*Awesome tier*

Jewelers: Found a nice and cheap ring/amulet? Yeah, it's probably something bad (curses make things cheaper). Once you have plenty of cash you should buy everything though. Curse test and identify everything, you can only gain from it. If you get amulet of flight/reflection you're golden, these are the best early game talents to get. Vitality will prevent the annoyance of rabies. Many useful rings as well: free action is a MUST for surviving the dungeon, so getting it early is awesome. Sustain ability can be used for eating poisonous stuff without resistance, and for preventing other stuff (such as mind flayers) from decreasing your stats. Slow digestion is an extremely useful commodity, but not necessary since food is plentiful (unless you're herbivore). Ring of aggravation has its uses, especially for grinding, since it increases spawn rate and makes monsters come to you (set some caltrops and a beartrap at the only entrance to your room and you'll have an easy time dispatching the baddies). Conflict will enemies kill each other, it's extremely useful if used correctly. Have discretion with the amulet of unchanging: it can prevent annoying polymorphs if you do not have polycontrol, but dying while polymorphed AND unchanging will not revert you, you'll stay dead.

GRIND: get every talent and stat up ring you want! Once you get polymorph and polycontrol you'll be able to eat most of the jewelry and get most of the useful talents in the game. Intelligence will help grind crafting/bartering skill faster. Con/wis will let you raise max HP/mana above your natural limits. Sustain ability should be gained permanently once you max your stats in base form. It can also be worn and combined with polymorph control to make you nigh invincible (you won't lose constitution after dying). Impact or protection should be on you at all times once you've permanently gained all the good talents from the other rings. Eat amulets of reflection, flying and vitality for their awesome talents. Always wear lifesaving, you can also eat them if you have many spares.

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Quality apparel and accessories (wand shop): Buy and test all the wands, some can make your early game really easy. Wand of opening means you don't need to craft lockpicks for trove chests after all: just pile the booty and zap the unlocking wand. Wand of polymorph can change items (polypile) into different items of the same kind, but it can also generate a golem of the item's material, so beware. Secret detection can be zapped whenever you feel stuck, especially in mines 4 where there are many secret passages. Every ray wand can attack enemies from afar and bounce walls, so you can snipe nasties from adjacent rooms/corridors. Many other wands are useful emergency or mobility items. Don't be too sparing with damage wands: always kill monsters that can generate with wands using wands, so they don't get a shot at you first, and use wands to clear the gnomish warriors at mines 2's scroll and potion stashes, since they can use the loot against you (being thrown a potion of amnesia sucks). Sometimes this shop generates leather gloves for some reason, which is nice if you don't have them yet (and they aren't cursed).

GRIND: Get polymorph wand and ABUSE it for getting anything you want from junk items. Potions, scrolls, rings, wands, armor, weapons, you name it: all useless garbage can be turned into sweet treasure at a single zap. Golems, you say? No problem, just get a blessed wand of cancellation: it will instantly kill any golem you zap it with (make it walk away from your pile of stuff first, and beware any breath attacks if you lack reflection). Cancellation can also be used for removing curses and enchantments, and downgrading potions, scrolls, books and jewelry for less inventory clutter (27 rings of naught in a stack are cleaner than 27 different garbage rings). Animation can be used for transporting any fixture you want to somewhere else (easier with porter or magic whistle), I like accumulating all the workbenches in my stash floor for all my crafting needs. Eat these: light for flight talent, secret detection for searching talent, locking/opening for locks skill, magic missile for magic resistance (BEWARE the damage, you can polymorph and use ring of sustain ability to get it MR without any loss). Death for when you don't want to deal with annoying crowds (don't hit yourself or a pet, have reflection/magic resist for safety). Stock on anything that you think is useful and you don't have the spell for, such as phasing.