How long to stat farm in 3.5?

[Timo Pietilä]

The Lesser Balrogs are too easy for a mage. Double-resistances renders their breath attacks a pathetic 65 damage, and they have no other useful ranged attacks to speak of.

Make that all classes that can cast spells. All of them get double-resistances to fire. Priestly classes from town book even.

Maybe we need to rethink double-resistances? 1/9 is too much. Maybe they should stack like shooter multiplier to ammo slay making it 1/6? Then max damage from double-resisted basic element is ~266 and not that tiny ~177.

[Zane314]

Vault update - first Demonic Q phased away.

I killed the mummified troll in the third corridor from range and Kavlax took the opportunity to breathe Sound for 200+ hp. That made me walk back out and heal, but the troll died, so it could get to me. Shot it a few times in LOS abuse around the corner, and then melee'd, didn't do anything interesting through that. Although dropped !Con, so my thanks to it there.

Second Demonic Q summoned a bunch of demons but not very interesting ones, and died pretty easily. Ancient Multi-hued didn't breathe until more than half dead, so was ignorable.

The Phoenix found me on the top left bend of the inner spiral. He hit me with light, which I could !CCW through, then hit me with fire, which I'd double resisted, and I was slowly whittling him away and then he summoned Winged Horrors. I zap Probing, look at it, go "well this is going to be annoying, but I might be able to handle it", and go back to hitting the Phoenix. Four rounds of nasty breaths from the two of them and quite a bit of healing later, I go "I don't think I am able to handle it after all" and TO them both.

Eol also burned several !Healing, due to an impressive rate of mana bolts. But him I could kill.

I also TO'd the Greater rotting Q just because I didn't want to see what it could make.

Not a _great_ haul... I think 3 !Con, which was very welcome, some random rods I hadn't seen before, Careth Asdriag (nice, but I think Sting still wins), Gorlim (bah), the last 'Thanc (meh), and the only thing that I actually ended up wearing, some helm with +Con on it whose other traits I can't recall off the top of my head.

Now to decide if I want to try to hunt down the Phoenix or not.

[Timo Pietilä]

Uh, the walls in that screenshot that are dark brown are permanent walls. They are trivially distinguishable from normal walls.

Brown in my angband means magma. That caused me to miss the obviousness of "different wall" that's obviously not magma. Basic "wall, not permanent, can be dug" without further thinking. If it had been something other than match to my settings I would have noticed it.

In my copy permanent wall is blue, as in metal walls. 50 feet of steel is pretty permanent.

[Timo Pietilä]

Now to decide if I want to try to hunt down the Phoenix or not.

IMO it's not worth it. Too low risk/reward ratio. I usually kill it when it is pushover and doesn't pose any danger, not before. IE, when it is easier to kill it than avoid it.

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

Another nice vault...

[krazyhades]

Sphere Vault, I think?

[Timo Pietilä]

Another nice vault...

Noticed when I posted a picture of bug here that if you use jpg instead of png or other image formats you can post a lot larger pictures. Apparently jpg doesn't have picture size limits, only filesize limit. Could you edit that message with jpg instead of whatever that picture is?

[krazyhades]

Holy shit I'm exhausted. Just livestreamed (and kept local recording too) of over 20 hours of play in the competition, including 3 characters dead in early stat-gain and one survivor (http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16104) currently making a mess on the lower floors of Morgoth's pad. I think I stop on that char tonight or I'll get him killed through the huge fatigue slipups I'm starting to have.

[Zane314]

So to answer my original question in this thread... slightly longer than I ended up doing. One extra Con and I would've survived that nether breath. Beautiful GV at 2950' with 9 uniques in it. Osse got the honor of the kill- 550 hp breath on my 538 hp (I thought max nether was 500 for some reason).

Ah well, was a good run.

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

So to answer my original question in this thread... slightly longer than I ended up doing. One extra Con and I would've survived that nether breath. Beautiful GV at 2950' with 9 uniques in it. Osse got the honor of the kill- 550 hp breath on my 538 hp (I thought max nether was 500 for some reason).

Ah well, was a good run.

Sorry for your loss. Nether has a slightly higher cap than other higher breath types. I always try to resist it if I can, but even with resist the maximum is ~471. Have a look at the following for information on breath caps (resisted and unresisted).

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=6744

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

Concerning your initial question, you can dive as quick as you like, but either use "complete monster knowledge" option, or use rods of probing, and LoS tricks to work out how much damage a monster/unique can do in one round before it can see you. If it's more than your max HP then don't even think about attacking. Run or TO.

[MattB]

If it's more than your max HP then don't even think about attacking. Run or TO.

Although unless you've got 0% fail rate on it, TO is only a safe option if you've got them hockey-sticked (i.e. you can see them but they can't see you).

Or, I guess, if they're asleep. (Does waking up take a turn?)

[Timo Pietilä]

So to answer my original question in this thread... slightly longer than I ended up doing. One extra Con and I would've survived that nether breath. Beautiful GV at 2950' with 9 uniques in it. Osse got the honor of the kill- 550 hp breath on my 538 hp (I thought max nether was 500 for some reason).

Use gear to boost CON. Weapons of westernesse, dwarven shields and armor, might helmets, CON rings. You can get maxed CON with quite low CON.

IMO CON effect to HP should be less than it is. Currently you get roughly half of your HP from (maxed) CON and half from clvl. I think that ratio should be closer to 1:2. It is too important stat, it beats all others by quite large margin (IMO). If not 1:2, then 3:5 or 2:3.