Next competition

[Gwarl]

Next competition is in just over a week. Anyone have requests?

[MITZE]

Next competition is in just over a week. Anyone have requests?

UMoria half-troll warrior.

[Patashu]

Quickband?

[the Invisible Stalker]

FA dark-elf thrall rogue in standard wilderness with disconnected stairs.

[wobbly]

If we're going thrall rogue dwarf is also a fun option. rblind works against destruction & you can move fast through the rubble.

[the Invisible Stalker]

There's a bit of a tension between race/class combinations which are good overall and those which are good for new players in the early game. My fear is that people lose 20 @'s over the course of an hour, get frustrated, and decide the comp is stupid. I think probably the best way to avoid that is to maximise stealth. There are definitely tactics to deal with less than stellar stealth, but they take time to learn. If you have high stealth then you have a reasonable chance of making it safely to Gondolin just by not waking up too many nasty things. You can instead wake things up and *destruct* them, but you don't have very many scrolls available, so it takes a bit of experience to know when and how to use them.

[Gwarl]

I probably won't do a thrall but perhaps a high difficulty FA race.

[the Invisible Stalker]

That seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity. The nice thing about comps is the opportunity to experiment with things which are unique to a particular variant.

[HugoVirtuoso]

My request:
PosChengband Tonberry Chaos-Warrior + FULL Wilderness + 100% Uniques (YES, I mean 100%)

[nikheizen]

My request:
PosChengband Tonberry Chaos-Warrior + FULL Wilderness + 100% Uniques (YES, I mean 100%)

Aren't those just the default settings.
Not sure what you meant by this.

[wobbly]

Pretty sure the last poschengband comp was so recent that my run is still going...

[Gwarl]

That seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity. The nice thing about comps is the opportunity to experiment with things which are unique to a particular variant.

There's a lot to distinguish FA without going full thrall mode. I'll have a few plays through but I think the harder races might be challenging enough as they are.

More suggestions are still welcome.

[debo]

Pretty sure the last poschengband comp was so recent that my run is still going...

Me too haha

[the Invisible Stalker]

Thrall isn't really that much more challenging than non-thrall. It's just different. Starting with telepathy goes a long way to compensating for your fragility as a first level character in dangerous territory. The keys to surviving as a beginning thrall are:

- Hounds and vortices sleep at night. Try waiting for dark. You'll be a lot safer. You may need to *destruct* to create a safe space in which to wait.

- Unlight is great. If you're a rogue, assassin or necromancer then it should definitely be your first specialty.

- Choose your first kill wisely. Experience points get divided by character level, so it's best to get as many as possible when you're still level 1.

- The only escapes you start with are five scrolls of *destruction*. Use them when needed, but only when needed.

- Visit (and move to) town fairly quickly. There you can get more escapes. Also, WoR only works once you have a home to recall to.

- Mostly ignore stuff that isn't close to you and far from monsters. It usually isn't worth the risk.

Some of those are more guidelines than absolute rules, but if you follow them then thrall mode isn't really that much harder than standard. Most of your @'s will still die, of course, but they mostly die quickly, and if they don't then you can skip much of the tedium of the early game. The average time required to get a decent midgame character is probably lower than for a non-thrall.

[Gwarl]

you can skip ... the early game.

But if the point is to try lots of variants, I don't want to skip the early game..