Ring of Speed <+9> question
 

Hello there!

Newly registered, but I've been poking my head in here for a while, and after taking a few good stabs at Angband of various flavors over the years (I started with 2.7.8), I've finally decided to get "serious."

I've been following the Player's guide at rephial, and doing my dungeon diving with a High-Elf Ranger. I've died a few times just getting my bearings again; I had a great game going where my Ranger found a sling (+7, +5), but I died from phasedooring past a jammed door into a vault...

Anyway, let me get to my question. I managed to find a Ring of Speed <+9> lying on the floor at 50 feet (the level gave me a very good feeling). I've never even *seen* one of these before (I haven't been deeper than 1000'), so you can imagine the look on my face when I put it on (right after almost selling it un-ID'd to a merchant).

So! I find myself paralyzed at this moment. Knowing that there's no way I am going to beat the game on this particular run with my lack of experience, should I go ahead and sell the ring for the 20k gold that's being offered and try to get some gear with the money, or should I just keep the ring and keep going?

Twenty-thousand gold is a lot of gold for a level 4 character, even though there isn't anything really great for me in the stores right now...

That is anextremely lucky find and a good one too. Don't sell it. You can dive even faster with +9 Speed.
Rings of Speed normally show up very deep in the dungeon.
Usually you get some boots with a little speed bonus or such around 20ish or 30ish levels.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly how fast to dive...I feel like I'm trying to balance the quick advancement offered by deep diving with the risk.

I know I've advanced further than I ever have by just taking down stairs whenever I find them unless there's a good feeling on the level.

I know I'm going to be dying for a while. Be conservative, and I'll just end up dying after spending 10 hours. Be risky, and I'll die in two hours.

How do you figure out how quickly to descend? And is the rephial guide still worth following? What's the best way to pick up experience (playing the game, not experience points). :)

That's a fantastic find. Effectively doubles the damage you inflict, doubles your run away! run away! speed, halves the time it takes to close in on monsters with a range attack.

20,000 coins' worth of 'other stuff' really isn't going to do much for you: that money won't go far at the black market, and the good stuff simply isn't available outside the black market.

Not that long ago I found boots of speed +10 at around 700', and that sort of boost gets you down to 1500'+ almost without having to think (which is dangerous in itself, of course). The only problem monsters were orc uniques.

I'm not certain that it's a feature of the game but I've found that as a magic caster I nearly always find a high value prayer book in the first 1000', and as a prayer caster I nearly always find a high value magic book. With that money I'll start to stock up on my own books, restore potions etc etc on my returns to town. But you won't be selling the ring so it doesn't really matter :)

Re selling without ID, there are *no* cursed rings any more other than The One Ring (which really would be a find at 50'). Put it on and see what happens.

Usually I dive with charlevel=dlevel. Down to 1000'/1500'. Then I get a little bit slower until I have certain things, like see invisible, free action, basic four resistances coverable and some stat optimization for more damage, more spells, more hp. After that, I again dive faster, depending on class, and usually get lots of artifacts. When more restances are covered and some speed is gained, I end up on dlevel 80/90 with a >35 level char. (With enough speed and detection granted. It is vital to be able to early detect the really dangerous monsters and uniques. )

Scud, what kind of character are you playing? After this ranger dies, what should I try next? :)

I'm enjoying the range attacks of the Ranger, but I might like a spellcaster...

That's just typical RNG cruelty. ;)

My first winner was a ranger. They can do insane amount of damage with the good artifact bows and good ammo.

The also get useful spells later with the dungeon books.

I was never lucky with pure casters like mages or priests. I am enjoying the mixed classes, ranger, rogue, and paladin.

Thanks for the advice Mondkalb.

So you're scumming between 1000'/1500' until you have what you need to descend?

Should I be asking for more specifics in terms of numbers or whatever for basic resistances and the like to decide when to descend further, or will the numbers not mean anything to me?

I'm not looking for a hand-hold as much as general (but specific) advice. I just want to know what to shoot for; I know there are no guarantees, no way to avoid death.

Again, trying to balance gathering advice without trying to bypass the school of hard knocks. Concentrated gameplay over the last couple of days has done wonders both for my in-game success and my desire to play more (even with all the deaths).

Not really scumming, I dive a little slower and sometimes feel the need to go up a level, for instance when I go down an stand in the miidle of an orc horde or if there is a bunch of acid hounds nearby.

The ranger has the early detect monster spell which helps a lot to decide whether to stay or to leave.

There are some guides which have suggestions for what to cover for certain levels, but most of them are a bit outdated. Free action was extremely important and still is, but paralyzing has a bit toned down, so you have a chance to survive the early paralyzers, by waking up in time and escape.
Resist poison was an issue and still is (after ~2000'), but to a lesser degree, because there is the resist poison potion as a temporary aid. Though mass poisoners are still very dangerous as are the one breath to kill monsters ^^.

I am having the impression that it was easier, say in 3.06, to get armor of resistance or elven armor early on. I feel they are a bit rarer now wich often makes it necessary to swap things; but that may be my playstyle because I dive faster than back then. (I almost always get artifact armor prior to resistance armor.)

With +9 speed and detection ability, you can avoid nearly every danger if playing careful. Just make sure you have always methods of escape (teleport, teleport level, deep descend) and healing. Wands and rods of teleport other are also vital, but they appear to be somewhat rarer also.

It's hard to give specifics because there are so many ways to die. One can try to give advice like "don't go beyond level 20 without Free Action", but actually, people do that all the time and it works out; and sticking to all the "signposts" is a great way to die of boredom.

You seem pretty familiar with the game already. Instead of trying to guess which specific pointers would be useful (and any that I could offer would be outdated), I'll just remind you of the 3 golden rules of Angband:

1) Detect everything (all the time)
2) Run like hell (all the time)
3) Heal (all the time)

Use your detection and evasion very liberally, and if you're in serious danger, don't hold back on the healing potions, either. But try to not be in serious danger, because the good healing potions are hard to come by.

Also, don't rely only on spellcasting or reading, if you don't have rblind and rconf.

I'm going to try out the ring and see how it goes...

Mondkalb, I see you giving out a lot of advice; you should write a quick-and-dirty guide for your playstyle! I think people would find it interesting.

This is the first time I've gotten far enough to get over my initial fear of death. Dying is a crucial part of learning the game; I'm just excited to increase the amount of time *between* deaths. :D

@Djabanete:Boredom is no fun! Death to boredom! Boredom is killed by death, ironically.

@Mondkalb: I haven't gotten far enough to rely on either spellcasting or reading, so that isn't a problem. ;)

I'll let you know how long I last with this ring...we'll see if I can make it to 1500'.

Play. Die. Play more. Die more.

You can't learn what is dangerous without (almost) dying.
Even if you would use the spoiler files which tell you everything about a monster, the game has many ways of putting your chars in perilous situations by using wacky combinations of monsters to show you who really is in charge. ;)

BTW, I'd rather read a guide by Timo or other long time players and winners. :D

*Any* updated guide would be worth reading, even if it's short. I'd gather the details through experience. :D

Incidentally, if you want to see more of the game, I highly recommend playing as a half-troll warrior. Sure, they don't get any spells, but they're incredibly durable, their melee is frighteningly effective, and they're very good at ranged combat. Rangers are the most fragile of the hybrid classes; I wouldn't say they're a bad class, but they're probably not the easiest one to learn the game with. Mages have a similar problem, but even worse (because all they can do is spellcasting / magic devices and they crumple like tinfoil if they get into melee).

I personally find Rangers easy to play (as long as I don't get surprised by out of depth Ancient Multi-Hued Dragons breathing into my only resistance hole).

As for my Gnome Mage, I used to melee with him all the time; when I started, he frequently used a sling and a bow.

When you're having trouble getting much past 1000', ranger strengths aren't really coming into play all that much (and if you run into an AMHD then something has gone badly wrong!). They have less survivability than rogues or paladins without being appreciably better at spellcasting, don't have the stats to be really good at melee yet, and are generally too low-level to be getting their extra missile shots yet.

Again, melee in the early game? Maybe against trivially weak enemies, but generally melee as a mage in the before-statgain part of the game is a losing proposition. I mean, I know you play more cautiously than I do and thus will tend to be higher-level for a given depth, but I wouldn't think that'd be enough to make early melee remotely viable since you simply don't have the stats to back it up.

Both fair comments.

Rangers have both Magic Missile and ranged weapons early on as well as decent melee capabilities. Because of the various damage choices and utility spells, I never really had a problem at early levels with my Rangers in 3.3.2 (CLVL35 and Winner).

With the Gnome Mages (CLVL1 and Winner), it would depend on the gear I had early on. If the melee weapon did significantly more damage than either spells or the ranged weapon, then I would sometimes melee even before stat gain. Most of the time, however, before stat gain, I would rely on spells or ranged attacks; frequently the ranged weapons would deal out more damage than low level spells even taking into account the poor ranged skills of Gnome Mages. That CLVL1 was when I tried to melee a Yellow Mold on L1 of the dungeon; inspired me to make sure that I carried a sling around the next Gnome Mage.

[QUOTE=Oramin;77581]
With the Gnome Mages (CLVL1 and Winner)...,/QUOTE]

With mages, you actually get a lot of play through devices. It's better to buy a couple wands of MM from the store than try to arch or sling things to death. The only problem is the expense of buying wands. Eventually you start finding them on the floor though.

Indeed -- remember that you get a bonus to your damage from wands of (magic device skill - level of wand)%. I don't think this is told to you anywhere in game, but it is quite significant, to the extent that an endgame mage should definitely consider using Wands of Annihilation against Morgoth. The DPS of wands in general usually doesn't quite manage what you can pump out with your direct-damage spells, but they're far more efficient mana-wise assuming you can find some breaks in combat to cast Recharge Item.

Again, good points in general; I used Wands of Annihilation on Morgoth. Also, the high end wands (Wands of Dragon Flame, etc.) should actually do more damage than most of your spells.

However, trust me on this, I ran the numbers for my specific character and the sling(s) worked out better at the beginning (IIRC, one of them was a decent enchantment Sling of Extra Shots). ;)

Edit:

I checked and apparently I was also shooting arrows at Morgoth with my Gnome Mage

You've gotta love a game that produces phrases like "...out of depth Ancient Multi-Hued Dragons breathing into my only resistance hole." I actually lol'd.

I don't want any AMHDs breathing into any of my holes, resistant or not. :)

I've decided to start again from scratch and die a few times with another character before going back to my RoS <+9> character (who will eventually die, I know). I don't want to "waste" such a good roll on "figuring things out."

Don't... the zero-th rule of Angband says Never Get Fond Of Your Character. The more you treasure him/her the more his/her death by a white icky thing will hurt when it comes ;)
The RNG doesn't like it when you try to fool it.

I made that mistake and grew very fond of my last good character, who was killed by a dark elven lord. My curses could be heard from Proxima Centauri.
The RNG didn't like my lack of faith and has been punishing me since then with lousy drops. I am really tempted, at this point, to order a T-shirt that says "I killed Farmer Maggot and all I got was a stupid slime mold".

Actually, I *did* kill Smeagol, and all I got was a wooden torch.

I think I got a dagger with no bonus this time around...
Ah, the good old times when Gollum always carried the Phial... :) I haven't been able to find it a single time since 3.0.9 or thereabouts. The RNG really doesn't like me :(

No, I hadn't killed Gollum yet... just did and got 26gp :(

Lately I've been trying leave smeagol, farmer maggot, and his dogs alive as long as possible. The dogs are usually the hardest, since they won't leave you alone so sometimes you have to kill them if you want to still take care of something where you are, but sometimes they last awhile. Not too long ago I still saw Grip at DL38 or so (not a good place for a doggie...) :-)

Eventually even the uniques will start to run away from you if your level is enough higher than theirs, which helps if you can spare them that long.

That's probably something that he picked up from the dungeon. In current versions Smeagol might not drop anything at all.

Going back to the OP, it's obviously a knack that HE Rangers have...

http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/5...30314at040.jpg

I was rather pleased with my recently acquired armour and shield, and the dagger found on this level tripled my damage and enabled me to dispatch Grishnákh with ease. And what a lovely pair of boots he was carrying...

OK, coming back from looong hiatus.
If you found Ring of Speed +9 and boots of speed +10, it is almost certainly April Fools joke...

Don't let Morgoth know. He may come upstairs and decide he wants them back.

Hi Pete! Looking to play, code, or reminisce?

Bit of each.
Started with review of promoted rgra post "Diving guide for newbies". It needs to be updated a bit for 4.0 -- I no longer know the optimal cutoffs for STR, DEX to get good blows.

Good thing I reviewed it, because I'd completely forgotten to buy oil and sufficient ?phase on my first try.

Well, if the new world gets too weird for you, the current comp is 3.0.6 ;)