Comp 168

[Sose]

This is my first time ever playing PosChengband but it's pretty easy to get into. And lots of fun!

At the start you can't attack anything, so you must get a corpse with your wand of magic missiles. After that you can press 'U' to possess a corpse you're standing on (or have in your inventory). Special abilities like 'shoot arrow' are also in the 'U' menu. Spells are under 'm'. Sometimes it's better to be barehanded in the beginning, you can check your damage with 'Cw' to figure out whether your damage is better with a weapon or without.

Finding a good corpse is pretty much trial & error unless you know the monsters well. Good things early game are things that move fast obviously, since +10 speed can quite easily be more powerful than anything else. If you wanna find out a bit more about a corpse without changing into one, you can *id* it. Usually if I find an interesting corpse, I'll pick it up, recall (careful, they weigh a lot -> make you slow) and use the town's *id* service to find out the stats. Monster recall gives a hint about the abilities/spells you will get.

One quick question: for example Dark Elven Warlock's monster memory says that it can evolve into Dark Elven Sorceror with enough experience. Does this apply to possessors? How much is required approximately? Or is this something different, like related to killing player's summons or something

[chris]

I think I might join-in on this silliness when I get a bit of free time. I have not played a possesser yet, so I'm not even sure what keys to press to possess & what not. If someone doesn't mind giving a quick summary on the basics? I'll just work out what forms are good by trial & error & dying, more fun that way.

Possession is a racial power, accessed with the 'U' command. You have powers to Possess and to Unpossess.

[1] Kill something to get a corpse. Then either pick it up (Warning: Corpses are *heavy*) or stand on top of it.

[2] Use the Possess power (Ua) to possess the corpse. You'll be prompted for which corpse to use and warned (if applicable) that you may permanently lose your currently possessed corpse.

[3] When you find a better corpse, goto [1]. You can use Possess to go directly from your current form to a new form. Unpossess will leave your current form without assuming a new form, and is really only there in case you make a big mistake, possessing something worse than your native form (This seems hard to do, but you might possess a fish that can't move on land as an example).

Tips:
[1] Use probing (staff or rod) to learn about the form before killing the monster.
[2] Use *Identify* on the corpse to learn about the form after killing the monster.
[3] Use ~4 (The Monster Knowledge Screen) to review corpse attributes before assuming a new form. This will show you all available corpses (pack + home) and allow you to make a more informed decision.
[4] High speed forms are useful early on: Fruit bat and Cave spider are excellent first forms, as are Farmer's puppies. Later on, hounds are excellent forms for carrying you down to stat gain depth (DL30).
[5] Have fun!

[chris]

One quick question: for example Dark Elven Warlock's monster memory says that it can evolve into Dark Elven Sorceror with enough experience. Does this apply to possessors? How much is required approximately? Or is this something different, like related to killing player's summons or something

Monster evolution won't apply for the possessor. It is only for pets that will gain experience as they fight along side you (There are riding classes that ride a pet, so evolution sometimes comes in handy!)

[Sose]

Ah, thanks for the clarification. Btw, does dual wielding require something special? I've tried with two relatively light weapons but my accuracy seems to always be really horrible.

[Arjen]

You have a dual wield skill which is trained by actually dual wielding weapons. But training it takes time.

[Sose]

Oh ok, thanks Arjen.

In case someone is willing to try the competition but hasn't played PosChengband or Possessors before, I wrote a really small quickstart guide based on my experiences playing the variant for the first time. It really only covers the absolute basics needed to get started and exploring the dungeon on your own.

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/d59a4f7c961a943e881d

[HugoVirtuoso]

And this compo has no virtues.

[Sose]

Hmmm! Is this intended? If you change corpse as a possessor, your "skill" while dual wielding goes back to 10%? This makes it basically worthless to dual wield until very late game?

I was using Grendel's corpse. Skill in 'Cw' is 44.7% / 41.7%. Changed to something else, in this case Logrus Master. 10% / 10%. Luckily my Grendel corpse survived, as I lost almost 100hp also with the new form. When I changed back to Grendel, the skills were the same.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Hmmm! Is this intended? If you change corpse as a possessor, your "skill" while dual wielding goes back to 10%? This makes it basically worthless to dual wield until very late game?

I was using Grendel's corpse. Skill in 'Cw' is 44.7% / 41.7%. Changed to something else, in this case Logrus Master. 10% / 10%. Luckily my Grendel corpse survived, as I lost almost 100hp also with the new form. When I changed back to Grendel, the skills were the same.

This is by design. If you use ~4 and then press '=' a few times you'll notice that each monster possessed has a specific class. I think Grendel falls under Warrior, thus having rather "decent" dual-wielding ability.

The Logrus master is a different body type...a Mystic, I think. Due to the body-type, the Logrus master is actually limited to [Unskilled]! for Dual-wielding and use of most weapon types (with some exceptions). So, Logrus masters are hopeless at Dual-wielding. Yet, they can use weapons well if you increase your DEX or have Rings or Gloves that increase accuracy.

[Sose]

Ok, I thought that the skill was individual for each corpse but that is not the case. Just that mystics are bad at dual wielding. I got a ninja corpse now, Nightblade and my dual wielding ability is still good.

[wobbly]

A couple of quick questions.

I'm seeing a lot of mention of levels & forms in people's dumps & I'm a little confused. Is it a minimum level to possess a form? or a max. level available to a form?

Drank a potion of blindness & it's not showing up in known objects, bug?

I've worked out there's a unique for level 6, what other levels?

Thanks in advance.

[chris]

A couple of quick questions.

I'm seeing a lot of mention of levels & forms in people's dumps & I'm a little confused. Is it a minimum level to possess a form? or a max. level available to a form?

Both. Your possession ability (Ua) has a current power associated with it. You cannot possess monsters whose level exceeds this power. So there is no jumping into high powered forms too early.

On the other hand, there is a max level for forms, which is generally L15 or the monster's level + 5, whichever is greater. Once you reach the max level of your current form, you stop gaining experience. You can keep the form as long as you like, but really, at this point, you should be on the lookout for something stronger.

Drank a potion of blindness & it's not showing up in known objects, bug?

That sounds like a bug. You are looking in the Object Knowledge screen (~2) rather than the character dump, right? The statistics section of the character dump only shows hard coded objects: basically, stuff I want to see to gauge game balance.

I've worked out there's a unique for level 6, what other levels?

The Angband quest levels are 6, 12, 24, 38, 44, 50, 56, 62, 76, 88. Of course, Oberon is on 99 and The Serpent is on 100.

[wobbly]

Thanks. Yeah ~2, perhaps the game decided I couldn't see the potion because I'm blind from drinking it or something odd...

Edit: Interesting, as soon as I walked over another potion of blindness it appeared in my item recall, so it seems to be only the 1st potion/scroll

[Sose]

Just one random useful tip: early on weapons are quite useless if you don't have a really good one. Check your form's unarmed damage with 'Cw' and compare it to your damage with your strongest weapon wielded. There are even some late-game forms that can be absolute beasts in melee without a weapon! You can still wear a shield in your other hand (I think).

Usually I only start using weapons after getting The Sting if I haven't found anything of similar power level earlier.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Compo 158 participation is picking up. I like this. I return to this later this, when I hopefully get the chance.