Your favorite and least favorite parts of Angband gameplay

[PowerWyrm]

Play force descent. No more boring parts...

[Estie]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

Play force descent. No more boring parts...

How so ? Just because you are forced to fullclear levels doesnt make it more interesting.

[Raajaton]

Well it does raise the intensity when you are forced to flee a level. However boring levels will remain boring levels.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Estie

I agree with Derakon, some compression would do the game good.

I would prefer some extra goals in between, like quests and stuff. Make the descend a bit more interesting.

IIRC NPP, when it still was pretty close to vanilla, had those and I liked them quite a bit.

- shops offer quests
- you get reward from completing the quest from that shop.

magic shops rewards could be dungeon books, armorer and weapon store good quality ego-items and so on.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Estie

How so ? Just because you are forced to fullclear levels doesnt make it more interesting.

100 levels in angband have far more monsters/loot than you need to win. There's no need to fullclear every level.

[PowerWyrm]

My favorite part: the midgame. Because it's when you build your character. The early game is boring as hell, killing weaklings for junk. The endgame is also boring... you can kill Morgoth at level 32 with a hobbit, as proven by the last comp, it's just a matter of having the right amount of supplies with the right equipment.

[mushroom patch]

The way I play the game, I dive straight to the bottom (recalling for supplies and such every so often), with a brief stop around level 75 for speed rings, then scumming for vaults and key consumables at 98. I make no effort to max stats before 98. I make no special effort to kill uniques and I win with a very minimal list -- the only one I consistently kill that isn't required is Saruman, because he's annoying and not easy to avoid.

The most interesting part is the awkward interval between about level 50 and finding the first speed ring where almost everything is too dangerous to fight.

The early game is kind of interesting too, because weapons I'd consider garbage in a normal game play a major role. For example, I'm often in a position where the only monsters I can profitably kill are trolls, because I have a weapon with slay troll.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by fizzix

100 levels in angband have far more monsters/loot than you need to win. There's no need to fullclear every level.

If you visit every level only once and leave before new monsters spawn, that statement is dubious at best. You might get everything you need in those 100 levels, but chances are that you don't, unless you start to scum some levels for more monster.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

If you visit every level only once and leave before new monsters spawn, that statement is dubious at best. You might get everything you need in those 100 levels, but chances are that you don't, unless you start to scum some levels for more monster.

I take it you haven't played with forced descent on? That mode coerces you to play each level at most once, and you can still skip out on a bunch of levels without missing much. I basically always play with forced descent now, and while there've been times that I've felt I wasn't as prepared as I'd like to be for the endgame, I've still had enough of a safety margin to win -- which says more about how cautious I am about the endgame than anything else.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

If you visit every level only once and leave before new monsters spawn, that statement is dubious at best. You might get everything you need in those 100 levels, but chances are that you don't, unless you start to scum some levels for more monster.

My experience says otherwise. You don't need to full clear anything close to 100 levels to get enough gear. However, I will conjecture that 50 levels is currently not enough for classes without heal spells, although I've only tried 3-4 times. If the town sold unlimited CCW and _teleport, even 50 levels might be enough!