>In all seriousness, you could ask for basic prep info from
>most people in game and they'd tell you. Not "where can I get
>preps", but "where can I buy a potion of teleportation?" or
>"where should I look in order to get flight potions". Some,
>like reduce and enlarge, are slightly less likely to be
>revealed, but an ally would probably still do it.

Additionally, in my opinion, the above are all you really need to play the game very competitively (plus detect invis if your character doesn't have it built in.)

You desperately need to be able to recall to survive when you're starting out. Teleport helps a lot in certain situations where there's no other hope. Flight is necessary for some opponents. Enlarge/reduce, depending on your character, can sometimes be pretty useful. But honestly, that's all I roll with for most characters.