having trouble making transition to late game

[Gram]

Back in town after the vault, here's the ladder link. 8 artifacts from this vault; Arkenstone replaced Star immediately, and I ignored Calris, but the other 6 add to my inventory woes. I could really use some help figuring out what to keep.

Pete: I killed Arien back at DL67; wouldn't want to face her without both permanent and temporary fire resist, but with both, I don't remember her being all that much of a challenge. Didn't think immunity was required.

In fact, now that I've killed Osse and Fundin (and Draebor, who was also in this vault and who dropped the necklace of the dwarves), I've killed all the uniques native to DL66 and shallower except Radagast, and none of those native to DL67 or deeper.

[Pete Mack]

Arien is just hell on stuff in the pack. (Say goodbye to your guaranteed escapes.) It's easier to just avoid her without elemental immunity. Pazuzu is the same. (Say goodbye to those rods and wands of teleport other.)

[Timo Pietilä]

Arien is just hell on stuff in the pack. (Say goodbye to your guaranteed escapes.) It's easier to just avoid her without elemental immunity. Pazuzu is the same. (Say goodbye to those rods and wands of teleport other.)

Arien didn't do much to my gear and I had only single-resist when I fought him last time. Maybe you are remembering something other than him. Maybe Phoenix? That's really hard on your gear.

Pazuzu I agree, elec damage is huge.

[Gram]

Again, I could really use some advice figuring out what to do about the inventory squeeze after getting all that loot. Here are my thoughts:

Ditch:
Thranduil - ring of power or Dor-Lomin for telepathy instead
Ingwe- Necklace of Dwarves, Trickery, Weaponmastery seem more appropriate
Barahir- haven't been using it, don't think I'll ever use it since now I have Narya
Carlammas- Necklace of Dwarves is better
Evenstar- I own almost no other rNether but other amulets are probably better esp. now that I have rDark from arkenstone
Elven Cloak of Aman [6,+26] <+3 stealth, +1 speed>, rNexus- the other Cloak of Aman gives +4 stealth and rDisen which is rarer

Unsure:
Anarion / Preservation- probably not worth keeping both? rChaos, rDisen on Preservation vs rBasic on Anarion
Thror- the +3STR,CON is awesome but compared to present Elvenkind boots it's -3 stealth, -4 speed
Scrolls of Rune of Protection- is trying to stockpile these worth the space at home?
Celebrimbor- rShards, rDisen are nice but probably not ever gonna wear this instead of Dor-Lomin
Gorlim- been keeping this around because I saw somebody say it came in handy in the final fights. No way I'm using it for anything else, given how my character relies on stealth. (Well, mayyybe if I found Deathwreaker...) But Dor-Lo-Min or something like Gondor would have advantages in the final fights too.

Probably my biggest problem:
Body armor. I've been keeping every artifact body armor I found since the beginning, since it doesn't seem like any of them are strictly comparable. This has been annoying.

I have the seven artifact armors Arvedui, Himring, Thalkettoth, Caspanion, Rohirrim, Belegennon, and Soulkeeper. I also have a Robe of Permanence (should I kill that and rely on other things e.g. shields, rings, amulets for sustain if I need it?). This dominates my home inventory space and I can't just keep accumulating the entire set of artifact armors.

The armor I'm wearing is dwarven chaos DSM: +2STR,+1CON,rChaos,rDisen, FrAct. It's my only worn source of FrAct, since I'm wearing the caestus of power instead of Fingolfin for the +5 STR. Race and class bonuses, Trickery, and Dor-Lomin have me maxed out on +DEX, so Fingolfin's bonus is not helpful right now. Narya, Weaponmastery, or Dwarves are other likely sources of FrAct.

[Pete Mack]

Dude! Go kill Sauron! What are you waiting for? You have lots of disposable goods except Slay Evil/Acid brand ammo for Belthronding (a shame!)

Arvedui is low level armor and Belegennon is not suitable for a high-dex race/class combo. Those are easy to throw away. So is Robe of Permanence. It'd be a shame not to use that cool ego dragon scale armor.

Since you clearly aren't planning to use archery, go win with your current gear! (Or if you do use archery, trade up to Amrod when you switch to melee.)
+20 speed is enough, and 565 dam/turn is epic.

[Gram]

Well, if I were as experienced in Angband as many of you perhaps I'd descend straight to Sauron with this kit. But this is my first time beyond DL40 or so, to say nothing of DL80, so I'm not certain enough of what I'm doing in many of the more serious fights yet. And this may be the only time I get this far with a character, so in some ways I'd like to soak up the experience rather than rush to its conclusion.

I played Angband around 15 years ago and never got beyond the stat gain phase. I decided in October to try it again, had a few unsuccessful characters before this, and when I'm done with this character I won't be immediately re-rolling another. (Well, maybe if I die and am really really frustrated... but I don't have time to do this continually.)

There are a lot of ways I could find equipment better than what I'm wearing now. That includes some kinds of improved gear that would allow me to wear other great gear that I already have but that it wouldn't make sense for me to wear now.

I really could use some more advice about what to ignore before heading back down.

Does the ditch list I wrote above make sense? Any thoughts about the things I've put in the unsure list?

[Carnivean]

Your decision making above makes sense.

What doesn't is being scared to descend, though it's the natural reaction. Make a copy of your character's save file for piece of mind, then run down and smash Sauron.

[Pete Mack]

Your character cannot get significantly stronger. Yeah, he could get a bit more speed, but no more HP and no more melee damage output unless he finds Deathwreaker or a monster MoD ego weapon. All the basic resistance holes are covered. Literally the only thing left is gathering suitable ammo for Belthronding. I do understand the appeal of wandering around destroying everything, but do keep in mind it won't contribute further to victory.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Well, if I were as experienced in Angband as many of you perhaps I'd descend straight to Sauron with this kit. But this is my first time beyond DL40 or so, to say nothing of DL80, so I'm not certain enough of what I'm doing in many of the more serious fights yet. And this may be the only time I get this far with a character, so in some ways I'd like to soak up the experience rather than rush to its conclusion....

My thoughts on the matter are in this related post http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...826#post107826 about whether to hunt down all the uniques.

[Gram]

I do understand the argument that if you know what you're doing and your entire aim is to beat Morgoth, at some point you maximize your odds by just dropping ASAP to Sauron rather than taking out more uniques or scrounging for one more nice drop. And certainly even when it doesn't maximize your one-game winning chances it may maximize your wins per time spent or whatever.

But though of course I want to win, I don't think I have the experience quite yet to make it through the endgame fights with the character as he is, I'm gradually learning more about how to deal with harder fights, I'm learning to play better, and I'm enjoying having a powerful character and experiencing parts of the game I've not seen before and may never see again.

Some of these late game finds and kills make the experience feel more complete. Even with a win, it would have been kinda unfortunate to hastily wrap this up and put the game back on the shelf without ever having found any of the rings of power, even if it may not make sense right now to wear Narya as more than a swap.

There are more landmark finds out there, and though I'm not going to hold out forever in hopes of getting some particular rare item, finding a few more iconic things would be fun. Also, maybe some things I find soon could afford genuine improvements for my character. (Some improvement would be possible in just about every slot, and even if nothing else, getting some better ammo would be a boon, as Pete said.)

At the start of the thread I was nervous about descending more, since I'd run into several packs of the nastiest hounds, I was doing only half this much damage, and I had only 2/3 this many hit points. I'm not too nervous to descend some more now. I'm just disinclined to immediately spam stair creation to get to L99.

You can see that my descent from L70 to L80 wasn't really slow. I had been intending to keep close to that pace getting down to L98, pausing to pick a few things up along the way when the level feeling was great, and see how I was doing when I got to L98.

But I can't pick things up along the way at all- indeed, I can't go back to the dungeon without carrying a ridiculous collection of miscellanea- unless I do some spring cleaning first.

Among the things I was asking about here was: Is it worth trying to hoard Rune of Protection scrolls, of which I only have 3? I see plenty of advice relying on Rune of Protection for the endgame fights, but that's usually for the classes that can cast it.

[Pete Mack]

Essentially anything you can use in the endgame is a better bet to keep than some gear that might be marginally better than your current equipment assuming some other item gets found. So yes, even 3 Runes are better than nearly all low (and many mid-) level artifacts. M will take on average around 3 turns to break a rune. So that is (say) 6 free turns. That is around 2500 free HP damage, which is to say: a big deal.

I understand why you are stretching that game out. But the moment you get a little bored or careless with the character, it's time to go win.

[Pete Mack]

Gram, you wrote:

There are a lot of ways I could find equipment better than what I'm wearing now. That includes some kinds of improved gear that would allow me to wear other great gear that I already have but that it wouldn't make sense for me to wear now.

Not really true. You have all the important resists except Nether, and a whopping 564 dam/turn in melee. The only improvement you are likely to see is a slightly better Ring of Speed. Everything else is most likely to be a wash--even Ringil. (Deathwreaker and the like are very rare.)
Note that you are better off fighting Morgoth without rNether, because it is probably the least dangerous of all his spells. It only does ~210 average damage, and it isn't a summons. If you do have rNether, he will only use the spell once, at most.

[Raccoon]

Note that you are better off fighting Morgoth without rNether, because it is probably the least dangerous of all his spells. It only does ~210 average damage, and it isn't a summons. If you do have rNether, he will only use the spell once, at most.

Isn't that only if the smart monster AI is turned on? Otherwise monsters (should) gleefully throw spells at you no matter how immune you are.

[Pete Mack]

Monsters that "cast spells intelligently" learn from their mistakes. Or is that not true?

[Gram]

But the moment you get a little bored or careless with the character, it's time to go win.

Absolutely, and that advice is good for me to keep in mind as I proceed. Thanks for the info about rune of protection; I'll definitely keep those as well as any more I find.

If anybody has any further advice about what to ditch it'd still be a real boon. I'm rather busy with other stuff but I'll probably get back to playing soon.

It's true that in any single slot there are very few upgrades possible. But altogether there's some possibilities.

Weapon-wise, Aule would be clearly better than Pain from here to Sauron, though I guess neither brand nor slays beyond the slay evil are applicable to Morgoth and so Pain's damage output in the very last fight would be higher. And Deathwreaker is insane. Of course either of those is very rare, and Ringil or Eonwe are the only other weapons I wouldn't just drop immediately upon finding. (Possibly Wrath as well.)

Cubragol, Ringil, Feanor, or lesser speed improvements could allow me to trade the ring of speed for Narya. On top of the immunity and stats, any of the rings of power do enough things for you that they seriously relax your constraints on other equipment. As it stands it's kinda tempting to wear it anyways though the drop in either damage or speed would be sizeable; I'll probably carry it around as a swap for the time being.

Luthien is one of the few major direct armor upgrades possible (zero downsides, no adjustments to other gear). But there are better shields, better body armor, and better boots, and with the right combinations of those there are situations where e.g. Fingolfin or Dwarves or Soulkeeper (or things I don't have yet) would be better than what I'm presently wearing.

A couple of my non-artifact items are things that have M# dice and that I found shallower than L60. If I found the same item type in a vault deeper than L80, odds are good they'd have improved bonuses.

As you say the most likely upgrades are a better speed ring and some better ammo.