Advice from accomplished divers

[d_m]

This forum has a bunch of accomplished divers. Do you folks think this character is too deep?

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9032

I am mostly able to scramble around and find deeper stairs. I worry that eventually I'll get unlucky with scrolls of recharge and run out of -TA. Also, my supply of escape scrolls might run out.

Thoughts? My drops have gotten better as I go deeper, but I've only found two artifacts so far, and only about 4 stat potions.

[Magnate]

This forum has a bunch of accomplished divers. Do you folks think this character is too deep?

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9032

I am mostly able to scramble around and find deeper stairs. I worry that eventually I'll get unlucky with scrolls of recharge and run out of -TA. Also, my supply of escape scrolls might run out.

Thoughts? My drops have gotten better as I go deeper, but I've only found two artifacts so far, and only about 4 stat potions.

Very interesting dump - very very similar to my last few dives. I'll be keen to see what advice you get. My view has always been that it's pointless to do anything other than go down - either you will find a killer weapon or launcher, enabling you to take on more monsters, or you'll run out of escapes and die.

I'm also interested in whether you're earning enough money from selling stuff to keep yourself in necessary consumables.

[Flee]

This forum has a bunch of accomplished divers.

Ok so im far from being called a accomplished diver but will give my 2 cents worth

Do you folks think this character is too deep?

No.

keep going down.... next stop 4900'.... detect like mad and run for your life

[PowerDiver]

Do you folks think this character is too deep?

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9032

You've long passed the point of safety or equilibrium or whatever you want to call it. If you hang around at your current depth, you will surely die. You only hope is to get lucky as you descend.

I guess I'd summarize my view as "too deep is not deep enough".

On the way, consider whether you should have chosen your initial stats differently. Do you really need all the points where you put them, or could you have started with a higher CON?

[Zikke]

I would never go down to the bottom without Telepathy, let alone the large amount of other resists you don't have that are insta-kills at low depths, like Nexus, Nether, or Poison.

Without a speed padding, I'd say it's suicide, but that's just my opinion.

[aeneas]

You've long passed the point of safety or equilibrium or whatever you want to call it.

I'd concur. You're either too deep or too shallow . I would go straight to speed ring depth if I were you. Right now you have very little going for you so you're going to have a hard time staying alive very long. If you can find a nice big speed ring that will at least help a bit. ESP would be another item that would make a big difference to your survival chances. But tbh I don't think your odds are great.

But you have to ask yourself what your purpose in playing is. By diving at this rate you put yourself in the hands of the RNG to some extent. I don't really know 3.1, and I gather it's a bit faster than 3.0, but I'd say that this is a very respectable dive given that you haven't had great luck in terms of items. The bright side to that is that even if you get killed you're preparing yourself to win if you dive at this rate and get good items. It will seem relatively easy then. Without having done this sort of suicide diving it would still seem terrifying and you would either back off a bit or make some avoidable mistakes.

So yeah, I think if you're talking about maximizing your chances of winning with this character you're too deep. But if you're talking about learning to play better I think you're doing fine.

EDIT: Also, how many hp would you gain by wearing both those Con rings? It's usually not a lot at that level of CON. +3 speed is actually pretty nice in terms of avoiding double moves so you'd want a pretty big boost to give that up, but... worth keeping an eye on if your CON goes up a bit, or if you can find a few points of speed somewhere else. Non-uniques still have slightly variable energy in 3.1, right?

[Pete Mack]

At that point, it doesn't matter how deep you go: that character is a dead man walking.

You are vulnerable to instadeath from Poison, Cold, even with temporary resists, and _all_ the higher elements. And you are vulnerable to Fire and Electricity, with single resists. (Acid you can survive, barely.)

Your character is so hopelessly short on HP that _anything_ can kill you. So you might as well just keep diving and hope for a speed ring and a whole lot of CON.

I'm with Eddie on this: if you are really going to dive, you just can't afford to shortchange yourself on starting CON.

[PowerDiver]

You are vulnerable to instadeath from Poison, Cold, even with temporary resists, and _all_ the higher elements. And you are vulnerable to Fire and Electricity, with single resists. (Acid you can survive, barely.)

That reminds me of an rgra post I made about diving with a mage.

"If you have so few hp you cannot survive an in-depth elemental breath even when resisted, you don't really need to obsess about getting rBase."

As Pete pointed out, the same logic applies to the high resists as well. How liberating! By my logic, that means you have almost no resists to worry about.

[aeneas]

That reminds me of an rgra post I made about diving with a mage.

"If you have so few hp you cannot survive an in-depth elemental breath even when resisted, you don't really need to obsess about getting rBase."

As Pete pointed out, the same logic applies to the high resists as well. How liberating! By my logic, that means you have almost no resists to worry about.

I was actually thinking of that post when I started reading this thread. IIRC it was in the thread about your first really fast mage win. Which was pretty unfathomably fast.

Anyway, I've won with characters in straits this dire. That's mainly because I've played a lot of characters who wound up in dire straits. The bulk of them died, but... I remember one who was way too deep to survive long who recalled into a superb level at +0 speed and <400 hp, detected a large vault that he couldn't even think of opening, then found his first -tele_other elsewhere in the level. Decided to go in a little way at least, wound up with quite a bit of speed and enough Con to go to >600 hp. Went a little farther and found more speed and more Con. Kept going, and kept getting better stuff that allowed him to keep going. Recalled from the vault with something close to a winning kit. It was like a whole game of Angband compressed into about 5k game turns .

So it's never entirely hopeless. The scenario I describe above doesn't happen every day, but it's that kind of really rare luck that keeps this rodent pushing the lever. This is, btw, why I'm not in favor of changes to Angband that flatten the luck curve.

[Pete Mack]

So it's never entirely hopeless. The scenario I describe above doesn't happen every day, but it's that kind of really rare luck that keeps this rodent pushing the lever. This is, btw, why I'm not in favor of changes to Angband that flatten the luck curve.

What he said.

[Flee]

that character is a dead man walking.

feeling like a dead man walking is the only way to play... any time i feel like im doing well or im safe i end up dead a short time later

fear is the best way to stay alive... and on that point... i dont play to win... i play to not die(which if done right leads 2 a win) and feeling fear/weakness is the best way 2 stay alive

[d_m]

On the way, consider whether you should have chosen your initial stats differently. Do you really need all the points where you put them, or could you have started with a higher CON?

I don't have a lot of experience playing Rangers, honestly, and just used the default build.

[d_m]

EDIT: Also, how many hp would you gain by wearing both those Con rings? It's usually not a lot at that level of CON. +3 speed is actually pretty nice in terms of avoiding double moves so you'd want a pretty big boost to give that up, but... worth keeping an eye on if your CON goes up a bit, or if you can find a few points of speed somewhere else. Non-uniques still have slightly variable energy in 3.1, right?

+6 con translates into 50 HP right now, which doesn't seem like a good trade off. Especially considering how much mana I burn through to do detection and find stairs (not to mention the occasional teleport).

Thanks for the encouragement. At this point the goal just need to be dying on 98

[Zikke]

This is how you will die with this character:

Since you don't have ESP, you will maa a lot. You will descend a stairwell into a room. You don't see anything and will maa which will reveal a pack of inertia/time/gravity/vibration/plasma hounds nearby and they will cook you in 1 turn.

Or a dragon, but my money's on hounds.

[PowerDiver]

Since you don't have ESP, you will maa a lot. You will descend a stairwell into a room. You don't see anything and will maa which will reveal a pack of inertia/time/gravity/vibration/plasma hounds nearby and they will cook you in 1 turn.

That's an excellent explanation of why you should value an item of infravision over an item of elemental resistance at this point.