Competition 62

[Antoine]

Self note: !CCW only does 6d8 in V (cf 8d10 in NPP)

Its like drinking low alcohol beer

[buzzkill]

Its like drinking low alcohol beer

What a tragedy.

[buzzkill]

It seems like a lot of promising young Luckys' are dropping in the lower 40 DL's.
Must be a steep learning curve. I'm not looking forward to it.

[PowerDiver]

It seems like a lot of promising young Luckys' are dropping in the lower 40 DL's.
Must be a steep learning curve. I'm not looking forward to it.

The game changes qualitatively around DL 40. If you spend too high a percentage of your playing time before that, you should expect to develop bad habits. Replaying the comp until you win might be a shortcut to learning to win. In fact, once the comp is over, people who have never won might find it helpful to save the game at DL 40 and restart there after death. It won't count as a win, but what you learn you can apply next game.

[starstealer]

So is 98% before DL40 too much then :P

I am inclined to agree of course, but even diving as much as I have been outside of the competition - I am still having a hard time getting that deep. I am definitely still in need of working on "run away and live another day."

PDSM makes this competition interesting to me - because in the early levels, he is virtually indestructable (very unlikely to be hit by low level monster standard attacks, and unlikely to be hit with ability drain/theft/etc even by creatures down to ~DL10.

Once he gets past those first few levels though, Lucky needs to find help - a better weapon, coverage for those few essentials he doesn't have (FA, SI most notably). I have also found that a decent stealth boost makes things so much easier - not something I really notice playing human/half-elf/high-elf mages; a dwarf warrior is just so much louder...

As an aside, I'm curious about people's use of the PDSM activation. I've been reserving it against uniques when there is at least one weaker monster between us (snaga/hill orc/novice 'p') and just trying to activate it until it succeeds. So far this has done really well to take out the faster unique orcs (Bolg for instance), but I'm really not succeeding enough to make use of it every time it is available. I certainly wouldn't use it as a "last ditch" attempt - because it is still activating less than 10% of the time (that's just a guess - no clue what the actual percentage is).

[buzzkill]

As an aside, I'm curious about people's use of the PDSM activation. I've been reserving it against uniques when there is at least one weaker monster between us (snaga/hill orc/novice 'p') and just trying to activate it until it succeeds. So far this has done really well to take out the faster unique orcs (Bolg for instance), but I'm really not succeeding enough to make use of it every time it is available. I certainly wouldn't use it as a "last ditch" attempt - because it is still activating less than 10% of the time (that's just a guess - no clue what the actual percentage is).

You got your PDSM to activate? I'm astounded. My Lucky seems to have no clue. I've tried dozens (if not more) of times without any success and now pushing CL30.

My first experience on DL40 was dropping in right next to an Ancient Dragon, luckily asleep. It hasn't improved much since then. The lower 40's have been a huge pain in the ass. And, although I know I'm I'll equipped, I must press on. Currently hassled by life drainers and quick moving monsters. My Defender provides SI and FA but does miserable damage. My Dethanc does good damage but leaves me open to paralysis and all manner of invisible undead are sneaking up and draining my XP.

Where's the wand/rod of light? Does it even exist in Vanilla? I miss it badly.

[chem]

Looking forward to giving this a try! I just built a new computer, so I am off the laptop. This means I have a numeric keypad again, and I can play Angband! Never did get used to a roguelike keyset.

I'm also happy that it's [V], and a warrior. Classic. He gets PDSM?? I'm in!

Less happy about the fewest turns criterion for a winner. That was just never my playstyle. I'm not sure of a good way otherwise though... hmm...

What about Winner with most artifacts collected? Does [V] keep notes on that yet? If not... then, maintainer: why not??

[Donald Jonker]

You got your PDSM to activate? I'm astounded. My Lucky seems to have no clue. I've tried dozens (if not more) of times without any success and now pushing CL30.

My current favorite (and guilty) method of killing wormy is ?phasing around him twenty to thirty times trying to activate the pdsm, which eventually does kick in and takes him out in one shot. Sure, you might as well use an unenchanted sling at that point, but what's the fun in that?

[Jungle_Boy]

At one point on one of my more recent Luckys I tried to activate the Phial which I had just recent;y picked up and not yet IDed. I thought it was a little unusual when the Phial asked for a direction and just hit the right arrow key, unfortunately for him there was a cold hound there who got a dragonbreath to the face!

[starstealer]

You got your PDSM to activate? I'm astounded. My Lucky seems to have no clue. I've tried dozens (if not more) of times without any success and now pushing CL30.

Assuming your intelligence hasn't been boosted beyond a certain point, at CL30 - you will have just under a 10% chance of success (assuming the spoiler from 3.0.5 is still valid). By CL33 this will only have increased to 14.5%, but by CL37, you are up to 60+%

I only bothered to look up the equation when I noted that I was having trouble using the rod of acid balls in my possession. As it turns out - they are both on the same equation since the depth of an item beyond level 50 is treated as 50 for that equation.

[buzzkill]

Assuming your intelligence hasn't been boosted beyond a certain point, at CL30 - you will have just under a 10% chance of success (assuming the spoiler from 3.0.5 is still valid). By CL33 this will only have increased to 14.5%, but by CL37, you are up to 60+%

I only bothered to look up the equation when I noted that I was having trouble using the rod of acid balls in my possession. As it turns out - they are both on the same equation since the depth of an item beyond level 50 is treated as 50 for that equation.

Thanks for the info. I can never bring myself to work out the percentages for such things, but I always find the information useful when others do so.

Throughout most of my one and only Lucky's life his INT was 'normal', whatever it started at. Toward the end days, he probably found a Potion of INT or two.

During his long and moderately successful life (he died at CL30-something) he never got that armor to activate. Probably at least 100 tries. I guess he just wasn't very fortunate.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=8358

[Xoota]

Hi,

So, this is my first try on an Angband competition.

I've been playing roguelikes since I had Moria installed thanks to a CD fully loaded of shareware games back in the nineties. After that, I got to know Angband, and I have tried Angband, variants of Angband, but I've never been succesful on any of them... And always got tired after reaching some difficult level.

I see that this competition is a really good tutorial for newbies (I'm just for the sake of playing), and I had some questions that arose during my take... Sorry if these are too obvious...

- How do I interact with macros with this Angband? (@ doesn't work...)

- And what do you usually do regarding the objects the monsters drop? Do you disregard them until reaching a particular deep level (which is the one you explore?) Do you identify them and discard them as needed?

Thank you, and thanks PowerDiver for redirecting me here.

[Zikke]

To interact with Macros, hit = and then M. (= is the new @)

[Bandobras]

- And what do you usually do regarding the objects the monsters drop? Do you disregard them until reaching a particular deep level (which is the one you explore?) Do you identify them and discard them as needed?

I suspect you don't yet know about the wonders of the scrolls of Word of Recall. Use these to get to top/bottom of the dungeon instead of going all the way down by foot and disregarding shallow objects.

[Xoota]

I suspect you don't yet know about the wonders of the scrolls of Word of Recall. Use these to get to top/bottom of the dungeon instead of going all the way down by foot and disregarding shallow objects.

*blush*

You are absolutely right. I knew you went upstairs with them, but didn't know that you went downstairs