Advice on Mages!

[Khuzdul]

I have been playing Angband for AGES but have never really found much luck with Mages. I like to play warriors and paladins the most, so as you can imagine I have a quite melee style of play. I love the magic Mages have, but I can never really get a good character going.

Furthermore, do any of you have advice on finding rare spellbooks (especially Raal's and Kelek's). I've only had Raal's once, and that was as a rouge so I couldn't really use it!

Also, I love to kill Uniques, but I think at about level 25, it starts slowing my descent. Are the drops and experience worth it? i've heard that leaving really early uniques (Lagduf, Mughash) is a good idea for when you're fighting Morgoth, so he doesn't summon things like Gothmog or Venca!

Any help would be appreciated!

[Derakon]

Spellbooks will just eventually show up; there's not really any particular active steps you can take to get them to arrive faster short of diving deeper in the dungeon.

As for killing uniques, if you can kill one fairly decisely then go for it, but otherwise there's absolutely nothing wrong with saving them for later.

General advice for mages: use wands. You get a significant damage boost from them thanks to your device skill, so they're competitive with your spells, and don't cost mana.

[Therem Harth]

Use macros and inscriptions. You will die much less often when you can just hit F1 to blast things, F2 to detect, etc. instead of thumbing through menus.

[mrrstark]

Use macros and inscriptions. You will die much less often when you can just hit F1 to blast things, F2 to detect, etc. instead of thumbing through menus.

I really wish this wasn't the answer.

"instead of thumbing through menus"

Wish that Angband magic gameplay wasn't so dependent on an obscure pseudo-programming language and keyboard key juggling for comfortable play. Especially since each variant has a slight deviation, and every new savefile and every time you switch classes requires you to set up your spells-UI every time.

It's probably another reason why Warrior is so much easier to get started with...

[mushroom patch]

My advice is don't play mages. If you do play mages, spam detection mercilessly and avoid challenging fights. Drops and experience from uniques don't justify risky encounters.

[Estie]

1. Use macros, 2. Pick your fights, 3. Dive fast

Apart from the detection spells, you can macro a few attack spells, too. I typically have 3 or 4 attack macros. The macro programming has been simplified recently.

As a melee player, you are probably used to killing everything around unless its too dangerous. As a mage, that procedure is time consuming. Leave anything that is a horde alone, only kill a few lone and easy monsters before moving on. For this to work you need stealth; thankfully items with +stealth can be found early and readily.

Your main attack spell eventually becomes acid bolt, so only kill monsters that can easily be killed with acid bolt. Gelatinous cube wakes up ? Teleport it away. Ancient black dragon in the room ? Let it sleep. You could of course kill the dragon with fire bolts, but you dont have the spell macrod and typing 100 keystrokes for one monster isnt worth it, nor using annihilation charges.
Its better to move on to the next level to acid bolt the white dragon and use the wands on Harowen.

This is not an absolute rule, if a horde is between you and a tasty vault, by all means take some time and kill the horde.

The way to get the dungeon books (and indeed all the good endgame items) is to dive. Equipped with acid bolt, stealth and teleport other, you can travel the depths where Gelugons, Demiliches and Great Wyrms dwell if you keep up detection and move carefully. It is strangely liberating when you venture into those regions where it doesnt matter if you are a fighter with 300 hp or a mage with 150 - if it breathes, either one dies.

[Derakon]

Regarding keystrokes: the "n" command repeats the last command you did, so if you want to repeatedly cast a spell that you don't have a keymap/macro for, you can cast it once, then hit "n" over and over again -- until you do something else, of course.