[Peter Ebbesen]

In a deathmatch with n contenders, at least n-1 contenders will die. (It is possible that all n contenders die). Remember this, always.

Thus, unless you are absolutely sure that the contender is sending will win, you are not going to affect the outcome of the number of enemy contenders that will die.

With exception of a special case (dealt with in a moment), the real question is thus: Do you have a commander that

1. will win almost certainly
2. can actually use the trident and will never want to dump it in favour of a good sword, shield, bow, staff of elemental mastery &etc
3. will at random be forced to participate in future deathmatces, no matter what you want him to do at the time

In most cases, the answer is no. Those strong enough to be near certain winners are nearly always magical creatures that benefit much more from magic-boosting or shielding items than from the quickness of the Trident and the extra XP gained from winning. Additionally, the higher the difficulty level of enemies, the nastier things you will meet so the more powerful you will have to be to win - and the less likely that it is a unit that will overall benefit from wielding the Trident.

(Note: In case the winner has no hands, he does not get the Trident. You could base around not even getting that one, but still risking life and limb, I guess, but that is a bit far out.]

In other words, there are exceptionally few cases where it pays to enter the Death Match with the intent to win. This is skewed by the number of human players to AI players, but a good baseline: Don't enter in order to win - it does not pay off.

[Unless you are Ermor and send a spare Dusk Elder. Dusk Elders will kill just about anything in a Death Match and it is hard to afford decent equipment for all your Dusk Elder's anyhow]

I promised a special case before, and this is it. You can enter in order to lose, and still gain. This is done by booby-trapping your contestant such that he will hurt the opposing contenders.

It should be immediately obvious that a booby trap based on inflicting massive damage on a single contender is useless. If you are not going to win, then there is only going to be one enemy survivor anyhow, so your killing off one is completely and utterly irrelevant.

In other words, what you are interested in is cursed items that the enemy will pick up. With a bit of luck, it will be given to the enemy that defeats your contender, who, if defeated, will hand it over to another contender &etc. Eyes of Aiming, Berserker Pelts, Knives of the Damned, Amulets of Lycanthropy, Armour of Thorns - only your imagination sets the limit - so long as you choose something cursed or immediately disabilitating (Fever Fetish).

[ March 29, 2004, 17:46: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]