Complete beginner advice

[buzzkill]

My previous character was a warrior, CL 37 with about 550HP. Things were going fairly well (I did save-scum a couple times, I'd allowed that to myself when I got killed by a monster I was meeting for the first time), mostly thanks to -detection. But then I took stairs down to 2950, zapped my -illumination, and... the time hound breathes, the time hound breathes [...] you die. How could I have avoided that? Stair-scumming until I land in a corridor?

Not every death is avoidable. Times hounds a bitch. Descending into a unlit room is dangerous and unavoidable, more dangerous the deeper you go. The short answer is get ESP. Detection before illumination is always a good idea. Create doors, if you can, is another solution.

I've now started a high-elf ranger (and moved to 3.1.2, I too was foolishly playing 3.0.9b). I'd kinda like to create macros to make shooting less annoying, but I'm still a bit confused by the system. So, could anyone point me to a place that explains how inscriptions and macros work?

You can learn a little about inscriptions here.

I'm sure someone else will cover this better, but macros are accessed through the options menu (=). Just enter the 'trigger key' and then keystroke sequence that the trigger will execute. So the macro, f1*5, would fire ammo inscribed @f1 at the nearest enemy, with only a single key press. If you're happy with your macros, then dump them to a file or they will be lost upon shutdown.

[fizzix]

Hey, I'm another fairly new player with a few questions, and I thought I could "use" this thread...

My previous character was a warrior, CL 37 with about 550HP. Things were going fairly well (I did save-scum a couple times, I'd allowed that to myself when I got killed by a monster I was meeting for the first time), mostly thanks to -detection. But then I took stairs down to 2950, zapped my -illumination, and... the time hound breathes, the time hound breathes [...] you die. How could I have avoided that? Stair-scumming until I land in a corridor?

This is the closest you get to an unavoidable death. It's low probability enough that it's almost not worth taking precautions for. I would guess you have something like a 1/5000 probability of instakilling yourself in this manner (w/o ESP) each descent. With ESP the chance is something like 1/500000 or lower. Those numbers are made up. Edit: the probability is a little higher for teleportation with or without ESP, but not much, maybe 1/4000.

If that probability is too high for your comfort zone, what you can do is recall as little as possible, recalling back to the dungeon is dangerous because there are no stairs nearby. If you land in a dark room do one of the following:

1. create doors
2. read scroll of Teleport Level, Deep Descent until you land in a corridor
3. _destruct
4. If you came down or up stairs, immediately return

All the ones besides 1 and 4 are almost infeasible. I usually do 1 even in corridors, even if I have ESP, because I don't want a time or aether vortex breathing on me. I play with disconnected stairs, so 4 is not an option for me. Although at the endgame something like create doors, detect, create stairs, exit happens a lot.

[Zikke]

In my opinion, you need to have Telepathy before you get to Time Hound or Gravity Hound depth. Check ego weapons and some ego and artifact helmets.

[PowerDiver]

Hey, I'm another fairly new player with a few questions, and I thought I could "use" this thread...

My previous character was a warrior, CL 37 with about 550HP. Things were going fairly well (I did save-scum a couple times, I'd allowed that to myself when I got killed by a monster I was meeting for the first time), mostly thanks to -detection. But then I took stairs down to 2950, zapped my -illumination, and... the time hound breathes, the time hound breathes [...] you die. How could I have avoided that? Stair-scumming until I land in a corridor?

I've now started a high-elf ranger (and moved to 3.1.2, I too was foolishly playing 3.0.9b). I'd kinda like to create macros to make shooting less annoying, but I'm still a bit confused by the system. So, could anyone point me to a place that explains how inscriptions and macros work?

Infravision might have saved you. I keep going on about the value of infravision. Another advantage of high-elf is that they get more infravision than others.

[Timo Pietilä]

Infravision might have saved you. I keep going on about the value of infravision. Another advantage of high-elf is that they get more infravision than others.

Dwarves have even better: +5 infravision. That's enough to spot most monsters outside of lite radius. Kobolds also have +5 infra.

My favorite combo is Dwarf Priest. Maybe reason why I don't value infravision high is that I have had quite good infravision without any boost with my usual chars.

Dwarf priest is IMO easiest combo for non-fighter class practice. Fun for "no need to think" -kind of games. They tend to get boringly easy after a while, so for challenges I would use something else. Or put some other restrictions like "no artifact".

[Fendell Orcbane]

Only if you are playing a character without a detection spell: ) I was able to get to 4900' without it. Of course I am playing a High Elf Ranger so that might have something to do with it.

[Derakon]

The point is that turn you spend casting the detection spell is also the turn the hounds need to pound you into oblivion.

You can play without telepathy. It just means accepting a small chance of unavoidable death every time you enter a new level.

One alternate fix for this would be to ensure that the player always starts either in a short corridor or in a lit room.

[PowerDiver]

Only if you are playing a character without a detection spell: ) I was able to get to 4900' without it.

The people who are dying have detection spells. They are dying on the turn after they detect. You just haven't been bitten by bad luck yet. The point of infravsion is that you see them *before* you detect.

[TeKRunneR]

Thanks for the macro advice, that was sufficient for me to understand the system. I think I'm starting to see why rangers are considered one of the easiest classes... Detection + good ranged damage, right?

As for my death, I was, in fact, wearing an amulet of infravision + 2, but the stairs were at the edge of a room, with the hounds all on the other side. I guess as far as inevitability goes, it was still better than my previous death, which went like this. It was my third time ever into the dungeon, too...

[Derakon]

Rangers have easy detection and escape spells, good ranged damage, above-average melee, temporary resistance and combat booster spells...basically, they do an excellent job of combining mages with warriors, while throwing in a dash of "Hey, you're awesome at using bows too".

Paladins are also powerful, but they don't get the ranger's boosted missile capabilities. In exchange, though, they get some of the priest's unlimited big heals, which makes standing in melee much more feasible.

[TeKRunneR]

Oh hey, a couple more questions:
- How big is one tile? I can never tell how close I should get from a monster to shoot it.
- Are save files from 3.1.2 binaries compatible with the SVN version? I'm sure I wouldn't mind fewer hounds...

[Derakon]

Each tile is 10'. So a bow that shoots up to 130' can shoot 13 tiles, and 30' of infravision lets you see warm-blooded creatures up to 3 tiles away.

No idea on the savefile compatibility, but the hounds tweak is just a change to monster.txt, which doesn't require any change to the executable. So if that's all you want, download the SVN, find monster.txt, and replace your existing copy with it, then restart Angband.

[Fendell Orcbane]

The people who are dying have detection spells. They are dying on the turn after they detect. You just haven't been bitten by bad luck yet. The point of infravsion is that you see them *before* you detect.

I guess I have been pretty lucky...but I detect often. How many times have you seen people dying with healing and *healing* potions in their inventory? I mean yeah I have lost characters to bad luck too, but I think a lot of people aren't being careful enough.

Having said all of that the next time I recall it will be in a room full of timehounds...

This might be a stupid question but have you gone down to 4900' without ESP? Is there anything that would keep you from going down? I just ask because a lot of people swear by diving. While I know that it does tend to be the best thing that you can do, I also feel that it is too risky. What if you end up near a graveyard? Or you are fighting and a Wyrm of Many Colours sneaks up on you? This is what happened while I was killing Ungoliant...lucky for me I had just gotten ESP. That and a wand of TO took care of the problem. But if I didn't have ESP I might have been killed.

[Derakon]

The trick with exploring at 4900' is not giving your enemies a chance to wake up and come after you. You should be aware of what's around you and stay outside its alertness radius as much as possible -- that way, it can't wake up and start coming after you. This also means picking your battle locations so that new enemies won't interrupt you. None of this requires ESP; in fact, ESP's radius is less than your detection radius. ESP is a failsafe, that's all.

Also, I really wouldn't recommend fighting any deep unique that can summon without having a source of teleport other handy; the way you phrase it, it sounds like you would have taken on Ungoliant even without it

[PowerDiver]

This might be a stupid question but have you gone down to 4900' without ESP? Is there anything that would keep you from going down?

I don't really know about 4900' without ESP. It would be hard to avoid getting at least one source by then. The only reason for me not to go down is that there is something to distract me, like a shiny toy or a pit I can clear easily. Or a tasty pack or monsters or escorts.

It was different in 3.0. I used to worry about my CL a little bit as a proxy to make sure I was picking enough fights, but I completely ignore it now. I don't know if I got better or the game got that much easier.