Egoless Ironman

[PowerDiver]

I'm doing surprisingly well with an ironman game with
no egos or artifacts, dump here

I am nowhere near the 550 hp required to face the serious nether breathers.

I think I will have no choice but to farm for exp. I'm thinking I should create angel explosions since they don't breathe. An alternative would be to collect some clone monster wands, and I guess go after swamp wyrms. Is cloning cheesier than inducing an explosion even after accounting for using up a precious slot? I'm starting to wonder about that.

There are only 16 levels to go. I've been mostly clearing levels of monsters with drops, except for graveyards. Do I try to force the issue and kill too-tough foes using up consumables? Do I wait for a speed ring? It is starting to feel as if time is running out.

[Magnate]

Don't you basically need two +6 CON rings? I don't see how you can do it otherwise. That will rob you of 0% fail so you'll need to kill with -annihilation etc.

[PowerDiver]

The goal is one speed ring and one con ring. That means a lot of CLs are needed to get the hp up.

[Magnate]

The goal is one speed ring and one con ring. That means a lot of CLs are needed to get the hp up.

Oh yes I'd forgotten about speed, you really don't have any choice but to go with one of each. Wow - there isn't anything else that can give you CON, so you're going to max out at 18/150 IIRC (+1 race, -2 class, +6 ring). I guess you should get over 600 with that for the final fight, but am I right in thinking that you can't reach 0% fail? Oh - you can if you find a +4 "magi ... good luck with that.

[Nick]

If you want my advice, I think a stupid death would do wonders for my adequacy issues.

[PowerDiver]

If you want my advice, I think a stupid death would do wonders for my adequacy issues.

Ask and ye shall receive. Death to Tarrasque frost breath, could have had double resistance or otherwise avoided it. Ladder dump updated.

[Derakon]

How heavily did you use those attack wands? The big problem I had with my recent mage character was having enough mana to kill things. That, and while Meteor Storm is very reliable damage at 200HP a pop, it's not necessarily all that fast. And of course mages are too squishy to stand in melee, but at range, summons mean you can't hit with meteors any more (and Rift is really mana-hungry).

Edit: I should note I haven't yet found Tenser's or Kelek's with this character, so I'm stuck with the basic 4 + Raal's for attack magic. One of my biggest annoyances with mages -- how heavily they rely on dumb luck to get the spells that enable them to deal with foes.

[PowerDiver]

How heavily did you use those attack wands? The big problem I had with my recent mage character was having enough mana to kill things. That, and while Meteor Storm is very reliable damage at 200HP a pop, it's not necessarily all that fast. And of course mages are too squishy to stand in melee, but at range, summons mean you can't hit with meteors any more (and Rift is really mana-hungry).

Playing non-ironman, I made major use of wands of dragonfrost and dragonfire. I even used dragonbreath against foes that resisted at one element.

In this game they were precious, so I used them less. I tried to kill major foes mostly with mana and used the devices more for backup when mana ran out.

Most of my game was before CL40 so rift was not any more efficient than any other MB6 spell for the majority of my game.

[Timo Pietilä]

Ask and ye shall receive. Death to Tarrasque frost breath, could have had double resistance or otherwise avoided it. Ladder dump updated.

I like to think that if you can win with egoless ironman, then there is something wrong into game. It should not be possible even for you.

Make a journey pointing out the weaknesses of the game you used to win when (if) you win, then maintainers should plug those weaknesses to make game harder.

[Pete Mack]

Eddie--
* Bummer about the Tarrasque. Especially since you are carrying MB5.
* I'm a bit surprised at your limited selection of amulets. I figured amulet swaps would be huge in an Ironman game. (Why lose the AoESP? Surely it's better than Rods of Light+AoMagi for walking around.)
* Why no melee weapon? Surely even that character is strong enough to mow down Troll pits.

I don't see you getting so far again for a while: MHDSM is just a huge find.

Also: That is an absolutely amazing run. I can't imagine getting so far in egoless play, never mind egoless ironman.

[PowerDiver]

Make a journey pointing out the weaknesses of the game you used to win when (if) you win, then maintainers should plug those weaknesses to make game harder.

Mages are incredibly powerful when you know how to use them. The recent halving of damage mana costs make them barely viable killing with spells. Then it is a matter of patience. I could have made it further. The 'S' definitely belonged in yaSd.

Detect. Kill what you can. Evade what you cannot kill. It's just a matter of execution.

I guess someone might say I abused teleport other, but with 1% fail that entailed some risk. I never learned any spell from MB7. I was dropped to 10 hp by multiple hound breaths after I detected upon entering a new level, so lack of casting create doors nearly killed me but I survived. Reverting to larger hound pack sizes would "fix" that.

I wore two rings of escaping for a while, but that's just because all previous rings I found were junk. I would have happily traded them for two rings of int+3.

I used ?massBanish near a vault once. I found it much too early to devote a slot to it, so I just used it. I got 2 stat potions from the exchange, which seems fair enough to me in return for such a powerful scroll.

The only thing that felt wrong was the ease with which I could rest in peace, but I could only do around 2000 points of total damage with MB6 spells without resting. Either I had to be able to rest or else one major group summons would mean unavoidable death. I don't see how you can change this without forcing mages to do most of their damage with physical attacks.

I guess another change I have suggested before, to remove poison resistance from mages and give it to priests, might make a big difference. No one else seemed to agree that this was a good idea, so it didn't feel like abuse to me to use poison resistance spells.

This game was much more fun than the egoless win. That was just a grind. The only strategy was take no risks. This game was full of opportunities for risk/benefit tradeoffs, and the slot decisions were tricky too.

[Pete Mack]

@Powerdiver--
I would have thought that Rogue would be comparable to Mage for this--they get Haste Self much later, but their detection is comparable, and they can resist breaths with a single resist a lot earlier. And they have better stealth.

And with Tenser's, they have a useful exploit in egoless games.

[PowerDiver]

(Why lose the AoESP?

* Why no melee weapon?

I don't see you getting so far again for a while: MHDSM is just a huge find.

When I was playing egoless, I kept losing chars. I thought the problem was getting used to the crutch of ESP, and then dying when I gave it up for amulet of magi. I decided not to use ESP at all, and that's when I started getting really close to winning. HOWEVER, it might also be buggy implementation of ATTR_MULTI and ATTR_FLICKER on my ancient linux box. I removed those at about the same time I gave up on ESP, so I can't be sure which change was the important one.

A prev egoless char carried a shovel, and bron pestered me about it. This game I had a chaos blade for a while, then dumped it due to weight. Maybe I should have kept it. I could mow down troll pits with rift, so that doesn't really matter. OTOH chaos resistance was a big deal when I got my hp close to 500 but not quite there.

I found 2 MHDSM within minutes of each other, and I think I found 4 overall. They aren't so impossible to find deep.

[PowerDiver]

I would have thought that Rogue would be comparable to Mage for this

Rogues and rangers cannot kill with spells the way mages can, and my guess is that egoless weapons can't get the job done.

[bron]

Rogues and rangers cannot kill with spells the way mages can, and my guess is that egoless weapons can't get the job done.

I agree with this. HTH and missile waepons just don't have enough punch for the deep monsters without the ego boosts. A BoC is nice for the rChaos, but not critical. And it weighs a lot.