Fightless the full-casting mage

[fizzix]

Where you'll get killed on load, in the none too distant future, is probably the spellbooks.

No armor kinda surprises me tho...is that just for now, or forever?

I was kind of assuming that by the time spell-book load was a problem I would have found at least one =escaping and hopefully two. No armor was a typo, I meant no launcher. Obviously though, armor for AC is useless because there's no reason to let anything get close.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Where you'll get killed on load, in the none too distant future, is probably the spellbooks.

No armor kinda surprises me tho...is that just for now, or forever?

[fizzix]

The original plan was to die a couple times early and then adjust the starting stats to maximize things better. I really made a half-assed attempt at picking stats because I still was trying to figure out whether it was worth it to start off buying MB2 or not. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) this guy lived longer than I expected, so I just look at the poor stats as an extra challenge to overcome.

writing stuff down takes a while, and stuff accumulates fast. I have tons of notes, and I'll have to cut stuff out once the fun of early survival panic goes away. If I was starting over, Int and Con would be priorities, with probably the same amount in STR as I have now. Carrying capacity isn't as big a deal when you have no weapon, armor or ammo to lug around.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Resting is seriously slow.

But, yes, in this approach mana means everything, which also says that regen is incredibly valuable.

Another aspect of the 18/50 is, it should lower your fail rates a bit, or if not, get you closer to the next step where fail rates do drop.

[ewert]

18/50 int would have definitely been better, more mana and spells/lvl ( = faster lvl gain = more mana).

Also why up dex at all, as a real mage? 17 con gives +1, 18 +1.5 and is the max but would leave str at 3, heh... I'd maybe go even as far as just blow all in INT and STR (for carrying capacity). :P

And I bet writing this all down takes longer than resting. =P But yeah, first hotkey for mage-mages is R=R\r...

[fizzix]

While reading buzzkill's report I decided that I wanted to do something similar. So here is the full report of the adventures of fightless mage from birth to death (or victory I guess, I don't know yet how the story ends). I will try to do my best to describe my game play style, pointing out where this game differs from a normal game where applicable.

The plan for the game is to play a full caster, that means no archery or melee. The early levels will be tough and I want something that has an INT bonus but not too much of an EXP bonus, so I go with hobbit mage, taking a hit on HP to only have a 10% EXP penalty from race. My starting stats are:

Str 8
Int 18/40
Dex 18/10
Con 16

In retrospect I probably should've put another point in INT. oh well. Other features of this game are disconnected stairs, randarts, Nexus stat-swap has been altered to a +1/-1 effect, all stores cap is constant at 20k, and the flavor edit file has been altered because I like silly names. Other than that it's identical to 3.1.2 v1970.

I'm expecting a pace that finishes in around 1M turns, although early sources of speed, regen or int bonus could reduce that. I fully expect the first few levels to go painfully slow and involve a lot of resting for SP. I start with only 2 SP and that's going to make it tough to kill things.

But enough rambling let's begin
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In town I get 6 ?phase and 3 !CLW, and sell my dagger. Usually I'll buy flasks of oil and use these to kill early monsters I can't handle. But not with this character.

DL1 CL1

Descend into a lit room where I immediately find 3 more ?phase. I need to get CL2 before descending again because I can't handle Maggot's dogs. Rubble blocks my path, but I have no weapon to dig through it, so I just go another direction. I enter a big lit room with large white snake, my first attempted kill. I hit it with an MM (magic missile) but fail the second MM attempt and must retreat. I rest to regain SP and the second attempt kills it, rest again. 1 MM kills soldier ant. 2 more kills a floating eye. 2 MMs kill small kobold giving me CL2. I know have 4 SP and a whopping 5 GP. I decide that I actually want CL3 before descending. In a game that I have !oil, I will try to descend pretty much straight to the first point where I get into trouble, usually between DL8-12. !oil is enough to take down the first few dangerous monsters that you find, Grip, Fang, and Bullroarer most notably. This game I need to have enough SP that I can kill them, and that means I need 6 SP, so I need CL3.

I kill a white worm mass, a grey mold, and find 3 more ?phase. I've mapped the out entire northwest corner of map. I kill another large white snake. I enter a lit pillared room that has yellow centipede and small kobold. I only have 2 SP so I retreat. I'm at 3 when the kobold wakes and chases me into another lit room. 2 MM kills it, and I've regened back to 2 SP. 1 shot kills the centipede. The pillared room that had the centipede also has an up stairs, good to know if I need to run.

I spy a jackal in a lit room below the pillared room. A pack of jackals would be deadly to me. I only have 1 SP. Jackals won’t chase me into the hallway so I go back to rest. They only can sense low HP not low SP, so they'll wait patiently for me to regen SP and kill them. Entering the room shows 5 jackals. I kill 2 and rest. Kill 1 more (failure, more resting) Repeat until all are dead. I also kill a white centipede in the same room. Need 10 more xp for CL3. A lit room further south has 9 jackals, time to continue my painfully slow xp gain. 5 XP left after killing them, pick up some unknown scrolls in that room. Find 5 immortal potions in a room with white centipede. They’re almost definitely junk, since I already know !CLW, so I squelch them unknown. Got to the bottom right of the map, still haven’t found down stairs. I awaken a rock lizard and white worm mass in a room near the northeast. Kill both, get 9 GP. 2 more unknown scrolls. Lastly I one-shot a clear icky thing.

Finally, I pick a lock for CL3 and 6 SP. Unfortunately there are 2 fruit bats waiting for me on the other side of the door. I kill them with 3 MMs but I’m out of SP and there’s a rock lizard in front of me. Phasing once lands me in the room next to another lizard, but there are also stairs in this room. I flee down the stairs with 0 SP and 5 HP. Level 1 took me 23296 turns. Resting is slow!