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My life is now complete.
AlterReality, whose dump is at
is the first ever Ironman winner of Sangband. Note that he was played on a build made from the latest code. This was out of necessity, as it was the only way I knew how to get Sangband set up on Ubuntu - I am that curious breed, a layman on Linux.
This character was the product of three months of recent effort, preceded by various periods of Ironman attempts in the past. My recent attempts were about 3/4 sorcerors and 1/4 necros.
AlterReality began life as NeedsFoodBadly, a twinkily-rolled and much-recycled fellow with 500+ gold in the bank. He spent it on MB1 and MB2 (only bought just in case - it dropped in the dungeon before I needed it), one ?Tel, maybe some potions and all the rest on PDoor.
Sorcery is practically made for Ironman, not least because Phase Door kicks in really quick as a replacement for those precious scrolls. Then you just need to clear the Mughash Barrier and, with the right technique and enough patience, you are good go go until about D:50. Mughash is a problem because... well because I tend to want to kill him on the first level where he's generated (usually around level 8), which tends to be far too early to do it. I think I wisely chickened out this time and later dispatched him easily.
"The right technique" means playing the game of someone who can't recall to town and can only flee down, and having a good sense of what to hoard and what to drop at what stage of the descent. It would be boring to go into I think, at least for the upper floors. But just to give one example, duplicate books are easy to overvalue and burden yourself with...
A propos, camlost's Sangband, especially after factoring in one gameplay change that followed in the code before camlost abandoned Sangband (sniff!), is a very Ironman-friendly set of versions. In one of his first releases, in the name of supporting shadowstalkers, camlost enabled a lot of key actions in the dark - spellcasting with a penalty, and certain emergency scrolls just like in the light. That makes Ironman light management in the opening less annoying at minimum, and sometimes less deadly. Then later on, in response to my whining about the absence of town book drops in the late dungeon, he extended those into the end of the game - but above all, he introduced fireproof town books. With high enough Dodging, you only really need one fireproof town book per pile. (Dodging to stop thievery.)
And the one gameplay change? Stats now very gradually naturally regenerate after being drained. That means if you screw up and stand next to a yellow worm on D:5 or whatever, you're not crippled for the next 30 levels.
Each one of these changes on its own made Ironman less frustrating when it was introduced. (Imagine trying to get all your stores of -- flammable -- MB1 set up for the whole game by D:30 while needing a light source for almost every move.) Together, they made it actually fun. :-)
I suddenly find myself kind of at a loss as to what to say that can't be read from the note dumps. I guess I'll point to the long nailbiting time it took before I got Raal's -- not until depth 74, which may not sound like much, but -- the damage options before Raal's start to become pretty dicey by that depth. Also interesting was the long time wondering how I would ever cover darkness and nether without a ring of darkness (which had to bump Barahir, as I usually wasn't playing as fast and loose with rPois as I did in the last battle). Luthien came just in time. As did Nenya, which prompted my final dive. It was time, I was getting bored.
So bored, in fact, that after offing Sauron I forgot to wait for Thrain to recharge, or even my magic mapping power, so I was flying blind throughout the final battle. Fortunately the mistake wasn't fatal, and nor was the turns spent fighting without rPois. (I did have temp rPois from !Resistance for part of the fight.) I used Mass Genocide this time more than I've ever used against Sauron before - I was trigger happy because I was reallllly sick of balrogs burning my recharging scrolls. After all, I only had 20 of them, 10 of recharging, and 20 plus wands of doomblasts... I could run out at any moment.
I also had 90+ lembas wafers just in case I destructed Morgy by mistake and needed to wait for him to regenerate. 'Cuz discussions back in the day concluded that you could do that if you had enough food.
If Sangband had a Wand of Overpreparation, I'm sure I'd have been carrying that too.
Manastorm manastorm DOOR CREATION CLW CLW CLW OPEN DOOR manastorm RIFT manastorm manastorm MASS GENO manastorm manastorm *HEALING* manastorm Teleport Away kill balrogs out of spite find Morgy manastorm manastorm... Morgy dead.
Yay!
***
Bug reports: (Linux build from source using Mikko instructions from here at forums):
- Game always crashes and panic saves upon moving cursor when nearlooking.
- Game sometimes crashes (and always panic saves if it does) when moving cursor for Phase Warp spell.
- Dumps for Ironman have blurb for both Ironman and the newer Partial Ironman mode.
AlterReality, whose dump is at
is the first ever Ironman winner of Sangband. Note that he was played on a build made from the latest code. This was out of necessity, as it was the only way I knew how to get Sangband set up on Ubuntu - I am that curious breed, a layman on Linux.
This character was the product of three months of recent effort, preceded by various periods of Ironman attempts in the past. My recent attempts were about 3/4 sorcerors and 1/4 necros.
AlterReality began life as NeedsFoodBadly, a twinkily-rolled and much-recycled fellow with 500+ gold in the bank. He spent it on MB1 and MB2 (only bought just in case - it dropped in the dungeon before I needed it), one ?Tel, maybe some potions and all the rest on PDoor.
Sorcery is practically made for Ironman, not least because Phase Door kicks in really quick as a replacement for those precious scrolls. Then you just need to clear the Mughash Barrier and, with the right technique and enough patience, you are good go go until about D:50. Mughash is a problem because... well because I tend to want to kill him on the first level where he's generated (usually around level 8), which tends to be far too early to do it. I think I wisely chickened out this time and later dispatched him easily.
"The right technique" means playing the game of someone who can't recall to town and can only flee down, and having a good sense of what to hoard and what to drop at what stage of the descent. It would be boring to go into I think, at least for the upper floors. But just to give one example, duplicate books are easy to overvalue and burden yourself with...
A propos, camlost's Sangband, especially after factoring in one gameplay change that followed in the code before camlost abandoned Sangband (sniff!), is a very Ironman-friendly set of versions. In one of his first releases, in the name of supporting shadowstalkers, camlost enabled a lot of key actions in the dark - spellcasting with a penalty, and certain emergency scrolls just like in the light. That makes Ironman light management in the opening less annoying at minimum, and sometimes less deadly. Then later on, in response to my whining about the absence of town book drops in the late dungeon, he extended those into the end of the game - but above all, he introduced fireproof town books. With high enough Dodging, you only really need one fireproof town book per pile. (Dodging to stop thievery.)
And the one gameplay change? Stats now very gradually naturally regenerate after being drained. That means if you screw up and stand next to a yellow worm on D:5 or whatever, you're not crippled for the next 30 levels.
Each one of these changes on its own made Ironman less frustrating when it was introduced. (Imagine trying to get all your stores of -- flammable -- MB1 set up for the whole game by D:30 while needing a light source for almost every move.) Together, they made it actually fun. :-)
I suddenly find myself kind of at a loss as to what to say that can't be read from the note dumps. I guess I'll point to the long nailbiting time it took before I got Raal's -- not until depth 74, which may not sound like much, but -- the damage options before Raal's start to become pretty dicey by that depth. Also interesting was the long time wondering how I would ever cover darkness and nether without a ring of darkness (which had to bump Barahir, as I usually wasn't playing as fast and loose with rPois as I did in the last battle). Luthien came just in time. As did Nenya, which prompted my final dive. It was time, I was getting bored.
So bored, in fact, that after offing Sauron I forgot to wait for Thrain to recharge, or even my magic mapping power, so I was flying blind throughout the final battle. Fortunately the mistake wasn't fatal, and nor was the turns spent fighting without rPois. (I did have temp rPois from !Resistance for part of the fight.) I used Mass Genocide this time more than I've ever used against Sauron before - I was trigger happy because I was reallllly sick of balrogs burning my recharging scrolls. After all, I only had 20 of them, 10 of recharging, and 20 plus wands of doomblasts... I could run out at any moment.
I also had 90+ lembas wafers just in case I destructed Morgy by mistake and needed to wait for him to regenerate. 'Cuz discussions back in the day concluded that you could do that if you had enough food.
If Sangband had a Wand of Overpreparation, I'm sure I'd have been carrying that too.
Manastorm manastorm DOOR CREATION CLW CLW CLW OPEN DOOR manastorm RIFT manastorm manastorm MASS GENO manastorm manastorm *HEALING* manastorm Teleport Away kill balrogs out of spite find Morgy manastorm manastorm... Morgy dead.
Yay!
***
Bug reports: (Linux build from source using Mikko instructions from here at forums):
- Game always crashes and panic saves upon moving cursor when nearlooking.
- Game sometimes crashes (and always panic saves if it does) when moving cursor for Phase Warp spell.
- Dumps for Ironman have blurb for both Ironman and the newer Partial Ironman mode.
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