Intentionally making life hard for @

[archolewa]

Originally Posted by Jay

Here are a few ideas that occurred to me:

- alternatively, play without using deep descent at all

Are we sure this is a challenge? Most of my deaths happen after reading a Deep Descent scroll. Personally I squash them as soon as I find then.

[quarague]

You could also not use some equipment slots. This gives you a wide variety of extra difficulty. Using say no gloves is not much of a restriction. No rings or amulets is probably quite annoying (rand arts plus some luck recommended to get enough speed). I'm not sure whether 'completely naked' is doable? A mage can do a lot with magic ...

[Adam]

Bookless mages or artfactless games are also a challenge and doable.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Originally Posted by archolewa

Are we sure this is a challenge? Most of my deaths happen after reading a Deep Descent scroll. Personally I squash them as soon as I find then.

Funny, I save them up and then race for the bottom once I think @ has enough power to survive at depth.

[archolewa]

Originally Posted by Ingwe Ingweron

Funny, I save them up and then race for the bottom once I think @ has enough power to survive at depth.

Yeah, I know some people do that. Personally, I prefer to go down the old-fashioned way. This is partially because I'm a cautious player, and so like to be overprepared for Morgoth, and grinding on the bottom floors is nowhere near as fun as descending, and partially because once I'm strong enough for the depths, well then it's fun to engage in wholesale slaughter for a while after much of a game of running and hiding.

[mrfy]

I tend to not use Deep Descent except once at the beginning. I do make it more difficult by killing all the uniques before Sauron and Morgoth.

[PowerWyrm]

Originally Posted by Angdrim

Angband is most fun when your survival is very much in doubt. And so I decided that I'm going to give my new @ a handicap. What I've settled on: no teleport other. This is basically going to make Morgoth impossible (assuming I get there, of course). So I might make an exception for the last fight. The only alternative that I can see is killing all of the really nasty uniques before getting there.

Turning off the option that lets artifacts re-spawn when you miss them occurred to me too, but since no TO is going to make raiding vaults hard (and some of them impossible), that would mean losing out on tons of artifacts, and I chickened out and left it on.

My last @ was an ironman win. I thought playing ironman would make the game a lot harder, but it wasn't that bad. Early game is a bit nerve wracking if only because food and light gives you a time limit, but once you get the phial and reliable source of food (or a big stock of it), playing ironman doesn't make a very dramatic difference. A bit trickier with setting up resistances, no guaranteed source of arrows, but not a huge difference.

Any other ideas about how to make the game harder? Anybody else give their @s a handicap?

Not so long ago, I took on the "Mount Olympus" challenge: bookless artifactless egoless hobbit mage. See the corresponding thread here: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8326

And my ladder entry: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=20489

The ultimate challenge would be an ironman version of that. See if you have the patience for it...

[Thraalbee]

An "Illiterate Mage" with zero use of scrolls and books is an easier alternative

[Angdrim]

Off topic, but didn't think this deserved a new thread: Just saw a "red hatted elf" in town. I took ten years off from playing Angband - I don't think these guys weren't in the game last time I played. Anyway, flavor text says "It's Yuletide and this elf has had a few too many". Does Angband know the date? Do these guys only show up around Christmas?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Originally Posted by Angdrim

Off topic, but didn't think this deserved a new thread: Just saw a "red hatted elf" in town. I took ten years off from playing Angband - I don't think these guys weren't in the game last time I played. Anyway, flavor text says "It's Yuletide and this elf has had a few too many". Does Angband know the date? Do these guys only show up around Christmas?

Father Christmas and his Christmas Elves only show up on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. For anyone trying to take out EVERY unique, these are the only days you can get Father Christmas.