Ironman?

[Fenrir]

My dwarven warriors keep getting massacred by druids and packs of white wolves. Any tips for ironman mode with a race that has low stealth?

Here are a few observations:

- You'll be surprised about all the monsters that are lame in the normal game but turn totally deadly in ironman (ie; those green glutton ghosts!!).

- Summoners are doubly as bad in ironman. And the same goes for monsters that appear with friends (things like the kobold lord deserve some respect now).

- confu/sleep/fear/slow wands will save your life.

... but only in the first levels.

- You want to beat Smeagol and Wormtongue as soon as you see them.

- Detect doors and stairs has never been as important. You want to know where you'll be running to if things get ugly. Detecting doors is also a good way to know where those nasty 'Z's are.


Also, I don't know if this bug was already reported, but the "start with more gold instead of equipment" birth option doesn't appear to do what it is supposed to? (You start without both the equipment and the gold).

[buzzkill]

My dwarven warriors keep getting massacred by druids and packs of white wolves. Any tips for ironman mode with a race that has low stealth?

I have almost no experience with ironman, but I'd assume that you would have to move a bit slower making sure to find most (if not all) of the useful items along the way. That and keep your fingers crossed.

[Nick]

No tips really (I tried Dwarf warriors too, for a while, and found the same sort of problems), but an idea. A compromise between ironman and regular play would be semi-ironman mode, where

• there are no up stairs and
• recall always takes you to one level below the lowest you've been to (unless that's DL99 and Sauron is still alive).

This would be an ideal mode for competitions; in fact, this feels to me like the way the game "should be played".

[Fenrir]

"That dwarven racket!!"

I tried playing a kobold rogue, even though I never play rogues, and it went a lot better... except for when I read that scroll of aggravate monster and woke up that *HUGE* pack of cave spiders. !cure light wounds ?phase, nothing could save that boy.

Conclusion: Always read unID'ed scrolls while standing on the downstairs.

... and I don't remember ever getting killed by a scroll of aggravate monsters before.


Potions of oil seem a lot more powerful than one might think. Cheap, and somewhat good ranged weapon... but do I even have a chance of bringing down Smeagol or Wormtongue with these? If they drop something good enough, the poor guy might even stand a chance...

EDIT: No, they just shrug them off.

[saarn]

I played a little Ironman with a half-troll warrior (and it was fun). The regen was painful because of the food consumption, but sustain strength was nice. Last time I did it was in 3.0.8b, so some of this doesn't work, but my experience was that the best thing to do was not max out stats at the start to get a bit more gold (nerfed now), sell the potion of berserk strength (now worthless in the shops) and the WoR and the broadsword for cash, then stock up on a ton of food and torches, some phase doors, and buy/sell ccw/csw/clw if possible to have them ID'd ahead of time. I think my best run that way hit about clvl20. I died a lot of starvation and darkness. I'd generally pseudo ID all armor/weapons and ID scrolls/staffs/wands/potions/rods by use, which would leave me with big stacks of unknown rings because I almost never found ID. The changes to pseudo ID (magic, rather than good/bad) in 3.1.0 I imagine will make life much harder for Ironman play until you hit about dlvl 30 and excellent stuff starts dropping all over.

Would be nice if the drops of basic consumables (light/food) were higher in Ironman, but maybe that would defeat the purpose. . . Ring of slow digestion is a godsend.

Has anyone won at Ironman?

[Fenrir]

Has anyone won at Ironman?

There have been a few. But none in the current version, that I know of.

Thanks for the tips. I'll try a character without maxed stats next time.

[Pete Mack]

You might try Rogue for your ironman character, but I suspect Ironman may be nearly impossible in 3.1.1. The utility drops are much, much smaller from clearing (say) an orc pit. In earlier versions, orc and dragon pits were a reasonable substitute for stores. No longer.

[saarn]

You might try Rogue for your ironman character, but I suspect Ironman may be nearly impossible in 3.1.1.

Hmm, actually, with MB1 and MB3, you can always have a (possibly expensive/slow) source of light and food once you get beefy enough. I think I may give this a try, see what happens. I'm thinking a half-orc for the HP. . .

[Pete Mack]

Half-Orc is good, but Kobold or High-Elf is better. If you want to play to the class' strengths, you should try to max out your base stealth. The loss of the 1HP/level for Kobold is largely offset by the extra +2 base CON along with very fast leveling.