Save the hounds... again.

[Derakon]

Really, *enchant armour* is all but useless now (and quite common)

It's always been all but useless, though I can't speak to its commonality. The *enchant* scrolls simply try to enchant the equipment several times with the standard enchantment algorithm; nothing particularly special.

[CunningGabe]

It would be cool if *enchant armour* also tried to add a resist or boost the pval.

[buzzkill]

It's always been all but useless, though I can't speak to its commonality. The *enchant* scrolls simply try to enchant the equipment several times with the standard enchantment algorithm; nothing particularly special.

Well now it's totally useless, I guess. The point I was trying to make is that I would normally use these scrolls to repair acid damage, damage that doesn't really occur anymore because it was caused primarily by water hounds, which you don't run into all that often any more. They were good at restoring that last couple of points of enchantment (+8, +9, +10) to acid damaged armour, which is hard to achieve through normal enchant scrolls.

Assuming hound rarity isn't going to change, and since these aren't sold in common stores, I'd like to see them beefed up a little. Off the top of my head, maybe add a guaranteed +1 enchantment up to +15, or a temporary boot to AC, something.

[scud]

Welcome back, and thanks for posting your thoughts!

Why thank you! Sorry for the tardy response. I was busy, killing things.

Ego DSM is almost certainly too frequent. DSM in general has been made more common; on the flipside, it was rarely useful in the old days. But the DSM egos are both powerful and relatively common.

My most recent corpse was rocking Bronze DSM of Permanence and had a very fetching but never worn Black DSM of Speed +9 in his wardrobe.

There's more than one type of greater vault that consists of small cells holding powerful monsters. The old type with straight lines is still in the game.

I encountered a few 'new' greater vaults, but managed to miss out on the olde worlde single cell spiral (how do you agree on names for these things? Is there a handy identification chart somewhere?)

Re difficulty, my game was a little skewed by finding a Rapier of Slay Animal (1d6) (+9,+9) at 250' and Dal-i-thalion at 550', which greatly eased the next twenty dungeon/character levels. I missed out on the fun of having to really 'work' the unique orcs. As mentioned elsewhere, vrock and mumak farming can bump your level very quickly and painlessly in mid game (although that's always been the case). The closest shave I had prior to death was look Itangast in the face at CL19 / 750'!

Re hounds, they are definitely thin on the ground. Looking at my autopsy report I killed a combined total of four aether and chaos hounds, and not a single gravity or nexus hound. I actively went looking for ethereals, nethers and plasmas but totalled less than a hundred combined. Obviously I bailed out of a few time hound -infested levels, but not many.

Re the durability of stuff, books are definitely over-protected with double resistance. My library grew and grew. I had 67 copies of 'Sorcery and Evocations' at home; in the old days I'd sometimes run out altogether.

Twas another stupid death, playing too casually, too late at night. When ploughing through a column of glabrezu always look out for the lurking pit fiend! Got chaos-ed twice in two attempts, and that was that. Was left lying of the floor with -8 (that's MINUS EIGHT) HP with hundreds of unused SPs and four charged Rods of Healing. Finding Nenya thirty seconds earlier wasn't much consolation. My main concern was lack of a really meaty weapon. Was Stonehanding because I had serious blindness resistance problems, but I didn't have significantly deadlier tools at home. I think Erebor was the most lethal thing I had, and waving a pick around would have been most undignified for a High Elf Ranger Lord.

Still, my best bash since returning to the game: 15m XP and down to 4300'. Next time I need to be a bit less 'bashy'. Time for a few weeks off, I think...

[buzzkill]

Re the durability of stuff, books are definitely over-protected with double resistance. My library grew and grew. I had 67 copies of 'Sorcery and Evocations' at home; in the old days I'd sometimes run out altogether.

Yep, and dungeon books far too common. After a while I took to collecting these to sell rather than other items, primarily because they're everywhere, and they stack. There was talk some time ago about making dungeon books artifacts, only one copy per game, which seems like a good idea.

Is 'slay animal' even less useful now with nerfed hounds? What are the other big animal menaces?

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I've always liked dungeon books to sell, because as you say, they don't consume a slot, they're all high-value, and they're light. The only issue is, you're probably not looking for cash all that much by the time they show.

IMO, there's no such thing as over-protecting the books. I think it's ludicrous that you need to carry around a whole library.

Big animal menaces...
Shelob, the later Qs (including the Emperor Q), Dracolisk, the Phoenix, Lernaean Hydra, Jabberwock, Ungoliant, Tarrasque, Draugluin, Huan, Carcharoth, Winged Horror (not all that deadly, but I don't like them), greater basilisk, elder aranea

Note, too, that several of these *only* have Animal, including the Tarrasque, Lernaean Hydra, Huan, and I believe all the Qs.

There are a number of others that I didn't list, but which can be a problem on or around their starting levels, like the bigger hydras.

[buzzkill]

Big animal menaces...
Shelob, the later Qs (including the Emperor Q), Dracolisk, the Phoenix, Lernaean Hydra, Jabberwock, Ungoliant, Tarrasque, Draugluin, Huan, Carcharoth, Winged Horror (not all that deadly, but I don't like them), greater basilisk, elder aranea

Note, too, that several of these *only* have Animal, including the Tarrasque, Lernaean Hydra, Huan, and I believe all the Qs.

I pity the fool who approaches any of these with *slay animal* as his preferred choice in weaponry.

[Derakon]

Weapons with animal slays (and particularly ammo with animal slays) can be helpful though.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I never said you'd want to melee them. You just asked for the menaces.