New To Rogues

[ElectricPaladin]

I've just started playing Kobold rogues. Any advice from the old roguers?

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by ElectricPaladin

I've just started playing Kobold rogues. Any advice from the old roguers?

I don't know why anyone plays kobolds. If I want a tough rogue I play high elves. If I want one that's not quite as cheesy but has good hp and good skills I play a hobbit. AFAICT a kobold is just a hobbit with slightly better fighting and slightly worse everything else. I guess it must all be about the rpois ...

[ElectricPaladin]

Originally Posted by Magnate

I don't know why anyone plays kobolds. If I want a tough rogue I play high elves. If I want one that's not quite as cheesy but has good hp and good skills I play a hobbit. AFAICT a kobold is just a hobbit with slightly better fighting and slightly worse everything else. I guess it must all be about the rpois ...

I do like the rpois. I'll try hobbit and high elf, though.

[will_asher]

Kobolds also have a slightly better hit die which is worth something, hobbits have a horrible hit die. (unless that's been recently changed..)
That said, I also play hobbits more often than kobolds.

(Maybe I should make them slightly tougher since I reduced their Rpois to a partial resist in DaJAngband.)

[Nile]

Originally Posted by Magnate

I don't know why anyone plays kobolds. If I want a tough rogue I play high elves. If I want one that's not quite as cheesy but has good hp and good skills I play a hobbit. AFAICT a kobold is just a hobbit with slightly better fighting and slightly worse everything else. I guess it must all be about the rpois ...

rPois is definitely huge, enough to make up for everything else IMO. Plus the reasons you said, 1 more hit die than hobbit and better at melee. Also, this may sound contradictory, but I find that being a high elf usually makes the game harder. Because of the high exp modifier. The best way to avoid death is to be in as few situations where you can die. Leveling fast achieves this goal nicely, while leveling slowly is the exact opposite.

Originally Posted by ElectricPaladin

I've just started playing Kobold rogues. Any advice from the old roguers?

I'm not an old roguer, but I just won with a Kobold Rogue. Tons easier than a mage, but not as easy as a ranger.

Just how new are you to rogues? What clev&dvel do you make it too?

Rogue specific advice...take advantage of your stealth by picking off one monster at a time. mae always (detect objects). Therefore, upon entering every level you should, in this order (and when you have the spells/resources): mab (detect monsters), mcg (detect invisible, if you're below 40 or so, sooner if you lack see invisible), mae (detect items), mag (detect traps/doors).

Free action, meh, I have lately come to think it's overrated, especially for a rogue. More important is to know which monsters can paralyze, like ghouls, carrion crawlers, and some mages (although you can survive those if they port away). Since you're a rogue, it should be easy to steer clear of monsters you don't want to fight. The Rogue I won with didn't have free action till around dlev 45.

If you are a kobold, then you have rpois, so once you get the basic resists head to dlev 40 asap.

Let's see...just the basic advice really, like always multiple means of escape. I try to always carry ?phase, ?tele, and ?teleLevel throughout the whole game. !ccw till you can replace with !healing. Oh, and carry stacks of wands of teleport other.

This is the hard part: know your limits and learn from your mistakes. For example, if you die while fighting Lorgan or Azog, take note of it, and next time don't fight them so soon.

One last piece of advice, which has saved me many a death...avoid the vaults unless you are totally certain you can own it. It's not worth the risk of death to get an artifact which you will find later anyways. The 3 exceptions to this rule are if you see: 1. A Plain Gold Ring, 2. A 4d5 Long Sword, 3. Power Dragon Scale Mail. In those cases, it's worth dying in an attempt to get the item.

[momo125]

HE Rg was my first win. really hard to beat. you get min 3 attacks off the bat and SI plus good stats. dive as fast as you can and detect objects. get the ones with no obsticles and leave the others alone. this does require some stair scumming, but half of the game is luck anyways. can't remember number of ch i've lost when WOR and die.

[Pete Mack]

Originally Posted by ElectricPaladin

I've just started playing Kobold rogues. Any advice from the old roguers?

Don't screw around fighting random crap. Dive, Dive, Dive! (Kobold has top stealth and RPois -- it's one of the two best combinations, along with High Elf.)

[timtek]

Free action, meh, I have lately come to think it's overrated, especially for a rogue. More important is to know which monsters can paralyze, like ghouls, carrion crawlers, and some mages (although you can survive those if they port away). Since you're a rogue, it should be easy to steer clear of monsters you don't want to fight. The Rogue I won with didn't have free action till around dlev 45.

I'm still new to angband and especially rogues, how do you stun monsters?

[fizzix]

hmm, funny timing, I'm currently playing a kobold rogue. I think this is my 4th attempt, 2 died early and 1 died later after a nexus vortex switched str and chr, ugh.

My advice is:

Anything you find that raises stealth is huge in the beginning. So keep an eye out for boots and cloaks of stealth. You're going to be running a lot.

You need detection, so you know where to avoid. at the beginning, wands and staves of light can do this.

Then it's pretty much detection, detection, detection. Run if you have to. You can get a lot deeper with a stealthy rogue than you can with most other classes, so it's really the class you want to play if you want to learn to dive. Or at least, that's why I did it. It's also a bit nervewracking, i'm thinking of playing a nice tank warrior after my current rogue wins or more likely dies.

Anyway, I posted my current attempt in the AAR section. She's doing pretty well for herself, at dlevel 90+.

[Nightmarjoo]

Originally Posted by timtek

I'm still new to angband and especially rogues, how do you stun monsters?

The spells Shock Wave and Ice Storm in Raal's Tome of Destruction have a chance to stun monsters who don't breathe sound. I haven't gotten far enough with a rogue to know if a rogue can cast either of those spells though.