Greatly helped by chaos resisting telepathic dagger picked up on level 9 (see 'memorable randarts'), I'm currently playing what's starting to look like my first successful mage in new Angband. By level 30 had native speed of +11, aided by +5 elven boots from black market and +6 speed ring from early 5-8 level. Arcane Control also appeared in black market and I could afford it(!). So my weapon of choice now is mana bolt and I'm starting to see what people mean by calling mana tap+fastcast combo overpowered...
So, on dungeon level 30, 9-8 feeling! Turns out to be a vault with baddest thing inside being a chaos hound which was an easy bag of experience points with that uberdagger. Stuff inside included dwarwen armor, augmentation and other stat potions + tons of stuff to sell. Back to town, back down and 9-8 again!
A vault, again, but detection peek inside shows its more like a 19-8. Inside, lesser balrog, queen ant and Scatha (dungeon level 30, remember?).
The first big thing to wake up is Scatha. The vault was the kind of square one with long corridors along edges and monster dance floor in the middle. So when telepathy warns me that the worm is on the move, I back off to the end of corridor, cast resistance and fast cast, drink speed potion and pray. Well yes, fastcast+manabolt is overpowered. Scatha never even got close to me. Next comes the big bug. No issue. Both dropped good stuff, swapping few items got my speed to +21, and clearing some trolls and things from the big room was just sort of a target shooting practice.
During all this mayhem, lesser balrog was happily sleeping in the far corner. Instead of TOS, I decided to kill it for experience. So, resistance on and woke the beast with mana bolt. It tried to reach me and breathed only once near before its end.
While going through new gear, I notice one thing: I have no fire resistance! At some point when putting on all the new and shiny gear from Scatha and the ant, I had managed to lose that. So I had gone against lesser balrog with 215 hitpoints and only single resistance. Only luck saved me from YASD of the year.
By the way, with mage I almost never actually use any shooter, so in bow slot I prefer something that provides some key resistances, stats, speed etc. Something like ... this?
Short Bow 'Tirnorn' (x4) (+11, +11) <+2, +4>:
Dropped by The Queen Ant at 1500 feet (level 30)
+2 constitution
+4 speed
+2 shooting power
Branded with cold.
Provides resistance to cold, poison
When activated, it disables traps, unlocks doors and reveals all secret doors in a given direction
Yes, much better than the ring of resist poison I was using...
So, on dungeon level 30, 9-8 feeling! Turns out to be a vault with baddest thing inside being a chaos hound which was an easy bag of experience points with that uberdagger. Stuff inside included dwarwen armor, augmentation and other stat potions + tons of stuff to sell. Back to town, back down and 9-8 again!
A vault, again, but detection peek inside shows its more like a 19-8. Inside, lesser balrog, queen ant and Scatha (dungeon level 30, remember?).
The first big thing to wake up is Scatha. The vault was the kind of square one with long corridors along edges and monster dance floor in the middle. So when telepathy warns me that the worm is on the move, I back off to the end of corridor, cast resistance and fast cast, drink speed potion and pray. Well yes, fastcast+manabolt is overpowered. Scatha never even got close to me. Next comes the big bug. No issue. Both dropped good stuff, swapping few items got my speed to +21, and clearing some trolls and things from the big room was just sort of a target shooting practice.
During all this mayhem, lesser balrog was happily sleeping in the far corner. Instead of TOS, I decided to kill it for experience. So, resistance on and woke the beast with mana bolt. It tried to reach me and breathed only once near before its end.
While going through new gear, I notice one thing: I have no fire resistance! At some point when putting on all the new and shiny gear from Scatha and the ant, I had managed to lose that. So I had gone against lesser balrog with 215 hitpoints and only single resistance. Only luck saved me from YASD of the year.
By the way, with mage I almost never actually use any shooter, so in bow slot I prefer something that provides some key resistances, stats, speed etc. Something like ... this?
Short Bow 'Tirnorn' (x4) (+11, +11) <+2, +4>:
Dropped by The Queen Ant at 1500 feet (level 30)
+2 constitution
+4 speed
+2 shooting power
Branded with cold.
Provides resistance to cold, poison
When activated, it disables traps, unlocks doors and reveals all secret doors in a given direction
Yes, much better than the ring of resist poison I was using...
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