Mage torture

[Bogatyr]

I've played almost exclusively mages for all my *moria, *band games. I have vanilla gnome mages down to an almost robotic fomula. I've tried other classes and I consider mage the easiest to win with. Maybe not the fastest (due to the middle game challenge of maxing CON), but the most predictable. It does require monster knowledge and game experience as others have mentioned, and there is a time once you reach 18/200 INT in the middle where you do avoid fighting a lot until you can load up on CON. The key for mage play is surviving until you can max CON (or at least get it beyond the one-shot attacks of many monsters, particularly curses and psionic attacks). Once you find Mordinkanen's and of course Kelek's, it game's all but won. Basically, if I don't die at clev 1, or get bored maxing CON, I can win every time with gnome mage.

My gnome mage recipe:
+ 18/50 (max) starting INT, the remainder into strength
+ 1st spell magic missile, 2nd spell detect monsters
+ thereafter always learn the highest level spell you can, and cast it, in order to boomerang up the levels as high as you can as quickly as you can. You can get to level 11 (identify, woohoo!) with only a few levels from killing monsters, the rest from casting new spells.
+ always fight at a distance, never get close to crowds
+ get to 18/200 INT as fast as possible: drink all Intellect potions, wear all INT rings
+ rings of escaping can be extremely powerful since the low level spell failure rates are not affected
+ always rest after fights. Never walk around with less than max SP/HP
+ detect/reveal monsters constantly, never move without knowing what's waiting for you
+ choose armor/weapons only for stats/effects/resists (INT, CON, ESP)
+ dive fast to stat gain, max INT, get "enough" CON to avoid instakills, then dive to 98.
+ use macros to spam magic missile / fire bolt at "popcorn"
+ find great stuff, win
edit, some more:
+ dig a LOT: prepare corridors with single-move escapes from beyond visual/attack distance. You can fight crowds one-monster at a time this way, safely. You can beat any monster in the game almost trivially except for wall-eaters/walkers via hockey sticks, but this feels borderline cheating and gets boring fast, like pillar dancing.

[brbrbr]

A-ha!

So if I boost INT and STR at birth instead of CON, i would not need to wear ring of Strength in midgame and can continue to wear ring of Mouse, which gives me Stealth so I can avoid monsters. In that sense stealth is even better than resists. n fact, it is in midgame where I swap Mouse for Strength, so it may contributed to my troubles. I may underestimated stealth. Does it sound like a plan???

Fun factor, though is still under question. I LOVE clearing out levels, I LOVE killing strong monsters. I may get bored again in "valley of sorrow" (dl30-50) by continuous running away and looking for CON.

There is something else I am thinking: Is there a way to customize monster colors?
I would like to make purple following guys:
- Drolem
- Basilisk/Greater Basilisk
- Dark elven lord
- Death knight
- Knight Templar
- All drujs
That would highlight them and make more noticeable. Is there a way??

[Nick]

There is something else I am thinking: Is there a way to customize monster colors?
I would like to make purple following guys:
- Drolem
- Basilisk/Greater Basilisk
- Dark elven lord
- Death knight
- Knight Templar
- All drujs
That would highlight them and make more noticeable. Is there a way??

There are at least two ways:

1. Go into monster knowledge (~, d), go to the monster you want, hit 'v' for visuals.

2. Go through the monster.txt file in lib/gamedata, when you get to one of the monsters you want to change:

name:472:Drolem
base:golem
color:g

just change to

color:P

You can either edit the monster.txt file in place, or put your edited copy in your user directory - gamedata files in the user directory are used preferentially if they exist.

[Timo Pietilä]

There is something else I am thinking: Is there a way to customize monster colors?
I would like to make purple following guys:
- Drolem
- Basilisk/Greater Basilisk
- Dark elven lord
- Death knight
- Knight Templar
- All drujs
That would highlight them and make more noticeable. Is there a way??

Related proposition: if LoS monster has known distance insta-death attack it would show bright red in monster list.

If full knowledge and no insta, or near insta capability monster then green.

[brbrbr]

color:P

That will definitely increase my survive-ability!

[PowerWyrm]

A-ha!

So if I boost INT and STR at birth instead of CON, i would not need to wear ring of Strength in midgame and can continue to wear ring of Mouse, which gives me Stealth so I can avoid monsters. In that sense stealth is even better than resists. n fact, it is in midgame where I swap Mouse for Strength, so it may contributed to my troubles. I may underestimated stealth. Does it sound like a plan???

Fun factor, though is still under question. I LOVE clearing out levels, I LOVE killing strong monsters. I may get bored again in "valley of sorrow" (dl30-50) by continuous running away and looking for CON.

There is something else I am thinking: Is there a way to customize monster colors?
I would like to make purple following guys:
- Drolem
- Basilisk/Greater Basilisk
- Dark elven lord
- Death knight
- Knight Templar
- All drujs
That would highlight them and make more noticeable. Is there a way??

Don't forget that mages get their DEX pumped quite a bit at birth, which I really don't understand. You should always start by removing all those pointless DEX points and pump STR and INT instead. If you don't want a low CON, I'd suggest putting 8 in STR/INT and 4 in CON.

[Timo Pietilä]

Don't forget that mages get their DEX pumped quite a bit at birth, which I really don't understand. You should always start by removing all those pointless DEX points and pump STR and INT instead. If you don't want a low CON, I'd suggest putting 8 in STR/INT and 4 in CON.

Breakpoint for 1.5 spells / clvl is 18/50. If you can get that, get it. If not then it doesn't matter much if it is 18/40 or 18/30, the first stat-boost item you find almost always push that above 18/50. (IE. +2 is almost as common as +1 even at early levels).

All races that can get 18/50 to spell-stat for pure spellcaster level fast at early game almost purely by casting new spells.

[Bogatyr]

A-ha!

So if I boost INT and STR at birth instead of CON, i would not need to wear ring of Strength in midgame and can continue to wear ring of Mouse, which gives me Stealth so I can avoid monsters.

Yes. But rings of INT are more important if you get to 18/200 and 0% fail teleport other. Once you reach 18/200 INT then juggle equip for max CON (keeping 18/200 INT). Then just make sure you manage LoS properly and you can just TO monsters that wake up which you don't want to fight. Rings of escaping also mean more speed which gives you a safety buffer against LoS mistakes. After that, yes I like stealth, too.

[yyt16384]

Having 18/200 INT is really important. With 0% fail teleport other you can teleport out non-wall-passing monsters that are not faster than 2x of your speed by teleporting them around a corner. Combined with haste self this means you can teleport almost all monsters.

When taking out vaults, make use of the permanent walls. This is the only place you can safely teleport wall-passing monsters that can one-shot you.

Also note that there are a lot of monsters that can cast cause critical wounds, which may hit for up to 150 HP. It is a good idea to stay away from them if you are running with low HP.

[brbrbr]

I am still thinking (planning)...
I do not have issues with spell failure rate. I learned not to rely on spells.
So why 0% failure is so important????
If it's a life and death situation, I use scroll of teleport or teleport level or potion.
With full monster memory I also know in_advance if I want to teleport monster away, or engage. And if I know in advance I have luxury of several attempts.

My mage issues were boiled down to low damage mid-game, and insta-killers. Very few monsters I can kill, too many monsters can kill me.
Lets assume Inflating INT at birth would help with damage, so I would have more fun killing.

Instal-killers. What a pain in the ass!!!! Avoiding every shadow is not fun. Even with lot of stealth. Teleporting across the level becomes more dangerous. Abusing stairs feels like cheating. Get onto level, quaff enlightment (if you have it), TO every monster between you and the object... that is certainly boring.

It is also hard to be always concentrated on every beast around you. Attention drifts sometimes and the next thing you see is the RIP screen. Bloody breathers/casters/drujs!
Boredom dulls attention. If I dive deeper it will be more dangerous, so I may become more focused.... but yet less monsters for me to kill, more fleeing, teleporting, boring, attentions loss.
My rule of thumb of diving is I dive as soon as I can dominate 50% of the level. Last two runs with mage it was 30% domination, and levels felt too dangerous... I would not be comfortable to dive deeper.

Hmmm, more questions than answers. Last try with mage and warrior is the next.

[Derakon]

You do want to dive a lot faster. In the deeps, you still find killable monsters fairly often, but their drops, and the items on the floor, are much better. Mages don't depend super-heavily on their character level for killing things (it's important, but not vital). What they really need are to fix their awful stats and to get good wands and spells. All of these come from finding better items, and better items exist deeper in the game.

0% failure is important because it means you can rely on your spells. A 0% failure-rate Teleport Other means you don't have to fight anything that you don't want to fight, and as a mage there's a lot of things you don't want to fight. Moreover, other teleportation spells are suicidal past, oh, 2000' or so; it's pretty much a guarantee that eventually you're going to land next to something that's awake and angry. Teleport Other doesn't move you and is thus much more predictable in its effects.

[Bogatyr]

I am still thinking (planning)...
I do not have issues with spell failure rate. I learned not to rely on spells.

There's your main problem right there...

So why 0% failure is so important????

Derakon addressed this. teleport self is *dangerous*, you're really rolling the dice with that. teleport self is a last last last resort.

With 18/200+ INT, you have tons of SP. You can kill almost everything one-on-one that doesn't have distance attacks, and even them you can wear down with a TO approach. Oft-beaming spells like fire bolt and acid bolt are very powerful in long corridors against melee-only monsters. Lure the baddies into corridors and gain EXP in volume!

Abusing stairs feels like cheating.

Leaving bad situations is key to success. Stairs are just one more way. I *always* leave a clear path back to the stairs, especially in the early game. That's one reason why my mages almost never die early.

It is also hard to be always concentrated on every beast around you. Attention drifts sometimes and the next thing you see is the RIP screen.

Well, that's angband, not just for mages. With mages, you only need to worry about instakill distance attacks. There are plenty of monsters worth good EXP and nice drops with distance attacks that need not worry you, especially dragons if you have double (1/9) elemental resists. With fire and poison resist, you can confidently take on Hydra pits (managing distance carefully), earning TONS of EXP and gold. Them suckers don't like cold .

Bloody breathers/casters/drujs!

Drujs are fun. I love undead pits. It takes a long time, but I usually clear out one or two per game, just to get to the drujs. With mage, you really need to embrace unsymmetric LoS. Even if it feels a bit "dirty" to hockey stick, hockey sticking drujs and Quylthulgs is one of the game's great pleasures .

Boredom dulls attention. If I dive deeper it will be more dangerous, so I may become more focused.... but yet less monsters for me to kill, more fleeing, teleporting, boring, attentions loss.
My rule of thumb of diving is I dive as soon as I can dominate 50% of the level. Last two runs with mage it was 30% domination, and levels felt too dangerous... I would not be comfortable to dive deeper.

If you dive deeper, you're guaranteed not to be bored. Nothing like recalling into a large dark room deep in the dungeon without Mordinkanen's or ESP to get the heart racing.

Hmmm, more questions than answers. Last try with mage and warrior is the next.

I dislike non-red-spellbook classes, warriors in particular, because without ESP they're blind until they find a huge stack of rods of detection. Sometimes tons of HP just isn't enough, especially against crowds with dangerous distance attacks (e.g., gravity hounds!). For me, warriors are less fun because without detects, there's no opportunity to come up with a plan. Just hold down the arrow key in the corridor, ho hum.

You have to embrace the mage style: master of your surroundings and encounters. Learn to love the strategy/tactics of setting up advantageous digs into pits and taking out the monsters one by one at the edge of sight distance. Fire bolting the undead is a great pleasure with mages .

edit: you also get revenge for all the skulking around when you find Kelek's. Major vault? BOOM, and pick over the loot at your leisure (just stay on your toes vs. the uniques).

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I dislike non-red-spellbook classes, warriors in particular, because without ESP they're blind until they find a huge stack of rods of detection. Sometimes tons of HP just isn't enough, especially against crowds with dangerous distance attacks (e.g., gravity hounds!). For me, warriors are less fun because without detects, there's no opportunity to come up with a plan. Just hold down the arrow key in the corridor, ho hum.

Whereas, for me, I prefer a robust race/warrior over every other class. But then, I am more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school....

[Zikke]

Don't worry too much about abusing line of sight to kill things. The monsters will abuse it to kill you.

[yyt16384]

With fire and poison resist, you can confidently take on Hydra pits (managing distance carefully), earning TONS of EXP and gold. Them suckers don't like cold .

Be careful with 11-headed ones. Their plasma bolts can hurt a lot.

I dislike non-red-spellbook classes, warriors in particular, because without ESP they're blind until they find a huge stack of rods of detection. Sometimes tons of HP just isn't enough, especially against crowds with dangerous distance attacks (e.g., gravity hounds!). For me, warriors are less fun because without detects, there's no opportunity to come up with a plan. Just hold down the arrow key in the corridor, ho hum.

I haven't played warriors but I feel the same with priests. Before finding book #6 or a rod of detection there is no way to detect properly. And before finding book #5 you can't TO with 0% fail rate. They also have much lower HP than warriors.