High-Elf Rogue newbie

[debo]

Saruman died... and didn't drop anything :|

At least I killed him without getting melee'd - I'd have been annoyed if he disenchanted me only to drop nothing

[Timo Pietilä]

Mine has no speed bonus It's +4 Str, Cha, and +2 stealth.

Hum. That was me who removed the speed bonus....

Sorry about misinformation.

[debo]

Well, I expected the late game to be the fun part, but it's actually more annoying than fun haha

I keep running into vaults of undead things. Also, it seems like every high-level monster I'm running into recently has disenchantment as a melee effect, which makes me want to scream. I can kill them with arrows but it takes FOR-EV-ER.

I have 2 staves of banishment so I've been leaving the scrolls at home using the staves pretty frequently + greater recharge.

Nightwings, Black Reavers, and any kind of Druj is pretty high on my "OMG SO ANNOYING" list right now. Reavers are actually leaning more towards the scary/dangerous side b/c of manastorm. I've never been hit by one before, and I don't want to find out what it feels like.

I'm particularly scared of reavers b/c the first time I ran into one, he hit me with a spell from out-of-sight, and I was sitting around 250HP. If that spell had been a manastorm, I would have died.

I've found some more gear that I could shuffle around, but one thing that is stopping me is my crown of serenity, which gives pStun. Right now I melee Grand Master Mystics with nary a worry, but if I swap that out to allow for cycling in all this better stuff I'm finding, that's not going to be possible anymore :/

I've run into Gabriel a couple of times now, and as soon as I see him, I just teleport level. The only thing that's stopping me from fighting him right now is his disenchantment -- otherwise, I'm pretty sure I could take him.

Also high up on my wish-list -- some kind of resistance/protection from Teleport Other. (Please don't let monsters have this :P)

I'm sitting around dlvl 72 right now on clvl 42.

[debo]

Alright, that dreadlord unique decided to spice up my life a bit by summoning a buttload of Ringwraiths.

Is it just me, or are XP values sort of wacked out when you get to high levels?
Gabriel is ~60K XP and he's scary as all hell. Dracolichs still give me about 23K even though they're huge wimps if you have hold life + 2x cold resist

I'd rather fight 3 dracolichs than Gabriel... in fact I'd probably rather fight 100 dracolichs than Gabriel.

Dawndeath, Dog-Lord, and Hoar-something have all gone down quietly. The Easterling Ringwraith is still out there somewhere, and he seems to be the most dangerous one. Gonna go find him now

Oh, also -- until this floor, I'd never found an amulet of weaponmastery in my life. I just found 5 in a row +1 str, +2 str, +3 str, and I think even a +4 str one, I can't remember now

[debo]

So I see now what a balancing act this becomes in the late game... there are so many monsters that breathe 500+ damage of weird elements like Chaos, Disenchantment, Nether, etc.

My new kit drops Chaos, Stun, and Sound resist in exchange for 34 unhasted speed + max con + all the other "weird" resists. I figure if GMM's try to melee me, I'll just TO them :P

Take a look, see what you think

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11936

P.S. I've seen people get excited for Ingwë before on these forums, but I ditched it... I'm not understanding what the big deal is? The only thing I can see about it that's useful is the activation spell?

EDIT: my +disenchantment is a swap... I keep trickery on most of the time, swap to weaponmastery as needed. If something breathes dis on me from the shadows I will chastise it severely

[Derakon]

Ingwë is decent but nothing amazing. In the old days it was the best artifact amulet (and beat in non-artifacts only if you really needed more WIS or you got lucky with Magi). Now, though, there's much better competition (both artifacts and non-artifacts).

Your character looks pretty good. +34 speed is nice -- actually, it's well into the region where you're facing diminishing returns (starts at +28). So you could lose some speed without hurting too much, especially since you have reliable access to temporary speed. Consider ditching a speed ring for that damage ring.

Gurthang is a solid weapon but nothing amazing. Eowyn has better damage against evil non-dragons that resist fire and poison, of which I'd wager there's a decent number including most uniques.

Hithlomir's an odd choice IMO. Presumably you're wearing it for darkness and nether resistance? Unfortunately nether resistance in the worst case will only reduce your damage from 550 to 471 (it's a variable resistance, anywhere from 50% reduction to only 14% reduction). Darkness is pretty rare, and the only really heavy damage is in the form of darkness storms, which are even more rare. So Hithlomir's not helping your average case much. You might consider wearing Isildur for the extra 70 AC; IIRC that should give you an extra 12% damage reduction against most melee attacks, in addition to generally making you harder to hit. Heck, use Isildur and Eowyn and you keep all your resists. Just carry Gurthang as a swap for when it deals more damage.

I usually inscribe my really dangerous items (Destruction, Teleport, etc.) with "!*". That will cause the game to prompt me before following through with using them. Or "!*!*!*" for three such prompts.

You may as well ID those arrows in your quiver.

Til-I-Arc and Avavir aren't going to see use at this point; your other weapons outclass them. If you need space in your home, ditch 'em.

Good luck!

[debo]

This is super informative, thanks. I didn't realize that difference resistances work different ways like that.

Do all of the "high-level" resists (chaos, disenchantment, nexus etc.) use this variable-damage-reduction thing? How about Sound?

I also didn't realize that speed accumulation was nonlinear. I assumed that at 30 speed, I'd be 3x as fast as a normal monster, and at 40, I'd be 4x as fast. I guess this is not the case then?

I did pick Hithlomir for the resists, since I spend most of my time Shielded which keeps me around 200AC. I also didn't think that AC did that much damage reduction -- I'm used to AC being used mostly for hit-chance reduction.

If I'm using Isildur, I'll need Gurthang for poison resist, but I'll pay closer attention to how many opponents are both poison and fire resistant. I was using Til-i-arc until about 30 seconds ago (I used Gurthang around clvl 30 and then switched to Til-i-arc when I found it.)

[Derakon]

I don't really feel like digging up the resistance information again right now. It's...somewhere, on these forums. I seem to recall that sound resistance is a flat 50% reduction, but I could very easily be wrong.

AC gives you physical damage resistance, maxing out at 60% with an AC of 350.

Speed is linear up to +28 and then falls off fast. That said, +20 is "three times faster than normal". I think (again, not looking it up right now) that "four times faster" is around about +35, and "five times faster" probably requires you to get up over +50.

You don't need Gurthang for poison resistance; your Trickery amulet has that covered.

[Timo Pietilä]

Alright, that dreadlord unique decided to spice up my life a bit by summoning a buttload of Ringwraiths.

Is it just me, or are XP values sort of wacked out when you get to high levels?
Gabriel is ~60K XP and he's scary as all hell. Dracolichs still give me about 23K even though they're huge wimps if you have hold life + 2x cold resist

I'd rather fight 3 dracolichs than Gabriel... in fact I'd probably rather fight 100 dracolichs than Gabriel.

Either you have been lucky with variable resist or those Dracoliches have not used their main weapons on you. Two dracolichs = RUN. Two dracolichs can cause over 900 points of damage thru resists in single turn.

[Nomad]

I don't really feel like digging up the resistance information again right now. It's...somewhere, on these forums.

It is in the in-game help somewhere: under "attacking monsters", I think. Ah, yep, here it is:

There are resistances available to chaos, disenchantment, confusion, nexus, sound, shards, light and darkness: all of these will reduce the damage and prevent side-effects other than physical damage. With these resistances, as with nether resistance, damage is a random fraction: for light and dark, it is between 4/7 and 4/12, for sound and confusion it is between 5/7 and 5/12, and for chaos, disenchantment, nexus, shards and nether it is between 6/7 and 6/12.

[Timo Pietilä]

It is in the in-game help somewhere: under "attacking monsters", I think. Ah, yep, here it is:

"There are resistances available to chaos, disenchantment, confusion, nexus, sound, shards, light and darkness:"

If that was copy & paste from actual help then that list has a bug: it doesn't include nether, even that text continues with "...as with nether resistance, damage is a random fraction:..."

Also confusion is not resist anymore, it is protection like blindness and can be found as random ability instead of random resist (cloak of magi can have it, but cloak of Aman cannot).

[Nomad]

"There are resistances available to chaos, disenchantment, confusion, nexus, sound, shards, light and darkness:"

If that was copy & paste from actual help then that list has a bug: it doesn't include nether, even that text continues with "...as with nether resistance, damage is a random fraction:..."

Yeah, that's because there's a fairly large chunk of rambling about how hold life and nether resistance work a few paragraphs earlier that I didn't bother to paste in.

Really, that whole section of the help files (and most of the rest of the help to be honest) could use a bit of cleanup; it's a lot more wordy than it needs to be and it's hard to dig out the information that you're looking for. Things like resistance levels really ought to be in a list or table instead of buried in dense paragraphs of text.

[Derakon]

It is in the in-game help somewhere: under "attacking monsters", I think. Ah, yep, here it is:

Y'know, that sounds kinda like my writing voice. I wonder if I posted that to the forums and then whoever was doing the help update (sorry I forgot who you are!) copied it in?

[debo]

Thanks for all the info re: resistances, folks. I didn't realize that kind of detail was to be found in the help files.

I've found some more great artifacts, with Thunderfist probably being the most exciting. As I approach lvl 80, the monster encounters are getting more interesting as well -- I just had a Great Wyrm of Chaos summon Ancalagon the Black I teleported and immediately ran down the stairs, and found myself about 10 squares away from the Tarrasque!

I teleported level, and now I'm someplace not so risky.

[Timo Pietilä]

I teleported level, and now I'm someplace not so risky.

Or so you think >