Reality check - how am I doing?

[joelsanda]

Santa Claus and a turn of good fortune have me deeper (550') with a higher level character (15th level High-elf Ranger) than ever before. Here are some accomplishments - can folks with more experience and success than me (shouldn't be hard!) weigh in on how well I'm doing? The fact I'm still alive tells me I'm doing alright ... but how do I stack up to folks who have won or roll their eyes and my success?

Deepest level: 550'
Character: 15th level High-Elf Ranger

• Ring of Protection +7
• Log Bow (+2, +3)
• The Phial of Galadriel
• Leather Scale Mail (10,+4)
• Wands (Stinking Cloud, Sleep Monster, Wonder)
• Bastard Sword of Slay Evil (+6,+2)

And the following named enemies are no longer:

• Grip
• Fang
• Smeagol
• Lagduf, the Snaga
• Bullroarer the Hobbit
• Orfax, Son of Boldor
• Wormtongue, Agent of Saruman

Time for a Scotch to celebrate or is this more worthy of a flat and warm soda?

[buzzkill]

Your post looks fantastic, but your character looks like one of mine, a little light on equipment, but you're doing fine for the depth you're at. You shouldn't expect too much of the wand of sleep monster. The ring of protection isn't doing much good either, swap it out once you find something better, or sell it if you need the gold.

FYI, you can post you character dump to the ladder by pressing C (for the character screen), and then f (for dump to file). You will find the dump in the lib/user directory, add it to the ladder, then just post a link to it. It's easier and more detailed than typing out the details of your character.

[PowerDiver]

The main thing is you need to enchant your bow. Sell whatever, except not the phial, for money to buy scrolls of enchant to-hit and more importantly enchant to-dam and try to improve the longbow to +9,+9.

[d_m]

Keep an eye out for magical daggers, rapiers, main gauches, etc. Against evil enemies your bastard sword is probably pretty good, but you might do better if the dagger has large bonuses (because you'll get 2-3 swings).

Also, if you see any scrolls to +tohit or +dmg you should try to get your bow to +9/+9... you will notice a significant improvement for every +1 to damage. If I saw them and needed money I would probably sell some of those wands to get the cash to do it (esp. stinking cloud and wonder... sleep can be a good way to flee from swarms of weaker monsters). EDIT: Eddie beat me to the punch on this one.

Finally, make sure you're carrying around a lot of phase door (I usually carry 20-30) and try to buy _teleport, ?teleport and ?teleLevel as soon as you can.

Good luck!

[joelsanda]

FYI, you can post you character dump to the ladder by pressing C (for the character screen), and then f (for dump to file). You will find the dump in the lib/user directory, add it to the ladder, then just post a link to it. It's easier and more detailed than typing out the details of your character.

LOL ... I did a character dump and copied from the txt file to put the data in the post. I'll post the file next time (-:

[joelsanda]

The main thing is you need to enchant your bow. Sell whatever, except not the phial, for money to buy scrolls of enchant to-hit and more importantly enchant to-dam and try to improve the longbow to +9,+9.

Yeah, the stores in town have quite a few of those, but I wasn't aware the enchantment persisted. I ditched the first sword I had because the rapier is faster.

The enchantment scrolls are permanent? I'll certainly buy those if that's the case.

[Derakon]

For comparison's sake:

Bastard Sword of Slay Evil (3d4) (+6, +2):
* Against a normal enemy does an average of 9.5 damage per hit.
* Against an evil enemy does an average of 17 damage per hit (the base dice get multiplied, but not the plus to-dam)
* You probably only get 1 blow per round with this weapon. Thus, enchanting its to-damage bonus will give you 1 extra damage per round.

Dagger (1d4) (+5, +5):
* Against all enemies does an average of 7.5 damage per hit.
* Depending on your STR and DEX stats, you might get multiple attacks with this weapon (conceivably as high as 4 per round if you seriously optimized these stats at character creation). Thus, increasing its to-dam rating gives you up to 4 extra damage per round. (Note that at (+0, +0) the weapon deals an average of 2.5 damage/round)

Long Bow (x3) (+0, +0) with Arrow (1d4) (+0, +0):
* Deals an average of 7.5 damage per shot.
Long Bow (x3) (+0, +9) with Arrow (1d4) (+0, +0):
* Deals an average of (2.5 + 9) * 3 = 34.5 damage per shot.
Long Bow (x3) (+0, +9) with Arrow of Slay Undead (1d4) (+0, +9) against an undead target:
* Deals an average of (2.5 + 18) * 3 * 3 = 184.5 damage per shot.

In other words, damage bonuses from the projectile and the bow are added to the damage from the projectile's damage dice, and then the damage is multiplied by the launcher's multiplier, and then any slays on the projectile multiply the result. This is in contrast to melee weapons, where slays apply only to the damage dice, and your multiplier comes from getting additional blows per round.

As a general rule, your first goal should be to get your multiplier higher (increase blows/round, increase launcher multiplier). Then you should try to increase your damage per hit, and your chance to hit.