How useful are heroism, holy chant, and other "buff" items?

[PowerWyrm]

I find tons of these all over the dungeon and I really have no quantitative way to think about how useful they are in any given situation.

I've used them against low-level uniques and that has been quite good. But what about deeper in the dungeon?

I'd be interested in learning more about which "buff" items in general are useful in which situations.

It's not just potions and scrolls either. What about mushrooms? Most of them seem like double-edged swords, with a few notable exceptions.

I've been finding it useful to categorize the items I find into "buff", "attack", "escape", and "utility" items. The buff ones are starting to confuse me though, for real.

Buffs except Speed and Resistance potions are pretty much useless and I squelch them immediately upon ID except in very rare cases:
- I don't have rFear and I plan to use melee with the character, I keep Heroism and Berserk Strength to remove/sustain fear
- I have found a nice shooter/ammo combo that deals more damage than melee or spells and the character has poor shooting skill, I use Heroism/Berserk Strength/Holy Prayer to pump up the to-hit of missiles
- I'm playing Mage/Priest and I've found Deathwreaker so I can melee Morgoth, I use Heroism/Berserk Strength/Holy Prayer to pump up the to-hit of melee

[Pete Mack]

Useful for early game uniques, and vs. Morgoth. If you are diving especially early on, a couple each of !Hero and !berserk can let you snipe a higher level monster that you otherwise can't even hit. Doing this advances EXP very quickly.
A high level ranger or rogue will maintain those states indefinitely using spells.

I find tons of these all over the dungeon and I really have no quantitative way to think about how useful they are in any given situation.

I've used them against low-level uniques and that has been quite good. But what about deeper in the dungeon?

I'd be interested in learning more about which "buff" items in general are useful in which situations.

It's not just potions and scrolls either. What about mushrooms? Most of them seem like double-edged swords, with a few notable exceptions.

I've been finding it useful to categorize the items I find into "buff", "attack", "escape", and "utility" items. The buff ones are starting to confuse me though, for real.

[wobbly]

Why would that be flawed? It's just long lasting effect. If you can use that in your benefit, then there is nothing wrong utilizing it IMO.

I would like to have some item with protection from evil effect in fact. A bit like slays, but protections maybe.

Bit of a difference between a long lasting (or gear based) protection from evil effect & press qq or rr 40 times.

[Timo Pietilä]

This kind of thing (the way effect durations stack) could probably use some work. I tend to buy a stack of 40 infravisions at some stage because the cost is neglible then drink them to clear inventory room. 5 or 6 recalls later infravision is still in effect. Practically it's of small benefit yes, but the whole basic mechanic seems a little flawed.

Why would that be flawed? It's just long lasting effect. If you can use that in your benefit, then there is nothing wrong utilizing it IMO.

I would like to have some item with protection from evil effect in fact. A bit like slays, but protections maybe.

[wobbly]

This kind of thing (the way effect durations stack) could probably use some work. I tend to buy a stack of 40 infravisions at some stage because the cost is neglible then drink them to clear inventory room. 5 or 6 recalls later infravision is still in effect. Practically it's of small benefit yes, but the whole basic mechanic seems a little flawed.

[Timo Pietilä]

Only works on "evil" monsters that are at or less than the CL of @, e.g., the maximum it can ever affect is monsters that are level 50, once @ has maxed out in experience levels. So, not very useful in the endgame, where most monsters are well above level 50. If you have it and it's relevant to the monsters at hand, by all means use it. They will have to make a "saving throw" to hit @ or their blows will be "repelled". Just don't expect it to work against any monster with a higher level than @ or that is non-evil.

If you are priest and has it as spell it lasts quite a longer than it takes time to recover mana from casting it and duration of it fully stacks, so at town cast it a row until mana drained, rest, cast again, rest and so on couple of times and then recall back to dungeon. That way it is pretty much always on and you use only small amount of real time doing so.

Ruins your turncount though, but who cares.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

This thread has been super-helpful. Now I have an idea what to do with most of the buffs I find, especially which ones can be discarded.

But what about Protection from Evil? This seems to start appearing somewhere around DL20 so I guess it must be more powerful than the early-game buffs. What does it actually do?

Only works on "evil" monsters that are at or less than the CL of @, e.g., the maximum it can ever affect is monsters that are level 50, once @ has maxed out in experience levels. So, not very useful in the endgame, where most monsters are well above level 50. If you have it and it's relevant to the monsters at hand, by all means use it. They will have to make a "saving throw" to hit @ or their blows will be "repelled". Just don't expect it to work against any monster with a higher level than @ or that is non-evil.

[Wanderlust]

Cool, I just did try it (just before my last character died while acting like an idiot next to an AMHD).

There was a pack of black ogres with a unique of some kind in the middle. It definitely slowed down the ogres a lot, they could barely hit me. But it didn't seem to affect the unique in any way. At that point the black ogres were basically irrelevant anyway, so it was only a minor help in that particular fight.

I can definitely see how protection from evil could be a key tool in certain situations though.

Actually (like everything else in Angband), the more I experiment with the buffs system, the more I appreciate it. I really like how each buff has usefulness only in certain situations, at certain times, and with certain characters. Also I like how different buffs and items in general gain or lose relevance according to the progress of the game. I've never seen this dynamic in a game before and it adds a special type of "strategy" I really enjoy.

[Thraalbee]

Evil monsters has to make a saving throw(ish) check for each melee attack. If fail, then "repelled" and a miss. Results vary from good to useless. Try it! Most useful against lower and mid level evil monsters. Not an end game buff for me

[Wanderlust]

This thread has been super-helpful. Now I have an idea what to do with most of the buffs I find, especially which ones can be discarded.

But what about Protection from Evil? This seems to start appearing somewhere around DL20 so I guess it must be more powerful than the early-game buffs. What does it actually do?

[Egavactip]

I like Mushrooms of Emergency for the mid-game period, especially for taking out uniques. They give you a lot of healing at a time when you probably don't have Heals, plus resist fire and cold is a nice bonus. I like to chug them against single-monster encounters, so that you can keep track of your opponent despite the hallucinations. You also have to pay close attention to the hallucinations to see if anything is coming closer. Obviously, if you have resistance to chaos, there is no down side at all. Not being able to know how far down your opponent is, because you are hallucinating, is a minor drawback, but that's why I bring multiple mushrooms to the big fight, because they are there to help me through that one encounter. Then I find a nice corner and stare at hallucinations until it wears off. I am all for medicinal mushrooms.

[Bowman]

If you have a subwindow with monster memory displayed, you can see the change in the melee chance to hit when you use heroism/berserk. I don't know of any way to see the ranged chance to hit, so the best you can do with that is probably to try eyeballing it based on the numbers on the character screen.

As far as AC goes, it's tough to gauge, since it also depends heavily on what type of melee the monster is doing (different to-hit modifiers on "hit to attack" vs "shoot acid" vs "hit to disenchant" vs "gaze" vs...well, you get the picture).

As far as picking between !heroism or !berserk, probably just keep whichever has the bigger stack. If they're about the same, I'd favor keeping !berserk because I *think* it also gives a little damage buff (also, I just like the "You feel like a killing machine!" message more than "You feel like a hero!" ).

ESP may be an important intrinsic, but getting it from mushrooms of second sight isn't a great plan, as the buff has far too short of a duration. Only use these in positions where you really need to know what monster is behind the corner (e.g., in vaults).

Oh, yeah, I didn't mean to imply that I was relying on second sight mushrooms instead of trying to have ESP equipment. I meant that, since second sight mushrooms usually show up before ESP (and commonly before SInv, too, at least for me), I like to carry them around as a substitute for times like going into a vault or trying to sneak around something dangerous in a dark room.

[Timo Pietilä]

Is there a place the various states are documented? Or should I just grow a pair and read the source code?

I don't think there are any clear description to how much a bonus to hit helps hitting things. It's pretty vague even if you know the maths because there is random element and monster AC affects as well as your class/race bonuses (which are not shown anywhere in numbers except while creating the char)

You can 'l'ook a monster and if you know it well enough it will show your chance to hit it. You can then experience with buffs to see how those numbers change.

Same goes with your own AC too, it depends of the monster what the hit probability for it is.

Other buffs (except maybe protection from evil) are pretty obvious, temp see_inv is just temp see_inv and so on.

[Wanderlust]

I think part of what confuses me about the buffs is the fact I don't really understand exactly what the various states mean. All the advice in this thread makes sense, and yet when I'm 1500' deep and need to free up an inventory spot, I still don't have any quantitative way to compare whether I'll be better off dropping the potion of heroism or berserk strength (just to pick a random example - in fact I suspect both may be near-useless at that level).

Is there a place the various states are documented? Or should I just grow a pair and read the source code?

[Timo Pietilä]

I think a more interesting question is whether these are things we should explore. For example, should a priest/paladin both be much weaker fighters, but benefit more from more powerful buffs? Then we could have more monsters debuff players and these monsters would be more dangerous and difficult for these classes to handle.

Interesting. Ranger/Rogue/Paladin gets about par with warrior with buffs, but are considerably weaker without, mage/priest stay weaker, but could get more defensive buffs than the other three.

+1 to that idea.