Another Newbie needs help

[Timo Pietilä]

Depends, but I think rPois. Of all the abilities, it's one of the hardest to get otherwise and takes up a ring slot. rBlind is a close second.

Stun is hardest. Poison you get eventually from Trickery if you haven't already found armors with it. Blindness you get from helmets of seeing and those are very common. Problem with blindness is not that it is not common, it is that you usually need to choose between Telepathy and it (unless you have Thranduil) and in that competition ESP wins.

[Derakon]

The best innate trait is regeneration, on the half-troll. Regeneration keeps the pace of your exploration up, it greatly increases your effective mana cap for casters, and (as a side benefit) it renders wounds largely irrelevant, though that mostly just saves the occasional !CCW. Other innates are occasionally more useful, but regeneration is the gift that is always relevant.

After that, I think my top racial traits would have to include (not necessarily ordered):

* The hobbit's high stealth
* Sustain CON on the dunadain
* Resist poison on the kobold

FA and SI are convenient, no question, but since they're essential and 90+% of characters don't have them as innates, gear that provides them is common. The same isn't true of rPois (i.e. it is rare) even though it does count as largely essential, so kobolds have much more leeway for gear in the midgame compared to other classes. Meanwhile, getting your CON drained can spell trouble fast (and sustain CON is rarely convenient to your gear). And high stealth, like regeneration, is almost always helpful.

[robbiodobbio]

cool, sounds good.

Another thing, I was reading another site for tips and it says you should only use recall to come out of dungeon and not to go down. It says you should go down via stairs so that you always enter a level on stairs and need to make a quick escape.

Do you agree with this? Doesn't it take ages to play like that?

[Derakon]

I don't agree with that, precisely for the reason you mentioned: it'd take forever to play that way, you'd get bored, and you'd end up making a fatal mistake. It sounds to me that whoever wrote those tips is playing a very paranoid / cautious game, but while that might (might) increase the odds of any given character being a winner, it will greatly increase the amount of time you spend playing between winning, if you take my meaning.

Dive fast, die early, learn from your mistakes, and do it all over again.

Not to mention, that tactic only works if you play with the "connected stairs" option on, so that when you enter a level you're standing on a staircase. The original game didn't do this, so you didn't have that easy escape handy. Removing connected stairs is a common way to make the game harder.

[Thraalbee]

Too slow. I buff speed and cast resistance and then recall. Before getting the spells I just recall down anyway. But I believe even when recalling, monsters will not get a free move, so if you bring a good escape you should be ok anyway as long as your first move is the escape

[robbiodobbio]

Yeah I started doing it with my new character and started getting really bored and ended up with a backpack full of junk and no arrows left pretty quickly. Gonna start recalling down.

Dive to CL? Or deeper?

[Derakon]

Dive until you don't feel safe, stay there for a bit, then dive some more.

[Philip]

Dive till you die. Then start a new character and repeat. Dying is how you learn.

[Timo Pietilä]

The best innate trait is regeneration, on the half-troll. Regeneration keeps the pace of your exploration up, it greatly increases your effective mana cap for casters, and (as a side benefit) it renders wounds largely irrelevant, though that mostly just saves the occasional !CCW. Other innates are occasionally more useful, but regeneration is the gift that is always relevant.

After that, I think my top racial traits would have to include (not necessarily ordered):

* The hobbit's high stealth
* Sustain CON on the dunadain
* Resist poison on the kobold

FA and SI are convenient, no question

You are again forgetting dwarfs. I'm guessing you don't play them often. Blindness protection is IMO best of them all, mainly because blindness as resist outside of helmets of seeing is rare (in case you don't want to use Thranduil: lacking fighting stats, have ESP from other gear and have Hammerhand or good ego crown of might). For regen you can just rest, it ruins you turncount but who cares, it doesn't take you any real life time to do so. H-Trolls are good because their enormous HP and very high melee skills, but otherwise they lose to Dwarfs in about everything, especially very low INT and WIS makes mana recovery quite moot point for H-Trolls. IMO regen as innate ability is weakest of them all, even hobbit hold life beats it. Regen for Hi-Elf or gnome or hobbit would be great, but for H-Troll it is just nice thing to have for lack of anything better.

Hobbits also recognize mushrooms, which can be useful in early game, and they have hold life which makes dealing with undeads easy.

[nitpick] it is dunedain or dunadan. Kind of foot, feet -situation.

[Timo Pietilä]

Too slow. I buff speed and cast resistance and then recall. Before getting the spells I just recall down anyway. But I believe even when recalling, monsters will not get a free move, so if you bring a good escape you should be ok anyway as long as your first move is the escape

Enter dark room, cast light/detect monsters/detection, see large pack of gravity hounds. RIP.

For that reason amulets of infravision (in case you don't have ESP) are very valuable. A good one of those extends your visual range large enough to usually see if there is reason to immediately bail out. Teleport level, cast doors, banish, mass banish, destruction...

[Derakon]

You are again forgetting dwarfs. I'm guessing you don't play them often. Blindness protection is IMO best of them all, mainly because blindness as resist outside of helmets of seeing is rare (in case you don't want to use Thranduil: lacking fighting stats, have ESP from other gear and have Hammerhand or good ego crown of might).

I didn't forget about dwarves, I just don't consider blindness resistance to be as helpful as you do. I've gotten used to not being able to both it and confusion resistance at the same time, which means I can never rely on scrolls for escapes, which means that blindness resistance doesn't affect my tactics much. Especially since you can still "see" enemies just find with telepathy when blinded. And anyway you don't get blinded very often.

For regen you can just rest, it ruins you turncount but who cares, it doesn't take you any real life time to do so.

I care. Stopping to rest breaks flow for me, even though as you say it only takes a second or two. Different playstyles.

H-Trolls are good because their enormous HP and very high melee skills, but otherwise they lose to Dwarfs in about everything, especially very low INT and WIS makes mana recovery quite moot point for H-Trolls. IMO regen as innate ability is weakest of them all, even hobbit hold life beats it. Regen for Hi-Elf or gnome or hobbit would be great, but for H-Troll it is just nice thing to have for lack of anything better.

Try playing a half-troll paladin or rogue sometime. No matter what race you pick your mana pool will be pretty poor and your failure rate on recent spells will be high, but the half-troll allows you to cast spells fairly frequently anyway, and the ones you care most about tend to be in book 1. As a full caster I agree that the half-troll is probably not the best, but it makes a fantastic hybrid caster.

Hobbits also recognize mushrooms, which can be useful in early game, and they have hold life which makes dealing with undeads easy.

Recognizing mushrooms just saves you a few ID charges, and hold life is the most worthless ability in the game after feather fall.

[nitpick] it is dunedain or dunadan. Kind of foot, feet -situation.

Whoops. Thanks for the correction.

[Thraalbee]

Enter dark room, cast light/detect monsters/detection, see large pack of gravity hounds. RIP.
...

By the time I can cast speed and resistance I expect to have ESP. But I agree, in the early game I like items that adds to my Infravision.

[robbiodobbio]

In the early game, what;s more useful acid or lighting resist? I'm on DL12 just found both amulets, don't have any resists at the mo.

Also do you find that confusion is the biggest killer of early characters? Hasn't killed me yet but i've had a couple of close calls, you can't cast or read so 2 escape routes are closed off and I haven't found a teleport staff yet.

[Mondkalb]

I'd carry the amulets as a swap. There are not many breathers at that depth.

Confusion can be a killer. If you can't detect often, you can be surprised by a sudden Umber hulk. For early chars one Umber hulk is dangerous enough, even more if other creatures are nearby.
Later there are Hammerhorns and a couple of magic using Monsters.

[robbiodobbio]

Just found metal scale mail of resist lightening. When I wear heavy armour it says it encumbers my movement, is this just a reference to the loss of some "to hit" points? Or something else? Should I wear it with strength 15? Or leave it at home until I've beefed up a bit? It also slows me down as it weighs 38lbs.