Questions from an old timer getting back into the game

[Worblehat]

I played Angband a lot back in the '90s and '00s (won once with a dwarf paladin). Wow, a lot has changed! So far there's a lot I like, some things that just seem weird (blackguards and necromancers - everyone else is trying to kill the Big Bad, these guys are ... "aggressively negotiating" for a promotion, I guess?), and plenty that's just different. I'm hoping I can ask questions here to avoid fatal discoveries in game.

Are there still instadeath consumables, or is it safe to "try it and find out" with potions and scrolls? I've already lost out on !augmentation and ?acquirement since I donated them to the shops and didn't have the money to buy them back (the new-to-me system of not selling loot for money took some getting used to but I kind of like it now). On the other hand I'm pretty sure there used to be a Potion of Death, or maybe it was a mushroom, back in the day.

What changes from how things worked ~20 years ago could kill my character now? Sorry, open ended question and depends on people knowing how the game has changed, so maybe this isn't answerable. I saw something in another thread about the Nazgul having something called black breath now? That didn't used to be a thing, is obviously canonical, and sounds dangerous. Is there some resistance to prioritize before I start seeing those guys? I remember endgame involving careful juggling of resistances, since any unresisted damage type was a potential instadeath.

Is it my imagination, or are artifacts rarer now? I'm around 1400', character level 28 or 29, and I just have the Phial, Hithlomir, and Narthanc. Perhaps my memory is misleading me, but I thought characters at this level already had quite a few more artifacts than that in the old days. Most of my equipment seems pretty underwhelming, though I'm doing just fine (high elf mage, sadly I'll never cast from Raal's Tome of Destruction though I'm sure one of the reworked spellbooks has the same functionality) with spells for offense and with Hithlomir covering the basic resistances.

Thanks. I'll post more questions as they occur to me.

[Cryomaniac]

I'm not that familiar with modern base Angband version either (more of a Heng player), but from what I know, use-ID'ing is a lot safer in base Angband now - though stat drain still might occur.

[Nick]

ID by use is definitely safe, and mostly the best way to ID stuff. There's also been a smoothing out of difficulty down the dungeon, rather than most of the new monsters coming before level 50 and the remaining dungeon being more of the same. Artifact density I think is not too much changed, although there's been some back and forth on object allocation over time.

[PowerDiver]

There has been a long process of reducing instakills. E.g. when you descend a level, you are unlikely to be in LOS of a monster. ID-BY-USE is expected. I wish there was an option to make the best 5 or 10 objects known, as I hate losing a rare potion like Life to testing. There is a birth option to know all flavors you can use depending on your fancy.

ID-BY-USE is the biggest change. It is implemented generously, and you often learn things you might think you should not, like neutralize poison when not poisoned.

Another big change is that there is no trap detection, and searching bonuses matter. You can overcome the problem with Trap Immunity, but that rune is pretty rare.

There are new bigger badder dragons that are better avoided. They also summon, which is ridiculous. Summoning has been tweaked, but it is still out of control. I'm probably hallucinating, but the "summons some friends" seems much much worse than whatever e.g. priests would summon in the old days.

The second biggest change is that the useless spells work quite often now. Slow and Stun are particularly useful. Proper usage after you learn which monsters resist what makes the game a lot easier. Note that Slow needs a minimum of two uses to get to full power, and bleeds off continuously rather than just stopping after a fixed amount of time. Also note that slapping a sleeping monster with a Stun leaves it asleep, but using the lullaby Slow wakes it up.

Monster memory has been factored out of the savefile into lore.txt in .angband/Angband in my build. I think you can copy lib/gamedata/monster.txt to that file and get full monster memory if you like.

Thrown items are crazy now if they have an ego. You need to double check the descriptions. E.g. you probably do more damage throwing an ego sling stone compared to shooting it from a +5+5 sling.

[Worblehat]

Note that Slow needs a minimum of two uses to get to full power

Thanks everyone, much appreciated!

I thought searching was different, but seems to work well without having to manually do it. Like the identify rune system, it's different but seems beneficial overall once I got used to it.

Regarding the two uses of slow to reach full power, I tried the same idea with resistances, and indeed something seems to have happened. The resistance matrix on the character screen went from white + signs to green exclamation points in the affected types of resistance. Does that mean that double-resist X becomes immunity to X? That seems amazingly good, but I'm not sure what else it might mean. I remember immunity to acid was really precious (grumble grumble packs of water hounds grumble...). I'll see if I can find a safe way to experiment in-game...

And yes, Slow has been a key element since I found that wand! Annoying that a recharge eventually blew it up (inevitable, sooner or later) but thankfully the store had another for me when I was back in town. Mages certainly have a very productive relationship with wands, which I don't think I properly exploited in long-past mage attempts. I didn't get a lot of use out of Stun; it wasn't entirely clear what it did. I'd have expected it would render the target inactive for a few turns, but that did not appear to be the case when I tried it.

[PowerDiver]

And yes, Slow has been a key element since I found that wand! Annoying that a recharge eventually blew it up (inevitable, sooner or later) but thankfully the store had another for me when I was back in town.

The rules about stacking resistances have not changed. There is a darker green for immunities. There are vulnerabilities that override and cancel other resistances but do not override immunity. Those are marked with a minus.

If you really care about a wand that is commonly sold by the store, donate it and the shopkeeper will recharge it. Then buy it back. That works with slow monster.

[zog]

Another old-timer upgrading to 4.2.5 here. I decided to just dive as fast as I can, and reached for 1400’ without finding a single item of Free Action, and got killed by paralysis. Is it still the case that you should scum for FA and See Invisible around 1000’?

[PowerDiver]

Another old-timer upgrading to 4.2.5 here. I decided to just dive as fast as I can, and reached for 1400’ without finding a single item of Free Action, and got killed by paralysis. Is it still the case that you should scum for FA and See Invisible around 1000’?

Drops are no longer so ridiculous that I can simply dive without paying attention. You probably should not adopt a dive ASAP playstyle. I wouldn't recommend scumming, but you should probably take advantage of level feelings and clear the occasional level that appears worthwhile.

Also, some times you die. That's no big deal compared to the boredom of scumming.

If you really hate dying, I recommend that if you get deep enough you feel the need to scum, just return to town and take the stairs down to DL1 and start over with better gear.

[nyuuu]

About drops: drops are random, which means sometimes you get a lot and sometimes you get nothing... See Invisible and Free Action are definitely required quite early, but you should at least see rings, either in the dungeon or at the black market. Check the shop regularly. Also remember to pause at ~1600 feet and drink stat gaining potions; you won't survive 2000 feet without almost-maxed out stats.

I also have a question: in the description of the ranger chieftain, it says it can cast spells X Y Z; 1 time in 5. What does the "1 time in 5" exactly mean? I had one that was almost dead (1 spell away) that cast heal-self 5 times in a row and went back to full health (grumble). I find this very odd.

[backwardsEric]

I also have a question: in the description of the ranger chieftain, it says it can cast spells X Y Z; 1 time in 5. What does the "1 time in 5" exactly mean? I had one that was almost dead (1 spell away) that cast heal-self 5 times in a row and went back to full health (grumble). I find this very odd.

In Vanilla, nearly every time a monster acts (the exceptions are for dealing with webs or if the monster multiplies) it will see if it wants to use a ranged attack, including spells. The "1 time in 5" for the ranger chieftain means that it will cast a non-innate spell, on average, 20% of the time. That base chance can be modified: if the monster is at its optimal range, the chance is doubled and, if the player is a blackguard with taunting active, the chance is halved. If a random roll passes the chance check, the monster then proceeds to see if it really wants to cast a spell (player in line of sight, ...) and select the spell to cast. Ranger chieftains do not have the SMART and STUPID tags so, as long as there is room to summon something, the spell selected will be a random selection between blinking, casting a cold ball, hasting, healing, and summoning. So healing 3 times in a row would be a 1 in 15625 event (increasing to a 1 in 1000 event if at optimal range and there is no room for summoning).

Some Angband variants implement mana pools for monsters, but Vanilla does not: https://github.com/angband/angband/issues/2854 .

[hypatia]

I too had a long hiatus, though I was playing ZAngband and never got much below 2500'. The thing that brought me back to the game was finding Angband on Google Play - you do realise you can play Angband on your phone now? It works pretty well.

It's a little out of date now but I also found an incredibly well-written walk-through which has revolutionised my survivability and generally given me a kick up the backside. It's on the Lets Play archive and was written by a guy called TooMuchAbstraction. If you Google those two terms you should have no problem finding it. It's actually three walk-throughs: Fighter then Mage then Priest.

Since then I've had a few victories as a Ranger and as a Blackguard. I'm playing a L50 Mage ATM and am 3900' with full resistances and Boots Of Feanor so I'm probably set for another victory.

The new classes are interesting. The Blackguard only regains mana through combat. It's a very strong character, perhaps a little over-powered but beware - there's a later spell Bloodlust which can take over control of your character (you become so angry that you continue lashing out at your foe even though you want to heal).

The Necromancer is even more interesting - it's a spellcaster who needs the dark (spell failure rates go way up in lighted areas). Definitely try with a Gnome first, or other class with infravision.

One problem with a Mage is that you have no Rune Of Protection so against virulent summoners you have to stand in melee range. It's a little scummy but sometimes I use a Ranged Pillardance against these foes - you must basic Pillardancing right? If you want details post back and I'll tell you how it's done.

[hypatia]

Oops! Ignore my last paragraph. I *thought* that you couldn't use Mass Banishment when combatting Uniques who summon because the Banishment would also remove the Unique from the level - not fun if you've got Ungoliant down to her last 1000hp - but not so... I've just tried it on Omarax and Mass Banishment only removed his summons.

Is this a change?

[PowerDiver]

I don't know about ancient versions, but e.g. the spoilers for 3.08 http://www.juti.nl/hugo/Angband/Spoiler/magic.spo specify "Uniques are not affected." in the descriptions for banishment and mass banishment.

[nyuuu]

It's not new, no. Banishment has never affected uniques. Spells of mass banishment are major weapons when fighting Morgoth; I usually collect scrolls and never use them until the last fight. (Uniques still have to be teleported away though).

Also, one way to prevent, or at least limit, summons is to hide in a hole in the wall (at Z):

  Z
 x
  x
xxxxxx

Thank you backwardsEric for the answer. I'm sure that ranger I met cast the spell at least 4 times, maybe even 5. So it's just pure luck (for him), I thought it was a timer instead of a roll (ie. "can't cast for 4 rounds after casting"). Well I still killed him a few rounds later so anyway.