Warrior Fun

[brbrbr]

So I gave up on gnome flea, sorry, mage and started Dwarf Warrior instead.

What a relief it is!
I have so much delight playing that character, I cannot stop playing.
I get to dl30 in one breath and going from strength to strength.
Maybe it will become harder, but I have so much fun already. It is Fantastic.

Here is my mage play style:

Detect stairs, there is one in to East.
Detect monster, there seems to be a Priest over there, let's research.
He can cast serious wounds, which is less than my full health, but I am low on healing.
He can speed himself up, what if he double-move me?
Lets calculate, it would take X1 cold bolts, X2 firebolts or X3 acid bolts to kill 
him, assuming Y failure rate
If I remove ring of escape, I would loose Z speed, but gain Y less failures, which tactic is better?
He's got decent melee attack, and the room is small, so I better build a shooting tunnel. 
I don't have enough mana to complete the tunnel, I would need to rest,
but the Priest can wake up. 
So I better swap ring of Int for ring of Mouse for tunneling,
then not to forget to switch it back right before the battle.
If I get in trouble I will teleport him away with wand, cause failure rate on it lower than on spell.
Ok, lets haste ouselves and execute  the manuver.
It is so good to be mage, what would I do without all these spells?

Here is how I play warrior:

I want to go East.
There is green p between me and East.
Hit right, hit right. Continue to go East

Oh, god, I am so happy

P.S: I love mashroom farms in the dangeon, and I also had a rings sale in the black market - 8 different rings, all warrior-oriented. Is it part of the code now: themed shop sales?

[Bogatyr]

So I gave up on gnome flea, sorry, mage and started Dwarf Warrior instead.

What a relief it is!
I have so much delight playing that character, I cannot stop playing.
I get to dl30 in one breath and going from strength to strength.
Maybe it will become harder, but I have so much fun already. It is Fantastic.

Here is my mage play style:

Detect stairs, there is one in to East.
Detect monster, there seems to be a Priest over there, let's research.
He can cast serious wounds, which is less than my full health, but I am low on healing.
He can speed himself up, what if he double-move me?
Lets calculate, it would take X1 cold bolts, X2 firebolts or X3 acid bolts to kill 
him, assuming Y failure rate
If I remove ring of escape, I would loose Z speed, but gain Y less failures, which tactic is better?
He's got decent melee attack, and the room is small, so I better build a shooting tunnel. 
I don't have enough mana to complete the tunnel, I would need to rest,
but the Priest can wake up. 
So I better swap ring of Int for ring of Mouse for tunneling,
then not to forget to switch it back right before the battle.
If I get in trouble I will teleport him away with wand, cause failure rate on it lower than on spell.
Ok, lets haste ouselves and execute  the manuver.
It is so good to be mage, what would I do without all these spells?

Here is how I play warrior:

I want to go East.
There is green p between me and East.
Hit right, hit right. Continue to go East

Oh, god, I am so happy

P.S: I love mashroom farms in the dangeon, and I also had a rings sale in the black market - 8 different rings, all warrior-oriented. Is it part of the code now: themed shop sales?

Haha your mage play style leaves something to be desired. But I'd take it any day, wow, how interesting it is, so many choices, angband is about choices, strategies, decisions. And unless you're clev one, a priest should be about 1-2 spells to kill.

Now, taking out an entire orc pit at clev 12 or so, where any one of them could probably kill you in one-on-one melee, now *that's* fun. Line 'em up in a corridor, spear of light and lightning bolt them 10 at a time, sleep the lead guy, go rest up for SP, come back and continue. Awesome!

Just wait until you stumble into packs of gravity hounds and an already breeding nest of neekerbreekers.

[Bimbul]

Horses for courses, I agree with the previous poster - much more interesting to play magic casters for me.

[Zikke]

Unless brbrbr is actually the borg! I imagine those are the calculations the borg uses to play a mage.

I prefer paladins; most of the bash bash bash of a warrior but with a few tricks (like detection, satisfy hunger, TO, etc.) for a nicer standard of living.

[brbrbr]

I've cleared orc pit with average shovel
By the time I realized it, all orcs were done. That was hilarious.

I guess, I source my enjoyment from feeling strong and capable.
Mages don't give me that feeling.

I've been reading http://lparchive.org/Angband recently, it is very decent write-up. The guy says Rogues are warriors with mage utility spells. I always thought of them as thieves, or spies, somebody who is weak and survives by stealing and sneaking rather than honest fight.
If Rogues are real fighters with some magic backup, it would make a perfect character.
The only thing which bugs me is why everybody chooses hobbit race for rogues? Hobbits are not fighters...

[Rowan]

The only thing which bugs me is why everybody chooses hobbit race for rogues? Hobbits are not fighters...

I think that's a throwback to D&D, which is probably a shout-out to the "burglar" Baggins in Tolkien. *shrug* I don't know for sure- I'm always a hobbit, no matter what!

[Nomad]

I've been reading http://lparchive.org/Angband recently, it is very decent write-up. The guy says Rogues are warriors with mage utility spells. I always thought of them as thieves, or spies, somebody who is weak and survives by stealing and sneaking rather than honest fight.
If Rogues are real fighters with some magic backup, it would make a perfect character.
The only thing which bugs me is why everybody chooses hobbit race for rogues? Hobbits are not fighters...

Hobbits have the highest stealth, so they're good if you want to play as a stealth type rogue that avoids fighting.

If you want to play a fighter-with-added-spells type rogue, try playing as a Half-Orc. That +2 to STR really makes a difference surviving melee combat in the early levels, and unlike the other high STR classes (Dwarves and Half-Trolls) they have no penalty to DEX and only -1 to INT so they're not too useless at the actual rogue stuff either.

[Derakon]

Rogues are basically tied with paladins for melee capability; melee is their primary means of killing things and therefore of getting experience, so they'd better be good at it. They're not awful at ranged combat either (third behind rangers and warriors).

Hobbits are one of the better races; good stats, great stealth, and a minimal experience penalty. They're a bit fragile, but they can still do any class really. Good stealth can take a lot of pressure off of you.

[Bogatyr]

I've cleared orc pit with average shovel
By the time I realized it, all orcs were done. That was hilarious.

I guess, I source my enjoyment from feeling strong and capable.
Mages don't give me that feeling.

You've clearly not gotten a mage far enough along. A ~40-ish clev mage + dungeon spellbooks is definitely the most powerful entity in the game. Not in "HP/turn" damage output, but in the fine-grain control of every encounter and the dungeon geography itself. A mage can trivially destroy any non-wall-eating/passing unique without ever taking a single blow/attack. The ball and beam spells affect large groups in a single turn.

So I can certainly say:

I source my enjoyment from feeling a master of the dungeon, the monsters and its contents.
Mages give me that feeling.

[Bimbul]

I just had my best game ever - very nearly made it to endgame - with a rogue - I do like the balance of a rogue (wasn't a hobbit though).

Definitely is a personal thing characterwise. My own epiphany occurred a long time ago playing Nethack when I just got bored with warrior characters and the ease with which the early game was done and wanted a greater challenge.
I ended up with my first Ascension being a tourist* - the toughest character of all (early gamewise at least). My favourite was definitely wizard though - they start off as 'fleas' but by the end are superpower characters and for me are just much more interesting to play.

The only downside of the rogue here for me is that they have almost no attack spells. Mage - oooh drool - provided you can get far enough - slavver - hell yeah.

It's interesting for me, having thought about it, that your first post here is almost the perfect reason that I prefer mage over warrior.

The toughest character I find here is the priest. Never really got far as one - few attack spells, mostly healing and detection, and the blunt weapon thing takes out most of the artifact weapons [edit]- yay - I found Narthanc like 2 minutes after posting this - sigh - [edit2] - actually it's still not bad as it happens hmm)

Having said that, I just got a great find as a priest green dragon scale mail on DL6 - this one has promise now.

Currently, I use a random character each time though (I am new-ish to this game) so I get a feel for them all for a while. Warrior is OK but has issues with detection - I don't have to worry about traps or lurking nasties down at DL10 as a mage.



*This is my Nethack claim to fame - I almost never mention it

[Timo Pietilä]

The toughest character I find here is the priest. Never really got far as one - few attack spells, mostly healing and detection, and the blunt weapon thing takes out most of the artifact weapons

Priest is easiest of them all. OoD is quite powerful weapon and healing is great. After you find Godly Insights you have no trouble whatsoever. It's not fastest, but it is easiest. High level priest is pretty invulnerable.

Don't worry about blunt weapon restriction, it increases your failure rate, but you still get 0% to all spells that matter at very high level.

[Bimbul]

Cool - I look forward to hopefully getting to that point with this one - it is going well currently - getting lucky with finds early on.

Most of the priests I've done have been weak races too - that doesn't help - a lvl one gnome priest can get killed by a white centipede on lvl1 if you're not careful.

Yeah, I've decided that narthanc is just better, and much lighter than my maul currently - it doesn't do the same damage it does with other characters but wth. I did find a mace of disruption in my last game - I imagine that's a weapon of POWAHHH in the hands of a priest. Blasphemer!

[Bogatyr]

I've played and won with a few rogues and do like them. They fight well, shoot well, and have great supporting magics. Looking for a particular item is so much nicer with the rogue's detect objects -- there are never enough !Enlightenment for my tastes.

I always die with ranger.

I have a priest on the back burner who's doing pretty well -- the "haha you can't hurt me" aspect of the priest is pretty amazing.

The mowing through monster crowds as a warrior I admit is a relief once in a while, but I always find myself returning to mage, either gnome or human (current)

[Rowan]

I've been playing priest since I started last year- learning pretty much everything the hard way, no monster spoilers etc.

Just discovered Colluin and Power Dragon Scale Mail for the very first time (on both counts). Never had such an easy time before!

Though usually as soon as I say something like that....

[Bimbul]

Yeah, my favourite trick is to post how well I'm doing and then die immediately.

I've yet to meet such a thing as a power dragon - but I saw on the ladder someone found that power dragon scale mail. Me wants it, now!

I found (iirc) a balance dragon scale mail (might have been a multihued, can't remember) in my last game of awesomeness and it was hard to leave be - even though I had artifcats as almost all my armour - the power dragon one looks un-droppable - what a piece of kit!

A good drop early makes a world of difference - green dragon scale mail on my current priest has already made it my best priest ever and I've not been trouble at all yet really since - kiss of death here too - once more