| abstract | - Digging for victory is a strategy in which the player aims to quickly reach the castle and obtain its wand of wishing by digging down as soon as possible. The resulting game is called a dig for victory. In addition to a digging instrument, the player needs a tonal musical instrument (not a leather drum or a bell) in order to open the castle drawbridge. Since elven wizards and priests are guaranteed to start with an instrument - and instruments are normally rather rare - an elven wizard is a popular choice of character for this strategy, due not only to the starting instrument but to the large selection of other magical equipment with which they begin. The dig for victory strategy is mostly preferred by players who find it an exciting way to reach the castle in a high percentage of newly begun games. However, many strong players do employ a controlled dive to the Castle if they do not yet have magic resistance or reflection after completing Minetown and Sokoban. This dive can take a variety of forms, from simply not exploring every dungeon level thoroughly to actually digging down all of the way. A player making the dive after getting some protection, building up a set of armor, and collecting wands is much more likely to succeed. Reasons to do this include the avoidance of traps which are painless with magic resistance (especially polymorph traps, which can destroy armor, and teleportation traps and level teleportation traps) and being able to obtain relatively early immunity to the touch of death (for which some players would preferentially genocide master liches over arch-liches because the former is more likely to appear at the castle).
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