# Talk:Drain for gain
Notes
See the perennial discussion on the protection racket: Most players agree it's a learning tool to force you to play carefully, but not a way to increase the ascension ratio of experienced players. I could imagine that applies to this technique, too.
Exercise is very slow -- likely too slow to be useful for this technique.
You will still see arch-liches in Gehennom because some liches are generated with potions of gain level. Besides, liches are bad because they summon, and you'd have to be level -11 never to see a master lich in the sanctum.
A cursed unihorn makes you ill, and when you cure that, your stat loss is likely reversed (because each trouble has the same chance of being cured, and each stat counts as a separate trouble).
Tossing Stormbringer up when you are low-level is a very bad idea because you usually have little maxHP. My wizards have been killed by a single vampire bite while fully healed. Perhaps a wraith is the safest method, and should be mentioned first.
typos: /negative/ HoB; /restoring/ stats
Foocubi are a scarce resource. At least, you'd want to say how to summon lots of them (e.g. letting yourself get hit by water demons). Likely, if you can pull that off, you might as well ascend.
This article needs to be linked from all the other ones on related subjects, else nobody will find it.
––Tjr 13:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Some additions;
The cheapest way I see to reduce con would be a cursed unicorn horn, and if that makes you ill simply cast spellbook of cure sickness, possibly also spellbook of cure blindness, as these will not increase your stats. The unihorn article doesn't explicitly state what a cursed can cause, but I'm assuming it's roughly the same as what it can cure.
The quickest way would be to use multiple rings of gain constitution. The charging article says that a ring will never explode from cursed charging unless it is already at -5, so there's no risk of losing a ring to obtain a -5 or -6 ring. Two of these gives -10 - -12 con, and the table in the article shows you need a difference of 15 for maximum HP gain. a +5 ring or two rings adding to +5 while you have 13 con (use the cursed unihorn or exercise to adjust it here, if it is above/below this point).
Reducing WIS using a cross-aligned altar is both quick and cheap, as long as you don't accidentally convert every altar in the game.
Exercise is useful for raising your stats to the necessary threshold in preparation for this activity, but as Tjr says it is way too slow to actually be used during the level gain/loss.
Is donating to priests faster than writing Elbereth? Elbereth is free, takes one turn, and also exercises WIS; does it exercise is in a different amount or something?
-- Qazmlpok 16:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
If you donate to priest for clairvoyance, you will exercise your wisdom every turn while you have clairvoyance, after draining to XL1, a small amount of gold can give you tens of thousands of turns of clairvoyance, enough to exercise wisdom to maximum. --Ylmson 08:19, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
I see. I was under the impression that it was just the donation that exercised WIS. Checking the source (attrib.c, line 353) is showing that it's every 5 turns, not every turn. -- Qazmlpok 15:12, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Foocubi are not a scarce resource for most chaotics, who can obtain an unlimited number of them through Kop sacrifice (and fairly easily even without Kops, just by saccing e.g. watchman and human zombie corpses).  --Ilmari Karonen 20:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
You mean human chaotics. --66.93.240.163 09:32, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I think this article focuses too much on the "Drain to level 1" strategy. It seems to me that a better strategy is to repeat the routine of wearing equipment to decrease wisdom/constitution, losing a level by draining, wearing equipment to boost wisdom/constitution, and regaining the lost level by killing a weak creature. This will boost HP and Power while keeping the same level.
--66.93.240.163 09:32, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
An interesting observation I just made. I just danced back and forth between 14 and 15 with a wraith and three various +/- ringso of gain constitution and pumped my Hp with 400 more or so, but I lost all my Pw in the process.
--Kynde (talk) 18:24, 8 October 2013 (UTC)