Medusa Spoiler

Written by Arien Malec. HTML conversion by Kate Nepveu.

Contents

• Maps for Medusa's level
• How to cross Medusa's level (or Juiblex' for that matter)
• How not to be drowned by eels
• How to not turn to stone through Medusa's gaze

Maps for Medusa's level

How to cross Medusa's level (or Juiblex' for that matter)

• Walk on water or levitate over it
  • Water Walking Boots
  • Levitation (ring, spell, potion, boots)
  • Note that the potion/spell will time out (best with blessed potion or spell at skilled or better)
  • Boots can be stolen/taken off (foocubus/nymph)
  • Rings can be stolen/taken off (foocubus/nymph)
  • Rings can be destroyed (electric eels, wand of lightning, blue dragon, etc.)
• Use boulders to create a path across the water
  • Scrolls of Earth or boulders from giants
    • You need at least 2 scrolls of Earth
  • Polymorph into a giant and collect boulders to drop/throw
  • Note that on the Titan version of Medusa's Island, there are three pools of water in the room by which you enter the level. Behind the middle pool is a door. Hit that with a wand of striking and use the scrolls of Earth from there.
• Dig down, come back up to kill Medusa
  • You can level teleport up to get past the level if you have teleport control
  • You can also wait until you have some other means of crossing the water
    • Perseus' statue may contain levitation boots
    • Vlad's Tower has a guaranteed pair of water walking boots
    • You can wish for one of the means described here when you reach the castle
• Freeze the water
  • Spell of cone of cold or wand of cold
  • Cold-breathing monsters (reverse genocide if necessary)
  • Polymorph into a cold-breathing monster
  • Note that fire (breath, wand) can melt the ice
• Jump from island to island
  • Spell or boots of jumping
  • Being a Knight (chess moves only)
  • Doing the shotput (throwing an iron ball attached to you)
  • Note that you will have to use the door behind the water on Titan's level to use either of these methods
• Be able to survive without air
  • Use an Amulet of Magical Breathing
  • Polymorph into a creature that can survive without air
  • Put damageable goods in an oilskin sack
• Polymorph into a swimming or flying creature (e.g., vampire lord)
  • Ride a flying creature

How not to be drowned by eels

(See also the Instadeath Spoiler: http://www.steelypips.org/nethack/instadeath.html)

Note that water walking, levitation, flying, etc. are not protection against drowning!

Note that jumping into or shotputting into an eel or other water creature will land you in the water

• Never be burdened or worse; you may be grabbed and drowned before you get a turn to respond
• Wear an oilskin cloak
• Grease your body armor or cloak (whichever is outermost)
  • Grease can be worn off
• Use missile weapons, wands, or spells and ESP to kill the eels from afar
  • Thrown rocks are a cheap source of disposable missile weapons
  • Lances and polearms can be used if you have ESP from an external source (e.g., helm of telepathy, certain quest artifacts), but not if you have intrinsic telepathy (because you can't hit things with them while blind)
• Use ESP, be fast or very fast, and run around the eels
• Be able to survive without air
  • Amulet of Magical Breathing
  • Polymorph into a creature that can survive without air (e.g., vampire lord)
• Kill them in melee
  • Be able to dole out massive damage in melee
  • Be sure to have wands of teleport at the ready if they wrap themselves around you
• Cancel them
• Blessed genocide ;

How to not turn to stone through Medusa's gaze

• Have reflection (SDSM, shield of reflection, amulet of reflection)
  • Note that reflection will kill Medusa *unless* you are invisible (the message is "Medusa doesn't seem to notice that her gaze was reflected."). You may want to wear mummy wrappings to exploit this, if you are invisible
• Be blind (blindfold, towel, potion of blindness, lightning (wand, blue dragon), yellow light or dust vortex (reverse genocide if necessary), expensive camera, cursed unicorn horn (have blessed available to counteract undesired effects), food)
• Be stoning resistant (e.g. polymorph into a stoning resistant creature such as a stone golem)
• Kill her in one turn (Spell of Finger of Death or wand of death) and
  • Have stealth so she does not wake up (mind the squeaky boards)
  • Be very fast and exploit the speed system
    • See the Monk FAQ on how to do this -- you have to kill Medusa in one turn, however (+FoD or /oD)
  • Wear an Amulet of Life Saving and kill her in one turn after you die
  • Wearing an Amulet of Life Saving is probably advisable in any case, if you are foolhardy or desperate enough to try one of these methods

Credits

Many methods and suggestions from (in no particular order):

Pat Rankin, Geoduck, Topi Linkala, Geoffrey Eadon, Roger Broadbent, Sebastian Haas

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