Greed is a killer...

[Fendell Orcbane]

So I almost bite the dust during my last recall to 4900'. When I first appeared something breathed Plasma. What it was I didn't find out because it didn't show up on ESP. But I thought Plasma hounds and teleported out of there. In retrospect it was most likely a vortex. But it did get the first attack. So then I almost killed Maeglin but he summoned a bunch of Uniques one of which came with greater Balrogs. So I *destructed* the area. I was pissed though since Maeglin only had two * left.

Then I did something risky. Which you ideally should not be doing in this game. I opened a vault full of chaos hounds. I was thinking that I could TO them away before they hit me. Well two of them Breathed on me and got me in the red. It sucked. But honestly I thought that I was dead. If three more hit me I would have been dead. I was resisting Chaos too... if I hadn't that would have been the end.

Moral of the story...avoid Chaos hounds at all cost.

[Derakon]

Odd; generally I consider Chaos hounds to be handy walking bags of experience, assuming I have the relevant resist. How many hitpoints did you have?

[Fendell Orcbane]

Odd; generally I consider Chaos hounds to be handy walking bags of experience, assuming I have the relevant resist. How many hitpoints did you have?

Well I had 758 went down to 450 or so after 2 breaths. And I was resisting. But I wasn't set up to fight them. They were right in front of me, I just thought that I'd have enough time to TO a bunch of them before they got to move. My mistake.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

TO is a line effect, so unless the setup is highly favorable to that...and odds are, in a vault, it won't be...it's not a very good tactic against a pack. In a vault you should have fairly good choice on where you breach; I'll prefer somewhere that won't give LOS to more than a few at first, and, if I can, give a line of retreat. Take out the first few, to get their numbers down, then you can usually use your speed advantage to get the rest.

[Derakon]

Alternatively, nothing says that you have to teleport them all away at once, just because you can. You have the spell; you can TO each of them individually. It just takes longer and costs more mana.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

But if you're gonna use multiple TO to reduce numbers like that, you have to make damn sure you don't allow the residual group to have lots of LOS with you. The key point is to realize that you can't leave a lot of em functional, and with LOS.

A side point is that, one of the things that makes chaos hounds a pain, is that they've got the hit points so no area attack spell is really worth much.

[Matthias]

More than 400 hp left isn't exactly "almost bite the dust". Maybe you are actually trying to play too safe. Don't be too scared by those deep things In the Maeglin situation I wouldn't have destructed, but teleported and finished those two stars for example. The chance of that going wrong seem smaller than those involved with restarting the fight.

[Fendell Orcbane]

You know maybe I should have teleported away but I wouldn't have felt safe with the other things that he summoned awake and looking for me. However this is food for thought thank you : )

[Tiburon Silverflame]

There are very few non-unique monsters that, one on one, pose a significant risk. If you teleport away from that collection of uniques, especially Lungorthin with his escorts, you can pick your avenue to return, and then start dealing with them individually. And this is an area where TO would help. Scatter them around. If you do, tho, remember that if you plan to teleport yourself when you're getting down a bit, you'll have to do it a bit earlier; you need to keep enough of a reserve to address the threat of some of the beasties you teleported away.

I had Maeglin show up a while back...got him down quite a ways, then he got, IIRC, 3 of the undead uniques with a summoning. All of whom, were also summoners. Oh, not good; yeah, I could Mass Banish, but that's expensive, and with 3 or 4 summoners, it'll have to be done too often. Fine; start a parade of TO, and a TSelf. Break them up, hunt them down. Got them all...ended up being, IIRC, 6 uniques, 5 of which were significant.

[Derakon]

There are very few non-unique monsters that, one on one, pose a significant risk.

This of course depends on your level, gear, available spells, etc., not to mention how many consumables you're willing to use up. I generally don't bother fighting greater balrogs, black reavers, titans of either stripe, pit fiends, and a few other really big monsters. This does mean that I saw...I think it was Lungorthin...with his escort many times and each time went nowhere near them. An escort of 18 greater balrogs? That's not worth it. You could teleport them away, but then they'd be awake and boring tunnels towards your location; teleport self becomes distinctly nonviable in that situation because you'll have polluted the entire map with angry summoning walleaters. Then one day poor Lunny got generated between a door and a lump of rubble, no escort in sight. That made him worth dealing with.

[Fendell Orcbane]

I agree with this statement..

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I did say very few, not none. We're talking maybe 15 or so? Considering the list size, that's a few. And several of them are more because they're not worth the hassle, rather than that they're a significant threat to kill you. To a large degree, you don't deal with the balrogs because you want to keep a few spellbooks and scrolls around...same reason why 11-headed hydras are better avoided. Fine, 1 balrog...maybe you drop it before you lose anything. But 2 or 3, even coming at you one at a time...well, at least you got rid of that excess weight that was slowing you down.....

[Derakon]

Actually, my problems with balrogs and reavers are the walleating and the drain-charges touch. But then, I've been playing warriors and priestly types lately, so I'm carrying around staves of speed throughout the late game. Mage-types are less encumbered in that sense.

[Timo Pietilä]

This of course depends on your level, gear, available spells, etc., not to mention how many consumables you're willing to use up. I generally don't bother fighting greater balrogs, black reavers, titans of either stripe

I usually use Greater Titans for measurement for "Am I ready to deal with Morgoth?". Those things hit hard, really hard, and if they can't hurt me too much, then I'm ready if I can deal with summons.

Hmmm... Practice fight: Get a wand of haste monster, Earthquake area, Find a Greater Titan, Haste it, lure it in "practice zone". Fight.

no problem whatsoever, fight is actually boring: Ready for M.
Need to do some escape routine: Not even close to ready.

[Fendell Orcbane]

I've never noticed Balrogs to eat through walls, but then again they don't tend to wake up unless I attack them : )