was doing some testing with the Draconian race, and Apparently if you take the metamorphosis ability as a blood knight Draconian, the Beserk and slay living abilities don't apply correctly, resulting in a massive DPS drop and a much much weaker overall character.

Edit: Also appears to have some weird interactions with the monk. my AC changed but I can't figure out *how* it got the number it did, and you lose all of your passive combat abilities (which may be intentional but kinda sad a dragon martial artist sounded really cool)

About item destruction & curses
 

Hey all, I have a few basic questions, sorry if those seems obvious to seasoned players!

Reading the help files about consumables/item destruction and resistances, I noted that:

Acid : degrades armor and destroy staves and scrolls
Electricity: destroy rings and wands
Fire: destroy staves, scrolls, town spellbooks and unequipped equipment
Cold: destroy potions
Sound: destroy potions
Chaos: destroy staves and wands
Disenchantment: can degrade artifacts

About rods: I see there's no trace of rods in the above list, so I guess they are indestructible? But still subject to thieves I suppose... :p.
I'm pondering to ditch my scrolls of WoR since I found a rod of WoR!

About fire: are non-town spellbooks immune to fire? also, when fire destroy a unequipped item, can it bypass "normal" item resistance? (ie: can fire destroy a ring that's not worn?).
Also, only the fire section mention unequipped items, so I conclude other type of damage only affects worn equipment?

@Sideways: recent versions of Vanilla are clearly stating by which element the item can be degraded/destroyed in its description, it would be a nice QoL improvement for newer players like me!

About curses: are scroll of remove curse and scroll of **remove curse** only used to remove the sticky property of an item, or can it remove the effect linked to the curse as well, like in recent version of Vanilla?

[edit: unrelated, I met the flame spiders for the firs time in the troll cave, nasty stuff! that plus a monster out of my FoV throwing huge boulders at me, I barely escaped alive, with a nasty cut! fun times...]

[edit2: I've got the corpse of Implorington III which is marked as wanted, but the guy in outpost doesn't want it! must I bring it somewhere else or is it a bug?]

Implorington is wanted by a bank. Youll find it in one of the towns

Been playing a death sword some more.... They should really be inherently immune to being disenchanted. like, They don't need to have resistance to it or anything just having their attack and damage modifiers reduced. the fact that gaining Attack and damage modifiers is part of their progression and they can just lose all those bonuses with no recourse, it's even extra difficult to re-enchant themselves. Maybe balance it by making it so weapon enchant scrolls always fail on them the same way they can't enchant themselves at shops?

Regarding item destruction of devices, the FAQ in the help menu has good info:

If you rely on rod of recall, make sure to inscribe it !*!* (to require two confirmations before doing anything with it) to avoid accidentally dropping or throwing it.

Implorington is wanted by the Cornucopia.

So I'm trying device master again (wands) and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the strategy.

Counterintuitively, I get the feeling improving device skill and putting all stat gains into intelligence isn't the best strategy, since higher device skill doesn't increase damage. And its not like fail rates are an issue, at least not in the early game for me. Would Str/Dex/Con gains make the most sense? As long as my failure rates are okay, should I just not worry about device skill and Int?

When I get those gloves from Tidy the Lab (the ones that increase device skill but have a negative combat value), I'm guessing I won't wear them. Which seems crazy - that a device master wouldn't wear a device that increases device skill.

Or am I all wrong about that?

Yeah, for devicemasters more device skill is a drop in the ocean, whereas someone like a warrior or samurai might need it badly.

I'm still not sure how to interpret acid damage in monster memory recall.

It seems to quote the damage you'll take from acid if you're wearing non-damaged body armor. It does not change this number if you aren't. You can be fighting something that recall claims cannot one-shot you, you can check recall and make sure—yup, it can't one-shot you!—and then it can one-shot you.

That annoying Metal Babble...
 

Looking for advice dealing with the Metal Babble at the bottom of the Arena Dungeon. I have my poison needle. I rekitted for high speed, high CON, high AC, reflection, immunity to fire, and double resistance to chaos and disenchantment. I brought a lot of healing with me, and phase door/teleport for escape.
The problem is I haven't been able to get more then a couple of needle attacks in. He won't let me approach within melee range. He's much faster than I will ever will be (+80 speed) and blinks away before I can step next to him. Ambushing around corners hasn't worked. If I stand behind a closed door he won't open it. If I open the door he either blinks or attacks (from a square away) and then blinks before I can move into the doorway and attack.
I'm thinking about searching for another anti-teleport amulet (I've been selling or ignoring the ones I've seen so far). But I'm nervous about needing to spend an extra turn swapping amulets when *I* need an emergence escape.
How do others get that damn Babble to hold still long enough to get a few attacks in?

That annoying Metal Babble...
 

Update: Got him! I dimension doored right next to him several times, but he always blinked away immediately before I could needle him. Finally I tried a charge right at him as he rounded a corner and charged me, throwing raw logrus and psycho-spears all the way. Suddenly he was right in front of me. I got him on the very first needle stab! Lucky I guess. I was expecting stab-heal-stab-heal-etc.

Now for the final challenge in the Thalos Arena. Anyone defeat the GWOP with a poison needle? Just out of curiosity, can the Serpent of Chaos be killed with a poison needle?

Uniques cannot be killed with a poison needle, except for the babble at the bottom of the Arena, who's a hardcoded exception.

What is the go with a poison needle? I've never tried one.

Most of the time it deals exactly one point of damage, but occasionally (think around one in ten times) it will deal (monster's HP + 1) damage, which will instakill the monster.

The chance in code (from 7.1.Salmiak) is randint1(randint1(r_ptr->level/7)+5) == 1
This means that 1-time-in (random number from 6 to (5+monster level /7) ) it will kill the mob.
So for the Metal Babble guardian in the Arena, a level 80 mob, you would have 1-in-6 (best case) to 1-in-16 (worst case) chance to instantly kill it. I think (Statistics class was a long time ago) the average chance is 1-in-11.

But it varies a little based on monster level, so for instance a level 50 mob would range from 1-in-6 to 1-in-12 (average 1-in-9), while for a level 100 mob the max is 1-in-19 (average 1-in-13).

1 in ~8.5 for DL 50 monster. (You can't add denominators.) For what it's worth, the odds are of order 1/log(DL).

Bug/RFE: Giants, etc. & Kronos' Sickle
 

Titans have Kronos as their racial boss, yet his sickle is, unflavorfully, not suitable for Giant wielding.

Posted for Rolanako.

Bug(?): Death-Swords and Disenchantment
 

The function for Death-Swords getting disenchanted and losing their essences (r_sword.c, line 1114) doesn't appear to be called anywhere; as far as Rolanako and I can tell Disenchantment isn't any more dangerous or annoying for Death-Swords than any other character, even though I could have sworn that was not the case at some point.

Note that since the babble doesn't levitate, etc., it has to spend extra energy to enter trees. It will fireball trees if you're next to them, but you can often stand one square away and approach just after it enters them without making it blink. Of course you'll need a good pile of ?Forest Creation for this, or to have some other means of tree creation.

So I've gone back to coffee break, if I'm going to die around CL30 may as well get there quicker.
But how do you guys control the pacing? Do you just sit and rest in DLs you've pretty much cleared waiting for monsters and loot to respawn? Or do good players not really need to pace it?
I rarely get to CL35, and find that it's too much for me id DL is > CL+5. And when under CL25 I keep DL < CL

Mainly I avoid killing summoners unless I dont need more xp at the time

Bug?: Devicemasters and Transfer Essence
 

The Transfer Essence ability for Devicemasters (devicemaster.c, line 265) seems to only let you transfer from deeper objects to ones of shallower depth, yet its safety check message (line 290) makes it seem like it's supposed to work in the opposite way (from shallow objects to ones of deeper depth).

Archer vs. Weaponmaster?
 

I'm curious what the pros and cons are of playing an Archer vs. playing a Weaponmaster (bows, crossbows, slings)? Clearly the Weaponmaster gets some great class powers - I especially love the sling master's powers. The Archer gets the advantage of being able to effectively use all bows, not just one type. What else? Do Archers get better damage from bows? Are they better at melee? Because right now I'm struggling to see what advantage an Archer could have that would outweigh those Weaponmaster class powers.

At a glance, the Archer is better at archery, having Amber [12] instead of just heroic, higher strength and con, better skills almost all the way across the board, save stealth and perception... (Though why do both archer specialists have poor perception), lower exp modifier better life rating, and... Don't underestimate the value of create ammo. The kind of ammo you create scales as you progress (dunno if it's depth or CLVL based) and can roll Ego ammo as well as higher quality types, like mithril bolts, or arrows of returning.

Essentially they lose out in the utility of the Bowmasters abilities for being better at basically everything else.

Bug: Throwing and Throw Weapon Abilities
 

Had cause to look up how throwing worked, and noticed that due to the way that throwing multiplier context->mult is initialized in multiple places, it's also calculated in multiple ways, which results in some of those calculations not taking into account some things they probably should.

For instance, the Daggermaster's Dagger Toss initializes context->mult to (100 + (CL * 4)). However, in py_throw.c line 165, it's initialized to (100 + (100 if you have the throwing mutation) + (100 if the weapon has the throwing flag) + (a STR-based modifier)), only if context->mult isn't already initialized. This means that Dagger Toss won't benefit from you having the throwing mutation, the weapon having the throwing flag, or a STR-based modifier . . . which arguably, it should.

This probably applies some other abilities besides Dagger Toss as well.

Wow
 

There are so many cool things to discover even after a long time. Small things like there is a suit of armor that allows you to breathe even when there is no air and that there is actually a monster in the game that makes this feature useful. But this made me laugh out loud when I found it ...
The Great Maul of Vice - activates for Lightspeed (speed 99) for 16 turns with only 1.6% fail rate for my Warrior. Useful as a swap unless you are a mauler.

Edit: An unexpected side effect -- It consumes gold, if in inventory or wielded

There's more...Do you know what happens when you run out of money?

Interesting. Thanks for the warning! My guess would be it disappears but keeps drawing money from the player's gold pool.

Bug: Thieving Monster Interactions
 

[13:51] reijesa: You attack the Ninja Tonberry: You cruelly attack it! (It retaliates: It hits.) You feel uneasy. You grab hold of your backpack! The thief flees laughing! Your weapon drains life from it! You swing wildly at nothing. It seems weakened. You swing wildly at nothing.

[13:52] reijesa: looks like the "can't attack if it's gone" fix doesn't check vampirism

Monster Leprechaun starts with zero gold in Thrall mode.
Not a bug but that is a bit mean, isn't it?

Resurrection Machine can choose Basement Cat, which won't ever generate randomly again. A similar bug was fixed with random Angband quest guardians but this one's still at large.

Bug: Summon Gods
 

[16:40] picklenugget: Apparently casting summon gods crashes the game
[16:40] picklenugget: as a possesor

Human transform for doppelgangers is oldhuman
 

A CL35+ doppelganger transformed into a human does not get a human weakness. Not sure if WAI or bug.

Note: this is in Salmiak. Haven't tested in Nightly.

Putting on a ring with slaying maluses triggers the "do you want to switch fingers so you can... benefit... from these... maluses" message :)

Corrupt savefile solution?
 

I got a 3-4 program crashes [Salmiak] when drops were generated after a kill. Eventually one of these led to a broken savefile. Ideas on how to solve?
I can start all over of course, but my level 41 snotling skillmaster was doing so well so it is a bit of a pain.

If it were just the crashes it would most likely get fixed simply by upgrading to nightly; but a broken savefile will (probably) be more complicated.

Is the savefile small enough to attach here when zipped? I can't promise I can fix it, but I could give it a look tomorrow. (Any successful fix would still require upgrading to nightly afterwards, though.)

Thanks! It is too big though, so I'll restart after downloading the nightly. Snotlings level up very fast and even if Glaurung does not drop his helm this time I'll find something else nice. Again, thanks for all the work on this great variant!


[EDIT] Where do I find the nightly?

https://github.com/sulkasormi/frogco...ads/master.zip

You'll need to compile it though, if that's a problem you can also find it on angband.live.

Hunted by a Caaws!
 

I was just followed around by a Caaws in a watery room. Never experienced that before and the description says Stationary. What is going on here?

Probably a tanuki (as a couple of people commented on angband.live).

putting the cursor on it and reading the lore said Caaws with expected stats and imunities but it was only mildly annoying

Question about playing as a ring. I had a death/hell knight as a mount, and he had some summons which I kept for ages:
- a troll who ended up a storm troll (had him since whatever was before Troll King)
- and ethereal dragon

The hell knight threw me off. Once I got him back the troll was a pet again, but the dragon was not. Probably related the troll came with me on recalls, any others did not.

Does anyone know what the difference was? All I can think is maybe I had "ridden" the the troll at some stage but not the dragon. Would that make a difference?

Hello. I'm having a problem with making macros for Wild-Talent work.
For example I mapped sequence "mab*5" on F1 key. After pushing that key it only opens main talents menu that can be activated by pressing "m" key and nothing more. Mapping sequence "ab*5" kinda works, but still requires two keystrokes instead one.

P.S. Thank you for such a great game I having a blast playing it. But summoners are suck :)

Hi GenjiHikari, thanks for the feedback! That's a known bug with the official salmiak release. It can be solved by upgrading to the dev version from Github (but you'll need to compile it yourself, since the last .exe upload is salmiak).

If you lack the tools to compile you can also play the dev version on angband.live, you can't import your offline character there though.

Thoughts after sorcerer win
 

Just a couple questions that came up with my most recent character -

1. Is Orb of Entropy's extra effect going to ever be relevant? Unless I am misreading the source, which is admittedly not unlikely, it seems the max HP reduction is rather insignificant. Is there ever (even a niche?) a way that it is useful, or is it simply undertuned / flavor really? Seems a shame, it is such a neat idea.

2. Craft's magic armor, what does the "magic resistance" part of it mean? Not reducing damage from any sort of monster spells, and saving throw as displayed on the character sheet was the same I believe. The line showing magic resistance from armor pieces didn't even show a temporary value up for it when the spell was cast either, is the description outdated or is something amiss?

Thanks once again for the great game and answering silly obscure questions such as these. :confused:

1. Orb of Entropy is basically a non-player-healing ball of Vampirism, so what goes for wands of vampirism (and other vampiric attacks) also mostly applies here: the max HP reduction is not useful very often (due to how small it is compared to the overall damage), but it is useful in niche situations; to slowly kill an opponent you have trouble finishing off in more conventional ways because it outheals any damage you deal.

(Would guess the reduction is more likely to be relevant with a wand of vampirism, though, just because having Orb of Entropy implicitly suggests you also have the other options in the Death realm.)

2. It gives you an extremely high saving throw. If you're not seeing any difference, I would guess you already had an extremely high saving throw, so there'd be no change :)

I think I've found a good workaround for the agony of leaving artifacts behind when your pack is full.

The item limit is number-based, not weight-based, on the ostensible justification that every additional discrete item you stick somewhere makes everything else harder to find. Anyone who's lived out of a backpack can attest to this. It's a real thing.

That said, when the level is cleared and it's just you and a pile of artifacts, who cares?

So what about this: If you pick something up beyond z (and your inventory starts scrolling, like your home), up-to-and-including the next 13 slots or so, using or removing an item from your pack takes triple energy.

This being a death sentence 99% of the time seems like an adequate deterrent, and on those rare occasions when the level is cleared and it's just you and a pile of artifacts, it would make a frustrating aspect of the game considerably less frustrating.

Also it's weird that imps can be "pious" since I'm pretty sure "imp" is just shorthand for "impious one".

After Gothmog breathes hellfire at a good pet, a flag gets flipped to double the damage, and it never get checked again. Even if the pets die, he'll breathe for 500 unresistable hellfire at the player every single time until he dies or you do.

Lost a promising character to this earlier today. Managed to reproduce it in Salmiak, so it's been in the code for a while. Did not test on other hellfire breathers.

Thanks for the report.

Can't reproduce it, though; every time I've tried it, damage reverts to normal as soon as the pet dies; and I can't see a problem in the code either. There's an alignment update in delete_monster_idx(), and calculate_upkeep() rechecks pets' alignment every turn even if you have no pets.

Hey fair enough. Honestly I teleported the pets away instead of dismissing them (I should have done that). It is, if nothing else, profoundly weird that having good-aligned pets out of LOS doubles hellfire damage for the player.

RFE: "Craven" clarification
 

Had a player on the webserver wondering where their vFear was coming from, on a Craven character.

Yes, I know the name of the personality would imply it, but apparently that's not enough and it needs to be explicitly stated that Craven gives vFear; its current description doesn't do that.

I think it's not stated because Craven also penalizes your CL for fear check calculations; and only mentioning the vFear might give the inaccurate implication that that's the only fear-related penalty, while mentioning both feels like overkill for a short flavor description. (They are both mentioned in the much longer help section on fear.)

Bugs/RFEs: Various Things
 

Bunch of various things; some arguably bugs, and some arguably not but also don't make sense if you stop to think about them.

• Necromancers two-handing something still counts for them having a "free hand" for touch attacks. Possibly applies for mummies too, etc.
• Similar problem with (at least) mummies; according to Bucephalus, they can wear a shield, hold the reins while riding, and still have a "free hand" for their gimmicks.
• Animate Dead, logically, reanimates corpses and skeletons . . . yet, detect spells treat the reanimated as living still. Not strictly a bug, but a logic problem with the current system.

One More Thing
 

Oh, one more thing about Animate Dead: while regular monsters running away might make sense, it doesn't for undead slaves!

Bug/RFE: Necromancers and Vecnacrown
 

If I'm understanding how things work correctly, Vecnacrown can't drop for Necromancers. Ever.

It's a setchance drop from Vecna only, and for Necromancers Vecnahand takes priority in the statement.

Vecna really needs 100% to drop his head.
That is such a good (apocryphal) story. Direct ancestor of Leeeeroy Jenkkns!

That's One Tough Sheep
 

Attachment 2126

It really, really is.

The Land of Oz
 

Visited Oz for the first time yesterday.

.

.

.

You're a sick and twisted individual, rodent.

Like all the best maintainers.

Bug: Necromancer Touch Spells and Fear
 

A necromancer's touch spells don't appear to be consistent with current fear code; as far as I can tell it looks like it (necromancer.c starting at line 14) still presumes old binary fear code (e.g. current V/FA2), where being afraid at all prevents you from doing the thing (melee, or in a Necromancer's case their touch spells which in a lot of ways count as melee) and also prevents you from wasting the turn due to fear getting in the way.

Quick question - when casting Genocide, why does the game ask for confirmation if it's a 'n' or 'X'? What's special about nagas and xorns?

At a guess, something to do with the fact that 'N' and 'x' are not monster types?

x is unmaker and they can be numerous. you might die if low on hp so a confirm is nice

'n' is the repeat key for the regular keyset, and 'X' is the repeat key for the roguelike keyset.

Staves of genocide in particular have very high fail rates for most characters, so it's not unusual to see 100 consecutive failures before the staff is successfully used on attempt #101. By that point, most players will already be sitting on (or prepared to hit) the repeat key to initiate attempt #102...

Bug: Trap Doors, Disarming, Levitation, and easy_disarm
 

With levitation and with easy_disarm off, walking into a trap door ignores it, and failing to disarm a trap door ignores it. Expected.

With levitation and with easy disarm on, walking into a trap door ignores it, and failing to disarm a trap door procs it.

EDIT: rhukath's the one who pointed out the bug, I just did a bit of poking and the report.

Bug/RFE: Beaming spells destroying loot underfoot
 

Spells that beam will destroy loot you're standing on top of—even though the animation doesn't look like it hits the square you're on at all. Requesting this be changed to not happen.

Bugs/Crash: Mimics and Banor=Rupert
 

Mimics mimicking Banor=Rupert, using his Something Weird, immediately cause a game crash. I have a feeling there are similar instances for other monsters and possibly powers, but I don't conclusively know what those might be.

Tangentially for Mimics, spell cost and effect power for various monster spells aren't displayed for the player.

EDIT: Bug courtesy of bostock.

Skill notifications on level up
 

Is there a way/option to be notified when learning new spells and powers on level up?

For spells, not strictly, but you can check ~s, ~x, or browse books to see what levels spells are, and use that in conjunction with spell studies (which if available are diplayed on the main screen in the sidebar) to know when you learn a new spell (but only for books you already have or have learned from, I think).

For powers, there's an option to spoil future powers that aren't yet available to you in the powers menu.

Thank you. I thought it was a bug with my config at first. This ~ menu slaps, quite too bad it doesn't highlight recent changes (~x info as a Death Sword for example) but it's very useful

Bug: Reading ?ArtifactCreation and Keeping It (on a non-Scrollmaster)
 

[11:49] Incitatus: if you read ?art creation, and close the game window before you name it, you keep the artifact and the scroll
[11:49] LucyFurr: Awesome exploit.
[11:49] MITZE: What's the art named though
[11:50] MITZE: if you do that
[11:50] Incitatus: it's an artifact but it has no name, and doesn't "count" against artifacts created, or even ?art creation read

Bug: Character Sheet SP Regen
 

SP Regen on the character sheet claims to be a non-zero percentage even in cases of classes that explicitly don't regen SP—like Rage-Mages.

New Player's Intro to Oz
 

[19:28] geraldine: wh
[19:28] geraldine: is the oz dungeon just like
[19:28] geraldine: australia
[19:28] geraldine: ?????????
[19:28] Enceladus: Wizard of Oz.
[19:28] MITZE: but also Australia
[19:29] MITZE: probably one or two other things as well
[19:29] MITZE: There's a bunch of fucked up things there
[19:29] geraldine: i was gonna say there are some things here that were NOT in wizard of oz
[19:29] geraldine: i hate this place
[19:29] MITZE: I'm pretty sure rodent's intention was to make people say that, yes
[19:30] Zabutor: yeah I usually wait until I'm a pretty high level and just dive to the bottom and kill the witch
[19:30] MITZE: So uh
[19:30] MITZE: have you seen what fire does here yet
[19:30] geraldine: oh yes
[19:30] geraldine: very first screen
[19:30] MITZE: *slits wrists*
[19:30] geraldine: started running lmaooooooo
[19:31] geraldine: absolute nightmare

Playing as Draconian Berserker. I am on the way to lvl 35 so there is question about two dragon powers: Regeneration and Summon Kin.
1. Regeneration. How strong is effect of this power? For example current regeneration rate is 200 % and with this power will it become 300 % or 400 % or maybe even higher?
2. Summon Kin. Which dragons will this power summon? Is it just young or acient one?

Summon Kin will summon pet young and mature dragons up to CL 39, and pet ancient dragons from CL 40 on. It's based on both the player's level and the dungeon level; at endgame depths you can get major wyrms with some luck.

The Regeneration power gives a flat bonus of 150 percentage points; so your current regeneration rate would become 350% with it.

Ok. Thank you. Is quality of loot depends solely on dungeon level and monster power or there are some other factors involved?

DL, monsters have a specific quality of drops (treasures and good/exceptional/objects), some dungeons have a bonus to loot generated in them (but those are mostly endgame or pantheon dungeons), Lucky personality/White Aura mutation gives a slight boost to drop quality/ratios...there's probably a few more I'm forgetting.

Hi! just got urges to play frogcomposband again under OpenBSD and i finally managed to get it to work...

i have put an updated "installation/updater" script in my repo now here: https://notabug.org/lea2501/scripts/...composband.ksh

First clone the repo
$ mkdir -p ~/src && cd ~/src && git clone https://github.com/sulkasormi/frogcomposband.git && cd ~/src/frogcomposband

To install it you need:
$ doas pkg_add automake autoconf gcc gmake

After cloning, to compile run:
$ export AUTOMAKE_VERSION=1.16 # <- (version without minor number 1.16.5 > 1.16)
$ export AUTOCONF_VERSION=2.69 # <- (version without minor number 2.69p3 > 2.69)
$ sh autogen.sh
$ chmod +x configure
$ ./configure --prefix "$HOME"/.frogcomposband --with-ncurses-prefix=/usr --without-x --with-no-install CFLAGS="-DSGI -DULTRIX" LIBS=-lncurses
$ gmake clean
$ gmake

And finally, to play:
$ ~/src/frogcomposband/src/frogcomposband -uUser -mgcu -- -n1

I sank through the floor casting tele level in a random sea dungeon and it creates a normal level with no stairs.

Bug: Device-Eating Races
 

There seems to be a bug with device-eating races, where you can sometimes eat and get nourishment from a device with zero charges . . . I suspect what's going on is that you can eat from a device if it has more than zero mana, even if the mana it has isn't enough for a charge.

Lucky negotiation
 

My rogue went to the Micro$oft quest without -stone to mud and failed to break the stone door to the boss. I searched my inventory and the level for anything that could help but there was nothing. I tried the tele to-spell, but it required line of sight. I tried phase and tele but the room is icky. Finally I went through all the spells and ended up trying negotiate, and lo and behold!
Evidently Bull heard me through the stones, after a few attempts I managed to buy him over for a reasonable amount of gold and the quest was completed :)

As a bonus he teleported out of the vault to greet me. Mistake. I reneged on the deal.