Top 5 deadliest uniques

[Scraper]

Originally Posted by debo

smeagol zomg

If smeagol wasn't affected by light damage, I don't think I would have killed him ever. These days I just ignore him until I'm at a point where he is trivial.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Annoying?
Draebor, for shifting you off the entire level.
Harowen the Black Hand for steal+teleporting.
If there was a unique gelatinous cube, that would be my 3rd.
After that, any unique who teleports away in lieu of running away on low health.

[Derakon]

Ar-Pharazon is annoying, because once he's in-depth he shows up on every bloody level until you kill him. His rarity is only 1, for cripes' sake.

Harowen can fortunately be killed easily with a little Phase Door + ranged combat, since he has no ranged attacks aside from spawning traps.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Magnate

I think this may be the same reason that the Tarrasque doesn't feature much either: all three are known to be highly dangerous, and people don't fight them unless they're very well prepared?

Tarrasque is IMO far worse than Gothmog or Ancalagon unless you happen to have immunities to fire and cold. For warrior Tarrasque is the only monster I take potions of resist cold and fire with me unless I have said immunities.

Tarrasque is a bit like Morgoth in a way that everything it does deals huge amount of damage, and it uses breaths a lot (1 in 2). It just doesn't have weak actions. Ancalagon and Gothmog have:

Gothmog:
S:1_IN_3
S:BLIND | CONF | SCARE
S:BR_FIRE | BR_PLAS
S:S_HI_DEMON | S_HI_UNDEAD

blind, conf and scare are all meaningless spells if you have either resist/protections or perfect saving, fire is easy to double-resist and plasma deals quite low damage. Summons are dangerous only in open space.

Ancalagon:
S:1_IN_3
S:BR_ACID | BR_COLD | BR_ELEC | BR_FIRE | BR_POIS
S:S_HI_DRAGON | S_KIN

acid and poison are only 266 points even with single resist, summons are bad only if you fight it in open space.

[robbiodobbio]

I've run into Tarrasque twice, she's nasty, does huge damage and keeps coming back for more, not quite sure how to take her down.

[Pete Mack]

An undead thread. Quick get a dragon to breathe on it!

[Severian]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

An undead thread. Quick get a dragon to breathe on it!

I thought it was interesting reading at least. Mainly because I have just run into Kavlax and Gorlim on successive levels. It has been like 10 years since I played, but I knew enough to just not fight them (I would be looking at a tombstone right now if I hadn't known that, I imagine.)

Gorlim is particularly scary as a Priest caster, even though he can't one-shot me now, where Kavlax can. You can keep tabs on Kavlax by detecting a lot, but having Gorlim wandering the level, maybe just out of sight, is scary (I ran into him in one of the new cavern levels you can't light very easily.)

Angband has changed a lot since I lost played, but I the basic principles seem the same. If I had to make a list of them it would start with:

1) Angband is a game of knowledge, in two senses.

One is what you know about your character's surroundings. That's very important, and has a lot of implications (there's a reason rods of light are one of the surprisingly good items in Angband, and it isn't mainly about killing Trolls, though there is that.)

The other is what _you_ know about the game.

Some of that is just facts- you can look up what Gorlim does if he's not in monster memory (but will you before the first time he stomps you?) It's a little harder to figure out just what kind of damage Kavlax can do, but you can work it out. I didn't bother to calculate it. I knew that with <300 hp I didn't want to tangle with him.

The one truly close call (well, Kavlax might have had a brief opportunity to one-shot me but it's hard to call that a close call since I escaped with no damage) I've had so far in my first game in 10 years was to adamantium coins of all things. I had forgotten how hard they hit early on- that's just about remembering facts.

But some of that is having a strong sense of danger, and that mainly comes with dying a lot. That's why when you are learning the game you should (IMHO) just go for it and lose as many characters as you can, as quickly as you can, within reason. There are certain situations that are really dangerous that don't look so on paper.

Anyway, sorry if that seems a bit presumptuous for someone who hasn't played Angband in a decade. I think it's basically right in its outlines though, and I hope it helps someone new to the game.

[Scraper]

Another I would add to my list is grand master mystics. I don't know what their native level is but they seem to show up way earlier than when they can be dealt with easily.

I actually don't remember running into any of them in my last game. Are they still a thing?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Originally Posted by Scraper

Another I would add to my list is grand master mystics. I don't know what their native level is but they seem to show up way earlier than when they can be dealt with easily.

I actually don't remember running into any of them in my last game. Are they still a thing?

Yes, they are. Teleport them away... teleport them away...

[Severian]

Originally Posted by Ingwe Ingweron

Yes, they are. Teleport them away... teleport them away...

Indeed- one of those not all that dangerous monsters (if you understand how they work) that will kill you if you don't respect them. You kind of have to get killed by one once to know to respect them. My first really promising character (by which I mean he got to 2200' without spoilers, back in the day when I was flailing around at Angband) died to a Patriarch, and ever since I've given them a wider berth than they actually deserve. Grand Master Mystics are kind of the same, but they deserve the wide berth.