3 Things That Shouldn't Be Brought into the Game

[tamo]

Hi!
I've been playing for about 7 years now, Dunadan, Palladin all the time.

It seems that the game has a mechanism implemented at the start, in which in this session, with this character being played, there will not be any exactly auxiliary, but important things. For example, during the first 20-25 levels, you may never encounter a thing that protects against blindness, helps you see the invisible, Free Action, or a serious weapon. It seems that when the hero starts, he is randomly assigned those things that will not be encountered. It's good if it's a little-used thing, but it often happens from the above list, which makes further play impossible.

There is also something like a curse or the fate of a hero — if that happens, then all the time there will be almost empty loot levels. And you can return to the levels below many times, endlessly replay them, trying to get at least something from weapons or equipment, without which it is pointless to move on. The only way out is to kill the hero and start over, unless he died for natural reasons in the dungeon.

The third consideration is that in the latest version, there are often situations where you encounter an enemy who kills you in the blink of an eye and nothing depends on you. For example, there were several times The Maia of Mandos, which suddenly turns into a time vortex and immediately kills you in 2-3 breaths. Or The aether hounds at about level 55, which are not visible with the help of evil detection, abruptly burst into the crowd and instantly take you apart.

[Sphara]

Hi,
You are not forced to delve too deep, you can try to hunt the items on shallower floors. Paladins do want all the intrinsic you mentioned, if you wanna get deeper than DL30. Get a staff of teleportation if possible, if blindness is a problem. It can be cured with any cure wounds potions.

I'm not sure what you mean by the second complaint. It's a HUGE tactical advantage to get the level danger feeling and immediately leave. No need to start again.

There have been monsters that kill you in one turn right from the birth of Angband. Drolems being a good example, as detect evil does not detect them. If you are playing a paladin, you probably do have bad stealth, so non-detect-evil -detectable monsters may wake up. As far as Maiar go.. just do not fight any Maia of <anything>. They sleep very deep, but if they wake up, they do have the transformation that has a VERY deadly breath attack. Just leave them be. Aether hounds at DL55 sound.. very deep. Time/plasma/nether hounds are more likely DL55 encounters. The difficulty of playing midgame paladins comes from two things: lousy stealth and reliance of other detection than Detect Evil. You'd want telepathy or rod of detection.

[Sphara]

For me, the difficulty of modern vanilla Angband ramped up when dungeon level 30 huorns were introduced. For example, background like a necromancer does not have many ways of dealing with them, unless there has been a significant luck with the found loot.

[PowerDiver]

You have picked a particularly tough race + class combination. I bet you want to kill things using melee, because you did not choose a priest instead.

The changes for the past two decades have implicitly assumed most everyone kills at range abusing asymmetric line of sight. For the most part the game is a lot easier, but there are a few ways it got harder. I think the first change to make the game harder that one typically encounters is that boring priest monsters now cast summon friends. If you step into a corridor out of a room, you can shoot the priest with impunity as it comes for you. If you close to melee, it will summon as you approach it. That is huge.

The changes that make the game easier mostly matter more to ranged attacks. The changes that make the game harder hurt most to melee characters. The calling card of the paladin ought to be healing, but healing potions and devices are so much more commonplace the relative benefit is nerfed. The bonus of a healing spell just isn't worth as much any more, especially since it comes with a minimum 5% failure rate.

Dunadans seem like a great class on the character screen. In practice, they are flawed. I used to prefer to play a dwarf mage in preference to a dunadan mage, despite the massive difference in Int modifier, for the protection from blindness among other things. I recommend that you decide which is more important between see invisible and blindness protection to decide whether to play high elf or dwarf. Either makes a fine paladin.

If you want to continue with paladins, sadly it is the same as when I decided to experiment with blackguards. Ignore anything you read and resign yourself to playing a ranged character for up to the first 40 levels of the dungeon, if you play the official releases. That's just how it is. For all their pronouncements about wanting to allow for different play styles, they have the way they expect you to play and that's all there is to it. You might get lucky and switch to melee much earlier, but you can't count on it.

Can you modify the code and compile for yourself? I've been experimenting with massive increases in number of blows for melee characters. I'm close to getting the balance right. Ask if you want particulars.

If you want to play melee characters, there are gamedata files you can modify that take effect without the need to recompile. I recommend removing the junky melee egos such as plain slay orc, and adding melee weapons to the "of power" ego. In addition, I make the egos that provide extra powers like defender or blessed apply to launchers. These experiments are easy to do, but you need to make the mods between games. Also, everything in gamedata applies including duplicate entries, so save any originals in a different directory.

It has been a while since I played a paladin, but I assume they still have portal. Use it. After 7 years of playing, you should know who is dangerous. If you see something dangerous, portal and think about leaving the level rather than reencountering it. If you cannot find stairs, you can always recall to town and back.