Greed is a killer...

[Timo Pietilä]

unless you get crushed by falling rock from his shatter attacks (10d4 damage + stun if you do get hit, at 66% odds if the game tries to create a wall on you).

I think the damage from actual crush is something like 300 points of damage. Much more than 10d4. That 10d4 is some other earthquake side-effect.

...looking source...found:

		/* Hurt the player a lot */
		if (!sn)
		{
			/* Message and damage */
			msg_print("You are severely crushed!");
			damage = 300;
		}

(I assume that this "!sn" means there are no safe grids where player can dodge the blast, IE earthquake tries to create wall all around the player, not including Morgoth grid)

Earthquake crush interrupts Morgoths remaining attacks. It used to be that all attacks are counted first and then that earthquake damage took place which did mean that, if unlucky, Morgoth could do about 800 points of damage in single round of combat. That is no longer possible.

I think the trick to drop some artifact at your feet still prevents this to happen. Earthquake can't destroy artifacts, so no granite in grid where artifact is.

[Derakon]

Greater titans have 4 12d12 melee hits to confuse, at an average damage of 312 damage if all hit. Apparently confusion hits aren't mitigated by armor damage reduction? I don't feel like looking that up right now. Morgoth has two shattering hits at 20d10, a drain-all-stats hit at 10d12, and a drain-charges touch that does no damage, for an average damage of 285 if the first three hits land (and if you're silly enough to be carrying charged items in your inventory, his last attack will heal himself). So greater titans actually have a stronger melee than Morgoth does, unless you get crushed by falling rock from his shatter attacks (10d4 damage + stun if you do get hit, at 66% odds if the game tries to create a wall on you).

[Fendell Orcbane]

Morgoth hits hard. In fact he used to be capable to do more damage in melee than with manastorm. Now it is a bit less (no two earthquake crushes in one turn anymore). That's why Greater Titan is a good practice opponent. Not too difficult to kill, but gives you an idea how well you can handle bad melee-damage.

Obviously they are wimps compared to Morgoth HP and summoning, but with melee they can do more damage than M unless you get crushed by earthquake.

I think Greater Titans hit harder than any other creature in the game including uniques (hits for confusion are not dampened by AC, if hit lands all damage goes thru). If they are just tiny speed-bumps in your way then melee is not your problem. You can then concentrate on how to deal with summons and unresistable spells.

Hmm, I have taken out some Greater Titans but mostly with arrows. Having said that the last time I got a character up to Greater Titan level, the GT was hitting really, really hard. So hard that I had to bail. However with my speed I should be able to dish out a lot of damage before it can even get started. However playing dumb( like letting a GT get in close combat range) isn't my style. Back then I was playing 3.0.9 and had no quiver so ranged attacks were not as good as they are in 3.1.2 so I actually used hand to hand for a lot of enemies with arrows softening them up.

[Pete Mack]

What about Gothmog? I just killed him pretty quickly no fuss no muss. But I realize that with Morgoth you can't do as much with Runes of Protection.

With Rune, you can reduce his melee attacks to (almost) zero. This is a big, big deal. So big a deal that I never use it...

[Timo Pietilä]

What about Gothmog? I just killed him pretty quickly no fuss no muss. But I realize that with Morgoth you can't do as much with Runes of Protection.

Morgoth hits hard. In fact he used to be capable to do more damage in melee than with manastorm. Now it is a bit less (no two earthquake crushes in one turn anymore). That's why Greater Titan is a good practice opponent. Not too difficult to kill, but gives you an idea how well you can handle bad melee-damage.

Obviously they are wimps compared to Morgoth HP and summoning, but with melee they can do more damage than M unless you get crushed by earthquake.

I think Greater Titans hit harder than any other creature in the game including uniques (hits for confusion are not dampened by AC, if hit lands all damage goes thru). If they are just tiny speed-bumps in your way then melee is not your problem. You can then concentrate on how to deal with summons and unresistable spells.

[Fendell Orcbane]

What about Gothmog? I just killed him pretty quickly no fuss no muss. But I realize that with Morgoth you can't do as much with Runes of Protection.

[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 : )

[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.

[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.

[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.....

[Fendell Orcbane]

I agree with this statement..

[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.

[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.

[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 : )

[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.