First Time Winning Angband

[Pete Mack]

@archo
Rangers have one excellent early spell: Resist poison. And detect life is a good, especially when backed up with a Staff of detect evil.

[archolewa]

Oh. It appears that the Necromancer and Blackguard classes are much more complicated than I first thought.

Maybe I should try a different class for now. Maybe a Ranger?

Depends on what kind of game you are interested in. If you want a game similar to mage, but a bit more forgiving. you can try rogue. They play similar to mages, but are tough enough to melee every now and then. If you wamt a more aggressive playstyle without all the Blackguard weirdness, warriors are a good choice.

I honestly find Rangers to be tough. Their melee capabilities are bad, their health is good but not great, and their stealrh is also good but not great. Meanwhile most of their early spells are easily reproducible with items you can buy in town. All tbey really have going for them are fast bow shots. Geeat if you can find a powerful bow, not so much otherwise.

[Hounded]

Uh, what? Learning to ride a bike is hard, but actually riding a bike is dead easy. (Though I did have to remind my 79yo mother that riding a bike below 5mph is far more difficult than 6mph.)

Sorry; was implying that the "natural" state of playing Angband ends with a dead @ and the game ensures you never forget how to do that.

Too dry? Nevermind...

[SonicSpeedBryce]

Oh. It appears that the Necromancer and Blackguard classes are much more complicated than I first thought.

Maybe I should try a different class for now. Maybe a Ranger?

[sffp]

I've been going back and forth between Kobold Necromancer and Half-Orc Blackguard for a year now. I'm trying to get a win in each class/race. They are tough to play.
Both come Nec and BG come with a significant handicap - Necs need to avoid light so that beautiful +3 strengh artifact lantern you find, leave it on the floor, it's dross.

BGs don't restore their spell points by resting - they actually lose them. It is constant battle all the way down (or at least, as far down as I've gotten one. )

[archolewa]

Blackguards dont have the same evil enemy problem Necromancers do. Despite being the half-caster, Im not sure Blackguards and Necromancers have any shared spells at all. What you want as a Blackguard is a nice, heavy weapon. And a willimgness to murder damn near everything you see in the early game.

[SonicSpeedBryce]

Well, I'll just have to stay clear of evil in the early game till I find a good artifact/strength and dexterity potions. Aside from that, it shouldn't be TOO different from the Mage I won with. Though, I imagine statements like that are liable to send characters to an early grave.

[Pete Mack]

Blackguard is very heavily spell dependent. Early in the game, you can't get more than 1.3 blows for quite a while, though you can get 2 with spells.

[SonicSpeedBryce]

You know, now I'm almost tempted to run Necromancer just for the promise of high difficulty alone.

Almost.

That being said, it would be nice to have melee as a fallback for nether resistant enemies. I guess I'll try Blackgaurd first then.

[DavidMedley]

I'll sometimes force quit when I press the wrong button by accident and die. Do we all do that?

I've never force-quit or save scummed. A few times I've turned on the recover from death option, planning to play to the end but I always lose motivation on those characters.

[Pete Mack]

Necro is considered by many to be the most difficult class. (Druid is also in the running.) You might want to try the equivalent half-caster first, tho Blackguard has its own difficulty.

[Sphara]

I've actually been thinking about starting a new character; how does a Dunadan Necromancer sound? Any advice for that character?

Grats for the 1st one.
Early Necromancer will be in lot of trouble with anything evil. That is all kobolds and orcs, for example. Nether bolt just doesn't cut, even though it does some damage through resistance. Try to get a launcher and kite monsters using bat form. You may even buy stackloads of flask of oil and throw them at monsters.

Necromancer is the hardest start by a big margin, imo.

[Selkie]

I've actually been thinking about starting a new character; how does a Dunadan Necromancer sound? Any advice for that character?

Sounds hard to me. You're playing in the dark so it's good to have some intrinsic infravision. I like high elves, you get light, dark, and nether resisted, you have high INT and decent other stats (except wisdom, but who cares about that), and see invisible is very useful.

[SonicSpeedBryce]

Thank you, all of you, for the kind words of encouragement! I know I'm still nowhere near being good enough at the game to be considered a pro yet, but it's encouraging that I got even one win under my belt. Looking back, though, yeah, maybe I was being over dramatic about using spoilers. Sure, I'll never be able to tell a legendary tale of triumphing over the game with only my own skills and knowledge of the game at that point, but, in the grand scheme of things, not many people will care about that. Oh well.

I've actually been thinking about starting a new character; how does a Dunadan Necromancer sound? Any advice for that character?

[archolewa]

I guess it depends on how you define "unspoiled." I did manage to get my first win populating the monster memory the hard way (dying and Rods of Probing). However, I was lyrking here and reading peoples comments on strategies and the like. That being said, I did come up with anti-summoning corridors on my own, and I was playing a priest, who become very hard to kill around DL60 or so. I still havent won with a mage.

Regardless, congratulations! That first win is something special.