Competition 100

[Nick]

dragon sand demons

That is an awesome typo

Azathoth (lowecase black 'j') is probably the most dangerous NPP addition. It starts showing up at around 3000', can pass through walls, and dish out damage like Morgoth.

Don't forget "can blink toward you out of a vault and breathe nether" - six years ago, but it still stings.

[nppangband]

Another thing to be aware of is that monsters that can teleport to you can do so from across the dungeon if they're awake. Thus it can be nigh-impossible to shake e.g. Radagast (to pick a comparatively minor example) once he's taken a shine to you; you can teleport him away but he'll just keep coming back a few turns later. You'll have to deal with him more permanently or leave the level, which can be nasty if you have a quest there.

And you get high level monsters teleporting out of greater vaults right next to you mid-game as well.

Also, starting out this comparatively physically-weak warrior-type with a quest for Golfimbul is cruel. I thought I might be able to take him with some iron shots and a sling I'd found, but the sling turned out to be cursed...at clvl 9 with a magic dagger (only two blows!) in melee, with heroism and bless running, I got him down about three stars before he slaughtered me. Saving up for the crossbow in the weapons store doesn't really seem feasible when you only have access to dlvl 1. Maybe I should try to buy a wand of Magic Missiles with my starting cash?

SET TRAPS!!!!!! A brigand is only a weak warrior if you play him as a warrior. He is part warrior, part Oangband rogue. He will definitely do more damage with a regular sling than they will with a regular crossbow. I was thinking a sling, some potions of speed, some scrolls of phase door. You should be able to find some some combat oriented potions and scrolls (heroism) to make sure you don't miss too much with the ammo.

Back to the traps, set the traps where the monsters can't see them, then lure them into walking onto them. (If they see you set them, they are much more likely to disarm them).

[nppangband]

Quote:
Originally Posted by nppangband
dragon sand demons

That is an awesome typo

Sounds like a great idea for a new monster race.

Don't forget "can blink toward you out of a vault and breathe nether" - six years ago, but it still stings.

Teleport_to now uses up almost two turns worth of monster energy, so you should get a turn to react before he get's in an attack (which will almost certainly be a 550+ damage nether breath. Definitely use an inventory slot for scrolls of teleportation at all times)

[Derakon]

Teleport_to now uses up almost two turns worth of monster energy, so you should get a turn to react before he get's in an attack (which will almost certainly be a 550+ damage nether breath. Definitely use an inventory slot for scrolls of teleportation at all times)

So he teleports to me, I teleport away, miscellaneous monsters where I teleport to get a turn on me, he teleports to me, I teleport away...

I'll give the traps a shot. The help described brigands as being nearly as good as warriors at melee and good with slings; I was all set to take him on when I found a sling, then it was cursed, so I said "Ah, screw it, might as well go down fighting". Did a credible job on his Snaga escort but the boss himself was a tough nut to crack.

Just completing the task for this competition is a major feat in and of itself. Personally I wouldn't worry too much about turn count. Who wins in the (not terribly unlikely IMO) event that nobody manages to kill every unique? Most uniques killed? First to kill Morgoth?

[nppangband]

Just completing the task for this competition is a major feat in and of itself. Personally I wouldn't worry too much about turn count. Who wins in the (not terribly unlikely IMO) event that nobody manages to kill every unique? Most uniques killed? First to kill Morgoth?

The winner is the one who kills the most uniques.
In the event of a tie (ie multiple people have killed all 104 uniques), the tiebreaker is lowest turncount.

[Timo Pietilä]

Don't forget "can blink toward you out of a vault and breathe nether" - six years ago, but it still stings.

I had an encounter with CGV and Vecna with that at stat-gain region in NPP. It was truly hair raising experience, but I managed to get to stairs before he decided to use any of his instant death -spells.

This brings in my mind. In NPP it is important to be able to escape level. Not just region of dungeon.

[tigpup]

Also, starting out this comparatively physically-weak warrior-type with a quest for Golfimbul is cruel. I thought I might be able to take him with some iron shots and a sling I'd found, but the sling turned out to be cursed...at clvl 9 with a magic dagger (only two blows!) in melee, with heroism and bless running, I got him down about three stars before he slaughtered me. Saving up for the crossbow in the weapons store doesn't really seem feasible when you only have access to dlvl 1. Maybe I should try to buy a wand of Magic Missiles with my starting cash?

I've managed to kill him twice at clvl7 with traps, 00dagger, !speed, ?phase, !hero, ?bless all from dlvl1 along with enchanted ammo (arrows once, shots once) and !CSW all bought from store. If you want to town-scum for Lotho Pimple at about clvl4, you might get a nice drop from him (although I think Jeff toned down his drops recently).

[tigpup]

Just a quick comment that if you don't already know NPP hydras they are not same thing as vanilla hydras. Think AMHD + Kavlax crossbreeds for top ones. Very very very nasty.

(unless they have been weakened, I haven't played NPP for a long time).

&

The hydras themselves haven't been weakened. But there are no longer hydra pits and nests.

The ones with over 10 heads are extremely dangerous.

Big hydras will turn-up in animal nests, and for animal-nest quests, some will be OOD. Combined with some of the nastier hounds (gravity, time etc), animal nests in NPP are dangeous places.

Azathoth (lowecase black 'j') is probably the most dangerous NPP addition. It starts showing up at around 3000', can pass through walls, and dish out damage like Morgoth.

Do not (as I did once) mistake Azathoth for a black-pudding; which is also a dark-grey j.

Was Azathoth orginally a replacement for vanilla's Azriel?

[nppangband]

Do not (as I did once) mistake Azathoth for a black-pudding; which is also a dark-grey j.

And that is an excellent point. Azathoth really should flashing colors creature like all of the other dangerous creatures.

Was Azathoth orginally a replacement for vanilla's Azriel?

I don't remember if it was at that exact Angel. I got rid of Gabriel the Messenger and all of the angels. I added Evil Iggy, Azathoth, Arien, Maia of the Sun, and added non-unique Ainu and the blue wizards. Then Anssi Ramela changed all of the Ainu to Servants of the Valar, and added uniques like Radaghast the Brown and others.

{begin soapbox subtly intended for the attention of the Angband dev team} It really is a much better use of the "A" symbol, and adds much more Tolkien Flavor to the game than Angels. It is also an opportunity to add many creatures to the later part of the game, where new monsters needed. If the Angband wanted to add them to Vanilla, I would happily prepare the monster entries for them... {end soapbox}

[tigpup]

And that is an excellent point. Azathoth really should flashing colors creature like all of the other dangerous creatures.

It does have the ATTR_MULTI flag, but the colour changes are subtle.

[buzzkill]

I thought this was worth cross-posting here since this bug exists in 5.2 and affects the current competition.

I just responded to your recent forum post. The mushroom of blindness has a bug. It poisons you for 200+d200 durns. It is supposed to blind you for that duration.

My apologies for this mistake.

[nppangband]

@buzzkill - Thanks for cross posting that.

I also want to add that id-by-use is a bad idea in NPP, and will eventually kill your character. I have not adopted the revised Vanilla object list. There are plenty of cursed items, heavily cursed items, potions of death that cause 5000 hp damage if you drink them, potions that permanently drain your stats, etc..... You can try to identify potions by throwing them at monsters. The worst that can happen is they might get hasted or healed. But the best way is to wait for ID scrolls, staves of perception, haul stuff back to the stores and sell them, or use the identify service in the magic shop.

For bad items, when you destroy them, the verify prompt is (y/n/s) (yes, no, squelch). If you hit 's', the item will be marked to be squelched in the future and you will never see one again (unless you change the squelch settings in the knowledge menus or the squelch menus).

Eventually you will get staves and rods of mass identify that makes dealing with id'ing stuff on the floor incredibly efficient.

[buzzkill]

A) So, assuming no one kills all the uniques, how will the winner be determined?
B) What is 'body count' and how is it calculated? If it's intended to be a count of dead uniques, it's malfunctioning, badly.

[Nick]

A) So, assuming no one kills all the uniques, how will the winner be determined?

Killer of most uniques.

B) What is 'body count' and how is it calculated? If it's intended to be a count of dead uniques, it's malfunctioning, badly.

Yes it is, and yes it is. I'll ask Pav about fixing it.

[tigpup]

That's the reason for the rule that a character is disqualified if they bypasss (don't enter) more than 15 greater vaults. Hopefully that won't be too viable of a strategy.

hmmm - I'm not sure that is a fair or accurate way of checking for stair-scumming.

I just left a superb level after killing Ulfang the Black. I left because of Harowen the Black Hand almost killing me. I never saw the Hourglass vault, and I wasn't stairscumming, but I *needed* off that level asap. I explored about half the level and killed a unique (the point of the comp).

My notes show this:

| 791124| 1750 | 31 | Killed Ulfang the Black
| 796163| 1700 | 31 | Left the level without entering the Greater vault
| continued... | | ("Hourglass")

Thoughts on fairness of counting this as stairscumming?