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LAST TIME, ON SLASH'EM
I finished off more quests and special levels, and prepare to take on, well, more special levels.
CONTINUING, ON SLASH'EM
The Nymph level has a 45% chance of appearing on DL:23-24. At this point, I'm very fast, have extrinsic telepathy and see invisible and can kill nymphs and pixies in at most a hit or two, so there's no threat other then potential mild annoyance if they take something.
Aphrodite always spawns on the nymph level, and is just a nymph that takes another couple hits before dying.
Drain resistance starts being very important here because monsters that can potentially start with offensive wands will have them.
Ring of protection from shape changers forces monster shape changers (like were-creatures and doppelgangers) to stay in their natural state instead of turning into other things. It doesn't affect me as a player doppelganger.
Eventually the priest stops giving me AC from donation and just takes my money. Jerk.
I take some time to make some unholy water. It acts as the opposite of holy water where it curses anything dipped in it. Some of the items I have are more useful cursed though.
For example, I curse all my teleportation scrolls because levelport is way more useful.
This level has THREE swamp rooms as well as a zoo.
I'm not sure any of them actually managed to hit me before I killed them all.
Deeper ones are the next level up from deep ones but can't hurt me enough that I care, although I hit 13 from this one.
I go to attack the giant, but he has a surprise for me in one of the new potions.
Potions of amnesia can erase your memory of the current level, of past levels, and of discoveries. After some looking around though, I think this one thankfully only damaged my memory of this level.
A tinning kit, finally. Applying a tinning kit to a corpse preserves it as a tin, which can be later opened to eat. Nutrition from a tinned monster is minimal, but bonus side effects from eating corpses happen normally.
Eating a stalker corpse while invisible will grant both intrinsic invisibility and see invisible. I didn't feel like finding a wand of make invisible to zap myself with otherwise I could have just ignored it.
Some water monsters like eels have a potential instakill drowning attack if you let them grab a hold of you, but none of them are strong enough to survive long. I also notice that this level has two downstairs, so that means another special level.
Oh, the Lost Tomb. Lots of shades and mummies. There would be a lich here too, if I hadn't wiped them from existence already.
Starting to get a pretty good spell list, considering I won't cast most of it. Detect treasure, though, is the Rogues special spell, so I get a bonus to casting it. Rogues can get expert in divine magic, so if I can level it up with a lower spell I can probably cast it at a decent rate. Its the same as a portion of object detection, except reusable.
Silver sabers are one of the best non-artifact weapons out there and a popular choice for #twoweaponing in NetHack because you can't two-weapon two artifacts there. Doppelganger, in a rare moment of not being the best race, can't two-weapon though.
Slippery cloaks make it impossible for sea monsters to drown you (because they can't grab onto you). I swap it in for my cloak of displacement because the slippery cloak also grants me MC3 instead of displacement's MC2.
MC (magic cancellation) is a non-stacking form of resistance some armour pieces grant that affects the chance on monsters special attacks working on you, separate from magic resistance.
I read a cursed spellbook that ends up paralyzing me for almost 100 turns. This is how much damage a couple of monsters managed attacking me the whole time with my massive pile of AC and regeneration.
Wearing any metallic armours, any non-robe body armour (robes are body armour and not cloaks in SLASH'EM) and holding a shield all contribute to spellcasting penalties. Taking of my metallic helm and shield drops my fail% of light low enough that I can just spam casting it in a safe place to get some divine skill points. Divine has some nice non-combat spells I'd like to be able to cast at a reasonable rate like detect objects, identify, and magic mapping.
My shield is my source of reflection and I can equip it easily if some monster comes into sight, so I don't mind un-equipping it. Body armour takes much longer to take on/off, so I just leave it on and deal with the penalties.
DL:26 brings us the Guild of Disgruntled Adventurers. Its a big room filled with player monsters, who are a GREAT source of loot because they get lots of potions and wands within a limited selection of types.
Although they will drink and cast them at me 
I set up shop here just of range to minimize how many can try to get at me with ranged attacks.
Unfortunately, someone standing on that spot I was attacking had a wand of digging and made a hole there which I stepped into
Going back upstairs to the Guild I also find a cockatrice nest, which I'm going to leave sleeping.
The tourist monsters in the Guild usually have Hawaiian shirts on them, which fills my last armour spot with another thing to enchant.
Something must of woken them up. I kill them all so I don't have to worry about them wandering around.
At least one guy started with a wand of death and not just striking/fire/lightning/draining/cold like everyone else.
I'm getting massively burdened by the sheer amount of stuff these guys have.
Eating leprechauns has a high chance of granting teleportis, which bounces you around everywhere, but with teleport control this is a good thing.
The guy with the wand of death ran away, I tracked him down to kill him and take it, because those are always useful.
I head back upstairs to sort through all my new stuff. I had a couple of cursed scrolls of enchant weapon, so I read them on my Bat from Hell to try and get it down to +5, hoping to re-enchant it up to +7 safely. Artifacts can resist this though, and the Bat does that for all the scrolls I had.
I also drink a bunch more of full healing potions just to clear up space in my bag if nothing else. I still have a dozen more hanging around.
At this point, I also have plenty of resources, excellent equipment and levelport, if I wanted to I could breeze through to the lategame with it. I do want to show off all of the special levels at least once though, so its the long way down for us.
Now that I have a tinning kit, I start can start chowing down on giants hoping for strength increases.
I also visit the Wyrm Caves again.
In addition to making big monsters snack size, tinning kits are also a one turn solution to stopping trolls from constantly reviving.
Spamming light gets me Basic in divine.
More special levels!
The Spider Caves are full of spiders. Surprise!
Without poison resistance, this place is terrifying. There is some good loot here, though. A guaranteed wand of death, ring of conflict, and speed boots. I don't need any of them but I'll clear it out just because. At some point I passed out from fainting from lack of food because I wasn't paying close attention, and the spiders still didn't pose a threat.
There's two unique monsters on this level, but they don't have the strength to hurt me either. Shelob here is the first one.
Girtab is the other unique monster, and with that we're done here.
More giants to eat!
Oh god that's not a giant at all 
I completely forgot titans could spawn in these rooms and was playing it fast and loose. Titans are nasty spellcasters, this one just summoned a basilisk and a black dragon on me.
I kill one of the titans and turns out there a second one.
I pull out and put on my ring of conflict, which takes the pressure off me because monsters will attack each other instead of me.
Two titans dead
With conflict, here you can see how dangerous cockatrices are in action. I clear out the rest of the level with those damn titans dead. I was never in a situation where I was really threatened but it could have turned out different if I wasn't watching out for the things that were actually dangerous, which is mostly monsters that can kill me in ways asides damage.
NEXT TIME, ON SLASH'EM
Only a few more special levels until we get to the late game, I swear.