Morgoth is not a "giant?"

[Timo Pietilä]

Timo, there's still plenty of time left in Comp 169 to prove that you can win every game you play.

No artifact is easy, but I don't score big in competitions because I simply don't care enough about my turns.

[edit] uh, force descend is on. I can play this but it is boring as hell and I would not like it.

[edit edit] force descend is not what I thought it is. You can still visit town. That's OK for me (IE. it's not ironman, never tried it because I thought it is).

[Ingwe Ingweron]

No artifact is easy, but I don't score big in competitions because I simply don't care enough about my turns.

[edit] uh, force descend is on. I can play this but it is boring as hell and I would not like it.

Easy? Well, so far it is a competition bathed in blood. Several good players have made the attempt, many more than once. Only PowerWyrm has succeeded thus far. Even without worrying about turncount, just winning is very difficult.

[Timo Pietilä]

just winning is very difficult.

No, just slow. I have won with artifactless, bookless ranger. It wasn't hard then, I suggest it wont be hard now, though hobbit is better than human (infra helps surprisingly lot n early game).

[Ingwe Ingweron]

No, just slow. I have won with artifactless, bookless ranger. It wasn't hard then, I suggest it wont be hard now, though hobbit is better than human (infra helps surprisingly lot n early game).

Well, the proof is in the doing. The comp is artifactless. Yes, that's winnable. It has forced descent. Yes, that's winnable too. It has smart AI (which was apparently fixed recently?), which makes monsters a little tougher to kill fast enough before they take advantage of all the holes in @ resistance that are so hard to fill without artifacts; still winnable, but hard. And, as the Agents would say in "The Matrix", "Only human". Certainly, the comp is winnable, PowerWyrm has proven that. But your claim that you can win EVERY game is quite a bold one. No matter how slowly, or carefully, there is always an element of chance and risk in this game. And higher in this comp than most. But maybe you CAN win every game you play. Just every other good player on here is a dope.

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, the proof is in the doing. The comp is artifactless. Yes, that's winnable. It has forced descent. Yes, that's winnable too. It has smart AI

No, that's not what it has. It has "monsters learn", which is my standard setting.

I have already used a bit under 60k standard turns and I have not yet reached stat-gain. That's how bad I'm turnwise. Played about a seven hours now more or less on and off because RL (like work) keeps interfering. Had good luck with early weaponry, but nothing remarkable yet.

For some reason game refuses to give me amulet of infravision, my earlier games with 3.5.1 I had them coming in every second drop from monsters this deep (1050'). I have already seen multiple of the every other low level amulets. Also RoSI keeps evading me. Invisibles start to be a bit more than just nuisance now.

[edit] played five, not seven hours. Forgot that site clock is two hours behind ours and just looked at the clock and when I posted and made the comparison. Then started to think that it couldn't be 11 when I posted the starting post.

[quarague]

I want to come in on Timo's side in this 'I can win any game if I want to' debate. I think the trouble is in the 'want to' part, and knowing what it entails. I'm not sure whether I could win any game but I definitely could win a much higher percentage of games than I actually do. If I were to purely maximize my chance of winning I would have to play much slower in terms of keypresses per second (ie think more about what I'm doing) and probably also much slower in terms of in game risk taking. But the problem is, it would be much less fun to play this way so in practice I don't.
So in the current competition the question would not be whether I am in principle able to win this but rather whether I'm willing to play in a way that makes it at least reasonably likely to win. While I'm not sure what the answer to the first question is, the answer to the second one is currently no. So if I were to play the competition I would probably die early and often but that wouldn't necessarily prove anything about whether I could win.

[Tibarius]

playing style

I am on the same line as quarague is - a lot of my deaths would be avoidable if me, the Player would care about playing less hasty and more cautios. Often enough i spamm the movements keys and if suddenly from a side door a Monsters Shows up, it could take around 3-4 free attacks on me, before i have recognized there is something attacking me and i stop spamming movement. And the last death would also have been avoidable if i would have taken the time to properly Analyse the Situation. A carrion crawler moved into melee range with a 2nd of them already visible some spaces away. My character had no Free Action. The choice of logic would have been to use the teleport staff i was carrying. I decided to blast another orb of draining on him to see if i can finish him off. My char didn't finish him ... it got paralyzed and died. For my playing style the game is deadly enough as it is currently - even tho i could reduce my dying rate if i would spend (much) more time on playing more cautiosly.

[Monkey Face]

My thought is that any game is winnable after a certain point. (Yes, I almost always get bored or careless and have only one once in about 17 years of playing.)

However, I think that early on, bad luck can derail some games. For example, you are playing a kobald priest and walk into a room with a shrieker mushroom, Grip, and Fang. I'll agree it's not likely but it is certainly possible. You would have had no way to detect in advance and they are likely to swallow you up pretty quickly.

So I don't think every game is winnable but after the very early stages, they all should be.

[Timo Pietilä]

My thought is that any game is winnable after a certain point. (Yes, I almost always get bored or careless and have only one once in about 17 years of playing.)

However, I think that early on, bad luck can derail some games. For example, you are playing a kobald priest and walk into a room with a shrieker mushroom, Grip, and Fang. I'll agree it's not likely but it is certainly possible. You would have had no way to detect in advance and they are likely to swallow you up pretty quickly.

That needs to be very early and very very bad luck, because both Grip and Fang can be killed with clvl 1 char and both are actually detectable (hint: they bash doors. Anything that early bashing doors is likely to be Grip and/or Fang). If you get them both in your starting room and are playing with connected stairs off, then you probably are toast.

Actually worst creature you can get for weakling priest at clvl 1 are novice priests (whatever those are called now). Curses can get you killed in single turn in LoS of those if you are unlucky.

At clvl 1 it is possible to get yourself killed by undetected trap too. Also not likely.

If you are playing with absolute certainty that you don't get killed most chars can make that by buying stuff that prevents it before even entering the dungeon. Couple of oil flasks for example make quite a big damage for early critters, and phase door scrolls are must. Buy a sling/bow and shots/arrows if they are available, if not, buy some bolts anyway, you can throw them for 1d5 damage. Couple of scrolls of detect traps cover the dungeon.

Main safety is the stairs though. Get out of the danger if you detect that there is chance of getting killed. Connected stairs off is a setting that makes clvl 1 death a lot more likely. That's not a standard setting though, so I really don't count those in my "every game" claim, just like I don't count ironman games in it (forced descend + no recall = ironman). I also hate searching stairs so that's another reason why I keep that on (or off, setting is actually "don't generate", not "generate").

[Antoine]

How much (in theory) can a character progress without ever entering the dungeon? Presumably you can get unlimited money (through killing townies) and hence non-artifact equipment (through the Black Market etc)?

A.

[Timo Pietilä]

How much (in theory) can a character progress without ever entering the dungeon? Presumably you can get unlimited money (through killing townies) and hence non-artifact equipment (through the Black Market etc)?

A.

You don't get any XP in town, so that's limiting factor....actually you could get some XP by polymorphing townsfolk, so clvl 50 with non-artifact gear if you just spam townsfolk for couple of decades.

[Tibarius]

lol

I knew i am amoung strange Folks if i am in for Angband in these days - i didn't knew the People are THAT strange --- Geee, does anyone realy "Play" the game if she/he scums the town for decades???

[Jungle_Boy]

But do the stores refresh if you never leave town?

[Nick]

But do the stores refresh if you never leave town?

They do if you buy them out.

I initially thought it might be possible that a potion of Experience might turn up in the Black Market, but sadly the BM only stocks items up to 20 levels deeper than the player's max depth, and !Exp is native to DL65.

[Derakon]

They do if you buy them out.

I initially thought it might be possible that a potion of Experience might turn up in the Black Market, but sadly the BM only stocks items up to 20 levels deeper than the player's max depth, and !Exp is native to DL65.

So hey, Wands of Polymorph are native to dlvl20, which means it's actually theoretically possible to get a mage up to a level where they can cast Polymorph themselves, which makes experience available in unlimited quantity. All you need to do is have the wand be in the Black Market at the start of the game, and have enough Scrolls of Recharging available to get the needed experience. And, uh, have the scrolls not blow the wand up.

Getting the money needed to buy the wand, not to mention the experience needed to get anywhere remotely significant after that, would be an incredible exercise in tedium, though. Polymorph would at best rarely produce monsters native to dlvl3 or 4, and that's not a lot of experience.