methods to prevent careless deaths?

[will_asher]

I keep dying from carelessness around dungeon level 8-16.
Does anyone have any tips or methods of preventing dying of carelessness?

The main thing I think of is not to let my hps get below about 1/3 of max, and never say to myself, "Just one more hit and then I'll heal myself."

[AR_chie]

I keep dying from carelessness around dungeon level 8-16.
Does anyone have any tips or methods of preventing dying of carelessness?

The main thing I think of is not to let my hps get below about 1/3 of max, and never say to myself, "Just one more hit and then I'll heal myself."

Maybe select alarming in 'hit point warning' option. I prefer change it to 20 percent.

Second clue is never press constantly direction key, - thit is not a RTS

Third one - think and remember that RNG never sleeps.

[Bandobras]

Dive? Switch to O?

[Fuma]

I've got the warning set to 60%. I'm playing a mage

The easiest method is to just start panicing at 2/5 of your health.

[Magnate]

Dive? Switch to O?

I find O much harder than V (though I'm not certain what the OP is playing).

My careless deaths are all around running out of escapes. So the solution is spend ALL your money on ?phase, ?tele, ?tlev and?WoR. Second biggest problem is lack of healing, so spend whatever's left on !CSW and later !CCW.

CC

[Bandobras]

> > > Does anyone have any tips or methods
> > > of preventing dying of carelessness?
> >
> > Switch to O?
>
> I find O much harder than V

This is exactly the point.

[Faust]

"Just one more hit and then I'll heal myself."

This is my main cause of death, 14 years and I still haven't learnt.

[Nick]

My careless deaths are all around running out of escapes. So the solution is spend ALL your money on ?phase, ?tele, ?tlev and?WoR. Second biggest problem is lack of healing, so spend whatever's left on !CSW and later !CCW.

Very true - with the addition of !Speed.

[Limeade]

Does anyone have any tips or methods of preventing dying of carelessness?

Take breaks.. long continuous sessions are not only prone to carelessness, but also bad for your wrists.

Take time to look at your surroundings. As with any turn-based game, each turn presents you with a new puzzle where you need to find the best thing to do.

[will_asher]

Thanks for the suggestions. I posted in the vanilla section of the forum so I thought it would be evident that I was playing vanilla.
My favorite class is kobold paladin, and I usually have the HP warning at 30% but often I don't pay enough attention to it.

From what I've heard O would take a lot of getting used to after playing V. I would like to win V before I get much into other varients, but maybe that's not the best idea.

Just in case I decide to take that suggestion: what is different about O besides the combat? (I've heard about O style combat and that's why I think it would take a lot of getting used to.)

[OT edit:] So I'm diving again a little faster so I get to dungeon Level 11 quicker but I'm not past the point where I usually die. Anyway, the power goes out. I remember that Angband saves automatically but not right up to the point where the power went out, so I hope I didn't lose anything important. I get back into the game and my hard leather armor of resistance which I had just found seems to be missing, but then I realize that it's there in my inventory unidentified and not psuedo-ided yet. whew.

[Nick]

Just in case I decide to take that suggestion: what is different about O besides the combat? (I've heard about O style combat and that's why I think it would take a lot of getting used to.)

In a nutshell:

• More classes and races;

• Class specialties - you get to choose (at levels 0, 20, 40) extra powers;

• Smarter monsters, monster mana;

• Incremental resistances - one item gets you 45% resistance, a second takes you to 70 %, etc up to 5 items giving immunity (actually slightly more complicated, but that's roughly it);

• Various more minor things like more even rise in power of monsters as you descend, magic devices are harder to use for non-magic users, etc.

It is harder than V, but not enormously. It is also reputedly impossible to dive in O...

[Magnate]

In a nutshell:

• More classes and races;

• Class specialties - you get to choose (at levels 0, 20, 40) extra powers;

• Smarter monsters, monster mana;

• Incremental resistances - one item gets you 45% resistance, a second takes you to 70 %, etc up to 5 items giving immunity (actually slightly more complicated, but that's roughly it);

• Various more minor things like more even rise in power of monsters as you descend, magic devices are harder to use for non-magic users, etc.

It is harder than V, but not enormously. It is also reputedly impossible to dive in O...

Hmmm. It certainly isn't impossible to dive in O, at least using the "clev<<dlev" definition: I have a rogue crawling around ~2100' in his mid-twenties. It is hard though, and I wouldn't want to try it with a non-rogue.

Pretty much everything else Nick says is true, but I would emphasise that none of the above list has anything like the impact of the different combat model. The monster mana, additional spell realms, special abilities and different resistance model all take a bit of getting used to - a session or two. The different combat model took me dozens of characters to get used to, because it's so totally different to V:

- plusses to-hit (skill) are *much* more important than to-dam (deadliness)
- criticals are a significant part of your damage output
- dice sides are more important than number of dice (because of criticals)
- extra blows are not a no-brainer; sometimes the bigger weapon is better than the extra blow (rarely true in V with enough +to-dam)
- brands and slays are less important (but still good)

I'll leave it there for now, though there's a whole PhD one could write.

A couple of replies to other points:

To the OP - if you wait until you've won V before trying a variant, you could be waiting a long time! Try a variant whenever you feel like it (probably just after you lose a really good character to a 3000' YASD after weeks of play). I've never won V without cheating, but awfully glad I've played some variants.

To Nick - I agree that !speed is great (I hoard them), but I don't know any variants in which they're a stock item in stores (most have them as unusual stock or in the BM). Sometimes though !speed can be dangerous, because it tempts you to finish the fight when you should really escape ("ooh I can whack-and-back now, I don't need to run"). At least, that's killed me a few times.

CC

[andrewdoull]

To Nick - I agree that !speed is great (I hoard them), but I don't know any variants in which they're a stock item in stores

Unangband stocks them...

[Psi]

- brands and slays are less important (but still good)

I'm fairly new to V combat having played all my previous melee characters in O-style, but to me it seems that brands and slays are more important in O because they mutliply up the whole damage, rather than just the base damage dice as in V. I may have missed something though.

[Bandobras]

Psi, you are right. Moreover, they add a sizeable (for a starting character) damage amount on top of that (at least in S). I love the O style combat, but this I don't like: the first branded dagger I find is usually better than that extra-dice, manually enchated big weapon I was so proud of for the first 10 levels. Not in the spirit of O IMHO.