I was one shotted by Kavlax. What just happened?

[Nick]

Yeah, breath weapon damage is based on the monster's current HP; I believe it's min(damage cap, monster HP / 3).

Actually it's this for acid, cold, lightning, fire, poison and (oddly) time. For all other things it's min(damage cap, monster HP / 6).

[LostTemplar]

1600 is for fire, frost, lightning and acid. I suppose anyone who know what "base elment" means in Angband already knows damage cap.

[Derakon]

Help me out what am I reading here:

Suggestion: put this stuff in [ code ] blocks so that it'll be formatted nicer. There's a description of the meaning of the entry at the top of monster.txt, though, so I've just copied that in.

# === Understanding monster.txt ===

# N: serial number : monster name
# T: template name
# G: symbol 
# C: color
# I: speed : hit points : vision : armor class : alertness
# W: depth : rarity : unused (always 0) : experience for kill
# B: attack method : attack effect : damage
# S: spell frequency
# S: spell type | spell type | etc
# F: flag | flag | etc
# -F: flag | flag | etc
# D: Description
# drop: tval : sval : percent drop chance : min : max
# drop-artifact: name
# mimic: tval : sval

Also, none of this indicates its breath damage.

Yeah, breath weapon damage is based on the monster's current HP; I believe it's min(damage cap, monster HP / 3). The damage cap is different for different elements: 1600 for the base 4, 800 for poison, and anywhere from 250-550 (or something like that) for the high elements.

[Amnekian]

There should be special message in the notes on first death to kavlax -- "Welcome to Angband"

And now I take that death with great pride!

Also, thanks to you guys, I discovered the Ladder. I reeaaally should the dive in this.

Help me out what am I reading here:

Kavlax the Many-Headed
T:dragon
C
I:120:1300:20:102:30
W:39:3:0:3000
B:BITE:HURT:2d12
B:BITE:HURT:2d12
B:BITE:HURT:2d12
B:BITE:HURT:2d12
F:UNIQUE | MALE | POWERFUL
FROP_4 | DROP_GOOD | ONLY_ITEM
F:OPEN_DOOR | BASH_DOOR
F:IM_ACID | IM_COLD | IM_ELEC | IM_FIRE | RES_NEXUS | NO_CONF
F:NO_SLEEP
S:1_IN_4
S:BR_ACID | BR_COLD | BR_CHAO | BR_ELEC | BR_FIRE | BR_GRAV
S:BR_NEXU | BR_SHAR | BR_SOUN
D:A large dragon with a selection of heads, all shouting and arguing as they
D: look for prey, but each with its own deadly breath weapon.

Also, none of this indicates its breath damage.

[Magnate]

There should be special message in the notes on first death to kavlax -- "Welcome to Angband"

I really like that idea.

[debo]

There should be special message in the notes on first death to kavlax -- "Welcome to Angband"

[Derakon]

Have you played like this ? I found it incredibly boring to 'l'ook at every monster, considering the fact that most of monsters are just not dangerous at all. Reading chilling tales about promising characters dead to Kavlax or drolem or teleport_into_the_undead_pit is more fun IMHO.

Well, no, I don't, but I practically have the monster info memorized anyway, so I don't really need to. And sure, I agree that does sound like fun, but it may not be what everyone wants to do; some people just want to play the game without having to guess which monsters can one-hit-kill them.

In short, we both made valid suggestions, and it's up to the newbies to decide which, if either, they want to do.

[LostTemplar]

option that gives you full monster knowledge.

Have you played like this ? I found it incredibly boring to 'l'ook at every monster, considering the fact that most of monsters are just not dangerous at all. Reading chilling tales about promising characters dead to Kavlax or drolem or teleport_into_the_undead_pit is more fun IMHO.

I judge from my own experience, when I first time started playing FAangband I played for about year until my first win, and reading ladder helped mostly.

[Derakon]

Another possibility if you don't mind the game calling you a "cheater" (the rest of us don't care, at least not about this particular option) is to turn on the cheat option that gives you full monster knowledge. Then whenever you see a new monster, you can call up the monster memory for them and see their full spell list including average damage (which, for breath attacks, is also max damage since there's no variance).

So you'd see Kavlax, bring up his monster memory, and it'd say he can breathe gravity for 250 damage or whatever. And you'd look at your HP total and think "Hm, I'm playing a gnome mage with 93 HP, I should avoid this guy."

[LostTemplar]

More or less any notable monster can one shot up to 600 hp resised and 1600 unresisted, so be carefull. So if you have less then 600 assume that any unfamiliar monster can one shot you. To avoid dumb reading of the monster list I would recommend looking at ladder dumps for dead characters, It is much more fun. E.g. if look thru 100 dumps of dead level < 30 character you will more or less figure all of possible deaths and some way to avoid these deaths form comments.

[Avenger]

If you don't object to spoilers, check out the full monster list at http://mangband.org/Main/Info.

This is, of course, not entirely applicable to other variants, but it still holds mostly true for close variants.

To be absolutely sure, peek into r_info.txt in your edit folder. It's pseudo-code that the game uses to generate the monsters, but it's quite legible, at least enough to get a sense of how dangerous a monster will be to you.

[fizzix]

Kavlax is one of Angband's gotcha monsters. I'm not a big fan of gotcha monsters, but he's a big one. Other gotcha monsters are Ancient multi-hued dragons, drolems, Osse (although he's a lot tamer than Azriel), the Tarrasque and probably some more.

[Nick]

So how do I know what monsters ditch these insane amounts of damage?

Well, now you know Kavlax does

Or should I back off from uniques around DL30 until I have a lot of resists?

Anything new should be suspect. Breathing uniques can be expected to be deadly, especially if it's not clear from their description what they breathe. And remember, every new method of death gives you information and probably a good story.

[Amnekian]

So how do I know what monsters ditch these insane amounts of damage? Or should I back off from uniques around DL30 until I have a lot of resists?

[Magnate]

How can I get the character dump?

shift-c, f, then click on the Ladder tab on this site and upload it.

EDIT: having said that, if you exited the game after dying, I don't think you can get a dump of that dead character now. Sorry.