I finally understand how diving quicker can be "safer"

[Wraitheist]

I used to dive down to '900 or so until I found 'FA. Then I would dive a bit deeper until I had teleport. Then it was down to stat gain. I'd stay there until my stats were maxed (or nearly so) before going futher.

I finally realized, however, that more than a few of my deaths were from what seemed like bad luck. I'd walk down the > and instantly get breathed on my some out-of-depth unique. Another time, I landed in a pack of gravity hounds.

So I finally understand why just taking every > is arguably safer. The more time spent at those depths, the higher and higher the odds of getting into situations like that. By going deeper more quickly, you actually find important items faster and are therefore less likely to be killed by something due to lacking that certain resist. Not to mention that I'm less likely to get bored and careless.

So, thanks to everyone who preaches the power diving method. It took nearly a year for me to believe that power diving is the way to go, but now I couldn't agree more.

Now, I'm off to fall down some >.

[AR_chie]

Originally Posted by Wraitheist

I finally realized, however, that more than a few of my deaths were from what seemed like bad luck.

Once I had very bad luck. When wandering for long time at 1300-1500' I was introduced by RNG to Destroyer (person from deep shadow - ca 4500-4700'). That meeting was short and painfull.

[Djabanete]

Originally Posted by Wraitheist

I used to dive down to '900 or so until I found 'FA. Then I would dive a bit deeper until I had teleport. Then it was down to stat gain. I'd stay there until my stats were maxed (or nearly so) before going futher.

I finally realized, however, that more than a few of my deaths were from what seemed like bad luck. I'd walk down the > and instantly get breathed on my some out-of-depth unique. Another time, I landed in a pack of gravity hounds.

So I finally understand why just taking every > is arguably safer. The more time spent at those depths, the higher and higher the odds of getting into situations like that. By going deeper more quickly, you actually find important items faster and are therefore less likely to be killed by something due to lacking that certain resist. Not to mention that I'm less likely to get bored and careless.

So, thanks to everyone who preaches the power diving method. It took nearly a year for me to believe that power diving is the way to go, but now I couldn't agree more.

Now, I'm off to fall down some >.

Whoa. It's never occurred to me that powerdiving might be safer. But it's certainly a heckuva lot more fun. Happy >'ing to you.

[Pete Mack]

Well, there's diving and then there's powerdiving. I don't think the latter is safer than going slow, but certainly diving is safer, at least with good detection. As for powerdiving, that is in entirely in the mind of the diver. My current character (a Ranger) just reached CON 200 at 4150' (cl 38), after finding Thorin and Cambeleg in quick succession. But it doesn't feel like powerdiving, because he found Tenser's at the earliest useful moment, and he found Bard at 1600', cl 22.

[Seany C]

Diving/power-diving works fine with a few minimal break-points: the only one I'm insisting on from now on is some source of FA before going into 'fast-moving paralyser territory' - after losing two consecutive characters to a double-move from a Basilisk and an invisible Trapper (no permanent SeeInv, either)*...it's usually more fun than the slow grind of levelling at a 'safe' depth, though...

*actually, it wasn't really diving - CLs 19 and 21 vs DLs 40 and 44.

[Djabanete]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Well, there's diving and then there's powerdiving.

Eh? Care to explain this to us?

[Wraitheist]

That's a good point about FA. I've never actually not found FA by '1600 so I've never experienced that. Good to know!

[aeneas]

Originally Posted by Djabanete

Eh? Care to explain this to us?

I don't know what Pete will have to say, but its a distinction I've made before. Actually, I'd say there are a couple of ways to dive without powerdiving.

I'd call powerdiving going down pretty much as fast as you can find stairs. You never wait for anything- not FA, not resists, nothing. You don't explore further than you need to to find stairs unless you see something really worth checking out. You rely on the fact that the stuff you need is really common 1000' feet or so below where you first need it, so if you can get there in a small amount of turns you are unlikely (for certain values of unlikely...) to be killed before you get there. If you're playing for turns this means you either die or win in a small number- PowerDiver's <400k wins are a great example of this.

But there are other ways to dive- one is to play quickly, but not _that_ quickly. To me this just means recognizing that there are diminishing returns at a given depth and moving on once you've gotten 80% of the utility out of that depth with 20% of the turns it would take to get 100% of what's normal there. If you're playing for turns you'll die or win in around 800k- 1 million like this, depending on luck and race/class.

But you can also choose to play in a style I'd call "punctuated equilibrium", which is a compromise between safety and quickness. It involves playing at certain "sweet spots" until you have a laundry list of stuff that will make you relatively safe at the next sweet spot, and then diving to there. This can involve some long fast dives, but it's very different from powerdiving from the beginning.

The thing about diving is that if you're powerdiving it is never safe to stop- you have to just drive through, because you are too vulnerable to survive long where you are. Once you are a certain distance out of depth it really is safer to keep going down. But it's safer to not play that far out of depth in the first place. Less fun, for my tastes at least, but safer.

EDIT: But, I should also add that I think diving as fast as you can at least some of the time is the fastest way to learn the game, even if it's not the most reliable way to win.

[Kadoles]

Originally Posted by aeneas

The thing about diving is that if you're powerdiving it is never safe to stop- you have to just drive through, because you are too vulnerable to survive long where you are. Once you are a certain distance out of depth it really is safer to keep going down. But it's safer to not play that far out of depth in the first place. Less fun, for my tastes at least, but safer.

Am I diving too fast? can you be too deep for stat potions?

current char

[Pete Mack]

No, you can never run out of stat potions. The trouble is they are quite rare in 3.1.0 dev.
At your depth, even novice mages can drop them, so they should actually come a little quicker.

The issue isn't stat potions, it's staying alive at 160 HP and no MB5... I don't think I'd be able to keep that character alive at that depth, but it would be fun to try.

Good luck! And if you die, try it again with V3.0.9 or with Eddie's patch. 3.1.0 is in pretty bad shape for extreme diving right now. (Orc and troll pits are no longer such useful sources of stat potions, etc.)