Reducing Turncount

[AnonymousHero]

Does that mean, you're the new maintainer?

I believe Old Nick has an immortality clause in addition to the other clauses, so, I should think the death message would be entirely hypothetical.

[mushroom patch]

This is a great question and I'd be interested to know what other people doing angband speedrunning have learned about it. The best I've done is so far (in admittedly not many attempts and not very regular play) over the last four months is about 56k standard turns, 213k game turns (probably a somewhat old version -- whatever's available via apt). I don't think this best run was very tight at all and I'm very much a beginner at this. My observations:

High-elf Rogue seems to be the easiest for me speed running, for the combination of stealth, detection spells, useful intrinsics, early melee ability, and good magic device.

Quite a lot of turns can be saved by spending money on scrolls of deep descent, mapping, and stair detection in the early game. Tons of time gets wasted when you're at low levels and low speeds.

It's not hard to just not rest, although I find the endgame scumming makes it difficult to maintain SP. (I don't do a good job of exploiting staves of the magi, which is probably the whole problem. I rely too much on potions.)

You can save a lot of time collecting equipment by scumming up big vaults with promising looking items (mainly big melee weapons) and mass banishing/teleport othering everything inside. Clearing vaults by hand takes a really long time and doesn't seem to be a good idea.

You should never fight or leave stairs without good reason and you should restrict fights to high value targets from a loot/xp perspective. Farming U packs and to a lesser extent escorts seems to be a good way to go, although I've had a hard time making this resource effective.

I've had good results diving as quickly as possible to a depth of around 73 and scumming for speed rings. This way, you can get to +20 speed around experience level 32, at which point winning is just a matter of time. My feeling is that there's no point in worrying about the pluses of your rings for the most part, so you don't want to leave the stairs just to check the plus on a speed ring when you already have two. Once you have speed, then start leveling and proceed to level 98 to scum.

You don't actually have to kill any uniques other than Sauron before the Morgoth fight. You just need to maintain a stock of banishment scrolls and a source of teleport other. If you get in trouble from popcorn summons, banishment/mass banishment. If uniques, teleport Morgoth away then kill or teleport the uniques. You can massively cut down the amount of preparation needed to kill morgoth by exploiting banishment and teleports this way. Less potions, lower quality melee weapon, lower experience level, etc.

I'd be interested in any expert opinion on this and criticism of my methods, which I'm sure are full of inefficiencies.

[fizzix]

This is a very interesting question and I'd be interested to know what other people interested in angband speedrunning have learned about it. The best I've done is so far (in admittedly not many attempts and not very regular play) over the last four months is about 56k standard turns, 213k game turns (probably a somewhat old version -- whatever's available via apt). I don't think this best run was very tight at all and I'm very much a beginner at this.

213k game turns is very fast indeed. I'm pretty sure I haven't broken 400k, although i also haven't played high elf in years. Do you play disconnected stairs?

[Nick]

Nick tramples over fizzix

[mushroom patch]

No, I use mostly default birth options. No ironman-type stuff. I don't stair scum so much in the initial dive, but in the endgame (where endgame = speed ring depths and greater) I do and there disconnected stairs would make a significant difference.

I forgot an important bit: In the early game I use rings of teleportation for the speed (I'm not sure if the teleportation hurts or helps on average, but it's not too bad and the speed is big). It seems a lot depends on getting early speed items. A good pair of boots in the early game is huge.

Edit: Also, re: disconnected stairs, not being able to retreat to stairs would make a fundamental difference. You need to be able to avoid hounds reliably from about level 40 on.

[mushroom patch]

Also, the ~ menu thing is a great tip. I didn't know about that until now.

[fizzix]

I forgot an important bit: In the early game I use rings of teleportation for the speed (I'm not sure if the teleportation hurts or helps on average, but it's not too bad and the speed is big). It seems a lot depends on getting early speed items. A good pair of boots in the early game is huge.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense what you say about speed. 56k action turns isn't that much better than I tend to get. It's the game turns that are way low. Psi had a character that was a stair-scumming victor in under 200k game turns.

@Nick

I clearly said you "push past" other developers, not trample. C'mon now.

[mushroom patch]

Interesting link, thanks. When I get a chance to run another character, I think I'll be able to shave off quite a few turns using ~. I wasn't that careful about running around town anyway. I wonder about this comment on the dump you linked:

You shouldn't even visit the shops the first time until you have scummed a full pack of consumables from the starting stairs. I don't know how much more tedious that is in 3.1 versus 3.0, but it makes a big difference. For not too many turns, you get significant bonus starting money and awareness of a bunch of flavors and a few !speed in your pack.

I guess this would work. Does this really save a lot of time?

I have to say, in many ways I succumbed to "that's cheap" kind of thinking and refrained from doing some of the more exploitative things I considered. I'll make the next run more mercilessly exploitative.

By the way, have you guys ever considered making the "score"/ladder rank depend heavily on the number of turns taken to win? I think this kind of scoring really works in the crawl community in terms of spurring competition.

[fizzix]

By the way, have you guys ever considered making the "score"/ladder rank depend heavily on the number of turns taken to win? I think this kind of scoring really works in the crawl community in terms of spurring competition.

Yeah, there has been thoughts along this line. The current ranking is dumb. The problem, as Psi notes in his character, is that Angband is very succeptible to scumming. And while that's fun to do once, it's incredibly tedious and not a great way to play.

I think Psi (or someone else) had another character where they tried to gain the most levels at once. They stair scummed for a longbow and arrows and two-shotted an Erinyes to go from level 1 to level 31. Again, fun once, but super tedious.

Crawl is more immune to scumming since levels are persistent. Similarly, Turncount in ironman or forced-descent is more meaningful than in a game that allows you to stair dance until you get a lucky drop. (another alternative would be to make stairs take some larger number of game turns)

[LostTemplar]

Most competitions are using turns as score. Normal ladder using experience originate at times when winners were rare, most characters died before lvl 20 and experience was valid measure of progress.

[Derakon]

Apply a large malus to score for revisiting levels. For example your score could be something like:

(max depth * 5,000,000) / ((number of standard turns) * (number of levels visited - max depth + 1))

So for example, if it took you 100k standard turns to make it to level 100 and you never revisited a level, then your score would be 5000. Doing the same in 200k standard turns would get you 2500. If you did it in 100k turns but you hit each level twice then your score would also be 2500. If you used 5 Scrolls of Deep Descent (each skipping over 4 levels), then your score would get a 20% multiplier.

EDIT: Err...wait, my formula doesn't actually work that way. Well, you could come up with one that does. You get the idea.

The main difficulty with this approach is Word of Recall, which forces revisiting a level unless you have forced-descent turned on. This could be solved, in a way, by selling Scrolls of Deep Descent in the town.

[Nick]

One approach would be to introduce a bunch of different scores, and see which worked best.

I clearly said you "push past" other developers, not trample. C'mon now.

The only inaccuracy with the original, I thought

[fizzix]

One approach would be to introduce a bunch of different scores, and see which worked best.

Why not go meta-roguelike and randomize the score mechanic on a per turn basis.

[Derakon]

Nick hits you. You feel strange... your score is now based on the number of Slime Molds in your home!

[AnonymousHero]

Apply a large malus to score for revisiting levels. For example your score could be something like:
(...)

... or we could just give everyone a score of 1000. It'd still be about as relevant to anyone's enjoyment of the game itself .

(Yes, I think "Score" should be removed. Instead have multiple axes like there already are with "Max Depth", "Max XP", "Deepest Unique Killed", "Number of floors seen/generated", etc. etc. There are so many potentially interesting combinations of these that a single "points" score could never capture even a trivial amount of it.)