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After much trial and tribulation, I have achieved my glorious second victory against Morgoth. This time with 3.2 and the shiny new random artifacts feature. Another high-elf ranger. You can find my dump here.
Quite a few impressive finds, I feel obliged to admit, including a splendiferous long bow (just what an aspiring ranger needs) and a double-immunity cloak, resulting in a total of three immunities. My kit was so thorough that both ring slots were free for =speed -- overkill really, but who am I to argue?
I do seem to finally have a better feel for the power curve, figuring out what I can handle and what I need to avoid. Similarly, I've also made progress on the *real* source of death of my characters -- me. I keep an eye out for boredom, and have learned to take things verrry slowwwwly when I sit down to play after a break as I seem to have a tendency at such times to rush in headlong and eat nasty spells to the face.
When I engaged Morgoth, I started doing that hockey-puck thing again, shooting him around corners. But after a while, I decided to be brazen, and just shoot him in the open. The fight became much more interesting -- healing from spell damage, teleporting stuff away, destructing when things got out of control. I feel like I'm ready to try out other classes, and perhaps spice things up with a few difficulty toggles -- disconnected stairs, and such.
Just one problem, though. I'm a cheater.
You see, I never set foot in Angband anymore without turning on "Know complete monster info". It seems foolhardy to me to do otherwise. There's just too many obscure baddies lurking around down there that can obliterate characters instantly. Do I have to expend an entire character's life just to learn that ethereal dragons or drolems or (insert random funky unique with bizarro ranged attack here) can rip my head off at a whim even if I have the "correct" resistance? That just seems like way, way too expensive a price to pay for knowledge.
That's meta-game knowledge already, in fact. My "new" character has no way of knowing what some crazy half-dragon, half-potato can spit out of its nose. Yet monster abilities are constant from game to game. Indeed, I challenge anyone to look me in the eye and claim that anyone has any real chance at winning this game without knowing *precisely* what every single one of these enemies is actually capable of.
So ultimately, everyone's already got their characters skulking carefully around the dungeon based on knowledge not directly available to that character. Everyone's already doing what I do. I'm just being blatant about it. So why, then, is it "cheating" to have the game confirm what I already know? How is it "cheating" to use the in-game interface as a handy, dandy reference of who can breathe what and when, as opposed to what I used to do, which was to have the monster spoiler files sitting open in the next window?
Thus I petition that "Know all monster info" at least be moved out of the list of cheat options. The other flags in that list are legitimate cheats, in my opinion: knowing about what was randomized *in that game*. Information not available to the character *or* to the player in any fashion. Information that the character needs to discover during his journey. Information that's actually part of the game challenge, part of the fun. Reading on your tombstone "Oh, by the way, didn't you know that Greater Basilisks can breathe nexus?" Not fun.
Quite a few impressive finds, I feel obliged to admit, including a splendiferous long bow (just what an aspiring ranger needs) and a double-immunity cloak, resulting in a total of three immunities. My kit was so thorough that both ring slots were free for =speed -- overkill really, but who am I to argue?
I do seem to finally have a better feel for the power curve, figuring out what I can handle and what I need to avoid. Similarly, I've also made progress on the *real* source of death of my characters -- me. I keep an eye out for boredom, and have learned to take things verrry slowwwwly when I sit down to play after a break as I seem to have a tendency at such times to rush in headlong and eat nasty spells to the face.
When I engaged Morgoth, I started doing that hockey-puck thing again, shooting him around corners. But after a while, I decided to be brazen, and just shoot him in the open. The fight became much more interesting -- healing from spell damage, teleporting stuff away, destructing when things got out of control. I feel like I'm ready to try out other classes, and perhaps spice things up with a few difficulty toggles -- disconnected stairs, and such.
Just one problem, though. I'm a cheater.
You see, I never set foot in Angband anymore without turning on "Know complete monster info". It seems foolhardy to me to do otherwise. There's just too many obscure baddies lurking around down there that can obliterate characters instantly. Do I have to expend an entire character's life just to learn that ethereal dragons or drolems or (insert random funky unique with bizarro ranged attack here) can rip my head off at a whim even if I have the "correct" resistance? That just seems like way, way too expensive a price to pay for knowledge.
That's meta-game knowledge already, in fact. My "new" character has no way of knowing what some crazy half-dragon, half-potato can spit out of its nose. Yet monster abilities are constant from game to game. Indeed, I challenge anyone to look me in the eye and claim that anyone has any real chance at winning this game without knowing *precisely* what every single one of these enemies is actually capable of.
So ultimately, everyone's already got their characters skulking carefully around the dungeon based on knowledge not directly available to that character. Everyone's already doing what I do. I'm just being blatant about it. So why, then, is it "cheating" to have the game confirm what I already know? How is it "cheating" to use the in-game interface as a handy, dandy reference of who can breathe what and when, as opposed to what I used to do, which was to have the monster spoiler files sitting open in the next window?
Thus I petition that "Know all monster info" at least be moved out of the list of cheat options. The other flags in that list are legitimate cheats, in my opinion: knowing about what was randomized *in that game*. Information not available to the character *or* to the player in any fashion. Information that the character needs to discover during his journey. Information that's actually part of the game challenge, part of the fun. Reading on your tombstone "Oh, by the way, didn't you know that Greater Basilisks can breathe nexus?" Not fun.
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