Yet Another Chardump Advice Post...

[PowerDiver]

OK, first off I can't believe you did much of this in your faster wins. I mean- I've been working on getting to 1500' in 50k turns, and.. it's all about finding stairs. Is getting a drop from an orc at 1200 feet worth a few turns?

You don't do anything much in a 400K win, but you need to look for opportunities. I think you are trying to go too fast. My "bold rogue" posted to rgra took 85K turns to get to 1600' in a 400K game. For a while I was going too fast and not killing enough. I had to adjust my playstyle to look for more chances for opportunistic kills.

But let's not completely hijack the thread. The OP said he had trouble killing things. He might well be unable to kill a large pack of algroths in a room, yet find it easy to lure them into a long corridor and kill or at least soften them sufficiently with a series of elec beams doing 7d6 damage [if I read the spoilers correctly] to the entire pack each round. If algroths are easy, replace with water trolls in the argument. The other advantage is that at most one foe can melee or shoot at you while you hurt the whole pack, which means less need for recuperation.

Also, what else is the mana for? By his depth, he should have rods for traps, stairs, and treasure in sufficient quantity that one of each is recharged by the time he leaves a dTrap area. If you are not carrying those rods perhaps you should, to keep the ability to cast more elec beams.

disclaimer: I've been working primarily on identify-via-wield for many months, recently ironman priests, and I may be too senile to really remember diving with rangers.

[bigmcstrongmuscle]

I tried putting a few points in Intelligence this time around, so I'd have enough mana to lightning bolt more regularly. So far it's going well - at Level 14, I've got almost double the mana my last @ had around now, and I don't seem to have lost any attacks with that extra point of strength and dex. I've maxed out my bow again, and so far, things are looking up.

Especially after Wormtongue dropped this on level 11:

g) a Robe of Permanence [2,+16]
     Provides resistance to acid, lightning, fire, cold, shards.
     Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
     Sustains strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, 
     charisma.
     Stops experience drain.

This may be the best item I have *ever* seen this early. He may have been a sniveling wretch with no morals and disgusting habits, but this is enough to make me want to hug him.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and a quick question: What's with the hounds in this version? They got *viciously* smart all of a sudden - they've actually started clustering to the sides of doors to breath-weapon ambush me as I come through.

[Sirridan]

Yeah AI got a pretty big boost, hounds and canines "Z and C" avoid getting trapped in hallways now, they will chase you into them though if you are around half hp or less, for some I actually let myself get that low then hide at the entrance and one shot them as they come around... but I try not to anymore 'cause that may end up getting me killed someday, heh.

Also, I want that robe!! (big grats)

[Pete Mack]

EDIT: Oh yeah, and a quick question: What's with the hounds in this version? They got *viciously* smart all of a sudden - they've actually started clustering to the sides of doors to breath-weapon ambush me as I come through.

The smart_packs (birth) option is now set to true by default. IMO it makes hounds much more interesting: hounds are harder to fight, but easier to evade. But if you really hate it, you can turn the option off for your next game.

[bigmcstrongmuscle]

Ahh, I guess that'd do it. I was never sure exactly what that option did. I don't know that I hate it, but it does make things a little trickier - you have to fool things into coming out so you can kill them. The tack I've been taking has been to wait around 2-3 steps into the corridor, and use my bow to kill them as they enter my LoS. Usually they only seem to step into range 1 or 2 at a time.