Iron Man

[Mantis]

Hello everyone.

After much effort I managed to nab a Sil with a Feanor & a Finarfin- playing on the Android 1.3 build. However I found nipping between 900 & 950 a little immersion breaking and decided to try the straight down challenge option. It's quite tough, my best effort perished around 750 when I was too reluctant to escape the level - you need every point of XP you can get or you're soon overmatched! Anyone have any advice on the best sort of build for this kind of challenge?

[wobbly]

My only ironman win was a christmas start with Dramborleg. It's hard to do without leaping which makes some kind of sprinting archer a natural choice.

[Mantis]

Thanks, my previous winners were stabbers so an archer might be the way to go. Alternatively I might try reducing the turncount if having to take Leaping proves too restrictive & repetitive. It saves your bacon now & again though!

[wobbly]

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21949

3 Sils, ironman. Got him down to 3, tried Calris, my vampric & Angrist. Think I would of made the kill if I tried Angrist earlier. Very tight in the endgame, I was pretty lucky with drops though I never found the damage ring I wanted.

[Mantis]

Congrats, very interesting choices! You went with a non-leaping stabber it seems : I just had a YASD at 750 with a decent archer after leaping somewhere, discovering that the corridor configuration didn't permit leaping back, and then getting a multiple critical decapitation by Tevildo's Guard on a misclick. Maybe leaping isn't worth it after all!

[wobbly]

I held back the xp for leaping till I was pretty sure I could just risk it. The problem is a chasm cutting the level in half can lose you 2 levels. I'm actually using the shield in my pack for most of the game which left me a little noisy for pure stabbing. Usually I used the bow rather then risking getting to stabbing range.

[Mantis]

Well you seem to have gotten enough XP anyway, I guess Iron Man costs the player chances to find more consumables & items rather than XP. Incidentally, do Iron Man rules apply on the ascent too? Though I suppose crumbling stairs can still happen...

[wobbly]

Yeah you wont be short the xp if you murder everything. I had danger on my gear for the 2nd half of the descent, not sure how much extra it netted me. It's still a bit tight if you want the kill, just because without a perfect gear set you'll want to be a bit more optimized in your build. I could of done with extra melee/evasion, though even with my odd build I had enough, just didn't get the fight quite right.

Not sure about the ascent, I never tried to go down. There's always chasms though, so going down is not going to be a problem.