How fast do you dive?

[Derakon]

Even a character with Morgoth's Iron Crown, the One Ring, the Boots of Feanor, a huge stack of Potions of Life, etc. -- every possible advantage you can give them -- is not invincible. The idea that you can render the endgame safe via sufficiently slow play is fundamentally flawed.

[Philip]

Or, for that matter, mean time to win. It sounds incredibly tedious.

I am incredibly confused about your "two gear sets" example. What use is it being able to kill a Dread when you can't see it? Why are you even fighting a Dread at a point where you can't instakill them?

In your analogy, you probably go bankrupt well before you put the lift in. In Angband terms, that means getting to a point where the game is so boring you hold down arrows keys because death would be a welcome relief and change of pace. Another possibility is spending a month getting a character to clvl 30 at dlvl 10, going a bit deeper, and then suddenly being killed by something. It's a lot less annoying when you spent a weekend having characters die on you, but having a clvl 30 character with better gear at the end.

For what it's worth, you're right that at dlvl 20-30, you can either have damage (though I have no clue why you'd want to represent damage with a great axe rather than a weapon with multiple blows) or you can have defense stuff (instakill prevention for example). The solution is to gear up for defense, go to dlvl 40-50, or to 80 or so, and find stuff that will give you both. Angband only requires you to kill two monsters. Killing any others is a matter of personal choice, and understanding that is crucial to the game being playable. In a sense you could say the game is built for diving, since stealth is one of the few skills that doesn't go up with clvl, just with gear.

clvl 40 at dlvl 10 sounds like one of the circles of hell to me. Why would you subject yourself to that? And even if you did have, say, SI already, because V is generous with items, you could easily be killed by an Ethereal Dragon or some kind of Ghost at clvl 25 and dlvl 10 wandering out of a vault.

EDIT: While it is true that in no variant can you ever be safe, V has a remarkably safe endgame. O has Storms of Unmagic and Wyrms of Power that will teach you that you are always at most two turns away from death. I believe V would become a better (if somewhat harder) game if Teleport Level were made available, and monsters were made scary.

[Sky]

What's your win rate, roughly?

less than 10%

[kandrc]

less than 10%

So you invest a lot of real-life time into a character doing mindless grinding, and then you get killed. Cool strategy.

I also win about 10%, maybe slightly higher, but my wins take about 8 hours, and if I survive an hour, my win rate goes up to perhaps 70%.

I think that if you start playing forced descent for a while, it'll do great things for your game. Keep clearing levels if you like. Keep selling if you like. Just turn on forced descent. Keep it on until you get a win. It'll make you a much better player.

[Derakon]

I think we can safely say at this point that Sky has no interest in improving their win rate.

[Sky]

my games last 15m to 1hour before i find myself in a non-survivable situation. my win rate is low because i dont care about dying and using cheats to continue. my win rate would still be low but not quite as much. there's no way for me to know if i will survive a particular fight with just so many heals unless i try and die. and i also try to save consumables, but this means none of those characters can be put on the leaderboard.

i still make mistakes. i just killed a CL40 rogue like a moron because i Phase from a dreadlord and the Phase put me bang in the middle of the graveyard, which i didnt need to clear anyway because i had preserve_off. And i had a !Life activation i didnt even use.

[the Invisible Stalker]

Minimising risk is the key to the game, but it's vital to understand how to measure risk: chance of dying per dungeon level, rather than per turn. If you go down the staircase and never come back up then that's one fewer level on which you can die.

[Sky]

ok while that's indisputable, you can't just read a scroll of Take Me Down To Dungeon Level 99 and expect to win because "it's only one level i have to take care of".

running through the dungeon gives you the various tools you need to win the game - experience, stats, consumables, and equipment. the more of these you have, the more likely you are to win and, more importantly, to not die.

in addition, the game has a set of gates which you cannot pass without some specific gear, be it invisible monsters, stat/xp drain, speed, passwall, confusion, and simple damage output.

[Derakon]

in addition, the game has a set of gates which you cannot pass without some specific gear, be it invisible monsters, stat/xp drain, speed, passwall, confusion, and simple damage output.

You can pass them by not fighting them. There are players who take clvl 20 characters with awful gear down to dlvl98.

The only thing you need to do in Angband is kill Sauron, and then kill Morgoth. Literally everything else is optional as long as you achieve those two goals. Of course achieving those goals is a lot easier when you have great stats, awesome gear, and plenty of experience, but it is by no means necessary and there is absolutely a point at which continuing to try to power up your character does more harm than good.

[kandrc]

you can't just read a scroll of Take Me Down To Dungeon Level 99 and expect to win because "it's only one level i have to take care of".

I once made a source change to do roughly this. WoR took me (clvl 1) to dlvl 98 and placed me on an up stair. I turned on connected stairs, and I stair scummed. Took me--I don't recall exactly--maybe 30 tries before I got a winner, but from figuring out what code I had to change to killing M was no more than about 4 hours.

At dlvl 98, potions of experience and augmentation are fairly common, as are wands of dragon breath, drain life, and annihilation. If you stand on stairs and test wands on moderately powerful monsters that can't one-shot you from a distance, it's easy to get a clvl in the low 30s with your first kill at that depth. Or if you test a potion of experience, that will also get you to about clvl 30. ESP is common. Weapons of gondolin are common (giving +1 to light radius, which is a big deal when you're clvl 1 and carrying a torch). Use a hobbit rogue, so you have maximum stealth and detect objects. You go from meat to capable in only a few minutes (if you survive), to a stud in not much more time.

Admittedly, this requires scummy play, but not only is it possible, it's not terribly difficult.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

ok while that's indisputable, you can't just read a scroll of Take Me Down To Dungeon Level 99 and expect to win because "it's only one level i have to take care of".

running through the dungeon gives you the various tools you need to win the game - experience, stats, consumables, and equipment. the more of these you have, the more likely you are to win and, more importantly, to not die.

in addition, the game has a set of gates which you cannot pass without some specific gear, be it invisible monsters, stat/xp drain, speed, passwall, confusion, and simple damage output.

The only "gates" that MUST be passed are killing Sauron, then Morgoth.

If it's not forced descent, my typical @ spends a bit of time at levels 1-3, identifying the common consumables and ignoring most of the useless items; trying to get Free Action (usually a level feeling of 4), and, if lucky, a 'Thanc dagger (usually a level feeling of 6 at those shallow depths). If those are covered, then @ dives, using ?Deep Descent and every down stair until stat-gain territory (DL30+). Slowly working down, @ tries to find stat-gain potions and carefully selects monsters to kill for experience. Once stats seem sufficiently high, @ again dives as close to DL98 as possible. Careful play at DL97-98 nets quick experience and fantastic gear improvements. Once ready, @ tries to kill Sauron and then Morgoth in quick succession.

Not nearly as fast as some, but still pretty fast. The philosophy I discussed at length at http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?p=107826
I like that post so much, I think it should be a "sticky" post.

[the Invisible Stalker]

ok while that's indisputable, you can't just read a scroll of Take Me Down To Dungeon Level 99 and expect to win because "it's only one level i have to take care of".

running through the dungeon gives you the various tools you need to win the game - experience, stats, consumables, and equipment. the more of these you have, the more likely you are to win and, more importantly, to not die.

in addition, the game has a set of gates which you cannot pass without some specific gear, be it invisible monsters, stat/xp drain, speed, passwall, confusion, and simple damage output.

Of course how long you spend on one level influences how likely you are to die on the next, but the basic point, that probability of death per dungeon level is far more important than probability of death per turn, is sound.

Also, surviving with a low level character deep in the dungeon is certainly possible. Even without stair scumming. That's what thrall mode in FA is all about. There you start with ESP, which helps considerably, but otherwise FA is far less forgiving then modern V.

[Pete Mack]

Try HE Mage. It's terribly frustrating if you dive slowly because it takes an insane amount of time messing around to level up *unless* you dive hard and kill only the richest payoff monsters. I set an exercise for myself a while back: 20K player turns for CL 30. I didn't quite make it. But getting to CL 25 takes a ridiculously short amount of time if you focus on killing only the choices monsters--something like 10 like 10 kills per CL.
Some examples:
Group of wolves at CL 4-5. Then no more wolves unless they can't be avoided.
Group of hounds at CL 10, then no more low level hounds unless ditto...
Weak (OOD) U (Erinyes) at CL 18/dl 35, reaching CL 24. It's a lot of fun and surprisingly easy. Just dive like crazy and pick *only* the best fights. You'll need plenty of ?phase and magic devices: in some fights, phase failure is lethal.

[Egavactip]

The question about win rate made me curious, as that was not something I had ever thought of before. From the time I first started going for cheat-less wins to now, I have completed 86 games, by my stats, with 38 wins and 48 losses, so my win rate is around 44%. I have no idea if that is good or bad. It is all straight vanilla Angband with randarts, and a very eclectic mix of character classes and races.

I do not "dive" per se (with exception noted below) but I would not consider myself cautious. Though the exact speed depends considerably on character type and specific gear acquired, I typically progress level by level at a pretty good clip, not repeating very many levels (when possible I try to go down one last level before recalling back to the surface). Generally speaking, between level 40 and level 60 I will either die or I will acquire enough gear to allow me to survive until the end game (barring really bad luck or dumb mistakes).

Once I have gotten enough gear, I begin my latter game descent, which typically descends at a somewhat faster rate. During this time, I am trying to fill gaps in my gear or get better gear but mostly trying to get consumables for the final two battles. If I am bored I will begin to go down faster, including using Deep Descent. The more experienced I have gotten, the quicker I pass through this stage, though again, I like to go into the last two battles with lots of consumables. There are also certain times I may go down fast to the high 90s then linger there, especially if I need to bump up speed or something like that, because Rings of Speed are much more likely to be found in the deepest levels.

So on the slow and cautious to fast and foolhardy scale I am probably somewhere in the middle but leaning more towards the fast end. I don't like the "full dive as fast as possible" strategy because I don't like gambling quite that much.

[Sky]

i only dive when im bored. or rather, i only go down 3-4 DL when i've exhausted all the possibilities for that particular DL - when i have killed all the uniques and found (reasonably) all the gear that is *likely* to show up at that depth.

the game is easier without preserve mode; you can dive, find yourself in trouble, and leave. you can't do the same with preserve mode, unless you want to permanently lose the artifacts on that level.