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One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. -
So I finally got to +22 speed: +9 from a ring, +3 from artifact Black DSM, +3 from the randart Elfstone, +3 from randart cloak, +4 from randart boots. More crucially, the randart ring on my other hand has +3 shots for my x4 +30 xbow, and my final randart weapon has +5 CON. With a single stack of 24 slay evil bolts, and about 150 other bolts, I decided to take Morgoth on, with only 637hp.
The first few skirmishes went ok: I got him down to 8 stars in return for one manastorm which burned up half a dozen of my slay evil bolts. Then he comes back and summons Lungorthin with escort, and I banish U only to discover that the big guy stays put. So I tele him away, and Morgoth gets really pissed: in a single summon he gets Feagwath, Ungoliant, Omarax, Polyphemus, Fundin and Beorn! I back up to string them out and get rid of them.
By the time he's down to five stars I'm down to normal seeker bolts, and the level is filled with uniques: the Witch-King, Thuringwethil, Vecna - the whole gang. I'm certainly not teleporting myself anywhere. I'm out of scrolls (of Banish and Mass Banish) but I still have staves - I'm not letting Morgy anywhere near me. At this point I start to wonder if uniques can be summoned when they're already on the level - a few rounds later I get my answer when he summons Kronos, the Queen Ant, and my old chum Omarax ... I get rid of Morgy, but things get a bit sticky when one of Kronos's escorts summons me right into the middle of the pack - time for my first tactical *destruct*, which saves my skin but costs me a ton of bolts (and all my reserve stash, which was just inside the blast radius - dammit!). But Morgy is down to three stars now so maybe I won't need them ...
My last staff of Banishment explodes when I try to recharge it, but at least I have no reason not to use *destruct* freely now, as there's nothing left on the floor.
... but actually I don't need to do it again - he comes back three more times, and never casts another spell, just plods towards me taking bolt after bolt. He dies when I have 88 bolts left, and I reflect that I probably would have done it if the ring had only +1 shot rather than +3. My first non-scummed winner - a half-elf of all things. Thanks Nick for the competition that inspired it.
"Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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Awesome - congratulations!One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.Comment
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Wait... that is your first clean win? This is what I love about Angband. Even the maintainers need 10 years to win. You guys are awesome.Comment
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It's all about not taking risks. All my recent deaths were about bad guys getting a double move, or breathing something I hoped they wouldn't, etc. This time I did much better at making sure I couldn't be double-moved, and making sure I didn't take on anything I couldn't handle. I never saw rshards all game, so until I got over 500hp (which was the last 5% of the game) I avoided big shard breathers completely. There were a couple of occasions at the end when I was at less than 550hp and Sauron/Morgy could have killed me with a manastorm, but they were literally only a handful of turns rather than a consistent feature of my playing.
This comp was a real eye opener for randarts - I looked at the spoiler, and no wonder it took me so long to find enough +speed! With the exception of a single Cubragol-like broadsword and a hat with +4 speed, my final kit contains almost the maximum possible +speed. (I never saw boots of speed, and only two +6 rings other than the one I wore.) That's pretty unusual for a randart set - no boots better than +4, and only two items in the whole set better than that. And as Timo said, a pisspoor selection of launchers. Nothing notable in the way of offweapon brands either. My +3 shot ring (which was Vilya) was the only notably uber item.
@nullfame: the reason it takes us so long is that we get distracted by "ooh, that's a bug, I'll just try and fix that ...""Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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The advice "kill Morgoth; don't die" sounds like a joke but is actually profound.
I just looked at your dump, and it appears you were about 5 !CON short. A first win that took under 500K turns must be some kind of record. Was this an intentional tradeoff because you figured you were more likely to die looking for more con or was it something else?Comment
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What does "non-scummed" mean in this context? Do you mean first non save-scummed win?
In that case getting it under 1M turn would have been good, and getting it under 500k turn is awesome.
Or did you need to save-scum previously because you were diving? You never played normal game?Comment
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No, I save-scummed one winner ten years ago, in my first year of playing, simply because I grew bored with never getting beyond stat gain and wanted to see what the late game was like (pre JLE it was quite boring - all I remember is wall-to-wall black reavers). After that I swore I'd never savescum again, and I haven't - but it's taken me a long time to win. I always played clearing every level (often more than once) until I started diving about three years ago. As soon as I started I found that the faster I dived, the further I got, so I just kept diving faster and faster. This is the result.
So yes, this is my first non-save-scummed win - and only my second legit character to survive past 4000'."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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I just got bored. I had <500hp for the longest time, and could not take Sauron until I found the ring with +3 CON and shots, getting me enough hp to survive a single manastorm (which he never cast). With the exception of STR (which seemed to crop up everywhere), stat potions were so insanely rare that I couldn't face waiting (I never saw !Aug). At one point I intended to hunt down all the tough uniques, but after spending thousands of turns killing about three of them I changed my mind (again, it was all about hp - one breath and I'd have to bail out of my ASC to CCW).
One thing that would make a big difference is if !Heal were for sale in the Temple like !CCW. Since they're both percentages they're no longer that far apart, but !Heal would allow you to stand and fight instead of having to phase and use multiple CCW, which I think would speed up taking down uniques.
On reflection I think the randart set was a bit crappy - with the exception of two weapons with +3 blows, and the cloak, I didn't find anything good early. Most of my kit was found very late, after reaching dl98 and bouncing around.
I have you to thank for my conversion to diving: you once wrote a persuasive post on rgra about how to cope with dying. For seven years or so I had clung to every character like a loved one, spending millions of turns inching through the game and taking months off when they died. After reading your post I took the opposite approach and spent months dying dozens of times an evening, until every now and then one survived to stat gain and beyond. Each time the number of deaths between successes became slightly less and the successes got a little further. At one point my savefile said of Bullroarer something like "he has killed 54 of your ancestors" ...."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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Putting Healing in the temple would largely amount to negating one of the biggest advantages the priestly types get. I'd say this is just a matter of consumables being too rare in general. Making this particular potion functionally unlimited seems excessive.Comment
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There's no such thing as a crappy weapon with +3 blows!
Your complaint sounds as if you are diving just a little too fast. When diving, you will usually find most of your endgame kit very deep, so that is typical. However, if you are really hurting for equipment on the way down you need to figure out how to kill a bit more. There's also the growth curve that means if you get behind, you cannot find as many easy kills as you go and you keep getting further and further behind the power curve you want to follow.Comment
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CCW and heal are both % based on lost HP not max HP, so heal >> CCW in that sense unless you have huge HP and are facing something somewhat reliably damaging not burst damaging. Of course, with eq/destr area or something, phase + 2-3 ccw potions is good to go often. Or 4.
I think my kobold warrior won't be hunting down the uniques nor scumming for "nearperfect" gear, but going for Sauron and Morgy as soon as he gets there. That's new for me, since I almost always take like millions of turns just scumming after the first +-1m of getting to 98. But if you think consumables are a big problem, you could try the modified object.txt file I am using with the kobold, it has worked for me so far quite alright. I have done a "solid fighting dive" not a deepdescent style dive, fighting stuff on the way, and it's resulted in having probably enough consumables to fight S and M already and I'm not yet at 98 even.
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Keep in mind that Heal also has a not-insignificant minimum heal amount of 300HP, while CCW's minimum heal rapidly becomes irrelevant. That said, generally I find that 3CCW > 1 Healing, assuming you have the time. The difference is that Healing potions mean you don't have to bail on your current fight to heal up.Comment
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