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“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead -
I just want to say that I'm greatly enjoying watching the ladder for this competition. I hope everyone's having fun!
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As a side effect I now greatly fear not just the Tarrasque, Huan and the top spell casters. The fear for those guys is fading in comparison with the absolute horror of running around at speed zero without see invisible praying not to meet a Poltergeist or another shrieking mushroom patch... Ruined 4ever, I guessComment
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Just died to an Earth Elemental... figured it would only melee me, forgot about whatever it can apparently cast (too lazy to look it up).
But seriously, I had a ton of fun.. highlights, after getting past the ignominious deaths to self-immolation or shrieker patches:
- Casting 'maa' in each new room and praying nothing is awake
- Phase Dooring to get enough distance to blast something
- Realizing stair scumming is not scummy, but an essential survival trait
- Realizing resistances are *completely* futile
- The sinking feeling when the Ancient Red Dragon refused to die after a rocket to the face
- The elation when it then *failed* to fire a rocket!!
It was fun, but also doomed to failure, so the clear conclusion is that Morgoth should arm all his minions with Rocket Launchers.Comment
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I totally agree with Gorbad's analysis. A stack of ?Phase Door, shameless stair scumming, constant prayer and a lot of luck is required to make any headway at all in this comp. http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=19012 has gotten lucky a few times now with monsters that exceed the 1,000 life-rating, but @ is definitely doomed to failure!“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are DeadComment
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Rocketband - Rock My World
Rocketband - was supremely difficult. Some postmortem thoughts:
1. Early levels:
- Stair-scumming is absolutely necessary in the early levels, and, actually, throughout the game. Stair scum relentlessly. Never start a level with unknown terrain around you or monsters danger-close, if you can help it.
- See-invisible is a must have right from the start as is great magic device skill to reduce failure rate on the launcher. Hence, High-elf is probably the best bet.
- A stack of ?Phase door is required. Major care must be taken not to be in the blast radius of your own shots, so phasing out of danger-close range is often called upon. NEVER stand in your own blast radius!!! (At the later levels, my @ sometimes did stand in fringes, but was able to survive the spillage and heal.) Check every shot before firing!
- Get to know the targeting mechanism. You will need to do a lot of creative targeting to place shots on target (or even close to target is good sometimes).
- Speed and stealth are the only stats that matter. As fast as possible and as stealthy as possible. Resistances, armor class, and hitpoints are all virtually irrelevant.
- Detect monsters (supplemented by detect invisible from scrolls or staves) is vital at nearly every turn. Detect as often as possible. You cannot let yourself be surprised, even for a moment. Upgrade to Reveal Monsters, or better yet, a stack of Detection rods, as soon as you can.
- Having a melee weapon (must be an artifact, as Derakon has removed all others) is helpful for weaker (non-packing) monsters.
2. Mid levels:
- Continued stair scumming.
- Telepathy, speed and stealth are the must finds.
- As is getting the failure rate down on casting stone to mud. Since Derakon removed all wands, the only potentially viable characters are Mages, Rangers, and Rogues. You must get the failure rate down on casting this vital spell. Playing a Rogue, I never used the Detect Objects ability, stealth and magic device skill was all that mattered. I might go with a mage if I were to do it again, just to be able to get a zero-fail on stone to mud and virtually unlimited banishment and mass banishment for the later levels.
- Reveal monsters is vital at nearly every turn. Even better are a stack of Detection rods.
- Mapping is also quite important. Once you get stone to mud and telepathy, you can map and plan hockey sticks to take out powerful uniques and troublesome monsters.
3. Later levels and end-game:
- More stair scumming.
- I never found it, but a great find would be the Arkenstone, as it would allow for hockey-stick planning on a global scale.
- Creative uses of permanent walled vaults and long, hockey-stick tunnels, will allow you to take out every unique, including Morgoth.
4. Epilogue:
-Luck is the biggest necessary factor. No matter how careful I was, there were times when @ was exposed. Monsters failing their rocket shots at a few critical moments or having intervening monsters that took the brunt of enemy blasts saved me.“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are DeadComment
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Unbelievable! Congratulations on an amazing win, and thanks for the post-mortem thoughts. I honestly was unsure whether anyone would ever manage to actually beat the game without cheating. The concepts of what you would need to do (paranoid detection and massive abuse of hockeysticks) are relatively simple, but the necessary string of alertness and luck needed to implement it successfully seemed beyond plausibility. I am sincerely impressed.
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Wow, that's incredible!Comment
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& Myth debunked: Rocketband was unbeatable; proved wrong by Ingwe IngweronMy best try at PosChengband 7.0.0's nightmare-mode on Angband.live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwAR0WOphUA
If I'm offline I'm probably in the middle of maintaining Gentoo or something-Linux or other.
As of February 18th, 2022, my YouTube username is MidgardVirtuosoComment
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It isn't unbeatable, but it is *VERY* difficult. Once @ has telepathy, can reliably cast stone to mud, and cast reveal monsters (or has a stack of detection rods), the game does become easier. Not easy, but easier. The hardest part is to not die to inattention. That, and you do need some luck.
I just tried it with a High-elf Mage, and found it much better. Still not easy by a long-shot, but it made me wish I'd played a mage in the comp. I got my mage down to DL 32 before he died. Failed the rocket launcher at an inopportune moment.“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are DeadComment
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Congrats to Ingwe for the insane accomplishment of becoming the Ultimate and Penultimate Rocketeer. Kudos also to Gorbad for #3.
Also thanks to Derakon for making the best Angband variant of all time.Glaurung, Father of the Dragons says, 'You cannot avoid the ballyhack.'Comment
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Thanks to debo for the inspiration.
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