17 Years Later... And my first winner.

[dhegler]

After trolling around lvl 95 or so, I got bored, so I decided to give Sauron a try. A few seeker bolts of slay evil and a couple dozen mana storms powered by my staff of the magi later, he was dead. Kind of surprised it wasn't much tougher, just phase doored as I hit him around (speed +35 helps). Did it with max HP of 690 and SP of about 380. Then, I tried Morgoth and killed him the same way, some seeker bolts of slay evil and maybe 50 mana storms later, using teleport, phase door and staff of the magi (with recharging from Tenser's) and....

I have been playing Hack, Nethack, Moria, Angband, etc. for seriously over 17 years (probably closer to 23) and never once saw Morgoth, or got even close.

Thanks to this forum, comments, research, etc for the help. Now to see if I can do the same with a Priest...

How does everyone else take down Sauron and Morgoth? Projectiles primarily? I liked mana storm. Guess I was lucky that no one burned up my staff, now that I think about it.

Thanks again!

[Matthias]

Hey good job! The first one is always the most fun So how did you solve your healing potion problems? In your last dump you had like 2 life potions and nothing else.

How you take down M depends mostly on the class you are playing. For mages Manastorm does the job well enough

[dhegler]

I think I used my 2 potions of life on Morgoth. I would phase door/teleport, maf (cure light wounds) about a dozen times to get up past 600 hp where one blast from morgoth wouldn't kill me, then wait for him to get into my l-o-s. Luckily he also didn't mana storm me too often, as that was what hurt the most.

Also, I could hit him with the bolts at times when he couldn't hit me down a long corridor.

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He couldn't hit me, but if I aimed my bolts behind him by a few spaces, I'd hit him when the bolt would cross over to the next row, but I wasn't in his line of sight. Since he can tunnel, I couldn't do this all the time, but it certainly helped shield me.

[Lord Tom]

I've always found Sauron pretty easy with any class as long as you lure him into a diagonal tunnel (which you dig beforehand) such that he can't summon anything that will have line-of-sight on you.

For Morgoth, with a Paladin I used a combo of a good melee weapon (slay evil is nice), bow (+1 extra shots, +15 or more to dam), a bunch of scrolls of phase door and potions of speed, healing, life and restore mana.

During the battle, it was useful to use phase door to buy a couple turns to quaff potions or cast heal, and also hopefully get a couple free bow shots off while he chased me down. Portal is ideal for drawing him away from any uniques, etc he summons -- its range is less than teleport but far enough that he'll outdistance his (slower) counterparts.