How long to stat farm in 3.5?

[Zane314]

I've recently been bitten by the Angband bug again and have been getting back into 3.5. I've really enjoyed the new rooms and vaults and other general feel improvements.

After a few bad starts, I've finally gotten a character to 1650', expecting to scum for stat potions as I used to have to do. But I then proceeded to find some really really nice vaults and I feel like I'm ridiculously overgeared (Celegorm, Sting, Amulet of Trickery +2, RoDam +10, dwarven plate, Cambeleg, etc - will chardump when I get home). I took out Mim's kids with no problem and the only unique I've faced that I couldn't just straight melee was Quaker, who I could shoot-and-scoot.

So my question - does stat gain go faster if I dive? I don't feel like I have enough Con to go _too_ far deep, but I'd also rather not sit here for ages just looking for potions.

[fizzix]

Yes, stat gain will go considerably faster if you go deeper*. Scumming at 1500' is definitely possible but incredibly boring. The stat potions are roughly balanced so that if you descend at a reasonably moderate pace, clearing levels as you go, you will have stats maxed somewhere between 3000' and 4000'. It takes pretty quick diving to not have stats maxed by the time you reach 4950'

The advantages to this approach over scumming 1500' is that you keep yourself on your toes. If you know you always need to be worried about being one shot by an in-depth monster, you are less likely get unexpectedly one-shot by a surprise out-of-depth monster. At least that's how I approach it.

*Details: Monster drops are rated an average of your current level and the monster level. So at level 58 or so, snagas can drop stat potions, where they wouldn't before. Furthermore, there are less competing items to stat gain potions deep. So you have a higher chance of finding one on the floor at 3000' than at 1500'

[Derakon]

That whole "dive to 1650' and scum for stat potions" thing went out the window awhile back anyway, as the distribution of both stat potions and monsters changed.

[Zane314]

Okay, well I was _going_ to chardump... but after C/f I can't find any such file in the resulting directory.

I _also_ can't find any files in my save directory in any program other than Angband, so I would not be surprised to hear something funky was going on.

In any case, thanks for the comments, and hi, Derakon! Amused to see you still active here. (Evil Southie here)

Edit: fixed. Dunno how Angband's been writing my save in a write-protected directory, but moving it to a non-write-protected directory worked fine.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16059

[Derakon]

In any case, thanks for the comments, and hi, Derakon! Amused to see you still active here. (Evil Southie here)

Ha, wow, that takes me back. Good to see you!

Your character has some really nice kit. The only glaring thing is that you'd probably be better off with a magical longbow, for the extra multiplier on each shot. I'd start trying to prioritize CON, too; with more HP you'd be all set to dive quite a bit.

Oh, and you can equip arrows now. This doesn't do anything except make them take up a bit less inventory space -- you use up 1 slot per 40 arrows regardless of how many stacks that is. For example, 38 normal arrows and 2 magical arrows = 1 inventory slot used up, if they're in the quiver.

[Zane314]

Yeah, the lack of CON was why I was wondering about stat gain.

I'm now down to 2000', I think I found one !Int as my only stat pot in 1700-2000.

[Zane314]

2000-2400' was much better for me in stats, though - 2 !Augmentations and plenty of others. Still not maxed, though.

Ran across this beauty of a vault. Decided to save so as to not play through it while tired.

[quarague]

This looks like a pretty dangerous vault. Mild spoilers ahead.





Long stright corridors mean monsters can have you in line of sight before you do, or even if you see them, there might be some rubbish monster between you and the dangerous ones, so you can't easily TO them.

Kavlax is a big player killer who can easily one-shot you at 320 hit points, the various Q's can summon other one-shot killers and they don't move, although you might get lucky and they just teleport away themselves.

[Nick]

Kavlax is a big player killer who can easily one-shot you at 320 hit points, the various Q's can summon other one-shot killers and they don't move, although you might get lucky and they just teleport away themselves.

I'd add the Ancient multi-hued dragon and the Phoenix as major threats.

[Timo Pietilä]

This looks like a pretty dangerous vault. Mild spoilers ahead.
Kavlax is a big player killer

Nevermind Kavlax, Phoenix is there. That's near-guaranteed RIP in single turn if it gets any of the breaths against him. Kavlax is deadly only because it surprises how much damage it can do. If you know it, you can avoid it. Phoenix is way worse than Kavlax.

If you try that vault, be very careful.

There is smoke elemental which will crush most of the items if you go around that spiral. I would use stone-to-mud to make more direct way in. OTOH spiral corners are good way to fight only few monsters at time.

[Carnivean]

In 3.4 I fought the Phoenix with fire immunity and he couldn't hurt me. Walked up to it and smacked it around. 3.5 I tried the same trick and it slaughtered me.

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

The Phoenix doesn't just breathe fire. You could try casting TO on him as soon as he enters your LoS, but if you fail, you could end up very dead. (double resistance would at least save you from his fire breath).

You can't use stone to mud on the vault anyway, because it is permanent stone.

[Derakon]

In 3.4 I fought the Phoenix with fire immunity and he couldn't hurt me. Walked up to it and smacked it around. 3.5 I tried the same trick and it slaughtered me.

Somewhere along the line the Phoenix got pretty substantially buffed. It used to basically be a stepped-up version of Vargo, with plasma breath in addition to fire-based attacks. Now it has fire, light, and plasma breaths, can summon more birds (mostly dangerous for Winged Horrors), and I'm pretty sure its HP and melee attacks got boosted. It's sort of a mini-Tarrasque now.

[fizzix]

In 3.4 I fought the Phoenix with fire immunity and he couldn't hurt me. Walked up to it and smacked it around. 3.5 I tried the same trick and it slaughtered me.

Phoenix has two breaths, fire (1300 or so unresisted) and light (max light is 400 I think). It's melee is also rough, and there is a difference here between 3.4 and 3.5. In 3.4 if you had immunity to an element and a monster did damage of that element, you would receive no damage. In 3.5, the damage is split into an elemental part and a physical part. You receive the physical damage (which I think is 1/3 of the total damage) and resist a portion of what's left. Some attacks like touch or wail have no physical part I think. Turns out Gothmog, the highest level unique before Sauron, is a piece of cake with fire resist under the old rules.

[Derakon]

I thought it was only immunity that trivialized elemental melee in the old system? Also, Pazuzu is a lot more noticeable than Gothmog, because he has 4 12d12 electrical hits, which is brutal if you didn't have electrical immunity and totally harmless (before 3.5) if you did.