Stupid Angband Questions

[Derakon]

Ah, that is a fair point (re: Hithlomir). Really what's needed are CON potions, but the Dwarven armor might possibly come out later once CON is in the 18/150 region.

As for Gurthang, no better weapons are visible in the dump, I was just saying to consider switching if something else comes along, since Gurthang is not especially compelling. Single-resisted poison breath caps out at 266, and IIRC neither drolems nor AMHDs actually hit the damage cap so they'd do less. I might possibly consider even a Westernesse in this situation, depending on what it did to my max HP. Or a Blessed or Holy Avenger with ESP.

[Drokk]

Lots of good feedback.

Haven't found anything yet with ESP or the resistances mentioned, the only weirder one I found was for sound but I'd have to swap out my chest armor. Until i get more of those, I'm just continuing to be liberal with TO, I choose to engage things that use those elements at my own peril.

Good note about the mushrooms/spellbooks. House inventory management is definitely my weakest element, as the other RL's I've played don't have a similar persistent inventory.

My primary thoughts for the weapon were getting double poison resistance and regeneration, and will swap to the staff once I can find some other source of poison resistance, or a different source of CON that would let me swap out my amulet.

Great note about the shield/armor redundancy, I'll swap it out once anything else comes along.

Holy cow am I inscribing the scrolls of destruction, that already happened once, blew up the vault I just cleared by accident T.T

Still trucking along with this little dude. Haven't had too much time to play, but I'm already accumulating more con. I'll post an update soon!

[Drokk]

Played a little bit more yesterday, talk about stressful!

Honestly, did I do anything wrong getting to this depth with such a low CL? I figured the difference between -1 hp and -20384 hp is negligible, so I might as well go deep for higher chances of better gear and CON potions.

I'm having trouble bounding back xp wise, I'm having to TO so frequently and most of the high value targets are sitting at around ~4000 hp, which is too much for me to wear away without that last offensive spellbook. Still no Tenser's, so I'm also feeling the lack of greater recharging for my wands of drain life.

Still, though, the only thing I feel that could kill me would be inattention. My stealth is intentionally high, and as long as I'm paying attention (detecting frequently, haste self, resistance) I feel like my mana reserves are high enough to at least survive through heavy usage of TO.

Is this just growing pains? First time I've really made it to what could be considered the early endgame, with an extremely low CON mage no less.

[Derakon]

You're in a state that's actually pretty common for aggressive mage players. It's absolutely doable with smart play -- if it weren't, we'd've told you to retreat back to earlier in the dungeon.

Find easy targets to kill, and avoid or TO the rest. Don't linger on levels; since so many things can kill you easily, and once awakened monsters never fall asleep, you want to be generating new levels regularly to get a fresh pile of sleeping monsters to sneak past.

Orcs and trolls can drop surprisingly good stuff deeper in the dungeon, and you should be able to handle some ancient dragons (at minimum, the ones where you can get double resistance) and several hound types by now. Otherwise, prioritize floor items, since you often don't have to fight much of anything to get them. When you do have to fight, Rift and Meteor Strike are your primary offensive spells when you can't/won't use wands.

[Philip]

I would also note that feeling stressed is normal, but it mostly goes away with experience. Your calculus that there is no difference between dying by a bit and dying by a lot is correct, but it is most correct for Mages in particular, who (can) have 0% fail TO, and all sorts of other goodies (Door Creation blocks line of sight for anything not right next to you, for example).

[Drokk]

Thanks for the encouragement and the great advice, this thread has been exceptionally helpful.

Good to know I'm on the right track.

[Pete Mack]

Oh yeah, this is a well-recognized fate. It's even more exciting if you add in lack of ESP and l9w base speed. (You need to carry a stack of light rods.) I will point out that without Tenser's you can still recharge Staves of Mapping with Recharge I spell. Yeah it fails often, but you can find or buy the staves faster than the fail rate.

Thanks for the encouragement and the great advice, this thread has been exceptionally helpful.

Good to know I'm on the right track.

[Drokk]

I updated the character dump!

Still trucking along, little over 300 hp more than my last update.

[Timo Pietilä]

In 4.1.2 (and as long as I can remember before) rangers get an extra shot at CL20 and another at CL40, but only with short/long bows.

Rangers also have best shooting skill of all classes which applies to all missile weapons, so if you get a buckland sling with +2 to both shots and might you might be better off using that instead of your bow even with those extra shots. For other classes using buckland would be no-brainer in most cases, but with ranger you have to actually compare them.

[Drokk]

That lil' mage is still alive! In the process of moving across the country (while also working normally) so whenever I get home I'm generally so spent I don't want to accidentally kill that character doing something dumb!

So instead, I've been slaughtering a dozen dwarf paladins. Its tough to get them off the ground, I've been losing them to poor play (again, generally exhausted) but without an early thanc the low damage numbers can get you into tricky situations. I feel that mid to late game once you get enough mana to play with they're pretty great, but I honestly like priests better for the deeper mana pool early.

I find mages/priests are so much easier than melee characters due to the diverse toolset. Want to try and make one work though, once I'm through this move I'll pick that mage up and run for the win!

[gglibertine]

OK, I have another stupid question:

Why does a quarterstaff weigh 15 lbs. in Angband? In reality they're between two and five pounds on average.

[Estie]

OK, I have another stupid question:

Why does a quarterstaff weigh 15 lbs. in Angband? In reality they're between two and five pounds on average.

This is an old one, coming up every now and then. I dont really know, but my speculation is that whoever first made the game took the carrying capacity values right out of the d&d players handbook where str rises to ridiculous heights and carrying capacity follows suit. If that is so, 15 lbs would be a compromise between realistic weights and the fraction of carrying capacity that makes for a realistic amount of quarterstaves carried.

[Darin]

The way D&D weapon weights were explained to me was that it was a compromise between weapon weight and unwieldiness. So the quarterstaff is considered unwieldy enough to give it a weight penalty for combat purposes. Of course, that makes no sense from the point of view of how many you can lug around.

[gglibertine]

The way D&D weapon weights were explained to me was that it was a compromise between weapon weight and unwieldiness. So the quarterstaff is considered unwieldy enough to give it a weight penalty for combat purposes. Of course, that makes no sense from the point of view of how many you can lug around.

Everything's changed in 5e. Quarterstaff now weighs 4 lbs. Encumbrance rules have been reworked as well, but I've literally never played in a game where encumbrance was even used, probably because the old rules were so bad that people gave up on them and can't be arsed to learn the new ones.

[Adam]

I'm still on 4.0.3 and recognized something strange. I started to fight a bunch of sleeping ogres. When I nearly killed a chieftain he started to run away through his friends - who all remained sleeping. This I find quite strange, don't they wake up when someone pushes them past?
I don't know if this was changed in newer versions but looks like a minor thing so maybe not.