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.
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.
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