Do you dive aggressively or slowly?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In Halls of Mist, almost all scrolls, mushrooms and potions come in stacks. Necessary consumables like Phase Door come in big stacks. This change feels really good. I've never felt that I'm finding "too many" consumables. I just need to buy less from the shops.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Aggressive diving is often rationalized by the fact that there's a possibility for dying on every dungeon level, because of sloppy playing (boredom) or just bad luck. Collecting experience and loot on shallow levels is often just not going to work.

Should the DivingBand somehow increase the chance of dying on shallow levels, to make diving the only sensible strategy for winning? Perhaps have a monster attack -- maybe poison or disease -- that is just as lethal to characters of every experience level.

[debo]

In most *bands I end up descending slowly, simply because I get curious about what is on each level. Even in Sil, I have to remind myself of the clock occasionally to get rid of the OCD compulsion.

Years ago I played a "3D" PC dungeon crawler called Moraff's World, in which monster XP increased exponentially per level. I have never played a more addictive diving game EVER. You could dive 50 floors, kill a single level-draining monster (who give way more XP than normal ones), and suddenly gain 40 levels. The trick was, though, that you had to rest at the inn to actually 'convert' the XP to levels (old D&D style). This made the ascent back even more harrowing than the hunt itself! Super fun.

Edit: The other thing that made MW conducive to diving is that you only found items by killing monsters. (No chests, dungeon-floor-items, etc.) So there was never this feeling that you were 'missing out' on a level by not exploring it.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Now that's cool. You can download the game from here, might be a good reason to fire up DOSBox!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In most *bands I end up descending slowly, simply because I get curious about what is on each level.

Halls of Mist might be a good diving game for you. In Mist, you want to clear whole levels (they're quite small). You can make the decision to dive when you take the stairs down.

[daniel.santos]

Ok guys, this is a test message and I'm sorry to choose this thread and use you like this, so I'll at least put in a few cents on the topic (if it even goes through that is, grrr).

So I'm the Pixie/Troll guy and the issue of diving is paramount to playing a Pixie Mage that, if added to Angband, will be the most vulnerable class early on since they only have a hitdie of 4.

But I have done it! Well, crap, I got him to 15 or so and some stupid master yeek on dlevel 10 summoned a psudo dragon who nailed my little pixie mage in one shot with a poison cloud (and I didn't have resist poison yet). But I’m scumming this toon because I need the test results. Once I get him to 50 and at least close to defeating Morgoth or have others more familiar with the game analyze the character at higher level and give me assurance that the that such a character can defeat him, then I'll be done.

So this is a funny question ("how do you dive?") for my situation because I've had to dive WAY cautiously in dungeon levels half my own and I still ran into a deadly situation. But once I got my char to level 24 or so and read this thread, I decided to take a big risk. I had a pair of scrolls of deep descent, an ESP necklace and a glorious "defender" weapon that granted me +4 stealth, so I decided to go for it and dove to level 34 with the reading of two scrolls! My aim was to try to sneak around to find the stat potions, but I encountered many mobs that I could take and ended up level quite abit there. This has almost completely worked out except for another death (basilisk poison this time), but that happened when I was arguing with my wife while playing (always a recipe for disaster). My toon is 32 now and on dlevel 36, where I'm taking my time still trying to find more stat potions, but his hit points are finally up to 137, a glorious accomplishment since I was at around 54 just a few levels earlier and my str is finally high enough that the Pixie racial haste bonus isn't all being wasted to counter-act their epic weakness. I'm actually *making* it in dlevel 36 now (I could probably move on, but I want some resist poison item) This is causing me to wonder if their +7 stealth is a candidate for nerfing.

Anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings and I hope this goes through!

Latest pixie patches are here if anybody cares. (the fourth patch will probably apply "fuzzy" because I have it in my tree after another patch that touches text adjacent to it, but it should apply).

[LostTemplar]

Dive until character seems 'valuable'(highly subjective point when I start trying to keep character alive) and depth seems too dangerous. If character does not seem valuable I dive until death. Ability to choose diving rate is indeed

Angband's biggest strength compared to other roguelikes.

[Elbereth]

I always follow the same pattern: play a high-elf mage, explore every last corner of the dungeon for weeks, then say "to hell with it", start diving and immediately die a gruesome death.

I've been playing this game on and off for 15 years, and I've yet to win. Hell, I've yet to hit clvl 40 with any character...

[LostTemplar]

I've been playing this game on and off for 15 years, and I've yet to win. Hell, I've yet to hit clvl 40 with any character...

It becomes much less fun after a win.

[dos350]

It becomes much less fun after a win.

ive won twice and i still enjoy angband,

if not even more than ever,

despite the game becoming worse than wat it was when i first played (3.12v2), i still find it 2 b one of the best single player games 1 can play, even at 3.41 with its small stacks and fuzzy item detecto and how could i forget the "improved" lvl feelings and shop interfac(... i could go on for most of the list)

any1 playing for over a year and hasnt 1 isnt trying hard enough in my opinion

if u want 2 win just play a high elf warrior , in my eyes the easiest combo ive tried

as for diving,

the faster the better i think, just keep going down..if ur full weak u cant go 2 far without much avoiding, otherwise just blitz,

any downstairs gets u closer, closer

free action is important after about dlvl 25 and u need it badly, so is resist and r/conf and blind or otherwise just stay safe

if u know wat ur doing tho u can just dive and not go near homonc and bla that kill ur unprotected self

when u get on stairs u detect, if u r warrior u hope or u hav staff/bla

GL and no abuse

[Bagplant]

Having been a slow and steady clearer in the past, I am very much on the fast diving bandwagon now because it's so much more fun.

I need some risk in order to keep me alert. If I fight too many easy opponents for too long I end up dying to something preventable because I got bored and held a move key down once too often. I also try to maximize the reward for the risk I'm taking, which takes various forms but has an impact on whether I choose to fight or run, and when I dive. I like hanging out on levels that are multiples of 5 or 10, because historically those are where new item types came into depth (not sure if this is still true).

There are certain points where I won't go any deeper without a particular quality. I try not to get down to ancient dragon depth without rbase, and I don't like going below about 1700' without SInv (fighting dreads when you can't see them is no fun). I don't typically wait for FA but below a certain depth you accept some risk of instadeath without it (can usually be mitigated, worse for characters with bad saving throw).

I'm really pleased to hear that 3.4 has reverted the item level change for monster drops - kill all weaklings was not a fun playstyle. In general I like the difficulty in 3.4 and item drop rates feel more like they did in 2.x - I'm actually excited now if I find a good ego weapon pre-stat gain, which is nice. Ego armor is perhaps a little too rare compared to weapons, but that's not all bad (trying to get through stat gain with a patchwork of resists adds some drama). I'd say that compared to 3.1 early game feels a bit tougher due to lower drop rates. Stat gain feels a lot tougher, due to the stat swap potions being made rarer and because you typically don't have anywhere near the quality of gear that you did in 3.1. It's also harder to find stat potions from monster drops due to the item level change - in 2.x you just had to locate a couple of troll pits and clear them out and you'd be done, but that doesn't work any more since the "too much crap" change. You need to either dive much deeper (dangerous until you have more CON) or cherry-pick your targets - I spend a lot of time hunting for dragons.

Below about 2500' it feels fairly similar as drop rates go up and ego items become common again. Artifacts feel a bit rarer, possibly a consequence of the drop changes (do non-special artifacts still need to be upgraded from ego items in the code?) My current character is at 3500' (practically 3000' as I just fast dived 10 levels using deep descent in search of rings of speed) and has found 11 artifacts so far. In 3.1 I suspect I would have found a lot more by now.