So it ends...

[Khuzdul]

Finally, after countless characters, I HAVE DEFEATED MORGOTH!!!! Sorry there is no dump, I was so stoked I forgot to get it! Anyway, I would like to tell my story to all of you, and get some feedback on what I could do to improve my game for later characters. In extension, are there any fun ideas out there on what to do when you have won?

Anyways, here comes the story.

I played as a High-Elf Mage, with a strong emphasis on intelligence and constitution. For the early game, I played around on dlvls 5-10 to grab some early xp and learn most of the spells from books 1+2.
Once I had completed the first two books, I power-dived to dlvl 50, where I played a rouge-style game, snatching objects and avoiding monsters. After ***AGES*** (weeks probably) of doing that, I had found it, RINGIL!!! Along with some other nifty Atifacts ((Celeborn, Thorin, Elendil) I had Randarts on if you're sceptical) I started fighting some monsters to grind down the xp. I quickly made it to some higher levels, so I could quickly learn books 3+4.

Now that I was a fairly well-powered mage, I did what I loved to do, and hunted uniques. I crushed them from lvls 1-50, having a very bad encounter with the Balrog of Moria. I left Sméagol and Harowen alive, because if Morgoth/Sauron/Any other Unique-Summoner summoned them, they'd just nick my money and run off instead of being a threat.

After that I just slowly grinded Uniques down until I made it to dlvl 98 where I killed Gothmog, and readied myself. Instead of jumping right down to Sauron, I played on lvls 98/97 for a while, where I cleaned out Vaults and collected *tons* of Artifacts. Now with a fully-fledged mage, I went down to kill Sauron.

I literally killed Sauron *that* easily. Whenever he summoned, I banished. We just slugged it out and I just kept quaffing potions of Life after life after life.
Morgoth, however was a different story.

I went down to 5000' feeling *very* confident. I was wrong. Morgoth laughed of my mana storms and chaos strikes. He crushed me, wrecked my stats and wrecked me! I just ran away and got about 1000000000000 (not actually) potions of Life and mushrooms of Vigour on dlvls 99/98. Next time I came. I just did what I did with Sauron. I was slow and long but it worked.

I WON ANGBAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for listening to my story :P Hope to hear some nice advice!

Namárië

[Monkey Face]

Congrats! My first (and only) win was with a High Elf Mage as well. Since then, I've tried to play other race/class combinations and I dive more than I used to.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Congratulations! Getting to the end-game is a big accomplishment, and getting a mage there is difficult. Though, as you experienced, when you do get them to the end-game a mage is quite powerful.

The largest leap forward in my playing was watching Fizzix's "Let's Play Angband" videos on YouTube. A major education! I highly suggest checking them out. Soon you'll have winners in other race/class combinations. Particularly good are Dwarf Priests, Kobold Rogues, Half-Troll Warriors, Dunadan Rangers.

[MattB]

Well done, sir!
The only advice I'd give is to value sustains more highly, Especially CON, or you'll soon have fewer max HP than Morgoth's manastorm (600).

[quarague]

Congratulations. IIRC Morgoth stat drains only in melee. My mage winner never let him get a single move on me while in melee range, I just used phase door whenever he was next to me. That was a much cleaner and also less risky fight than the HT paladin who just chugged it out in melee and didn't have enough banish to get rid of half the summons.

[Bogatyr]

Congratulations. IIRC Morgoth stat drains only in melee. My mage winner never let him get a single move on me while in melee range, I just used phase door whenever he was next to me. That was a much cleaner and also less risky fight than the HT paladin who just chugged it out in melee and didn't have enough banish to get rid of half the summons.

What attacks did you use then, aren't you limited to ball effects to get over the heads of the summons? Did you immediately banish all summons or give them a few turns on you? Did you clear out all uniques first?

[Derakon]

What attacks did you use then, aren't you limited to ball effects to get over the heads of the summons? Did you immediately banish all summons or give them a few turns on you? Did you clear out all uniques first?

Mages can mass-banish non-unique summons, and they can deal with unique summons with Teleport Other or Word of Destruction. They have all three of these in functionally unlimited quantity (limited only by SP, and Restore Mana potions are plentiful).

You teleport uniques away by ducking out of LOS (you're fighting in a Destructed area, right?), and then waiting for them to enter LOS one at a time. You can also do the "TO Morgoth, Destruct to remove uniques" trick, though that does mean that those uniques can be re-summoned later in the fight. TO'd uniques can't be summoned again.

[Bogatyr]

Mages can mass-banish non-unique summons, and they can deal with unique summons with Teleport Other or Word of Destruction. They have all three of these in functionally unlimited quantity (limited only by SP, and Restore Mana potions are plentiful).

You teleport uniques away by ducking out of LOS (you're fighting in a Destructed area, right?), and then waiting for them to enter LOS one at a time. You can also do the "TO Morgoth, Destruct to remove uniques" trick, though that does mean that those uniques can be re-summoned later in the fight. TO'd uniques can't be summoned again.

Good points. Other than the just-recent Half-Troll Warrior melee win, and despite playing for so many years on and off, I've only won with a handful of characters, way back when sea-of-runes and invulnerability were around [did angband ever have invulnerability? or was that only umoria? See how far I go back!]), so no, I only recently learned of the destruction tactic. But yes I do recall with the HT Warrior that there still were plenty of LOS opportunities at a distance (more than I wanted!), so I can see how that can work, thanks!

[Derakon]

Yeah, Angband used to have invulnerability. Back in the days when Raal's Tome was the last mage dungeon spellbook, and nobody cared because Tenser's Transformations included Globe of Invulnerability and was basically an auto-win button. Plus mage offensive spells were horribly expensive back then, so they were basically weak warriors with lots of buff spells anyway.

[quarague]

My mage summoning solution involved killing of most uniques before the big fight. The when the big M summoned uniques, he got all the remaining ones in one go, I teleported away, and M got to me and died in the fight before any of the other uniques caught up. Non-uniques you can just banish or mass-banish every time they show up (at least as a mage).