Tips from others

Barrel bashing - Nystul
Use a blunt weapon when cracking barrels. Barrels can spawn skeletons; might as well get ready for them.

Team Stair Trap - stolen from C.P.U. post by Magic Frog
First, you station the rogue and perhaps a spare warrior behind the stairs. BTW, make sure any bow repairs are done FIRST.

Next, one of the other players goes and gets the Butcher. The Butcher follows, and that player simply goes down the steps to level 3. This leaves the Butcher trapped almost automatically, and the rogue and perhaps the 3rd player can shoot him full of arrows at will.

More Butcher and Leo tips - Pete
W = wall, G = grate, C = game creator, <---- = path taken by the 'rabbit', B = where the Butcher ends up

                             <----BBB

WWWWG  GGGGGGWWWWW

W                          C W

W                             W

OK. The game creator positions himself behind and right next to a grating at least 2 spaces from the opening. One of the other players (the rabbit) opens the Butcher's door and, maintaining at least a 2 space lead, leads the Butcher past the grating with the game creator. When the Butcher gets closer to the creator than to the rabbit, he loses interest in the rabbit and stays within 1 square of the creator. The rabbit ducks through the opening and joins the creator in shooting at the Butcher. The main drawback with this method is that the Butcher 'paces' to and from over his 3 square area, and this means that most of a mage's and warrior's arrows will miss, as will a lot of the rogue's. This drains a few bows that might be put to a better use.

BTW, through a grating is a perfect place to use all those scrolls of inferno that litter the dungeons. And that works for all mobs, not just the Butch.

An aside. In the past when playing Ironman, the stairs down have been a favorite dumping site for gear we wanted to keep track of but not carry around. If you plan to use the stairs trap on the Butcher, be sure to leave a big clear space around the stairs. It is a real PITA to click on someplace cause you want to move there and instead stop to pick something up.

Typically, if you activate Leo, you will have a hard time outrunning him. However, this is a good place for a little tactical use of town portal. When you have a chance to clear a fair bit of level 3 and have found a place to park Leo before you meet him. Simply cast a town portal in the parking place. When you do meet Leo, everybody runs back to and up the portal. While Leo frantically guards the portal against your return, you (all) sneak back down the stairs from town, through levels 1 and 2 and go on about your business.

Editor’s note: Very nice tactic. If the party doesn’t have HB, it’s a good time to study the explored territories and find a place to park Leo. A good place to park Leo would be a dead-end room out of the path of the up stair and the rest of the level.

Telekinesis - Moriah - Thread
Start 2 computers, take 2 chars in their 30s, play in Hell difficulty over IPX.
As before, one char cleared most of a room, the other came in, cast a single spell on a single monster and see what the result was.

First case:
Stone Curse -> no experience gain.
Stone Curse + Telekinesis (2nd monster) -> XP gain.

Next, try a more resistant monster.
This meant a change of slashing char to a Sorceror more capable of handling Hell/Caves.
So we come across Blood Claws. Immune to Fire and Magic, resistant to Lightning.
Incoming char casts a single Telekinesis -> XP gain.
Try anther highly resistant critter, an Obsidian Lord on the next level.
This time I cast TK, then left to go make a cup of coffee. Milk had run out, so had to run an errand. Still gained XP after the other char killed it (what do you expect with a Strange Sword of Carnage?).

This actually brings us to an interesting stage.
What really happened in that game on dlvl 10, the Tank Mage killed all but a handful of Obs. Lords.
Then the Test Mage came in. But due to several lingering Obs. Lords, he only had time to tag a few of them, then had to scurry back up the stairs. Tank Mage killed all the immediate monsters (no XP for the Mage on the other level), then took the 3 remaining Obs. Lords to a safe spot away from the stairs. Re-enter the Test Mage. Kill Obs. Lords with Tank and lo-and-behold, the Test Mage did NOT gain any XP. I guess the effects of TK wear off if a char leaves the level. Next on this same level, I decided that it would be a nice test if the TK mage could die. So he tagged the last remaining Obs. Lord on the level, took off his shield, dropped a res scroll, dropped 2 full blue pots and proceeded to commit komushi or whatever the term is for suicide. Tank Mage dutifully distracted the Obs. Lord, raised the Test Mage with the res scroll (the test mage is a LoL after all) and Tank then kills the Obs. Lord (gotta love that Strange Sword of Carnage!). Test Mage gained XP from this last kill

Telekinesis Staff Calculation - Charis
PS knowing how much you guys like math 8-}
How valuable is a TK staff??

#charges = 20-40, avg 30
take a lvl 15 or so sorcerer, facing fireclan or mudman, around 1100 base exp.
He needs 110K exp to lvlup. This is 100 solo kills, or 200 half-kills.
With recharges, staff will have 30->26->22->19->16->14->12->10->9..1 or a total of about
187 TK's to cast.

Conclusion- a mage could get almost an entire lvl up from TK alone from an average staff, likely two lvls if found early

A variation of butcher bake 2b..... Cyrene - Thread
....wherein instead of leading him to a grate room and doing (or muffing, as the case may be) the quick door slam, you lead him to a long grate and just duck through the door and up along the inside of the grate. fat charlie will take the diagonal to you, miss the door, and wander around up and down the grate while you roast and/or procupine him.

variation 2c is for the steady of nerve and mouse, wherein the game originator waits behind a grate while some sucker, ummm, brave rabbit fetches butch and leads him right past on the other side of the grate, where butch scrapes off on the game originator and lets the rabbit bolt down a hole somewhere.

of course, 2c is just a variation of 1b, the dual stair trap dodge. in this one, only useful when butch is coming towards the open end of the stairs from his crib, the rogue takes up stair trap position before butch is let free, and the rabbit just leads him straight to stairs and bolts down, leaving butch trapped for rogue. guaranteed to lower the rogues blood pressure in im....

which leads us to im boss trap plan 9 from outer space, which charis showed me a few weeks back, in which game orignator (charis) stair trapped a skel boss and held it there while rogue lined up the killing shots at leisure (which beat the hell out of the method i was using, which was the run and shoot and cuss and hope the hell the damn bosses ai would crap out and get him stuck somewhere before *my* ai crapped out and got me killed).

The *easiest* butcher kill, even for a VERY low lvl char (well, mage)... Charis - Thread
* Find fire wall scroll
* Open door
* double cast it right inside the room next
to door
* Close door
* Listen to screams
* Butch dies
* Open door, pick up drop

Absolutely simple

(The double cast is so that even a lvl 1 fire wall is strong enough to kill him) his walking around is what makes it so painful