Competition 144

[Nick]

Competition 144 (One Gross, if I may use the expression) is now available from the competition page; it is an NPPMoria Elf Ranger.

Note that comp 143 still has a bit under two days to go.

[nppangband]

First bug report is already in, but fortunately it is fixable in the edit files for anyone who has already started (As soon as I post this I am uploading fixed zip files to the NPP site as well):

The ranger can't use mage spellbooks. The fix is in *nppangband/lib/edit/m_p_class.txt:

Scroll down to the entry for the ranger, the first couple lines are:

N:4:Ranger
S:2:2:0:1:1:1
C:30:32:30:3:24:24:56:72
X:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0
I:4:40:30000:40
A:5:35:4
M:92:3:400

The M line should read (change the 92 to 90):
M:90:3:400

[nppangband]

For the seasoned Angband players,when deciding how deep to dive, here are some things to help:

1) Ghosts are quite deadly at thier depth. Already one comp character has been killed by them, and I suspect there will be many more before this thing is through.

Thier native depth is 1550', but they will start appearing around 1300 in special rooms. They move quickly, and can pop out of the walls and can consistently hit the player for 150-175 hp damage in one player turn at normal speed. Do not hold down an arrow key to walk down a corridor. Here is my fully healthy character that died in two player turns this way:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=14341

What makes them hard is that stat gain potions are native to 1250', so the charcter either has to face a long wait for some potions of constitution at that depth, or make sure they have some way to detect evil or invisible and avoid them.

2) The equipment in Moria is much simpler. A winning kit is simply armor or shield of resistance, an amulet of the magi for free action/see invisible (gloves of free action and a holy avanger weapon also works, and there are rings for both. A defender's sword covers all of those), 2 sources of speed(there are rings of speed +1, and boots of speed, and potions/staves of speed), and enough firepower and healing to kill the Balrog.

3) Amulets of the magi, rings of speed, and the Balrog are all native to 2500'. At 2500' and below either Evil Iggy or the Balrog will appear on every level. Max depth is level 63 (3150').

4) There is no poison resistance, so an ancient chromatic dragon will kill a healthy player in one breath, and an ancient green dragon will come close. There also isn't any source of confusion resistance, so CCW and healing potions are essential. Resist blindness is available, but not nearly as common as in Angband.

5) Healthy young dragons are native to 1450', and have 256 hp, so their unresisted breath damage is 85 hp. Yound red dragons are at 1750' and their hp stats are 288 with 89 damage breath. Young chromatics are at 1800' and have 320 hp so 106 hp unresisted breath damage.

6) Mature dragons start at 1750' and their hp stats are 384 with 128 hp damage. Mature reds are 1850', and are 480 hp and a breath damage of 160 (mature black dragons have 16 less hp than reds). Mature chromatics are native to 1900', have 640 hp, with 213 breath damage unresisted.

7) Ancient dragons start at 1900' feet, vary in thier hp but are around 704 hp, and 234 breath damage. Ancient greens have 720 hp/ 240 damage. Ancient reds are 2000', have 840 hp, 280 breath damage. Ancient chromatics have 2080 hp, 693 breath damage.

8) Aside from Evil Iggy and The Balrog, there are no new monsters after 2000', so there is no point in lingering at that depth. Dive to 2450' at that point. There are other nasty monsters around 2000', such as emperor liches, to watch out for until you are ready to win.

9) The Balrog moves at 4x regular speed, has 3000 hp (1000 fire breath unresisted). His combat would probably be around 100hp per round, but a theoretical max of 216, and he can touch to absorb charges, which can haste a monster in NPPMoria. I would guess most rangers will be killing him with their bows, anyways. He can also cause wounds for potentially a bit more than 100hp.

10) You will definitely not need to get to level 40 to win. I won with a level 36 priest, and I suspect a ranger easily can win with levels in the low 30s. Which is why the comp criteria is the way it is. With wands of wall building and detection it is easy to avoid Ancient Chromatic Dragons and thier instadeath poison breaths.

11) The other reason the comp criteria is based on experience rather than turncount is the Moria speed system, where every speed item doubles your speed (2 speed items make you as fast as the Balrog, three make you twice as fast). If the comp were based on turncount, the first lucky person to find a ring of speed out-of-depth would be the winner, easily.

12) Finally, don't ignore those molds and jellies. In Moria some of them are worth *alot* of hp for their level.

[Wraitheist]

Thanks, that is valuable info! What do you mean by your last point that molds and jellies are worth a lot of HP?

[nppangband]

Typo. I meant experience points.

[Wraitheist]

Ah, gotcha. I noticed that you can pick up skeleton corpses and shards of pottery. Are these just flavor or do they have any utility?

[Malak Darkhunter]

It is just there for flavor , old angband/ moria had this as well as many variants including sang band , this feature was removed in angband today in an attempt to "clean" up the dungeon, and have less dungeon clutter. It was called TMJ to much junk and was removed from the game

[nppangband]

But with the squelch options, once you find a piece of junk or bad item you can set it to "always destroy", then you won't have to bother with it for the rest of the game.

I remember in Moria items couldn't even be destroyed, much less squelched. The only way to get rid of something was to start throwing objects into a corner Once all the available floor space was taken up (there was no object stacking), items would start dissappearing when you throw them into the same area.

[Wraitheist]

Man...this is tough. Last game I died on lvl 1 by falling through a trap door. The next, I went down the stairs to '150 and died to something invisible that I couldn't escape from.

[nppangband]

Yes, it is. The original creator of Moria took each player victory as his own defeat, and tried to "fix" the game so that whatever that person did to win wouldn't work again. For example, I believe he made the balrog pass through walls after somebody used pillar dancing to win.

This version of Moria isn't nearly as difficult, but the general tone of the game is that winning is a difficult achievement.

[chris]

Yes, it is. The original creator of Moria took each player victory as his own defeat, and tried to "fix" the game so that whatever that person did to win wouldn't work again. For example, I believe he made the balrog pass through walls after somebody used pillar dancing to win.

Aw, come on ... Pillar dancing is clearly cheating!!

[Wraitheist]

Wow, that's an interesting approach to design! Quite the achievement when you manage to win anyway, I'd imagine!

[nppangband]

Wow, that's an interesting approach to design! Quite the achievement when you manage to win anyway, I'd imagine!

Well, bear in mind this was the mid 80s, when the typical video game experience was putting a quarter in an arcade machine and you just tried to survive for 5-10 minutes. So the idea of being able to save a character and play it again the next day was pretty great at the time. And having an actual winning objective, regardless of how hard it was, was fairly amazing.

But yes, fast forward to today, where checkpoints are a gaming standard, and "one game, one life is almost nonexistent, and it seems pretty harsh.

As for the competition, mages start out as weak characters, but end up the strongest. So the good news is that most deaths will happen after 15 minutes of play, but if you survive the first couple hours you are well on your way to winning.

[DaviddesJ]

12) Finally, don't ignore those molds and jellies. In Moria some of them are worth *alot* of xp for their level.

But, for the competition, xp are bad....

[Nick]

But, for the competition, xp are bad....

Only if you win