Mage torture

[ewert]

Just a tip on macroes, there are plenty of keys you can use that are "handily" placed (I keep F1-onwards copies of the attack spell macroes):

x - this is my "spam attack" key, at start magic missile, eventually fire bolt / acid bolt, I also macro in target nearest in this so it's just "xxxxxxxx all dead next room"
h - if you play without ranged weapon (wands + spells only), this is usually my "big hitter", so frost/fire/acid bolt early on and meteors later on
X - area attack spell, stinking cloud early, cloudkill later
^D, ^F, ^G - detect spells
Z - haste
H, J - resistance and shield
^I - identify

etc., just check the key mappings and use those unused ones (or useless ones) to avoid moving your fingers always to the F-keys. Makes playing a mage ten times faster. =P

[Rydel]

Also, remember that not all classes use all the commands.
A non-caster can remap m and b
A monster with no shooter slot can remap f

[Bowman]

I'm a rather new player and still working on getting a winner with anything aside from half-troll warrior, but there are a few things I've picked up that have been helping me:

1. For mages, character level is only really significant in the early part of the game, to get access to the important spells (mainly for reveal monsters and teleport other, secondly for haste self, since wands/rods can provide damage easily enough). Once you've got those, you have the potential to survive anything with good tactical play. Just remember that "survive" is not the same as "defeat"! The easiest fight to win is the one that you don't actually fight.

2. If you're in depths where you have to worry about instant death (e.g. depths with "cause critical wounds" casters with less than 150 max HP, Kavlax depths with less than 200 max HP, depths with "cause mortal wounds" casters with less than 225 max HP, drolem/ancient multi-hued dragon depths when you can't survive their breaths), the main priorities should be (1) have enough detection to avoid getting surprised, (2) avoid fighting things that can instant kill you, (3) look for items that will help you survive (equipment of resistance, rings of constitution, !Constitution, etc.), then (4) fight things that you can kill (ideally these will be things that can drop items AND don't have summons, like orcs, ogres, young/mature dragons, or dark elf warriors). Since floor-generated items improve based on your depth, this usually translates into "fight smartly, dive aggressively" (not sure if you play with forced descent, but I do, and I still have no major worries about more or less skipping 10-20 midgame dungeon levels since anything they might get generated would probably be replaced with something from deeper on anyway).

3. Learn how the edges of line-of-sight work so that you can move around more favorably. The most important one is the "hockey stick":

 # #
##@#
s...
####
THIS IS AN UNSAFE POSITION.  "s" can attack @ without being seen.

 #@#
## #
s*..
####
THIS IS A SAFE POSITION.  Neither @ nor "s" can attack each other directly.  @ can attack with "s" by targeting the * space with a ball spell.

 #@#
## #
.s..
####
THIS IS A SAFE POSITION.  @ can attack "s" without being open to attack in return

If you're unsure about where monsters are, try to always stand at least one square away from a corner while detecting so that you can't get attacked immediately after casting your detection. Taking advantage of these line-of-sight tricks is the safest way to fight drujs and Q's, since they're a total pain when they can see you but completely helpless when they can't.

4. If you have door creation, you can break line of sight whenever you want (unless you're in melee, which shouldn't happen because you're a mage). Enemies can't attack you if they can't see you, so if you somehow get surprised by something dangerous (e.g. you're shooting at a death knight and it decided to summon a vampire lord), make some doors.

5. Teleport self tends you bounce you around between the same spots if you cast it multiple times in a row. If you just teleported away from trouble and ended up in new trouble immediately that can't be solved by teleport other, your best options are probably door creation (if the danger is all to one side and you can walk away from it after making doors), teleport level, or *destruction*.

6. Feel free to use rings of escaping and potions of speed liberally until you have haste self, because if you're slower than your enemies, their damage potential is effectively doubled (or worse!). Since you will get haste self eventually, you don't need to worry about saving up !speed for Morgoth.

7. Be ESPECIALLY mindful with anything that you know can suddenly put you in a horrible situation! This mostly means summoners, but also be wary of anything that teleport you around, like blink dogs, phase spiders, tengus, imps, and nexus breathers. If you can help it (which you should be able to, with good detection), never risk fighting a nexus hound/vortex without having resistance just because it has low damage. A single breath can send you into a pack of something like drujs or time hounds, and they don't drop items anyway!

There's probably no advise in there that wasn't already mentioned in this thread, but sometimes it helps to hear things from a weaker player

[brbrbr]

Thanks guys for all your help.

Here is how I modified my play style:
1) I spent all points to INT on birth
2) I prioritize Stealth and Infravision over Resistances
3) I do not fight trolls, if I can
4) I tunnel much more often, prepare surroundings
All that helps, but marginally.

The struggle came in the same place: valley of sorrow between dl40 and dl60.
At this depth, I have 120HP, which is lower than Cause Critical Wound, lower than most of Elemental blows, even with resistances. I have to avoid most of the monsters and battles. No fun. So I dive.

Diving helps!!!

At about dl55 potions of constitutions started to appear. I brought HP above 150, which makes it possible to fight with much wider range of monsters. At DL 60 I got Resistances, so I could fight dragons. Game starts to be easier and fun.

Also, changing color of Basilisk, Death Knight, Drolem, Patriarch to purple really helps. Nice trick!!!

I have died at level 65. Dracolich breath nether. He was at 80% of health, and I HAD nether resistance. It was marked green. How is it possible? Monster memory said it is 530 damage unresistant. I had nether resistance, I had 302 HP, +19 speed, how could I die with -40
????????????????

(

[yyt16384]

I have died at level 65. Dracolich breath nether. He was at 80% of health, and I HAD nether resistance. It was marked green. How is it possible? Monster memory said it is 530 damage unresistant. I had nether resistance, I had 302 HP, +19 speed, how could I die with -40
????????????????

(

Nether resistance is not very reliable. It reduces damage to 6/(6+1d6), so you will take 6/7 of the damage at most. You shouldn't deal with big breathers with only 300 HP.

[brbrbr]

What???? Where do you get that info?

Oh f*, it is!
Right there, in 14th paragraph of 5th user manual on rephial.org.

I have no words.

[Bogatyr]

Someone recommended a Half-Troll mage as being "easier". I started one just for fun to see how it plays, and got to around clev 11 before stopping, and I think it's *much harder* to play than a gnome mage. The HT mage has a looong way to go 18/200 INT, has very poor SP early on, and high fail rates for critical damage spells (the bolts). I feel like the HT mage just can't do any damage and runs out of SP way too soon -- doesn't feel like a "mage." Yeah, he has great hit points and STR, but mages just don't need that much STR to get going, and tons of HP aren't necessary with careful play and knowledge of monster attacks.

[yyt16384]

What???? Where do you get that info?

Oh f*, it is!
Right there, in 14th paragraph of 5th user manual on rephial.org.

I have no words.

You can check list-elements.h in source code for more information.

Base 4 elements and poison resistance reduces damage to 1/3. For light and dark it's 4/(6+1d6), and for sound it's 5/(6+1d6). For everything else it's 6/(6+1d6).

So for example, you need 176 HP to survive a full power breath from a ethereal dragon if you have light and dark resistances.

[Nick]

Right there, in 14th paragraph of 5th user manual on rephial.org.

In case you weren't aware, the help files are available in the game too - just hit '?'.

[brbrbr]

In case you weren't aware, the help files are available in the game too - just hit '?'.

I was so hoping to blame the game for the failure, not myself.....
In my defense - green colored attack description means you are safe and resistant. 6/7 reduction is not resistance, it is misinformation. It gives false sense of security...

I cannot resist posting an extract from Hitchhiker's Guide:

"But the plans were on display . . ."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying BEWARE OF NETHER BREATH.

[Timo Pietilä]

I was so hoping to blame the game for the failure, not myself.....
In my defense - green colored attack description means you are safe and resistant. 6/7 reduction is not resistance, it is misinformation. It gives false sense of security...

AFAIK green means that you have resistance, not that you are safe.

All high elements act like nether, you get variable resistance. Nether just has highest damage cap. Some of the resists are a bit more effective than others, but they all vary, it's not fixed.

Lesson to learn: don't rely on high element resistances for damage reduction. Use them for side-effect protection.

IMO that difference between high-elements and basic four and poison is something that we would need to deal with somehow in future releases. It's newbie "Gotcha" that doesn't really make much sense.

My suggestion would be that AC should remove part of the damages from all elemental attacks, then all resistances should be variables, but not quite like 1600 * 6 /7 like nether (obviously), so that you would not be able to rely on resistance alone.

In short:

1) Make AC have some value on magical distance-combat too
2) Remove the difference between high and basic elements.

(side effect: this would give stoneskin and mage shield spells a lot more use)

[Zikke]

I agree that, as illustrated earlier in this thread, having two different models of resistance is tough on all but the most learned veterans. I consider myself a veteran and I wasn't even aware of this difference until this thread.

It's great when a "new" player finally figures out how the damage is calculate. I don't, however, think that it should be complicated. I personally enjoy some of the other variants that have a straight, listed percentage for each element.

It's much simpler to let the player know their percentage of resist so they can balance gear, and then make the BREATH attacks include some variation in their pre-resist damage. Easier for the player to understand and also aligns much more closely with a typical player's mental model of how damage from attacks are calculated. (i.e. I'm used to attacks being variable with die rolls; why are some of them a fixed amount of damage? That happens just about zero other times in the experience of a RPG player.)

[bio_hazard]

*Almost certainly variant territory*
Change basic resists to:
Fire
Cold
Acid
Shards/missiles

These seem more "basic" than me- we can move lightning to exotic.

Basic armor gives resistance to some or all of these
e.g. basic cloaks give rFire, fur cloaks give rFire and rCold, elven cloaks to all.
shields give rShards scaling with size
boots/gloves give rAcid


Other injections of "realism"
helms limit stun duration based on "size" of helm
leather boots give +stealth (soft more than hard), heavy armors -stealth

[Carnivean]

Other injections of "realism"
helms limit stun duration based on "size" of helm
leather boots give +stealth (soft more than hard), heavy armors -stealth

Those seem eminently sensible. I like the idea of the player having to choose between stealth and the safety of AC (assuming that AC gets made more meaningful than it currently stands).

[brbrbr]

AFAIK green means that you have resistance, not that you are safe.

Quote from the rephial.org, paragraph #2 of "Monster Memories" chapter:

These attacks will be color coded to inform you of whether or not you currently resist a specific attack. Red or orange means you do not resist it, yellow means you partially resist it, and green means you resist it or are immune

So either color-code nether attacks in always red, or simplify resistance model to make it easier to understand.