High-Elf Warrior
 

Now this is the business. 4.3 blows/round at the start. +80 melee, +80 shoot. And reasonable magic devices skill unlike Half-Troll Warrior. And the superior start means I can kill anything and everything, thus fully compensating for the lousy XP mod.

Keep dying stupidly, though. This game I have 2 wands of TO at DL21 (8,000 turns). So maybe I should play carefully. Couple games ago I had an early wand of TO and had 5 other metal objects in my possession (not counting multiples of same objects) and I begrudgingly TO'd away a storm giant. I did not TO away a young blue dragon. I did not. Why would I waste a charge (only 4 left) on a young blue dragon? Honestly, who does that? The dragon breathes lightning, your wand of TO is destroyed! Okay, seriously? What the poop. I believe he was injured, too, so his lightning damage woulda been pretty pathetic. I died shortly after to what I don't recall. When bad luck strikes, I have a hard time playing smart thereafter.

Yay, dropped the wrong weapon several levels ago (westerness of FrAct) and never find other FrAct and then died to paralysis on DL31 on a 9-9 level after teleporting away Saruman. YASD.

Ha ha.
Nelson.jpg





But seriously i have lost 2 rods in my whole career - that i know of.
And yeah, westernesse + Fa is what i rocked when i cleared a greater vault (arrow) at DL37.
Which earned me a randart sword with NO slays or brands, and the Phial.

Edit: duh. Didnt realize he said wand, not rod. Wands and staves are 2x1, buy 2 for every 1 you want to use.

If I could program I would make ID on walk over of every type of object @ knows. So if @ walks over a good weapon and has already ID'd good weapons of that sort before then he immediately knows what it is upon walking over it. This pick up {more} rest rest rest drop {more} pick up {more} gets old fast and leads to rushing because, you know, 90% of what monsters drop are weapons, so @ spends most of his time picking up and dropping junk weapons, and of course since I play this game too much it leads to carelessness and continually dropping the good weapon and keeping the bad one.

I know I can inscribe my weapons with !d!v!k but I tend not to unless a weapon is really good (I wasn't really planning on needing the weapon long since usually I get FrAct somewhere else and I had picked up Azgha-something-or-other (main gauche of Glaurung's bane).

Losing the TO happened in another game not long ago as well that I complained about. It takes a lot of lightning strikes to destroy metal objects in @'s inventory.

EDIT: Also would be nice to have a more sophisticated {more} system. If a monster deals less than 5% damage skip the {more} prompt for his action. When activating Cammithrim why do we need two {more} prompts? I get around this by inscribing it with @2 and making a hot key: A2'[space][space]$

This problem is solved in development, with rune-ID. Once you've IDed a rune, you recognize it in every further item that has it on walk-over (and sometimes on detection.)

I'm sorry, I don't really understand Pete. How do I implement this feature in my game?

I'm beginning to think wands of TO are native to DL20s. Just found another one at 1100' on my latest careless HE-Warrior.

It'd be a ton of work for you to implement it, but Pete's saying it's already been implemented, thanks to the efforts of Nick, the other developers (including Pete), and many playtesters. You just need to be playing a different version of the game. You can download the so-called "nightly builds" here.

1. Install MinGW
2. Pull the git repository at GitHub.com/angband/angband
3. Compile

Okay, thanks guys. I may attempt this.

Another wand of TO one level down on another level 6 feeling level (though I think wands of TO make for level 3 feeling at DL23, not 6, so we'll see what else I find [found Dagmor on last level with the wand of TO]).

Okay, I really need to not die stupidly this game.

Decided to try a run with Randarts. Found a {special} gloves. Get ready for it: <+2> DEX! Wow, that sure is special! I'm pretty sure all {special} items have to have something that distinguishes them from non-artifact items, even if it's something gimmicky like a magic missile activation. But these gloves should have at the very least had FrAct. They didn't even include one basic resist.

Also interesting, after finding a defender weapon and buying gloves of power in the shop, I held onto the FrAct gloves in my player inventory just in case (already damaged at [1,-1]. Well, got hit with more acid and my gloves of FrAct got damaged, so now they are [1,-2]. Didn't know net negative AC was possible . (Though one recent game I found two =reckless attacks early and was bombing around with -17 AC, but that's a different thing).

DL1, pick up Narthanc. A few turns later on DL3 I pick up a rod of stair detection. Stairs come fast and furious and at 1800 turns I put on an amulet of ESP on DL12 (8 treasure feeling).

It's pretty remarkable since I was not at all exploring levels, and just beelining as fast as I could to the first available stairs.

I guess I dove too fast and got super unlucky. Started in a giant room full of air hounds. Had just picked up Wormtongue boots, too. Oh well.

I thought hound pack sizes had been reduced? There were 21 hounds that I could detect with ESP when I died.

No _Teleportation? That's pretty much a necessity by 1800'. Or if you're using connected stairs, run right back up. Surrounded by hounds on level entry is a classic death, anyway.

No I didn't really have anything since I was literally taking every stair as soon as I found it using the rod of stair location. haha.

How often do you teleport into (or start in) a room with very good objects for your depth? It always feels so improbably lucky when it happens. But I guess since I play this game so much it's bound to happen from time to time. But it happens more often than teleporting into/starting in a room full of killer hounds.

Some memorable things that were in the room I started the level on or I teleported away from danger into was an amulet of trickery (DL70something), a shield of Thorin (DL 50something, but I was diving very fast since I put the game at a 5 level skip so it was by far the best object I had found) and just now 2 !DEX on DL30 with a 3 level skip in the game settings (7800 turns so far). Still no FrAct tho.

In other news I found a crown of the magi (full basic resits and telepathy on DL25 in one of my 5-level skip games and then stupidly tried to take on an Ogre Cheiftain or some "moves quickly" ogre and died. :( Sad times. But the more I play the less I mind dying, even when I have great early gear like that!

Swapping out the other ring of damage my dam output is now 138! wow. Will be really careful not to lose this ring since I will likely be using it in the very end (if I can last that long of course; lately I've been dying a lot).

Hello, I just picked up a ring of damage (+0,+15) on DL33. It's a 9-8 level, and I was gonna take the earliest exit I saw (a trap door near the start) but my rod of treasure detection showed some nearby objects so figured I'd risk checking it out since I haven't much to lose (I'm still wielding a basic whip I found early on (+1, +5) haha but an earlier (+6) ring of damage and gloves of slaying had my average output at 75dam/round . If I survive the next few turns I will take that trap door!

I'm about to leave DL87 at 18,433 turns. Since I have forced descent on and skipping 3 dungeon levels every time I descend I have pretty much no chance of winning, but it's still fun. If I can pick up a couple of wands/rods of TO I will have a chance, but the one wand I picked up the entire game got destroyed upon trying to ?recharge. I have no telepathy, one rod of Detection I bought in the BM and am still wielding Forasgil. But I did find a rod of speed, 3 staves of speed and another ring of damage good for +14 dam and gloves of Theivery along the way. I used a ?Destruction to remove Ungoliant who was near a Topaz ring which I was hopeful was going to be a ring of speed. Counting 15 squares worked, Ungoliant got removed from the level and I easily navigated the rubble to collect the ring of speed <+9> two squares away from where she was.

If I read a ?RoP in a hallway to prevent a monster form pursuing me and then he is out of line of sight but still trying to get passed the RoP to get to me, will he have a chance to break the rune while he is offscreen?

@grotug: yes. Pathfinding works through rune of protection.

Cool, thanks.

Well, starting room on DL90 had cap of Telepathy. Now just need some TOs and maybe I have an outside chance. I used my second !Enlightenment and there is a small vault with balance dragon armor, which is very useful since I just bought a shield of resistance in the armory. The Balance armor would take care of most of the important higher resists. I'm hoping the unID'd amulet is Trickery. Of course I have no way of dealing with what's inside the vault, protecting the goods.

And some things breathed on me and I died.

For extreme diving, you pretty much need to go with 17/16/16 stats, especially with a low-stealth warrior. It takes too long to get survivable HP elsewise.

Okay, good point. Yeah, I died by a Winged Horror and something else of similar danger level. Pretty pathetic!

Without rPois, Winged Horror isn't so pathetic as all that. It breathes poison for 340 HP; Dark and Nether for 170. But with 18 base CON and a Ring of Con, you'd have survived.

Yay, the luck gods are smiling on me this game! (playing normal forced descent game)

1. Orc Shaman dropped me a wand of TO on DL34
2. Picked up a ring of speed <+9> (LF: 3-9) on DL39
3. The very next level had a large oval vault where I picked up a helm of Telepathy, but was careless about traps and fell through a trap door to the next level (I had no trap detection at that point) before I got to see what other goodies might line therein; though there was Tensers Transformations, so there may not have been much else good.
3. Just picked up a rod of TO on DL53 (LF: 5-8). Let's see what other goodies await me on this level. Don't think a rod of TO would give a 8 LF at DL53, but maybe? It is so huge though. Rods of TO are like... the best.

I was thinking it'd be fun if there was a new amulet type; a good luck charm (not sure what it would be called). But basically, like searching and infravision, it could have a value between <+1> and <+8>, which would determine by how much it would increase the chance of something good being dropped from monsters (and maybe chance of good stuff being generated at the start of each level). <+1> might represent 10% increase in quality of items being generated/dropped and <+8> might represent an 80% increase in quality drops/items generated.

EDIT: So far this game, diving fairly quickly, I've encountered 4 Tensers on my way to DL53.

So I YASD that character trying to get into a vault. A loooooooong hallway at the top of the vault caused me problems. Whenever I'd ?phase out of the vault to wait for my rod of TO to recharge I'd end up in the hallway, and then I'd have to teleport away. And invariably I teleported next to Gluarung, except I was wearing a second ring of speed I had picked up on the level, and not the ring of poison I had also picked up on the level, and father of dragons breathed poison.

In other news, just picked up a rod of speed on DL12. We'll see if I can avoid killing this one off prematurely.

EDIT: 2 potions of brawn, the Phial and Colannon and the feeling is only 5 on DL24. I guess that's about right, but when I found the Phial I thought I had found everything of worth on the level. Guess not!

Lol, picked up boots of speed <+4> a few levels ago and just now a <+6> RoS on DL32. I love it when hitting the down stairs in quick succession doesn't burn me. So my native speed is +12 and I have a rod of speed; on DL32.

EDIT: I'm beginning to think "Star" light source is kinda garbage. I'd rather light a room than map my surroundings. If Star would recharge faster it'd be a good item, but its recharge rate makes it pretty bad.

You found a vault.
You do not have TO.
You must flee the vault.

I feel like more than any single object, TO is like make or break. Even with temporary speed of +25 at DL41 I have to abort the vault because I can't TO Shelob. At least I came away with Thalkettoth from Arokhil the Blind, but I lost my ring of damage (0,+8) because I tried on an unknown ring while my backpack was full and had to ?phase out when a Crystal Drake showed up. I killed the Crystal Drake, but as I was going to check out the loot the ghosts dropped from inside the vault, Shelob showed up and I had to ?phase out again, and there was no way to get back into the vault without Shelob chasing me down. I almost managed it, though, because I phased into a checkered room and Shelob followed me into it and then I teleported out when she got close to a perfect room that leads back to the checkered room and the entrance to the vault. My plan was to get close to the entrance of the vault, then ?phase and hope to land closer to it, close the door to the checkered room, haste self and watch the door as I'd run down the hallway in the vault and if the door didn't burst open then I'd be safe in the first arm of the spiral vault. If the door bust open and I'm not close to the end of the first arm of the spiral, then I abort the mission, but I fat fingered ?teleportation instead of ?phase and forgot to !* the ?Teleportation. :( I think that plan mighta worked. Not sure how close I have to be to shelob before she starts pursuing me again, though.

Anyway, base speed +15 at DL41 is nothing to sneeze at. I also lost Arvedui as I donned Thalkettoth, but it's not such a big deal since I have rNexus covered with Colannon and base resists with shield.

here is something i did recently.

1. wear 2x rings of escaping, 1 elven cloak, 1 pot of speed. tot: + 19 spd
2. break mini-vaultl; Beorn comes out to try to kill me.
3. run away through cleared dungeon.
4. when on the far side of the dungeon, teleport.
5. go back to vault, loot, recall.

all this effort for a spellbook (i'm a warrior); what can you do, it was 9-9.

That's a good strategy. Luckily with the vault I just found I also found a scroll of destruction a dungeon level or two earlier so I was able to lure all the things I wasn't able to deal with out and destruct. It actually worked perfectly. I didn't even destroy the small chest in the top of the vault because a master thief picked up the items at the top of the vault, where Harowen and Itanagast were. It worked perfectly, and I only had to remain in Itanagast's line of sight for two turns (the first turn the bolt missed the sleeping young black dragon blocking Itanagast from moving up to the top of the vault). At 295HP I *think* I would have survived his fire breath, but maybe not. He breathes for 733. 733/3 = 244.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hHxcjgYv1...31.28%2BAM.png

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9RdDWeYfS...33.19%2BAM.png This is a good example of where too much stealth is a bad thing.

Also remarkable is that the only three mushrooms I've ID'd this game are the only 3 mushrooms I need to know:
1. Clear Mind
2. Second Sight
3. Vigor.

EDIT: Since I play on a laptop keyboard; when I am playing cautiously, like in this vault, I tend to not press two arrow keys at the same time to move diagonally and and up moving over instead of diagonally. Something just breathed lightning destroying an un-ID'd rod and wand. With my luck one of them was TO.

Two iron helms of telepathy, and my first artifact weapon, though. Next level, quite, normal level; Dor-lómin lying in a hallway. I will be wearing this for a long time.

On a keyboard you should be able to use the number pad (or the numbers at the top) to move diagonally. 1 is down left, 3 down right, 7 up left, 9 up right. (2,4,6, and 8 are down, left, right, and up respectively while 5 is rest.)

I do do this sometimes, but I've been trying to move away from it since it's a bit cumbersome to do half my movements at the top of the keyboard and the other half using the keypad. Really, I was just commenting on the slight irony of being more prone to input undesired movements when nervous and being cautious.

I found some fairly fitting music for Angband: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bhceZgdWFM

This synth dungeon music is pretty good, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p99R2G2QowA

If anyone knows any good mood-setting music to listen to while playing please share. :)

In other news, my character is becoming quite the boss. Kavlax dropped me another <+6> RoS and shield of the Haradrim. Now Haradrim is one of those awesome pieces of gear that would be way over the top OP if it *also* provided the base resists. How many games have I so sadly had to leave it in my home because I couldn't cover crucial high resists, and the base resists wearing it. Well, whaddya know, I'm wearing Dor-lómin. GG, dungeon. GG.

Basically all I need now is Himring and Weaponmastery and I'm good as golden (and later on an endgame weapon).

Yay, that {tried} rod (no monsters were around when I tried it) was a rod of TO! My base speed is +20. This is insane. Now I just need a ring of Damage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bhceZgdWFM#t=1h3m45s This part is particularly good when taking on a fearsome foe.

I thought warriors got 6 rounds with all weapons? This beaked axe I'm wielding and the pick of Erebor I just picked up both max out at 5 rounds. In other news, just upgraded my boots of speed to <+9> bringing my base speed to +26 when not weighed down.

Some of the very heaviest weapons max out at 5.2 or 5.3 blows per round, no matter if STR and DEX are both 18 *** maxed. E.g., Grond, Deathwreaker, The Glaive of Pain, etc.

Well, beaked axe is not very heavy so I don't get it. Woops, my bad, it's not maxed. Looks like it's going to go up to 6.0 rounds as I thought it would. Just found a longbow of power (+20, +15). Surely it's stats are backwards? Oh well.

Learn Vi keys. Once you do, you'll never want to use a number pad again.

So true, Much better ergonomics too.

This keyset?

Seems... very counterintuitive. But I suppose if I were to get used to it I'd never go back. Seems like it might take some getting used to, though.

Ha-Ha! Found a new endgame weapon. Wowsers. Great name. Crazy damage. One of the few artifacts I don't think I've seen mentioned on the forums. I need a source of rDisenchant, though. I think there's a "Weaponmastery on the other side of the level, but "Trickery is currently sustaining my DEX. What to do... prolly use it as a swap.

Hm...Doomcaller?

I was always partial to the Lead-Filled Mace "Skullcleaver" myself (It's a mace! That cleaves skulls!"), but that one's not in Vanilla.

Yep, you got it. :) Skullcleaver is a good one, too. I'm thinking the [-50] is not worth it, though (nevermind aggravation). I nearly died whacking away at a horned reaper. I think my acid branded beaked axe of Húrin is doing just fine


Hmmm... is a 'spear of ice' not frost? I have been stunned and given a cut from Catoras' spear of ice, even though I am wearing 'Nenya' which provides immunity to frost.

Hmm.. Eol just dropped Calris. This gives the rDisenchant I need. Hmmmm... I guess damage to dragons is better than demons? Not sure on that one. Also not sure how much the -20 to hit is going to make me miss.

-20 to hit is a lot. Holy Infusions will fix it.

I'm an illiterate warrior. What I can't decide is if I want to ditch the Doomcaller. Can't be meleeing Morgoth with it if it's gonna leave me so exposed to his blows.

Doomcaller is a lot of fun IF you are already at full strength: 18/200 CON, HP near 900. Try it on dragons first. Hurin is pretty weak for an endgame weapon.

The HJKL key assignments originally came from the Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...inal_ADM3A.svg

This was used for the vi editor, and rogue (which added the diagonal movement keys).

I've been using them for vi and roguelikes for ages, and as you say once you get used to them you don't go back.

I am at max STR, DEX and 208 CON (and I haven't maxed my CON yet, at least while I'm wielding Hurin I have 954HP, even though I'm only CL42.

I tried it on an Ancient Black Dragon and for some reason it took 2-3 rounds to kill him. I'll keep it and try it again, but that experience with the Horned Reaper was scary. I also found Sting and almost want to save *enchant weapon* scrolls for it as I'd rather wear a ring of dam (+15) than a ring of speed with Nenya. The +3 speed of Sting would take to me to +20 speed.

So I just went back to get a chaos armor in the other vault (I want me some rDisenchant!) and decided, why not, I'll take on Puzazu, I'm doing 700+ to demons. Well, he destroyed 3 of my 5 wands of TO but didn't touch any of my rods, (no biggy there, but a bit surprising he did so much damage to the wands). But he made my weapon choices much easier :D. Yes he did, when he dropped the great hammer of Aulë! Yahooooo!!! over 1,000 to dragons! Good day to you, sir: (Glaurung not too happy at the moment). Aulë pretty much best weapon in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGK1dr-Ql0w
EDIT: this reimagined (nice production) of the original Doom 1 soundtrack goes *great* to kicking butt with Aulë. :D

Ancient black dragon has 880HP. Two rounds of melee is expected, after factoring misses. 1047 damage is insanely high for melee. And 712 vs evil(!) makes the -50 AC worthwhile, though you would do better with higher base AC than Himring grants.

I never fight Horned Reapers in any case. Just not worth it.

It's true, Himring was half the reason the HR gave me so much trouble. None of it matters anymore because Aulë is boss, it is king, it is the greatest weapon ever. I'm doing 800 damage vs Black Reavers. I am *so* glad I went back for the dragon chaos armor. Having rDisenchant lets me clobber Black Reavers for "easy" XP (they do have a nasty habit of invoking 470dam mana storms on occasion) but I just crushed a black reaver in like 5 rounds and he did no damage to me at all. Insane. They are great for XP farming if you have insane melee like I do because they do not do anything nasty to my equipment like 90% of the rest of the dungeon at this depth since I have rDisenchant from the beefier dragon armor.

Btw, this doom music sounds insanely good on my headphones and is perfect for Angband. Highly recommend it. You have to turn the music volume way down and then the main volume way up so that you can hear the game volume.

God, I'm even squashing bone golems like they were nothing. Haradrim is good, too, berskerker rage does make a difference.

CL43 and just quaffed another !Aug and now have 970HP. Con still not maxed.

Great Wyrm of many colors? 4 rounds after softening up with some bolts of wounding from favorable hockeystick. Only one of the most terrible non-unique dragons in the game. Maybe I'll taunt the greater draconic Q which conjured forth this wyrm just for kicks....

12 floors to Sauron; where are ?DD when I need them? I can easily finish this in under 50K turns if I want to

How are you supposed to take on a dragon pit if they destroy all their drops? Kinda defeats the purpose....

Then I let the almost dead Great Ice Wyrm run away figuring I'll kill it later and get its drop without the drops getting destroyed and another dragon breathes, killing it (robbing me of the xp) and then another one breathes destroying all the useful potions (there were 2 great ice wyrms). Even with good stealth, everything is waking up rather quickly (I drilled with +8 digging 2 holes to drop my staves of speed before taking on the pit, but the big hitters were already coming around to me by the time I dropped them). I guess I need to think about my strategy before before taking on a pit so I am not fighting multiple big hitters at once.

That's right. I even find myself using them by mistake when I have to use a word processing program instead of vim.

Do note that monsters in pits are always awake, regardless of stealth.

Oh, right, I forgot about that little detail. ;)

So I've been collecting !speeds and bringing them back home and using staves of speed instead. Sauron was pretty close to dead when he teleported away. So I tried to teleport after him, rather than waste my 3 charges of speed which I used before our fight to drain the staff empty. But I teleported to where I TO'd the unique balrogs to, that Sauron had summoned. So I teleport again (precious scrolls, mind you) and it takes me back to where I just was. I teleport again, and takes me to some far corner of the level. I teleport again and it's back to the balrogs. I often feel that teleportation isn't really that random, and that there are like 4 spots on a level where you can land that @ has no idea about until he starts teleporting around the level. Sometimes it works uncannily in my favor, continually dropping back to the opening of the vault again as was the case in the *destructed post I recently made.

I guess it would be nice if it put you in a new location each time you teleported rather than bouncing back and forth or choosing the same landing over and over.

EDIT: Well that was uncomfortable. Fighting Morgoth at under 30 speed felt a bit dicey. Even though I found power dragon scale on DL99 bringing my AC to 212, I was finding myself needing to heal quite often. Only had 3 *healing* left, no !healing, and 3 !CCW. Definitely the closest victory I've had I think. The other two I recall having plenty of consumables to spare. Beat him in under 50k turns, anyway. Also kinda boring to fight Morgoth without there being some risk, so living in fear of being double shotted made the fight seem more exciting.

Impressively low turn count.

Really nice turn count.
One question though: 47534 4900' Killed Mughash the Kobold Lord
Is it worth killing the low level uniques at such depth?
You have better chance of getting something nice from him at that depth, that's true. But still not much chance of getting something useful for the final fight.
I usually don't go for these easy uniques so M has more chance wasting a turn on summoning them.

...

As long as I remember, I don't think I've ever found a PDSM in Angband. And almost every post I see, people show *ego* PDSMs...

You were 6 pounds overweight, so if you'd just ditched some of your load you'd've been at +20 speed. :)

For whatever reason, it seems like all DSMs past the early game are ego DSMs. The DSM being a PDSM is still pretty dang notable though.

The AC penalty on Doomcaller isn't important. You may want something else for Sauron if you can find a big acid brand, but it'll probably be close enough as makes no tangible difference. That aside, once you can handle the aggravation, and assuming you don't have some other important hole to fill in the weapon slot, it's the only choice.

And once you're tough enough to stop playing the stealth game, aggro can be a welcome change.

wow. I used to see posts about it often and wonder what it was. I had never found one before 4.0.5 and now I've gotten at least three. Never seen the one ring or boots of faenor, though.

Derakon, I am not seeing +20.... where are you seeing this?

You were at +19 while 6 pounds overburdened, which should have been penalizing your speed by 1. Ergo if you ditch 6 pounds, the speed penalty should have disappeared, leaving you at +20. Right?

Has anyone run stats on item generation in 4.0.5? It's possible that it's been skewed again.

I also rarely got rings of power and I get them almost every game in 4.0.5.

Derakon, I checked my character again and he is currently at +17 and 41lbs. overburdened. So being underburdened would bring him to +19. I see in the dump I was -6.0lbs which I think means I had 6.0lbs to spare before becoming overweight.

Oh, well, that's not confusing at all! :) Sorry for the misdirection.

I'm back to playing High Elf Warrior and I crushed a Basilisk with a katana of frost, a ring of reckless attacks and a ring of accuracy (+14, +0). Not too much later I found a ring of dexterity which significantly brought up the damage on my katana (2.0 blows to 2.3 blows), so I swapped out the =Accuracy for it. I gained a few levels and encountered another Basilisk. I figured this should go well. I nearly died bringing him to 40% health; phased away, !CCW and still didn't do much damage and had to ?phase again. I don't recall how much the ring of accuracy improved the damage when I put it on, but my experience is that the game shows that a normal ring of accuracy like mine improves damage per round by around 1% or 2%, but this clearly does not seem to be the case as I'm doing less damage with a ring of DEX <+3> than I was with a ring of Accuracy. Unfortunately, I dropped the ring of accuracy so I could swap it out for the reckless attacks to finish the job. Any thoughts on this? Does anyone melee with rings of accuracy?

edit: I also didn't check chance to hit when I had the ring of accuracy on, but without it my chance to hit the Basilisk is 66%.

Your sample size is 2, your perceived antipattern may well not exist. The difference between an easy fight and a hard one comes down to RNG more than to minor variations in gear.

That said, =Accuracy is a pretty garbage ring. It has a minimal effect on your hit rate and critical hit rate, the latter being what improves your listed damage when inspecting the weapon. I'd wear =DEX (+1) over =Accuracy, if only for the DEX sustain. But plenty of other rings would be even better.

according to the game, you do less damage with a ring of slaying (+12,+9) than with a ring of damage (+0,+10).

That is misleading. You're improved hit rate will more than make up 1 HP/ blow. And for a big dice heavy weapon, there will be more damage up front, even ignoring hit rate.

I've always sort of operated with the generalization that +10 hit equals about +1 dam. I wonder if rings of accuracy aren't more effective against opponents with higher AC than say opponents you normally have a 79% chance to hit? But I think the 66% vs the Basilisk the first time would only have gone up to like 68% with the +14, +0 ring. I was about two CL higher when I fought the basilisk the second time, so that also increases my chance to hit him (should probably be greater than what the ring would have provided two CLs earlier).

I have no idea whether it is accurate, but I always used +2 to-hit = +1 to-dam as my guideline.

I just did some math. (The displayed hit probability is hopelessly wrong for the monster info screen.) It depends a lot on your melee skills. Let
M = melee skill = base + 3*to_h bonus.
AC = monster AC
Then hit probability is
.12 + (1-.12-.05)* (M - AC*2/3)/M.

For M = 120 AC = 150 (roughly a dracolich) you will be hitting
26% - Base
40% - With a +10 accuracy ring (or buffed with !Hero alone)
57% - Buffed with !Hero and !Berserk
62% - With all 3 bonuses

So without buffing (Note: not recommended against high AC), your damage improves by .14/.25 = 56%. With heavy buffing, it increase by 9%

For a decent midgame damage output of 50 per blow, that corresponds to 26 and 5 damage per blow, respectively. Of course, if you're using Sting or Harradekket, the numbers are much lower.

TL;DR:
For good melee compared to level appropriate AC, the value is about 2:1 to_d:to_h
For poor melee, always choose to_h.

The other thing to keep in mind is that these comparisons are important *only* when facing a serious threat. You simply shouldn't care against lesser opponents.

With one exception: mage. To conserve mana, you need to fight everything except for the most dangerous monsters. The optimal mage melee weapon is thus a MoD of Gondolin--ie, slay everything you can actually hit. (Of course, you may need a stat stick here.)

Do such mages ever choose between a ring of damage and a ring of slaying? I think I always use different rings by the time that sort of combat is feasible.

Yeah, mage physical stats are so miserable that they'll almost certainly prefer =STR or =CON over either of those.

Eddie--if you're a high elf mage using something like Thunderfist(CON, STR) or Deathwreaker (STR), I can see adding a ring of slaying as an option. An extra 40 melee makes a big difference against high-AC targets.
Edit: one reason to point this out is that mage hit probability is *significantly* overstated by the 4.0.5 monster knowledge. (Nick is or has fixed it in the rev branch.) If you are considering a fighter mage, focusing on this really helps (along with al three buffs, despite the nerfed Tenser's mages get.) Of course with archery you get a big bonus from additive hit chance of both bow and arrows, so long as you are shooting from relatively nearby.

If you are using it to save mana, you might want to wear a ring of int. Or con or speed, as death reduces your mana precipitously :). In particular, a ring of str+5 generally gives you +5 to hit and +5 dam in addition to possibly another half blow or more. It's really hard for a ring of slaying to match that, and if they are even close sustain str is nothing to sneeze at. I've played a lot of everything, including mages, and I really cannot remember a mage giving slaying or damage serious consideration, ever, except maybe early on before I found a decent stat ring.

Mind you, my memories and experience are mostly for 3.0 with my version of blows code, but I've played some 3.1+, and I think the principles should apply pretty well to 4.0.