Fightless the full-casting mage

[ChodTheWacko]

I wouldn't be going anywhere near pack monsters if I played a fightless mage.
Not less I had tons of mana to spare (and some rods)

How do you plan on fighting element resistant monsters in the future?
After magic missle, what's the next decent spell that would work against, say, a mature multihued dragon?

- Frank

[fizzix]

CL8 DL7
I Land in an E-W corridor. Dvis shows 5 novice mages and a red naga to the northeast, I’ll avoid them and head west instead. I enter a room where I pick up some iron spikes. I think I’ve used them in a game exactly once before, so I carry the amount that won't leave me burdened. What I guess is a poltergeist scares me. I tried to punch it a couple times (apparently stab because I'm still accidentally wielding my dagger) with no success. I guess I’ll allow for accidentally hitting things that I can’t see. Fear doesn't bother me so much, so I ignore the poltergeist and continue. Dvis later on shows 13 manes (rpois, no group AI, definitely avoid), 9 wood spiders (group AI won't let them chase me into a corridor, so kill), a novice paladin and rattlesnake. I head off towards the paladin. The paladin scares me so I quaff !boldness to reduce fail rate, and MM it to death. A zombified kobold is also in the room along with an Obeisantly Objurgating wand. I pick up the wand and the boots that the paladin dropped. 7 SP is enough to take on the zombie kobold. 3 MMs and it’s dead. I continue onward headings towards the room with the spiders. The first one gives me CL9 (18 SP) MM failure is down to 5%. After sniping them from the corridor, and resting when SP is low, the wood spiders are killed and I'm most of the way to CL 10. I had south, keeping an eye out for those manes. I Kill the rattlesnake I detected earlier. Dvis shows a paladin and a priest up ahead, both sleeping for now. I get cursed, while heading towards them in a corridor, so I fire MMs down the corridor listening for squeals of pain. It dies and I get CL10, up to 20 SP. I manage to detect the stairs and heading towards them, I smack into the paladin. Guess I killed the priest before. I MM it to death and pick up the pair of boots he dropped. I chuck the unused spikes because of burden, didn't think I'd use them. DVis shows another novice priest and four rogues before the stairs. I kill the priest, and try out the Sanctimonious Potion while injured (poison). My wand does nothing to a white jelly, and there's no path to the rogues, so I go down the stairs.

CL10 DL8
Dvis shows two cave orcs to the south, a disenchanter mold (avoid) and a giant salamander (avoid) to the north. A lone yeek is over to the west so I head that way. I run into a dead end with an up stairs. Since I have an escape, I'm a little bolder in fighting the orcs, so I choose south and the cave orcs over north and the salamander. They are in a lit room. It takes 6 MMs to drop a cave orc. I decide to use a frost bolt and 2 MMs to kill the second. (slightly more economical) I reach a down stairs and recast dvis. Only the yeek is out to the west so I head that way. It dies to MM and it (a glutton ghost) eats one of my rations. I eat the other. I head back towards the stairs, rest and descend.

CL10 DL9
Dvis shows only a kobold zombie and a rot jelly to the west, so I head that way. In general, I feel zombies and skeletons give more XP than I feel they should in the early game, so I often kill them. I kill the kobold zombie but the rot jelly is in a corridor blocking my path so I head back to where I started and then further east. I reach a down stairs. Dvis shows a bandit close by and a bunch of novice mages and a baby gold dragon to the far north. The bandit is awake and starts chasing after me, I head back out of a room and into a corridor, and close the door to the room and wait. When it opens I know he’ll be in sight in one more turn, so I wait once then start MMing into the darkness. MMs kill it but I get a ‘it touches you, you are terrified.’ I ignore it and read ?dobj and see a wand and a staff to the north. The staff is probably close to the mages and the dragon, but the wand might be getable. Dvis shows a baby bronze close to the wand, dangerous but I might be able to kill it. I get to the room with the dragon and the wand, it’s dark. Dvis shows 2 of the mages have woken to the west, so I need to be careful. I grab the wand and leave without waking the dragon.

I think about trying to take on the room of mages and get the staff, why not. I kill a bloodshot icky thing and test out the first wand I found (confuse) The icky thing gets a mana drain off and I’m down to 10 SP. I forgot they do that. This is not enough to take on the dragon with the mages close by, so I retreat back towards the stairs.

I need to take a second to explain the dungeon layout. I'm in a room in the southwest section of the map with two paths, both leading east. The southern path leads to the downstairs in a long corridor. The norther path terminates in a room that's almost directly above the stairs. This is the room with the bronze dragon, the wand I recovered, and some of the now wakened mages. Further north of the BBD's room is unexplored territory that includes the rest of the mage group, the baby gold dragon, and the unknown staff. As I said, the mages have wakened and track me down. I MM a couple to death but I’m at 5 SP, so I retreat along the southern path closing the door behind me, so I know if there are more on my tail. The poltergeist is still touching me, so it’s hard to rest without being disturbed, but I finally get back to full. There are 5 mages in the room with the dragon now, luckily they couldn’t find the path to me. What's more amazing is that I was able to reconstruct this geography from memory 2 weeks later just using bare-bones notes. Go Go gadget memory!

I head back to confront them. One drops a Lincoln’s rod in the room, but the dragon has now awakened. I killed four but there’s still one mage left. I read ?phase, hoping to be teleported south into the adjacent corridor with the stairs, but this brings me into the room instead, the dragon breathes cutting my HP in half and confusing me. I chug !CSW to heal myself but more importantly to remove conf. I first MM the last mage, I don't want to lose turns to blindness or confusion. The dragon is next to me so I ?phase landing elsewhere in the room. I manage to kill the dragon and another mage that showed up, but I wind up at 3 SP. I retreat back towards the stairs and rest.

Most of the mages are dead, so I can finally get the Weber’s Staff, and in the same room as the staff, I read ?dinvis and kill that poltergeist that’s been annoying me. I gained CL11 at some point and now have 21 SP. I pick up 3 more ?dobj that are close by, test out the rod dtraps (I’ll sell it.) The gold dragon is actually inaccessible, so I don't worry about it. I'm far from the stairs now and I don't want nasties spawning between me and my path down, so exploring time is over. On the stairs I test the staff (light) and descend.

CL11 DL10
I land in a room with a dark elven warrior, a night lizard and a giant grey rat. This room is dangerous! I MM the rat so it doesn’t breed, and then cast dvis showing a panther about to enter the room from the east. This is uber-deathly so I think it’s a good time to cast my first teleport. I fail. (14% chance). Ok, whatever, I try again. Fail. And now the panther is on me and I only have 7 SP left. Ok new plan, panthers are cats, and cats are easily confused, so let's try the wand I have. I –confuse the panther, and it 'confuses' it every time. But every time, it gets unconfused right away. I try 3 or so times but don't get myself anywhere nearer to the western exit. This is exactly why confusing is so useless. This is the exact situation where it should be useful...and it isn't.

The warrior wakes up and I have no choice but to try teleself again. This one works and I’m in a room with an orc shaman. I get to the exit before it awakes, I have 2 SP, I need some more. I see the shaman coming after me and I –confuse it, and I continue to retreat. Unfortunately, the panther from before had a straight line to the room I was in and tracked me successfully. I try my other untried wand, the one that did nothing to the jelly, but it’s haste monsters. I think I’m dead but I try teleself again (only 4 SP) it works (!), but now I’m at 0 SP. However, I’m able to rest to full health! Phew, disaster averted.

I rest to full mana and dvis. Nighthawk to the north, salamander to the south. ?dobj shows just a hat to the north. I detect an up stairs also the north, but I’d rather continue going west, away from the panther. further east, I dvis a lone wolf, a yeek and a dark elf warrior. 2 MMs kill the wolf. ?dobj reveals nothing but silver, which I’ll get. I kill the yeek, and run into a dead end, time to head back north towards the warrior. Closer to the warrior I see creeping gold coins, a giant white tick, a black harpy. I decide to try to take out the gold coins, they are in a lit room. They take 7 MMs and drop 85 gold. I retreat, rest and then continue north. I detect two down stairs, finally. I’m happy to get off this level. I decide to kill the tick and go after the warrior though. When I reach the warrior it’s already awake. Killing it gives CL12 (23 SP) I pick up some copper lying around and head towards the stairs.

CL12 DL11
I land in a lit room, with some gold and an unknown scroll. Dvis shows only a green icky thing to the west. I detect a stairs nearby. I walk a short ways and dvis again, detecting a dark elf, and a kobold. ?dobj shows a metal cap and another unknown scroll. I head towards the scroll. I hear doors burst and it’s another panther to the north of me. I’m in a large lit room with the cap, there could be a secret door to the north that lets the panther in, and I don't mind fighting it in this terrain with nothing around. I wait and see. A couple turns later and the panther has found the roundabout path towards the room I’m in, I head away from the entrance and await its arrival. 5 MMs take it down. I pick up the scroll and the hat and head towards the down stairs. I test my unknown scrolls (holy prayer and holy chant) and descend.

[ewert]

Ahh then it might have just been the illusion of it, as speed usually comes with levels which comes with more SP of course.

[Twilight]

Does it? I have a vague memory about speed not affecting regeneration rate. Maybe I remember wrong?

As Timo says, most everything happens every 10 gameturns (buff timers decrease, recharge etc). Unless they've changed it recently this is true for regeneration as well. That is - it's independent of the players speed.

Edit: Subjectively, of course, it seems the regeneration rate slows down when you gain speed, but it is (was at least) directly related to your totals (HP & SP).

[Timo Pietilä]

No offense intented. Disconnected stairs does change it a bit yes. Then again +8 speed nearly halves the rest times as well.

Does it? I have a vague memory about speed not affecting regeneration rate. Maybe I remember wrong?

[ewert]

down time affects the amount of spawned monsters. With disconnected stairs, the mid-game is a lot of 'securing the stairs' That becomes harder and harder the longer you remain on a level. We will continue to disagree about this point though, so you can just sneer in disgust at my use of speed rings.

No offense intented. Disconnected stairs does change it a bit yes. Then again +8 speed nearly halves the rest times as well.

[PowerDiver]

I’m at turn 82k, so this is an extremely slow pace, although most of that is because of resting for SP.

If you compare your player turns to your active turns, you will see that you spent less than half the time resting. You are going slowly because you are too weak to kill things more than because of the resting. The danger quotient must make you feel like you're diving despite the turncount.

[fizzix]

CL5 DL1
I begin my trek back down hoping to get a little deeper. I want to find the stairs as quickly as possible on the first two levels. With detect stairs, finding them should be easier. I find another !speed, which will come in very handy. Also get another unid’d scroll. I find the stairs fairly easily and pick up a Sanctimonious potion and 6 (!) more CLW. Feeling pretty good I drop down.

CL5 DL2
I drop down in a lit room with down stairs in it, I go down immediately.

CL5 DL3
I land in an empty lit room. Detect monsters shows a kobold shaman and a novice rogue and an awake crow. I head towards the shaman expecting the crow to come at me. It does and 1 MM sends it fleeing. Second MM drops it giving me CL6, 12 SP. Also, MM is now 4d4 damage. A path curves north away from the kobold. I see a sling and grab it to sell. (it’s worth 1 ?WoR) Another detect shows a lot of monsters but nothing scary. Eventually the path turns back to the kobold shaman and 3 MMs kill it. I see down stairs close by. I get to the stairs and test out ?darkness. Rest. Descend. Resting before taking the stairs is a common trend, resting on levels is dangerous because more monsters will spawn, and these monsters will be more dangerous on average than the monsters the level was generated with.

CL6 DL4
I land in a lit room near the center of the map and dvis shows nothing to fear. dstairs shows an up stairs nearby. This is good to know, in case I need to run. Going one way a detected acid trap blocks my path to the east. I don't want to risk disarming it, it's not worth it. I backtrack, heading west, killing a green frog and ignoring a blue jelly. The other way gives me down stairs. I reach the stairs and dvis shows nothing I want to kill. I rest and down I go.

CL6 DL5
I land in what looks like a dark room. I read ?light but room doesn’t light up. I must’ve fallen in a wide passageway. Yep, it’s a three wide passageway that’s actually pretty long. This is rare for Angband dungeons, it means that three corridors where generated side by side. I decide to learn light area since I have no more ?light. Dvis shows cave spiders. I want to Stinking cloud them to death so I head over to them. Some resting and a bunch of SCs ends them getting me halfway to CL7. 4 MMs drop a skeleton kobold, and I only need 6 xp more. A red centipede gives it to me. I see the downstairs nearby, and some boots lie next to it, so I go pick them up. I learn Teleport self, frost bolt and lightning bolt in that order. I have 14 SP, and teleself costs 6, but it’s important enough to learn. I rest and drop down the stairs.

CL7 DL6
Detecting shows a radiation eye. (it has drain mana, so I avoid) and a shrieker patch (also avoid) and nothing else to scare me. I head away from both of those monsters. Smeagol stops by but I don’t have the ability to kill him so I start heading towards the stairs that I detected. Smeagol steals 11 coins and I make it to the stairs and drop again.

CL7 DL7
Land in lit room, kill a Creeping copper coins (drops only 5 GP) Dvis shows a green naga to the south, I want to kill it as it’s worth 20 xp. Boots pseudo as average and I put them on. Path is moving me away from the naga and I see mughash + escort further off to the right. He’s sure death for me, so I want to avoid him. I started in the northwest corner and the path is leading diagonally southeast. The path forks to the east and one way goes to Mughash, the other goes further southeast.

I enter a room from the west, now near the southern center of the map, south of mughash, with a bunch of sleeping wood spiders. I exit through another door, directly south of the entrance heading back west. But there’s a pack of novice priests to greet me. They chase me back through the room and into the norther corridor, I fire MMs at them and I’m down to 0 SP. Only one isn’t afraid at this point, so I run back into a lit room I started in and regain 1 SP. The MM sends him fleeing. By the time he gets back I’ve gotten 1 SP back and I kill him. I know there are still more around, so I try resting. at 3 SP another one approaches, but 1 MM kills him. I’m able to rest back to full. Dvis shows only that green naga. I go back down the path towards the room with the spiders, and there are 8 more priests, by that southern corridor. I light a corner and wait for them to come, but they don’t. Drat, they're too far away to find a path to me. I do manage to lure and kill two more, one drops a wakefully wainscotting wand. However, unfortunately for me silver mice have awoken and are breeding and, lo and behold, I’m out of SP again. I rest to full and go back and try to SC the mice. By now the wood spiders have woken up. Fun. The spiders resist poison so I can’t SC them so I’m reduced to firing MMs at them from the corridor. They’re worth quite a bit of xp each, and I get CL8 from them (16 SP). Silver mice are now chasing me back down the corridor and I decide to give up on this level and recall. I test the wand on the mice and it is of slow monster and I’ll sell it with the sling for WoRs. I read WoR (autoinscribed @r9) and retreat.

CL8 town.
I sell the wand of slow monsters and the sling and buy 2 WoR and 5 ?Dobj. I buy another mb2, a !CCW (demented) and a !boldness (perspicacious) for knowledge and 3 ?satisfy hunger. I guess here’s the time to make my first character dump. I’m at turn 82k, so this is an extremely slow pace, although most of that is because of resting for SP. But I fully expect things to pick up soon. I WoR and buy a potion of rcold to learn flavor (Genteel) and away we go.

(observant readers will notice that I'm still wielding the dagger I tested-wielded earlier. Even though I squelched it, I forgot to take it off)

ladder dump here:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=10402

[fizzix]

down time affects the amount of spawned monsters. With disconnected stairs, the mid-game is a lot of 'securing the stairs' That becomes harder and harder the longer you remain on a level. We will continue to disagree about this point though, so you can just sneer in disgust at my use of speed rings.

[ewert]

Well, considering I played a nearly fightless start/mid-game (end-game lots of boring easy monsters were mown down with melee like any other char, orc pits etc.) _half-troll_ winner mage when the new mana costs were introduced, I'll just have to disagree on whether it is a huge advantage or not. I definitely feel it is based on my gameplay, and thus don't use em anymore myself for mages.

18/50 starting INT would have made things a lot easier at start, first INT boosters and you start to get into the major mana per INT ranges instantly. But even with a half-troll it's not that bad with magic. Irrelevant monsters though tend to be mown down with melee, there I'd agree totally fightless will be tedious though.

As for the fail chance, as I said it is not +min-fail, magic missile is best dmg/mana there is like half-forever (though the new mana costs are thus that all spells are quite alike which is nice), and min fail very soon even with RoE on, so ... +8 speed and nearly two magic missile is almost same dmg as the early bolts, and unresistable, and less dmg lost on "overkills" etc. +8 speed with frankly zero drawbacks for mages. I don't count downtime as drawback as I don't play with turns in mind when I play, so I don't even bother getting them off for ID'ng stuff etc., just resting more.

I do agree on one thing, until restore mana potions come around at dlvl25 more and with the current consumables problem, there is definitely problems with uniques up till then. Unless one also uses wands/rods as supplemental dmg. Actually at one point having stacks of 3 good wands and using recharging was more mana efficient I seem to recall ...

[fizzix]

Considering you played ranger with +might instead of +shots and thus feel serious imbalance is unfun enough to change the game to suit you, I'd suggest NOT using RoE. They are imbalanced with mages, because the spell failure penalty is not minimum fail but just +fail%, and thus your magic missile stays near zero fail% even with two rings on ... It's definitely cheap in my book now, and I thus don't use the RoE anymore until they are fixed proper. Two RoE with mages makes everything cakewalk, and even +INT rings have troubles replacing the rings until you get speed from other sources or haste spell.

well, the game is already over and it proceeded past the point where RoE came into play. Yes RoE are imbalanced, but I also feel that SP regen rates in the midgame are also imbalanced to really hurt mages, so they kind of even out. Speed isn't as huge an advantage as you might think, since my damage output is limited by total SP, not damage/turn in the midgame. Mainly, speed helps me run away or not wake up things, which, coincidentally, is how RoE should be used.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I wouldn't say that armor's useless for AC; I agree that you don't want anything to get close, but there may be times when you don't have that much choice.

I also had the same thought as NotMorgoth...a defender whip would be nice just for the defensive aspects, and it's not that unlikely to find one. Later on, Gondricam would be particularly sweet, given its massive AC boost. It can't hurt. Then, of course, there's the good speed boosters...note that you're sacrificing, potentially, +20 speed (Ringil and Cubragol).

ewert: given that everything has to be killed by spell, I think any increase in spell failure will be very significant. MM's nice, but the damage goes up rather slowly. And given the low-ish Int to start, he's lower on mana, so using lightning bolts is non-trivial.

fizz: yeah, starting mages take forever. And you're forced to rest a bit more often with the low mana. The turn count's not altogether surprising.

[ewert]

Considering you played ranger with +might instead of +shots and thus feel serious imbalance is unfun enough to change the game to suit you, I'd suggest NOT using RoE. They are imbalanced with mages, because the spell failure penalty is not minimum fail but just +fail%, and thus your magic missile stays near zero fail% even with two rings on ... It's definitely cheap in my book now, and I thus don't use the RoE anymore until they are fixed proper. Two RoE with mages makes everything cakewalk, and even +INT rings have troubles replacing the rings until you get speed from other sources or haste spell.

[NotMorgoth]

Are you allowed to wield weapons for their resistances etc, just not attack with them? It would be a shame to find a Defender or something and not use it.

[fizzix]

CL3 DL2
Injured and out of SP I'm happy to land in an empty room with nothing but gold. Unfortunately, it's not long until a green centipede interrupts my rest. I only have 1 SP. I cast one MM but that doesn't scare it away. I try ?Phase, but it’s faster than me. My phase lands me near a corridor and luckily for me it's too dumb to figure out how to get to me in the hallway, phew. I regen another SP and promptly cast another MM and it dies. Rest to full (6!) SP.

South of the room I started in, I run into OoD (out of depth) creeping copper coins. I ?phase away. I have to use all SP to kill it and I get 13 XP from it. Again, I rest to full. Time to learn detect monsters. Detecting shows a cave lizard (OoD) and grip to the north. I will try to kill grip for CL4. I head towards him and he meets me in the room I started in. I've traveled a whole 100 feet on this level. I have to use 2 ?phase but Grip runs away when I'm at 2 SP. I rest in the lit room and wait for him to return, and he does before I regen any SP. I fail the first MM but get him with the last one. CL4 and 8 SP. The cave lizard to the north is worth 8 XP so I go to find it. I run into a room with an awake novice ranger and novice mage. I don't have enough SP to afford constant detection, because I need to save it for offense. This is dangerous, so I flee. A kobold comes at me, but one MM sends it fleeing. The ranger comes next, I kill it but am down to only 2 SP and there are (at least) 2 novice mages. I know there's not a pack because then they'd be listed in red on monster menu to tell me they're OoD. They confuse me, so I quaff my !CLW and run into a passageway. 1 MM sends one fleeing into the other allow me to run more. When it get's it's courage back another MM kills it. My last SP luckily sends other mage fleeing, and I close a door and try to rest. It comes back at full health, I’m only at 2 SP. However, 1 MM kills it. I rest to full. 1 Novice mage dropped a Skeptical potion. Killing another kobold gives me CL5, 10 SP. I learn detect stairs.

I think I will gather enough GP for MB2 and walk back to town. This is rare for me, I usually dive much deeper, and almost never take the stairs back up. Detect monsters reveals a sleeping salamander. Don’t want to get stuff burned so I head a different way. I'm a bit injured, so I ID-by-use the skeptical potion (heroism). I manage to pick up 2 more of a unknown scroll I picked up earlier on dlevel 1. I cast dstairs, but only see a down one. I really want MB2 before diving, so I wait. I pick up a dagger and squelch all but splendid weapons. I'll unsquelch these later when I want to recall to have stuff to sell, but for now, non-splendid weapons are useless. I manage to find the upstairs and test out ?light and ?blessing while standing on them. Before going up I search one nearby lit room and find two more unid'd scrolls (but I forget to read them) Lastly, I wield a found cloak to no obvious effect. I go back to the stairs and up.

CL5, DL1
I rise in the middle of a huge room with 10 jackals, next to a rock lizard. Also a floating eye and brown snake. I try to escape before the jackals wake up and manage to get into the hallway. Jackals aren’t worth killing anymore, so I continue onwards. I decide to learn stinking cloud and kill a pack of jackals with it when they block my path. I find 2 new Cantankerous potions (one dropped by a small kobold) and a Perspicacious potion and another scroll of ?phase. Importantly, I find 57 pieces of silver on the ground, which gives me more than enough for MB2. Finally find stairs back to town after mapping out half the level mowing down the weaklings in my path. I pick up a Quantized potion on the way to the stairs.

CL5 town.
I sell the scrolls of blessing, these are worthless to me. I also ID-by-sell two more scrolls which turn out to be trap detection and detect invisible. Then I sell the other 2 trap detections. A scruffy dog bites me, and that allows me to test out some potions. The cantankerous potion is !speed (i have another) I also test Resist heat and one with no effect (probably boldness or slow poison). This is the first time that I'm hit since I tried on the cloak and it looks like it is average. I buy MB2 and another MB1. I also buy a !CSW (partly to learn flavor), 2 more !CLW and 2 more ?phase (I have 10) and go back down.

58k turns, usually I'm sitting at dlevel 20 at this point. I'm an order of magnitude off.