How to restore lowered stat?

[Gockel]

argh, you're right about this... i died now (rather stupidly, was too proud to run away from some little spiders...) and until the end (mage with nature/arcane on lvl 15) this crappy zap was my only spell suitable for combat... of course it's nice to have unlimited food and light but after a while i got a bit sick of all these "tools" spells... next one will be chaos...

[EpicMan]

For a good combination of blasts, defense and 'tool' spells I suggest taking Sorcery and Chaos. Sorcery has good detection, teleportation, and at high levels Globe of Invulnerability

[cofresi]

For a good combination of blasts, defense and 'tool' spells I suggest taking Sorcery and Chaos. Sorcery has good detection, teleportation, and at high levels Globe of Invulnerability

Based on my Fuzzy memories of Zangband Tk, I second this. My sweetest Z character was a mindflayer Chaos/Sorcery mage who reached lvl 47 or so. He finished the quest for the last Chaos book easily and got greedy going for the Sorcery book. A sad death to Ethereal drakes (or were they Sky Drakes borrowed from Master of Magic)?

[Gockel]

Hm, going to try this next...somehow the description of chaos which says that that your friendly chaos god tends to give you some nice or sometimes nasty surprise when levelling up (?) turned me away from following chaos until now... i have the feeling that the game already has enough nasty surprises for me without a crazy god meddling in my affairs...

but one other thing: i got a bit depressed with playing today... played a mage (nature/sorcery) to lvl 23 and to dungeon lvl ~14 and then i made the wise decision to try a little quest...demons under the city (diff lvl 15)...went fine, killed almost everyone down there. but the last part of the level was separated by some rubble. i rested to full 99 hp, cleared away the rubble and realized that some heat resistance would have been nice. as i didn't have it i was pretty much dead, pretty much immediately. with his first fireball that stupid arch-vile took me out...
i guess the game will continue like this, MAYBE next time i'll be able to kill that bastard but probably around the next beautiful corner a less beautiful bastard will be lurking with a pretty disgusting surprise... right?

i'm just wondering, did you really all learn it the REALLY hard way??? i mean it seems to be pretty impossible to be prepared for everything, so i guess the first unknown really nasty monster usually means death, right? one small step ahead every attempt IF you're lucky...
considering that it took me ~25 hours to get this far, it seems almost impossible to find enough time to finish that game in the next 5 years...

are you just playing faster than me? or am i not thinking enough which keeps me from being prepared for everything?? or have all of you simply utterly lost your minds that you just kept trying again after you got killed by a small unexpected surprise on lvl 98 after 300 hours of playing??? if that's the case, i like you, you're weird
well, whatever is the case, i'll immediately start my new chaos/sorcery mage ( or maybe nature again? they say somewhere in the "manual" that you might find an incredible nature spell later on... i'm curious)
i'll let you know as soon as i won
thanks for your hints!

[Derakon]

A few things:

1) You should be regularly casting detection spells so you know what's around the corner.

2) If you see a monster you don't recognize, look it up in whatever spoilers you have access to. Use the "complete monster knowledge" cheat if you must; none of us will mind. The game is hard enough without getting killed by attacks you couldn't see coming.

3) Yes, most of us play much faster than you do. Generally speaking, I don't start getting attached to my characters until character level 40 or so, because getting to that point has only taken 4-5 hours or so (rough guesstimate).

4) Items (2) and (3) in mind, I'd recommend playing something other than a mage. Mages have terrible survivability, so you absolutely must know what monsters can do before you encounter them. Other classes with more hitpoints can be more lenient -- a warrior-type would have been able to take that arch-vile. Other classes will also play much faster, which means you'll learn more about the game in a shorter amount of time. Personally, I'd recommend throwing all caution to the wind and playing a Beastman Chaos-Warrior. They get mutations and boons/curses from their patrons when they level up, they get access to the Chaos magic realm, and they're competent fighters. You won't get attached to them either, given how random they are. Still, a decent number of them come roaring out of the gate thanks to mutations for +4 STR/INT, free Chaotic weapons, free stat boosts, etc. That'll get you deeper into the game faster. Who cares if you kill a half-dozen before character level 10 before you get the one that survives longer?

[Timo Pietilä]

Oooh, you took the Arcane school? If I recall correctly it's a pretty wimpy one. You really need Chaos or Death if you want to be a blast mage, assuming my fuzzy memories of ZAngband are accurate.

Hello! When did this turn to variant discussion? I would not be surprised if zangband has way more methods to lower stats than vanilla which everybody assumed at the beginning.

[Gockel]

oops, sorry... got a bit carried away. if i have any more questions i'll do so in a seperate topic. thanks for all the suggestions anyway, going to try that chaos warrior next!