Lvl 8, Dlvl 8, Gnome Wizard, killed by a system shock

I'm just no good at playing a wizard. I always run out of power and then get stuck. I made it down to Minetown, barely, and was feeling pretty safe. It was really weird when I hit the first level of the Mines. I was a gnome so I felt fairly secure in venturing down. But when I got there, all I found was corpses. At first I thought a rolling boulder trap had taken out a few. But then it was just more corpses. Then I found the ghost of some samurai who had just ate it a few minutes earlier. Then everything made a lot more sense. So there were two ogres I had to run past to get to Minetown. Again I had a little bit to clean up once I got there, but things seemed okay. Until I got stuck in a corner with an orc zombie coming one way and an elf the other way. So I can't Elbereth my way out of it. Actually, I did. I started with a wand of slow monster so I zapped the elf and got the zombie running far enough with Elbereth that I made it out of the corner.

But shortly before that I had, in desperation, put on one of the rings I started with. It was a ring of polymorph. Not polymorph control, just polymorph. When I put it on, nothing happened. I never took it off. I got to the temple and was trying to close the door when I died.

Oh, and my cat, who later died in action with a centipede, stole some boots of speed for me. Awesome.

8235 points
4269 moves