My newbie experience on the game

[Azrad]

Well, hello all. Been two weeks since I finally decided to get with playing the game, and I figure I should spend my time with this first post panicking about my current state of the game.

So first few playthroughs, it all ends exactly as expected. Somehow, nearly every single time I seem to have died reading an unidentified scroll of descent and getting killed once I drop down through the floors.

Yet somehow, after a few tries I got lucky. One part of it was perhaps due to going with a high elf paladin - not the most spectacular of combinations. Plain and simple, I suppose. Still, for a newbie like me I suppose it works out. I patiently grind my way floor through floor, and soon enough I get used to the game. I suppose the first headache was those red frogs and their dreaded strength lowering powers.

I trudge on. A lucky win over Smeagol (not exactly Sauron or Morgoth, but don't laugh) through monkey-like persistence boosted my morale. Before that I found a ring of fire with a plus 15 which really helped me out in a pinch. Still got it, since it works well whenever I need to kill from a distance... especially against my hated Nexus Quylthulgs (more on that later)

Things picked up. Somewhere around dl20-30 I found the Star of Elendil and the helm Holhenneth. Combining the two ensured that I never got into a situation where I got surprised by enemies. Helmet first, showing all the traps, doors, items and monsters (the purpose of which was super useful later on) followed by the star which helped map the way around floors. So if there's a nest or a vault, I can plan ahead so I can survive whatever I find. At dl34 I found Isildur, which really got me into a confident mood.

And so came trouble. Found a small vault like place somewhere around 40. At this point I know I needed some poison resistance, but somehow I decided that can wait a little. I was just grinding, I didn't plan yet to go further down, et cetera. So I encounter the vault, I scan through the place with Holhenneth, and I was like holy crap that's Ungoliant. Thankfully he was sealed in a room with the only entrance was granite wall, so unless I was being stupid I'll be safe to loot unless I break open the wall.

So I went with stupid. I kinda wanted to see what item Ungoliant was sitting on. I dig through the wall, he comes charging out eating my face. I was prepared for it, so I used teleport other on him, and it somehow worked. All I got was a common wooden shield for that.

But it doesn't end there.

I step out into a tunnel. Little did I know there was a Nexus Quylthulg just sitting a few spots offscreen. So that fleshy bastard teleports me away, and like seriously what are the odds of Ungoliant being so close to me, just sitting in a dark corner near the place I got teleported to. Somehow, I manage to hightail it outta there several times richer in items and currency, and my character a little bit browner in the pants thanks to that second encounter with the damn Ungoliant.

And so I stay alive, still hanging around dl40 as I slowly grind my way and hopefully find some poison resistant stuff. So far no luck with that.

Now, as a newbie, do I have any sort of chance at reaching the bottom? My bad habit, I suppose, is an urge to try to kill everything on a level at close range. Haven't tried ranged weapons yet, and as for the spells I'm mostly just using teleport in the event of those Ungoliant-ish situations. Should I invest in ranged fighting, and more use of the prayer books, or do I continue to hack and slash my way to my fate? My apologies for the long first post. I like to ramble too much for my own good.

edit: so as it happens, I came across a weapon that provides poison resistance. On the other hand, damage is around 40 less than what I'm currently using, plus my current weapon ups my dexterity by 2. Should I use the poison resistant weapon, or should I try searching for something else for now?

[fizzix]

Killing everything on the floor is not recommended. You can certainly play that way, and Angband allows for it, but people that do often get frustrated with the game. Angband's genius is in forcing you the player to pick which battles you're willing to take and which ones you need to avoid. It allows you means (detection) to get information on what's around the corner and various methods (teleport, teleport other, teleport level, destruction) of avoiding unwanted conflicts.

You are very lucky to have survived the encounter with Ungoliant without poison resistance. She moves at +20 speed and has a poison breath which is at the unresisted cap (800) and a darkness storm which also packs a mean punch. Unless she was sitting on the one ring itself, I'm not sure I would have chosen to open that little room. I'm pretty sure I know what vault design you're talking about, and that design is specifically made to trick greedy players into taking on something that they can't handle, which is guaranteed to get the first move on them (you can't tunnel through the wall out of line of sight of the monster).

Angband only gets more like this as you descend, and you're forced to either grind enough that you can keep clearing, or learn to pick your battles more wisely.

[Azrad]

Ya. After that super close call I really should be a bit more tactical in my approach. I mean, I got the tools to scout the area, and I should take advantage of it a bit more. While every time I find a room packed with monsters, I should really be careful if I see enemies on the list that I don't want to fight at all.

I've been lucky with drops, I guess, which puts me in a very overconfident mood that's just tempting fate. Just found the Trident of Wrath at floor 42, as well as the long bow Belthronding which says it protects from disenchantment. Seems like they could come in handy; so I'll keep them, especially the trident since it outclasses my previous weapon in damage.

I still need to find a poison resistant anything though.

[MattB]

By far the biggest killer of my characters is the un-ID'd scroll of deep descent. It probably kills about 20% of my characters. I've given up trying to combat that death, and just take the hit every time it happens and reroll.

And, by the way, if you've tele-othered a mean beastie on a level, and then teleport self, the chances of landing next to the aforementioned mean beastie are approximately 99 out of 100.

P.S. Wrath and Belthronding are potentially endgame equipment. Use them if you can. As for poison resistance, keep grinding (and checking the black market) and you'll find a ring of poison resistance very shortly. Not the ideal means of getting rPoison, but better than none. And you DO need rPoison at that level, unless you've got a really good handle on which monsters breathe poison. Then you can wield the Wrath!

[Azrad]

I'll be ever-vigilant on searching for that poison resist. Encountered a Drolem a while back, at the same floor I encountered Ungoliant. I had the jump on him since he was on a long corridor and all. I heard about the poison thing while I was looking up stuff when I was just starting, so I carefully positioned myself on them corridors so I can get ready. Needless to say I'm not facing that until I have a means to defend myself.

One other thing I learned. Running away to another floor or the town if I see a Neekerbreeker. Was fighting a Silent Watcher, and I assume it summoned one of them. My character was hallucinating, and by the time I snapped out of it they were everywhere. Tried to kill them all, but I suppose trying to shield myself from a typhoon with a paper umbrella would have been more successful than that.

edit: found Sting. I'll probably stick to the Trident for now, but this luck at finding unique weapons is unnatural. I can't help but feel that the next character I'll try will have less luck than zero.

[Estie]

By far the biggest killer of my characters is the un-ID'd scroll of deep descent. It probably kills about 20% of my characters. I've given up trying to combat that death, and just take the hit every time it happens and reroll.

I cherish each and every deep descent scroll, wether ided or not. The important thing is to be prepared: I buy 3 clw, 3 phase and 1 magic map scroll in town before going down, if no map scroll available I try for det stairs scroll.

So when reading the next unid scroll takes me down, I am normally able to get out of immediate danger and towards the next staircase. Its only a step from there to those FA boots, slaying gloves or reckless attack ring native to the depths

[Azrad]

So somehow my character is still alive, despite my knack for intentionally pressing the metaphorical big red button that says do not press. I go down a floor, get one of those bad level feelings. I scan the map, and I see the vault.

Okay, I make the character explore the rest of the map first. I see a rod of summon monsters. Using it the first few times, I get easy enemies. So I try some more, then I summon the out of depth Glaurung.

Uh oh for me, but I decide, why not? Earlier on I find the Trident of Ulmo for my second weapon, and it does 500-plus damage to dragons for my character. I fight it off, decent damage at a decent pace. Then he summons some out of depth wyrms. I realize that I may be a bit out of depth in the fight, so teleport other is used on the wyrm. Still, Glaurung summons some more beasties, and soon enough I might get surrounded. I high tail it to the corridor to continue the fight, with Glaurung following.

Glaurung gets offed, I go yay. Somehow, tempting fate I use the last charge on the rod. Saruman of Many Colors up in my face. D'oh. It became a pretty annoying fight, he teleports my character away multiple times. Using detect it was easy to find him again. Pretty much a back and forth fight with lots of being teleported away. At the last leg he summons Smaug. O...kay, not as bad as Glaurung, and I finish up both in short order.

As for the vault, no unique enemies to fight... until I decide to intentionally walk into a summon trap, and out comes Thuringwethil, the Vampire Messenger. At this point, I'm just asking for it, no? The narrow corridors of that vault was helpful, in the end.

As for loot, I didn't get that much to replace my current gear. The Beaked Axe of Theoden, the Lochaber Axe Mundwine, and the gauntlets Pauraegen and the leather boots of Wormtongue.

In hindsight, my character should have been dead ten times over. Used up a lot of recover mana potions so I can heal up whenever my health dipped down to 300 or so.

[thapper]

At this point, I'm just asking for it, no?

Yes, you were clearly asking for it. I can't make up my mind if I should advice you to go crazy now, since the RNG clearly wants you to stay alive, or if I should advice you to not take any more risks since the RNG will instakill you next time you tempt it. But then again, I haven't been playing for a long time so who am I to give advice. Good luck in whatever you decide to to!

[Azrad]

Yes, you were clearly asking for it. I can't make up my mind if I should advice you to go crazy now, since the RNG clearly wants you to stay alive, or if I should advice you to not take any more risks since the RNG will instakill you next time you tempt it. But then again, I haven't been playing for a long time so who am I to give advice. Good luck in whatever you decide to to!

Haha, yeah. At this point, I reckon I should go a bit crazy on this playthrough, whether I fail or succeed.

[Djabanete]

The techniques that you must already be using if you're beyond depth 40 are the same techniques that will eventually win you the game if fortune smiles upon you. You just need to continue using them carefully. Pick easy fights and avoid hard fights (and stop summoning monsters on purpose ). For me the holy trinity of Angband strategy is detection, escaping, and healing. If you keep on hand methods for doing those three things, and remember to use them, then you can go far.

Edit: There are very few "oops, I'm dead surprises" left for you now that you're familiar with paralysis and big poison breathers. The last one is getting knocked out: if you're facing a monster or pack of monsters that can repeatedly stun you, your stun counter will go up until you are "knocked out". Then you die. So take care with Vibration Hounds (until you resist sound) and Mystics (always). I lost a "best character" to a Master Mystic even after I had the hang of the game. Clearly, you have the hang of the game, so keep being careful about what you fight, run away when you have to, and don't get knocked out!

Edit2: Do you know about anti-summoning corridors?

[Azrad]

The techniques that you must already be using if you're beyond depth 40 are the same techniques that will eventually win you the game if fortune smiles upon you. You just need to continue using them carefully. Pick easy fights and avoid hard fights (and stop summoning monsters on purpose ). For me the holy trinity of Angband strategy is detection, escaping, and healing. If you keep on hand methods for doing those three things, and remember to use them, then you can go far.

Edit: There are very few "oops, I'm dead surprises" left for you now that you're familiar with paralysis and big poison breathers. The last one is getting knocked out: if you're facing a monster or pack of monsters that can repeatedly stun you, your stun counter will go up until you are "knocked out". Then you die. So take care with Vibration Hounds (until you resist sound) and Mystics (always). I lost a "best character" to a Master Mystic even after I had the hang of the game. Clearly, you have the hang of the game, so keep being careful about what you fight, run away when you have to, and don't get knocked out!

Edit2: Do you know about anti-summoning corridors?

Thanks for the heads up on knocked out. Actually, just ran into a situation where that almost happened. Was heavy stunned, as I recall, and almost didn't realize that my chance to cast heal was lowered. Not sure if stun was the cause of that. Anyway, quaffed up a heal potion to save myself from that situation.

Looking at the character screen, it seems I got some resistance to sound, but no protection from stun. Don't have any nether resistance, so I'm currently looking for something for that.

edit: for anti-summoning corridors, half the time I just stick to narrow corridors, usually somewhere with an intersection so I can be on one corner and don't get fired at by anything lined up on said corridor.

At the moment, my current gear... well, I'd say I was tremendously lucky on this one. Without them, I'd probably be really dead at this point:

weapon: Trident of Wrath for the undead, Trident of Ulmo for dragons, and recently found Ringil which seems to be useful on demons.

for long range, got Belthronding which I don't really use for shooting stuff, but it protects me from disenchantment so it's being wielded. Found Cubragol as well, which might give me a needed speed boost in a pinch.

rings: used to be a ring of poison resist, but found the Serpent Ring of Barahir yesterday, so that's for my poison defense. Found a ring of speed plus 8 on the same vault, so that replaced my ring of digging (I didn't realize that I can now dig through granite with my current weapon until this point, so whoopsie on that)

neck: amulet of devotion. don't have any other amulet at the moment, but the wisdom boost is nice.

light source: Arkenstone. really like this one since it shows me the entire map and all. plus with the spell detect I can scout ahead for monsters and traps.

armor: full plate of Isildur. a bit disenchanted, but so far still using it due to the armor points and all.

cloak: Thoringil. I suppose this is the best one for me at the moment, no? Usually all I find are fur cloaks, so currently it's all I have.

shield: small metal shield of Thorin. another recent lucky find, from a young red dragon. replacement for my metal shield of elvenkind. boosts up my strength to 18/***. I guess that means it won't go any higher?

helm: Holhenneth. don't use it for it's detection ability anymore, but I need it to protect against blind.

gloves: alchemist's gloves of power plus 4. The pretty big strength boost and all.

feet: leather boots of Feanor. speed boost. trying to find one that has more defense, but the speed boost is pretty great for me, so nothing new yet.

That's about it. I got some mithril arrows, but I don't exactly use them. And looking at my gear, I'm really amazed at my luck on finding them, and how I managed to survive this far.

edit3: I could replace Isildur with the hard leather armor of Himring. I already have sound and nexus protection elsewhere, and Himring will grant me the nether resistance I need. On the other hand, Himring really drops my AC down by a lot. From 212 with Isildur, to 149. Should I take the drop in AC for nether resistance?

...whoops. Looking at it closely, removing Isildur removes rElec and rCold, so that would be problematic.

currently, what I lack in protection and reistance is shard, nether, stun, and feather falling.

[Carnivean]

Armour is kind of worthless as you go down. Resistances are far more valuable but, as others will no doubt point out, each one has only a utility value. Timo has posted his must have, would like and can do without list before.

You're unlikely to get anything better than the Boots of Feanor. +15 speed doesn't grow on trees. Unless you're going to get to +30 without them and need a resistance, leave them on. You don't need to go past +30, but getting there is vital against Morgoth.

18/*** means that you've maxed it. I think it's actually 18/200 under the *s. No further benefits will be accumulated. However the step up to 18/*** can be massive for your stats, especially CON.

[Azrad]

So I encountered Ungoliant again. This time I decided to fight back, and the battle pretty much took a long time. Thankfully, I was much better geared for this. Her normal attacks were okay. Not much damage, but could be trouble in the long run. Her main pain was that darkness attack, which took a decent chunk of damage. On the other hand, I managed to keep things all right with the heal spell. Quaffing a mana potion wasn't even needed. It was just long... I could have made it quicker, perhaps, if I chewed on a mushroom of vigor - found one of those rooms that was a 3x3 space of food items, and I got four of them. I didn't, and I kept fighting on until my strength was at 18/30.

End result... well, at first, I thought it was all non-Priest spell books, until I realized that Wrath of God was prayers. Woo, I guess this is the last book? No more prayers to learn, it seems.

Again, I realize that whether I win or lose, my next playthrough won't be as easy as this one. For one thing, I suppose I'll be done with paladins for now.

P.S. Hydra nests suck. Too much tedium of killing and aside from a few items in a room everything else is either gold or some other type of currency.
P.P.S. Blargh. Found not one but two scrolls of mass banishment. Guess they burned away when those hydras kept shooting me with fire.

[Derakon]

Ungoliant is the second-most durable monster in the game, after Morgoth, so it's no surprise the fight took a long time. She's not as dangerous as Sauron though, since he's more aggressive.

[Azrad]

So I found Soulkeeper, which should take care of my nether resistance. On the other hand, all that's left is fire resistance, which Isildur had. Also lack shard and stun protection, which I don't have anything for that. I could get some fire resistance from Eol... scratch that, fire immunity, and also gives me feather falling to boot. On the flip side, removing the alchemist's gloves of power takes my strength down by four, and the damage I do goes down by about 50 points.

Worse off, I think, is that it aggravates monsters. I kinda like having the jump on monsters with detect and all, and it could be dangerous to now have most of them try to rush me, which is what I assume aggravate does.

In the end, the last piece I gotta look out for would be a cloak that does provide fire resistance (and maybe hopefully some stun or shard protection as well). Thoringil is nice, but the protection from fear and paralysis and seeing invisible things is already covered by my other gear, and Thorin's shield provides an immunity to acid instead of just resistance. So I suppose I should look out for some ego cloaks or somesuch.

So for now, Soulkeeper gets stored in the house, and I don't go deeper until I find a cloak that'll protect me from fire, if something like that does exist.