Suggestion for strategy for Dwarf Warrior

[hein]

So, I think I´ve discovered now the key to (almost) succeed with this game with a warrior.. no winner yet though.

OK, I like dwarves the best when I play a warrior. They are very sturdy, not as hopeless with magics as a Half-Troll, and it is very useful to have resist blindness and find treasure.

The reason I always die is because I descend too fast. I've tried to set myself som simple guidelines here:

Before leaving the dungeon, buy some extra food and light. Spend the rest of the money on PhD and Clw.

At 50' - be at least XP level 2.
At 350' - have some better weapon than the initial dagger - a light weapon with some pluses is enough.
500' - A missile weapon. Any sling with some pebbles is good enough.
600' - Free Action
700' - Some armor equivalent to Metal Scale Mail or better
1000' - Staff of teleportation
1200' - See invisible
1400' - Resistance to cold, fire, lightning, acid.
1500' - Resistance to posion
1800' - Maxed out STR, DEX, CON
2000' - Resist Nether
2100' - Some permanent speed boost
2200' - Telepathy
2500' - 150 AC or better
2800' - Darkness, Nexus, Confusion, Sound
3000' - At least +10 speed
3300´- At least +20 speed
3500' - Maxed out all stats
4000' - XP level 45 or better

Also: explore all levels with a 5 or better treasure feeling unto 1000' - all with 6 or better up to 2000' - all with 8 or 9 using caution to determine if vaults etc. are safe to plunder.

What to do you guys thing? What can go wrong?

[Derakon]

The reason I always die is because I descend too fast. I've tried to set myself som simple guidelines here:

This is dangerous thinking: it leads you to believe that you are safe if you have taken enough precautions. But the dungeon is never safe. You don't die because you descend too fast; you die because you get into situations that you aren't equipped to handle. Certainly that can easily happen deeper in the dungeon, but merely improving your equipment is not enough to protect you. You also need to play smarter, which means knowing what's around you (detection) and being able to avoid threats (teleportation, Teleport Other, Teleport Level, and good stealth all help).

At 350' - have some better weapon than the initial dagger - a light weapon with some pluses is enough.

Warriors (especially dwarf and Half-Troll warriors) early on are beefy enough that they can take on monsters from considerably deeper in the dungeon with a dagger.

600' - Free Action

Way too early. You want free action before monsters with paralyzing melee attacks start showing up. The conventional wisdom is that 1000' or so is fine, and you can push that much deeper if you know which enemies to avoid.

700' - Some armor equivalent to Metal Scale Mail or better

Armor is not completely pointless, but I certainly wouldn't stop my advancement through the dungeon just because I'm not satisfied with my AC.

1500' - Resistance to posion

Way too early. The only significant poisoners you're running into at this depth are Air Hounds, and they don't deal much damage with their breaths (at least as far as a warrior is concerned). Carry CCW to cure the poison status and you'll be fine. You do want resist poison eventually, but only because there are several later monsters that can breathe poison for massive damage.

1800' - Maxed out STR, DEX, CON

Ick. This would require spending a ton of time replaying dungeon levels to scum for stat potions. The game also has moved stat potions lower in the dungeon -- you can find them at 1800' but they'll be more common deeper.

2000' - Resist Nether

What at 2000' is hitting you for nether hard enough that you feel unsafe?

...and so on.

Also: explore all levels with a 5 or better treasure feeling unto 1000' - all with 6 or better up to 2000' - all with 8 or 9 using caution to determine if vaults etc. are safe to plunder.

Turn level feelings off, IMO. All they do is tempt you to stay on a level when you really should be fleeing. Any good treasures that you miss out on because you failed to explore a level will be made up for by a) not dying, and b) exploring other levels instead.

What to do you guys thing? What can go wrong?

No amount of precautions will make you safe. Start focusing on recognizing what enemies are threatening, and then figuring out how to first avoid them, and then later, kill them without them being able to kill you. Each encounter is a puzzle, and there should be a winning path through that puzzle. The path just oftentimes doesn't involve getting into fights.

[Pete Mack]

To get started with a bad stealth/bad detection character you need a huge stack of ?Phase Door and !CLW, replaced as possible with !CSW !CCW after first dive.
Things you might otherwise not think of, but help for a warrior or Priest-caster:
Defender weapon primary swap for Stealth. Without full detection and/or ESP, stealth is huge. You are much better off facing monsters one at a time.
Rod of Light for hallways. Better to find that Drolem before it breathes. It will be awake in any case.
Rod of Illumination (warrior only). Lantern of Seeing is better than Phial, so *do not* ignore the rods when you find the Phial on DL 5.

And of course you will rely on _Tele as an escape much more than with other characters. Get it ASAP.

I think the easiest Warrior races are High-Elf and Kobold. Stealth is so important, and Strength is easier to come by than DEX. rPois is more important than for other classes, because of bad detection. rBlind is not particularly useful, because the ego lantern is very common.

[bdgamer]

So, I think I´ve discovered now the key to (almost) succeed with this game with a warrior.. no winner yet though.

OK, I like dwarves the best when I play a warrior. They are very sturdy, not as hopeless with magics as a Half-Troll, and it is very useful to have resist blindness and find treasure.

The reason I always die is because I descend too fast. I've tried to set myself som simple guidelines here:

Before leaving the dungeon, buy some extra food and light. Spend the rest of the money on PhD and Clw.

At 50' - be at least XP level 2.
At 350' - have some better weapon than the initial dagger - a light weapon with some pluses is enough.
500' - A missile weapon. Any sling with some pebbles is good enough.
600' - Free Action
700' - Some armor equivalent to Metal Scale Mail or better
1000' - Staff of teleportation
1200' - See invisible
1400' - Resistance to cold, fire, lightning, acid.
1500' - Resistance to posion
1800' - Maxed out STR, DEX, CON
2000' - Resist Nether
2100' - Some permanent speed boost
2200' - Telepathy
2500' - 150 AC or better
2800' - Darkness, Nexus, Confusion, Sound
3000' - At least +10 speed
3300´- At least +20 speed
3500' - Maxed out all stats
4000' - XP level 45 or better

Also: explore all levels with a 5 or better treasure feeling unto 1000' - all with 6 or better up to 2000' - all with 8 or 9 using caution to determine if vaults etc. are safe to plunder.

What to do you guys thing? What can go wrong?

I agree that this is dangerous thinking. When I got away from this kind of thinking is when I finally managed a win.

The most important thing early is have ?phase door, !Cures, enough light source, and a _tele as soon as you can afford it.

Beyond that, progress down rapidly, understand that blindness and confusion can kill you, and avoid monsters that you run into that have a high or even medium degree of causing your untimely death (i.e. Dracolisks and Greater Basilisks are way up there). Continue to improve as you go down, and ALWAYS pick your fights.

[Pete Mack]

You simply can't expect to get away from that dagger or main gauche(0,0) for a while. When you start:
* get 3 blows. (4 isn't usually possible anymore)
* Carry a big stack of !CLW and ?Phase, as much as you can afford. That is often 7 of each.
* 1 ?Recall
* 1-2 !Hero

If you are playing with selling, sell the chain mail for cash. If not, make sure to start with "start with extra gold" so you can afford more useful things than expensive armor.
If you can get a sling and some iron shot, great. If not, pick up a dozen !oil so you can kill Bullroarer if necessary.

Go as deep as you can on the first trip down. Getting to 750' is quite feasible,.Recall only when you are running out of ?Phase & !CLW. But run away! You won't be able to fight all varieties of orc with an unenchanted dagger. So leave the level if you have to, even run back up stairs.

It is more fun, a better learning experience, and speed play allows you to lose characters without investing great piles of time. Really. I started out just like you describe. The result was repeated losses at low levels.


The one thing I agree with completely is: buy _Tele as early as possible.

Before leaving the dungeon, buy some extra food and light. Spend the rest of the money on PhD and Clw.

At 50' - be at least XP level 2.
At 350' - have some better weapon than the initial dagger - a light weapon with some pluses is enough.
500' - A missile weapon. Any sling with some pebbles is good enough.
600' - Free Action
700' - Some armor equivalent to Metal Scale Mail or better

[Estie]

One other thing I want to take with me on the first trip is a ? of mapping, if not available, detect stairs. Sooner or later I´ll read that unid ? of deep descent, and it might land me in dangerous territory. In that situation, knowing where the next staircase is can easily be the difference between life and death.

[Timo Pietilä]

At 50' - be at least XP level 2.
At 350' - have some better weapon than the initial dagger - a light weapon with some pluses is enough.
500' - A missile weapon. Any sling with some pebbles is good enough.
600' - Free Action
700' - Some armor equivalent to Metal Scale Mail or better
1000' - Staff of teleportation
1200' - See invisible
1400' - Resistance to cold, fire, lightning, acid.
1500' - Resistance to posion
1800' - Maxed out STR, DEX, CON
2000' - Resist Nether
2100' - Some permanent speed boost
2200' - Telepathy
2500' - 150 AC or better
2800' - Darkness, Nexus, Confusion, Sound
3000' - At least +10 speed
3300´- At least +20 speed
3500' - Maxed out all stats
4000' - XP level 45 or better

Also: explore all levels with a 5 or better treasure feeling unto 1000' - all with 6 or better up to 2000' - all with 8 or 9 using caution to determine if vaults etc. are safe to plunder.

What to do you guys thing? What can go wrong?

Nether is not needed at all (but if you can get it without sacrificing other things get it).

Maxing stats is not needed, but you will want to have 400+ HP at 2000, preferably around 600. Just use light enough weapons that you get enough blows to make a difference.

Poison you need around 2000' not earlier, and even there it is very unlikely to kill you if you have some sort of detection of monsters.

I would want nexus far earlier, stat-scrambling is a bitch.

Free action around 1000'. Avoid ghouls and carrion crawlers before that.

Get a good missile weapon early. That's even more important than having good melee-weapon, though later you will find good melee easier than finding good missile weapons.

[bdgamer]

One thing I forgot... -tele other, probably the single most important item to have imo.

[Pete Mack]

If you get lucky and find one early. They are not all that common.

One thing I forgot... -tele other, probably the single most important item to have imo.

[Timo Pietilä]

If you get lucky and find one early. They are not all that common.

Pretty common at BM though, so if you just check that every time you visit the town you might get one before you need one. I usually end up getting my first RoRPoison from BM as well as plenty of other things.

I also buy cheap unseen flavors just to eliminate them from "unknown" category.

[Pete Mack]

Have you played with rebalanced items? Tele other is pretty rare,and it is only a bolt, not a beam.

[Timo Pietilä]

Have you played with rebalanced items? Tele other is pretty rare,and it is only a bolt, not a beam.

I'm not sure if you aimed that question to me, but yes, I'm currently playing dwarf warrior with latest stable vanilla.

Weird thing is that even that I think I'm going deep rather fast, I rarely use tele-other. For many sessions I used few shots just last night (got a CGV with Huan and couple of annoying "not worth the fight" -monsters). I was very low on healing potions because I dived "one more level" after I killed three unique dragons and dealt with demon explosion after wiping out another GV at that level. Kind of weird to get two "this level is murderous" in a row, both having one of the major GV:s.

[EDIT] make that four unique dragons: Ancalagon, Glaurung, Itangast and Smaug were all in that vault.

[Estie]

I'm not sure if you aimed that question to me, but yes, I'm currently playing dwarf warrior with latest stable vanilla.

Weird thing is that even that I think I'm going deep rather fast, I rarely use tele-other. For many sessions I used few shots just last night (got a CGV with Huan and couple of annoying "not worth the fight" -monsters). I was very low on healing potions because I dived "one more level" after I killed three unique dragons and dealt with demon explosion after wiping out another GV at that level. Kind of weird to get two "this level is murderous" in a row, both having one of the major GV:s.

[EDIT] make that four unique dragons: Ancalagon, Glaurung, Itangast and Smaug were all in that vault.

I think thats not coincidence, but changed spawning behaviour: uniques got grouped up and there is a high chance of all in a group spawning at once. I assume all unique dragons are in a group and all are likey to spawn together provided you are deep enough.
The fact that you see those 4 clumped up is indication of fast diving: if you go slowly, chances are you kill Ithangast long before reaching Glaurung depth.

Another interesting group is Saruman and Wormtongue: I have seen the pair occasionally, when Wormtongue survived my early game.

[Derakon]

I think thats not coincidence, but changed spawning behaviour: uniques got grouped up and there is a high chance of all in a group spawning at once. I assume all unique dragons are in a group and all are likey to spawn together provided you are deep enough.

It's more that Ancalagon has the other unique dragons as potential escorts. They don't have him listed, but he has them. In other words, if you see Ancalagon then you're likely to see the other remaining unique dragons with him. Kind of weird that Glaurung, Father of the Dragons doesn't have any of his named kids with him though.

Similarly, Kronos will spawn with Polyphemus and Atlas, Gothmog will spawn with the other two named balrogs, Sauron will spawn with Khamul and the Witch-King, and so on.

[Carnivean]

Ancangalon has up to 5 friends. The others don't join forces normally.

Wormtongue does indeed follow his master, should he be able to.