Stupid Angband Questions

[gglibertine]

Two extra shots is huge. Beyond that, they get all the buffing and detection spells of a Rogue, plus two more big ones: *Destruction* and Glyph of warding. To make up for it a little, their melee and HP are mediocre. Starting rangers are quite weak. Endgame rangers are massively overpowered.

Oh yeah. I'm not suggesting otherwise, I just wasn't sured.

Having only reached the endgame stage a couple of times, mostly I just know you have to be really fast and loaded up with resistances, have lots of ranged attacks, and be effective against demons and undead.

I suck at games. Angband is the only one I play. I might never win, but I doubt I'll ever give up trying because I enjoy it so much, ASCII and all.

[Grotug]

As someone who was drawn to Angband by its lore and who aligns himself with the good races (hobbits and elves please!) it took me a looong time before I would even consider not scoffing at Half-trolls even being an option in the game, but once someone recommended (probably Derakon) that I try it, and I finally did, I haven't tooked back. Every once in awhile I'll try different combos, but HT Warrior really is by far the most enjoyable class combo for me.

Things I like about it: The early game is really easy (shouldn't games start out easy and get harder?) As Derakon says, it's great, satisfying fun just running around and crushing everything you see. It's also more exciting not having good detection, because more scary things can happen to you while you are bludgeoning everything in sight.

I love the early game, but I also love the late game when I'm doing up to 900 damage to most things per round. I also like that HT/Warriors are versatile, so when I find a really good launcher I'm at least pretty good at using it.

I find the other class/combos to require far too much time and patience to repeat them regularly, though I do enjoy them from time to time. But at some point while playing a Mage I just stop and say "why am I taking so much time and bother to rest up all the time between assaults on this unique when I could just be bashing his head in as a HT/Warrior and be done with it?" It's just hard for me to justify the trouble of playing other class/combos.

I started winning Angband regularly when I started taking seriously the advice on these boards.

EDIT: HT/Warriors can be so powerful that you can beat Morgoth without any banish/mbanish/rune/destruction scrolls without too much trouble if you have the speed, AC and damage output (which one often does when playing Randarts). It's another reason I like to play them; it's more satisfying to just kill the things instead of banishing them. And I often find all the gear I need to win the game by DL70 because I've killed so many uniques and gotten so many good drops by then, even while playing with forced descent on.

I mean, ultimately the game comes down to damage and health; and HT Warriors have both of these in spades.

Oh, and Lances are 30 pounds and Maces of Disruption are 40 pounds. And recently I just noticed how good the dice on Katanas are for their weight; by far the best dice to weight ratio (they only weigh 12 pounds but have 3D5!) Oddly, though, it's rarely beneficial to wield them as a HT/Warrior over lighter weapons (early) or heavier weapons later. Dunno why, though; just usually find some other good artifact weapon.

Part of the problem with the weapons system in Angband is that light weapons are useful too deep into the game. Angband would be much more interesting if daggers and spears and the like would max out in blows much earlier and do much less damage than the heavier weapons.

[Moving Pictures]

But at some point while playing a Mage I just stop and say "why am I taking so much time and bother to rest up all the time between assaults on this unique when I could just be bashing his head in as a HT/Warrior and be done with it?" .

i think that's a problem with the game, though. Right now, I've got a CL34 half-orc mage with a few boosted stats (need more CON in the world' worst way.). And what's the most powerful single-round attack form this mage, with Kelek's (the collection of which was a rather challenging adventure), can offer?

Fire ball? At a mere 89 points, hardly.
Rend soul? 11d34 looks impressive at first glance, but at a mere 194 points per round (if the critter, like, say, half the the dungeon)) resist it, it only comes out to half that, so meh.

Nope. The most powerful ranged attack in this half-orc's arsenal is the Long bow of Bard, which edges out the heavy crossbow of power, currently ranked No. 2.

That ain't right.

[Pete Mack]

What you want is wands of drain life (annihilation being to valuable to use.) Magic devices are great as a mage, and shockwave/ice storm are a lot of fun in combination with melee.

Also, it's pretty easy to kill uniques with chaos strike+rift.

[Moving Pictures]

What you want is wands of drain life (annihilation being to valuable to use.) Magic devices are great as a mage, and shockwave/ice storm are a lot of fun in combination with melee.

Also, it's pretty easy to kill uniques with chaos strike+rift.

Haven't got to that point of advancement yet. But Anhilation is a handy thing to have. Had it, blew it up with a recharge, but it saved my bacon with some low-level unique. A few games back, The Tarrasque fell to a stack of three in the hands of a rogue that otherwise had pathetic damage potential.

[fizzix]

I'm not entirely convinced that it's correct that the wand/rod versions of spells do more damage than the spell version. They're certainly more efficient with regard to mana (although you can lose them to recharging.) The biggest downside to rods/wands is that they take up an inventory slot.

I think it might be interesting for the spells in Raals to scale less with level and do more flat damage.

Part of the problem is that uniques have so many more hitpoints than other monsters, so it's difficult for a mage to kill them with a limited pool.

I think there's a lot of paths forward on this. Maybe a first step would be bumping up the damage of stuff like explosion and fireball, or even reducing the mana cost further.

[Derakon]

I know there are players that want the mage to be the "I don't need to worry about weapons/consumables because I have a spell for every occasion" class, but is that really the direction we want to go in? If spells are more powerful than devices, then some of the tactics of playing a mage go away -- you just throw spells at things until they die. I mean, I guess you can make the spells so much more expensive than devices that the mage can't feasibly use spells and must supplement with devices, but that feels like it accomplishes the same effect that the boosted devices currently do, just in a more painful way.

In my opinion the guiding principle for the mage should be that they have to survive by being smart and using the best tool for the job. Sometimes that should be a spell, sometimes a wand, sometimes a bow or a sword. Ideally all of these would be competitive in different circumstances. Where we run into trouble is if one of those is dominant over the others.

[fizzix]

I think right now it's hard to find a good use for most of the spells in Raals, or damage spells in general. Part of this is due to the nonlinear nature of SP. When you find Raals you don't have enough mana to cast the spells regularly and reliably. By the time you have the SP, those spells are outclassed by other options. I guess in the grand scheme I'd be ok with a mage using spells for weaker enemies and devices for uniques and tougher enemies. Right now devices are the most damaging and the most efficient (with cheap and accessible recharging).

I also admit that your description of a "mage" aligns more with my description of a "rogue".

[Estie]

I dont see why there shouldnt be a class whos best option to kill monsters are spells.

[Sphara]

Mage certainly has enough firepower to kill everything without the wands. The problem reaching the endgame is finding Kelek and I believe most mages do find it before lvl99. Just based on that premise, I don't understand why mages are the strongest class with devices.

Angband lategame spells/prayers are massively powerful but some of them makes me think.. just why?? Why would you have enchantment spells that encourage to scummy behavior? I mean it's not scummy if it is in the design but jesus christ when I cast enchant/fail/rest/cast enchant on my weapons and armour I really did think I should just go with the current equipment.

Recharging spell falls into this same category. I have never ever ran outta charges of my main wands and staves reaching the endgame. Never tried to kill M with annihilation wand but if that is the most efficient way, why does this possibility even exist? Chaos strike spell kills Morgy so easy that only comparable easiness could be lvl50 ranger with HMight arrows and that scummy shooting possibility the game allows (and that Ingwe demonstrated for me)

[Moving Pictures]

Mordy missing

Am I clueless, or has Mordenkainen's Escapes been stripped from v4? I've been hunting for it,and then went into autoignore setup and only eight spellbooks listed? Eh?

[fizzix]

Am I clueless, or has Mordenkainen's Escapes been stripped from v4? I've been hunting for it,and then went into autoignore setup and only eight spellbooks listed? Eh?

If you haven't seen it anywhere ever, it won't show up on the autoignore list.

[Grotug]

Am I clueless, or has Mordenkainen's Escapes been stripped from v4? I've been hunting for it,and then went into autoignore setup and only eight spellbooks listed? Eh?

Once again, this applies:

Because RNG don't care a teet about giving you what you need.

[Nick]

Mage certainly has enough firepower to kill everything without the wands. The problem reaching the endgame is finding Kelek and I believe most mages do find it before lvl99. Just based on that premise, I don't understand why mages are the strongest class with devices.

Angband lategame spells/prayers are massively powerful but some of them makes me think.. just why?? Why would you have enchantment spells that encourage to scummy behavior? I mean it's not scummy if it is in the design but jesus christ when I cast enchant/fail/rest/cast enchant on my weapons and armour I really did think I should just go with the current equipment.

Recharging spell falls into this same category. I have never ever ran outta charges of my main wands and staves reaching the endgame. Never tried to kill M with annihilation wand but if that is the most efficient way, why does this possibility even exist? Chaos strike spell kills Morgy so easy that only comparable easiness could be lvl50 ranger with HMight arrows and that scummy shooting possibility the game allows (and that Ingwe demonstrated for me)

Given I'm currently going through a rework of classes, what do people think about having two arcane classes, one with powerful spells and one which primarily uses devices, and gets spells to enhance that?

[Carnivean]

Given I'm currently going through a rework of classes, what do people think about having two arcane classes, one with powerful spells and one which primarily uses devices, and gets spells to enhance that?

It would depend on the implementation, but I would be for it. When I play mages I have always ignored devices.