Moments of "whoa"

[MattB]

Timo will be happy!

[Haladon]

Not "woe", where you died unexpectedly, but "whoa" when you realize you did something possibly a little awesome.

Here is whoa as well as woe.

I once found a Ring of the Mouse (0, -3) <+4> in about depth 450 with a hobbit ranger. It stayed with him till he died from a gaze of a basilisk without free action .

Looking at the data files, mouse is (0 -3d4)<d4, d4>. So it was the best possible with a chance of 1/1024.

[Raxmei]

If I recall the mechanics correctly big summoners are easier to fight way out of depth. Fight him early -assuming you can- and you won't have to deal with the really dangerous greater demon summons.

[Derakon]

Monster drop quality is always at least the monster's native depth, so there's no penalty for fighting uniques when they're out-of-depth.

[MattB]

Yep. That'll help.

[PowerWyrm]

Gothmog is a pussy as long as you have double resist fire and fight in an antisummon corridor. However, I would wait to get him on-depth to maximize the chances of getting good drops from him.

[scud]

... whoa ... Gothmog?

Interesting(ish)ly in one of my three games on the ladder I took out Gothmog at DL58/CL45. Despite his native depth I doubt Gothmog would make anyone's Top Ten Scary Monsters list. Rather him than a purple C/L/R...

[Philip]

Do you want to have fun? Fight him.

[kaypy]

Go on- "How I died horribly" posts are always fun 8-)

[Thraalbee]

The question is, should I fight Gothmog?

[Thraalbee]

Gothmog at L58!

Glador was doing well, finally descending with some speed and feeling a bit powerful. This, after a very slow statgain -- DEX swapped with CHA early on. He enters L58 right between a purple S and U. The S is Shelob, no cause for alarm. Maybe kill her later. The U then? Balrogs are bad but I can probably kill it, what kind of ... whoa ... Gothmog? Hmm, isn't he dangerous? Oh crap, native to L95, only the big M and Sauron are native at lower depths.

How uncommon is this?

Could there be any correlation with the level of the artifact(s) in the Vault behind Gothmog? I've only just started to clear it.

http://angband.oook.cz/screen-show.php?id=2333

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=14505

[edit] The vault contained nothing very useful, only a quite undewhelming Robe that had high resists but is already useless in this game [end]

[Derakon]

Yeah, rings of Damage top out at +15 now. I think even in the old days they never went above +22.

If you had randarts, then conceivably you could get access to damage bonuses from every single equipment slot...but of course, you also wouldn't be able to use Sting nor Doomcaller.

[Timo Pietilä]

Just to nitpick, 5.8 max for Warrior with BoC.

Incidentally, couldn't a (+15,+15) Sting with max stats and top level gear do better than Doomcaller?

(Just a guess, haven't run the numbers)

Just about anything that matters is at least evil, so Doomcaller dice alone is 12*3 (2*6d5) which gives you 36 points. Add to that 28 from weapon and you have 64 from weapon alone. Sting with 2*1d7 (8) + 15 has only 23 base damage before other bonuses, so you would need to beat 41 point / blow advantage using two extra blows. After five blows that advantage is 205 points of damage, so you would need to get 102.5 points of damage with those two blows (not counting criticals, which would actually be significant with Doomcaller). That would require 79.5 points from rest of the gear.

I don't think that is realistically doable. 20 from STR, 10 from Fingolfin, 5 from Weaponmastery leaves +23 and +22 RoDam, and I don't think that high RoDam exists anymore.

It's actually easier to get that with priest or mage, because for them two extra blows is 50% more blows when for ranger/paladin/rogue it is just 40% and for warrior 33%

If you get big-dice extra blows +2 weapon then that could beat Doomcaller. Not Sting, it's just too tiny weapon, but something else.

[Derakon]

I'm sure if you had enough pluses to damage eventually the extra blows would win out over the stronger blows, but I don't think I've ever seen it happen in the endgame. Early- and mid-game is a different story of course. And if you lack the stats to get full blows with the bigger weapon then the lighter one with +blows might also be preferable. But if both are operating at "maximum power" then I think the big weapon will almost always be preferable, especially if it has applicable slays.

[Oramin]

In general, I have no doubt that Doomcaller would be better but what I was wondering is if there's a transition point if you have a bunch of plus damage gear. For example:

The One Ring
Vilya (or a high end RoDam RoSlaying)
Fingolfin
Shield of Haradrim
Max Stats (so STR bonus is applied to 8 vs. 5.8 blows)