Stupid Angband Questions
 

I've been losing at Angband for 20 years on and off, with no real expectation of actually winning. As I was playing earlier, and then again while I was responding to a post elsewhere on the forum, it occurred to me that there are some fairly basic things I just don't know about gameplay that I probably should.

I will mention that I'm a chick, because I know how much guys love explaining things to chicks and I am not above taking full advantage of that.

1. I know you get XP from killing things, successfully casting a spell for the first time, disarming a trap -- I assume there are other things though I can't think what offhand -- but mostly you get XP from killing things. So if I'm playing a character who needs to avoid combat until they're studly enough to handle it, how do I gain XP? Or am I just out of luck on that one?

2. I know it's good to start out with a light weapon that gives you multiple blows -- but at what point in the game do the heavy weapons become preferable, or do they ever, really? Is it a matter of stats, or player level, or dungeon level, or what? My best guess is that once you've maxed out your stats you can get more blows with heavier weapons, but are you really ever going to get multiple blows with, say, a lance?

3. There are quite a few wands/staves that I've just never found very useful, but that sell for pretty good money in town. Confuse Monster, Slow Monster, Sleep Monster, &c. -- in my experience, anything I actually want to use those on is immune to it anyway. I have used a Staff of Slow Monsters to good effect in rooms full of rapidly multiplying lice, but other than that, are there any monsters these are genuinely useful against?

4. I had this crackheaded idea that a Hobbit Paladin would be really cool, if I could get her strength up quickly enough. What say you?

I'd like to think I'd give the same response regardless of your gender, but I'll never know now, will I? ;)

If you have no way to kill things, then you're pretty much stuck. However, all classes ought to be able to kill things at the start. Mages have Magic Missile and everyone else is at least marginally competent in melee. You can also buy flasks of oil for throwing at monsters.

It's a matter of stats and of the weapons getting better. An early Mace of Slay Troll is not as good as a magical Dagger, because the mace is too heavy for your stats to give additional blows, and the slay isn't very useful either, while the dagger can likely get you extra blows dealing significantly more damage in the average case. A lategame Mace of Disruption of Slay Evil will be quite competitive vs. say a Katana of Extra Attacks; even though you might get 4 extra blows/round with the Katana, the Mace of Disruption just hits so much harder that it makes back the difference easily.

Maces of Disruption are about as heavy as lances are. I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but they're both pretty ridiculous.

These are pretty limited, yeah. A Wand of Slow Monster can be quite useful against early uniques; it may take a lot of tries to get it to stick, but once you've slowed them down they're basically defenseless. The other ones are generally not worth the inventory slot to carry though. Staves of Slow/Confuse Monster also wake up everything in LOS when you use them, which can be really counterproductive.

Sure, hobbits are a pretty good race. I've played hobbit warriors just fine and their combat stats are only a little better than paladins' are.

1. Part of the learning curve of Angband is to know what monsters you can kill and what are better to be avoided. If you are playing a flimsy character it is a good idea to rely on stealth and to avoid most monsters until you have better equipment. Some of the early not moving monsters grant good experience; try to kill them from afar with ranged attacks to get some levels.
Stronger characters can kill pretty much everything on early levels.
Later in the game the use of probing rods and staffs can tell you how dangerous monsters might be and how many experience points you would get for killing them.
Use phase door scrolls to attack moving monsters and get away.
Also, it is vital to have means of escape like teleport level.

2. The modern angband versions tell you how many damage you will do with any weapon. Heavier weapons have better chances for critical hits. If your to hit ability is not too good more hits might be better than fewer just to increase chance of hitting.

3. Depends. I ususally don't use most of the staffs because they are heavy and block an inventory slot. They can be useful though. I use them when I find them in situations where they might help. Some uniques can be slowed which makes it easier to kill them.

4. Any class and race combo can win the game. A weak paladin might be a bit of a challenge. Hobbits have good stealth though and also good saving throws.

I hope the awful torment of not knowing doesn't drive you insane. ;)

Yeah, you just have to apply more "strategery" to survive early on with a weak character. I was just idly hoping there was some secret way to build up XP without having to hurl endless missiles/flasks of oil/unID'd potions at every jelly I see.

Ah, that clears things up a bit. I've tended to think only in terms of total cumulative damage with multiple hits, but I get it now -- if you can hit hard enough in a single blow, you may not need the others. I'll have to start looking harder at some of those heavier weapons.

I think they're 20 lbs., and it does make perfect sense that you'd have to be pretty strong to wield such a thing. I have a hard enough time pouring cat food from a 20-lb. bag, let alone wave it menacingly at intruders. (One weapon I've always felt is too heavy in the game is the Quarterstaff. I've handled quite a few over the years (I used to hang out with medieval recreationists and martial artists), and I've never held one that felt that heavy at all.)

Ha, so I was right. I kept thinking there must be something I was missing because they sell for so much... although, if you think about it, prices for items do not necessarily reflect their utility in all cases.

Hmmmm... perhaps I'll try that next. I will admit, albeit shamefacedly, that I'm just too vain to play a dwarf or troll. Half-orcs are as far as I go. Orthodontia will fix that underbite, and I hear red worm mass hair removal is the very latest thing in all the top salons!

Oh dear. Half-Trolls are fantastic fun to play. It's so liberating being able to just smash your face through every enemy you see in the first 1000' or so. You really should give one a shot sometime.

I'll answer just this because others covered the other questions quite well.

Get a bow. A longbow or xBow. Use it. Sling if there are nothing better in shops.

Being able to kill from distance is very important on early survival, and stays important thorough entire game. Each turn monster uses to advance toward you is turn you didn't get any damage.

Just wanna second that half trolls are really fun. They are my goto race anytime I start getting frustrated playing elves or hobbits. Mind you, I've never won the game but I always get a lot further with half trolls. They just mop up the floor with everything they come across.

I like half trolls the best, so much I have won with half troll on every class... mage was bit of challenge in early and in mid game. :)

Shows the importance of HP I guess. I think H-Troll warrior is only combo that can get double-manastormed by Morgoth and walk away.

Imo it shows rather the importance of strength.....half-trolls come with sustain as well.
More accurately, it shows the importance of speed. In the all important early game, str = speed.

The early game is not far too important. While you are more likely to die there, you waste about as much time there as anywhere else.
Hit dice is obviously the most important trait. Hit dice is the only thing that cannot be improved with equipment, hit dice determines HP, and HP determines survival. You cannot win without first surviving.
Sustain strength is handy for the simple reason that most dangerous monsters drain that, and it is hardest to recover from. I have spent time at dlvl 55 with a clvl 30 priest with only the basic books at -5 speed. A hilarious experience.
Regen might be the most important early game trait Trolls have, because it allows you to survive fights that would be impossible otherwise, and you don't waste as much time resting. It also leaves you with more disposable mana than you would expect. Oddly enough, it's not entirely easy to find on artifacts you would like to use, which makes it handy later on as well.
Insane base CON helps you survive while maxing stats, where troll CON will give a multiplier and noone else's will.
In comparison, troll STR can be handy early to avoid slowing, but with no_selling, that's not quite as much a problem as it used to be.

I had a stupid Angband question, searched on the phrase, and discovered an old thread -- which I started myself, go figure. It's not noon yet and I haven't used my (very basic) C in so long that I don't feel like trying to decipher the source files, so here are a few more stupid questions.

* In the help files, it says that Hobbits are especially good with slings -- but is that actually true, or is that just shameless racial stereotyping? Does the game *actually* give Hobbits a bonus if they're using a sling?

* Likewise, do Rangers actually get a bonus with bows? With regular bows only, or with crossbows as well?

No - although they do get the second best missile weapon skill after high-elves.

In 4.1.2 (and as long as I can remember before) rangers get an extra shot at CL20 and another at CL40, but only with short/long bows.

That's what I thought, but I'd never got round to verifying it.

Right, I'd seen that bit, I just wondered if they had other advantages that I didn't know about.

Thank you, once again, for answering my stupid questions. :)

Two extra shots is huge. Beyond that, they get all the buffing and detection spells of a Rogue, plus two more big ones: *Destruction* and Glyph of warding. To make up for it a little, their melee and HP are mediocre. Starting rangers are quite weak. Endgame rangers are massively overpowered.

Oh yeah. I'm not suggesting otherwise, I just wasn't sured.

Having only reached the endgame stage a couple of times, mostly I just know you have to be really fast and loaded up with resistances, have lots of ranged attacks, and be effective against demons and undead.

I suck at games. Angband is the only one I play. I might never win, but I doubt I'll ever give up trying because I enjoy it so much, ASCII and all.

As someone who was drawn to Angband by its lore and who aligns himself with the good races (hobbits and elves please!) it took me a looong time before I would even consider not scoffing at Half-trolls even being an option in the game, but once someone recommended (probably Derakon) that I try it, and I finally did, I haven't tooked back. Every once in awhile I'll try different combos, but HT Warrior really is by far the most enjoyable class combo for me.

Things I like about it: The early game is really easy (shouldn't games start out easy and get harder?) As Derakon says, it's great, satisfying fun just running around and crushing everything you see. It's also more exciting not having good detection, because more scary things can happen to you while you are bludgeoning everything in sight.

I love the early game, but I also love the late game when I'm doing up to 900 damage to most things per round. :D I also like that HT/Warriors are versatile, so when I find a really good launcher I'm at least pretty good at using it.

I find the other class/combos to require far too much time and patience to repeat them regularly, though I do enjoy them from time to time. But at some point while playing a Mage I just stop and say "why am I taking so much time and bother to rest up all the time between assaults on this unique when I could just be bashing his head in as a HT/Warrior and be done with it?" It's just hard for me to justify the trouble of playing other class/combos.

I started winning Angband regularly when I started taking seriously the advice on these boards. :)

EDIT: HT/Warriors can be so powerful that you can beat Morgoth without any banish/mbanish/rune/destruction scrolls without too much trouble if you have the speed, AC and damage output (which one often does when playing Randarts). It's another reason I like to play them; it's more satisfying to just kill the things instead of banishing them. And I often find all the gear I need to win the game by DL70 because I've killed so many uniques and gotten so many good drops by then, even while playing with forced descent on.

I mean, ultimately the game comes down to damage and health; and HT Warriors have both of these in spades.

Oh, and Lances are 30 pounds and Maces of Disruption are 40 pounds. And recently I just noticed how good the dice on Katanas are for their weight; by far the best dice to weight ratio (they only weigh 12 pounds but have 3D5!) Oddly, though, it's rarely beneficial to wield them as a HT/Warrior over lighter weapons (early) or heavier weapons later. Dunno why, though; just usually find some other good artifact weapon.

Part of the problem with the weapons system in Angband is that light weapons are useful too deep into the game. Angband would be much more interesting if daggers and spears and the like would max out in blows much earlier and do much less damage than the heavier weapons.

i think that's a problem with the game, though. Right now, I've got a CL34 half-orc mage with a few boosted stats (need more CON in the world' worst way.). And what's the most powerful single-round attack form this mage, with Kelek's (the collection of which was a rather challenging adventure), can offer?

Fire ball? At a mere 89 points, hardly.
Rend soul? 11d34 looks impressive at first glance, but at a mere 194 points per round (if the critter, like, say, half the the dungeon)) resist it, it only comes out to half that, so meh.

Nope. The most powerful ranged attack in this half-orc's arsenal is the Long bow of Bard, which edges out the heavy crossbow of power, currently ranked No. 2.

That ain't right.

What you want is wands of drain life (annihilation being to valuable to use.) Magic devices are great as a mage, and shockwave/ice storm are a lot of fun in combination with melee.

Also, it's pretty easy to kill uniques with chaos strike+rift.

Haven't got to that point of advancement yet. But Anhilation is a handy thing to have. Had it, blew it up with a recharge, but it saved my bacon with some low-level unique. A few games back, The Tarrasque fell to a stack of three in the hands of a rogue that otherwise had pathetic damage potential.

I'm not entirely convinced that it's correct that the wand/rod versions of spells do more damage than the spell version. They're certainly more efficient with regard to mana (although you can lose them to recharging.) The biggest downside to rods/wands is that they take up an inventory slot.

I think it might be interesting for the spells in Raals to scale less with level and do more flat damage.

Part of the problem is that uniques have so many more hitpoints than other monsters, so it's difficult for a mage to kill them with a limited pool.

I think there's a lot of paths forward on this. Maybe a first step would be bumping up the damage of stuff like explosion and fireball, or even reducing the mana cost further.

I know there are players that want the mage to be the "I don't need to worry about weapons/consumables because I have a spell for every occasion" class, but is that really the direction we want to go in? If spells are more powerful than devices, then some of the tactics of playing a mage go away -- you just throw spells at things until they die. I mean, I guess you can make the spells so much more expensive than devices that the mage can't feasibly use spells and must supplement with devices, but that feels like it accomplishes the same effect that the boosted devices currently do, just in a more painful way.

In my opinion the guiding principle for the mage should be that they have to survive by being smart and using the best tool for the job. Sometimes that should be a spell, sometimes a wand, sometimes a bow or a sword. Ideally all of these would be competitive in different circumstances. Where we run into trouble is if one of those is dominant over the others.

I think right now it's hard to find a good use for most of the spells in Raals, or damage spells in general. Part of this is due to the nonlinear nature of SP. When you find Raals you don't have enough mana to cast the spells regularly and reliably. By the time you have the SP, those spells are outclassed by other options. I guess in the grand scheme I'd be ok with a mage using spells for weaker enemies and devices for uniques and tougher enemies. Right now devices are the most damaging and the most efficient (with cheap and accessible recharging).

I also admit that your description of a "mage" aligns more with my description of a "rogue".

I dont see why there shouldnt be a class whos best option to kill monsters are spells.

Mage certainly has enough firepower to kill everything without the wands. The problem reaching the endgame is finding Kelek and I believe most mages do find it before lvl99. Just based on that premise, I don't understand why mages are the strongest class with devices.

Angband lategame spells/prayers are massively powerful but some of them makes me think.. just why?? Why would you have enchantment spells that encourage to scummy behavior? I mean it's not scummy if it is in the design but jesus christ when I cast enchant/fail/rest/cast enchant on my weapons and armour I really did think I should just go with the current equipment.

Recharging spell falls into this same category. I have never ever ran outta charges of my main wands and staves reaching the endgame. Never tried to kill M with annihilation wand but if that is the most efficient way, why does this possibility even exist? Chaos strike spell kills Morgy so easy that only comparable easiness could be lvl50 ranger with HMight arrows and that scummy shooting possibility the game allows (and that Ingwe demonstrated for me) :)

Mordy missing
 

Am I clueless, or has Mordenkainen's Escapes been stripped from v4? I've been hunting for it,and then went into autoignore setup and only eight spellbooks listed? Eh?

If you haven't seen it anywhere ever, it won't show up on the autoignore list.

Once again, this applies:

Given I'm currently going through a rework of classes, what do people think about having two arcane classes, one with powerful spells and one which primarily uses devices, and gets spells to enhance that?

It would depend on the implementation, but I would be for it. When I play mages I have always ignored devices.

I'm playing the new blackguard class online and it is so strong that I haven't had any reason to cast the spells. I thought I'd try to spam the spells later when I'd get my INT up but now I have 9 attacks so the experiment is sorta ruined since I really cannot tell anymore if they make any difference. Shield bash during the early game let me melee Nar, every orc boss, umbar bros etc unhasted and barely taking any damage after the stun kicked in. Got fairly good Westernesse weapon but still, it felt way too strong.

I would def try device class. Especially because i tend to overlook other devices besides TO/Speed/Tele. Would probably need a launcher nerf to that class. Something like reduced distance/dmg.

I think devices are a dungeon constant rather than a class specialty. I don't like the idea of closing off parts of the game to non-specialists.

Sounds good. I'd be interested in both.

I'm assuming that the spell-oriented class should be able to live happily device-free. This class would probably then need some other hoops to jump through, such as a massive str penalty (so that our magicians are finally forced to start wearing robes), or something else.

If you're playing a rogue, Raal's is nearly useless. By the time you have enough mana to use the two available spells reliably they're too underpowered to be worth bothering with.

I also find Scarabtices annoying because every time I've ever found it I already have the four basic resistances anyway (getting those is one of my first goals in the game) so they're not even worth learning. The only ones I ever bother with in that book are Resistance and Shield. I think Scarabtices should have more useful single resists, like Nexus and Poison.

Temporary resistance actually stacks with permanent resistance, though admittedly, even then, you usually want to cast Resistance rather than the single temp resist.

I'm not thinking of anything being closed off. Other classes would still be able to use devices, but the device class would get the boosts mages currently get, the recharging mages currently get (while mages would keep the new turn-charges-into-mana) and some extra device-related spells.

@sphara--sounds like a problem with randarts as much as with blackguard.

@gglibertine-
Raal's isn't worth carrying as a Ranger, either. Kelek's is worth carrying for a ranger: that is one of the three b8g avantages: shots, *destruction*, and Glyph of Warding.

Yeah so you're taking that stuff away from mages, making people choose beforehand whether they want the wands bonus and recharge ability of the mage or the spellcasting versatility, rather than allowing both.

I'm a bit leery of making a class that is primarily dependent on items that a) are not necessarily in ready supply, and b) can easily be destroyed by enemies. In other words, I'm not certain that magic devices should be a primary tool of any class; they just should be good enough that many classes consider them a useful supplement / first strike.

If you want to remove magic devices from the mage (i.e. worsen mage device skill, lose the recharging spell(s)), then I agree with fizzix that they should be given to the rogue instead. But I'm not convinced that the status quo needs tinkering with.

The new rogue already has this. The rework of recharging makes it so reliable, cheap, and fast to charge items that I've maybe lost 2 items to recharging in the entire play through up to 5000', and I was using them fairly extensively. I think that people complaining about the firepower of the new mage are not understanding just how insanely OP recharging is right now (even with the bugfix which makes it *possible* to fail).

Edit: Although come to think of it, the bug makes you always get only 3 charges per casting, so maybe people felt it was underwhelming and gave up on it.

Why ....
 

.... is there no booze in the dungeon?

I pondered playing Perry, the portly, perma-pickled priest, and trying to do a humorous diary type writeup but realized I've never seen any liquor apart from the town.

Given the cesspool of vice, violence and mayhem that is Angband, I find it hard to think the dungeon is dry.

And I mean, those frost giants and orcs, all jammed together in room, like, man, at some point you know they wanna party. They'd be brewing their own, using slime mold juice, if nothing else.

Surely Morgoth isn't a prohibitionist?

Offish liquor exists in certain variants.

Hey! So.

I've just picked up the game for the first time in a while; i've never been that amazing of a player but I've ascended in DCSS and played roguelikes for years so I know basic strategy.

Playing a human warrior for fun, I've been diving fairly steadily. I'm level 30 on DL 40.

I feel like a switch got flicked on level 38 which was the dungeon's collective "fuck this guy up" switch.

Unsure what I should be doing differently; I have almost five blows with an artifact rapier which out damages every other artifact I've found so far, so it can't be my damage. Got a lamellar armor of resistance, and some other good stuff.

I guess this is the stage of the game where I need to be running from things more consistently, but I feel like the largest issue I'm having is my current equipment lacking certain resistances (electricity/nexus being the two main ones). The deeper I dive the better the odds become of better loot, so rather than climbing back up or staying at the same place I'm scurrying around looking for armor (or uniques that I can plausibly kill) and taking stairs whenever I see them.

Is that what a good early midgame strategy is? The dungeon became a very scary place very quickly.

You're at the point where warriors are probably at their comparative weakest. The game is starting to generate nastier monsters that you don't have the ability to detect with anything better than your eyes, so you'll have a tendency to blunder into threats you didn't know were there.

Fortunately, teleportation is still a pretty reliable escape at this point in the game, so the #1 recommendation is to carry a few Staves of Teleport and use them whenever you encounter something that you don't think you can safely deal with. Then get off the level.

You're going to want to get electricity resistance fairly soon, since the damage cap on it (like the other "basic four" elements, acid/fire/cold) is 1600 unresisted and there are some enemies that can sling around large amounts of electrical damage. Nexus is less of an issue damage-wise, it's the side-effects there that you need to watch out for. But I'd just try to avoid nexus hounds, and kill nexus vortices with a bow before they can do anything. There's few other sources of nexus damage in the game.

If you want more specific advice, post a character dump on the ladder (Ladder tab at the top of the page; make a dump from the 'C' screen).

Thanks for the reply, I'll post a character dump.

Its my first time pushing into the actual midgame, so Nexus is new to me.

Quicker dumb question:

Is plasma an extension of fire damage? Or is it something different entirely?

Edit:
Here's a link to my char dump!

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21577

Plasma is a special element, which is unresistable; the only things you can do to take less plasma damage are to avoid being attacked and to weaken enemies that attack with it (breath damage scales with the current HP of the user). In practice it acts like a combination of electricity and sound, in that it destroys things that are vulnerable to electricity, and stuns you. However, resistance to electricity and sound do not protect you from plasma.

Similarly there's water, ice, mana, gravity, and a few other elements that I'm forgetting right now. Mana has a big damage cap and no side-effects, the others (including plasma) have fairly low damage caps but various nasty side effects. Watch out for gravity in particular.

Regarding your dump:
* Personally I would carry more Phase Door scrolls. Generally I try to enter the dungeon with 15 Phase Door and 5 Word of Recall. Phase Door + a good ranged weapon can make a lot of fights a lot safer.
* Why are you carrying a Summon Undead scroll?
* The shots in your quiver are just so much dead weight; get rid of them. There's a small chance you'll find a sling that makes good shots worth using, but it's not a big enough chance to stockpile non-ego ammo for.
* You should probably keep the Mushroom of Vigor in your home, so it can't get destroyed or accidentally eaten.
* You should be stockpiling Potions of Speed at home as well; you'll want them for the final fights. It's worth carrying 1 or 2 in inventory for use during normal play though, until you find a re-usable source of temporary speed.
* In my experience, flasks of oil and lanterns are both common enough that I don't need to carry spare oil in my inventory. Just top off when I find them in the dungeon -- and note that you can refill your lantern using another lantern.
* Your boots are redundant with your amulet -- sources of free action do not stack in Vanilla. Not that you really have better boots right now.
* If you didn't have that Telepathy hat, I'd tell you to carry Staves of Detect Evil. However, pretty much all evil enemies worth detecting are also brain-having -- all you really miss out on are stuff like skeletons and zombies.

On the whole, though, that looks pretty solid. You have a lot of areas you can improve, but none of them that I'd really expect you to have done by this point in the game.

Thanks so much for the thorough tips! I really appreciate you taking the time.

Since I'm on a roll, here's another stupid question:

I hear speed is extremely important, and from a general rougelike knowledge standpoint I can understand why, but could I get a quick breakdown as to why?
I just found a +9 ring of speed, and swapped it out for my damage ring. Want to know if I made the right choice there. I feel like its an offensive defensive tradeoff, but I want to avoid getting double hit by beefier monsters.

The strength ring I mostly have to sustain strength, as my unfamiliarity with monsters leads me to getting drained frequently.

A character with +10 speed does everything twice as fast as a character wtih +0 speed... so he does the same effective melee damage with 150 dam/round as the slower character would with 300 dam/round (because he gets twice as many rounds) but he's also effectively better at everything that isn't melee.

So speed is a really big thing, but only up to a point. +20 unhasted is usually "enough" - +30 hasted is enough not to get double-moved by any monster in the game, and speed is into diminishing returns territory by then anyway. Up to +26 it's 0.1x per point (so +26 is 1+2.6x = 3.6x speed), after that it gets a bit weird, but +26 hasted is all you really need anyway when you're not fighting Morgoth. (+26 hasted will do against Morgoth too at a pinch, but you might get insta-killed if you're unlucky with a double-move.)

So unless you already had heaps of speed without the +9 ring you almost certainly made the right choice.

First things first - Ring of Speed at dlvl 40 is very lucky, and you should definitely wear that ring. So long as you're getting extra blows from it, the ring of strength probably isn't much worse than the ring of damage anyway, so if it keeps you safer from STR drain that's worth it.

On a warrior I am fond of +30 unhasted. With bad saving throw and brain smash, and warriors being bad at getting reliably hasted, I find it convenient not to have to worry about it. The diminishing returns do get serious after a while, though.

The first reason speed is so important is that many monsters (including Sauron and Morgoth) have attacks capable of dealing over half your health in damage in one turn. If they get two consecutive turns on you, that means there's a chance you die. And any event where there is a chance you die, no matter how small, if it occurs enough times over a game, you will die. So you need to be faster than they are, if you're going to be fighting them.
The second reason is what Sideways mentioned. Multipliers that apply at the end of a calculation are extremely powerful.

Thanks again for the thorough responses.

Another stupid question!

When I see 4.6 blows, does that .6 actually matter? Like I'd have four blows one turn, and then five the next? Or do only the whole values actually reflect in the games attacks?

I notice it effects damage values, but I never quite see You attack monster (x5). Is it broken out into a separate 'bonus' hit after my main attack and I've just missed it?

The fractional blow means you take slightly less than a full turn. 4.6 blows means you get 4 blows in 92% of a full turn (I think I did that math right). So no, you'll never get five attacks out of one press of the button, but you're still getting on average faster attacks than you would at 4.0 blows/round.

Makes sense! Thanks again.

That character got instagibbed by the mouth of Sauron (got some really cool gear before death, check out the dump on ladder). Come hither right into a storm of darkness, ended up with -140 hp. Ouch.

Learned so much though, I totally got greedy and underestimated how deadly an OOD unique could be.

On to the next one.

Yes, OOD uniques are very deadly, and Mouth of Sauron is just bad news even at native depth. (Most deep unique s are, until you reach endgame strength.) There are a few you can kill easily (Dragluin for example), but mostly not a chance. Also stay away from Greater Balrogs and certain deep undead, which are worse than most uniques.

I'll keep that in mind! Until I get that monster knowledge, my process is currently:

Attack it
See how bad it hits you back
Teleport away and swear to never approach it again :D

I guess that won't really work when things can one hit me.

Currently trying to learn the magic system, so I'm splatting some dwarf paladins. Its tough in the beginning, especially before you get sustain wisdom.
Really have to respect monsters a lot more when you only have 2.0 blows. I found Elvagil, but with only one swing it really didn't help me at all. In fact, the confidence I gained from finding it probably got me killed!

To segway into yet another two dumb questions:

Is there a way to get complete monster attack info without being hit once first?

How can I make a caster survivable before I get sustain for wisdom? Early game weakness is new considering my propensity to play warriors, and that drain HURTS. I'm assuming I'm going to have to use the bigger hit dice weapons (maces, hammers, ect) because I'll have pretty much one blow across the board?

I've been so impressed with how helpful you guys have been today. Thanks again. I'll continue to barrage you with stupid questions, kind of set on making this RL my next ascension.

This is the fun way to learn and die. The way to win is to only attack things you know you can beat without burning a disproportionate amount of resources or creating a later dangerous situation.

Pedantry note: a Segway is an auto-balancing transport device, a segue is a conversational transition.

In game you can get this information by using Probing is either spell or device form, ie Rod of Probing. If you die and restart the same character you inherit all previously known information.

For all types of caster it's pretty much choose your targets and control your circumstances. You will be weak early.

You can get complete monster knowledge by looking at the file monster.txt in /lib/gamedata.

Sustain <stat> is of low concern. Stat draining can be avoided for the most part by not letting draining monsters melee you. The occasional drain might happen, but you should disengage and retreat rather than keep fighting and lose a relevent amount of <important stat>.

Paladin in particular does not rely on spells early on. Play him like a weak warrior if need be.

Typically, paladins end up wearing a wisdom amulet eventually which solves that issue.

How did I never learn this word? I guess I never used it in writing. I always thought it was "segway" and I never remember ever being told otherwise; and I've always thought the word was "segway" long before motorized scooters trademarked it. And yet, only now am I learning that the word is 'segue'. What a strange feeling! https://www.merriam-webster.com/word...monly-confused

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Aww, don't look up monster history; that's cheating! You got to earn your knowledge through many unhappy deaths.

Another reason I like playing half-troll warior is that stat drain hardly ever matters since you can't be drained of your most important stat and you gain levels so quckly being that you are a monste-crushing meachine with very low experience penalty. I used to play High-Elf Paladin when I started playing Angband for the native See Invisible and healing, but didn't have a proper appreciation of how devastating the slow experience gain is. I used to collect mushrooms of vigor to compensate.

i am slowly and painfully learning the lesson that one does not have to kill all the uniques.

Once you get past dl 40, you can assume that a significant fraction of monsters you meet you will n9t be able to kill. The obvious ones are AMHD, drolem, Ethereal Drake(!), Death Drake, Great Crystal Drake, Smaug and friends if you don't have double resistance and/or suitable ego ammo. Depending on your character, you may be able to kill them, but you will burn through a ton of consumables. On the other hand, demons native to those depths are great targets, until the Balrogs, who are often more effort than they are worth. After this, the number of killable at-deoth monsters goes down fast, until you catch up with the power curve through some combination of
* stats
* double resistance (this is huge)
* speed
* damage
* 0-fail
To avoid these monsters, use some combination of
ESP, detection, TO, Light Rods, Mapping, Stealth, running away, and not using teleportation unless you really don't have a choice.

Segue, hornswoggle ... we bring the vocabulary here at Angband.

Some of us old-timers, maybe it's only me, don't have the memories we once had and find it useful to have a memory aid. I've already killed every monster in Angband many times, and before the monster/lore trick, had methodically played several @'s in a row, avoiding as many uniques as possible until getting "probing", then using that on every new monster and unique to create a perfect monster memory savefile (including Father Christmas and his Elves).

I now feel no compunction whatsoever in looking up monster history. I still get confused about Nightwalkers and Nightcrawlers. Which one was it that breathes acid, or is it the one that disenchants...?

So. I've sent an army of paladins into the dungeons of doom. I'm having a lot of issues just dealing damage. By CL20, i was doing about 20 a round with a +3 +6 spear.

Dex seems to really be the primary obstruction, at least for my dwarf paladins. Do I just need to be running more until I can find some dex gear?

Another stupid question:

Is paladin the best class to learn a magic user? I'm going to dive into some mages so I can do some learning maybe the hard way, but if anyone has some specific recommendations for learning the ways of magic in Angband I'd massively appreciate it.

Plain ol' high elf mage is the way to go. Ultra low fail rate and generous mana pool.
Just dont expect to reach CL50.

Paladins basically play as warriors with healing magic, and they especially play as warriors for the first 20-30 levels of the game because they don't have the stats to use spells effectively. If you want to learn to play magic users, there's nothing wrong with just going straight for a priest or mage; you should just expect to die a fair amount early on because they (mages especially) have fairly small margins of error.

High-Elf Mages level so slowly, I cannot bear to play them. I'd prefer a gnome or hobbit myself, but there's also an argument to be made for half-trolls! Pretty bad INT (though not so bad that they can't use spells effectively), but their innate regeneration also regenerates SP quickly, and their great physical stats are just as useful for mages as for any other class.

High elf mage is ok up to around cl 35, IF you dive hard and pick fights carefully. But it's a pain reaching a level where Mass Banishment hits 0-fail. You have to kill a ridiculous lot of monsters.

Going to splat some mages.

Created my first one, had an oh god moment when I smacked a jackal and realized that I only had 8 hp.

I figure the experience of picking my fights will make me better with every character type.

Any good playthroughs anyone can recommend? While I can stumble down to 50 with a warrior no issue, i don't see myself getting to 20 right now.

Use wands a lot until you have plenty of mana. Buy ?recharge when available. Shooters are great as a complement in the beginning too, but not very accurate so keep the distance and bring loads of ammo. An early sling of accuracy or similar is a godsend. Bring 30 ?Phase Doors from town for each trip. Rinse, repeat. Confusion resistance is not critical but you'll want to be able to recover from blindness and confusion, thus loads of curing potions are important. Also a staff of teleportation is helpful but expensive early on. A potion of speed plus some curing potions and a ?teleport is often also a workable escape when attacked by one or more confusion auras

Right. I guess initially its all about learning a hard lesson on what to engage and when. Once I get to the stage where I have tools to use, then I can move on to dying because Im using those wrong :D

Thanks for the advice.

Ill splat a couple of gnomes, a couple of hobbits, and post the bones of the one I get the furthest on.

I really love the spells that are available, looking forward to using more of them strategically.

Glass cannon takes on a whole new meaning in Anband; I feel like even at later levels once I have my god-slaying spells, the potential of being one hit by something is still incredibly real.

Don't neglect constitution when initializing the character. Base starting CON of 14 can make a massive difference in the midgame. Eddie Grove wrote a song about it:
All I wanna do
Is find some CON
I got a feeling
I'm not the only one.

Hah!

That actually brings me to ask a different stupid question! This one may be stupider than the rest.

Ive just been going with the default point values when creating a character, Im wondering if those have been specifically initialized for a specific class/race combo, or if theyre optimized for maximizing something specific, like blows per round?

Might be nice if the default point values were some generally agreed upon to be solid for an individual class/race so bumbling rookies like me could have a solid initial footing.

No, the starting values are...not quite arbitrary, but tend to be optimized more for
A. Starting characters
B. pure melee
I always move at least 3 points into CON, for example.

The defaults are generally pretty reasonable, but they do tend to dump CON. Whether, say, 1 extra point of INT is worth 4 points of CON is a tricky question to answer. If you're dying before making it to the midgame, then no, it is not, because CON makes very little difference in your HP until you're able to get a lot of it. If you're dying after that point, though, then it's mostly a question of how long you're willing to wait before you get max CON vs. how valuable that extra point of INT is. CON is HP is what you need to keep from dying, and in the long run you should be maxing it regardless of where you start. Putting a good valuation on how quickly you max it is hard.

Looking around I found an earlier post you wrote about CON which helped put things into perspective.

Really appreciate you super knowledgeable folks swinging by. I think if I pushed it I could win with a warrior, but for some reason Im really hungry now for that mage victory. A lot of short wizards are about to meet their demise.

why .....
 

Answer me this, Angband gurus.

An iron ball, designed for use in ye old slinge, weighing a hefty one pound, can deliver 1d4 damage. It can be thrown by early-level characters who have no launchers as part of a "keep me alive until I get a launcher" strategy.

Potions are fragile things. If you - or more specifically, the right kind of hound or dragon bat - sneeze on one, it might shatter and break. These things, which weigh a mere four-tenths of a pound, can, however, be hurled at various creatures and do *twice* the damage of a purpose made enemy-bonk weapon.

'Splain?

So far as I'm aware, the only "potions" that deal any remotely significant damage are Flasks of Oil, which you notionally are turning into ad-hoc molotov cocktails. All other potions should only deal 1d1 damage. Looking in object.txt, most of them don't even have a "combat" line...though, oddly, Potions of Augmentation, *Healing*, Life, and *Enlightenment* do. And deal 1d1 damage.

Ye olde screenshot attached. Potions did 7,7,8; iron shots did 3 and 2.

Oh, huh. Potions of Confusion deal 3d4 damage; so do Blindness, Sleep, Poison, and Slowness. How odd.

But yeah, most potions only deal 1d1 damage at most. :)

So, let's see: 2.5*3=7.5, and 20,000/7.5 means 2666 of these to take out Morgoth.
Better rent a mule, methinks.

Potions of blindness and the like are very rare compared to iron shots (or charges on a Wand of Magic Missile). So doing modest damage has minimal gameplay effect. I agree it's Interesting.

Oh, it's minimal, but for those first levels, heck - ~8 pts of damage from a potion is by comparison, pretty hefty.

Yeah, it exists purely as a way to help non-fighters survive through the first couple character levels. Especially mages, who really can't fight much of anything until they get enough mp to cast a decent amount of magic missiles.

Hey! Could I get some feedback on my lil' gnome mage?

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21594

He's down at DL61. Best character I've had so far, really want to see if I can push him to get the win.

Looks good. There is no way you will use a ring of strength at this point, let alone 2. It's only useful pre-stat-gain for a mage. Also, no reason for mushrooms of second sight in inventory. (With those lovely arrows, you'd do better to carry !Heroism or ?Chant/Bless. !Berserk not so much, since it increases fail rates, which is bad for a mid level mage. High level mages can sometimes afford it.)
Edit:
You need CON more than anything else at this point. The way to get it is loot some vaults, which means: avoid everything, and go find some (you may need to go deeper, counterintuitive as this may seem.) Once you're getting to the midgame reliably, it is likely worth buying a bit of CON at the start, at the expense of melee (or STR/spellcasting for a full caster.) It's a shame you lost Nar-i-vagil, as the activation is exactly what you need to get CON, and the INT bonus can be pretty good, too.

Heh, fair enough.

My house inventory game is pretty weak at this point, so I appreciate the thoughts.

Also, following up with a dumb question:

When a resistance is greyed out on the character screen, does that just mean I haven't found an item with that type of resistance on it yet?

I'm noticing that sound is white, I found an armor with it on there (but opted for my current armor for the nether resistance).

Looks like I posted my edit 2 minutes too late. Do check it. The reason those extra 4 points of INT might help is 0-fail, which is hugely important for a low-HP mage. Zapping monsters with 0-fail TO at a knight's move away as they drain out of a GV is very different from zapping them with 1% fail, let alone 2%, which is pretty much guaranteed to fail at least once on a diagonal vault. In that case, 0-fail is more important than ESP. Wandering around the dungeon, sure: ESP is better.

And one last thing: the rod of TO Is worthless, and the rod of drain life isn't much better. For a mage, the only time saving mana on TO actually matters is while draining a vault. Wands actually are useful for this, and have lower fail rate than rods.

ugh .. no pConf, no pBlind, no speed, and you dont resist chaos or disenchantment .. or shards. At DL61 you are way too low for your gear, even a pack of earth hounds can rip you to shreds.

you also have extra mage books at home which you do not need, instead you should have kept your artifact cloaks, in case you can switch them later for better resists.

mushrooms of ESP need to be with you to be of any use.

That's rather overblown in my opinion. All three of those resists are optional, you just need to be careful about what enemies you engage. Plus, with only 262 HP it's not like resists are going to matter if a powerful enemy breathes.

My advice would be:

* Get more CON. You have a lot of it on your gear, which is good; you mostly need more potions. 262 HP is going to get you killed unless you play very smart.
* One of Hithlomir and your shield is redundant; you only need one source of permanent resistance and more don't matter (but you can combo permanent and temporary resistance to get ~90% damage reduction). I'd use the Dwarven armor instead of Hithlomir, for more CON.
* I'd ditch the Cure Serious in favor of more Cure Critical Wounds potions, just to save on a slot. Carry more Phase Door too; scrolls are cheap.
* Inscribe (the '{' command) your scrolls of Destruction with "!*" to get confirmation before doing anything with them. You don't want to typo and accidentally blow up the dungeon.
* Gurthang isn't doing much for you besides permanent poison resistance, and you can cast Resist Poison if you see a drolem / Ancient Multihued Dragon / Great Swamp Wyrm. So keep an eye out for other weapons that have nicer passive abilities, like more CON (surprise! :)) or ESP or speed or something.

@derakon--
At 262 HP, single resist rPois isn't worth much.

With 300 hp, I take Hithlomir for the stealth over a measily +2 con every time. Also, Gurthang gives regen, which is great to have when resting for any length of time is dangerous. With that character, I´d use exactly the same setup.

Ah, that is a fair point (re: Hithlomir). Really what's needed are CON potions, but the Dwarven armor might possibly come out later once CON is in the 18/150 region.

As for Gurthang, no better weapons are visible in the dump, I was just saying to consider switching if something else comes along, since Gurthang is not especially compelling. Single-resisted poison breath caps out at 266, and IIRC neither drolems nor AMHDs actually hit the damage cap so they'd do less. I might possibly consider even a Westernesse in this situation, depending on what it did to my max HP. Or a Blessed or Holy Avenger with ESP.

Lots of good feedback.

Haven't found anything yet with ESP or the resistances mentioned, the only weirder one I found was for sound but I'd have to swap out my chest armor. Until i get more of those, I'm just continuing to be liberal with TO, I choose to engage things that use those elements at my own peril.

Good note about the mushrooms/spellbooks. House inventory management is definitely my weakest element, as the other RL's I've played don't have a similar persistent inventory.

My primary thoughts for the weapon were getting double poison resistance and regeneration, and will swap to the staff once I can find some other source of poison resistance, or a different source of CON that would let me swap out my amulet.

Great note about the shield/armor redundancy, I'll swap it out once anything else comes along.

Holy cow am I inscribing the scrolls of destruction, that already happened once, blew up the vault I just cleared by accident T.T

Still trucking along with this little dude. Haven't had too much time to play, but I'm already accumulating more con. I'll post an update soon!

Played a little bit more yesterday, talk about stressful!

Honestly, did I do anything wrong getting to this depth with such a low CL? I figured the difference between -1 hp and -20384 hp is negligible, so I might as well go deep for higher chances of better gear and CON potions.

I'm having trouble bounding back xp wise, I'm having to TO so frequently and most of the high value targets are sitting at around ~4000 hp, which is too much for me to wear away without that last offensive spellbook. Still no Tenser's, so I'm also feeling the lack of greater recharging for my wands of drain life.

Still, though, the only thing I feel that could kill me would be inattention. My stealth is intentionally high, and as long as I'm paying attention (detecting frequently, haste self, resistance) I feel like my mana reserves are high enough to at least survive through heavy usage of TO.

Is this just growing pains? First time I've really made it to what could be considered the early endgame, with an extremely low CON mage no less.

You're in a state that's actually pretty common for aggressive mage players. It's absolutely doable with smart play -- if it weren't, we'd've told you to retreat back to earlier in the dungeon. :)

Find easy targets to kill, and avoid or TO the rest. Don't linger on levels; since so many things can kill you easily, and once awakened monsters never fall asleep, you want to be generating new levels regularly to get a fresh pile of sleeping monsters to sneak past.

Orcs and trolls can drop surprisingly good stuff deeper in the dungeon, and you should be able to handle some ancient dragons (at minimum, the ones where you can get double resistance) and several hound types by now. Otherwise, prioritize floor items, since you often don't have to fight much of anything to get them. When you do have to fight, Rift and Meteor Strike are your primary offensive spells when you can't/won't use wands.

I would also note that feeling stressed is normal, but it mostly goes away with experience. Your calculus that there is no difference between dying by a bit and dying by a lot is correct, but it is most correct for Mages in particular, who (can) have 0% fail TO, and all sorts of other goodies (Door Creation blocks line of sight for anything not right next to you, for example).

Thanks for the encouragement and the great advice, this thread has been exceptionally helpful.

Good to know I'm on the right track.

Oh yeah, this is a well-recognized fate. It's even more exciting if you add in lack of ESP and l9w base speed. (You need to carry a stack of light rods.) I will point out that without Tenser's you can still recharge Staves of Mapping with Recharge I spell. Yeah it fails often, but you can find or buy the staves faster than the fail rate.

I updated the character dump!

Still trucking along, little over 300 hp more than my last update.

Rangers also have best shooting skill of all classes which applies to all missile weapons, so if you get a buckland sling with +2 to both shots and might you might be better off using that instead of your bow even with those extra shots. For other classes using buckland would be no-brainer in most cases, but with ranger you have to actually compare them.

That lil' mage is still alive! In the process of moving across the country (while also working normally) so whenever I get home I'm generally so spent I don't want to accidentally kill that character doing something dumb!

So instead, I've been slaughtering a dozen dwarf paladins. Its tough to get them off the ground, I've been losing them to poor play (again, generally exhausted) but without an early thanc the low damage numbers can get you into tricky situations. I feel that mid to late game once you get enough mana to play with they're pretty great, but I honestly like priests better for the deeper mana pool early.

I find mages/priests are so much easier than melee characters due to the diverse toolset. Want to try and make one work though, once I'm through this move I'll pick that mage up and run for the win!