No, that doesn't work either, because the nomul call happens with any movement towards a monster.
Another issue I noticed is that polymorphitis doesn't function while multi is negative, so we don't get to polymorph at the start of turn 2002.
I think it is still possible to do it in 2002 turns, but harder. Turns 2000 and 2001 are the same as above. We begin turn 2002 in unicorn form on the Plane of Water. Drop a boulder, then repeat-move into the water and drown and get lifesaved, and 200 teleport fail onto the portal to the Astral Plane. Then we have one action before a series of monster actions, and we now have to get engulf-carried to the altar. This time, we can reuse an engulfer from the previous planes. I see two options: we could use the elaborate setup with turn undead I outlined in an earlier post; or we could just rely on monster-inventory-based luck manipulation to get the engulfer to carry you in the right direction, and make it an ochre jelly so that it can pass under the doors, which leaves the action free.
Some things I forgot to mention:
If using Juiblex heavily (anything more than a single engulf and disengulf), we make the monster with the cursed potion of invisibility a nurse to remove sickness afterwards.
Here's the starting layout of the Plane of Earth with monsters placed for reference (not including the randomly-placed boulder and portal).
EE.
'E.. E.
..TT. ..E E.
.&.. .H.. HE.
.E.. ET. U.v. Esp S
.S EE TE.E... . &.
EH .E. .
S '. S HE'
.& .. . S. &
.E .E. T
T.. E..
E. .&. TH
E.H' EE
.. H..
.. .....
&E. 9.@
.T.E
.E
Here are some more ideas that could improve the chances of it working, although I'm not sure whether they are worthwhile.
For the Plane of Air, since we are already bringing two monsters along, we should arrange for those monsters to be usable for kicking. The only engulfing, non-digesting, non-unique monster is the ochre jelly, with weight 50, which multiplied by 3 gives 150, which isn't a good value when divided by 1, but is when divided by 2, so we can use it if we adjust our total inventory weight correctly. (See my earlier post for how to get a large positive amount of gold without too much extra work.) The downside is that the ochre jelly deals 3d6 damage each turn, which can easily force us out of unicorn form. To counteract this, we can set up on the pre-bottom level some hypercharged nurses to increase our unicorn-form maximum HP before entering Moloch's Sanctum.
Here's another way to do the Plane of Earth. We get engulfed by a hypercharged Juiblex, then have another monster fill the starting cavern with monsters; on Juiblex's next turn, mnexto is called from tactics, placing Juiblex on the nearest free space, which is now in another cavern.
We should keep the number of followers we bring in down to 3, to make sure there is a free space next to the player for Juiblex to go to on the first turn (if we have 4 followers, we need to get adjusted off the starting square), so just Juiblex, the monster with the cursed potion of invisibility, and the second engulfer. We give the second a cursed scroll of create monster, which usually produces 13 monsters, which will fill the rightmost three caverns and two of the three rightmost spaces of the central cavern. But Juiblex deals a hefty 4d10 damage, so we need even more maximum HP. There are several options that give different probabilities of success, depending on how much maximum HP we gain.
I think it may be possible to do 2002 turns!
I'll give an outline first, then the details.
Turn 2000 is the same as before (get to Moloch's Sanctum and put on an amulet of life saving), except that we end in unicorn form.
Turn 2001, 1st action: Drink a cursed potion of gain level to go up.
Monster action: Get sent to level 1 with the Amulet of Yendor as before.
2nd action: Go to the Plane of Earth.
Monster actions: One hypercharged monster digs a path to the portal to the Plane of Air, and an engulfing monster carries you into it.
3rd action: Kick a monster and hurtle into the portal to the Plane of Fire.
Monster actions: A monster drinks a cursed potion of invisibility, setting multi to -1. Get engulf-carried into the portal to the Plane of Water.
At the start of turn 2002, hatch eggs to fill land spaces and create a tame monster in nearby water, and polymorph into a ceiling-hider.
Turn 2002, 1st action: Displace the tame monster with command repeat, drown and get lifesaved, and 200 teleport fail onto the portal to the Astral Plane.
Still 1st action: Hide on the ceiling.
2nd action: Cast turn undead to produce monsters.
Monster action: An attack makes you drop onto the high altar.
3rd action: Offer the Amulet of Yendor.
So how do we get this all to work? One key component is that we can produce many kinds of monsters with the iswiz flag set, by hitting duplicates of the Wizard of Yendor with the green slime's attack to turn them into green slimes, then polymorphing them. These monsters will follow you even if not adjacent once you have the Amulet of Yendor (see the function keepdogs). We will use this for the monster that drinks the cursed potion of invisibility and for the second engulfer (it has to be a different monster, because a monster that steps on a magic portal will thereafter know about such traps and avoid them).
For the Plane of Earth, we should have the digger be scared, so that it moves away from you and digs a straight line to a cavern as shown: (The Elvenking is represented by a 9 to avoid confusion with the player.)
No digging monsters naturally follow, so we make it a peaceful shopkeeper; shopkeepers have special movement determination when they are near the player, so we have to make its initial position 2 squares north and 1 square west of the starting position.
This also serves a second purpose. Notice the check if(minr < SQSRCHRADIUS && appr == -1) on line 872 of monmove.c; it appears to be intended to handle when the monster has found an item it wants, but it is also satisfied when minr is decremented on line 797, and the result is that a hostile fleeing monster at an L∞ distance of exactly 4 from the player moves towards the player. This means the monster has to be peaceful, but peaceful non-shopkeeper monsters have no inclination to move towards or away from the player (line 732).
To make sure the monster with the cursed potion of invisibility does not drink it prematurely, we give it other items to use first; we can use potions of gain level, placed after the cursed potion of invisibility in its inventory list (it will use the last one -- see find_misc). We can get some luck manipulation in from this, as noncursed potions of gain level result in one RNG call for the increase to the monster's maximum HP, while cursed ones do nothing here. You should check whether potions of gain level are milky or smoky potions; if they are, that adds more randomness and might introduce some complications. Since we are probably hypercharging the monsters in air elemental form, we can set up the inventory by dropping items inside it.
The first engulfer also has to be made to follow, and it can't be a pet or shopkeeper because of their special movement determination, so I think it has to be an iswiz monster. (We can get more than 2 such monsters by killing and reviving them.) In that case, to make it move while engulfing the player, conflict won't work; we could make it peaceful while still having conflict, or we could make it confused and luck-manipulate the confusion to not expire, or we could make it invisible (in which case it has a 1/3 probability of moving).
To make sure it goes in the right direction, we could try to get another monster to follow behind it once it enters the tunnel so it cannot move backwards. If we do it in only one engulfing, this could be the second engulfer; otherwise it would be better to use some other monster so it can't mess things up.
We could get in some more luck-manipulation in the generation of the Plane of Air by bringing one or more of the monsters created there to near extinction and retroactively adjusting exactly how many of them are left. (Probably air elementals and/or fog clouds, as the most numerous ones.) Do not make them completely extinct before getting there, though, as that would affect random monster generation elsewhere. I think the best way to do this is to use cursed scrolls of genocide, which create up to 6 at a time, and a good way to get lots of scrolls is also using cursed scrolls of genocide -- creating paper golems (then polymorph the scrolls).
For the start of turn 2002, we can retroactively adjust the sizes of the stacks of eggs to luck-manipulate to get the following polymorph.
I also came up with another method, which is probably harder: the Plane of Fire is done by throwing a heavy iron ball (since we haven't been in air elemental form, we can maintain punishment), then on arrival to Water, get adjusted off a monster to over the water, having changed to a flying form on the turn boundary, and this time we have to use the monster turn to fill the level, by having monsters read cursed scrolls of create monster (these are more iswiz monsters brought along, or possibly some of the same ones used earlier; helpfully, this creates monsters on land because the monsters reading the scrolls are on land, but by my calculations it is still difficult to reduce the empty space enough for a good chance at getting the portal, considering that the number of monsters we can bring along is limited to 7 or else we'll be surrounded by them on Air and Fire), drown and 200 teleport fail onto the portal, and on the Astral Plane, cast turn undead to produce lots of monsters and get engulf-carried onto the high altar (we arrange the corpses to get a tame hypercharged giant on the altar, and have a path of monsters that it will attack leading from there to where you are, surrounded by monsters it will not attack, so it clears that path and breaks down the doors, with a hypercharged ochre jelly following behind it, and at the end it makes way for the ochre jelly to approach and engulf you, and it follows the path back to the altar, followed behind by some other monster).
Actually, I think I still got the setups a bit wrong. Being pulled back into the water happens when the chain is in water and the ball is not in the same body of water; if the starting point is not water, this will always happen very soon, whether we want it to or not -- unless we start out carrying the ball, and at some point autopickup some items to go over the crawling-out limit and drop the ball.
Here's a small setup that works without doing that.
To really maximise the probability of the Home arrival working, we would fill the level with lots of monsters and chain ice and land mines all the way to the top left corner. (Unfortunately, the final scan for arrival position is done by columns; if it were by rows, we could make most of the top row invalid to get an arrival position in the top right, and use a much shorter chain.) We would probably rather not do that, especially considering the issue of obtaining all those land mines.
Also, it turns out that the initial arrival location cannot have a trap, water, or the vibrating square (see the function occupied, called from bad_location from put_lregion_here from place_lregion from goto_level). This means we need to be adjusted off a monster on arrival to Home and arrival to the pre-bottom level. The latter should be fairly easy; Home, depending on our method there, may be harder. If we go for the top-left as above, then we're in the full scan of place_lregion, where spaces with monsters are acceptable -- but even then the monsters get shifted off by that function, unless they have absolutely nowhere to go, and the only way I see to make that happen is to use a ';' monster and hit many 12/13 chances. So it probably has to be a monster following us from the goal level. With your quest-nemesis idea, we would have the quest nemesis following, with a 1/2 chance of taking our place (followed by the 1/2 chance of the player being adjusted off); with the method I suggested last post of teleporting to the trap, we just have the steed with a 1/10 chance -- unless we also bring a hostile covetous monster, which comes over after the teleport. Getting an adjustment also slightly changes the setup we need, as the ball and chain are placed on the pre-adjustment location; the simplest setup is as follows, working similarly to before:
Each X is a boulder or monster, each ^ is a land mine on ice with a lit potion of oil, and the two ?s are the polymorph trap and magic portal. This makes use of the fact that spaces with boulders are accepted by bad_location but not by goodpos (called from enexto_core). All the boulders are possible arrival points, with most having the maximum probability of success.
We can also bring with us to the goal level a monster with an AD_FIRE/AD_COLD attack, to get more luck manipulation after arriving there through the function destroy_item, retroactively adjusting the number of destroyable items in inventory. Here's a use for those potions that you collected! A stack of N potions adds N+1 RNG calls in destroy_item.
Any items that we need to keep safe can be left on the vibrating square or on the level teleporter outside the Quest.
ais523 wrote:
This improvement allows us to enter the sanctum manually, or polymorph manually, on our last action of turn 2000. That decreases the number of traps on the vibrating square level that we need to be able to hit on monster turns, making it much more probable that there's a seed that works (hitting two traps is way easier than hitting three because the probabilities multiply).
I'm not sure that's the best place to use our extra flexibility. Since we already have those hypercharged quantum mechanics there, we should be able to hit the traps without needing them to be by the water, especially as we can arrange to have exactly 12 movement energy so that we get unlimited monster turns at that time; it looks like that doesn't mess up anything later.
Alternatively, I think this is where we can use engulfing! Surround an engulfing monster with boulders and a scroll of scare monster, and have it standing on another scroll of scare monster. Teleport in and auto-pickup the scroll of scare monster to open the cage, so it engulfs you. By using a high-level monster or having high AC, we can force the engulf duration to be the minimum of 2; it engulfs you on the first turn, and by adding more boulders we can ensure it has only one place to go on the second turn, which will have the trap. For the polymorph trap, we don't even need to control the duration, as stepping on the trap will cause the engulfer to be polymorphed, throwing you out as long as it doesn't become another engulfing monster.
I estimate the probability of having two level teleport traps and one polymorph trap anywhere to be about 1.6%, which should be doable even with the heavy RNG jitter, as we can do it at pretty much any time. We also need the traps to not get destroyed by the invocation ritual, but that shouldn't change the chances a lot.
In fact, can we use engulfing on the way up as well? This time, we only get one monster turn, so the only way is to arrive next to the remaining level teleport trap and get adjusted off a monster onto it, then get engulfed and have some other monster kill the engulfer -- which actually sounds doable.
Also, I noticed that this is the second time you have missed or forgotten about something I have posted. It may be worth re-reading through the thread in case there's anything else you missed.
The next step would likely be to work on ways of increasing the probability of the most implausible steps (either by finding an alternative, equally fast, strategy, or else by finding a better way to do manipulation). The worst part is probably 2000:49 and the following monster turns; we need to land close enough to the Dark One that the monsters that followed us are in range, also land next to a level teleport trap (on that level), and after teleporting back up to the Quest, land on a specific square that we've set up in advance beforehand. (Although it seems plausible that we could use an ice-and-landmine chain to move us into the right place during 2000:37, as long as it's somewhere between northwest and southwest of the prepared square, which increases the chance of that part of things somewhat.)
What about using a second quantum mechanic to teleport to next to the trap?
ais523 wrote:
My current line of investigation is to try to save the action where we heal our wounded legs (via prayer, which would involve storing afternmv) . . .
Doesn't this work?
n720 wrote:
An AD_LEGS monster attack can set the wounded-legs time to rnd(60-Dexterity), which can be as low as 1.
Additionally, covetous monsters are very problematic for enexto triggers. The problem is that if the player has something they covet, they always teleport before moving (even if they're in melee range at the time and the teleport would take them further away). This means that the square you land on after the enexto is in practice nearly always going to be the square the covetous monster moved from, and it's very hard to make that the same square as the one you actually want.
What I suggested was not to use the covetous monster for triggering enexto (which, in what I imagined, would be done by another monster moving before it), but rather to just be present and follow us, as a way to get a small relocation on arrival to the Plane of Fire, if that is needed.
Regarding the heavy-luck-manipulation gold-scattering technique I mentioned some time back, it is possible to obtain the huge quantities of gold pieces without having to go through the repeated-duplication process a second time. Drop 1024 gold pieces at the beginning instead of all 1960 (hopefully this won't change anything); then at the point when the nymph has two stacks of 230 gold pieces in its inventory, get another nymph to steal one of them, thereby separating them, and then duplicate one of the stacks to get -231, put that into a container, and then take the other 230, and optionally duplicate most of it to get an amount close to 231.
Some more thoughts about how best to do the Plane of Fire:
If we need to get pushed on arrival, it is best to use hostile following monsters, as they have by far the greatest chance of doing so. We can do that by bringing covetous monsters with us from level 1, making sure they are put into the Plane of Earth before the monster that will cause us to fall from the ceiling, so that they go after it. Using faster monsters makes the setup on level 1 easier; the fastest covetous monsters are Vlad the Impaler and Yeenoghu, with speed 18.
One new possible approach is to get a push N/NW/W/SW/S, then move into the lava with command repeat, getting lifesaved and luck-manipulating a position near the portal, and then polymorph into an air elemental, put on the Eyes of the Overworld, and jump into the portal. This method can accept any portal position, but getting the push may be difficult because of RNG jitter from generating the level. The probability of getting a position near enough to the portal is about 1/45. That luch-manipulation can be done by 'g'-moving in the direction of the monster used for the push; if we haven't been forced out of piercer/trapper/lurker-above form, we could also 'g'-move in the direction of the lava (stopped by the check on line 968 of hack.c because those forms are blind, although that part of the check looks like a mistake).
Another possibility is to simply move towards the lava, then move into it with command repeat and get livesaved and appear next to the portal, and then move into the portal, and polymorph into an air elemental (polymorphing first also works). This requires for the level generation no luck-manipulation at all. The probability of appearing next to the portal is on average about 1/200, varying somewhat depending on how many open spaces there are next to the portal.
The previous way to trigger enexto in some places was with a leashed monster, but that won't work now because falling into water removes leashes. For the Astral Plane, we can have one of the revived corpses have OATTACHED_MONST retained data, of which most -- including current movement points -- carries over to the revived monster. For the Plane of Water, we can have a troll corpse self-reviving before the eggs; the same works on the Plane of Air if necessary.
An AD_LEGS monster attack can set the wounded-legs time to rnd(60-Dexterity), which can be as low as 1.
[Edit] Doing the Plane of Fire by throwing a heavy iron ball is not as simple as I previously thought, because we have to get it into inventory. So instead, we could read a scroll of punishment as the first action of turn 2002, before hiding on the ceiling and dropping onto the portal. We then need to revert to normal form to autopickup the ball upon arriving at the Plane of Water, which can be done by luck-manipulating one of the air elementals to be in position to attack us on the portal, or by bringing a sufficiently fast covetous monster with us. (Adding another reviving troll corpse for this appears not to work, because the monsters will not be in the right order.) Then, throw the ball to enter the Plane of Water (only northeast works), and polymorph into an air elemental. If we want to use the amulet of life saving here, instead throw the ball, polymorph into an air elemental and "oLS-cancel it, and finally move onto the portal; this gives for the portal 6 acceptable squares from a northeast throw and 3 from a west throw, and we can add 2 more from a northwest throw if we can have the option of reducing strength so that the ball is only thrown 4 squares.
One major problem is that in order to do a zero-time artiblast depolymorph, we need an artifact that can blast us in zero time. There are only two options: the MKoT and the PYEC, but both have their own issues. The MKoT is chaotic, and will cost us a turn when blasting us unless we're chaotic too. Unfortunately, we need to be neutral for the Quest unlock and as far as I'm aware, there's no way to change alignment fast enough to save time like that.
Doesn't trying to apply the Staff of Aesculapius work (as I mentioned earlier)?
I noticed a mistake in the plan I posted: you will actually be dragged back to 3, not to 4, so the traps have to be arranged a bit differently.
A monster drinking a cursed potion of invisibility can set multi to -1 (function you_aggravate), which makes helplessness end at the next turn boundary.
On the quest goal level, it looks like it should be possible to get put onto the level teleport trap by being thrown off a steed instead; we just have to get the monsters in the right order. This requires being in a flying form that is also capable of riding: winged gargoyles, mind flayers, angels, vampires, and wraiths seem to work.
I think I have found a solution for the part after that. In the drag_ball function, there is a part that pulls you back if the chain is in water and the ball is not in the same body of water. (Helpfully, teleds, the function called for climbing out of water, unlike regular movement, does not stop when drag_ball returns false, and ignores the cause_delay flag.) The water on the Wizard quest start level is of MOAT type, which joins up, so we need to get the ball out of water for this to happen.
This setup should work:
Begin by dropping into the water at 1. Crawl out onto 2.
* The land mine on 2 is set off and breaks a lit potion of oil, which melts the ice; crawl out onto 3, moving the chain onto A.
The explosion continues and melts the ice on 3; crawl out onto 4, moving the chain onto 3 and the ball onto A.
* The land mine on 4 is set off and breaks another lit potion of oil, melting the ice; crawl out, with 6 as the destination --
but before that, you get dragged back into the water at 4, and crawl out onto 5. 5 and 6 should have a polymorph trap and the magic portal on them.
(The asterisks mark opportunities for luck manipulation by scattering additional items.)
ais523 wrote:
I'd checked most of the functions listed above a week or so ago, because this is one of the last remaining pieces necessary in the run and we're so close. One I didn't check was unmul, and it has a fairly interesting codepath to prayer_done, which might potentially be the breakthrough we need. Unfortunately, the only codepath through to rehumanize() that I see there is via p_type -1, which for a neutral character like ours triggers only if we're undead and only with a 10% chance (although 10% is massive in a TAS). Luckily, p_type is a static/global, which means that there might be a storage glitch for it.
A successful prayer can fix TROUBLE_LYCANTHROPE, which should work. As a bonus, a successful prayer can also heal wounded legs.
This can be incorporated into the above setup to also end up without wounded legs, should that be necessary. There is a difficulty because fall_asleep, with wakeup_msg true (as for sleep traps), sets afternmv unless the value of multi is different to the sleep time.
Proceed from 1 to 4 as before, making 7 the destination for crawling out.
After getting pulled back into the water, crawl out onto 5.
* The land mine on 5 breaks a potion of unholy water, triggering lycanthropy, then breaks a lit potion of oil, melting the ice.
Crawl out onto 6, but avoid the trap.
* The land mine from 5 continues; it breaks one or more potions of paralysis, close enough to affect you.
Finally, it calls dotrap. Now the sleep trap takes effect, and the rnd(25) duration has to be less than the duration of the paralysis from earlier (rnd(5)) so that afternmv does not get set.
Now you go to 7, and then the fiery explosion from 4 melts the ice at 7.
(Again, the asterisks mark opportunities for luck manipulation by scattering additional items.)
ais523 wrote:
Incidentally, it may be possible to reach the Sanctum an action earlier via playing a different character. The Valkyrie quest home level is more sequence-break friendly than the Wizard quest home level is (due to being able to generate ice and traps on the same square); I don't know if it's sufficiently good to save an action on the descent to the VS level, but I'm not really looking into it as changing the character would desync the entire run. I originally rejected the Valkyrie as a character because I thought they'd be slower on the Plane of Fire, but there is in fact a square that can possibly hold the portal and that's within jumping range of both characters. Actually manipulating the portal to be there, together with the perfect push from a monster, would be a nightmare, but it it maybe doable.
I had thought of that, but it does not work because the Valkyrie quest start level has only fire traps.
On the Plane of Fire, what about reading a scroll of punishment and throwing the ball? That is not prevented by wounded legs and does not end the turn, and it has a longer range than jumping, but fewer choices.
Something else I found: the break_armor function (used when polymorphing) calls cancel_don in several places, which could sometimes be an easier way than getting the item stolen of ending helplessness in that way. Unfortunately, I don't see even any speed-24 forms that can hold on to any equipped items; the fastest I found is the mountain centaur, with speed 20, which can only be used for one turn before losing an extra action. (Avoiding air-elemental form would also allow us to retain punishment.)
Unfortunately, when you change level during a monster action, monsters don't move after the level change until either you've had a turn, or a turn boundary happens. I thought of leaving the Quest the intended way, but I can't see how it's any faster simply because we need to spend one of our own actions, or a turn boundary, on every second level.
Yes, but how does that affect what I proposed? There, after the level teleport from quest goal to quest start level, no monster actions were used until after reading the Book of the Dead. I don't see anything in the later part that is stopped by this limitation either.
I think I may have found an improvement near the start of the final part, and possibly a new way to finish in turn 2003 using this.
At the start of turn 2000, polymorph into something that flies. Do the usual stuff with getting accepted into the quest, level-teleporting down, and using monster actions to get the Bell of Opening, and now have another quantum mechanic teleport you onto a level teleport trap (there probably are some difficulties here, but I don't have time to figure it out now), and return to the start level.
Now do a zero-time artiblast depolymorph, and plunge into some water. Crawl out onto a land mine on some ice, which explodes. This breaks a lit potion of oil, causing a fiery explosion. The ice you are on is melted, and you drop into the resulting water and crawl out again -- onto another land mine on ice. This also explodes. It breaks a potion of unholy water, triggering lycanthropy, and then puts you into a pit. The explosion of the potion of oil is not done yet, and now it melts this ice, dropping you into water yet again. This time, you have to ditch items before crawling out, because of the difference in carry capacity between your lycanthropic and normal forms and a fine-tuned inventory weight. You drop a boulder; because you are in a pit, you get squished under it, losing rnd(15) HP, which reverts you to normal form. This calls drown again, in something similar to bug C343-193, with a similar result of crawling out twice in a row. Land on the magic portal and a polymorph trap in either order, and turn into a flying form again and leave the Quest; a monster standing on the portal on the other side causes you to be pushed over some water. (Some luck manipulation can be done in the middle of the sequence by placing extra items to be scattered, and/or adjusting the number of items in inventory -- items directly in inventory affect emergency_disrobe, and most items directly in inventory or in containers cause RNG calls in water_damage, even if not damageable, and it is even possible to add RNG calls in only selective drown calls by putting items in greased sacks that lose their grease, possibly nested, or in cursed oilskin sacks.) (Incidentally, the dotrap call left over from the first land mine (line 1161 of trap.c) will cause the second trap to be triggered a second time.) Do another zero-time artiblast depolymorph, drop in, and crawl out onto a level teleport trap, and go to the Valley of the Dead.
As before, level teleport down to the vibrating square and "oLS-cancel it, and read the Book of the Dead, and use the following monster action to turn into an air elemental and enter Moloch's Sanctum. Put on an amulet of life saving, and because this is now the last action of the turn, the problem that earlier arose here is easily solved -- a hypercharged monster can take several actions, acquiring the Amulet of Yendor and taking it up to the level above.
Now entering turn 2001, polymorph into a ceiling-hider, and quaff a cursed potion of gain level, going in the following monster action to level 1 with the Amulet of Yendor in the same way as before. Enter the Plane of Earth by climbing the stairs or by another potion, then hide and drop into the portal as before. Now do a zero-time artiblast depolymorph and kick a monster to hurtle into the portal to the Plane of Fire.
Coming into turn 2002, use a delayed instadeath to end helplessness, and polymorph into a queen bee. Because you were in natural form, you get only two actions. Put on an amulet of life saving and jump into the portal to the Plane of Water.
At the start of turn 2003, have the bubble move to leave you over water. (I'm not sure about this; you mentioned it as a possibility previously, but it appears to me that bubbles carry the player along even if the player is flying or levitating.) Polymorph on your action into a ceiling-hider using command repeat, and drown and 200 teleport fail onto the magic portal -- this will require some egg-hatching to fill up the level, and probably luck manipulation to get the portal at one of the farthest spots so that it does not get covered up by the hatching monsters. Still with three actions left, cast turn undead to fill the Astral Plane, hide and fall onto the altar, and offer the Amulet of Yendor.
One problem with trying to use farmove storage is that I'm not aware of any way to set it up without spending an action, and reading the Book necessarily cancels it (meaning we can't just set it up beforehand).
The idea was that with the changed movement points, the completion of the reading of the Book of the Dead is pushed back to turn 2001.
I've been reading the NetHack 3.6.1-alpha changelog, and noticed something interesting: "make hurtling out of water bubble on the Plane of Water handle entering water". I haven't tested in 3.4.3, but this seems to imply that an overflow hurtle on Water would work (and given that you can levitate over water in 3.4.3, it seems fairly likely).
I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "overflow hurtle", but I don't think hurtling by kicking works on the Plane of Water: hurtling requires levitation everywhere except in the Plane of Air, and kicking while levitating requires something to brace against, which I don't think is available at the entry point of the Plane of Water. Hurtling by throwing should work, but is 9 squares enough?
There is a problem with your current plan: Moloch's Sanctum is no-teleport. I have found a possible solution, but I am uncertain about it: get farmove storage, and change the movement points so as to get four actions on turn 2000 and five on turn 2001, continuing riding. The actual actions to take are the same, and now we can have the steed-throwing-off happen at the right time to drop us onto the Amulet of Yendor.
A small simplification: instead of invoking and canceling the Platinum Yendorian Express Card, you can apply, say, the Staff of Aesculapius (producing "Sorry, I don't know how to use that", also taking no time), which does not give magic resistance.
I have found a powerful luck-manipulation technique. Have the function "scatter" hit a stack of gold pieces, which can be obtained in very large amounts; the number broken off each time is limited to rnd(LARGEST_INT) (and LARGEST_INT is 32767 no matter how big ints actually are), so chunks can be broken off very many times, with several RNG calls for each. With the maximum of about 2^31 gold pieces, and with MAY_DESTROY on by using a land mine, the number of RNG calls is about 2^17 * 4.1 ≈ 537,000. (We can even increase the 4.1 each time to 5.1 by having the split stacks hit monsters, but this may not be desirable.) (Using a land mine also allows this to be used in a monster turn.) An easier option is to make the gold pieces fall down stairs; without MAY_DESTROY, this gives 3 RNG calls per split stack, which can still be a lot.
Perhaps the chances for the problematic part could be improved by having a second hypercharged monster generate more monsters, gradually filling the level and ensuring that one goes forwards.
(I am now not sure whether this one is possible, after trying it unsuccessfully.) My second improvement is to enter the tower's magic portal on a monster turn, making use of a quantum mechanic once again. This is not immediately possible, because the tower is contained in a special region that prevents teleportation in and out of it, and also prevents one from entering the level within it. However, if the initial position upon entering is next to the region and is occupied by a monster, there is a 1 in 3 chance of the player being relocated instead of the monster, and the region can be entered this way, and then a quantum mechanic can teleport the player onto the magic portal.
The reason why this didn't work for you is that there's a range limit on doing that. You can only move one square, and there's an undiggable and unphaseable wall around the edge of the teleport region. So this won't fly.
I was referring not to the main tower, but to the small one that leads to it: that one is enclosed only by water and ordinary walls. It probably doesn't matter now that you have a way to bypass that.
Here is something else I found that may be useful. Earlier, hurtling by throwing things was brought up as a way to pass the plane of Air, but in the end the limit of 9 made it inferior to other approaches. But there is another way to hurtle there: kicking a monster. In this case, the distance is determined by a ratio of weights and there is no limit on it.
I think I may have found some improvements for the finish. (Well, at least they were improvements on the plan for the finish as I last saw it. I cannot see what you have there now.)
My first improvement is complicated and I am not sure whether it is feasible in practise. Here are the changes to make for this improvement.
First, at the beginning of turn 2000, do not polymorph, and thus remain riding.
The fifth and last action of turn 2000 (after level-teleporting to the bottom) should be spent running.
Turn 2001 is the tricky part. First, I shall explain what needs to happen.
We spend the first action ringing the Bell of Opening and the second beginning to read the Book of the Dead.
The third action finishes it, and during the following monster action, we need to be hit by a quantum mechanic and teleported onto a level teleport trap, which is only possible after the first 200 random attempts of the teleportation fail, and enter Moloch's Sanctum.
The fourth action should be spent running, and the High Priest of Moloch has to die during the subsequent monster action.
The quantum mechanic and the High-Priest-of-Moloch-killer have to have started the turn as something else in order to have enough actions. This demands luck manipulation of the level's generation; we need a polymorph trap and a level teleport trap. If one or both of the traps is in a convenient location, the rest is easier, but because I do not know how likely this is, I shall assume that neither trap is in a convenient location.
There are many things that need to be luck-manipulated here; the two chances we have to bump into walls do not seem to be enough, which is why I have come up with a new technique for luck manipulation for this.
Here is the idea. In the middle of a monster turn, between two important random events, arrange for a monster to use a wand of fire and hit a pile of scrolls, which uses a random value to determine whether each of the scrolls is burnt up (see the function burn_floor_paper); the number of scrolls can be retroactively adjusted as necessary. Another option is to have a monster set off a land mine, causing random dispersal for each stack of objects there.
My best idea for the High-Priest-of-Moloch-killer is to start with a fast tame air elemental carrying an extremely-highly-enchanted Frost Brand. The High Priest of Moloch starts with 25D8 hit points, 122.5 on average, so +80 should be more than enough. The advantage of this option is that little luck manipulation is needed for the polymorph, because many possibilities are acceptable.
Putting everything together, here is the sequence of events in more detail.
With the first action, do some regular luck manipulation and ring the Bell of Opening.
There should be a fast quantum mechanic and two air elementals, one prepared as described above, near the polymorph trap. One air elemental steps onto the polymorph trap and turns into another quantum mechanic, and the first quantum mechanic sends it near the player. Most of the level should be filled with monsters or boulders to make the teleport more likely to go right. This monster must not disturb the player until it attacks -- this could be accomplished by making it peaceful and having conflict, or by making it invisible and not having monster detectio, or in some other way.
With the second action, do some regular luck manipulation and begin to read the Book of the Dead.
The second air elemental steps onto the polymorph trap and turns into an appropriate monster, and the quantum mechanic sends it near the level teleport trap.
The third action is spent finishing the reading of the Book of the Dead.
Now we may or may not need some midturn luck manipulation, and then the quantum mechanic sends the player onto the level teleport trap. We have 200 chances to hit one particular space out of 1659. The spaces vacated by monsters can have traps on them, should improving the chances slightly be necessary. Then we have some more midturn luck manipulation to get the landing position right (the actual level teleport happens after the monster turn finishes). Also, the pet wields the Frost Brand.
The fourth action is spent running.
The pet kills the High Priest of Moloch, and then the turn ends. At the beginning of the new turn, polymorph into whatever is needed next, drop off the steed, and land on the space on which the High Priest of Moloch died, grabbing the Amulet of Yendor by autopickup.
(I am now not sure whether this one is possible, after trying it unsuccessfully.) My second improvement is to enter the tower's magic portal on a monster turn, making use of a quantum mechanic once again. This is not immediately possible, because the tower is contained in a special region that prevents teleportation in and out of it, and also prevents one from entering the level within it. However, if the initial position upon entering is next to the region and is occupied by a monster, there is a 1 in 3 chance of the player being relocated instead of the monster, and the region can be entered this way, and then a quantum mechanic can teleport the player onto the magic portal.