Before I asked for advice the last time I'd already maxed stats. Now (here's the ladder link), a little further on, a couple levels gained, a couple vaults seen, and some uniques and a Great Wyrm of Chaos defeated, I've had some more nice finds. I now have enough speed and other good gear that I guess many of you would urge me to find a good stack of Deep Descent and go straight to the levels where one might find the rings of power.
But I've never been this deep before, and I've slowed my descent progress significantly since hitting CL42,DL52. There've been a couple areas I've handily cleared where I was nonetheless unnerved by the realization that if I failed to notice something that woke a couple sleeping monsters (mushroom, a breath that had a larger impact area than I'd counted on, whatever) I'd be instantly dead. And after a few run-ins with time hounds and one with gravity hounds, I guess the only way dealing with the worst hounds improves from here is that maxing CON bonuses would give me a couple extra breaths' worth of breathing room. I think I'm going to have to learn to be considerably more precise about some kinds of things to survive deeper than this.
Even more than that, the bigger obstacle to feeling ready to move on has been that the inventory management struggle gets worse with the growth of the pile of accumulated artifacts that don't seem to obviously supercede or be superseded by another.
Amulet of Trickery would be nice but I'm reluctant to give up regen. Plenty of artifact body armors with nice benefits, but I sure was glad of disenchant and chaos resist when battling that Great Wyrm of Chaos, and I really would like to keep my artifact gear in like-new condition. And so on and so forth. I really could use some equipment advice.
A few questions about non-equipment inventory:
Now that my speed normally comes from equipment and Haste Self, it probably doesn't make sense for me to have both staves and potions of speed, right? My guess: stockpile potions, eliminate staves.
What should I do about Teleportation at this depth? Do I really figure it's always too dangerous and get rid of both sources? That doesn't feel right to me. I guess that depends on having pConf and pBlind to ensure other escapes work. Also, when I'm tackling something hard enough to need an escape I've usually already cleared most all the rest of the level.
Rod of Healing saves consumables I'm stockpiling, Rod of Teleport Other avoids dealing with charges, and Rods of Detection save a couple turns and some mana, noticeable when entering a new level. But obviously the rod of Healing, with failure rate and recharge time, is no substitute for potions in the middle of a fight, a single rod of TO may soon be very insufficient, and detection's benefit may not be that noticeable. Should I toss them all?
But I've never been this deep before, and I've slowed my descent progress significantly since hitting CL42,DL52. There've been a couple areas I've handily cleared where I was nonetheless unnerved by the realization that if I failed to notice something that woke a couple sleeping monsters (mushroom, a breath that had a larger impact area than I'd counted on, whatever) I'd be instantly dead. And after a few run-ins with time hounds and one with gravity hounds, I guess the only way dealing with the worst hounds improves from here is that maxing CON bonuses would give me a couple extra breaths' worth of breathing room. I think I'm going to have to learn to be considerably more precise about some kinds of things to survive deeper than this.
Even more than that, the bigger obstacle to feeling ready to move on has been that the inventory management struggle gets worse with the growth of the pile of accumulated artifacts that don't seem to obviously supercede or be superseded by another.
Amulet of Trickery would be nice but I'm reluctant to give up regen. Plenty of artifact body armors with nice benefits, but I sure was glad of disenchant and chaos resist when battling that Great Wyrm of Chaos, and I really would like to keep my artifact gear in like-new condition. And so on and so forth. I really could use some equipment advice.
A few questions about non-equipment inventory:
Now that my speed normally comes from equipment and Haste Self, it probably doesn't make sense for me to have both staves and potions of speed, right? My guess: stockpile potions, eliminate staves.
What should I do about Teleportation at this depth? Do I really figure it's always too dangerous and get rid of both sources? That doesn't feel right to me. I guess that depends on having pConf and pBlind to ensure other escapes work. Also, when I'm tackling something hard enough to need an escape I've usually already cleared most all the rest of the level.
Rod of Healing saves consumables I'm stockpiling, Rod of Teleport Other avoids dealing with charges, and Rods of Detection save a couple turns and some mana, noticeable when entering a new level. But obviously the rod of Healing, with failure rate and recharge time, is no substitute for potions in the middle of a fight, a single rod of TO may soon be very insufficient, and detection's benefit may not be that noticeable. Should I toss them all?
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