Hello

[Thorpy]

Hello to all,
Glad to have found the forums. I've been playing on and off from the days of Moria. I rememebr the excitement of the expanded shops in Angband. never took to any variants, though haven't really tried that many over the years.
I certainly remember the "frog knows". I tend to have a play for a few weeks then leave it for a while. I've never won, made it too mid levels as a mage (Dlvl 60ish) and then run into something that's gone "hello, time to die". I have always got round this by save scumming, which I justify by the frustration of the life you've wasted when a character dies. when I try to play without savefile backing up, I tend to not get my balance right, either being too cautious or too crazy.

I've also introduced people to the game this time round.

I have always wondered if there is a complete weapon/armour combination/set, that gives you all requird resistances, or do you always have to compromise. I've never got deep enough to confirm.

I've seen a lot of references to "ironman", what are the ironman rules ?

[Timo Pietilä]

I have always wondered if there is a complete weapon/armour combination/set, that gives you all requird resistances, or do you always have to compromise. I've never got deep enough to confirm.

I've seen a lot of references to "ironman", what are the ironman rules ?

You basically need:

Basic four, poison, confusion and blindness. All others are more or less not needed. Sound and nexus are good to have and disenchantment protects your gear.

From abilities you need Free Action or perfect saving, see invisible and telepathy.

Speed and high HP.

Good weapon. Escape methods. Some healing. Detection.

If you want everything find PowerDSM and add few high-level artifacts on top of that and you are set. By combining different gear you can have every resist and ability, but it usually means sub-optimal gear. It is very rare that best possible item combination you have is also the one that covers most resists and abilities.

There are no real rules for Ironman, but it basically is char that can't go up, only down. Original ironman was char that takes every downstairs it finds ASAP.

[Marble Dice]

As Timo says, it's likely you'll find gear that covers all "required" resistances, but every resistance/ability is not "required." Frequently more speed or stats (especially CON) will be more useful than plugging every hole on your character sheet.

Regeneration and hold life are nice but optional, slow digestion and feather falling are pretty useless. If you do have a perfect save, you're also immune to the worst Nexus side-effects (teleport level and stat swap). Generally if you don't have a high resist (light, dark, shards, nexus, nether, chaos) you'll be fine but you do have to pay careful attention to foes with those elements.

Ironman as most people refer to it is a gameplay option you can enable in the = menu, birth options. It starts you in town as normal, but you can't use up staircases or word of recall, and teleport level always takes you down a floor. If you want to give it a try, priest or paladin is probably the best class for it.

[Derakon]

The way I'd rank abilities:

Free Action
Resist Confusion
Resist Blindness
Resist Fire
Resist Acid
Resist Cold
See Invisible
Resist Electricity
Resist Poison
Telepathy
Resist Disenchantment
Resist Chaos
Regeneration
Resist Nexus
Resist Nether
Resist Darkness
Resist Sound
Resist Shards
Resist Light
Resist Fear

Resist Fear is so low because you can always carry !Heroism to deal with it on a temporary basis. High resists are largely ordered by how annoying their side-effects are; high-resist damage reduction is unreliable (could be as much as 50% reduction or as little as ~15%) so I don't count on it. Regeneration is high for two main reasons: 1) it drastically accelerates MP recovery, which speeds up gameplay for any class that is reliant on spells; 2) if you get injured, regeneration drops your injury "level" by 1 each turn, which basically renders cuts moot and saves on resting time / use of consumables.

Basically, the further down the list one of those is, the more likely I am to ditch it for a useful stat boost or other ability (e.g. extra blows/shots).

[zaimoni]

Resist Fear is so low because you can always carry !Heroism to deal with it on a temporary basis.

With intelligent spellcasting, Resist Fear is pretty much a curse: it just makes the probability of nether bolts (or other actually dangerous spell) higher.

[Colbey]

My reading of the original question was "how do I play such that I'm playing ironman" in the most straightforward sense. And isn't the answer "turn on the 'birth_ironman' option in preferences and then start a new character"?

[PowerDiver]

If you have access to the resistance spell in MB5 you do not precisely need resistance to any of the 5 elements on your gear. I have beaten Morgoth lacking one of them during the final fight.

[Derakon]

Obviously your current requirements are going to change depending on your class. A mage with good detection spells will care less about Telepathy than a warrior, but might value Resist Sound more because it prevents stunning, for example. And all of this is open to personal tastes as well.

[Timo Pietilä]

[QUOTE=Derakon;28767]The way I'd rank abilities:

(quote removed for easy edit)

Free Action ---- not needed with perfect saving, so necessity at start, not needed with high saving throw class/race combinations at the end. If perfect saving is not attainable, then absolute necessity.

Resist Confusion ---- High value , but surprisingly easy to be avoided. Maybe after basic 4.
Resist Blindness ---- if you have both resist light and resist dark, not so important. If not then very important.

Resist Fire ---- a late must have. Too many fire breathers. OTOH, not necessity until you are at AMHD depth.

Resist Acid ---- gets halved by armor, so not that important, OTOH items with this also ignore acid, and that is valuable.

Resist Cold ---- High damage, many breathers. Pretty much same as fire
See Invisible ---- If you have Telepathy, not needed. If not then nearly necessity. Priests have detection and temporary see_inv as spells, so for them not so important.

Resist Electricity ---- Same as fire and cold. Double resist harder to obtain, so maybe higher than Fire and Cold (depends of your class).

Resist Poison ---- Very high value. In fact when I played non-ego, non-artifact game, I learned that I wanted this more than basic 4. Way too many poison attacks around.

Telepathy ---- VERY high value. This is like detection that is always active, so choosing your fights and avoiding surprises gets a lot easier with this. I put this right after FA.

Resist Disenchantment ---- Not needed, but nice to have. Goes down in list.
Resist Chaos ---- Not needed, rare element. Difficult, but not straight out deadly side-effect. Goes down in list.

Regeneration ---- Not needed. Makes playing for low turncount a bit easier, but that's pretty much it. One benefit is that high level mage with regen can cast MM until dying to starvation.

Resist Nexus ---- Stat-scrambling, teleportation, common element (hound). Not necessity, but nice to have. Higher than Disen or Chaos.

Resist Nether ---- Least important after fear. Goes way down in list. Doesn't protect you much, and side-effect is not dangerous.

Resist Darkness ---- High value against few last uniques (darkness storm) and against blindness if you don't have resist blindness. If you do, however, then not very important.

Resist Sound ---- Prevents stunning from distance attacks. Goes right after Basic4, confusion, blindness and Poison. Gravity, sound, plasma and ice (and maybe some more) cause stunning, and few plasma hounds can cause KO in single turn without this.

Resist Shards ---- Relatively high damage pretty early and causes wounds. I count this low in list, but higher than Nether.

Resist Light ---- Pretty much same as dark, but less so. Goes after dark.
Resist Fear ---- Perfect or high saving helps a lot, and you can still use distance-attacks and spells when scared, so goes maybe last in list for late game, but rather high for melee-chars at beginning of the game.

One thing that is missing is Speed. Technically that is not ability, but with enough speed, telepathy and high stealth you can avoid nearly anything you don't want to fight, and those that you want to are either dead or weakened beyond being dangerous before they have chance to react.

So most important are:

Detection ability (telepathy)
Speed
Ability to choose your fights (both knowledge how to, and ability to move undetected)

[PowerDiver]

My list is, in order

ESP -- more useful than anything else

for the rest of the list, assume no ESP. Things would change a bit with ESP

SI -- I can get from DL 60 to DL 70 without FA, but always die without SI, including priests who cannot keep the spell up at all times.

FA -- sometimes you have to get in LOS of someone with paralyze spell

rBlind -- blindness is annoying as well as dangerous and effectively ruins detection

rElec -- not only is this resist hardest to get with standard artifacts, it is hardest to get temporary resistance as well. It can be the difference in surviving a colbrans you cannot avoid.

rNexus -- AFAIAC losing a primary stat to nexus scramble = death, and sinking through the floor when you just cleared a vault is excruciating

fConf -- you can get out of most trouble with _telSelf + !CCW, but you don't want to have to leave a fight

rSound -- not so likely to be necessary, but when it is there is no way around it.

rPoison -- not so important if you can gather a stash of !rPoison, but not for sale at alchemist

rAcid -- armor cuts damage in half, so less important than rPoison until you face the massive breathers

rCold -- can cover with potions from alchemist, slightly protects precious healing potions

rFire -- can cover with potions from alchemist

Note priest casters get rFire+Cold early and cheap, and mage casters get them cheap when they get MB5.

Regen -- can be the difference in always running around with full buffing spells. Maybe it should be higher. Maybe it should be lower. It depends on the point in the game and how much mana you have.

rDis -- vital for a warrior, a luxury for others, but it is a tragedy to disenchant endgame gear

rChaos -- mostly the attack is annoying, but it is possible to die from forgetting who was where

The rest hardly matter. Nether, Dark, Light, Shards resistance doesn't help damage much in the worst case, which is the only case that matters. Slow digestion, FF, and searching are irrelevant. Fear matters a little, but !hero is readily available if you need it. Hold Life is nice when you have it, but I'd never sacrifice anything for it.

Ah -- infravision and increased light radius do matter, a lot, but don't exactly fit into the list. Say infravision is just above rAcid if you do not have ESP, maybe even above rConf. No single point of light is that useful, but they add up so it is hard to say where that would go.

[Pete Mack]

I mostly agree with you on that list--ESP is definitely #1 requirement.
Not so sure I agree on the distribution of things after rElec. (Certainly I agree about rAcid being below rConf, but my death rate to the things in the set

{Fire, Cold, Conf} are all pretty similar, with rSound and rBlind below them.

Since I don't play randarts enough, it's hard for me to value them--usually most of the important ones come nicely bundled in Isildur or Rohirrim.

[Arphod]

I have always wondered if there is a complete weapon/armour combination/set, that gives you all requird resistances, or do you always have to compromise. I've never got deep enough to confirm.

While the other responses before mine are largely correct, at your level of play (new), I can offer a much simpler response.

Get: See Invisible, Free Action, and Resist Fire, Cold, Elec, and Acid. Then learn the game. Start with High-elf, and See Invis is taken care of. Start with Gnome, and Free Action is taken care of.

Go.