Little Lost Priest

[Egavactip]

Once you feel you are spending more than two thirds of your mana to protect yourself you should either cast banish evil or just teleport. Morgoth is faster and will come to you. The others should be too far to even notice you, let alone catch up with morgoth.

Well, when I did it at first, some of the undead ones were actually able to get back into the battle--two of them even before morgoth, interestingly. After that I was more sparing with the banish evil and tended to use scrolls of banish or mass banishment, or destructions, in order to clean the slate--so that I wasn't just creating ever larger numbers of foes.

[Philip]

Once you feel you are spending more than two thirds of your mana to protect yourself you should either cast banish evil or just teleport. Morgoth is faster and will come to you. The others should be too far to even notice you, let alone catch up with morgoth.

[Egavactip]

Well, I just now killed Morgoth. It took a solid hour to do it, I guess you could call it the death of a thousand cuts. Or ten thousand "heals."

Basically what would happen is that he would show up, I would get a bunch of good Orbs off, then they would be fewer and fewer as he summoned things and I would have to spend more time teleporting other, re-glyphing, healing, banishing, restoring, destructing, or teleporting away. Once I had cleared the slate, I'd wait for Morgoth, then get those good Orbs off and then lather, rinse, repeat.

It was more difficult than the previous time I faced him, with a warrior. Basically because I was doing so much less damage, I had to keep myself alive a lot longer.

[Starhawk]

I'm surprised you didn't flee the level and start over when you discovered the undead vault. Did you find it halfway through the fight or something?

Anyway, well played -- and good luck with Morgoth. I concur on the ~400 damage per round if you want to melee. My only Angband win was with a warrior doing in the 400s.

[debo]

If all you lost was AC, that's not so bad. 20 AC is spit in the wind by the time you get to Morgoth.

[Derakon]

Morgoth will not teleport away on his own, so there's that. He'll also chase you down across the entire level, so he'll come back if you teleport him away. Very convenient, frankly.

[Egavactip]

One difference between this second time and my abortive first time was that this time my runes of protection were lasting a lot longer. The first time they were breaking constantly, so I was having to put a lot more mana and time into recreating them rather than doing damage; that's why I eventually teleported away. This time, they almost all lasted a long time.

[Egavactip]

Well, I just went back and tried Sauron again, and this time I succeeded. It took me about seven restore mana potions. Chasing him around was irritating, plus the level had an undead vault, so I ended up doing a lot of word of destruction just to get rid of annoying lich-types.

Sauron did a piece on me with disenchantment, though. My only prot from disenchantment was a sword swap, but swapping out my weapon lost me a lot in constitution and hit points, so I was reluctant to do so. Every time my rune got broken, he'd disenchant something. I probably lost about 20 in AC, and will only be able to get a bit of it back by re-enchanting.

All my plans, of course, went to naught. My first burrow became meaningless after something (I think a black reaver) tunnelled right to it, opening it right up to everybody else. My second didn't matter after someone blinked me out of it. My third lasted about three rounds before Sauron teleported away.

Several times I had to teleport away Vecna and the Tarrasque, who I think may be the only uniques left. I think I word of destructed them, which allowed Sauron to summon them back. I kept forgetting to use my life potions instead of my *heal* potions, which was irritating, since I wanted to use up all my life potions in the battle against Sauron so I'd have another slot free for the fight against Morgoth (instead of some life and some *healing*).

And did Sauron drop any artifacts? No, the cheap SOB. He dropped what would have been a nice +10 boots of speed, but I already had Feanor, so I can't even use them.

Well, I guess it is time to gird up and go for Morgoth. Last time I killed him (with a warrior), he didn't play keepaway like Sauron did. I hope that's true again, because I hate chasing them around the dungeon.

[Egavactip]

I'd definitely recommend going after at least Sauron with a character of that strength (I've taken down Morgoth with weaker). The easiest way to approach Sauron is to use an ASC (zigzaggy corridor that prevents summoning) and then basically just hitting him lots and healing whenever you need to. If I recall correctly, priests either have rune of protection or an equivalent, if so. use that. It will make life easy. Obviously that works best if you have potions of !mana. Basically just cast it whenever he breaks it. With Morgoth, it's slightly trickier...it will involve lots of running, repeated destruction mixed with teleport other, etc. Usually for Morgoth when I fight with either a priest or a mage I'll find a good spot on the map, frequently a corner (but that might just be my preference), destruct, wait for him to come. As soon as he summons something serious, i try to make sure that there's nothing besides him in LOS with me, then teleport him away, destruct again...and wait for him to come back. Rinse and repeat. It works pretty well. If you want something easier, and don't mind semi-cheating, you can wait until you get a level 100 with permanent rock on it. That can make it simple to defeat morgoth sometimes. Good luck to you! I just checked and it looks like you only have 6 !rmana...so I would either collect some more, or plan on using all of them for the morgoth fight, and at most 1 for sauron.

Yes, I've been runing. I have about 35 potions of restore mana at the moment.

[Egavactip]

Orb of Draining is 3d6 + 1.5 * level (for priests; 1.25 * level for paladins), for ~87 damage/cast at max level. However, that's doubled against evil targets. So unless your weapon can exceed 174 damage/round on average (i.e. including missed attacks, and remember priests typically have fairly pathetic melee/archery skill), you're better off using Orb. Of course, Orb also lets you avoid melee and can shoot over intervening summoned monsters, so it has even more to recommend itself.

I may have to try an all-orb strategy. The problem is that, between healing and recasting the rune, I can't get all that many shots on goal, alas. So it would take a really long time. Argh.

[Egavactip]

I´d look for at least 400 damage.

I've been looking for 98 levels for that and haven't come close.

[Egavactip]

Have you tried digging a corridor, usually a uneven jagged corridor to prepeare the battle for him, I usually detect him and then tunnel my way to him so he dosen't have much chance to summon, what's aggravating is he teleports you or himself away when he starts getting hurt, probably need to teleport other any creatures that are obstacles to him. And eventually should go down, try to pepper him with your sling to conserve mana. Priest is one of the only characters I can win with, besides rogues.

I tried digging a niche for him, but then he teleported away from it, so I had to go hunt him so that he wouldn't heal up. But even by the time I got to him, he had healed some.

[Derakon]

Orb of Draining is 3d6 + 1.5 * level (for priests; 1.25 * level for paladins), for ~87 damage/cast at max level. However, that's doubled against evil targets. So unless your weapon can exceed 174 damage/round on average (i.e. including missed attacks, and remember priests typically have fairly pathetic melee/archery skill), you're better off using Orb. Of course, Orb also lets you avoid melee and can shoot over intervening summoned monsters, so it has even more to recommend itself.

[Estie]

I recommend using melee and/or archery for damage and mana for rune of protection and healing. Your character has pityful offense, 227 damage with melee and only 1 stack of shots of slay evil.

For Sauron, it should be very easy to find upgrades, as he is vulnerable to acid. So any decent die weapon that is acid branded and/or ammo of acid would help.

Morgoth is only affected by "slay evil" and thus you need to get a bit lucky (or search longer) to find something suitable; extra attacks on the weapon also work well. I´d look for at least 400 damage.

[Angelus]

I'd definitely recommend going after at least Sauron with a character of that strength (I've taken down Morgoth with weaker). The easiest way to approach Sauron is to use an ASC (zigzaggy corridor that prevents summoning) and then basically just hitting him lots and healing whenever you need to. If I recall correctly, priests either have rune of protection or an equivalent, if so. use that. It will make life easy. Obviously that works best if you have potions of !mana. Basically just cast it whenever he breaks it. With Morgoth, it's slightly trickier...it will involve lots of running, repeated destruction mixed with teleport other, etc. Usually for Morgoth when I fight with either a priest or a mage I'll find a good spot on the map, frequently a corner (but that might just be my preference), destruct, wait for him to come. As soon as he summons something serious, i try to make sure that there's nothing besides him in LOS with me, then teleport him away, destruct again...and wait for him to come back. Rinse and repeat. It works pretty well. If you want something easier, and don't mind semi-cheating, you can wait until you get a level 100 with permanent rock on it. That can make it simple to defeat morgoth sometimes. Good luck to you! I just checked and it looks like you only have 6 !rmana...so I would either collect some more, or plan on using all of them for the morgoth fight, and at most 1 for sauron.