How fast do you dive?

[Sky]

What's your win rate, roughly?

less than 10%

[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.

[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.

[kandrc]

i read and i agree, but you're missing the third option.

find a mountain, set up a company, generate interest, find investors, float in on the market, hire workers, build a railway, move suppliers to base camp, construct a base, drill a shaft, and install a massive pressurized lift to the summit of the mountain is safer than climbing it with minimal gear.

like i said, slow isn't slow enough.

What's your win rate, roughly?

[Sky]

i read and i agree, but you're missing the third option.

find a mountain, set up a company, generate interest, find investors, float in on the market, hire workers, build a railway, move suppliers to base camp, construct a base, drill a shaft, and install a massive pressurized lift to the summit of the mountain is safer than climbing it with minimal gear.

like i said, slow isn't slow enough.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

i just wrote how *I* play, in all honesty. Although sometimes i go a little faster, or fall into a trap, but them again sometimes ill just reset the recall if im too deep....

i get the dive smart thing, but like you said, it requires a set of skills which slow grind doesn't .. grind just requires patience, lots and lots of patience. and a stack of WoR. and keymaps for resting at DL1. and sell_on.

My response - http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?p=107826

[Sky]

i just wrote how *I* play, in all honesty. Although sometimes i go a little faster, or fall into a trap, but them again sometimes ill just reset the recall if im too deep.

My issue is that, with the gear you get around DL20-30 you can do two things: build for everything, or build for DPS. For example, say you get this list of gear and you need to pick your equipment.

Ring of damage +8
Ring of Damage +10
Ring of resist poison
ring of see invisible
gauntlets of slaying +3
light with +3 STR
light with FA
great axe of acid +10,+10
maul of slay Evil, Hlife

on one side, you have a player with rPois, SI, FA, HLife. makes sense, but he's capping at 45 DPS.
on the other, a he's got half mana, no FA, no SI, but if he runs into a dread he can actually kill it capping at 130 dps due to slaying, damage rings, STR.

and also, it's a "holistic" build. i need to deal with the fact that i just cannot let a unique go when i find it. i'm still beating myself up for teleporting away from Ungoliant after using 4 potions of !Heal, even though i won that game.

it's not entirely correct to say that you are never safe in V. you just neeed to be VERY safe. if you are a fully kitted CL40 and you hover around DL10, even the most OOD mob cannot touch you.

it's just that the "slowly slowly" approach isn't slow enough. slow the dungeon crawl down to a crawl .. and you'll be safe. what's true is that people don't realise how slow they have to go, if they want to go the slow way.

last time i beat morgoth i went down with 16 !Life, 28 *Heal, 21 !Heal, 9 MBan, 20~ish Ban, 5 Rod of Heal, 16 Rod of TO, 5 books, *Enlight, 600 dmg vs evil, 42 speed, and every resist including stun.





i get the dive smart thing, but like you said, it requires a set of skills which slow grind doesn't .. grind just requires patience, lots and lots of patience. and a stack of WoR. and keymaps for resting at DL1. and sell_on.

[Namdeht]

Okay, thanks for the additional thoughts, I'll take it on board. I guess I found it easy to believe that I was too deep for my CL because of how hard every fight I picked was proving, sounds like I need to work on my aggression issues and sneak past even more fights than I already have been

[Derakon]

Sky's approach is lethally cautious, which is a big part of why they have so much trouble winning. I know that sounds strange, but functionally the issue is that you are never safe in this game, so you need to behave as if you are unsafe at all times: constantly alert, considering everything that could possibly go wrong, accounting for unknown factors, and bailing out of bad situations before they turn into worse situations. If you are playing cautiously, it is incredibly hard to maintain that kind of mindset: not only are the vast majority of things you face not actually a threat (leading you to drop your guard), but it's also just mentally exhausting to be that alert for long periods.

Play fast, but think as you play fast. You'll get way further than you would if you tried to make the dungeon safe. The dungeon is not safe. The dungeon is trying to kill you.

If you want a rule of thumb, dive until you feel really unsafe, then stick around at those levels for a little while while you come to grips with what that part of the dungeon has to offer. Then keep diving. Odds are you'll die a few times while doing this! But you'll learn, in the process, and hopefully each time you'll make it further than the last.

[Philip]

Sky's guidelines are not reasonable. Even the standard paranoid approach is
1) don't go below dlvl 20 without FA and SI
2) don't go below dlvl 30 without rbase
3) don't go below dlvl 40 with rpois
4) get ESP and positive speed as soon as humanly possible, next get over 10 speed, then worry about high resists
5) don't fight anything you can't kill easily unless you have an extremely good reason (only way to get to longsword (4d5) or whatever)
The primary reason any guidelines are unreasonable is that you're far more likely to die grinding for a particular quality you think you need several levels before you would need it than you are to die of not having that ability, at least as long as you have decent stealth.

It is entirely possible you were too deep, as Ingwe says, it takes a while to get a feel for things. But as far as I can tell your mistakes were actually getting into a fight, and thinking teleportation was a reliable escape. V is stingy with good escapes, which is why picking fights is so crucial. I am somewhat confused as to Bert being awake, it feels like that shouldn't really happen. How long had you been on the level already?

[Namdeht]

Good to hear different thoughts on this, I killed the @ in question, it was of course YASD where I stuck in a fight I wasn't going to win for too long then teleported and landed right next to Bert the Troll. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Despite my obvious stupidity I do feel like I was too aggressive going deeper, and what Ingwe Ingweron said rings true for me, it's going to take a bit more experience to develop a good feel for how fast I should dive.

Sky's systematic approach is appealing, I think I'll be referring to that too, as reasonable guidelines when I'm second guessing myself.

[Sky]

i clear DL1-4 two or three times to level up and get enough money for basic consumables. I won't go any lower than 5-6 until i have a lantern.
Then i walk down to DL10 another 3-4 times until i have a full stack of CCW and CSW each; what i'm really looking for is a elemental-branded dagger or at least a ego launcher, and at least 1 full stack of magic ammo. I'll also want 5-10 !Speed.

Once i have these, i go down to DL13-ish, maybe DL16, and i try to identify pretty much everything.

I get to DL20 when i'm nearing CL20, maybe more. I don't go below DL20 until i have at least a wand of TO and some way of digging through granite, be it a spell of Stone2Mud or enough potions of brawn.

Once at DL20, i try to get at least an artifact weapon, artifact light and artifact jewel. I really do not want to go anywhere without ESP. I have no problem grinding DL20~22 a dozen times over.

Once i have ESP and the aforementioned, i go down to DL35-40 for stat potions, good mobs, xp, money, and i don't really leave it until im CL35 and can reliably cast TO and TS. i will also want speed +10 (ish) and base resists, rPoison, rNexus.

All this assuming a fast game with preserve_off. I play much slower with preserve on.

Once i have a full set of artifacts, boots of speed, ESP, rConf, Resistance of Scarabatrice, a big stack of !Heal, stats maxed, i'll leave (i'm about DL60 by now) and dive to DL90, then i grind for greater vaults.

Once i'm satisfied i have found the vast majority of artifacts in the set, i'll go kill Suron, then back up, then Morgoth and he will crush me in a rockfall doing more than 600 dmg / round even though i have speed +42.
really.

[Gwarl]

This advice is outdated, but I prefer to hover around level 35 until I can handle D's

After I'm clearing vaults on DL40 it's time to descend.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

It all depends. How viable is @ at the given depth is affected by race, class, equipment and consumable finds, stats, etc. Also, is it forced descent? Is it no recall? Dive as fast as you can. I know it's not a satisfying answer, but I don't think you can quantify a simple mathematical formula for diving. It's more a matter of feel. You will get that feel by diving and @ deaths.

[Philip]

Glad I could help.