Which spells will I use as a High-Elf Ranger?

[Djabanete]

I value FA higher than just about anything else. Beyond a certain depth, you either have it or you die, and how long do you want to spend mucking around the shallow levels anyway? Just put on the FIRST free action item you come across, even if it means temporarily replacing Orome, and happy hunting!

[Nemesis]

Also oddly enough its easier to avoid and/or safely kill hounds with pack ai on since they wait in rooms and most of the time you can go around them or teleport self away.

I remember when I played NPP and Quickband (where pack_AI couldn't be deactivated), I was always annoyed by the dogs because they took so long before they came after me and it seemed like I had to wait forever when I was about to ambush them. But sure, their delaying gave time to heal if I got wounded and now it seems like hounds come after me from almost the edge of my detection range!

What do I do, will I get screwed later on?

[buzzkill]

Here's a situation that defenitivly was dangerous and not annoying: It happened when I still dived, I was at dlvl 20 and rather low level myself (I'm a High Elf) and entered the level in a dark room, right next to a druid. I cast Light and the next thing I know is that the room is full of Air Hounds! Many of them also breath that very round! ***LOW HITPOINT WARNING***, the Air Hound breathes poison, ***LOW HITPOINT WARNING*** the Air Hound breathes poison -more- and so on. After entering the level at full health, all I had done was casting Light! Therefore, I was luckily standing on the staircase and got away.

1. Play with dis-connected stairs (my opinion, others may disagree). Not as hard as you might think and you'll develop much better survival habits.

2. Arriving on a new level in a darkened room is one of the truly scary moments in any game. Immediately lighting the room is always a bad move. Detection of some sort is a much better option.

3. You shouldn't be fighting a druid without FA. His summons are dangerous enough. Waking and giving him the first move is just silly.

[Nemesis]

1. Play with dis-connected stairs (my opinion, others may disagree). Not as hard as you might think and you'll develop much better survival habits.

Well, I'm already disconnected from the stairs whenever I cast Word of Recall or Teleport Level.

Besides, I happend to already make the game more challenging by turning pack_ai off (more about that below) and if I'll activate some other challenge in a later game, I guess it'll be the deactivation of preserve mode.

2. Arriving on a new level in a darkened room is one of the truly scary moments in any game. Immediately lighting the room is always a bad move. Detection of some sort is a much better option.

Lesson learned. I hope. Or maybe I'll have to lose a couple of characters that way first.

3. You shouldn't be fighting a druid without FA. His summons are dangerous enough. Waking and giving him the first move is just silly.

I'm not sure if I knew that the Druid had the "hold" (paralyze) spell at that point, but it's quite possible I did. However, I assumed "summon animals" were just rats and jackals and such (wrong, I actually suspect the Air Hounds were his doing) and that his paralysis wouldn't pierce through my saving throw (probably right, but a stupid risk nevertheless). I was fooled by their native depth of 13.

By the way, can anyone else than Sirridan if I'm fated to become dog food for turning pack_ai off? I thought it would make the game easier and less tedious, but while it made the game less tedious the zephyr hounds are more rabid now. Will the deactivation of pack_ai cost me dearly (i.e. cost me my life) when I'm deep enough to encounter gravity and time hounds?

[Derakon]

Turning off pack AI is a mixed bag. On the one hand, you can now kill the hounds one at a time by luring them into corridors. On the other hand, they'll now chase you regardless of where you are, instead of hiding in rooms until you enter. If you're planning on killing them anyway, it's far less annoying to have pack AI turned off. If you want to avoid them, though, leave it on.

[Sirridan]

By the way, can anyone else than Sirridan

I'd never turn off pack ai just because of time hounds... man having them chase you is a nightmare.

Also one last thing about pack ai, if it's on and you're less than 50%hp, they will chase you.

[Pete Mack]

I'd never turn off pack ai just because of time hounds... man having them chase you is a nightmare.

Hmm. Maybe we need to add another disjunct to the "chase logic"

 opt_use_smart_packs == 0
|| p_ptr->chp * 2 <= p_ptr->mhp
|| m_ptr->speed >= 2*p_ptr->speed

[Sirridan]

Hmm. Maybe we need to add another disjunct to the "chase logic"

 opt_use_smart_packs == 0
|| p_ptr->chp * 2 <= p_ptr->mhp
|| m_ptr->speed >= 2*p_ptr->speed

Hm, that's just evil if you find them OOD. But it actually makes sense and probably should be added.

[Nemesis]

Turning off pack AI is a mixed bag. On the one hand, you can now kill the hounds one at a time by luring them into corridors. On the other hand, they'll now chase you regardless of where you are, instead of hiding in rooms until you enter. If you're planning on killing them anyway, it's far less annoying to have pack AI turned off. If you want to avoid them, though, leave it on.

How hard are late game packs to chop up for a Ranger? Maybe they'll die like dogs if I make an anti-breather corridor when they start hounding me?

By the way, I found a Ring of Free Action and a nice Metal Scale Mail of Elvenkind to go with it. Now I resist paralysis, nexus, light and all the basics (not including poison). Stat gain, here I come!

[Nemesis]

LATEST NEWS: I'm in town right now, and the black market offers me a ESP cap for 40k (which I can affoard). I never had telepathy before, but it's like auto-casting detect monsters every turn (but omitting a few mindless ones), right? I guess I want it, even though I'd have to put my +2 intelligence hat on the shelf? Is it usual that you get sloppy casting the "real" detection spell when telepathic and thus eaten by monsters without minds to read?

[ewert]

Just cast the detect the same time you cast dtraps anyways... For me it's ^D^F^V every detection radius (monsters, traps, items).

Always good to have routine detection. Telepathy won't stop that if it is routine. So I'd say no, the telepathy won't bring bad habits. Or maybe should say, too bad habits barring insanely rare occurance of a drolem being out of detect radius without enough stealth or rPoison so that it will eat ya... =P

[Derakon]

Telepathy is incredibly important. For example, it will reveal many dangerous enemies to you on the first turn you enter a level -- which means you won't waste that turn casting detection/light spells and instead can get the heck out of dodge. It will also give you advance notification of incoming wall-walkers, which you often wouldn't notice using standard detection spells until it's too late. I've seen two sudden-death posts in the last month or so that would have been avoided with telepathy (one nailed by time hounds on entering a level, the other blasted by an ethereal dragon while cleaning up a vault). It's worth losing 2 INT over; as a ranger you shouldn't be heavily-depending on your spells in any case.

[Pete Mack]

LATEST NEWS: I'm in town right now, and the black market offers me a ESP cap for 40k (which I can affoard). I never had telepathy before, but it's like auto-casting detect monsters every turn (but omitting a few mindless ones), right? I guess I want it, even though I'd have to put my +2 intelligence hat on the shelf? Is it usual that you get sloppy casting the "real" detection spell when telepathic and thus eaten by monsters without minds to read?

Yes.
Telepathy is worth +2 int, with very few exceptions. It is certainly worth 40K.
Some mindless monsters are pretty dangerous (In particular, high level 'E', 'g' and especially 'Q'.)

[Nemesis]

I was stupid enough to get a little too exited when I found my first (small) vault. Having no teleport other, I had to lure out the nasty uniques (The Black Troll and Lokakk the Ogre Chiftain). When I thought I only had to beat up a couple of Ologs and a bunch of Algroths, I saw that I had forgotten about a puny little red p. I thought it just was something like a Mage, and alright, it was "something like a Mage", as in "an Enchantress".

I fought bravely, firmly believing that if hit the attack button really, really rapidly, she wouldn't get time to summon a dragon. She did have time to summon dragons, as the turn based nature of Angband made her match my quickness. So I was standing there with a Mature Black Dragon and an equally mature White Dragon. I was wounded too, but not as wounded as the Enchantress. She had only a couple of stars left. Surly, it wouldn't be fair to let her get away! So I gave her one final swing!

She died, but her dragon pits both bit me. Now I was even more wounded. But maybe I could lure the dragons away from the vault? After all this work, giving up would be a sad thing to do! I boldly decided not to resign and I decided to teleport away to see if I could lure out the dragons from the vault too, as I had done with the Ogre and the Troll.

"You failed to concenWHAT?!" The Mature Black Dragon claws you. The Mature Black Dragon claws you. The Mature Black Dragon bites you. The Mature White Dragon claws you. The Mature... You get it. But no "The Mature blah blah Breathes blah." And no "You die.".

I decided to not tempt fate any further, called it quits for this time and as of writing this I am alive to fight another day!

I have +9 stealth right now, by the way. As my character hit rather hard, I can take out crowds of trolls with impunity, but is +9 to overdo it, as High Elven Rangers are rather stealthy to begin with? If I sacrifice +3 to stealth I can have +2 strenght instead. I don't think I get any extra blows from having the armour that gives me +2 to strength, but when I tried a ring that gave me another +2 to STR I get five blows per turn (that's max for a Ranger, right?)!

[Sirridan]

Yup 5 is max for ranger.

Grats on surviving, it's not as bad as finding a vault with something good inside (spotted with detect objects) and then not being able to dig through granite.