angband strategy guide

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Hunh, thanks for the numbers. I could have sworn that when I last played a mage there was no spell that matched Mana Storm for max damage. Statement retracted.

(Chaos Strike's average damage is 331.5, and Rend Soul is 280.5, not that anything worth using it on wouldn't resist it)

Still, nothing matches the average damage for a jumped-up mage than the wand of annihilation at 415.625. Also, I disagree that its recharge fail percentage and possible destruction affects the average damage calculation. You should attempt recharge once you've phased away to momentary safety. If it blows up, no problem. Once the wands are all gone (they are "consumables" after all), then rely on Mana Storm and Chaos Strike as the next highest average damage. Of course, if you happen to be wielding a great weapon like Deathwreaker or have a powerful Lothlorien bow with Holy Might arrows, you should run the numbers for average damage with the weapons/missiles as they might be your best bet.

[mushroom patch]

In response to the OP re: writing an angband guide:

This guide,

http://rephial.org/help/guide

the first hit for "angband guide," is not bad. It's far from comprehensive and it's not the best piece of writing I've ever seen, but it captures the basics of winning angband according to current thinking. It would be better to have more specifics and less focus on things like phase door (which is much less valuable outside of the early game than the guide suggests).

As a bare introduction that leaves a lot of room for people to figure things out as they go, it's a decent guide, even if it offers no real advice about the endgame. A general guide that includes, for example, how to play mages would be a larger undertaking and result in a large, unfocused document. It might still be useful.

[Tibarius]

Too late *grins* ... i am already too deep in writing a guide. It will of course be what i like best - even tho i am trying hard to make it usefull not only for myself but for all Angband Players.

[AnonymousHero]

Originally Posted by Tibarius

Too late *grins* ... i am already too deep in writing a guide. It will of course be what i like best - even tho i am trying hard to make it usefull not only for myself but for all Angband Players.

I think there's potentially great value in both a quick guide and a more in-depth guide. When I started playing ToME 2.x way back when, I quickly got frustrated with the (quite shallow) advice in the in-game manual and sought out Lord Dimwit's comprehensive guide -- and was immediately hooked!

EDIT: Of course that game wasn't quite as beginner-friendly as V is nowadays, but still...

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Derakon

(Chaos Strike's average damage is 331.5, and Rend Soul is 280.5, not that anything worth using it on wouldn't resist it)

Chaos Strike also has the problem that it polymorphs non-uniques - fine against Morgoth, though.

[myshkin]

Originally Posted by mushroom patch

In response to the OP re: writing an angband guide:

This guide,

http://rephial.org/help/guide

the first hit for "angband guide," is not bad. It's far from comprehensive and it's not the best piece of writing I've ever seen, but it captures the basics of winning angband according to current thinking. It would be better to have more specifics and less focus on things like phase door (which is much less valuable outside of the early game than the guide suggests).

As a bare introduction that leaves a lot of room for people to figure things out as they go, it's a decent guide, even if it offers no real advice about the endgame. A general guide that includes, for example, how to play mages would be a larger undertaking and result in a large, unfocused document. It might still be useful.

It's part of the game source repository, even, although it does not ship with the game. I took a shot at rewriting it for the 3.5.0 release, but gave up. I am very glad to hear that Tibarius is working on a modern guide, and would be happy to lend copyediting and formatting help.

[Tibarius]

That's cool - many thanks. The Format is not too good yet, i choosed to write it in 'courier new' to have a font-set which has identical char sizes, because that's a requirement to Play the game in letter-style mode. But it does not look very pretty, compared for example with the Output from the online-dillinger markdown converted example. So once i finished writing down the Content i guess i have to run over the whole work again and think about how to Format it nicely. But one step after the other.

Edit: And of course Quality of Content is more important than the way it is presented, even tho i like it if it is nicely and modern presented.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Derakon

There are tons of enemies with paralysis spells; if you spend a turn in LOS of them, you're basically rolling the dice that you won't get paralyzed. And while paralysis in the early game may be survivable, it very quickly becomes a death sentence -- certainly, well before you manage to achieve a 100% saving throw.

It doesn't take too long with hobbit priest:

18 with hobbit, 32 from being priest, 1.2 / clvl and 18/40 WIS to start with. Assume you find a +4 AoWIS quite soon, so WIS 18/80.

That's 54.2 to start with (I assume clvl 1 already gives you one 1.2?)

18/40->18/80 increases that by 3 = 57.2 100-57.2= 42.8 / 1.2 = 36.

So at clvl 36 you have perfect saving throw. With some luck with HA weapons, better AoWIS, ego-helmets and some potions of contemplation/wisdom you can have that somewhere around clvl 25-30. Especially since hobbit priest gains levels really, really fast it's actually really hard to dive with dlvl/clvl rate early, you tend to get more clvls than dlvls early into game. At least the way I play priests.

dlvl 30 = 1500'. That's beginning of the stat-gain. Before that there are really only two groups of monsters you should avoid: ghouls and carrion crawlers.

I think real challenge from this challenge game would be to find usable gear that doesn't have FA. Many of the really good artifacts have it.

[Estie]

Well you only need to abstain from items with FA before getting 100% save; once that is achieved, equipping FA makes no difference.
But yes, it is not a very interesting challenge.

[Tibarius]

I just won my first ranger character. Now mage and ranger are done, 4 classes to go.

Just when i posted the character to the ladder (Mugashi, kobold, ranger) i stumbled over something. You cannot distinguish the Angband characters by variant. Comparing a 2.8.3 character to a 3.5.1 character is probably like comparing cheese with apples.

I would vote for showing the newest variant always before older variants. That said ... a 3.5.1 char shold always be placed before an older variants char. That way, the top Position of the ladder is always ranked with "fresh" chars. I guess the max XP chars from Long Long Versions from the past should not hold the top positions for all the time.