Competition 84

[Nick]

Competition 84 is now available from the competition page; it is a V3.1.2 artifactless Dwarf Paladin. Thanks to bron for the savefile.

Note that comp 83 still has a bit over a day to go (and is looking like a close finish).

[Jungle_Boy]

I have a quick question. I noticed some items got auto-inscribed with {!!} I am unfamiliar with this inscription, what does it do?

[PowerDiver]

I have a quick question. I noticed some items got auto-inscribed with {!!} I am unfamiliar with this inscription, what does it do?

It is pretty irrelevant now. It disturbs and notifies when you go from one rod in a stack of N rods charging to 0 rods charging, and also from N rods charging to N-1 rods charging.

There is a disturbance setting now to do that for all chargeable objects including artifacts without bothering with inscriptions.

[bron]

I should have mentioned this: the savefile actually started with PowerDiver's savefile from competition 83. I liked most of the settings, and it had a good monster memory (I hadn't bothered to rebuild memory after the last savefile breakage), so I've been using it since then. I never bothered to remove the inscriptions; even I don't know what some of them do.

[Zikke]

I've never played a No Artifacts game. Is it possible to win without the resistences/immunities from artifacts?

[Pete Mack]

Resistances and immunities are the easy part. The hard part is doing without the speed and CON bonuses.

[bron]

Is it possible to win without the resistences/immunities from artifacts?

I play no-artifacts a lot. It is quite possible to win, although it is certainly more difficult than a standard game. It is very hard to get full coverage of all the possible resists, so you just have to go without some, or carry equipment swaps (or both). For several possible attacks (say, shards) even with a resist it is still possible to take 6/7's of full damage. So even if you have the resist, you still have to be able to withstand a nearly full strength blast. So if you are doing worst-case planning (i.e. you are actually trying to win) the lack of certain resists is not fatal. You have to watch out for side effects (e.g. hallucination from Chaos, or stunning from sound). Items with "extra" random resists are important (armor of Elvenkind or Permanence, shields of Preservation, Cloaks of Aman).

Pete Mack is quite right that speed and con are serious problems. You generally have to be content with a terminal base speed in the low 20's, and use temporary speed boosts to get over 30 for the fight with Morgoth. I usually end up with boots of speed, an amulet of trickery, and one ring of speed. The other ring slot being filled with +con. Depending on the race/class you might also need to wield a Westerness weapon, or possibly gloves of Combat (or both).

[Eli]

Don't forget Robes of Permanance.

[Nick]

Competition 84 is now finished - congratulations to Powerdiver for the only game win (and a very impressive one).