Unbelievable

[Grotug]

How do I copy and paste the last, say, 100 messages from my game (I'm not quite dead)?

So, I should know better, given the number of times I've died from an Umber Hulk when my only escape is ?phase. Well, I figured I'd just hammer it out, since I have a good weapon, but I'm not *that* powerful given that I'm just a lowly hobbit, not a half-troll warrior. So I start engaging him in melee, yeah, yeah, I'm confused, go on; I'll get a hit in once in awhile, though, and you'll eventually die. .... Before I.

Well, so I optimistically hoped, but instead: missing, missing, missing, missing, more confused, more confused, more confused, more confused. Now it's starting to not look so good. I don't actually have many potions, except 8 !speed, and a few !CLW and one !Heroism, but not wasting the speeds, no, no, would much rather die with a healthy stack of !speed then blow them all on bad judgment. I get to 30 health, hmm.. maybe I should !speed. 22 or something health, okay, !speed it is. (Stubborn much?) I quaff one of my last !CLW after the !speed and the speed is surprisingly effective. But instead of hitting him, I start moving away from him, drunkenly stumbling down a hallway, and for some reason he isn't following after, even though my progress is slow.

I come into a small room at the other end of the hallway and wait for him. While I wait, I swap from my sling to crossbow with relatively good damage (+1, +6) and (+6, +3) bolts and quaff my last !Heroism. He enters the room with one red asterisk, now it's two cause he recovered a little; ahh, no biggy, I'll finish him off now. I don't bother firing at him, because I'll just spray bolts wide, and what's the point.

He comes back into melee range and I miss, miss, miss, miss, 20 health again, 8 health. Okay, that's it. I'm dead. I finally take a moment to consider my very limited options. I can continue again with melee, and most likely miss and die, or... I think my bolts do more damage. Yah, I'm gonna fire the bolt instead of just swing at him. Except I don't aim the bolt at him, since I'm most likely gonna miss. Let's aim diagonally one square away from him. I hold my breath and fire. The bad aim is "canceled out" by the confusion and what do you know the darn bolt makes good! It hits the mark and the Umber Hulk dies.

Now I stand, heavily confused, 8 health and no health potions. Let's see if I can actually still survive to town, since I'm screwed if anyone else shows up. And it's gonna be awhile before I can read again. I should have been firing at the umber hulk while he was coming down the hallway at me instead of just waiting. That would have been interesting. If anyone enters the room I will definitely do that! Just, not *at* them, but in their general direction.

I rested up to 52 health before the confusion wore off. Fired some pebbles while I was waitng, and they went all over the place, including at my feet, one or two actually hit the mark I aimed for, though.

[Grotug]

Well this is definitely a first: I'm wearing two rings of STR, both <+6>. Recently I came upon a <+2> DEX ring and then saw a ring of STR not too far away and was thinking of times of finding early really high stat rings and how that never happens. I was thinking, hmm, would be really nice if this dex ring was +6. Let's go see what the STR ring is, (not that it will be more than 3, as they rarely are below DL40). And as if to answer my thought, it was <+6>.

It's kind of interesting, I remember my early days of Angband occasionally finding <+6> dex rings deep in the dungeon and thinking they were pretty cool. Then, for the longest time would find tons of <+5> dex or str rings but never 6. It was so long of not seeing a +6 dex or str ring that I was beginning to doubt I had ever really seen one or that the code had been changed to not allow +6 in those rings. Now I'm wearing two, both found on either side of DL35.

They say the bare minimum sample size for randomness starting to even out is 1000. I guess it takes many years to see 1000 STR/DEX rings.

And, of course I find a castus of power (+3, +8) when I'm red book caster, forcing a large compromise to wield the rare and awesome gloves....

[Estie]

I have learned the umber hulk lesson and these days drink speed early if I mess up and get confused.

+12 str as hobbit rogue ? Must feel like a HT warrior now. Are you using a light weapon ? Weirdly, with high str (and low dex) light weapons perform better, while low str high dex favours heavier.

[Grotug]

I noticed that last game. Even though I didn't have max str but max DEX I was getting 5 blows with a heavy weapon. I am unfortunately wielding a heavy weapon atm. The dex will come, though, since hobbits have good native dex.

I know I should write more concise DARs, but I find the details make it more interesting. My CON is dangerously abysmal right now. Even though I found "Trickery early, I will still die to a Drolem breath! I'm only at DL37, though, so hopefully will have the requisite HP soon (I'm 225, and I think I need 244).

And hopefully I'll find a source of rPois and dex in another slot soon, since I found another off-finger trinket that contributes +8 to dam in an amulet of Lightning Immunity. It's so typical to get two powerful items that have to compete for the same slot.

EDIT: How important is it for an item's cost to reflect its power/utility, versus reflect its overall power, regardless of utility? In the black market, I guess any item that costs around 30,000 gold is going to be a pretty good item. But a Heavy Xbow of Might <X5> (+14, +19) <+1> for 33,372 gold? Seems like a veritable bargain to me. !Augmentation costs 150,000 gold which seems a little high. I'll take a heavy xbow of might and power over !Augmentation any day of the week, even if their prices were swapped (so the !Aug costs 33K and the xbow costs 150K). That xbow is very near endgame power, and I'm affording it having reached a max depth of only 1950'. No complaints! This will be fun. And you can never afford an !Augmentation when you still need it, which is in the DL40s and 50s.

Maybe, items with to-dam on them that aren't rings or weapons should cost more and heavy weapons/armors should cost less? Maybe the cost of (to-dam) on weapons should do a bell curve once it starts going over +15? (Maybe it already does). Even if I was a warrior, where AC is king, I'd probably take the xbow over, say, an Adamantite armor of Elvenkind with a useful resist if they were the same price and I didn't have anything good in either slot and I could only afford one. But I think the armor would be in the neighborhood !Augmentation's price, maybe even more.

No one ever talks about winning the game with good AC. It's always about damage. Although doing melee with poor AC is rough-going later on in the game.

All I need now is off-weapon extra shots and it's GG.

[kandrc]

I will still die to a Drolem breath!

Hobbit Rogues don't get breathed on by accident.

[Estie]

The thing with that xbow price is that youll buy it immediately if youre using a sling (+0,+0), but if you have, say, a longbow of power, its not clear, and obviously its worth nothing if you have better. Whereas !Aug remains valueable for a long long time.

My measure for evaluating price is "how often do I buy it", and a good xbow for 30k seems about right in that I rarely have the money as well as the need for it.
For, say, 60k I would almost never buy it.

[Grotug]

Really? I had a good longbow of accuracy (+15, +12) at the time. It was still a fairly no-brainer purchase to pickup the xbow. It does twice the damage of the long bow. I think I have bought one !aug in all my playing. But I'm not even sure I did buy it. They show up very rarely in the shop, and when they do I can't afford it, and if I have been trawling the dungeons for long enough to afford it, then I probably have enough stat gain for it to not be a critical purchase. So in my experience, it's never worth the 150,000 gold.

In other news I think I just won the game with this drop from Stone Troll Trio #3: The Fur Cloak of Borfin: [3, +7] <+3, +5> {??}

+3 INT
+5 CON
Speeds Regeneration

Granted, it's not a super crazy artifact or anything. But all of its {known} attributes are absolutely critical to my success.

I have an 8d6 weapon I haven't been maining with +4 INT because my current weapon does better damage against targets that matter and regenerates. But now I can main the +4 INT heavy hitter and swap to the other for bruising members of the Unholy Trinity.

Activates to self haste. 82-100 turns to recharge.

Items like this are so key for playing a low health redbook class. I effectively just gained +5 CON and +9 INT and in the last hundred or so turns picked up another +2 INT from potions Aaaaannd, just ID'd pConf on the cloak.

[Grotug]

Keep finding sweet +CON items, but the latest one is super nice as it puts Telepathy in a very unique spot:

The Pair of Steel shod boots of Imlarad [7,+18] <+4>CON <+7> Speed. Grants Telepathy. I'd say this is gonna open up the endgame gear juggling very nicely.

Saruman says to me after I defeat him: "you have defeated me in battle. Now here are the keys to defeating Sauron." Or maybe it's more like: You defeat Saruman only to discover he was plotting to overthrow Sauron. In his midsts you find:

1. 30 Mithril Arrows of Acid.
2. A Cloak of Acid brand.

Wow, this is a powerful acid brand. Suddenly an unusable weapon at home now doing over 600 not vulnerable to acid, and its to dam is +8 . Of course one of my best items is already in the cloak spot +5 CON with pConf and Regen.

Wow, I have an artifact in every slot except the ring slots and launcher and I'm only at DL51.