# Forum:Boulder on down stairs ... in a corner...
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In an early game I have found what is possibly an impossible situation.  Hope someone can help with ideas.
My ranger character has only been to the second level... there was an altar on the first level so when she found some elven mithril armour on level 2 she popped upstairs (leaving dog behind) to quickly check whether it was ok to wear.  
However, in her excitement to make her way back to the altar, she accidentally pushed a boulder over the down staircase, which is in the corner of a room.  So it's stuck.  (She thought actually that it would just roll down the stairs, but it did not and is now blocking her way off level 1.) 
Being a starting character, she's got no obvious way of dealing with this situation.  Other than ranger starting equipment plus uncursed elven mithril, she's got 4 unknown potions, 4 unknown scrolls, a cursed unknown ring, a spellbook of healing (and knows the spell but has no chance of success as yet), and having been lucky finding food has 6 cram rations, 3 food rations and a tripe ration.  Definitely no spell of force bolt or wand of striking, and definitely no means of digging or polymorphing into a giant.  
Since food is plentiful and she's got the altar, her first thought is not to worry too much and camp at the altar for a while.  The tripe can be saved to re-tame the dog when the time comes.
But that still leaves the question of how to get downstairs eventually without having to leave all inventory behind...
Ideas welcome please!!!!
--- Elenmirie (talk) 14:48, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

If you get your inventory down low enough (i.e. drop anything heavy, especially armour), you can squeeze onto the square of the boulder. That'll let you continue the game, and with any luck you could find something that broke the boulder and reclaim your items that way.
Alternatively, sometimes you can knock items downstairs via throwing other items at them. I'm not sure if you can knock a boulder downstairs that way, but if you can, that might be an alternative solution to the problem.
I'd suggest that your best option is to throw most of your items onto the square with the boulder; even if the boulder doesn't fall, your items will. Then you can squeeze onto the boulder square, go downstairs, and pick your fallen items up. Ais523 (talk) 14:56, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
You have some gold, don't you? It's plentiful. Throw individual gold pieces t1$ onto the boulder to knock it down the stairs. This works only if the gold pieces hit the boulder instead of the wall behind it. So test how far you can throw. E.g. if you can throw a coin 4 tiles, then stand exactly 4 tiles from the boulder. It will take an average of 30 gold pieces per boulder.[1] You might want to plan ahead in case the boulder falls down and blocks the upstairs. --Tjr (talk) 20:55, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, you guys are awesome!!  You may be amused to find out what actually happened... Chrysoberyl the Ranger camped out for some time at the Level 1 altar, passing the time by scribbling with her fingers in the dust "I will not block the only exit with boulders" on every floor tile in the room where the altar was.  After all that she only ended up with an Axe called Cleaver... she didn't want to seem ungrateful to her Goddess, but honestly!  Couldn't Venus have sprung for Magicbane after all that?  But perhaps the Goddess works in other ways, for after some fruitless shooting (second-best) arrows at the boulder hoping to knock it downstairs, a dwarf suddenly burst through the wall... yes, through it!  All the archery practice did pay off and after acquiring one fine dwarvish mattock, the problem was solved.  
Almost disappointed to lose the opportunity to try some of the more arcane methods suggested... never mind, I'm sure Chrysoberyl will find herself in some equally puzzling scrapes later on.  
Cheers!
--- Elenmirie (talk) 22:00, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

An update - I had a chance to deliberately recreate the situation when the game was much farther on and I had plenty of means of getting out of it if necessary.  I started throwing gold at the boulder but slipped up after the first couple of single coins and threw my whole pile at once (oops) and after listening to the fading sounds of gold coins bouncing down the stairs, started throwing darts at the boulder.  I had 14 darts and threw them all - many messages indicating that the dart had caused other objects to fall down the stairs but the boulder stayed put.  Then I commenced tossing arrows - unwielded my bow first, but not sure whether that made any difference.  After about 10 arrows, finally the boulder went down the stairs.  When I went down to see what was going on, the boulder was 2 squares away from the stairs, and the rest of the stuff was scattered around randomly.  If I hadn't been a Ranger with plenty of missile weapons to hand, Ais's suggestion probably would work - just start tossing everything you've got at the boulder until it either goes down or you can squeeze through and pick up your stuff downstairs.  I think potions would break though so you'd have to leave those until you could come back for them.  -- Elenmirie (talk) 09:23, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
a silmalar situation happened to me today  

thanks for posting this --Rancalred (talk) 20:36, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
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