Complete N00b's Journey Character #4: Embar, the Edain Beor

[wizard44]

Introduction: This is the fourth and final character in progress in the series called the "Complete N00b's Journey", where I attempt to see how far I get in my four tries despite my n00bish mistakes. This character, whose name is Embar and is an Edain Beor that is pursuing a standard melee build, has made it to 250 feet after some tense moments with some orc archers. To celebrate, I am now starting a thread for this character to track his further progress. As a reminder for this series, the number before the hyphen signifies the attempt that I am playing, and the number after the hyphen signifies the goal that I have finished. With that, I bring you:

Complete N00b's Journey: Part 4-1

After some ladder research, I started by taking 6 melee and 6 evasion points and quickly dashed down to 100 ft. I find a battle axe and kill a couple of orcs and quickly find and descend to 150 ft, where I then give 2 more evasion points and get the Flanking skill. From there, I get a longbow, a cloak, and some potions, and nearly get killed by orcish archers. I manage to get to a place where I can rest and drink a potion of orcish liquor to recover, and make it to the stairs to 200 ft. From there, I step into a trap that blinds me, find a helm, and find the stairs to 250 ft and end the part, hardly believing my luck.

The next goal is to get down to 350 feet, which I feel this character is slight underdog to accomplish.

So what should I spend my current pool of experience on now? Charge, Polearm Mastery, or some other skill? Or should I increase my Will points and go for hardiness?

Some items that I will work towards getting before going to the next part is a brass lantern and a shield to improve my survival chances. Any other items that I should look for before going to 350 feet?

The below link is the current status of Embar, which will be updated as I post future parts of this character's progress:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=22979

Any tips to improve this character's survival is appreciated.

[Quirk]

Since you've picked up Flanking, Dodging would be the skill with the most obvious synergy. I think I'd use what you've learned from the pacifist runs to play quite cautiously, this Edain will be a bit under-powered. Most of your XP should probably go into Melee and Evasion early on.

Use your bow, archery is a bit too good in 1.3. Archery attacks vs 1/2 Evasion, so it's quite solid even without investing much in it. You may want to skip using the gauntlets if you're using archery a lot.

I'm not sure how best to use your Grace. If you're making a melee run, Slaying and probably Sharpness are going to be eventually necessary or nearly so, and you can probably afford another song or two on top of that. For early survivability Elbereth has its uses - it won't work against wolves and spiders, but it does scare off smarter foes. I'd keep that in mind if you find yourself facing a lot of orcs, you only need about 600 XP investment to get Elbereth online (though at such low Song it's probably only early orcs you'll be able to scare off). I would keep the investment back until you need it though. You don't have enough Grace to have a large Voice pool, you're an Edain, so it probably requires more precision in song usage than you can reasonably muster to go in heavily on Elbereth. Sil 1.3 singer strategy basically boils down to Silence/Lorien, Elbereth/archery build, or the default Slaying/Sharpness, and the last is really viable for the late game and throne room only. Freedom and Trees provide good utility but you can't really invest in them at the expense of Melee and Evasion, you need to wait until they're relatively cheap compared to Melee and Evasion upgrades.

Hardiness is nice to have eventually, but I'd leave it until the cost of getting it is less than increasing Melee and Evasion by a couple of points.

[wizard44]

Thanks a lot for the input. Unfortunately, I get shot by a horde of orc archers at 300 ft just as I was about to escape the level to heal up.

YASD #4: Lucky shots from these damn orcish archers.

I get the Dodging skill and put another point into melee, and begin my exploration of the 250 ft level. I end up having to reload the level after running into a mewlip and having my memories wiped by something that rang a bell. In the second reloading, I find a small wooden chest that fails to open despite repeated attempts to do so. I then trigger an alarm trap and rush to the downstairs to 300 ft. I then run into a group of orc warriors and orc archers, and get shot by a very lucky hit that takes just enough hp to get me to 0 just as I was attempting to retreat back upstairs.

I gave the ladder a final update, and will provide my review of this game shortly in the main thread. Thank you all for your input.

[Pete Mack]

Too bad, though somewhat predictable. Sil is a hard game--the usual method is to plan out a strategy in advance, not have it forced on you by chance. That said, archers take special tactics that take a while to figure out. Not a surprise you died to them in your first melee character.