Grotug's ongoing DAR thread

[Grotug]

Well, I finally found my first good RandArt. A main gauche 4d5! Yes, it still weighs three pounds despite the hefty dice. Despite the insane dice, FrAct, Resistance, SI, multiple brands and slays, it produced a 6 treasure feeling on DL24. I'm pretty sure this is better than any lightweight Standart weapon.

I have 14K gp and there are 10 !Nimblenesses in the black market. This should be interesting.... Quaff them until I hit two -STR or I run out of gold?

EDIT: Dang, -1 STR, -2 CON. Blows went from 3.0 to 3.7, though. I did have a lot of extra starting CON so I suppose this isn't so bad. Wow, my DEX is 18/87 and I have no DEX boosts. Seems I got some extra DEX from one of those potions. HMM... wish I was paying attention to what each potion did. I started with 18/30 I believe. 3 potions later I'm at 18/87 (and not 18/60 as I might expect). I still don't get how stat potions add. When a weapon says "With +1 DEX you'd get X blows) it seems that it doesn't necessarily mean: "Quaffing 1 DEX stat potion will give you X blows. Sometimes quaffing a stat potion does not decrease the amount of DEX required until blows are increased, and other times (like now) it seems to have gone from 3.0 to 3.3 to 3.7. Actually, I do remember that after the first stat potion, I was at 3.0 blows (the first one removed 1 STR, so STR went from 18/20 to 18/10). After the third stat potion I was at 3.7 blows. So two DEX stat potions took me from 3.0 to 3.7 blows. With +1 STR I'd have 4.0 blows.

Okay, just found another !Nimbleness after ?DD from town (and realized I forgot to buy more ?Recalls right after I read ?DD). DEX went from 18/87 to 18/111 and blows went from 3.7 to 4.1. When I was just at 3.7 blows I needed +2 DEX to reach 4.1 blows. Now I need +1 DEX to reach 4.5 blows. So the single !Nimbleness stat potion seems to have added at least +2 DEX, if not +3 DEX. Fantastic! But I have no idea why.

Yay, found a ?Recall. I am now doing 312 to Undead. What the sweet Samwise. This weapon is going to last me to DL73. Has weak acid/cold brands, slay evil, and *slay* Undead.

Holy sweet mother of Moses! This Main Gauche of OP Sustains my Life Force! Unreal. Intentionally walked on a summon trap and fiercely brought a wereworm to ruin.

Just picked up a great axe of Telepathy from Sanghayando. This is too much. Now all I need is +20CL, some rods of TO and it's off to pay Sauron a visit.

Well this is interesting. On DL31 with an 8-? feeling and just picked up a _Detect Evil. A Nightwing to the north in a medium-small lesser vault and Azog to the south. Think I might pay Azog a visit even though I don't have self haste. Think I'll leave the vault alone as dying right now is not a good course of action.

[chknflyrice]

That's a fantastic start.

That is why I love playing randarts. The rolls can go one way or the other making the game very interesting sometimes. Picked up an artifact great hammer with an insane die attached to it (cant remember the numbers) and a trident with 18d1.

[Grotug]

StandArt Great Hammer of Aulë (one of the best weapons in the game) has 18d1.



He breathed right through the closed door, eh? You don't say.... (Seems rather like a bug to me). Looks like the door was open but displaying as closed.

So this was rather fun and surprising: I tried an unknown wand on a lesser Balrog racing towards me. Figured there's at least some degree of chance it's TO. Well, no, but the Balrog turned tail and fled with great haste! A wand of scare monster actually... scared away a scary monster? Amazing!

[Nick]

He breathed right through the closed door, eh? You don't say.... (Seems rather like a bug to me). Looks like the door was open but displaying as closed.

Not a bug, if you're playing the nightlies. The door would have been shut last time you saw (or mapped) it, and something has opened it since. The new behaviour is doors (and other dungeon features and objects) stay on the map the way you last saw them until you get new information - and hearing something opening a door is insufficient.

[Grotug]

Man, I need to slow my roll. I'm about to die.



Okay, I ?phased, !CCW, took another couple blows from Berserker with black D in diagonal LOS as well. ?Phased again to better position. With the ABD quickly on me again, though I ?phased again and now you can see that I can see the Berserker through the granite wall.... HMM....



Gah, Lorgan has been haunting my crash dive. Here he is again just out of LOS to force me to _Teleport self. But now I have Gorgon blocking my way back to the room where I am trying to collect my bolts and 4 !CCW which is just dumb, because I've used more !CCW trying to get back there, nearly dying.... I really should go back to town. I often forget the way I've won this game is by not being stubborn, especially over stupid things like these items. There's also another ring of slaying I wouldn't mind having, but this level is too dangerous now and I am out of !Speed.

Well, that's pretty frustrating. Back in the dungeon after trip to town; still diving too fast cause none of the levels are interesting and always have stairs nearby. I am doing 491 to Undead, yet it takes me 3 rounds to kill a black wraith? Pretty frustrating when I am trying to deal with Dar. Used up my only two healings and nearly died since I went a round with Dar after my !speed wore off. That was dumb. That's the problem with RNG, sometimes you miss a lot with 70% chance to hit. I had a 72% chance to hit an Ancient dragon and all 10 swings hit him, 10 times in a row. Other times I'll miss 5 times in a row with the same odds. As an optimist, it's always irksome when I miss a bunch and nearly die for it.

It's always fun to realize that both of your staves of teleportation have been destroyed some time ago while you are facing two foes you cannot take [EDIT: BOTH got destroyed while fighting said two foes, a Greater Maia and the Ancient Red Dragon he summoned; I checked the messages history], and you're in a square room where ?phasing won't work. Had to use the only !*healing* I had just found and kind of hope for the best. I'm way too deep. DL57, 15K turns, CL32, 382HP. I'm not playing with Forced Descent on, but I don't like up stairs. Just found an artifact armor that hastens me but that's all it does.... No resistances, and I was wrong about Telos, the main Guache of OP. It rests Acid, Cold, Lightning, but not Fire, so I can't wear the speed armor.

There is an interesting looking large Lava vault on this level that I've never seen before, but it's almost certain death if I check it out.

There is another treasure room just north of my position where Fundin Bluecloak is sleeping. No doubt he will wake up before I have a chance to kill the lesser monsters in the lower two compartments (he is in one of the top two compartments), but I may try to check it out....

Well, that was frustrating, but also fun. Patriarch summons a Lesser Balrog. Really? Really Patriarch? This is the punishment I get for being on DL57. So I have to drop my staves (pretty useless the ones I have) and fight the Balrog. Of course he summons demons as well. I'm ?phasing around and end up in another square room. Just great. I nearly kill the Lesser Balrog, when he summons again and LOS is blocked. I ?phase, but I can't get him in LOS plus I have all these other demons I need to deal with, and a Dreadmaster. You can see after one of my ?phases I was able to run into the hallway and take some control back over the situation, and finish off all the demons.

Anyway, Fundin woke up and I'm plum out of consumables save for a pot of healing and only 3 ?phase doors left. No treasures for me.



There was actually a couple useful items in those drops. An artifact shield of rAcid, rLight, rDark, which I am going to leave behind. A pot of STR, a ?Banishment, Caestus of FrAct (already have caestus, but more sources of FrAct never hurt).

So it looks like Fundin and Undead Beholder are pretty jammed up, with slumbering Trolls, but there is also a winged horror which may be a bad idea since my only source of rPois is another gauche of weaksauce.



Here's what I'm going to do: Activate Telos. It actually identifies the objects! There's actually some good objects here, including a helm of Telepathy and an Elvenkind shield (upper right quadrant), an artifact amulet (<+5> DEX) and an unID'd wand (please be Tele Other!!) in the lower left quadrant. I'm gonna risk it. Because that's the fun of this game. I'm out of !Haste, though. The artifact amulet activates for haste, but slows you down when it wears off. So maybe the plan is to go straight for the wand and amulet and hope for the best.



Well, poop. Here they come....



[Sounds good, Nick! Thanks for clarifying.]

I guess I could ?Banish the Undead Beholder and take my chances fighting the Winged Horror. Hmm.... Or maybe try to get lucky with ?phase when the Winged Horror is a Knight's Move away from me?

My character: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=20344

**** I suck! So I ?WoR, ?banished the undead, ?phased in the direction I was hoping I wouldn't, back down the bendy corridor. So I went toward the Winged Horror again and ?Phased again in the direction I didn't want to go (back towards the square room where I fought the demons and Dreadmaster). So I fled through the square room and ?Phased in the right passage connecting to it hoping to move in a favorable direction, away from the WH, maybe towards the downstairs, without having to fight him. Nope. ?Phased back into the square room. So now I'm forced to fight the Winged Horror. He's a few squares away from me so I'm first thinking I just need to survive. So I put on the rPois Gauche in case he breathes poison, then realized I need max damage to fight this thing. So after a round of rPois, I switched back to Telos. I killed it with 67 health. So I healed since the Ranger Chieftain had just summoned a balance drake at the northern mouth of the square room. As soon as I healed I got yanked back up to town. GRRR!!! At least I didn't die.

But it was stupid. I should have just fought the winged horror as soon as the first ?phase didn't work (or certainly after the second ?phase). I would have at least been in a favorable position to get in a Knight's Move heavy xbow seeker bolt before going melee. And I shouldn't have ?WoR since it takes too long to kick in for me to think I can avoid the Winged Horror waiting for it to kick in. Frustrating. I could have gotten into that treasure room. Ahh.. at least it was exciting. Angband is good fun. And it's good when things don't always go my way. Otherwise it gets boring fast.

Guess what's in the BM? Go on, go on, go on my dear friends.

You were close, very close, no, no... close, but not quite. It is a rod of TO. Yes, yes. And a pot of healing.

[chknflyrice]

Always frustrating to read a recall only to find out that that creature you were scared of was a paper tiger compared to what you thought. Then (after being caught up in the battle) forget to cancel recall....... one step from said treasure you get yanked up.

[Grotug]

So very next level was this vault. Found another very very good artifact weapon. 4d6 spear with +25 to dam, <+3> CON. O_O Actually better than my current one. So I was 16 DL off on my prediction. Sometimes it's good to be wrong. No hLife, but has rNether and branded with poison for 473 dam.



Now I cannot read any of these unID'd scrolls since one of them might be *destruction*. Sort of annoying as one of them may be acquirement or *acquirement*. /sigh.

Well, hello! Nexus vortex blasted me, scrambled my stats (only temporarily thank goodness). Sent me far away from the vault. I _Teleported self conveniently below the vault near a master thief that teleported out of the vault earlier. He drops a cloak of the magi of Telepathy. YES! Sometimes things that seem bad turn out good.

This means I get to drop my slay evil weapon, free up an inventory slot and spend less time at -1 speed, which is good at DL57. Hopefully I will be able to get the ROS <+8> guarded by a G. Wyrm of Chaos in the heart of the vault and the Caestus of slaying in one of the chambers.

Still rocking with no rPois, tho I do have the rPois Main Guache swap.....

Gah, the dreaded moment I've been dreading has finally arrived! Arohkil was at the bottom of the vault accompanied by a Cyclops. Now the Cyclops nearly killed me on my first encounter with it about 10 DL ago, and brought me to deep waters on my second encounter. So I'm not even sure how I am supposed to deal with both of them at the same time, when Arohkil the blind summons a Drolem! I can't wield rPois Main Gauche since need Telos to whack on Greater Undead. While I was waiting for Arohkil and the Cyclops to show up, a Bone Golem precedes them. I do a round of melee absentmindedly with the Bone Golem before TOing him, so I'm not even starting this fight at full health. Was really planning on taking down Arohkil without using my only !Speed, but given that the Drolem is right behind Arohkil, I am going to have to !Speed and try to finish Arohkil quick!

I manage, and then start firing bolts at a red dragon and the Cyclops. The Cyclops fortunately doesn't give me much trouble as I poison it with my shiny new Spear of Gistelost. Just as he falls the Drolem shows up. Amazingly my rod of TO has recharged, otherwise it would be _Teleport. Once again the faithful rod does not let me down and the Drolem disappears.

Oh hell yes! Got my hands on a Caestus of Slaying (+2, +8). Why hello there Cambeleg Jr.

Another Drolem in the compartment Ossë was in. But I was in Knight's move to the mouth of the compartment and safely TO'd him.

Does Ossë pick up objects? Lots of objects disappeared after I had to ?phase away from him since it wasn't safe to TO him inside the vault due to other monsters getting out before him. Oh well, I got the RoS, the Caestus and the weapon which were the main things. Now to find out what these staves and scrolls do....

Not being able to ID scrolls really is a pain in the butt. Sink through the floor I do, before I get to try any of the staves. Plus I left the "Sustainance behind cause I forgot to drop the Caestus of FrAct.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Itanigast the Drake drops 4 artifacts. 2 of which are better than what I had before. Not too shabby.

[Grotug]

Just had an excellent trip to the dungeon on DL70something that made me warm and fuzzy inside because I feel I have reached that critical power level where it may be possible to just dive, dive, dive (been collecting ?DD). Found some very useful items, the best of which were "Trickery and a heavy xbow of *power* (+28) and Might X5 and bolts of frost. *Finally* found a wand of TO, used the unID'd wand on a sleeping Chaos Drake. I was pretty sure that I had finally found the wand I was looking for. It was nice to see him disappear. Thanks to more stat potions and two !Toughness I had been keeping in my home since the beginning (STR and DEX are maxed and had some spare !DEX potions from the dungeon) my @ is starting to look good:

I have 712 health, rBase, rPois, rNexus, rNether, rDisen, rDark, rLite, pBlind, ESP, See Invisible, FrAct, but no pConf or hLife.

Melee looks like:
446/round vs Others
536/round vs Animals
624/round vs non-rPois, Undead, Giants
802/round vs Demons

Ranged looks like: 160 with vanilla bolts, ~200 or more with majority of my bolts and 15 frost bolts that do 350 vs non-rCold.

Base speed is +12

I have 7 rods of Detection and 4 rods of mapping.

I have three scrolls of Deep Descent. Should I read one at a time or just read all 3 at once? I'm only at 24K turns, so seems if I was ambitious I could do a sub 40k game. I am NOT playing with Forced Descent so I can dawdle on DL98 as long as I darn well please! No forced fights with Sauron and Morgy. (Phew!)

[Pete Mack]

Get past dl 90 ASAP. At that depth, every vault has power 100 stuff in it, not just the greater vaults. At dl 98, even special rooms have power 100 stuff--effectively every 3rd pair of boots is either speed or elvenkind.

[Grotug]

25k turns, DL90. Haha. Headed to a small, round vault with Omerax and Drauglin and nothing else of note. Decided to take on a Pit Fiend on the way over to it. I'm doing 802 to demons, yet he did not fall easily, and immediately burned up one of my ?Banishments, and gave me a bit of a scare. He reduced my CON a good deal, too. Took me down to 150health. I was kind of expecting to crush him like other Major Demons. Even at 802 dam/round I am still feeble. I guess he will be a lot easier when I reach CL40? When he finally gave up the ghost, he dropped an !AUG so my CON is now higher than it was before I fought him.

Weird, there was nothing in the vault. Did Omerax or Drauglin make off with stuff?

No matter, DL91 and there is a large symmetrical vault with a long hallway going between the two halves. In the hallway is a Master Q who keeps summoning things. I have 2 ?Banishments. There is one other Draconic Q as well. There are 2 Xorns still asleep, and are always tempting to Banish. There are 3 Greater Titans and 3 Lesser Titans, one of each awake. I can probably deal with the Q, but might take awhile, in the meantime, things will be waking up. I'm thinking I should Banish the Titans as they pick up objects and I don't feel I will be able to take on the Greater Titans. Hmm... what's the best strategy here.

I banished the Titans and the Master Q. I was then able to TO Atlas before he even woke up (he was a little bit back from Master Q). Now Kronos and the two Xorns are the only real concerns regarding object removal.

Nightwalker did 300 damage in one round meleeing me. I forget how powerful they are because I usually have more AC when I fight them Yowsers.

Wow, Long Bow of Extra Might (+30), still not as powerful as my heavy xbow (+28).

The Xorn crushes a wand of Clone Monster. At last! The Dungeon plays fair!

20 Seeker bolts of Holy Might (+27)! 492 vs Evil. This vault has been the vault of high numbers. Lots of items with really high numbers, like an ethereal cloak [0, +30]. Now I just need to find an item that gives extra shots. O_O

[chknflyrice]

See if you can get some shots on the Qs (I belive you said you had some frosts) if that fails and you cant burst them down at range before the titans move TO the greater and fight the lesser or just banish all of them.

[Grotug]

The problem with trying to kill a Q (I was gonna TO it if I could ever get a LOS on it) is that they summon so fast you can never get shots in on it.

Banishing the Titans and the Qs worked pretty well. Found some good items, though half of them came from drops when I decided to take on a Unique.

[Patashu]

The problem with trying to kill a Q (I was gonna TO it if I could ever get a LOS on it) is that they summon so fast you can never get shots in on it.

Normally you want to kill a Q by hitting them with AoE around a corner or hockeysticking them (exploiting the asymmetrical LoS algorithm of Angband so you can see them but not vice versa). If you can't set either up, agreed, it's not worth trying to kill them.

[Grotug]

This is kinda cool. I was wondering awhile ago why the passable rubble in the town wasn't used in the dungeon. Cool to see it is now.






Unrelated to the above images: So I nearly died a *very* stupid death. I put on some unID'd gloves with +1 STR and +1 CON. Now I *know* what kind of gloves these are normally, but for some reason I didn't realize it at the time. I'm thinking the (??) is some kind of resistance, rChaos maybe or pStun; I dunno, maybe some new kind of {ego} item; I really wasn't sure. A Ranger Chieftain is going nuts with the summons, I'm not taking it too seriously as most summons aren't that bad, then I notice there is a Dracolisk two squares from me. I decide to take it on and about 40% through the fight I get hit with something and start to hallucinate (guess the [??] wasn't rChaos!) I still know where the Dracolisk is, though, so I figure I should finish him first even though I'm in the 300s now in HP. So I finish him, down to about 240HP and then boom, hit by fire from a Hell Wyrm right after my eyes clear. 12HP {more} 8hp {more} the messages finally end. Most of the animals are basically harmless, but I think an Ethereal Hound was still alive, but my turn comes and I have 8HP. What is going on here? Oh, duh, the gauntlets are Combat! There was another very large vault nearby, but I !*healed and _TS and then ?Recalled, taking down another Dracolisk in a hallway with some powerful bolts while waiting for the recall to kick in. Time to put the gloves of slaying back on. Jeeeez.

[Pete Mack]

You're nearly strong enough to aggravate, but it'd be a disaster in a wide open stronghold room like that. Very lucky escape.