Help with meleeing Morgoth please

[ewert]

I don't want to chicken out and kill Morgoth with my silly 7x crossbow (I confess I killed a couple uniques with it, I think Tarrasque and ... someone else, more due to the "holy crap this bolt does HOW much dmg per hit?!?" than by intent ), the ranged method against Morgoth is sooooo easy anyways compared to my so far failed melee attempts.

The file dumps show my gear and history. I have quite a lot of roguelike experience, so the early/mid/endgame otherwise doesn't give a lot of trouble, but I'll be damned I just can't seem to get the hang of going melee on Morgoth ...

My problems at the moment are no sustains to speak off, but does Morgoth melee stat drain care about sustains at all, or do they help some? Get crashes starting up char screen sometimes, so I have lost for example yesterday an artefact ring with nearly all medium/high resists and I think all relevant sustains, and good stats too due to program crashes. Oh well, gotta remember to save everytime now I get something awesome. Atleast the game autosaves on level changes so don't lose hours of playing. Is the Blade of Chaos around the weapon strength people use to melee Morgoth with? Or shall I run around lvl99 looking for better?

I have speed up the wazoo, that's no problem, nor is fixing resists to have everything. I think I can go up to 43 base speed with all resists. Now running with those for the higher dmg numbers with the nice Gondolin Mace, never much appreciated the Gondolin items until now.

Started to gather str/dex/con potions now to have "restores" (buying out the shop to stack on the real restores was too boring, and the mushrooms of vigor or potions of augmentation both are way too rare ... but trying to get them too).

The new cure crit potions is cool, bit weaker than a heal pot at warrior health levels, so healing (though could stack some more +CON items to have a buffer) is also pretty ok I guess.

I think I have killed all the other uniques. So that shouldn't be a problem. No rune scrolls to speak off, and used the few I had on my try, so the summons are troublesome, especially netherball/bolt users (or can they shoot past other monsters? if not I guess that would help, atleast dragons breathe through others though?). Definitely wishing for a cold immunity item but ... =)

I used Holy Chant scrolls from shop, I guess I should unsquelch berserk potions and gather em up? Anything else than chant + berserk to buff me up? Morgy didn't himself do any cold did he? So cold immunity would help only against the summons?

Man ... Well, any help appreciated. Lots of questions. I just don't want to do the ranger I mean ranged cop-out and gather some slay/holy bolts, my crossbow is pretty damn nasty though.

[ewert]

Well did few runs in 99 for fun, found nothing really, so decided to check what I could get for the Morgy fight... Should all that be enough for meleeing Morgoth in a corner?

Ps. Yeah the crossbow isn't that awesome since no extra shots, but the single shot dmg numbers are just silly.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Looks like you have enough major healing, which I find is the most important thing. The nice thing is that should you get low, you could bail and heal up while Morgy tracks you down, which he will do... this will allow you to set up shop wherever you like. I would recommend looking for a tame level... you don't want a graveyard nearby. I often read protection from evil scrolls up front, but I'm not even sure if they work against Morgy. I'd also carry a healthy stack of phase door and I would want more teleport scrolls, just in case Morgy goes on an insane summoning rampage. Don't forget that if you are planning on drinking 100 potions of whatever that you don't get gorged. Good luck! ... I also find that it helps to play some sort of death metal in the background... yeah, whatever juices you up.

[Sirridan]

Looks like you have enough major healing, which I find is the most important thing. The nice thing is that should you get low, you could bail and heal up while Morgy tracks you down, which he will do... this will allow you to set up shop wherever you like. I would recommend looking for a tame level... you don't want a graveyard nearby. I often read protection from evil scrolls up front, but I'm not even sure if they work against Morgy. I'd also carry a healthy stack of phase door and I would want more teleport scrolls, just in case Morgy goes on an insane summoning rampage. Don't forget that if you are planning on drinking 100 potions of whatever that you don't get gorged. Good luck! ... I also find that it helps to play some sort of death metal in the background... yeah, whatever juices you up.

Potion of salt water and a bunch of CLW or CSW or slime molds to get you to hungry should do it! Or just scavenge dl99 for a while until you hit hungry, getting gorged would hurt...

BTW that xbow is just ridiculous... if it was a longbow and you were a ranger, hah that would be fun.
(edit, xbow not bow)

[will_asher]

When I first read (x7) crossbow in your post, I thought you must be exaggerating but then I looked at the dump. Who let that be possible? That shouldn't be allowed.

If I were you I'd make a copy of your savefile. Kill Morgoth with melee and then kill him again with the xbow just for fun. Why pass up an opportunity like that?

[Zikke]

Ewert, I recommend uploading your character dump to the ladder for better viewing and tracking.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder.php

In-game, go to 'C' and then hit 'f' to dump the text file. Don't try to upload the character save file to the ladder.



P.S. Meleeing Morgoth is how I've ever beat him, even with otherwise ranged classes. Only way to go! x7 bow is sick!

[LCC]

It took me 98 rounds to kill Morgoth with melee in LCC3 - use the xbow!

[Schroeder]

Killing morgoth in mele isn't tough if you know what your doing. Find yourself a nice vault with permanent walls. The easiest choice for this is probably the hidden 3-layer vault (probably the least rare). Its hidden usually inside walls, and looks something like this...

XXXXXXXX
#......X
XXXXXXXX
X......#
XXXXXXXX
#......X
XXXXXXXX

The other (better/best) option would be the lesser maze vault. Coppied from some source code, it looks like this:

D:%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
D:%.XXXXXXX............%
D:%.XX,,.XXXXXXXXXXXXX.%
D:%.XXXX*...&........X.%
D:%.X.,,XXXXXXXXXXXX*X.%
D:%.X.XXX.....*......X.%
D:%.X..XX.XXXXXXXXXX.X.%
D:%.XX.X.&.XX.X.....*X.%
D:%.XX.XXX...*X,XXXX.^.%
D:%.X.XX,XXXX.XXXX,XXX.%
D:%.X.XX.....*..&.*X,X.%
D:%.X.,XXXXXXXXXXX.X,X.%
D:%.XXXX....*..X,X.X,X.%
D:%.X....XXX.X.X.X.X.X.%
D:%.X.XXXX,X.X.&.X.X.X.%
D:%.X.X...*X.XXXXX.X.X.%
D:%.X.X,XX&X....&..X.X.%
D:%.X.XXXX.XXXXXXXXX.X.%
D:%.X.....*...X*X*X..X.%
D:%.XX^XXXXXX..X*X,XXX.%
D:%........XXXXXXXXXXX.%
D:%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Where % is nothing, * and , and & are items, and X is permawalls.
lureing morgoth into the small, safe part at the bottom is a little tough though, so don't worry about it too much if you just want to use the other one.

I've used both vaults to kill morgoth. In real-time angband (mangband) i use the lesser maze vault, because i *can't* risk *any* summons, but in angband, summons are less scarry since you can think about what to do with them. And in the hidden 3-layer vault, you probably won't get more than 3 monsters (besides morgoth) in line of sight of you.

Extra tip: use a staff of earthquakes if morgoth came from such an angle that he has tons of room behind him. Make sure its empty before the fight starts though (to put some rock there. Probably not necesary, but a nice little thing to do.)
The staff is also useful to put some rock behind you so that he can't summon monsters behind you.


If you have as much healing as you say you do, this is the quickest, safest way to victory. If you don't have as much healing, and you would need to phase out during the fight to quaff ccw, this is probably *not* the safest way.

[zaimoni]

I often read protection from evil scrolls up front, but I'm not even sure if they work against Morgy.

Protection from evil has not worked against monsters higher in level than @ for some time. (could do an explicit code check, but I think this predates V2.7.9.) So it works fine against wimpy summons, not so well against Morgoth personally.

More generally, Protection from Evil is nice to set up by prayer-wheeling before recall. As an impromptu spell, Protection from Evil generally is expensively unreliable in the regime where you need it.

[ewert]

Well it's done.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9188

Funny thing, got the 3-corridor small vault right when went to try killing Morgy. =P I used the corridor end till I ran out of the major healing pots (and had forgotten to read holy chants lol ...), then did tele away Morgy and *destruct* the rest of em after summons, didn't even use the banish scrolls... I had plenty of *desctructs* so.

Have misread the cure potions, they are 1/4th of _wounds_ (but earlier have allowed myself to drop quite far so never noticed it), not hitpoints, but plenty enough to allow myself melee Morgy while HP ok, zap him away and quaff a few while waiting to get to max HP again.

All in all, quite satisfying, my first char on the new version so the top scores list looks mighty lonely with only 1 winner char there.

Hmm what character next. :P