YACD - Endgame Advice

[Mocker]

Greetings!

I played a bit of Umoria back in 1990 or 91, then discovered Angband a couple years later and I've been playing on and off ever since... I've never had a winner, never even fought Sauron or Morgoth, and my current character is as close I've gotten at 4600 feet.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11731

I feel like this character's pretty much ready to wrap things up but I wanted to run it past you all in case I'm missing anything... After 20+ years of tombstones, I'd really like to win this one.

Last night I swapped out the RoDamage +14 for the RoSpeed +14, wanted to see if the extra speed offset the loss in damage but I haven't tested it yet. Also not sure about sticking with Belthronding over Cubragol... Any advice on gear or anything else would be greatly appreciated!

[Timo Pietilä]

Greetings!

I played a bit of Umoria back in 1990 or 91, then discovered Angband a couple years later and I've been playing on and off ever since... I've never had a winner, never even fought Sauron or Morgoth, and my current character is as close I've gotten at 4600 feet.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11731

I feel like this character's pretty much ready to wrap things up but I wanted to run it past you all in case I'm missing anything... After 20+ years of tombstones, I'd really like to win this one.

Last night I swapped out the RoDamage +14 for the RoSpeed +14, wanted to see if the extra speed offset the loss in damage but I haven't tested it yet. Also not sure about sticking with Belthronding over Cubragol... Any advice on gear or anything else would be greatly appreciated!

Speed is almost always better than damage, until you reach +30. With +14 RoS you increased your energy from 30 to 40 = 33.333..% increase. 478 damage + 5*14 = 548 vs 478 * 1.3333 = 637.3. Speed wins. Thing is that with +20 speed hasted to +30 is almost same as 34 speed hasted to 44 speed (energy difference between +30 and +34 is only two points and +34 and +44 is three points.). OTOH added speed affects every movement, not just melee.

I suggest that you swap Hammerhand to Dor-Lomin until endgame. Aggravation is not worth the extra few points of damage until you reach the point where waking up thing do not matter any more. You find living deep much easier without items that aggravate.

As ranger Belthronding is way better than Cubragol. You just need to use that bow a lot to get full benefit from it. Also Pain is much better than Ulmo right now. It basically slays everything, even angels. Everything Ulmo gives is covered by other gears you have except +4 DEX, but you don't need that, 18/230 is still max, and Nether which you might want to have against some monsters even that you can't rely on its damage reduction for survival. Carry Ulmo as swap.

[Mocker]

Speed is almost always better than damage, until you reach +30. With +14 RoS you increased your energy from 30 to 40 = 33.333..% increase. 478 damage + 5*14 = 548 vs 478 * 1.3333 = 637.3. Speed wins. Thing is that with +20 speed hasted to +30 is almost same as 34 speed hasted to 44 speed (energy difference between +30 and +34 is only two points and +34 and +44 is three points.). OTOH added speed affects every movement, not just melee.

Thanks Timo! I tested the extra speed last night and I liked how it played.

I suggest that you swap Hammerhand to Dor-Lomin until endgame. Aggravation is not worth the extra few points of damage until you reach the point where waking up thing do not matter any more. You find living deep much easier without items that aggravate.

As ranger Belthronding is way better than Cubragol. You just need to use that bow a lot to get full benefit from it. Also Pain is much better than Ulmo right now. It basically slays everything, even angels. Everything Ulmo gives is covered by other gears you have except +4 DEX, but you don't need that, 18/230 is still max, and Nether which you might want to have against some monsters even that you can't rely on its damage reduction for survival. Carry Ulmo as swap.

It's funny, I'd played with Aggravation a lot with a previous character and it didn't really bug me, I was actually surprised by how harmless it seemed... But at this depth it has definitely been a lot more annoying.

I don't like relying on a swap for Nether resistance, so I'm thinking of going with Pain, Celebrimbor (for Shards) instead of Hammerhand/Dor-Lomin, and switching Cloak of Amans (from Shards to Nether). That covers everything and though my Con drops to 210 it still leaves me with max HP.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11731

I've slain 94 uniques so that means there's just 1 more plus Sauron and Morgoth, right?

[d_m]

It's funny, I'd played with Aggravation a lot with a previous character and it didn't really bug me, I was actually surprised by how harmless it seemed... But at this depth it has definitely been a lot more annoying.

My experience has been that if you play really slow and careful (e.g. you're overpowered for your dungeon level) then aggravation isn't a huge deal, especially if you have a means of teleporting away dangerous foes, detection, etc.

That said, that play style has other well-known dangerous (carelessness, boredom, etc).

[Timo Pietilä]

I don't like relying on a swap for Nether resistance, so I'm thinking of going with Pain, Celebrimbor (for Shards) instead of Hammerhand/Dor-Lomin, and switching Cloak of Amans (from Shards to Nether). That covers everything and though my Con drops to 210 it still leaves me with max HP.

You should learn optimizing your gear by preventing dangerous side-effects, evasion and damage, do not rely on (high)resists for damage reduction. You don't really need anything else than FA, SI, Basic4 + poison, pconf and pblind as much HP as you can get and as much speed as you can get to survive deep in dungeon. Nexus is good to have as long as your stats are very dissimilar or your saving throw is very low (warriors).

For main five high-elements you still get 6/7 of damage in worst case even with resist. Nether 471, rest 428.

Resists are good to have, but they are not in any way necessary except for basic4 and poison because those can kill you without resist with single hit (max damage from basic4 is 1600).

[Mocker]

You should learn optimizing your gear by preventing dangerous side-effects, evasion and damage, do not rely on (high)resists for damage reduction. You don't really need anything else than FA, SI, Basic4 + poison, pconf and pblind as much HP as you can get and as much speed as you can get to survive deep in dungeon. Nexus is good to have as long as your stats are very dissimilar or your saving throw is very low (warriors).

For main five high-elements you still get 6/7 of damage in worst case even with resist. Nether 471, rest 428.

Resists are good to have, but they are not in any way necessary except for basic4 and poison because those can kill you without resist with single hit (max damage from basic4 is 1600).

Good advice, thanks again!

I didn't realize just how little damage reduction the high resists provide in the worst case scenario, seeing the numbers I can definitely understand the rationale for prioritizing other bonuses over them.

That said, I've been playing this character very slowly and conservatively because if I don't get a win this time I'm liable to take a baseball bat to my PC... So I might just stay the course and try to keep all those high resists covered for now.

Assuming I get the win, I'll want to dive a lot more aggressively with my next character, and at that point I'll try to start prioritizing other bonuses over some of the high resists when appropriate.

I'd also like to try out no_selling and randarts one of these days, but I feel like I should win one with the standard Vanilla rules first.

[Timo Pietilä]

I'd also like to try out no_selling and randarts one of these days, but I feel like I should win one with the standard Vanilla rules first.

No selling actually feels very natural, kind of what it is supposed to be. If you think any modern shop they do not do trades, you buy things, but you don't sell things there.

That said you can still give things in shops in angband for free in which case unknown flavors get identified (and you might be able to buy it back) and any already in sale wands and staves get recharged. I use that a lot with my warriors to keep my ID-staves charged (recharging by scrolls risk losing staff, recharge by shop doesn't, so cost is pretty much irrelevant in comparison).