Beginners Question

[Gockel]

Hi there!

After being depressed for a while because of some really inconvenient and, as i felt, unpredictable deaths, i finally started liking the idea of a game giving me years (maybe) of playing time until i'm ready to win... i enjoy slowly building up my monster "database", slowly finding out about the specific dangers of a monster, even these moments of "should i allow it to hit me a few times in order to find out what it does? or will i be dead?", i really start loving this!

But somehow now i'm a bit lost. i guess it's not a very important issue anyway but i was thinking about it a lot, and i can't really decide:

i've got this little beastman chaos warrior (clvl21) with some nice mutations like str +4 and free action (by the way, does the +1 STL coming wit free action actually mean anything?). I'm wielding a chaotic long sword (+8,+9). For a lot of time i was a bit unlucky, didn't find ANY resistance stuff until dungeon/character level 20. But now i found the phial, a steel helm of seeing (see invisible/immunity to blindness) and finally a defender lajatang(+11,+7, +7AC, immunity to paralysis, res acid/electricity/fire/cold, feather falling, see invis, regeneration).

At first i was really happy, but soon i realized that i liked the chaotic effects of my old blade a lot. i guess it's a bit stupid but i'm really wondering if this lajatang thing is much better than my chaotic long sword...

i mean i have free action/see invis anyway and i didn't find many useful rings so at the moment i could wear a ring of levitation without giving up anything useful.
which leaves the resistances/AC/regeneration... regeneration is nice of course and i guess resistances are important, but well, the way my chaos sword confused and teleported my enemies was (usually) really helpful too, especially in fights against masses of orcs.

so my question is, do you think it would be completely stupid to continue using the chaotic long sword?
hmm, i guess (and fear) the answer is YES, YES, YES! IDIOT!... but i thought asking can't hurt really liked my dear little chaos sword... i'll shed some tears for it...

[HallucinationMushroom]

I'm of the school that you should use what makes you feel happy, especially when it comes to what you use to slay monsters. I've encountered situations like these before and found that whatever mathematical edge I might get doesn't outweigh the psychological boost I get from playing characters the way I think they should be played. I recently used a two handed flail of crack skull that I found more enjoyable than a short sword of way more damage, simply because the two handed flail weighed thirty pounds. If your goal is to win, and nothing else, then go with math. If your goal is to have fun and hopefully win, go with your gut.

Others here will more than likely give you good math and quantitative data... I would if I could. Sorry to hear about your losses.

[Derakon]

Chaotic weapons are inherently random and thus hard to quantify, but they do tend to provide some useful effects. Besides, I doubt you really need the extra resistances or regeneration just yet (and levitation is entirely forgettable). If you were a mage, it'd be a different story, but warrior-types have more hitpoints, and thus can afford to delay the point at which they pick up those basic resistances.

If you enjoy using the longsword, keep using it. You'll find more and more resistance-granting equipment as you keep going down.

[Gockel]

Ah, thx for the help!
the way you put it it seems obvious which route to choose, of course. my problem was that in my last game i got roasted by an arch vile (from full hp(99) to 0 in 1 turn with 1(?) fireball)... which annoyed me quite a bit then... so i wasn't sure if it's smart to go with the obviously more enjoyable option, because it could lose it's charm quite abruptly... and even if i obviously want to have fun, i found such an abrupt end quite frustrating...
anyway, it's true, my other character was a mage, so finally i continued going with the chaos sword. was definitely worth it, really enjoyed it, even if its polymorphing ability can be quite nasty sometimes...anyway, now i found the spear of hagen and since then the two of us went in a healthy and happy relationship
thx again!!

[Derakon]

If I recall correctly, arch-viles are very fast. I suspect you got hit by multiple fireballs; a single one from a monster of the arch-vile's level should not be able to deal 100 damage even unresisted.

[Gockel]

hmm... i thought they move at normal speed (not completely sure though...) but actually it could be, now that i played that quest again, i realized there were actually at least 2 arch-viles. so maybe both of them shot me, one of them out of the dark...
anyway, i guess this won't happen to me again. at least not in this fashion. i moved on, a few levels further c/d both around 27, and i met barney the dinosaur. thinking that he might even be friendly i didn't attack him first. but after he summoned 8 hydras around me i realized i was mistaken. i was smart enough to teleport away and take the hydras down one by one. then i spent a second thinking about checking on barney at the beast masters. decided against it. was a mistake. one breath of chaos, a failed attempt to cast teleport self and one more attack later i was dead (350 hp)... oh well, i guess there's lots to learn

btw, i guess nobody plays this old version anymore, right? zangbandtk 24r05 or something like this...
are the newer ones better? and it's true that this is the only version with tilesets, right? so you all play the real roguelike way? somehow i can't get used to the idea of playing like this, it seems... a bit exhausting somehow - even though i remember that when i first played rogue i really enjoyed it (on a very low level though, was around 9 then)...

would you suggest to switch to another version?

thx a lot!!

[buzzkill]

Z+ supports tiles, more or less (no double tile mode). The tile set is incomplete, but you won't notice many omissions in the early (first 30 or so) levels. Tiles may not be included in the download. If that's the case, follow the link in my sig.

Other variants that support tiles off the top of my head... FA (perfectly) and DaJ, IronBand (subject to the above caveats).