Need character advice

[Talharim]

Hi guys,
I have finally gotten a character past 400 ft: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21257.
I think I badly need advice. I feel I may have been doing it all wrong. I have chosen song of slaying but I haven't actually been using it. No good weapons, have been using the great guide about IDing stuff but besides that I am somewhat lost.

Any advice on how to proceed, how to do things differently if this one dies is appreciated.
Are there any guides around?

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by Talharim

Hi guys,
I have finally gotten a character past 400 ft: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21257.
I think I badly need advice. I feel I may have been doing it all wrong. I have chosen song of slaying but I haven't actually been using it. No good weapons, have been using the great guide about IDing stuff but besides that I am somewhat lost.

Any advice on how to proceed, how to do things differently if this one dies is appreciated.
Are there any guides around?

You look to be in very good shape for the depth you're at, you've just been rather slow getting there. Ideally you should be some way ahead of your min depth; the experience and equipment is better as you get lower.

In terms of other general advice - you haven't taken your free Archery skill, and you've bought quite a lot of skills for the depth you're at when it's often better to just keep pumping points into Melee and Evasion. Because Archery halves evasion, even quite small Archery investments remain relevant later into the game. I tend to pick up the free skills within the first few levels. Your stats also are quite Grace-heavy and you're not using songs or smithing all that much; I feel you'd be much better served with more Strength or Dexterity.

Your weapons don't look too bad - the defender bastard sword particularly is pretty reasonable though your strength is maybe on the low side to get the best out of it - but a Nargothrond weapon would definitely help as you run into more Rauko, and you'll likely get something more powerful as you keep going down.

Song of Slaying is relevant for the throne room, you'll need it eventually.

This thread http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8680 has a bunch of advice you may find useful.

[Talharim]

Originally Posted by Quirk

You look to be in very good shape for the depth you're at, you've just been rather slow getting there. Ideally you should be some way ahead of your min depth; the experience and equipment is better as you get lower.
.

This happens because I usually fully explore the levels and I had some long fights in some places. So I shouldn't fully explore the levels? Or is it linked with my not investing most XP in Melee and Evasion?

Originally Posted by Quirk

In terms of other general advice - you haven't taken your free Archery skill, and you've bought quite a lot of skills for the depth you're at when it's often better to just keep pumping points into Melee and Evasion. Because Archery halves evasion, even quite small Archery investments remain relevant later into the game. I tend to pick up the free skills within the first few levels. Your stats also are quite Grace-heavy and you're not using songs or smithing all that much; I feel you'd be much better served with more Strength or Dexterity.
...

This thread http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8680 has a bunch of advice you may find useful.

Edit: I looked at the archery skills. Which one should I choose? The first ones seems a bit meh.
So, invest more in Melee and Evasion. Go for more Str and Dex. I'll reread this post. Thanks!

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by Talharim

This happens because I usually fully explore the levels and I had some long fights in some places. So I shouldn't fully explore the levels? Or is it linked with my not investing most XP in Melee and Evasion?

You probably shouldn't fully explore the levels (though if you are playing a smithing focused character you may need to find every forge you can). You certainly shouldn't fight everything you see - the rewards for killing many enemies of the same type are low and you take on more risk that way. In particular if you run into whispering shadows and you cannot quickly overwhelm and destroy them you may want to abandon the level and move lower. Chasing down every last fleeing orc is less dangerous but somewhat pointless.

Not putting so many points in Melee and Evasion will also typically make fights harder and longer lasting, so this is an issue also, but in general it's secondary to picking your fights.

Bear in mind that a battle with one tough enemy whom you can retreat from is greatly preferable to being surrounded by many weak enemies. If you pick your fights so as to avoid being surrounded you will be able to survive at lower depths than you currently think possible.

Archery skill wise, Careful Shot is indeed kind of meh. Precision is better. Since you're halving enemy evasion when you shoot them instead of hitting them, multiple crits are very possible.

[Talharim]

I never took archery but a little goes indeed a long way. I have 3 right now and precision and it has been almost game changing. For a pure melee how much should I use and when?
When should I be choosing abilities?

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by Talharim

I never took archery but a little goes indeed a long way. I have 3 right now and precision and it has been almost game changing. For a pure melee how much should I use and when?
When should I be choosing abilities?

Depends on the ability. You don't need archery abilities before you have a bow or smithing abilities before you find a forge, but you will need enough XP free to buy the number of points needed for the ability at the point you need it. You can leave XP free from the starting screen.

It's possible and even relatively easy to descend to 400' without investing in more than the free abilities, though there are a number of abilities worth taking early - e.g. Keen Senses helps you pick your fights better, Hardiness buffs your armour, Power helps you hit harder, and so on. Some builds will almost require taking abilities early - Stealth builds gain a lot from Disguise, Song of Silence, etc. However, other abilities are better saved until you have equipment that suits them. Subtlety is of little use if your best weapons are two-handed, Channeling is useless without horns and staves.

It's probably worth doing a few runs where you don't invest in non-free skills at all until you're below 300', so you get more of a feel for the impact of additional Melee and Evasion and understand better what you're giving up to take skills. Your initial post shows you spending 6000 XP on skills by the time you've reached 550'; this would buy you another 4 points of evasion, which is quite a lot; another 4 on top of that would get you to throne room calibre evasion.

[taptap]

Combat skills and other skills scale differently. Combat rolls are 1d20 (20 sided die), other skill rolls 1d10. Remembering this makes it more intuitive to "run ahead" with investment combat skills.

Fwiw, you can play the game without any abilities (as a challenge). When doing so I was surprised that at least the start felt easier than normal. Just try for a few attempts to take nothing initially (and spend the savings in evasion / melee or archery) and specialize later on.

In your current situation you may have trouble to damage opponents not covered by your slaying weapons, but judicious use of Song of Slaying may help (or doom you by attracting the whole floor).

For the next melee oriented Fingolfin, I would take 3 3 5 3 as stats.

[wobbly]

Furthering what taptap is saying you're entering a depth where you're going to have trouble damaging a lot of things. Trouble is your setup is good at a lot of things but it's not great at anything. Too little protection to tank things. Too little damage to punch through things. Too little evasion to dodge everything. It's medium at a lot of things & too noisy to just avoid fights & that struggles without a lot of tricks. On the plus side dodging/ZOC/flanking is great if you never get caught unable to maneuver.

I'd maybe pickup sprinting which might give you some ability to get out of fights you can't win, possibly with trees to give the light to react. Trees is a real boon for high grace warriors, at the minimum 5 song you'd have an extra 2 light radius. That'll count for +2 melee/evasion & will against anything light sensity. Trolls/wraiths/vampires. You've already invested the 2 song for slaying. At 2 it'll do nothing but a small boost & a lot of noise. You've got the grace for a more singy build might as well.

A good trick for the future with skills is to do a warrior that is straight melee/evasion & learn to calculate costs in pts of melee/evasion. How much melee/evasion is this putting me behind the curve? (In a certain sense this should be accumulative for the total pts spent on skills *all game*, but I rarely calculate it that way) From where you are trees is song(3+4+5)+1000xp=2200. So less then the cost of 1 more melee/evasion for 2 light & +2 on *all rolls vs light sensitive.

Edit: Also next run try something more focused in melee/evasion like Taptap & Quirk are saying. It is a lot easier & gives a good guide to how much you should spend on skills. Just grab at most 1 skill from the tree & don't buy anything else till it's less cost then getting an extra melee or evasion.