I have just returned the King's Diadem to Perinn with From Perinn With Love, a non-magical Assassin. He was equipped very similarly to Squinting Guy, and he had WC 64 and AC 67, and 3249 HP. He was on level 157 when he finished, and is now on level 180.

Since Assassins can apparently gain WC and AC ad nauseam, someone with more time on their hands and less final exams in two days should attempt to breed an Assassin who can beat Murkon in his underwear, with no spells. No Items of Specialness of any kind on level 10, ever, except for bare hands and natural WC and AC. If someone wanted to be truly hardcore, they could do the whole game with no Items of Specialness at all except for keys and key-equivalents. I suppose we can allow a single Bright Stone to light the way, without which this quest would be virtually impossible. No hovering thingies or healing thingies either, on level 10.

Added challenges of this approach include:

1. Low Speed. The maximum natural Speed is 10, which does not allow you to attack 9 monsters at once.

2. Low Agility. This may sound strange, but it turns out that 31 Agility is kinda middling on level 10. I noticed this when I switched from +2 Boots of Agility to big clunky Iron Boots to get my guy's AC above 65.

3. Low resistance to fire, cold and poison. These top out at 10, and 20 is complete resistance. And no +2 Lozenges of Mintiness for the dragons you'll encounter.

I think I may well have kicked my Murkon addiction. Part of me is kinda hoping for a sequel, though.

Oh, and in the Hall of Fame we should be able to view any characters who have beaten the game. Just might be interesting.

^v^:)^v^
F"beating Murkon the hard way since 2002"B