Protection racket

The protection racket is a strategy for reaching the temple in Minetown at a low experience level with lots of gold and purchasing a large amount of divine protection for a small amount of money.

Strategy
Use of your starting pet is essential, as killing monsters yourself will soon raise your level, and not killing them will result in your swift death. Healers are widely considered best for this task, as the healing spell can be used to keep your pet alive while they do the fighting. Another advantage of Healers is that they can drink their starting potions to increase their maximum HP without levelling up. Gnomish Healers have an extra advantage: more of the monsters in the mines will be peaceful.

The stairs to the Gnomish Mines can be found on dungeon level 2, 3, or 4. On dungeon level 1, take the down staircase as soon as you find it. If you make it to dungeon level 5 without finding the mines, you've gone too far and must go back.

Surviving the Mines
The mines can be very hard for a low level character for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that the mine residents can often kill a level 1 character in a couple of hits and there are lots of them. This problem is made worse because the mines are frequently dark, making the monsters difficult to avoid and the stairs hard to find. There are several things one can do to make the chances of survival greater.


 * If you have 15 or less hit points, consider praying with 5 or less points left to increase your max HP by up to 5.  Do this before quaffing any potions of healing, which will raise your HP even more.


 * Save scrolls of magic mapping for the dark mine levels if you have any.


 * Choosing a race with infravision will help you avoid monsters even when in dark levels. Gnomes are the best choice since the mine residents are more likely to be peaceful as well.


 * Remember that if it is a choice between gaining a level and killing a monster to live, gain the level. Paying for only 5 or 6 points of protection at level 2 will still save you a lot of protection money down the road and help a lot as well.

Determine how much gold you need
Divine protection costs your level times 400, but not more than your level times 600. If you have no divine protection, a single donation will buy you 2 to 4 points (it's random). After that, each donation will buy you 1 point until you have 9 protection points, after which you only have a 1-in-protection chance to gain another point for every donation, up to a maximum of 20 protection points.

This means that if you make it to the temple at level 1, you'll need to donate 400 gold between six and eight times to acquire the maximum easily obtainable amount of protection. In other words, you'll ideally want to have about 3,200 gold when you get to the temple.

To donate the gold for protection, #chat with the priest. He will ask you how much gold you want to donate.

Getting the gold
There are many ways to get the gold you need:


 * Start as a healer or a tourist. Healers start with a large amount of gold (1,001 to 2,000 at random) and tourists with some (1 to 1000 at random as well) to donate to the Minetown priest.


 * Credit clone. That might not be a viable option if you don't have enough food for yourself and your pet (although there is usually a delicatessen in Minetown), and some might consider it cheating.


 * Loot vaults. You'll need some means of digging and maybe a scroll of magic mapping or two.  Other means of finding a vault can be found on the vault page.


 * Sell junk to shopkeepers. This requires extensive knowledge of item values since you don't want to carry 20 items to a shop just to find out they are only worth 1 gold each. Of course, finding a bag of holding will help you carry more junk to sell.


 * Polymorph your pet into something strong enough to kill shopkeepers, then clear out the Minetown shops. This is dangerous for several reasons: you risk killing the priest, leaving you with no way to donate; you risk losing your pet and therefore your source of income; and you risk killing Izchak.

What to do after

 * It might be a good idea to make your way back to the top of the dungeon and explore the rooms you haven't been in yet. You never know what you might find.


 * Level up.


 * Sokoban is also a good choice as the next step, if you haven't done it already.


 * Continue downward to Mine's End to get the guaranteed luckstone.


 * Combine this strategy with the digging for victory strategy for the ultimate metastrategy experience.


 * If you're a Gnomish Healer, you're probably low on food. Now that you can start killing stuff, you can return to the main dungeon (in order to avoid killing peacefuls) and hope for some lichen.

No matter what you choose to do, the extra AC you got from protection will be a big help in keeping you alive through the rest of the game.

Other information
For characters other than gnomish Healers and dwarven Archeologists, the chances of surviving the protection racket are slim, and hence it is a metastrategy. Conversely, it is arguable that the protection racket is actually the best strategy for gnomish Healers.