IVAN: some questions

[Skeletor]

1- do my equipment make enemies get bigger? and how does it works? here are my doubts:
a- only the weapon bonus (+1, +2..) or also the material?
b- only my weapon or every piece of equipment?
c- only my equipped stuff or also the stuff in my backpack?
d- only my weapon + stuff in my backpack or also the stuff I leave on the floor or closed in chests (carried with me)?

2- what are some good things to wish? usually I go for "vermis" and "dragon cuirass", or "belt of levitation" if I haven't managed to beat the sumo wrestler.

and, if you are into variants:
3- since the developers abandoned the project, there have been made some variants: http://www.attnam.com/downloads.php?show=variants
What are the main differences between IvanT, IvanX and Livan? What is your favourite?

Thanksss!

[corremn]

Since no one else answered.
I think material is very important, also you cant keep it in your backpack me thinks.
I also have a feeling that it is not as simple as what you carry with you at the time. I think your overall power is caluculated over time and therefore picking up a great weapon for a short time should not really have much difference.  Weapon skill and hitpoints also affect monster generation. 

As for wishing that is a common question asked.  However I have forgotton most of the good items, it has been a while.  However wands of cloning are always good.

I have not played a varient so I cant answer that either.

Also there are two IVAN forums out there somewhere, the old and the new.  They have all the spoily stuff you need.

[Z]

I don't know exactly how power is calculated, but I am quite sure that HP is important. For that reason, armors of great health are generally considered harmful. They increase your HP, but also make the enemies stronger... bad.

And turning yourself invisible or wielding a good weapon just before entering a new dungeon level is also a bad idea.

As far as I know, only used equipment counts into calculating your power, not the contents of your inventory. I remember the reason given by the IVAN devs: if you show off with great armor and weaponry, this will attract powerful enemies thinking that they can mug you, but if you just hold them in your inventory, nobody will know.

[Skeletor]

Thank you guys!

[Archaalen]

Go to attnam dot com, that's the site for the new forum and wiki.  It was placed there because the old site got overrun with adbots and such.

IVAN is great fun, it's been just what I've needed to keep me distracted these days.

[Vanguard]

So correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that IVAN was originally intended to be unbeatable, but now is meant to be beatable if the player exploits things correctly, but still unbeatable if they want a special ending.

I heard that somewhere, but I don't play it, so I could be totally wrong.

[Z]

Well, I won IVAN latest official version best ending without doing anything bad (that is, without exploiting anything which was obviously a bug; some people might think that changing the material of your limbs is an exploit, but it is obviously a consciously designed feature, maybe it could be helpful to balance it a bit, but the help given by artificial limbs is not out of proportion anyway; there might also have been some people who won without using even that, I am not sure).

It's hard to tell what level of difficulty the devs intended. I remember them saying that this (i.e. the best ending) should not happen. Well, if they really wanted that, they could use some cheap way to make the game unbeatable, like forcing the player to go through 100 levels of monsters which kill in one hit and are virtually impossible to avoid, or whatever. (If passing one such level happens with probability <1/2 no matter what strategy you are using, then such a game would be practically unwinnable without savescumming.) IVAN does not have anything like that.