Late-game

[ewert]

To be honest, my last game or two where instead of diving I trudged through the levels, I noticed a huge difference in danger between 60 and 90. I think maybe, the experienced players have a biased view due to knowing stuff and skipping stuff a lot.

Also, now I don't think anything really needs to be done with vaults vs drops really. Playing a janitor is a choice, not a necessity, most of my stuff in the late games are all drops or just found elsewhere on the floor, I am not doing many vaults at all ...

[Pete Mack]

The big spike in difficulty is DL ~ 85, where Greater Balrogs become native.

[ewert]

I didn't really think of it in the sense of specific monsters, but just felt the density of dangerous ones goes up enough to make things, well, more dangerous. An individual one vs experienced player isn't a big issue really usually.

[skydyr]

To be honest, my last game or two where instead of diving I trudged through the levels, I noticed a huge difference in danger between 60 and 90. I think maybe, the experienced players have a biased view due to knowing stuff and skipping stuff a lot.

Also, now I don't think anything really needs to be done with vaults vs drops really. Playing a janitor is a choice, not a necessity, most of my stuff in the late games are all drops or just found elsewhere on the floor, I am not doing many vaults at all ...

I agree 60 is still pretty distinct but once you get to 70 or 75 I think many players are just sifting through stuff they find for endgame gear or consumables, and if you don't have your evades and detection down pat, you're dead anyways. In many ways the focus of the game has changes such that the monsters don't matter as much anymore, at least in my experience. They certainly get more dangerous, but if you can't deal with them at 90 you probably couldn't deal with things at 70 or 75 reliably enough to survive long-term when you were there.

Maybe, as you said though, this is just player skill, but personally I remember when I first started being able to win that getting to 60 was hard but by that point I had enough speed, escapes, and detection that I could reliably get myself out of trouble later on and would only die to stupid things if I did. Granted, this was probably around 3.0.6 or so.

[archolewa]

To be honest, my last game or two where instead of diving I trudged through the levels, I noticed a huge difference in danger between 60 and 90. I think maybe, the experienced players have a biased view due to knowing stuff and skipping stuff a lot.

Also, now I don't think anything really needs to be done with vaults vs drops really. Playing a janitor is a choice, not a necessity, most of my stuff in the late games are all drops or just found elsewhere on the floor, I am not doing many vaults at all ...

This is how I usually play (a steady descent, with very little diving or floor repetition), and my experience is the same. I also find it much more enjoyable.

Sometimes, I think experienced players optimize themselves into a boring game without realizing it, and I would encourage people to change up their playstyle sometimes, especially if you find yourself bored grinding the endgame.

[Nick]

To be honest, my last game or two where instead of diving I trudged through the levels, I noticed a huge difference in danger between 60 and 90.

Excellent. One of the main aims of the monster list revamp in 4.2 was to make sure the idea of "Angband is just Moria with 50 more levels tacked on" was properly dead and buried. I remember frequently seeing advice that the way to play was hang around in the 30s and 40s, max your stats, and then dive straight to DL70 and scum for speed rings.

[mrfy]

This is how I usually play (a steady descent, with very little diving or floor repetition), and my experience is the same. I also find it much more enjoyable.

Sometimes, I think experienced players optimize themselves into a boring game without realizing it, and I would encourage people to change up their playstyle sometimes, especially if you find yourself bored grinding the endgame.

I also descend steadily with occasional trips to the town. I make it more interesting by hunting and killing all the uniques before Morgoth.

[kineahora]

Endgame melee weapon Paladin

So in Standarts:

What does everyone consider an "endgame weapon" for killing the final two on a melee character (I usu play paladins on melee).

I used to basically wait for a really big weapon, like Ringil or The Hammer of Aule, or Deathwreaker.

On my current level 50 paladin who has 2x Speed ring +15 and Vilya, with PDSM, Gondor and some very nice other stuff like +9 elven boots, belthronding, Arkenstone and cambeleg--I had been using the Lance of the Eorlingas which seems better now than in the past with 2d17 +21 damage, and I found a Holy Avenger Scythe of Slicing with +22 damage that's a bit better. I've got top level equipment and a pile of big consumables like potions of *healing* and Life, Restore mana, scrolls of banishment and mass banishment, 2 rods of restoring and a stack of rod of TO.

You think Scythe of Slicing HA with big damage is good enough? I feel like a bit of a wimp waiting for the über melee weapon.

[Werbaer]

You think Scythe of Slicing HA with big damage is good enough? I feel like a bit of a wimp waiting for the über melee weapon.

Holy Avenger Scythe of Slicing is an Über weapon.

My rule of thumb: 100 damage per hit is a very good value. So for a paladin, that would be 500 damage per round. It's not unusual to only have 400 - 450.
These numbers usually include a big damage ring. In your case, with permanent speed around 40, i would find 350 - 400 sufficient.

[ewert]

I agree 60 is still pretty distinct but once you get to 70 or 75 I think many players are just sifting through stuff they find for endgame gear or consumables, and if you don't have your evades and detection down pat, you're dead anyways. In many ways the focus of the game has changes such that the monsters don't matter as much anymore, at least in my experience. They certainly get more dangerous, but if you can't deal with them at 90 you probably couldn't deal with things at 70 or 75 reliably enough to survive long-term when you were there.

Maybe, as you said though, this is just player skill, but personally I remember when I first started being able to win that getting to 60 was hard but by that point I had enough speed, escapes, and detection that I could reliably get myself out of trouble later on and would only die to stupid things if I did. Granted, this was probably around 3.0.6 or so.

A lot of the danger increase also came in my recent exposure from just the overall number of the tougher mobs. Having a few bit out of depth ones in the 60s isn't awful, but having the whole level with lvl 90s population makes a totally different ballgame.

I think the latter paragraph has a root cause to the perception. I also remember before I had any winners that I often would die going past 60, and that kinda made me farm 60 till I was a bonkers character with lots of speed.

AND side note, that also makes you want to scum for vaults, for the out of depth items!

...

Damn. As Nick later said, I think maybe we are stuck in our old ways of playing making it unnecessarily boring or slow or dangerous or whatever.

My mild OCD makes it a bit hard to not store every bloody possibly useful item at home (and I edit my home to be 255 slots), but I think I might try some games where I try to stay in dungeon almost ironmanlike, but using both up n down stairs (but not the same one so no scumming in that sense) ...

[archolewa]

I think I might try some games where I try to stay in dungeon almost ironmanlike, but using both up n down stairs (but not the same one so no scumming in that sense) ...

This is how I play: no word of recall, but still able to use upstairs. It's a lot of fun. I find the game flows so much more nicely without a town, and there's some real hard decisions you have to make when you find a nice artifact or ego item that isn't useful *now* but very well may be in the future. I would recommend trying it with a warrior first. No longer having reliable access to the town books is a bit of a shock for spellcasters. Some can handle it OK, like paladin or ranger. But others, like Blackguard or Mage are in for a pretty nasty shock.

Rogue is nice too because its TO spell is in a dungeon book (so it can't be destroyed by fire). In one of my failed mage attempts, my only copy of the book with TO got burned up by some hellhounds, and the dungeon just would not drop another one.

[kineahora]

Holy Avenger Scythe of Slicing is an Über weapon.

My rule of thumb: 100 damage per hit is a very good value. So for a paladin, that would be 500 damage per round. It's not unusual to only have 400 - 450.
These numbers usually include a big damage ring. In your case, with permanent speed around 40, i would find 350 - 400 sufficient.

OK thx Werbaer for the advice. You were right that weapon was plenty. I think with my other items it did about 680 vs Evil. I chose to wear Vilya instead of one of my +15 speed rings, since I had rods of speed. I opened the game and offed Sauron and Morgoth no problem. Sauron seemed a great candidate for single combat. I decided to kill Morgoth in standard mode. I *REALLY* like Rune of Protection. it seemed 25 *healing* and 13 Life were plenty especially with <5% fail Gondor. I feel rods of healing really aren't great for a non-mage--too high fail% and Vilya is quite a high fail as well. No sense using these when you have piles of *healing* and life. I nearly went through 6 Runes and half my mass banishment.

[kineahora]

Excellent. One of the main aims of the monster list revamp in 4.2 was to make sure the idea of "Angband is just Moria with 50 more levels tacked on" was properly dead and buried. I remember frequently seeing advice that the way to play was hang around in the 30s and 40s, max your stats, and then dive straight to DL70 and scum for speed rings.

I also found the dive from 40-->80 approach has been ironed out.

I also agree with others that posted there are too high fail% on various items for max characters. Why when I have a max character and massive stats should PDSM be 63% fail for activation? The ring Vilya also has like 30% fail for healing? that's basically un-useable. I think these fail% need to come *WAY* down. I mean I consider 10% fail rate on a healing spell to be *RISKY* as hell.

[archolewa]

OK thx Werbaer for the advice. You were right that weapon was plenty. I think with my other items it did about 680 vs Evil. I chose to wear Vilya instead of one of my +15 speed rings, since I had rods of speed. I opened the game and offed Sauron and Morgoth no problem. Sauron seemed a great candidate for single combat. I decided to kill Morgoth in standard mode. I *REALLY* like Rune of Protection. it seemed 25 *healing* and 13 Life were plenty especially with <5% fail Gondor. I feel rods of healing really aren't great for a non-mage--too high fail% and Vilya is quite a high fail as well. No sense using these when you have piles of *healing* and life. I nearly went through 6 Runes and half my mass banishment.

Yeah, dont use Single Combat against Morgoth unless you are REALLY overpowered. You will very quickly end up trapped in a corner getting pummeled by debris, you wont be able to phase door away to heal, and if things go sideways you cant escape.

I made that mistake once, it was he only time I died against Morgoth (well, texhnically my character was trapped for all eternity because he Destructed Morgoth away, and Destruction didnt end Single Combat).

[Pete Mack]

Rod of healing is useless when you have 5% fail on heal spell, ?phase, and !rMana. At that level paladin is essentially unkillable unless overwhelmed by summons.
I actually disagree that HA SoS is a good endgame weapon for a paladin. Yea, you get +25 damage from blessed weapon bonus. But +attacks and free dlay evil from spell is better.
Congrats on the win!