Amragarn, the Dunadan Ranger

[Stan Belik]

That was my first character to make it that deep. He was only my third character since the download of 3.3.0 (the first two have died rather instantly), so I was pretty happy and full of hope he could be a winner.

Here's the dump: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11845

What do you think of him in general? Any piece of advice before I start over?

P.S. I've never actually played lots of Angband before. I've only been strongly playing Valhalla AKA Ragnarok among roguelikes.

[Timo Pietilä]

Here's the dump: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11845

What do you think of him in general? Any piece of advice before I start over?

You did learn one valuable thing: Deep in dungeon you need poison resistance. In this case you should have used Himring even that I find it rather unusual thing to wear.

For weapons you had three things to keep in home: Hurin, Balli, Firestar. everything else loses to them & Careth. Your current weapon was OK for now, but as you can see Hurin is nearly as effective with 4.3 as Careth is with 6 blows so it would not have taken very long before it would have been better (acid brand affects huge amount of monsters).

Mormegil is junk. You would never find a combination where that would beat any of the other weapons you have (-10 speed makes it unusable even if you enchant it to +15,+15).

Speed trumps nearly everything until you have +30, so pretty much every boots you had were junk compared to BoS +7. It would have been best choice even if you had found Dal-i-Thalion which has +5 speed and lots of other nice stuff, because +7 & +3 from Colannon & Amras puts you to speed +10, +8 is nowhere near as good as that (monster double-moves are killer). OTOH Dal-i-Thalion would have been good to keep, because +2 speed difference when it doesn't mean crossing a speed breakpoint is small enough to consider using it.

[Stan Belik]

I didn't yet actually manage to learn one particular thing yet: do the resists "stack" or something?
E.g. I had three items that granted Acid Resistance (Arvedui, Celegorm and Paurnen). Do these resistanses sum up? Or it's more than enough to have some given resist covered by just one item?

And yeah, I know Mormegil is junk, I just like to decorate my home with all the artifacts I find deep down in the dungeon. These things tell lots of stories to unlikely visitors

[Derakon]

As far as equipment is concerned, one source of resistance is all you need.

You can additionally get a temporary resistance (e.g. by drinking a Potion of Resist Fire), and that will stack with the permanent resistance. But permanent resistances don't stack with each other.

[fizzix]

actually you shouldn't worry about poison before dlevel 45 or so. And even then, if you can detect monsters, there are really only a few monsters that you need to avoid.

There was more of an issue in that you were fighting when you were wounded. It seems that perhaps the basilisk snuck up on you. You tried to escape with ?phase but that wasn't good enough. using _teleport, casting teleport, or using the rod of TO is probably a better bet. All those will have 5% chance of failing (and dying) and the teleport still has a problem of landing somewhere bad.

Really though, you should have been able to pick up other escapes. Anything that has a 0% chance of failure is a very useful escape. The best are ?teleport-level and ?deep descent because you always get the first move on a new level. ?teleportation is also fairly good, despite the possibility of ending up in danger. Lastly there is ?*destruction* but those are rare and you probably hadn't found any yet. If you don't have rblind and rconf then you probably need _teleport as well and _destruction when you find it.

The biggest trick is escaping before you're in danger. Sounds odd, but that's really the way to survive. Once you get good at that, you can start going deeper quicker, and just avoid everything you can't handle, and leave the level if it's too dangerous.

[Stan Belik]

actually you shouldn't worry about poison before dlevel 45 or so. And even then, if you can detect monsters, there are really only a few monsters that you need to avoid.

So I guess it was a pretty awkward death, huh?

[Derakon]

Greater basilisks don't ordinarily show up that early, so to some extent you just got unlucky. That said, you could have prevented this by knowing that the monster was in the area. If you see an unfamiliar monster, you should assume it can kill you, especially since it's faster than you are and native to a depth 500' later in the dungeon. Thus you'd be well-served to leave it alone.

Assuming those two breaths were from an uninjured basilisk, they'd deal about 336 damage apiece. Of course, you couldn't have known that without looking up the spoilers. Given its speed, it could also theoretically have breathed twice in a row, taking you from full-health to almost-dead in one turn (assuming you started at full health, you'd be left at 17HP!).

One thing you can do when fighting monsters faster than you is to use your bow instead of melee. You had 3 shots/round, which means that only a third of a round passes each time you shoot something; thus, the basilisk can't double-move you as long as you're shooting. Of course, that does you no good if you need to run away or heal.

EDIT: on further review, you had +9 speed, whoops.

[Stan Belik]

Well, I guess...

...Amragarn will be avenged!

[Timo Pietilä]

As far as equipment is concerned, one source of resistance is all you need.

You can additionally get a temporary resistance (e.g. by drinking a Potion of Resist Fire), and that will stack with the permanent resistance. But permanent resistances don't stack with each other.

And temporary resists don't stack with other temporary resists (potion and spell for example).

[Timo Pietilä]

So I guess it was a pretty awkward death, huh?

Yes.

You do need poison resist just as badly as you need basic four by that time. First thing that isn't basic element Ancient Dragon and can kill you with single breath attack will make same damage with all five of its breaths: Ancient Multi-Hued Dragon.

I prefer getting poison resist earlier than later. Before you meet AMHD you meet a lot of lesser poison breathers that are actually more dangerous than basic four breathers. I learned that with non-ego char I was playing. You can manage without some of the basic four for a long time, and poison started to get annoying sooner than any of them. When you actually need poison resist you need all the rest of basic resistances too.

When you meet AMHD you better have all five resists.

(note that high element resists do not follow same rules as basic four & poison. They have variable resistance from 6/7 to 1/2 damage)