A Few Questions/Observations From an Old Player

[LostTemplar]

32->42 speed makes you 11% faster.

[Timo Pietilä]

32->42 speed makes you 11% faster.

Which is more than +5 damage from STR I presume is the point.

OTOH, if he can use some damage enchanting gear with Ringil (like RoDam +15) then hasted +32 is better than hasted +42. Or not, that +11% applies to everything else too.

Speed causes perception distortion: you don't actually see yourself killing monster faster, difference comes from damage monster does to you. Game just feels easier (you have more time to do everything).

[Oramin]

Ok, now that I've found The One Ring on level 98 in a vault, I'm a little curious about using it (see, I told you that would work...).

1. Does Permanently Cursed mean I can't remove it once I put it on?

2. Just how bad is the experience drain? I've already chugged a couple of dozen Potions of Experience after hitting L50 so I should have a substantial buffer. Can I restore the lost experience?

3. Any other downsides such as it being bad to wear while facing Sauron?

Thanks.

[Derakon]

1. Does Permanently Cursed mean I can't remove it once I put it on?

Correct.

2. Just how bad is the experience drain? I've already chugged a couple of dozen Potions of Experience after hitting L50 so I should have a substantial buffer. Can I restore the lost experience?

Every few normal-speed turns, you'll lose a point or two of experience. It's completely negligible. However, the drain is permanent, so the only way to "restore" it is to kill things.

3. Any other downsides such as it being bad to wear while facing Sauron?

Nope. The only things special about Sauron are 1) that he can only show up on level 99, and 2) that after you kill him, you can get staircases to level 100.

[Timo Pietilä]

3. Any other downsides such as it being bad to wear while facing Sauron?

It's activation can be really bad. Or good. Depends of the mood of the Ring. I would recommend not to use that activation.

[donalde]

Vanilla characters top out around 1200HP, IIRC -- that's a half-troll warrior with max CON and a decent set of levelup rolls. Potions of Life are just that ridiculous.

1200 hp on hT warrior is pretty normal, I just looked ladder and found hT Warrior with 1293 hp. That is pretty darn impressive. That is like 100 to 200 more hp than any other race can wish for on clvl 50.

[Oramin]

Morgoth bites the dust again.

On to the Half-Troll Warrior.

[Oramin]

Does the game hate Half-Troll Warriors?

I'm down to level 19 of the dungeon and I'm level 27. I haven't found a single artifact yet; not even the Phial of Galadriel.

[Derakon]

That sounds normal to me. Artifacts are rare; even the Phial is no longer remotely a guaranteed early drop (unlike how it used to be where you'd think something was wrong if you didn't find it by 500'). Especially with half-troll warriors, you can dive so quickly that it's not unreasonable to not even have any ego gear before 1000'.

[Oramin]

Well, I finally got my first level feeling higher than "worthwhile" when I got down to level 20. Apparently a Potion of Augmentation can trigger the "Superb" feeling since that was the only major goodie I found; not that I'm complaining since it saved me 123,000 buying potions from the Black Market.

Yeah, I remember back when I first started playing and it seemed that I almost immediately got the Phial followed swiftly by Hithlomir every single game.

[Oramin]

Oh, in case anybody was wondering, I finally found my first artifact.

I think getting Anduril as your first artifact officially means that the game does *not* hate Half-Troll Warriors.

[Oramin]

Ok, what's with Silent Watchers?

With my previous two characters (Dwarf Priest and Gnome Mage), I had no problems with them. I would just shoot them from range (with spells) and they would just sit there.

I discovered quickly enough that getting up close and personal with them with my Half-Troll Warrior isn't a particularly good idea, so I started shooting them from a long distance with my bow. This isn't working either since they keep summoning things (last time was a Beholder).

What is causing the difference in behavior?

[Derakon]

The AI doesn't care what race/class you use. My guess is that your previous characters had better ranged damage capability. In particular, Silent Watchers are evil, so your priest would have obliterated the thing -- a level-20 priest would do IIRC 2 * (3d6+30) damage vs. evil targets, i.e. average 81 damage/cast. A mage with a 9d8 firebolt would have average damage of 40.5/round (assuming they duck out of LOS to rest up for mana). Both will hit about 95% of the time.

Meanwhile your warrior is probably using something like a (+8, +8) longbow and unenchanted 1d4 arrows, giving average damage of 31.5 assuming he hits. Silent Watchers have pretty decent AC, and IIRC your hit chance with bows drops off with distance slightly; your hit rate will be significantly worse than the failure rates your full-casters were getting for their spells.

[Oramin]

Sorry, I should have specified that I'm using Amrod and arrows that are a minimum of +6 to damage for an average damage of 96.8. Levels for all characters would have been around 35 or so.

Does having a lousy Stealth make them more likely to aggressively summon things? Or is there a range within which they start summoning? Bow range is less than spell range so I generally have to be closer.

[Derakon]

Nope. The monster AI in Angband is literally:

If randint(cast chance) == 1:
    cast a spell at random
else:
    if player is adjacent:
        attack player
    else:
        move closer to player

Silent Watchers cast spells 1 time in 6; 2 out of 7 of their spells are summoning spells. They move at normal speed. Thus statistically you should see a summoning spell be cast 1 in every 21 turns. Anything more than that and you're just being unlucky.