Destroyed (again, and again, and again, and again)

[Grotug]

This is fun. Found a giant greater vault on DL42. Was I excited? Of course not. Why would I be? It's not like the Es won't destroy anything useful in it. Am I the only one who has this problem? Every single vault is jam packed with Es. If not, then there's a lone E in the heart of the vault. I tunnel in, oh, how surprising. Nothing inside, except an E along with some other monsters. It's fun! It's fun finding massive vaults once every 10 million turns only for everything inside to be destroyed. Lovely. Great game design right there.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

This is fun. Found a giant greater vault on DL42. Was I excited? Of course not. Why would I be? It's not like the Es won't destroy anything useful in it. Am I the only one who has this problem? Every single vault is jam packed with Es. If not, then there's a lone E in the heart of the vault. I tunnel in, oh, how surprising. Nothing inside, except an E along with some other monsters. It's fun! It's fun finding massive vaults once every 10 million turns only for everything inside to be destroyed. Lovely. Great game design right there.

It happens. Sometimes it's unavoidable, sometimes monsters that destroy items also destroy "weaker monsters" and can be lured into doing so for a tactical advantage, sometimes you want all that useless loot stomped out leaving only the artifacts, and sometimes you race to get in there and TO the monster before it can stomp treasure out of existence. It's no worse than a strong monster that picks up objects, but is too strong for @ to kill.

[AmyBSOD]

In the case of unique E's, hunt them down! As soon as they're killed, they won't appear again so at least future vaults will suffer from less item destruction.

[Sky]

At least you can blame the monster. I can only blame myself. Used ONE scroll of destruction in the whole game .. took out the Adamantite Plate of Isildur.
Obviously playing with preserve on ....

[PowerDiver]

The pros to Es in vaults is that they force you to adapt your strategy. Instead of clearing the level first and then breaching the vault, you need to hit the vault first and get to them *fast*. It also makes stealth important even for classes that usually don't care who they wake up.

OTOH, it makes no sense. If I had a museum, I would not hire a fire elemental to guard the Rembrandts. Come on, Man! From an RPG viewpoint, something that walks has a boot tread that covers only a small fraction of the area traversed. Items should be far less likely to be stomped in that perspective.

[Pete Mack]

Well a retreating might decide to spike the big guns before the enemy takes over a military base, let alone a weapons depot, so RPG-wise, it makes some sense after all.

Edit: orc sappers and the like (should they be added to Vanilla) should probably have KILL_ITEM too.

[Grotug]

The pros to Es in vaults is that they force you to adapt your strategy. Instead of clearing the level first and then breaching the vault, you need to hit the vault first and get to them *fast*. It also makes stealth important even for classes that usually don't care who they wake up.

OTOH, it makes no sense. If I had a museum, I would not hire a fire elemental to guard the Rembrandts. Come on, Man! From an RPG viewpoint, something that walks has a boot tread that covers only a small fraction of the area traversed. Items should be far less likely to be stomped in that perspective.

Exactly; Probably should have held onto my pick, but I really like the rod of illumination, though I had the Phial, I also picked up the Star early and so was using that for SI and the rod for lighting up rooms. The vault required serious digging so even though I went straight for the vault by the time I reached its entrance some 1500 feet or so, I think most of the vault was awake. My stealth wasn't bad, though, I think fair. Now my stealth is Excellent, my speed is 7 (or 9 if I decide to go with the Flail Totila instead of the Eowyn's bastard sword).

Picked up Thrór's boots first trip back to the dungeon, but am seriously considering keeping the boots of stealth I currently have. Stealth is really really nice. Not sure the +3 speed and +3 CON are worth losing 4 stealth. I'm already maxed on strength so the strength the boots confer does nothing.

Tough decision; can't decide. I'm still half-troll warrior.

[Grotug]

So what I should do from now on is just banish E as soon as I see a vault, before even taking a step closer to get a closer look. Es don't seem detectable by my ESP and once again I got into a small vault and read "something tramples the mithril arrows." well, I *know* I could use the mithril arrows; everything else, who knows? I look around in the vault and find the red E. Of course E didn't crush all the garbage {ego} weapons.

I usually save my banishes for things I can't deal with or that will wreck my inventory/equip/stats. But the Es continue to ruin my fun.

[Pete Mack]

Don't waste banishment scrolls on Elementals. Save them for escapes and Morgoth. If you have extra staffs, then sure. There'll be other vaults--there are always more items in the dungeon.
And Elementals become less common as you get deeper. Also X (other than Umber Hulk) destroys items (and Polyphemus, but he's detectable by ESP.)

[Grotug]

X Bee lines to you, though. He doesn't flit about destroying everything, giggling all the while.

I will not survive to Morgoth, so I will just use my scrolls on Es. Been playing slow and careful, and my patience is waning (that last combo of me dropping my stuff and rising through the ceiling really just peeves me. The same thing happened the last tiem I faced the nexus v, had dropped stuff to face something else. Does the game know when I drop important stuff? Is there code "when @ drops ?teleport, /speed, doesn't have rNexus, summon purple v"? So I will start playing less slow and careful and die soon. Such is my Angband experience. I need to learn how to play Sil as that sounds like it doesn't take so long. All this careful playing and still not careful enough. I'm still in DL40s. If I read one of my deep descent scrolls I'm saving, I'll just die. I can't deep descend. I think I chucked my boots of stealth. Maybe I'd consider descending with them.

EDIT Oh, redemption! found amulet of ESP in store; replacing amulet of slow digestion. not a bad upgrade! pStun, here I come! Also picked up Himring from one of the W uniques (been fighting a lot of them, which is great cause I usually take them out before they even reach me using Undead arrows). Finally making some progress. Means I can put on ring of damage, too [+13]. Hmm.. what's more important, pBlind or sustain. I don't have any sustain except Str which warrior gives me. So I could go Celegorm for rLight and pBlind or Anárion for all sustain. Toughy; I'm kinda leaning toward Celegorm. I shoulda picked up that light of Truesight I saw recently.

/edit: my AC is now 121 down from 197. Not sure this is worth the pStun and pConf and extra damage. A black ancient dragon just ripped me to shreds. With 197 AC I can kill a multi-hued ancient dragon taking barely any damage, and they're *much* more dangerous than an ancient black dragon.

[Grotug]

The pros to Es in vaults is that they force you to adapt your strategy. Instead of clearing the level first and then breaching the vault, you need to hit the vault first and get to them *fast*. It also makes stealth important even for classes that usually don't care who they wake up.

OTOH, it makes no sense. If I had a museum, I would not hire a fire elemental to guard the Rembrandts. Come on, Man! From an RPG viewpoint, something that walks has a boot tread that covers only a small fraction of the area traversed. Items should be far less likely to be stomped in that perspective.

E's and other destroyers should have a 5% chance of destroying an object they move over each time they move over an object. Maybe certain Uniques could have higher percentage, like 20%.

[Nivra]

I find that AC is often underrated. It can make a huge difference before the end-game. Once you reach end-game, it's not that big a deal, but while leveling, it can be huge.

[Grotug]

I picked up a long sword of rLightning and a bunch of stat boosts and +3 speed. It aggravates, but with bad stealth not sure I care at the moment. Wondering if this artifact is worth keeping in my home in the off chance I pick up an artifact bow that has rFire, rFrost, rAcid? At least that is how I remember the resists going, maybe I got it wrong? I am trying to wear a shield of preservation but can't get the other critical resists covered if I wear it. But the bow and this long sword forged from meteoric iron would allow me to continue to wear Himring.

Thanks for any help!

[Pete Mack]

Believe the resistances are only rigged that way for the standard artifacts. What are its dice? That's pretty much what you want to focus on for a warrior, unless you get really lucky with a crazy good bow.

[Grotug]

Not sure off hand, maybe +14 or +16?

EDIT: to-dam is +12.