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#1 |
Adept
Join Date: Mar 2016
Posts: 139
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Naedim, Sil pacifist
I've been playing a lot of Sil pacifists on Angband.live lately. Sil, rather than Sil-Q, because getting the Angband.live purple on my own variant would feel cheeky.
Naedim made it all the way, having learned from the mistakes of pacifists past. http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21310 From the beginning I was determined not to spend in Melee, Evasion, Archery, Will or Smithing. (I was somewhat open to Will, but I think the only ability plausibly worth the points for a pacifist there is Channeling). There's less XP available as a pacifist and so it has to be carefully used. I began with 8 Stealth, Disguise, and 3 Perception, Keen Senses. This kept Vanish open from early on in case I needed it. In the event I never did. The goal was to get Listen, then spend almost all the rest of my XP in the song tree. Pacifists are very fragile starting out and the game can screw you over easily. A recent defeat with another pacifist that particularly rankles came through standing on some stairs about to descend waiting a moment to recover Voice when Othrod and alll his escorts came up, moving me off it and surrounding me. Game over. Getting past the first few levels required some amount of luck. In general however the particularly bad enemies are birds, wargs and shadows. Birds move fast and are good at spotting you early on, wargs move fast and track you by scent, and shadows are hard to see and cannot be put to sleep. Later on Easterling spies turn up, and their insanely high perception is very hard to evade. The early game followed the regular pattern of scouting about for the down stairs and bailing back to go up and down if the stairs appeared to be blocked or I was spotted or heard wargs picking up my scent. There was a scare at 500' where I was fleeing Orcobal and friends to the stairs and a bunch of orcs came up, and I was almost completely surrounded. I tried an unidentified staff and it turned out to be Majesty, which put them to flight and let me descend. This was fortunately the narrowest escape of the whole game. At 700' or so I started running into shadows, which got messy on a couple of occasions. Sprinting would potentially have helped but I didn't want to make the XP investment; it would have further delayed having a usable Song of Lorien. I took some grace draining from a bunch of wights I was forced to run through, but luckily had enough lembas to regain it; later running from another shadow I had to go through a group of cats and relied on the staff of Majesty again. Picked up the Leather Armour of Gorlim at 800', which has terror (afraid/fast when you take more than 10 damage - perfect for a pacifist!) and Exchange Places. Exchange Places didn't come into its own until the escape, but it did a lot of work then. Terror never triggered - I was seldom hit after that. 950' with Song of about 20 and Lorien is much more comfortable than the levels above as oathwraiths are much easier to avoid than shadows. I scoured 900' and 950' for a long time looking for a sharp weapon to cut Sils with but came up blank - it looks from the dump as though I missed the dagger Nargil, but if it was in Gothmog's hall there was small chance of getting it. I hung round upgrading my gear and getting my Song to the low 30s before tackling the throne room. This was my third attempt with a pacifist and I had a calculated plan: I put everything to sleep with Lorien right away, then stood near the doors and sounded a horn towards Morgoth. On this occasion it was not immediately successful and it took a few tries to both wake and alert him. He then headed toward me purposefully leaving the crown where it had fallen from his head and I sent him back to sleep. I had retained a lot of XP for purchasing Woven Themes, Song of Aule, Song of Sharpness and Song of Mastery. Sharpness with Silence was essential for Sil-cutting without having sharp weapons (I tried briefly to free one without it but this was ineffective). On cutting the third the whole place woke up, and Mastery gave me space to vacate out of line of sight and restart Lorien and Silence, shutting down Morgoth's songs. It's possible Lorien and Silence would have done the job without Mastery, but I didn't want to get too cute, and Mastery at 37+ Song works very well to freeze the room. In any case this took and soon even Morgoth was asleep again. I had accumulated over 20 charges of Revelations to make my escape, and had plenty of potions of Voice, not having used any on the throne room itself, so I was able to sing more or less continuously all the way up. Exchange Places with a potent Lorien woke enemies up just to put them back to sleep immediately with no attacking. At the entrance there were many traps, not all of which could be disarmed; I drank a Constitution potion and equipped an appropriate amulet so I could bulldoze through the spiked pits. Carcharoth slept as I whispered past, and I was out. |
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#2 |
Apprentice
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Sufficient for living and internet.
Posts: 60
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Since this was done on Angband.live, there was chat, and since I was present, I saved the chat. Here is the section from entering the throneroom to victory in an organizational spoiler;
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#3 |
Knight
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 710
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What is your opinion on lore master for singers? Does it overall gain xp? 60k is pretty high for a pacifist.
If you are not taking lore master, I would prefer Doriath for singers. You start just a few hundred xp shy of Song of Lorien. |
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#4 |
Apprentice
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Sufficient for living and internet.
Posts: 60
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I watched him gain 200xp on a quarter of a floor from Loremaster, so even though getting it is 2500-3500xp on a Finarfin, I'd expect it to pay for itself over the course of 800ft to 950ft-scumming.
I'm not very experienced with pacifists, but Stealth seems more reliable than Song at the beginning. |
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#5 |
Veteran
Join Date: May 2012
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Posts: 1,168
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I think loremaster falls a bit short longterm on xp (you'll get most of that xp anyway without), but it does make for a lot less headaches & a finarfin can certainly afford it. Even stuff like knowing whether a dagger sitting under a big drake is Angrist or not makes a huge difference.
I've tried perception/listen, stealth, evasion/sprinting & song starts. Personal opinion is listen is easiest followed by sprinters. Pure stealth seems hardiest to me. There just isn't a huge range of options against Wargs in a blind corridor. Traps can randomly screw you & something like -1 str & a locked door, web or pit is not fun. You also want some way to deal with shadows & it's preferable to be able to see them in the 1st place. |
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#6 | |
Adept
Join Date: Mar 2016
Posts: 139
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Quote:
At the point I generally get Lorien (about 550' this run) it's not quite good enough initially to be able to reliably sleep Sulrauko and werewolves before they spot me, even with the advance warning of Listen. It would presumably be stronger to have it earlier, and Doriath can in fact start with Lorien if they sink everything into Song, but with such low stealth you're likely to wake stuff up again very easily as you pass unless you're singing Silence (which also drains your Voice). Without Keen Senses/Listen also you are more likely to run into enemies at a distance you can't easily escape. I think you probably die to different things: you're probably better against things moving around rapidly and randomly, but if you're facing sustained pressure and you run out of Voice you won't have many tools left. I found starting with Listen/low stealth harder than high stealth/Keen Senses and build to Listen. I kept finding that I'd descend with Listen and find too many enemies around me to evade with my current stealth - which would put me into escape mode right away, and once away from the stairs, if enemies did enter a corridor behind me and the route out of the room ahead was blocked, things were liable to get messy very fast if they spotted me. I don't think the amount I put in stealth early is necessarily optimal, it's probably better to balance investment in Song of Silence with Stealth, but I found it made the tricky early levels very much easier once I learned to avoid wolves and birds and shut doors (less for noise purposes, more for blocking the early wolves). I generally had Listen by the time I entered warg and shadow depth, but I didn't see shadows before they crept up on me. This is largely because when they're "visible" with Listen or Keen Senses, they're invisible. Sprinting might help. Wargs I kept a very close eye on, but there is an element of luck; if they get your scent while you're distant from the stair, or while they're between you and the only known stair, survival is hard. Again I can believe Sprinting could help. There are many places where being discovered with or without Sprinting makes little difference though, and Sprinting costs 4300 XP, which feels hard to swing in the early game. I haven't given Sprinting a fair try though since my goal was to do without Evasion or Melee. An option I tried a few times when desperate was Song of Elbereth, but as I found Song of Sharpness was always necessary, the cost of that extra addition in the Song tree was too much for me to ever be happy taking it, and when things didn't flee the situation usually turned fatal. |
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#7 |
Adept
Join Date: Mar 2016
Posts: 139
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Having played around a bit with Sindar Doriath now I'm not sold on a Song of Lorien start. It feels stronger on the first few levels, but as you get into Warg and Easterling depth, enemy perception and will increase steeply from 1s and 2s into 6s and 7s, and it's no longer so easy to soothe aroused enemies back to sleep - they see you sooner and are slower to put to sleep. More stealth is needed not to be spotted, but without investing in perception you end up at Warg depth without Listen and that feels very fragile.
Making a comparison run with my usual style again it occurs to me how much time is spent in corners of crowded areas waiting for enemies to file past. This requires quite a bit of stealth to be safe, preferably not completely tied to Song of Silence. That doesn't mean that Sindar Doriath might not be the better choice in the long run - pacifist means a heavy investment in the Song tree - but I think the difference between -1 and 0 Str becomes relevant once you're boosting it to tunnel later, and the extra Grace point also makes a difference in terms of Voice; this possibly outweighs the experience boost for me. Last edited by Quirk; December 18, 2017 at 01:16. |
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