Just lost a deep elf conjurer to that in the Lair. A malevolent force made be drop two floors, to Lair 4. After 20 turns of wandering around without encountering anything, another malevolent force teleported me randomly into line of sight of a herd of 5 awake basilisks. I had ** willpower, so the chance to be affected by petrification is only 11% but with 5 of them at once, one is going to succeed. After I got petrified the game still continued for quite a number of turns but I didn’t wake up before the basilisks killed my char.
So how are you supposed to handle this? Trying to take them on one at a time and increasing willpower will help but you need a way out once you got the petrification on you. I noticed you still have 2 or 3 turns to act after you get hit but I’m unsure what I could have done with these turns to make my character survive.
After I died I thought a potion of cancellation might have cancelled the ongoing petrification? That would be a reasonable way out if it works but does it? Anything else I can do when I already have the petrification on me?
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cancellation removes petrification but does not solve the situation altogether.
naturally to get out of there use teleport.
Then these are just suggestions among many other (/chain of events): fog, teleport, poison, summoning, butterfly, god abil, fear, etc. Some buy time and would reset the fight entirely, while some would remain and try to hold their ground (risky/advanced/reckless)
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A thanks, so a potion of cancellation would have worked against the immediate petrification. Of course I still would have had a handful of basilisks around me afterwards but from there you can use all kinds of ways to resolve the situation. Too bad I only thought of that after my char died 
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don’t forget the potion of enlightenment, which grants will+.
If you quaff cancelation, you’re just going to get petrified again next turn or the turn after, so you do need a bigger plan than just that
I don’t know if quaffing cancellation removes the will+ granted by enlightenment, but it seems like it would. The !cancellation description should tell you after you use !enlightenment.
Other defenses: statue form and being a gargoyle make you immune to petrification, but that isn’t something you can use tactically at basilisk depths.
In general, cancellation removes all temporary non-persistent effect.
Probably can’t purify Yellow level contamination instantly,
God ability/effect is unaffected (Perhaps),
Potion Petition effects are likely to be affected;
Temporary status afflictions are probably not affected. (see Wretched Stars)
what more?
This one was not obvious for myself so this could help some. Cancellation would reset the Flay status apparently. Flay is a temporary status ofc.