My second ever winning character!

[Narry]

Hello!

I got familiar with Angband with version 2.7.x and played it a quite a lot until version 3.0.5 or something. I managed to win only once, with an elven mage in version 2.9.2 or 2.9.3.

I took a long break and started to play again in 2017, as I downloaded version 4.1.0. I had a rather promising progress with a High Elven Paladin, but without stun resistance, a group of plasma hounds killed her on dungeon level 60 or so.

I didn't give up and created another character with the same settings, a female High Elven Paladin, Edna.

Edna was more cautious than her precedessor and levelled slowly but surely. Stun resistance was again hard to come by, but finally she got it. That gave her courage to descend to lower levels. Finally, she was ready to face Sauron. Sauron was no problem, but Morgoth was! Badly hurt, Edna managed to escape and ascend back to level 99. Her thought process was as follows:
"I have all immunities and resistances, but I lack speed. And maybe more scrolls of Banishment and Mass Banishment!"

After lots of grinding, Edna went back to face the Dark Lord. She banished or teleported many groups of Morgoth's allies. Finally, she dealt the fatal blow and screamed of happiness as the Dark Lord fell!

Equipment in the final battle:
-----------------------------
the Lucerne Hammer 'Turmil' (2d5) (+10,+11) [+8] <+4, +1>
the Light Crossbow 'Cubragol' (x3) (+10,+14) <+10>
a Ring of Speed <+19>
the Ring of Fire 'Narya' (+2,+2) <+1, +5>
the Jewel 'Evenstar' <+2>
the Arkenstone of Thráin <+3>
Power Dragon Scale Mail (Dwarven) (-3) [60,+46] <+1, +2, +4>
the Cloak 'Conannon' [1,+15] <+2>
the Small Metal Shield of Thorin [5,+25] <+3, +4, -1>
the Golden Crown of Gondor [0,+15] <+3, +2, +1>
the Set of Caestus of Fingolfin (+10,+10) [5,+20] <+4>
the Pair of Mithril Shod Boots 'Stormwalker' [8,+24] <+6>

Also in the bag:
---------------
Lots of Potions of Speed
Lots of Potions of Restore Mana
Lots of Potions of *Healing*

[Sideways]

Congratulations! Post your character dump in the ladder if you got one.

[Narry]

I tried but it says this:
Edna.txt:
Your file of 34.8 KB bytes exceeds the forum's limit of 19.5 KB for this filetype.

[Sideways]

I tried but it says this:
Edna.txt:
Your file of 34.8 KB bytes exceeds the forum's limit of 19.5 KB for this filetype.

Go to http://angband.oook.cz/ladder.php and post it there.

[Narry]

Done.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21973

[Sky]

Really? You didnt find .. ifk, a mace of disruption, or a blade of chaos ... SOMETHING with slay evil. Even a shyte of slicing.

[Pete Mack]

Congrats. Why Turmil? It does really pathetic damage per turn compared to say Doomcaller (LOST) or a top ego weapon (MoD/BoC/SoS Holy Avenger/*Slay Evil*/+2 attacks.) You have other weapons that do more damage against evil in storage, though even Eowyn barely qualifies for endgame in a game with 1 million player turns. All your other gear is totally top notch. Always, always keep the weapon that does maximum damage, especially against evil. You will almost certainly want it in the final fight. You made your final fight much harder than it needed to be, though with a Paladin, it barely matters.

[Narry]

I know that Turmil doesn't do much damage, but I wanted to have all immunities. And I didn't want to wear two Rings of Power 'name', 'cause I had that very nice Ring of Speed <+19>.

[Philip]

Congrats on your win, and welcome back to the game.

Yeah, having all four immunities is not particularly important, and a Paladin doesn't really gain that much from a bit of extra wisdom. Looking at what you've chosen to keep in your home, you value immunities a bit too much. With temporary resistance, you can reduce the maximum damage from the base elements to something like 177, which is easily tankable for a paladin, and the final fight rarely involves that much elemental damage flying around anyway. It's interesting that wisdom gave you that much trouble though - the consequences of playing a High Elf, I suppose.

You also possibly overloaded on speed when you rekitted - speed has diminishing returns, and you have kits which would have done significantly more damage and had better stats available, while preserving +30 base speed (which with the amount of temporary speed you had available along with 100% saving throw is already overkill), and you could have even kept all immunities.

I would also recommend, for your next character, to try descending a bit faster. A popular method of playing is called diving. The basic idea is that by descending faster, you make each individual level much more dangerous, but also more rewarding, and consequently you play faster both in real time and in turn count, which means there are paradoxically fewer opportunities to die.
http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...ghlight=diving is a good introduction to the idea, as well as a sample build.

[Pete Mack]

I agree the ring of speed +19 is phenomenal, but immunity isn't worth giving up damage, especially fire/cold immunity, where you can get most of the affect with the resistance spell. Really the only real vulnerability for a Paladin is electricity, and big electricity attacks are rare. Poison and acid do at most 266 damage per turn with single resistance (acid damage is cut in half by non-zeroAC armor), and can be easily dealt with using Heal 300 spell.

I can guarantee you would have had an easier time vs. Morgoth and Sauron using Doomcaller.

[Narry]

Thank you for your congratulations and comments. The reason I wanted to have fire immunity was so that my low level prayer books - especially the Heal prayer - would be safe. Cold immunity to protect my potions. Acid immunity... well, that Shield of Thorin is just great overall, so why not? And since Stormwalker is also very nice...

But yeah, I see the point about damage. I remember there was a great artifact Mace of Disruption (7d8) in earlier versions that I played. I grinded levels 95-99 for a long time to find that, but no luck. Is it still there or has it been removed?

[Pete Mack]

Deathwreaker is just extremely rare. I have only found it once or twice, ever. There was a competition some time back where the starting character had it. Unfortunately, the starting character was also hacked to have only 3 base CON.

[Grotug]

I'm a little surprised I didn't catch this earlier: holy-moly enchantment on that PDSM! That is quite the find. [60, +46]

Pete Mack said:

Deathwreaker is just extremely rare. I have only found it once or twice, ever. There was a competition some time back where the starting character had it. Unfortunately, the starting character was also hacked to have only 3 base CON.

It would be fun to play this deathwreaker competition again. Any idea where I can get it? Would it be possible to implement it in the latest current V? (not the nightlies). Would anyone be interested? I'd like to play it regardless.

[Derakon]

You can set it up yourself with the debug commands. If I recall correctly, it's ^ae to edit your stats, and ^ac to create an artifact (just type "Deathwreaker" into the prompt). You can also ^aj to jump to a desired dungeon level, ^ad to detect, ^at to teleport, ^al to wizard-light the level (a.k.a. enlightenment), ^as to summon a monster, and a bunch of others.

[Pete Mack]

Here you go, Grotug: comp 189.

http://angband.oook.cz/competition.php?showcompo=189