Sniper - the fewest kills challenge

[Lord Tom]

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=17066

The Sniper bloodline is a series of rogues undertaking a challenge to defeat Morgoth while killing as few total creatures as possible -- with the perfect goal being 2: Sauron and Morgoth. The kill count in the monster information screen is used to double-check, but it's honor system for reporting any unseen kills.

Obviously getting experience is very difficult; there are small amounts of points to be gained from id-by-use and casting new spells, but disarming traps is the major mechanism early on, with the ultimate goal being to gear up, dive, and scum for potions of Experience.

Sniper V is a gnome rogue; my original thinking that a half-troll would be good proved tragically misguided - stealth is incredibly important for this challenge and saving throw is also good to have.

I posted now because Sniper V has achieved the major milestone of gaining the Detect Items spell, enabling vastly improved scumming for stat potions & a source of TO -- good timing, since I'm just getting to stat-gain depth.

Looking around for traps in the early going was very tedious and dangerous with detection limited to scrolls, and the need to buy or find such scrolls. Using a shovel to dig out gold and ring of digging to enable creative routes to traps has been key. Oh, and I managed to buy speed boots from the armoury; only +2, but I can outdistance normal-speed monsters (or quick monsters if I haste).

A fun if dangerous strat has been farming traps from Wormtongue. I was very lucky to find a shield of resistance very early, but his stinking clouds remain dangerous. It's kind of bizarre to be trying to disarm traps while a unique is bashing at you.

One other thing that took me a while to figure out is dealing with quick-but-weak monsters you don't even notice in a normal game (like fruit bats). I can't kill them and they're faster than me, so even a very weak monster can kill @, and panthers/stegocentipedes etc are deadly. Early characters had tried wands of slow/confuse monster; these seemed minimally effective as they only seem to work for a few turns. For a stealthy gnome, though, sleep monster is extremely valuable as it puts the monster out of commission for potentially much longer.

Sadly, somewhat early on Sniper V couldn't hold up from shoveling a white harpy to death in one round coming around a corner, though he hasn't killed any unseen creatures so far (prior incarnations punched out a clear mushroom patch or two). So best case for this attempt is 3 kills.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Elevates grinding to a whole new level.

[Philip]

I wonder if a mage wouldn't be better for this challenge. You lose detect item, which sucks, but magic is great for sleeping/confusing monsters, and teleportation is a way to get away from pretty much anything. It would probably make the early part even more of a pain though, and the loss of stealth would be bad. The main attraction for me though would be the ability to manipulate monsters during the final fight - free Banish, Mass Banish, Destruct, TO...

[Ingwe Ingweron]

For such a challenge, I'd suggest manipulating the Edit file for mage spells to allow them the detect object spell. That in combination with their late stage banishment and mass banishment capability might get you there --- eventually.

[Philip]

I tried. A whole lot of times, actually. It's just too hard not to fall afoul of the maggot dogs or a bat, or whatever, it seems, even with monster detection. Also, since doors don't give XP, and traps are tough to find until clvl 3 (which I never got legitimately), gaining XP is almost impossible. With effort, scrolls of detect traps get you to level 2. Perhaps with connected stairs it would be easier.

[clouded]

Play an Android in poschengband, your level is based on the total cost of all the items you have equipped. Mindcrafters naturally get spells by leveling up.

My strat:

1) pick Android Mindcrafter
2) scum the entrance of Camelot until you find a bunch of ego items, equip them and level up to CL30
3) begin scumming the dragon caves for more items
4) don't kill town monsters
5) reach CL50
6) get 1,000,000 gold and teleport to DL99 using the trump tower
7) kill Oberon
8) kill the Serpent of Chaos

easy.

[MattB]

Just given it a few goes - went for hobbit rogue due to the combination of stealth/hit dice/CON.
Just been killed by, believe it or not, a cutpurse!

[Lord Tom]

I tried. A whole lot of times, actually. It's just too hard not to fall afoul of the maggot dogs or a bat, or whatever, it seems, even with monster detection. Also, since doors don't give XP, and traps are tough to find until clvl 3 (which I never got legitimately), gaining XP is almost impossible. With effort, scrolls of detect traps get you to level 2. Perhaps with connected stairs it would be easier.

It is MUCH easier with connected stairs!

I did think about mage but shied away due to lower hp and detect items. I think the key equalizing point in this challenge is getting the first potion of experience; until then (I think they're level 65) @ will have severely low cl for the dl. (I'm currently cl13 scumming at dl40). A mage would have to take a lot more risks just going after "items" which could be anything (Glaive of Pain?! Drat!!) rather than homing in on unidentified potions.

[Philip]

Detect objects tells you what the object is? In that case, that alone might be worth it. The higher XP could also be nice. And it takes way too long to get any reasonable spells anyway.

I think the major selling points of the mage early are - dtrapdoorstair at clvl 3, dmonster at clvl 1 and teleport at clvl 7. Those are vital without connected stairs, with you can probably get away with not having them.

[Lord Tom]

Yes, Detect Items is a level 10 spell for rogues, and it shows exactly what each item is (but doesn't id artifacts or anything). So getting to level 10 was a huge milestone, and with this challenge that spell has been huge for tracking down stat potions.

I've got Con max'd and the others all in the mid-18/xx's, have heroic stealth, 3 TO wands, regen, rPois and about 190 hp. I'm waiting for Wormtongue to show himself again and I can hopefully get my cl to the high teens or even 20 just by continually disarming his traps.

I'd still love to find telepathy, and a ring of escaping or two would be amazing for this challenge, but none have surfaced...speed is only +2 and no repeatable source of haste...

[Lord Tom]

YES! Snuck a potion of experience out of a medium-sized vault around dl 66. Feagwaith & Baphomet were both in compartments accessible by doors but telepathy, stealth and hasting gave me just enough time to get the potion just a few turns before Baphomet woke up.

That bumped me from level 18 to 29, now I have 418hp, the resistance and escape dungeon books & telepathy. I'll probably try to find 2 or 3 more ! experience before diving to dl 98!

One side-note is that Harowen is MUCH easier to farm traps off of than Wormtongue, provided some other monster(s) blocking him. I lucked into a setup where Harowen got stuck behind 5 sleeping novice adventurers, so I dug myself a mini-room and he pretty much just cast create-traps constantly until the adventurers all woke up - I just stood there detecting and disarming and got maybe 750xp. Bummer I'd ditched my wand of sleep monster! Obviously, though, trap-farming is out now that I found the ! experience.

[Philip]

What is the best Race for this kind of challenge? I know you're using gnomes, presumably for the combo of stealth, device, DEX, INT, save, and Free Action. A Hobbit has a bit less XP penalty (110% vs. 125%), a bit more stealth, a bit less device, a bit more DEX, a bit more save, and no FA. Most importantly though, a hobbit has one less base hit-dice, so they're squishier.

I'm going to try both, and see where I get. I'm also going to try both with Mage/Rogue. Hopefully something will work out okay.

[Lord Tom]

Hobbit vs Gnome for me really came down to the hit dice (having hp margin of error above Morgoth's mana storms will be important, given the legions of uniques that will be dropping in) and my longstanding inability to keep Hobbits of any class alive. They're so appealing b/c I love LOTR, but they just...always...die.

Free FA has been nice to have since without it Wormtongue will occasionally slow you. The free-id on wands/staves is not essential but very nice since anything you'd id-by-use you'd need to be sure you're not going to kill anything.

On paper it does seem Hobbits would be pretty good as well; assuming you can level to the mid-30's with a good Con you should have plenty of HP as a rogue, Mage may be iffy. Stealth really does seem to be the key factor above all others.

With my current attempt I'm down on dl 98 now; I'm pretty sure I could kill Sauron at this point using drain life/annihilation/heavy xbow, but I'm only cl 31 after 2 potions of experience, hoping to get 1 or 2 more before I give it a try.

Good luck!

[MattB]

I'm pretty sure I could kill Sauron at this point using drain life/annihilation/heavy xbow, but I'm only cl 31

...wow!
glhf

[Lord Tom]

Well, Sauron won the 1st round. I had him down to his last bar at one point, but had to teleport him and destruct when things got too hot with uniques & greater undead. Eventually, he in most unsportmanlike fashion teleported me off the level.

Having all the uniques alive certainly made things interesting, it was kind of a who's-who: Gothmog, Lungorthin, Drauglin, Witch-King, Khamul, Kronos, Ancalagon, Feagwaith, Vecna, Saruman, Glaurung, Smaug and even Grip and Fang all put in appearances. The non-uniques weren't much of a factor, though I read a banish scroll to get rid of some D's at one point.

Sadly, I used all my !healing, half my !*healing* and 3 my 5 ?*destruction*, along with blowing up several wands of annihilation and drain life using lesser recharging, so I'll have to retool before trying again.