Help with character Build

[Helkost]

Hello, I'm a new user of the forum (but not a new player). First of all, many congratulations for this game (best longevity I have ever found in a game) and for your very nice forum.

For the first time in a lot of years, during which I played on and off, I managed a character to dive until lvl 51 (max depth)

Since I never made it this far, I'm not sure I can handle the mobs I'm going to find ahead of here, so any suggestions on how to improvemy character are welcome. I also have been finding difficult to chose which equipment to use on my character. Also, I have a lot of items in my backpack which burden me a lot, but I always use them (beginners handbook for detect monsters/stairs/traps, incantations and illusions for satisfy hunger/identify, resistances of scarabtices for the resistance/shield spell, Raal's Tome for offensive spells, and the rods and potions for curing /healing): are any of those dispensable? Like the rods for example, I am keeping them, but I tend not to use them much... especially the restoration rod, seems useless to me since it takes ages to recharge and really risks to be destroyed by a touch of flame or something; still it's so rare I am keeping it out of fear it might come useful later in the game, but will it, really?

here is my character dump, and thanks in advance for any suggestions you can give me.

Helkost

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Congratulations on getting this deep, and welcome to the forum!

I see that your @ is severely over-burdened. So, some suggestions, in no particular order:

• Carry only two (or maybe three) copies of the town books. Yes, they are subject to fire burning, but if you lose one you can either find another or return to town to replace the backup.
• Carry only one copy of the dungeon books (e.g., Resistances and Raals). These are immune to fire damage. Your Dexterity is high enough that they can't be stolen, which is the only risk to them. Personally, I don't bother carrying Raals as a Ranger since there aren't enough useful spells in it to justify using up an inventory slot.
• Use the ?Enchant Weapon to Hit scroll on Thunderfist. Right now it is only +5 to hit. It is possible to get it as high as +15. Or use it on your arrows. Don't use up the inventory space on this.
• Ditch the Rod of Curing. You already have rPoison and rConfusion. The only other thing it cures is stunning. Even if in gear changes you lose the protections, at this point you should use CCW for such problems.
• Ditch some or all of the mushrooms of vigor. You have the Rod of Restoration if you get stat drained and can't make it until the next level-up. Don't ditch this rod though! It is very good to have until all your stats are sustained.
• Carry only two of the Rods of Recall, ditch the rest. Rods of Recall are immune to lightning damage. (Oh, and by the way, rods are not subject to fire damage).
• Carry only one or two Teleportation staves. They are common enough that you can replace them as you come across more fully charged ones. Just be sure to drop the lower charged ones, then move over and pick up the new fully charged one.
• Wield the Helm of Telepathy! ESP is vital and far more important than rConfusion. If you want, keep Thengel as a swap.
• Ditch the Crown of Lordliness. If it had ESP then I'd keep it and ignore helms of Telepathy. This one doesn't, so drop it.
• Ditch your onesie and twosie arrows. Try to consolidate your quiver and not use up more than two inventory slots on quivers (though you can still carry up to 9 types of ammo in the quivers), unless you come across Sauron killers (good Acid arrows) or Morgoth killers (Holy Might arrows). Those are worth keeping even if they eat up another inventory slot.
• Use the Enchant Armor scrolls you have at home. They don't do any good unused.
• You can ditch several of the weapons in the home inventory. Compare the damage and get rid of the dross. (I keep Sting around out of sentiment and because I can enchant it up to +15,+15 and use it as a swap until I want to "aggravate" if I come across that great weapon Deathwreaker. Maybe keep Eowyn for its damage against evil, though by DL 99 you will probably have something even better.
• Find a couple more Rods of Detection, and you can even ditch carrying MB1.
• Wield Thalkettoth. Maybe store the Elvenkind of rNether. The speed and Dex boosts are more important than the AC right now and rNether is a nice to have, but not required. Plus that (-4) is a drag on your @'s archery.

You should see a dramatic increase in @'s speed, once you ditch all this extra unnecessary weight. That should make taking on those mobs a bit easier.

[Nomad]

Hello! Congrats on the new personal best. I don't usually play as Rangers, but some general inventory advice:

It looks like your main problem is that you're carrying much bigger stacks of most items than you need, which will be adding to your burden woes. (It's really not a good idea to be overburdened at all if you can help it, even if you've got a bit of a speed boost already - you're losing a lot of the benefit of that great +11 speed ring from carrying so much stuff.)

• It's good to carry a few backup copies of the basic spellbooks that are sold in town in case you get hit by a fire-breather and they end up burned, but it's overkill to be carrying more than perhaps three or four of one book. The dungeon books can't be harmed by fire so you don't need to carry multiples of those around.

• You don't need to be carrying both the rod of Restoration and all those mushrooms of Vigor with you at the same time, either - in fact, I would leave both in your home, so if your stats do get drained you can just recall to town and use one of them there. (If you're happier having some way to restore stats on you at all times, then I'd just take a single mushroom of Vigor into the dungeon with you, so you can either eat it if you need it or drop it to free the inventory slot without losing all your mushrooms at once. Either that or carry the Rod of Restoration.)

• You don't need to keep more than two of the Rods of Recall (one to use, and another one to cancel the recall effect if you change your mind before the first one's recharged).

• Up to you whether you ditch the rods of Curing. Some people say there's no need to bother with them, since you can just drink a potion of Cure Critical Wounds and it will get rid of any status effects; I tend to keep some with me until quite late in the game to avoid wasting potions when my health is still full, but they're definitely something to consider dropping if you're short on space or overburdened. (ETA: actually, I see you've got most things they cure covered already by equipment, so yes, ditch them.)

• Again, backup Staves of Teleportion are a good idea in case some of them get burned or you use a lot of charges, but you probably don't need six for a single dungeon trip. I'd leave half of them in your home and just carry three or so.

• You've got too many stacks of arrows to even keep them all in the quiver, so I'd ditch all of the average ones that you're carrying (and probably the magical ones too since you only have a few of each type). At this point, it's probably only worth picking up Mithril/Seeker or ego arrows.

• It's not worth hoarding scrolls of Enchant Armour or Enchant Weapon for later. The better a piece of equipment is already, the harder it is to enchant, so you're better off using the scrolls as soon as you find them rather than keeping them for later when you've got better kit.

[Helkost]

Thank you all for the very detailed answers! I'll try everything you say.
I'm updating my character sheet if you want to see how I look now.

@ingwe ingweron - what is MB1? sorry I don't know these acronyms..

P.S. do you think I should be safe at around level 50? What are the worst mobs (normal, not uniques) I could encounter? until now I cruised quite fine in the 40's even with level danger feeling 6, but as soon as I hit the 50's I encountered impact hounds, for example, which gave me a headache (I had to teleport away)

[Pete Mack]

You shoud do fine at DL 50 with speed +15. That said, the ring of Dexterity is probably not as good as a ring of constitution. The 18/200 vs. 18/170 is a big difference in HP.
MB1 = magic book 1 aka Beginners Handbook
And yes, don't carry more than 2 town books or 1 dungeon book. It is better to store Holy Might/Slay Evil/Acid brand arrows at home than all but maybe one weapon. You can dispose of Raal's and carry MB4 (haste self, Tele other) instead.
Valuable ranger books are:
Book 1 (phase door, detect monsters)
Book 3 (until you get enough rods of detection and identify)
Book 4
Scarabtrices
Tenser's
Morgenkainen

[Carnivean]

• Carry only two (or maybe three) copies of the town books.
• Carry only one copy of the dungeon books

Inscribe them with !d!k so that you will be prompted before dropping them or squelching them, then auto-squelch them. This means that the ones in your inventory will stay there, but the ones on the floor won't join them. If you don't do this you'll end up having 40 copies of the first 8 books by the end.

[Helkost]

well, I didn't know about inscribing. I'm trying it, seems I'm doing ok

By the way, I found morgenkeinen's book and a ring of speed +12; with the latter I substituted my ring of dexterity +5; now my speed is +27

Thank you fro all the suggestions, my charater improved immensely since I followed them =)

[Ingwe Ingweron]

@ingwe ingweron - what is MB1? sorry I don't know these acronyms..

P.S. do you think I should be safe at around level 50?

"MB1" is "magic book number 1". At this point, it would behoove you to learn and use some basic inscriptions and "autoinscriptions" and keymaps.

Inscribing spell books is vital. Your fingers can get so used to typing, say "m a a" (magic - book "a" - spell "a"), aka magic missile. But what happens if those books were all burned and now the first book is not Beginners? Inscriptions avoid this problem. Once you get used to using inscriptions and keymaps you will come to rely on them.

Rather than re-input these for every character I play, instead I have my own preference file (".prf" file) that I just edit for the particular class I'm playing. I load it to the character and save it under the character name at the beginning, then edit as necessary, commenting out and uncommenting the appropriate line as needed. Far beyond the scope of a reply here to go into all the ins and outs of inscriptions and keymaps. That being said, attached is my standard .prf file with keymaps and inscriptions. My.txt Just change the extension to .prf and put it in your Angband directory. Then you can un-comment out the appropriate lines and load it to your characters. Change it to suit your own needs, or don't, as you desire. Note, most, but not all, of my keymaps are to the Function keys.

[Pete Mack]

Why nor post ya new character dump to the ladder? And keep an eye out for a Ring of Con. At your current depth, there is nothing dangerous that can double move you at speed 16, and nothing at all that can double move you while you are hasted. The first really dangerous"exceedingly quick" monster is the Tarrasque. It is a regular killer of endgame strong characters.

[Nomad]

well, I didn't know about inscribing. I'm trying it, seems I'm doing ok

You may have found the info somewhere else already by now, but just in case, a quick guide to how inscriptions work:

You can put an inscription on an individual item with the { command, or set up automatic inscriptions for a given type of item from the object menu. (Automatic inscriptions are preserved from game to game if you keep using the same save file.) They can be handy just to jot down reminders of item properties (e.g. if you've got several Elvenkind armours with different resistances and want to label which one is which) but there are also a few useful inscriptions that the game will recognise as instructions.

Inscriptions that start with "!" followed by a command letter mean "ask for confirmation before doing this". They can save you from accidentally dropping something valuable or using risky items like scrolls of Teleport Level at the wrong time. For example:

!d - ask for confirmation before dropping this item
!r - ask for confirmation before reading this scroll
!* - ask for confirmation before doing anything at all with this item (useful for scrolls or rods of recall)

Inscriptions that start with "@" allow you to assign a fixed number to a type of item so you can hit that number instead of the inventory letter to use it. It saves time checking what inventory slot things are in all the time, and prevents you from accidentally selecting the wrong thing if things have moved around in the pack (like the situation Ingwe mentions where you cast a spell from the wrong spellbook because you lost all your copies of the right one). For example:

@m1 - cast a spell from this spellbook when you press m and then 1
@r2 - read this scroll when you press r and then 2
@z3 - zap this rod when you press z and then 3

Using @ inscriptions on ammo also controls which quiver slot it goes into. For instance, if you inscribe "@f0" on a specific type of arrows, those will always go into slot 0 of the quiver and you'll use those first. (Conversely, if you inscribe "@f9" on valuable ammo that you don't want to waste, it will always go into the last quiver slot and won't get used until you've run out of every other type of ammo first.)

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Using @ inscriptions on ammo also controls which quiver slot it goes into. For instance, if you inscribe "@f0" on a specific type of arrows, those will always go into slot 0 of the quiver and you'll use those first. (Conversely, if you inscribe "@f9" on valuable ammo that you don't want to waste, it will always go into the last quiver slot and won't get used until you've run out of every other type of ammo first.)

Another very useful ammo inscription is =g, which means pick up this ammo on walkover. So, if you have a stack of arrows that you fire off, all you need do is walk over them to put the spent arrows back in your quiver.

And your principal weapon can be inscribed with @0 and a swap weapon or digger with the same. Then the "x" key will instantly swap them back and forth.

[Pete Mack]

One more important inscription is !! on rods, especially Rods of Light or Detection. I use Rods of Light in hallways to avoid getting jumped by monsters in the dark. After finding ESP, i discard them.

[Carnivean]

One more important inscription is !! on rods

!! is to give a reminder when the rod (or anything else with a recharge time) is recharged.

[Nick]

!! is to give a reminder when the rod (or anything else with a recharge time) is recharged.

..and there's an option you can set to notify you on all recharges, too.

[Helkost]

Why nor post ya new character dump to the ladder? And keep an eye out for a Ring of Con. At your current depth, there is nothing dangerous that can double move you at speed 16, and nothing at all that can double move you while you are hasted. The first really dangerous"exceedingly quick" monster is the Tarrasque. It is a regular killer of endgame strong characters.

Actually, I found a ring of constitution +5; but at the same time, I got also a ring of speed +12... for now I'm using speed but I'll swap them if you suggest so.

I promise I'll find time to read all of your comments and explanations, they're very useful.

In the meantime, I uploaded my new character dump if anyone wants to see it.
I tried to use inscriptions, they worked fine for a while, then when I tried to add that preference file (without uncommenting anything for the moment) they stopped working altogether; I haven't looked into it yet. Still, I got rid of MB1 as now I have the rods of detection (I know I have to drop a few of them, bad habits take time to go away XD)

My character looks pretty decent to me now. What about the new body armors and Amulet I found, should I put them on in place of what I currently have?