Those dastardly fountains :P
Fountains are worth drinking out of once in while. I drank out of one and found myself getting my ASTR up by 2 points, AGI +1 INT +1 END +1 Dex +1. It even led me to an amulet of live saving! IN UT1!!! So it is worth it :) Well...only in the early levels. *edit* ARGH Stupid fountain. Got turned into a hattifattener or whatever its called...ok maybe they arn't too great.

Well they might be horrible in early levels too. If you have really good start, find a lot of good stuff but then you drink from a fountain, a dark frog pops out and because your charter isn't still yet any good he get's his ass kicked (and you lose all your nice gear) But I think it's good always drinking from fountains, because I have a feelings there's bigger chance to happen good things than bad things :)

Same way with me... Especially in nethack. Fountaint generally are bad for me, but I just can't resist quaffing them till they dry.

Yeah well the only problem is sometimes they lead you to later levels. Really bad in the GC. REALLY BAD! But i like the polymorphing. I got polymorphed into a roze quartz golem once and a goblin prince. I was wishing to get polymorphed into An enner :P. I hoped for too much coz then I turned into that stupid hattifattener.

I once got sucked from GC2-3 down to GC8-9, and I'm standing there in my ommel hair armor thinking I'm dead meat, but it turned out that I was on Ivan's level, and between taming him, and taking his armor for myself, we were able to hack our way right back upstairs. It actually helped to come in the back way on that pack of dark frogs, because you enter the level right in their midst. Ivan and I got the mystic in like 3 turns, and the rest in like 10. One of the most interesting rounds I've played. Elpuri got me in the end, though I hurt that %#@#$!@^ pretty bad first.