Hints and tips

[Derakon]

Bumping this to present a collection of hints in a single document...er, post. Next step is to add code to display a random line from that document each time you change dungeon levels. If you still want to add suggestions, go ahead!

1. Cure Critical Wounds potions will cure blindness and confusion. Carry lots; they're cheap.
2. Staves can be used even when confused and blinded.
3. Potions of Heroism or Berserk Strength will protect you from being frightened.
4. Monsters that breathe fire, acid, electricity, or cold can deal up to 1600 damage. Resistances cut that to 1/3rd.
5. The more hitpoints a monster has, the more damage their breath weapons deal. Watch out for breathers with lots of hitpoints!
6. Combine equipment of Resist Fire and a potion of Fire Resistance to double your resistance!
7. If you don't know what a monster can do, use a rod of probing on it.
8. Never underestimate the value of constitution. Hitpoints keep you alive.
9. Wield your ammo to your quiver to have it take fewer inventory slots.
10. Inscribe items with the '{' command. Inscribe an item with "!s!d!k" to get confirmation before selling, dropping, or destroying an item, or with "!*" to get confirmation before doing anything.
11. You can use the 'I' command to inspect items and get details on their abilities.
12. Hit '=' to check out the options and customize your game. Be sure to set your hitpoint warning while you're there!
13. Flasks of oil make a good throwing weapon early on.
14. Word of Recall will send you to and from the dungeon.
15. You can never teleport into a vault, even if you're already standing in it.
16. The only way to protect your inventory from damage is through elemental immunities.
17. +10 speed means you move twice as fast as normal.
18. Too much stunning will knock you out!
19. The stores restock themselves every 1000 turns.
20. If acid hits your armor, you take less damage from it.
21. Nexus attacks can swap your stats. Fancy being the smartest, weakest warrior alive?
22. Regeneration improves your recovery of both hitpoints and mana.
23. Never be too afraid to run away, and never go exploring without an escape option.

[Hariolor]

pay attention to how your enemies move - even among the same type some will be faster or slower than others

monsters' breath weapons grow less dangerous as they lose hitpoints, but a wounded enemy's spells are as strong as a healthy one's

don't worry about using your potions, wands, and staves to stay alive - you can't find more if you're dead

if you're in a bad situation take a breather and "I"npect all your gear, you may have forgotten about something that can save you

when a character dies, memories of monsters she has fought are passed to on to descendents that share her name [point being don't start a lot of new savefiles!]

even the most powerful characters can be made useless by blinding and confusion attacks, finding a way to resist them is critical to survival

probing an enemy to learn its abilities is always preferable to finding out the hard way

buy at least one scroll of phase door and one each of cure light and cure serious wounds before your first trip to the dungeon - you can sell them back if you need the gold, but being able to identify them right away is a lifesaver (there is a better way to word this I am sure)

[buzzkill]

if you're in a bad situation take a breather and "I"npect all your gear, you may have forgotten about something that can save you

Inspect all your gear and browse all your spell books...

I know it's a bit redundant, but I can think of a time or two that I've over looked a seldom used spell which could have saved my life.

How about, "Buying low priced (unknown) flavored items is a cost effective way to preemptively ID them."

[Philip]

How about:
Don't go below dlevel 20 without Free Action or See Invisible or you risk instant death. (My first character that got deep, an O maia ranger died to Draebor and his minions. I had no idea that i should have SI.)
Don't go below dlevel 40 without poison resistance. (Both to be shown at dlevel metioned minus one.)
A lot of stuff can be destroyed (or, in the case of equipment damaged) by acid attacks, so watch out for water hounds and vortices.
Never underestimate monsters, for example monsters that drain stats are not worth whatever you get if they get a hit at you.

[Timo Pietilä]

How about:
Don't go below dlevel 20 without Free Action or See Invisible or you risk instant death. (My first character that got deep, an O maia ranger died to Draebor and his minions. I had no idea that i should have SI.)

Not a requirement providing that

a) you have method of detecting invisible monsters.
b) you have high AC and/or saving throw.

In current vanilla paralyzation is not cumulative, so sooner or later you recover from it, and if the monster doesn't land a blow or you make a saving throw at the turn you recover you can escape. That said, it is not a bad idea to have FA before going much deeper. Something like Trapper is a very nasty killer without FA to help escape.

Seeing invisible is not much a requirement as long as you can detect invisible monsters. Many are visible in infrared and almost all with ESP. Priests can cast a spell giving temporary SI and there are quite common potions of true sight which gives same, also mages can detect invisibles and priest detect evil shows all evil, invisible or not.

Lack of SI is mostly warrior-problem. Human/dunedain warrior especially.

Don't go below dlevel 40 without poison resistance. (Both to be shown at dlevel metioned minus one.)

That's not a requirement. You just need to know that poison breath can kill you. AMHD is equally dangerous with all of the elements and something like Dracolich is way more likely to kill unwary adventurer with nether than Drolem with poison (Drolem is a lot rarer).

Only reason you usually have any of the basic four resist before meeting AMHD is because they are so common. You don't actually need them before. Ancient dragons breathe basic elements only about 200 points damage, then comes AMHD with ~700 points. It is a surprise with all of the elements.

[Magnate]

Thanks for the reminder - I had totally forgotten this thread. Will try and compose something for 3.2 - it means bumping something off the help menu, but I think the version history (version.txt) can be relegated, since it doesn't need to be read in-game.

[Derakon]

I'm not a huge fan of those "hard breakpoints"; as Timo notes, you can keep going past and most of the time you'll be fine, but you must be careful. It would be more useful to say things like

1. Getting paralyzed is dangerous! Free action will protect you.

As for poison resistance, that got folded into the whole "big monsters breathe for big damage" thing. The player will know that AMHDs can breathe poison by the time they encounter them; the only problem is that they have so much more hitpoints than their brethren, which can easily be fixed by bumping up said brethren.

The goal isn't so much to protect the newbies from everything they might do wrong, as it is to make it so when they do die, they say "Oh, dur, I should have known that would happen" instead of "Wait, what?"

Magnate: I've been poking at trying to get a random hint to display each time generate_cave() runs. Right now I'm having problems figuring out how to add a new edit file parser, especially since ideally this one should just be "read each line of the file into a separate row in the array."

[Magnate]

I'm not a huge fan of those "hard breakpoints"; as Timo notes, you can keep going past and most of the time you'll be fine, but you must be careful. It would be more useful to say things like

1. Getting paralyzed is dangerous! Free action will protect you.

As for poison resistance, that got folded into the whole "big monsters breathe for big damage" thing. The player will know that AMHDs can breathe poison by the time they encounter them; the only problem is that they have so much more hitpoints than their brethren, which can easily be fixed by bumping up said brethren.

The goal isn't so much to protect the newbies from everything they might do wrong, as it is to make it so when they do die, they say "Oh, dur, I should have known that would happen" instead of "Wait, what?"

Magnate: I've been poking at trying to get a random hint to display each time generate_cave() runs. Right now I'm having problems figuring out how to add a new edit file parser, especially since ideally this one should just be "read each line of the file into a separate row in the array."

We have a dev who can probably write that parser in about three minutes. Let me ask her and get back to you.

[the Invisible Stalker]

It is possible to win.

In a game that lasts hundreds of thousands or millions of turns you should expect very unlikely things to happen sooner or later. Assume bad luck.

Everything you need to know about items, monsters, artifacts, etc. is contained in files in the lib/edit directory. Learning to read these files will save you a lot of dead characters.

[Magnate]

It is possible to win.

In a game that lasts hundreds of thousands or millions of turns you should expect very unlikely things to happen sooner or later. Assume bad luck.

Everything you need to know about items, monsters, artifacts, etc. is contained in files in the lib/edit directory. Learning to read these files will save you a lot of dead characters.

Ok, pause the hints please folks - I'm tidying them up into a text file now. Once they're in nightlies (give me a few hours) feel free to suggest more. In the meantime I might miss them.