Diving with mage.

[Pete Mack]

So I tried Mage for the first time in forever after losing a warrior to boredom.
Rolled up High elf to make the early game feasible for spelunking. Got a LCV at 1600' yielding BoSpeed(+6) and Kelek at 2350/cl 29. Have yet to see Tenser at 4600'/83K player moves, though a randart with recharge helps for that.

Just killed the Witch-King, giving cl 41.
And I hit the wall. Need 550,000 exp for the next level, and was hoping to avoid farming balrogs (fire immunity makes them patsies.) So far I've hunted all the demon and Ringwraiths. What others are good targets for mages? And what other monsters for that matter?
I'd go for the win now, but I'd need a huge pile of consumables given current damage output of 208

[Pete Mack]

On this topic: The EXP requirement at high level is just ludicrous for mage. The natural playstyle is to snipe high value monsters. But the EXP requirement leads to farming balrogs, and the need for consumables means killing low level monsters for goods.
Mage detect treasure spell is nerfed, so targeted exploring doesn't work either. This just means: More grinding. For warrior and priest, that's fine. They can mow monsters down in melee. But it does not work well for mage

[Derakon]

Your problem isn't mage, it's high elf. High elves have a +100% experience modifier, mages have a 30% modifier. I mean, they're both the biggest penalties possible, but the high elf penalty is vastly overshadowing the mage penalty.

This is why I tell everyone not to play high elves.

[Pete Mack]

OK, I figured it out pretty well. I have +14 tunneling from artifact boots and weapon, so I can easily set up long corridors if I need to. I've now killed all the big breathers from long distance (Huan, Carcharoth, Tarrasque) with Rend Soul or Meteor storm. (They do significantly reduced damage when beyond basic phase door range.) Reached level 43, so now can cast Chaos Strike (fail 18%) and Mana Storm (fail 35%) with reasonable 15 dam/mana. Took out Vecna, cat lord, Saruman, Fundin Blue cloak. Still using Rend Soul for non-evil, which really helped me get through a hard part. Now moving along fast, with ~40,000EXP/kill*--every other major kill is 50K+.

* not counting junk in the way.

Edit: for what it's worth, here's the dump

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=19649

(Really AAR at this point.)

[Bogatyr]

On this topic: The EXP requirement at high level is just ludicrous for mage. The natural playstyle is to snipe high value monsters. But the EXP requirement leads to farming balrogs, and the need for consumables means killing low level monsters for goods.
Mage detect treasure spell is nerfed, so targeted exploring doesn't work either. This just means: More grinding. For warrior and priest, that's fine. They can mow monsters down in melee. But it does not work well for mage

It gets boring fast, but it makes for a nice break sometimes to farm druj's and/or high level Q's with a wand of clone monster while standing safely behind a LOS corner and pick up a few quick levels.

[Bogatyr]

OK, I figured it out pretty well. I have +14 tunneling from artifact boots and weapon, so I can easily set up long corridors if I need to. I've now killed all the big breathers from long distance (Huan, Carcharoth, Tarrasque) with Rend Soul or Meteor storm. (They do significantly reduced damage when beyond basic phase door range.) Reached level 43, so now can cast Chaos Strike (fail 18%) and Mana Storm (fail 35%) with reasonable 15 dam/mana. Took out Vecna, cat lord, Saruman, Fundin Blue cloak. Still using Rend Soul for non-evil, which really helped me get through a hard part. Now moving along fast, with ~40,000EXP/kill*--every other major kill is 50K+.

* not counting junk in the way.

Edit: for what it's worth, here's the dump

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=19649

(Really AAR at this point.)

Rend soul is the bomb for those that don't resist it.

[Pete Mack]

I hate farming. I only do it insofar as monsters summon during fights. And I do tend to fight in hallways; used only 3 or 4 ASCs the entire game. (For top balrogs, top Liches, Sauron)
Before final fight, there were 9 deep uniques (below dl 60), and 7 weak uniques. Killing big breathers (from a distance) and deep uniques is faster and less frustrating. I killed 4 druj and 3+1 deep Q the entire game.

[Pete Mack]

One more question: What's the deal with wands of annihilation? The damage estimate shows 412 damage, but on both Morgoth and Ungoliant (I tested them again to verify) they barely left a scratch. 14 charges took one star off Morgoth. Ungoliant shrugged off the attack, while Mana Storm was obliterating her.

[PowerWyrm]

One more question: What's the deal with wands of annihilation? The damage estimate shows 412 damage, but on both Morgoth and Ungoliant (I tested them again to verify) they barely left a scratch. 14 charges took one star off Morgoth. Ungoliant shrugged off the attack, while Mana Storm was obliterating her.

No idea, used one vs Sauron and it was doing 432 damage each time. Same with Morgoth. Since Morgoth has 20k hps, it took 5 charges to wipe 1* from him.

[Estie]

What Derakon said - "I hate farming" and "I play high elf mage" dont mix.

While I - unlike Derakon - am a huge fan of high elves, the one case where I prefer other races is when I play mage.

[Bogatyr]

What Derakon said - "I hate farming" and "I play high elf mage" dont mix.

While I - unlike Derakon - am a huge fan of high elves, the one case where I prefer other races is when I play mage.

Well I hate undead with a passion, after so many decades of suffering drain attacks, so I go out of my way to optimize for slay undead in choice of weapon, and take great joy in farming and repeatedly squashing druj's. Great exp, too.

[Pete Mack]

Farming druj gets old fast. They have no drop. Better off farming Great Swamp Wyrms.
Undead don't have many HP, so you can usually kill them with archery before they get close.

[Bogatyr]

Farming druj gets old fast. They have no drop. Better off farming Great Swamp Wyrms.
Undead don't have many HP, so you can usually kill them with archery before they get close.

Sure it does. I only do it once in a while because of that. But it's a nice short mini-game from time to time.

[Pete Mack]

So I am trying this a second time; early speed, !Con, and Kelek turned the game into a walk in the park. The trick to doing it is to dive much, much faster than your comfort range, and kill only high value monsters and any weak monsters either on the way to the stairs, to a high value monster. Rather than "run away" just always go for the goal. Mages can do this because they get reveal monsters early.
Up to dl 40, I played almost pacifist, killing only 14 monsters per character level (this was a bit of an experiment.) Unfortunately, past level 40, gear and stats matter more so you actually need to evaluate more objects...which means killing monsters. Notable kill: Cl 18, dl 33: Hezrou for 5000 exp and Cl 21...as a high elf. It is getting hairy at dl 55 with 250 hp.

Edit: Oh yeah. Because I don't have ESP, my most heavily used book is 2, as a flashlight. It is a bit tedious, but it quickly becomes second nature with a keymap. Had to give up 20HP to equip defender for regeneration.

[Estie]

Yes, defender is the best pre-endgame ego bar none. For everyone else, it feels ridiculously overpriced; for mages, the pricing seems about right.

For my mages, spear of light is also a bread and butter spell; I read somewhere that someone was using it in a similar way as a warrior (from wands, obviously), and I tried that, too, but I found for the warrior its not enough charges to use constantly and not much point if used only occasionally, so I have come to quickly squelch light wands.