Hoping for sage advice...

[UV_Catastrophe]

Hey everyone! I just started playing Angband again after a hiatus of about four years. When I first started playing, I didn't take things too seriously - I looked at all the monster information for fun, cheated death, and so on. I never beat the game, though.

This time around, I've decided to win the game legitimately. I made myself a high-elf mage, and I've proceeded with extreme caution down to 1800'. Last night, as I was about to recall back to town, I went up a flight of stairs and got a superb feeling. Looks like a greater vault - I'm not sure which type - and I wanted to ask for people's advice on how to proceed.

My character dump is here: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=7589

I think I got really lucky with the monsters in this one. The only ones that concern me are:

- Nether Wraith
- Master Lich
- 1 Ancient White Dragon
- 2 Ancient Black Dragons
- 3 Ancient Green Dragons
- Itangast the Fire Drake

My question is - do any of these have nether/breath attacks that can kill me in one hit? My character only has 300 HP. On the other hand, I have a hasted speed of +17, so I can probably teleport them away without any risk to myself. So, what advice can you give me?

[Pete Mack]

Originally Posted by UV_Catastrophe

I think I got really lucky with the monsters in this one. The only ones that concern me are:

- Nether Wraith
- Master Lich
- 1 Ancient White Dragon
- 2 Ancient Black Dragons
- 3 Ancient Green Dragons
- Itangast the Fire Drake

My question is - do any of these have nether/breath attacks that can kill me in one hit? My character only has 300 HP. On the other hand, I have a hasted speed of +17, so I can probably teleport them away without any risk to myself. So, what advice can you give me?

Go for it. With single resist, Itangast does at most 244 damage. You should be OK. Ancient green dragons do 240 dam unresisted.

[UV_Catastrophe]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Go for it. With single resist, Itangast does at most 244 damage. You should be OK. Ancient green dragons do 240 dam unresisted.

Thanks for the advice. I cleared it out without any problems (and chased down some of the ancient dragons afterwards). Sadly, the only artifact I found was the Steel Helm of Hammerhand. (Not bad, but I don't feel quite burly enough to wear something that aggravates monsters.)

On the plus side, I just found Resistances and Scarabatrices on a different level, so I think I'm set to dive a lot deeper now.

[UV_Catastrophe]

Since I've already got a thread going, I wanted to ask a couple of other questions that have been nagging me.

First of all - I'm a little curious about the ordering scheme for monster memory. I feel like the monsters used to be sorted according to depth (with the deepest ones appearing first), but in this version of Angband, the entries are all jumbled up - not sorted by depth or order of appearance or anything else that I can discern. Is there a way to sort those entries?

Other question - occasionally, when I cast a spell and target a specific enemy, it just says "target selected". The spell doesn't fail; I just lose mana without any spell effect. What's going on there?

Thanks again for the help!

[Big Al]

1. In 3.0.9, the monsters are sorted in the same order as the monster.txt file - which is generally in order by depth, though not exactly due to some monsters being added/removed over time. Last Friday, Gabe put a patch in the online svn code to order them in reverse order from the monster.txt (which is generally, though, not exactly) from deepest to shallowest.

I don't know if it would be worth it to reorder the monster list by depth the next time that an upgrade breaks savefile-compatibility, or to write a patch to display the monsters by actual depth. It'd be nice feature for the monster knowledge screen ('~') too.

2. I'd suspect that you don't have proper line of sight on the monster. Are you using a macro to target?

[UV_Catastrophe]

Originally Posted by Big Al

1. In 3.0.9, the monsters are sorted in the same order as the monster.txt file - which is generally in order by depth, though not exactly due to some monsters being added/removed over time. Last Friday, Gabe put a patch in the online svn code to order them in reverse order from the monster.txt (which is generally, though, not exactly) from deepest to shallowest.

Interesting. Maybe I'll try futzing around with it on my copy of the game.

Originally Posted by Big Al

2. I'd suspect that you don't have proper line of sight on the monster. Are you using a macro to target?

No, this happens when I have a clear line of sight, and I've never used macros. It's weird... there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when it happens, and it's been happening for a long time. (I remember it happening the last time I played regularly - four or five years ago.)

[zaimoni]

Originally Posted by UV_Catastrophe

Other question - occasionally, when I cast a spell and target a specific enemy, it just says "target selected". The spell doesn't fail; I just lose mana without any spell effect. What's going on there?

The spell doesn't visibly fail. I count this as a spell failing as it doesn't happen to me with a 0% fail rate.

I think this has something to do with messages suppressing each other.

[Macavenger]

Originally Posted by UV_Catastrophe

Other question - occasionally, when I cast a spell and target a specific enemy, it just says "target selected". The spell doesn't fail; I just lose mana without any spell effect. What's going on there?

My guess would be that the spell is actually failing, but you're casting it quickly enough that you don't see the "You failed to get the spell off" message, as that will disappear once you hit '*' to target it. I know I've wasted a turn every now and then quickly typing out maa5 to finish something I've been shooting off with a magic missile on my rangers, only to end up resting a turn on the 5 because the spell failed.