which weapon?

[xgamer]

Hi all,

I'm having a bit of a headache regarding my weapon choice. Would appreciate any help!

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=10546

Thanks!
xgamer

[Derakon]

You're asking between a sword of +8 speed and a whip of *Slay Troll*? Take the sword, any day. It almost doubles your damage capacity because you're moving a bit under twice as fast as anything you'll fight. The whip gives ~60 damage/attack against non-trolls, while the sword gives ~40 damage/attack against everything...but you multiply that by 1.8 to account for the speed boost and get 72. And then there's all the secondary benefits of speed. It seriously increases your survivability in just about every situation.

Edit: taking a closer look at your character, man, you have way too much speed for a level-30 character. +26 speed! You haven't quite hit the point of diminishing returns on speed boosts though, so +8 speed is still an additional +80% damage vs. normal-speed monsters. It's just not quite as significant an increase in your absolute damage output.

[PowerDiver]

The +8 from the weapon is only about +30% energy over what he has, so the whip wins on damage and also gives regen and better tunneling. For the best damage per monster turn, not only switch to the whip but use =dam+10 instead of =speed+8. However, that's not fully safe at DL40 unless you have temporary speed boosts available.

It's rather strange to squelch good bows when you only have one, and it is not a particularly good bow.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

The gloves are also rather weak. FA gloves would be *sweet*...then you can use the =Spd and =Dam together. Alternately, if you can find slaying gloves that can give another damage boost, the whip gets that much more of an edge.

[xgamer]

Thanks for the suggestions, but already got completely new and very nice equipment! Would you now recommend continuing stat gain or starting to dive further now?

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by xgamer

Thanks for the suggestions, but already got completely new and very nice equipment! Would you now recommend continuing stat gain or starting to dive further now?

Dive. There is no reason to stop at stat-gain except feeling that you can't deal with monsters at that depth. Avoid monsters that stun or blind (dark/light hounds), haste when needed. At HP 400 you can't survive full strength nether/shard/sound/chaos -breaths, so avoid Dracolichs and uniques that breathe those.

I would use that RoCON +6 you have at home instead of RoDam. It lowers your damage dealing capability somewhat, but increases your survivability a lot.

I'm surprised that you have found two RoS already, but your other gear is as weak as it is. RNG is playing tricks on you.

[xgamer]

Thanks - that sounds good. I'll start the dive then. :-)