A bit of luck

[Severian]

I used to play a fair bit of Angband, but haven't played in... must be close to ten years. A friend of mine has been playing a lot lately, and inspired me to revisit the game.

I started with a Dwarf Priest. I haven't played in a long time, and the game has changed some, so I played pretty conservatively down to around 1100'. Even playing conservatively I don't like to rest for mana much. I had a Warhammer of Acid with +3 to damage and it was starting to not do quite as much damage as I would have liked, but then I found an Amulet and some headgear of Wis, which about doubled my mana, letting me use Orb more, so I read Deep Descent which took me to 1400'. Went down pretty fast from there, found Paurhach at 1550'.

Killed Bolg at 1600'. He dropped a light crossbow and the Phial. I was happy to get the Phial, and was hoping the crossbow would be something decent that would do some damage to supplement Orb. Went to wear the Phial, noticed a brown artifact in my inventory, thought "that's odd, I thought I had worn Paurhach." Flipped to equipment, yep, wearing Paurhach. Flipped back to inventory and: "oh, Cubragol." Had to look at it twice as it took a moment to register.

Not, I think, the most ridiculous early find I've ever had, but for my first game in a long time quite nice. Now I just have to remember to remember that you can still die at +10 speed.

[Pete Mack]

I haven't seen Cubragol in ages, but that's more due to using randarts than rarity. Lucky find!

[Severian]

I haven't seen Cubragol in ages, but that's more due to using randarts than rarity. Lucky find!

Yeah, randarts can be fun. I haven't played in a long time tough, so I thought I'd play very vanilla- didn't even touch the default options.

I've found Cubragol a fair number of times, but I seemed to have a knack for finding it as a ranger deep enough that it wasn't a reasonable option.

This character does seem to be getting pretty lucky though. Draebor dropped BoS +5 at 1700' and I got Dwarven BDSM (more fun than it sounds- or not, I suppose, depending on your tastes) and a Dwarven shield right after that, along with two potions of Wisdom and a blessed Main Gauche with +3 to Wisdom.

Read Deep Descent again, cause 1750' felt pretty easy, which put me at 2000', still missing perm rCold (since rectified- found Elvenkind body armor with Resist Sound.) And then Angband reminded me that you shouldn't get complacent. Saw a dark 'd' coming down a hallway, and thought "I don't remember detecting a Young Black Dragon." Luckily I looked at it instead of doing something rash- I guess Kavlax's symbol has been changed a bit. How I missed detecting him is a mystery to me- I must have been very sloppy though.

Portaled away, and actually wound up recalling cause there was no way to get to stairs without dealing with him. It has been a long time since I played, but I'm pretty sure Kavlax one-shots me still (277 hp.) I probably could have LOS abused him to death, but it seemed not worth it.

The drop rate seems to have changed significantly in the last decade, I guess to help with too much junk. Of course it's hard for me to separate the effect of that from the effect of finding Cubragol at 1600', especially with a sample size of 1 character. But my impression is that the early middle game seems to have gotten a bit easier. Well- like I said, small sample, so I might be mistaken. Stat potions seem a lot easier to find, especially cause they come in stacks.

[Pete Mack]

Dwarven BDSM (can't get over that name either) is endgame quality stuff, better than most artifact armor. Unless you mean Blue not Balance.
With stat potions you are just lucky.

[Severian]

Dwarven BDSM (can't get over that name either) is endgame quality stuff, better than most artifact armor. Unless you mean Blue not Balance.
With stat potions you are just lucky.

I mean Blue, unfortunately. If it had been Balance I would not just have mentioned it in passing. I guess I was hung up enough on the acronym, especially given the Dwarvern modifier, that I forgot to specify.

It's sitting in my home right now, and I kind of doubt I will wear it again. But at the time it let me trade my FA boots for the speed boots, without giving up FA, and incidentally gave me Resist Electricity, so it was briefly quite useful. I'm already a ridiculous glass cannon between Cubragol and OOD, so the activation is meh. And it only has +1 Con. Right now that gets me <20 hp.

Permanent Resist Cold is a lot better than that by itself, so once I found the Elvenkind the Dwarven BDSM was basically binned, awesome/frightening name notwithstanding.

EDIT: here's a dump: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=19729. I'm a bit embarrassed about how leisurely I've played, but like I said, it has been a long time, and I wanted to feel out how much the game had changed. A lot, it turns out (I was genuinely puzzled by the green walls for a few levels,) but in some ways not much. The question now is: should I read the (new!) Deep Descent scrolls I have (they would be the fifth and sixth I have read- I like this new item.) Maybe so, though I have forgotten enough about Angband that that might not be a good idea. OTOH I am not sure that 2600' is _that_ much more dangerous than 2100', since I'm already seeing things that can kill me either instantly or in two turns. The main difference might be that they are harder to see/detect deeper. Thanks Bolg and Draebor for the +15 speed, and in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.

I really need CON and levels though, for the HP. Levels are easy. Almost everything I want to kill now gives me 10-20% of a level, and the rest is just clutter. CON though... I need a couple of potions and a big ring, I think. I haven't really figured out how the changes to stat potions affect the game yet.