Tried my hand at a basic player's guide.

[Pete Mack]

I got only as far as putting hp at 3b before deciding we are very far apart. I would put rule #1 that you need

your hp * his max moves per your move > his max attack

Later, you should note that another way launchers are overpowered is that extra shot launchers allow you to achieve that inequality even when your speed is much less than his, which cannot be achieved with any other attack method.

For the HP, that was an error.
I should have said character level and EXP.

Will fix.
And I can add the detail about extra shots.

[Derakon]

Seconded. OTOH, based on my own experience, I spent a lot of time getting very frustrated before I finally sucked it up and took the advice to dive, dive, dive. I learned a lot more in a very short period of time, so much so that I now spend very little time on the lower levels, even with very weak characters. I think encouraging this 'breakthrough' for new players to happen sooner rather than later is a good idea. However, there is some amount of time that is necessarily going to be spent dying from spiked pits, hunger, rooms full of lice, etc.

I think we can encourage that simply by saying "Look, it's gonna be a long time before you have a character live very long. Why not get as deep as possible before dying? If you see a staircase, why not take it? Remember what depth you died at last time, and see if you can pass it this time. Above all, try to avoid running the same level over and over again; that tends to be boring, and boredom is just as deadly as a dangerous monster in this game."

[PowerDiver]

[QUOTE=PowerDiver;28361]I got only as far as putting hp at 3b before deciding we are very far apart. I would put rule #1 that you need

your hp * his max moves per your move > his max attack

QUOTE]

Rule number 1 and I got it wrong.

hp > his moves * max attack

[Hariolor]

I think we can encourage that simply by saying "Look, it's gonna be a long time before you have a character live very long. Why not get as deep as possible before dying? If you see a staircase, why not take it? Remember what depth you died at last time, and see if you can pass it this time. Above all, try to avoid running the same level over and over again; that tends to be boring, and boredom is just as deadly as a dangerous monster in this game."

Would it be too cynical to add, "Besides, a lot of winning in this game comes down to dumb luck, even for the best players. You might as well dive deep and often in hopes of finding something useful, because you'll probably never win with skill alone."

[Pete Mack]

@Derakon:

I did point out that the only absolute prerequisite for killing Sauron is to go down a lot of stairs. (Italics in original.) Is that not enough?

[fizzix]

I think we can encourage that simply by saying "Look, it's gonna be a long time before you have a character live very long. Why not get as deep as possible before dying? If you see a staircase, why not take it? Remember what depth you died at last time, and see if you can pass it this time. Above all, try to avoid running the same level over and over again; that tends to be boring, and boredom is just as deadly as a dangerous monster in this game."

I agree with half of that. I agree that boredom is deadly. I don't agree with always taking the down staircase. This is only a good strategy if you have a decent feel for the monsters and the game mechanics. If not, you need to spend some time learning about them, and the best way to get info on monsters is to kill a bunch of them. Sometimes this requires playing around a bit at a shallower depth, or getting appropriate resistances.

Once you have that knowledge, then diving becomes a lot more reasonable.

[bron]

a lot of winning in this game comes down to dumb luck

I really can't agree with this. You can also win with skill and dogged determination. As an experiment, I was able to win with 3 out of 4 characters in a row at one point. Admittedly, they were all 3M+ turn games, it was kinda boring, and you could certainly win a larger absolute number of games in the same amount of calendar time by other means, but that was not the point of the experiment: you *can* win most of the time if you know what you are doing are willing to log the hours needed.

[Pete Mack]

@fizzix:
the fastest way to get that knowledge is to go down fast. At dl 30, you will still see all the monsters from dl 1-29, as well as native monsters. The monsters at dl 30 aren't particularly more dangerous than at dl 20, but give ~10x more experience, so you will level up 10x faster, (No lie!) and have a much better chance of getting necessary equipment.

The only real danger at dl 30 that's not at dl 20 comes from paralyzers and invisible monsters. But there's something like 6 types of monsters that can paralyze in that range (carrion crawler, Gorgimaera, Basilisk, Ghoul, Ghast, maybe one or two others.)
Even without free action, you will learn the complete list pretty quickly

In fact, you won't really learn the list until you try without Free Action.

[fizzix]

@fizzix:
the fastest way to get that knowledge is to go down fast. At dl 30, you will still see all the monsters from dl 1-29, as well as native monsters. The monsters at dl 30 aren't particularly more dangerous than at dl 20, but give ~10x more experience, so you will level up 10x faster, (No lie!) and have a much better chance of getting necessary equipment.

The only real danger at dl 30 that's not at dl 20 comes from paralyzers and invisible monsters. But there's something like 6 types of monsters that can paralyze in that range (carrion crawler, Gorgimaera, Basilisk, Ghoul, Ghast, maybe one or two others.)
Even without free action, you will learn the complete list pretty quickly

In fact, you won't really learn the list until you try without Free Action.

The problem is I can't go back and relearn Angband so I can figure out what way is best to learn the monsters. So I guess I can't really argue your main point short of finding a bunch of newbies and experimenting on them. Mwahaha.

All I want to say is that slow play has it's place. Especially at the beginning.

[shawnosullivan]

slow play may have had its place in 2.7.9 or whatever, but modern vanilla is definitely a high-speed game! :-P
i think its good to encourage new players to rush ahead a little carelessly and learn from their mistakes - it's a much better, not to mention more fun, way to learn than duplicate saves or cheating death. also, one of the most exciting and unique aspects of angband is the zen-like detachment and fearlessness of death you must cultivate in order to succeed...losing is kind of built in to the game design. players need to learn to enjoy that ...

[Pete Mack]

@shawn--
that kind of reminds me. Maybe V needs a 'nightmare mode' based on an earlier version. Timo's mentioned more than once that Frog Knows is much harder, but the UI is kind of painful. I'd like to try the current 'Band UI with some of the frog-knows gameplay dynamic (nastier monsters earlier, more OOD monsters, less artifacts.)

[andrewdoull]

@shawn--
that kind of reminds me. Maybe V needs a 'nightmare mode' based on an earlier version. Timo's mentioned more than once that Frog Knows is much harder, but the UI is kind of painful. I'd like to try the current 'Band UI with some of the frog-knows gameplay dynamic (nastier monsters earlier, more OOD monsters, less artifacts.)

Which reminds me. I know the 'rebalanced' monster list I attempted to include in Angband was roundly rejected because it made monsters appear when they were interesting, as opposed to when they were safely ignorable. Would this have any impact on making the game challenging again?

Andrew

[Pete Mack]

@andrew -- I don't think it's quite the same.

There were still plenty of weak monsters with high experience value in older versions of angband. I think the balancing is more in the other direction: make more high-power (and high experience) monsters appear earlier.

[Derakon]

A first-pass at old-style monster placement would simply be to broaden the range of depths picked from. Use a standard bell curve or something. The goal isn't so much to say "Okay, young dragons are now native to 700' as it is to say "I'm at 700' and there's a young dragon! Waugh!"

[Magnate]

Which reminds me. I know the 'rebalanced' monster list I attempted to include in Angband was roundly rejected because it made monsters appear when they were interesting, as opposed to when they were safely ignorable. Would this have any impact on making the game challenging again?

Andrew

It wasn't rejected per se, it was made a run-time option (-r, rebalance monsters). Since the removal of raw files, you need to move the new monster.txt file from user/ to edit/ for it to take effect. I've opened a ticket to expedite this.