Hadn't played in a while...so HE Rogue

[Pete Mack]

Had phenomenal luck with artifacts: Totila(rConf) at 1150', Wrath at 1650'(!), then first artifact helmet Dor-Lomin at 2750', along with multiple other useful artifacts and egos, in first real vault. Not so fortunate with dungeon books. Found only useless priest books and Raal's until 6800'.
This limited significant breather kills to Itangast, Scatha, and a Bile demon. . . which is to say: none at all. Also not fortunate with speed: limited to +5 from weak artifacts, plus unreliable haste spell. Wrath+Preservation makes undead a primary target.

Most recent vault was mostly a bust: ran out of charges on -Teleport Other, so reduced to the still unreliable spell. That isn't enough for a skull druj, especially one surrounded by breeding nether worms. But I did net Scarabtrices from an AMHD there.

Edit: Playing standard artifacts, because random arts are significantly easier. (Too much power in the glove and shield slots.)

[Pete Mack]

So, just won the game.

Finding Crown of Gondor, Elessar, and 2 Rods of Healing let me play this game like a Paladin--that's 1000 HP every 500 player turns, and another 1000 HP every 3000 turns. Never used a single !Heal until Carcharoth and the Tarrasque.

I used a MoD of Gondolin from dl 63, replacing Trident of Wrath. MoD of Gondolin is a whole lot of fun--it does 650 damage against almost everything, and even when it doesn't, it does 400. I ended up essentially clearing levels, just because I could.
Then at dl 95, I found MoD of *Slay Evil*. I used that for Carcharoth, Sauron, and Morgoth.

Qlzqqlzuup conveniently showed up on dl 98, who summoned Maeglin. Together, they allowed me to clean up the rest of the tough uniques, except for Mouth of Sauron.

[HugoVirtuoso]

So, from GAME START how long did it take to win in real-time? Just wondering

[Pete Mack]

I don't know. Real time speed is never something I ever worry about. But probably around 6-8 hours, over 3 sessions. A vanilla 4.0.5 game just isn't that big or difficult a campaign.

So, from GAME START how long did it take to win in real-time? Just wondering

[Ironshod Al]

When I looked at your character dump, I was initially amazed at how many books there were in the inventory.
I find that loosing two inventory slots (as in PosChengband) is okay, but five slots seemed like a big loss. Then I realised, that it really wasn't so bad. In PCB 5.0.5 playing as a rogue I spend two slots on books, one slot on ?Phase Door (due to the high failure rate for the spell) and 1-3 slots on ammo, since quivers aren't available until version 6. On top of that, staves, wands and rods stack in Vanilla.
The many books available in Vanilla seem overwhelming and is one of the reasons I haven't attempted to play casters of any kind. In PosChengband the rogue was suggested as a learning character, so I decided to go with that. And only using one book until CL20 made it a lot less daunting.

[Pete Mack]

It's a bit misleading. Some of those books replace magic items: MB7 for ?Recall; MB1 for object detection, illumination unreliable phase; MB3 for monster/invisible detection; MB4 for haste, teleport other. Others have huge impact on player power: MB5 increases power with resistance spells; MB8 with branded ammo and buffing spells. Filling inventory with books adds significantly more power than items they replace in inventory.

[Ironshod Al]

It's funny, I haven't thought of the various books that way before. They were just the red and green ? that I always squelched when found. It does make sense that each book contains multiple spells and some of these spells match the various consumables, and as such each book will either replace an existing stack of items or sometimes even multiple stacks.
I have just played a quick test game with a half-troll warrior in PosChengband 5 and his inventory is stuffed with scrolls, staves and rods that my high-elf/hobbit rogues didn't need because rogue spells replace these items.
Considering this, I may very well go back to vanilla at some point and at least try playing a rogue.