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I have a new Angband sport: trying to see how many levels I can go up in a single hit with a new character.
With new characters, I do often try to "dive" to level 2 or 3 without touching anything, after equipping myself with whatever gear I can afford that will support the effort, and try to kill Grip or Fang first at level 1 before anything else. You get a nice, tidy 60xp for that, enough for a quick jump to level 3 (for me with my weenie high elf mage / ranger builds, probably more for courageous human fighters with no XP penalty). It's hard to avoid killing things or other things that will get you experience on the way down; you want to do your kill at level 1, so any accidental XP you accumulate has to not push you to level 2 before you get them.
Last night I wanted to see how absurdly far I could push this, so I stair-scummed like crazy to level 1, just going down from town, picking anything within easy reach up if I spawned in a room without monsters, running back up and selling it, and going down for more, ignoring level feelings and rarely leaving the room I spawned in. As I accumulated things to sell, I managed to raise about 6000 gp overall (it took a while), which I invested in a few key components:
- A sling of extra shots (+15, +6) (+1), about 5000 by itself
- 5 or 6 iron shots of frost from the black market (one at a time!), which would do about 80 damage per hit to non-frost-resistant creatures
- Scrolls of detect doors / stairs, phase door, and deep descent (key, about 8 of those)
Along the way of gathering all this stuff, I accidentally accumulated 22 xp, where 23 are needed to level. This happened mostly by landing on traps, which give you XP for "discovering" them; once by accidentally disarming a trap I was trying to avoid; and some of it I don't know how I got, but I was watching the counter as I scummed for gear. It reached the point where I was 1 xp away from level 2, so it was time to dive, as deep as I could get.
I stair-scummed to level 4 or so and then read deep descent scrolls to plunge, reading detect doors and traps on each level down to see if there was a stairway nearby within easy reach, to drop an extra level with before the next deep descent scroll. I managed to get down to 1000' this way without touching anything. I then realized I really needed a detect monsters device to help find my target candidate, so I WOR'ed back up to town to get one, and then realized that there are no detect monster scrolls! Somehow that had never occurred to me. And casting a spell would give me XP, which would push me to level 2. No, I would just have to be lucky, here.
I WOR'ed back down, hoping to find a troll, but I happened to land right next to a sleeping werewolf. Value for a level 1 character: 3,000xp. That would do.
Step one: take one step to the side.
Step two: potion of speed.
Step three: one more step, as far around a corner as I could get while preserving the line of sight.
Step four: one iron shot of frost. Hit. Here he comes.
Step five: another. He's almost dead, but right next to me, and could easily kill me in one hit. Run? Fight?
Step six: I roll the dice and fire one more. Hit! He's dead. Then I warm up my space bar finger for going through the level messages.
Result: from level 1 to level 14 in one hit. Sweet! Worth the pain as a gameplay tactic? Of course not, but fun.
Now, of course, I wonder how much farther I could push this. A human fighter would have benefitted much more from that 3,000 xp. And deeper dives and bigger monsters would always be possible, too. The hardest part is trying not to accumulate ANY experience while gearing up. You can't kill anything in the dungeon before your biggie, you have to be lucky to avoid traps which give you XP for detecting them whether you mean to or not, and things in town CAN kill you.
Anyone else have deep-diving adventures with level 1 characters?
With new characters, I do often try to "dive" to level 2 or 3 without touching anything, after equipping myself with whatever gear I can afford that will support the effort, and try to kill Grip or Fang first at level 1 before anything else. You get a nice, tidy 60xp for that, enough for a quick jump to level 3 (for me with my weenie high elf mage / ranger builds, probably more for courageous human fighters with no XP penalty). It's hard to avoid killing things or other things that will get you experience on the way down; you want to do your kill at level 1, so any accidental XP you accumulate has to not push you to level 2 before you get them.
Last night I wanted to see how absurdly far I could push this, so I stair-scummed like crazy to level 1, just going down from town, picking anything within easy reach up if I spawned in a room without monsters, running back up and selling it, and going down for more, ignoring level feelings and rarely leaving the room I spawned in. As I accumulated things to sell, I managed to raise about 6000 gp overall (it took a while), which I invested in a few key components:
- A sling of extra shots (+15, +6) (+1), about 5000 by itself
- 5 or 6 iron shots of frost from the black market (one at a time!), which would do about 80 damage per hit to non-frost-resistant creatures
- Scrolls of detect doors / stairs, phase door, and deep descent (key, about 8 of those)
Along the way of gathering all this stuff, I accidentally accumulated 22 xp, where 23 are needed to level. This happened mostly by landing on traps, which give you XP for "discovering" them; once by accidentally disarming a trap I was trying to avoid; and some of it I don't know how I got, but I was watching the counter as I scummed for gear. It reached the point where I was 1 xp away from level 2, so it was time to dive, as deep as I could get.
I stair-scummed to level 4 or so and then read deep descent scrolls to plunge, reading detect doors and traps on each level down to see if there was a stairway nearby within easy reach, to drop an extra level with before the next deep descent scroll. I managed to get down to 1000' this way without touching anything. I then realized I really needed a detect monsters device to help find my target candidate, so I WOR'ed back up to town to get one, and then realized that there are no detect monster scrolls! Somehow that had never occurred to me. And casting a spell would give me XP, which would push me to level 2. No, I would just have to be lucky, here.
I WOR'ed back down, hoping to find a troll, but I happened to land right next to a sleeping werewolf. Value for a level 1 character: 3,000xp. That would do.
Step one: take one step to the side.
Step two: potion of speed.
Step three: one more step, as far around a corner as I could get while preserving the line of sight.
Step four: one iron shot of frost. Hit. Here he comes.
Step five: another. He's almost dead, but right next to me, and could easily kill me in one hit. Run? Fight?
Step six: I roll the dice and fire one more. Hit! He's dead. Then I warm up my space bar finger for going through the level messages.
Result: from level 1 to level 14 in one hit. Sweet! Worth the pain as a gameplay tactic? Of course not, but fun.
Now, of course, I wonder how much farther I could push this. A human fighter would have benefitted much more from that 3,000 xp. And deeper dives and bigger monsters would always be possible, too. The hardest part is trying not to accumulate ANY experience while gearing up. You can't kill anything in the dungeon before your biggie, you have to be lucky to avoid traps which give you XP for detecting them whether you mean to or not, and things in town CAN kill you.
Anyone else have deep-diving adventures with level 1 characters?
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