innate teleport level ability? Can they use that to cheaply escape the Halls?

  Kalirion: Indeed they can, just need to be careful where you rest.

There are no quests in Mandos. However some joke/Cthulhu/Angband monsters might seem insanely overpowered in Mandos since they're leveled.

Uniques never show up in Mandos unless summoned. Now, this doesn't sound like that huge an advantage, but it lets you clean up entire vaults and loot items if you have enough HP to survive using a mass genocide scoll.

• Actually uniques get summoned all the time in the Halls. Particularly Ancalagon. Of course, if you play really carefully you'll avoid being summoned at.

Staying "Alive"

Stair-scumming -- that is, going up and down until a favorable situation occurs (stairs up, useful objects, weak monsters, or friendly creatures nearby) -- is a favored tactic. Overused, it is considered by some to be cheating. However, lost souls tend to use this to avoid being instakilled on their first 3 turns on a level.

One thing to watch for -- after you've gotten used to going up and down stairs and hardly moving, your "detect traps all the time" reflex wears off, and you find yourself wandering around without DTrap. This is likely to be fatal, as traps at deep levels are usually quite nasty.

You may be level 50 when you get out - that is BAD for God quests (at least in 2.2.7), and might either make you miss the final quest of one of the towns or be summoned from the halls of Mandos to that quest around character level 45 (as verified in old 2.x.x versions). It also makes beastmaster quests ridiculously harder when you get them...

Dealing with Items

The biggest appeal of the Halls is, of course, the loot. More loot than you'll know what to do with. It can be a case of "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink" sometimes when you're surrounded by piles of loot and aggravated by your inability to sell any of it, not to mention your dwindling supply of ID scrolls.

Identifying

You start with around 40 Identify scrolls, and it's not nearly enough to get you by. Pseudo-ID everything you can, and learn to deal with getting rid of un-identified stuff that might be useful but probably isn't.

If you are a playing a Deathmold, you have another option: searching for a Rod Tip of Perception. This means saving most of your Identify scrolls for rod tips, and a few for rods. Just keep teleporting up to vaults preferrably Greater Vaults with those nice permanent walls to keep the wall passers/munchers at pay, and fetch every unidentified rod tip. Sooner or later you'll find Perception, and your ID troubles will be over. If you run out of ID scrolls before this happens, you can just mount unknown rod tips on rods until you find the right one - just keep track of which rod tips you identify this way because the game does not.

Potions

Potions are a prime candidate for pseudo-ID. {Average} and {Good} potions can't hurt you (as long as your pseudo-ID is good enough to tell Excellent apart from Good), so just drink them as soon as they're pseudo'ed. It can be a good idea to wait and drink them when you're slightly damaged or low on mana, so that you can figure out if you've got a potion of Healing, *Healing*, Restore Mana, etc. I often do this if I've got a potion that I've already {tried} but haven't figured out. {Excellent} potions should be IDed because one of them is the Potion of Detonations. Once you know which it is, you can just drink the rest with no worries.

If you have weak pseudo-ID, excellent and good items will pseudo-ID as good.

Scrolls

Most scrolls are a waste of space. Unfortunately, there are a few that you really need, so you wind up carting many around and trying to figure them out. I do NOT recommend using precious ID scrolls to ID other scrolls. Nor should you read un-pseudo-IDed scrolls. The lack of uniques means the Crumpled Scroll of Mass Resurrection isn't a problem, but one scroll of Curse Armor or Curse Weapon can ruin your whole afterlife. The good scrolls you're really after are *Identify* first and foremost, and perhaps Remove Curse and *Remove Curse*, if you've been unlucky and/or careless. Don't bother with those Word of Recall scrolls, by the way.

Rings and Amulets

There are a TON of these, and pseudo-ID is almost useless (it detects a Cursed Ring of Fear Resistance as Excellent, for example). You could burn through your whole stack of ID scrolls on just rings. A good bet is to ID until you find reasonably decent stuff to wear, and then just let it go until you've got a more plentiful source of ID. And if you find, say, a Ring of Speed, stop IDing other rings, because what could be better? A randart ring? Don't hold your breath.

When it comes to amulets, there's one X-factor: the Amulet of Doom. You do NOT want to find out which one it is once you've already picked it up. You can't go to the shop and pick up a scroll of Remove Curse, so you're stuck with it until you get lucky and find one of your own. There are fewer types of amulets than there are rings, so a good strategy is to ID amulets on the floor, at least until you've found an Amulet of Doom. Good finds are Amulets of Resistance and Sustenance.

• Merlin: You also have to watch out for Rings of Woe.

Co-aligned and Neutral Critters

Townspeople in dungeon towns will be levelled. This means they can instakill you! Weaklings like the blubbering idiot can block you in a shop entry long enough for you to starve to death.

Ents and High Elven Rangers are friendly. Before you flee, look for coaligned flags -- coaligned groups are quite helpful in early survival.

Character Choice

Summoners and possessors sound nice, but trying to get a nice corpse in Mandos can be difficult unless you stair-scum for coaligneds and take the corpses of whoever loses. The rewards however are nice, since those are corpses well above your character level. As of Tome 2.3.0, one annoying thing about possessors is that you lose the See Invisible ability, which makes things real dangerous until you find some replacement for it.

Deathmold possessors are actually quite easy: pilfer vaults for ego/artifact missile weapons and ammo and you'll be able to take down some rather powerful beasties. I even remember shooting down a Great Wyrm of Balance and feeling reluctant to abandon my body for its corpse because that would have meant the loss of my Heavy Crossbow of the Haradrim (x7)!

Petty dwarves have the detect traps ability. This makes them ideal if you want to play a class that has problems with traps, like swordmaster.

Eru is probably the best god for a lost soul unless you want to use edged weapons. If you pump prayer to 8.0, you have access to the basic divination spells (if you are a non-mage you have to scum for a Beginner's Cantrips though). If you pick Eru you can stay down longer because most classes have to start heading out when exhausting I.D. scrolls.

Symbiants also sound nice, since you start with a scroll of Summon Never-Moving Pet, which will summon a leveled non-mover. Often you'll get something weak, like a brown mold or a disenchanter eye, but sometimes you'll get summoner, which will give you a supply of high level pets. But watch out for pets with breath weapons: you'll be caught up in the breath attack (and instantly die) if you're not careful.

Disarming traps in Mandos can be extremely dangerous. Put some skill points into Sneakiness, and be sure to detect traps. If you can sidestep by going through a wall, do it. Beware of chests (especially small ones who are 75% gold). They may contain something wonderful, but on the other hand, many traps might kill you!

Mages (epecially Sorcerors) have it relatively easy becuase their starting spellbook contains everything you need to survive except for id. Get up to around level 30 where you can start killing most everything with Manathrust and then start scumming for a Tome of Knowledge. Sense monsters gives you temporary ESP which makes dungeon travel relatively safe.

Warriors are tough. Fighting types tend to be more dependant on gear and your 30-50 id scrolls dissapear awfully quick while searching for a decent weapon. Traps are also a huge problem. Make rod tips and staffs (for probability travel) a priority.

Gaining Levels

Playing a few hundred Lost Souls will give you a real appreciation for the value of killing monsters that are higher-level than you. Stair-scum until you find something that's just weak enough for you to have a shot at killing -- hopefully near a wall so you can retreat if needed, and then charge back in with everything you've got. Turn on berserker and running, cross your fingers, and hack away. Sure, sometimes you'll die. Lots of times, actually. But when you succeed, you'll gain several levels all at once, and suddenly your prospects for survival will be much stronger. The key point here is that, at low levels, you get WAY more experience for killing more powerful creatures. So, if you can, try to kill something BIG as your first kill, as it will get you FAR more XP than it would if you were higher level. If you pull it off right, you can get upwards of 30 levels. That can make it worth risking attacking a Chaos Vortex with that nice ego bow/ammo you just found!

Some monsters to consider for a first kill:

• Vortices, except the kind that has an aura that hurts you when you hit them.
• Death Molds (make sure to use a distance weapon or spell)
• Weak Zephyr hounds: Clear, Light, Dark, Cold, Fire, Acid, Air. Depends on your resists, and your damage-dealing ability, of course. They're tough to get next to a wall in a big open room, so try and get them in a corridor.
• Orcs and ogres are often doable, depending on your character.
• If you're truly lucky, you may find a cluster of low level monsters you can line up and hack away at.
• Giant Dragon Flys: These guys are easy to take out for any class and will pump you up to level 10 or above. Plus they are fairly common.
• Blood Sprout: These pesky things will kill you quite a bit because they are easy to overlook, but you can take one out easy for several levels if you time it right (they have very low h.p.).
• Disenchanter mold: Very common, and not dangerous at all to your starting gear.
• Shimmering mold: Likewise.
• Spectral X: Sometimes these can be handled at level one because of the lower hp (Spectral Orc). However they can blind you so be careful.
• Most bats ('b') are safe enough to kill and can provide nice experience.

As you get stronger, there are other monsters that will give you gross amounts of XP. In particular:

• Nether Hounds
• Plasma Hounds
• Vrocks (all the XP of a greater demon without the summons!)
• Dragons are always wonderful

Notables

Items to use to gain your first few levels as a Lost Soul

• Find a ranged attack! Arrows & bow, manatrust, wands & recharge, anything you can reuse!

• Find a set of dragon scale mail and use the breath weapon (but be warned, activating it will be tough)
• Find any one of a number of wands or rod tip/rod combinations for area effects (ditto).
• Find any one of a number of artifacts (tritto).
• Unlock some doors and stair-scum repeatedly for 1 XP each.

  • Dinge: Just got my first XP in weirdest way: by typo, accidentally read an un-IDed *Enchant Armor* while not wearing any armor. Scroll was auto-IDed and not used up and I got 50 XP to boot. Welcome to level 2. Not recommended

Monsters to especially watch out for as a Lost Soul

• Death Drakes
• Death Quasits
• Dreads, Dreadlords, Dreadmasters
• The burrowers: Balrogs, Hrus, and Black Reavers
• Spectral anything
• Everything else, especially Hounds. They move fast, they breathe, they hate you, and they never sleep. Ethereal Hounds are the worst of all.
• Monster pits -- more often than not they have something that can pass walls or just tear them down.

Extremely useful items for Lost Souls in the long term

• Items of speed
• All the AC, to-hit, and to-dam items you can find. Even the cursed helm of Gorlim (+25,+25) cold imm permacurse is good!
• Robes of Permanence, sustain items (prevents your CON from going down to 3 and staying there.)
• Resists. They save you from Z's and other breathers.
• The Rod Tip of Home Summoning
• Any item that lets you identify, especially a Rod Tip of Perception
• Items of Genocide and *Destruction*. Especially randarts. The HP cost of genocide is based on monster count, not on monster level.
• If you're amazingly lucky (I'm not), Power Dragon Scale Mail
• A Staff of Probability Travel. If you find one, you can float right to the top easily. This does mean you miss out on many, many goodies, however.

Chatter

HarryErwin: I've been trying to make a Geomancer work, but it seems a bit weak to survive. For example, my latest found two rings of speed for +15 at the very beginning and was killed shortly thereafter by something that ran him down. This does raise a question--in the beginning, is it better to creep like a slug (outstanding stealth, -10 speed) or run like a rabbit (+4 speed)? There seem to be a lot of creatures that can detect even characters with god-like stealth.

Follow-up: I've run a number of characters as rabbits (+4) and a number as slugs (-10) and have done the statistics. The rabbits survive significantly longer and gain more levels. On the other hand, characters that use average or normal speed (0) do not survive significantly longer than slugs. I'll try an intermediate value of speed and see what happens. After that I'll investigate sprinters (usually -10, but shift to +4 when they see someone react).

More follow-up: The mean number of turns survived and levels reached for each speed are as follows:

      -10         0         2         4 
 416.8777 1053.9937 1268.8313 1527.4596 
 1.977588 3.044985  3.319518  3.618802 

I've now done a similar study for an elven ranger lost soul. The more important factor is high speed, followed by aggressive tactics. Both are positive, but speed is twice as important.

DuncanTiminey: I've only been playing for a week now (maybe 100 lost souls) and early on I always plump for running/coward, only switching to berserker to kill. So far the most useful item I've found early on is a crown of telepathy - the ability to see those spectral/ethereal creatures coming improved my longevity tenfold. So useful I now risk venturing far from the steps to investigate crowns.