Mage torture

[brbrbr]

After winning with High-Elf Ranger I have decided to try Gnome Mage.

I hate it so much!!!
Two attempts, I've managed to bring both to about dl45.
Torture begins at about dl30
So little strength I can barely carry town-level books.
Merciful game gives me heavy artifact weapons and even heavier artifact armours, which I cannot wear.
Sure, that is a known drawback of mages for the upside of huge 40 spellpoints, so I can kill a whole one(!) troll.
I bite the bullet, grind it, grind it. At about dl40 my game is 95% running away, 5% killing monsters.

Thankfully game drops ring of intelligence and couple of strength, so with 100 SP I can kill whooping 5 trolls before running away.
I keep grinding and started to find potions of wisdom and dexterity. Wisdom and dexterity, wisdom and dexterity, wisdom and dexterity. What a usefuls stats for a mage. Isn't it? And only town-level books.

I keep grinding and stay at level 45, I start scumming the stairs often to get risk level no more than 3. Kavlax, Uvatha, Knight templar, partirarhs, death knight, every one of them can kill me with one blow. I teleport, teleport them, recall to town, do whatever I can, and it is still a torture. Five times or so I was lucky to escape insta-killers with just couple of hitpoints left. My hands shake and eyes glued to HP indicator.

The only hope I have is the potion of constitution. I did anticipate that and inflated STR and CON at the birth. Yet still pitiful HP. I dream about CON, ask for it, pray for it... but i keep getting wisdom, dexterity, wisdom, dexterity.

And despite the fact I have Excellent stealth, as soon as I land somewhere the whole level of monsters start chasing me as I am some kind of Dwarf of permanently aggravate monsters.

Both times I was killed by poison breathers. Drolem and Greater Basilisk. I DO detect a lot. I DO keep monster disposition in memory. Yet they somehow appear out of the blue and blow their 700 damage to my unresistant shoulders.

Horror movie. I never felt so hopeless and weak as playing mage. I do believe I played well to survive for so long, but the end was clear.

I just don't see how mage could win or at least be fun to play

[Carnivean]

If you're hating the fragility of the Gnome Mage, then try a Half-Troll mage first. They're tanks in comparison, and have the strength to carry books.

Try using more wands. You get a bonus to damage, which is described when inspecting them. You can get a bunch of shots off without touching your SP pool. Gnomes have a higher device skill, so more damage from wands/rods/staves/activating artifacts, which is why they're popular.

At the endgame, mages have a whole bunch of advantages, so if you can hang in, it gets easier.

[Thraalbee]

I have played this game for years but only recently scored my first mage win. I preferred all other classes due to frustration in the early game. But it does not have to be like that. My current game is ironman (no recall, forced descent) dunadan mage now well beyond the difficult times. It was never boring or frustrating.
From this stage (600+ hp) I will melee at times and possibly all of the end game, but I find the key in the early phase is sticking to wands, shooters and spells. phase door is required until you get really fast or use 2x rings of escaping. !Heroism etc helps to-hit. wand of wonder works much better for mages than others and can often kill early uniques such as wormtongue. Also id all ammo, branded missiles are great for killing uniques. commonly 10x damage in early game vs melee. Beats magic missile and dagger even if you miss a lot.

[PowerWyrm]

Once you have enough charges of teleport other on wands, or enough rods, or the spell with low enough fail rate, just dive to DL90. With a mage, it's pointless to stay shallow and kill trolls because you don't have the strength nor the mana to kill a lot of stuff. Then look for vaults, teleport other nasties and collect speed rings and other endgame equipment. You *can* survive at DL90 with 200 hps.

[Timo Pietilä]

You *can* survive at DL90 with 200 hps.

Can, but it is really tedious. I would prefer much higher HP so that you don't have to run away from everything and their cousins.

[Estie]

Speed is the most valuable commodity. If that mail of resistance slows you down, dont use it, rather go without res base.

Trolls are asleep and when they wake up, leave the premises rather than fight them. Its not worthwhile.
Good targets are things that die fast, usually low level, like low level p and h and d, but those can drop nice things at depths.

For birth stats, I always go max int rest str. Con wont give you enough hit points by itself, you need to find con potions wether you start with low or high con. And int + str enables you to do so.

[bio_hazard]

I'm enjoying my first deep run with a gnome mage. High stealth and speed and you can almost always pick your battles, and unlimited TO feels almost too easy. Don't forget attack wands and good ammo.

[Monkey Face]

My only two wins have been with mages (high-elf and half-orc) so they are winnable. Always have haste self casted. Use ring of escaping until haste self is reliable. Remember you can be overburdened if you are also hasted. Find something with poison resistance until you are able to cast resistance spell. Get your intelligence as high as possible so you get more spell points with lower failure rates. At the start of the game put your points in STR and INT. CON will come later.

[brbrbr]

INT is preferrable over CON at birth, you say?
The +1 to INT cost me 4 points.
Would it give me so more spell points to justify the price?

Magic devices - I agree, I found gnome mage to be excellent with those.
I underestimated that power at the beginning. Maybe gnome mage has more damaging potential than I think.

Still, low hitpoint makes it painful. It is not fun, as Timo said "run away from everything and their cousins".

If I was lucky with statgain drops and bring HP to 300, I could survive at least one spell or nether bolt, and probably win. It is just not fun to be afraid of every shadow and detect every 5 steps.

In my opinion, mage should be renamed to FLEA, because their only strength is FLEE.
Okay, okay, a FLEA which can become a killing machine somewhere later in the game, then the game is almost finished.

My next try will be Kobold warrior. I want to fight, not flee. And poison breathers are my biggest killers so far.

[Derakon]

INT is preferrable over CON at birth, you say?
The +1 to INT cost me 4 points.
Would it give me so more spell points to justify the price?

Yes. The thing about stats in Angband is that you get increasing returns on each stat point in several areas, including spellpoints, spell failure rates, and hitpoints. That means that e.g. going from 18/40 to 18/50 in a stat has a vastly larger effect than going from 14 to 15 does. As a mage there's simply no way that you're going to get a useful amount of CON at the start of the game even if you dump a lot of points into that stat. You're better served by boosting your INT that much more, to increase your ability to kill things and reduce your chance of spells failing.

More generally, nobody should be investing all that much into CON at the start of the game. Its effects scale with your level, and moreover they aren't all that significant until you get above 18/100 CON or so. Thus no "young" character will see much benefit from investing heavily in CON. There's not no difference, but the difference is small enough that you're generally better-served by investing in your offense (casting stats, STR/DEX) and/or your carrying capacity (STR).

Anyway, yeah, mages are painful for much of the game. They're really aimed mostly at players who know the dungeon inside and out and are able to know when to fight (rarely) and when to run, er, cast Teleport Other (often).

[Zikke]

I'm running a gnome mage right now as well.

1) Hang out around stat-gain level (25-30) if you want to try to farm more stat potions. Don't forget to use !Intellect to pump up that INT. Try to get to 18/200 as soon as possible, including wearing the best INT rings you can find.

2) Only care 1 copy of each book to save weight. If you avoid fights with fire creatures you don't need to worry about them burning up. I personally don't carry ranged ammo as a gnome mage to save weight and bag space (some people may think that's bad).

3) Wand wand wand wand wand.

4) You're looking for any item with telepathy on it. Once you get that you can dive as far as you want to dive, even if you're not comfortable with your stats just yet.

5) Don't worry about killing difficult creatures until you get much more mana and useful spells with 0% fail. You will find plenty of !Experience later on. You're looking for stuff on the ground, especially in vaults if you have Teleport Other. If you feel like you want to kill stuff, pick off relatively easy monsters that tend to drop items (p, d, h) but check their monster lore to see if they have range attacks that will hurt you a lot.

6) Once you get the Escapes book you're basically golden. Create doors will buy you time to create stairs or Teleport Level in most situations. Then once you get Kelek's you can stomp the dungeon.

7) When leveling a mage early on, I like to assign a hotkey (F1) to magic missile, which scales up a bit as you level and always costs 1 mana (and is unresistable). Then I bind F2-F4 with the three most recently acquired bolt spells with a low fail rate. I use these when I need a quick kill or fighting a more dangerous monster that doesn't resist one of the bolts. For less dangerous things I use Magic Missile. Make use of the 'n' command if you use the "Use last target" option.

[Carnivean]

7) When leveling a mage early on, I like to assign a hotkey (F1) to magic missile, which scales up a bit as you level and always costs 1 mana (and is unresistable). Then I bind F2-F4 with the three most recently acquired bolt spells with a low fail rate.

F1 is identify to me. It's analogous to F1 = help in windows. F2-4 are detection spells. To me that that's the important set, as you need them to know the dungeon. I then use F5-8 as attack spells.

[brbrbr]

Hmm. I certainly need to reconsider my birth selections.
To be honest, mage early game is pretty solid with me. It is the middle game (dl 30-50), where I struggle.

On key bindings I have:
F1-F4 group for utility spells (Detect, Stairs, Light, Reveal)
F5-F8 for offensive spells (Missle, Frost, Fire, Acid bolt)
For mage I found super-super-useful to assign Ctrl-R with R&[Enter]

I am thinking, guys... Even if I have a kobold warrior I am still unlikely to survive sudden Drolem or Greater Basilisk. Warriors don't have detection, so I may even have less chances to avoid my biggest killers.

What is your tactics against these guys? I mean... for some reason I am almost always miss them on the map. One time it was out of my sight, other one it was teleported away, but found a way back to me very quickly somehow, third time I mistaken it for a snake..

[wobbly]

I am thinking, guys... Even if I have a kobold warrior I am still unlikely to survive sudden Drolem or Greater Basilisk. Warriors don't have detection, so I may even have less chances to avoid my biggest killers.

While since I've played vanilla but pretty sure with a kobold warrior you should be able to take it on straight hp+poison resist as long as you don't wander around half injured & carry teleport level.

[Estie]

Hmm. I certainly need to reconsider my birth selections.
To be honest, mage early game is pretty solid with me. It is the middle game (dl 30-50), where I struggle.

On key bindings I have:
F1-F4 group for utility spells (Detect, Stairs, Light, Reveal)
F5-F8 for offensive spells (Missle, Frost, Fire, Acid bolt)
For mage I found super-super-useful to assign Ctrl-R with R&[Enter]

I am thinking, guys... Even if I have a kobold warrior I am still unlikely to survive sudden Drolem or Greater Basilisk. Warriors don't have detection, so I may even have less chances to avoid my biggest killers.

What is your tactics against these guys? I mean... for some reason I am almost always miss them on the map. One time it was out of my sight, other one it was teleported away, but found a way back to me very quickly somehow, third time I mistaken it for a snake..

Stealth. With high stealth, almost nothing wakes up. If you dont have high stealth, you can still dive fast, but need to reduce the time spent on each level.

Edit: With a mage, getting high stealth is easy as you can equip rings of mouse with impunity.