how do you kill stuff, as a mage?

[Pete Mack]

Your amulet is fine. Nevertheless, melee is really a bad choice till you have max stats, and then it's good only in some situations. You are not likely to do better than spell casting because mage to_hit rate is terrible. That said, a Gondolin SOS/MoD/BoC is a great find. Mowing down dragons and demons is very useful.

i'm not sure why someone mentioned Defender being valuable for mana regen; is mana regen a feature of defender? It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the falvour text. I have a amulet of regen, is that the same?

also, are my dungeon books immune to everything? should i carry more than 1??

[luneya]

I suppose I have to ask: it seems like you have both preserve and no-sell turned off. Why are you doing that? Those options are defaults for a reason.

[Sky]

i've played with selling since the 90s. as far as i know, the new system wasn't put in place "to balance", but to remove the tedious task of needing to carry gear just to sell it.
i use preserve because it shows you when there is an artifact on the level. (you get a pink $ symbol instead of the 6~9 feeling)

this means that, once you find an artifact, you need to grab it, or it's gone forever. however, it also means that when you get to CL50, DL80+, you can scum easily for artis (since every level at DL80 is a 7+).
again, something that carries forward from early angband releases.

[luneya]

Sure, but preserve requires you to doggedly clear artifact-containing levels, which is fine for a half-troll warrior but a suicidally stupid decision for a mage, whose entire skill-set is based around avoiding unnecessary fights. If you had preserve turned off as a challenge, I'd respect that, but it certainly doesn't make the game easier.

[kandrc]

even with a broadsword of attacks +2

And in another thread you said that you bought a ring of damage. I'll echo everybody else to say that you should be wielding defender. Also, lose the damage, and lose whatever your other ring is. I don't know what it is, and I don't need to know (well, unless you've found =speed). If you're wielding extra attacks then it's not escaping. You should be wearing two rings of escaping until you find =speed. Other equipment, optimize for speed first, stealth second, INT third (maybe INT second and stealth third). Nothing else matters until CON is (nearly) maxed. I run around dlvl 75+ with <200 HP, no resists (resists don't matter when even resisted attacks will one-shot you), +8 or more speed, legendary (or very close to it) stealth, and max INT. Pretty much untouchable, unless I blunder.

You're asking about banishment. That's a double-edged sword. You can easily kill an @ with it. Banish U on a level with a U pit or two, and it's game over.

EDIT: ESP also matters.

[Sky]

oh dear .. i didnt think about that. you get damaged even with the spell? whoops.

anyway, i *did* think about Escaping, just didn't realize it was possible. because before you get enough mana to cast stone to mud, phase, and attack spells enough to kill mobs, you will face many stupidly aggressive mobs (like wolves or zephirs) which you gotta kill, or you gotta teleport. They close up to you and melee is really the only choice.
Of course your system works, i just didn't think about it.

[Derakon]

before you get enough mana to cast stone to mud, phase, and attack spells enough to kill mobs, you will face many stupidly aggressive mobs (like wolves or zephirs) which you gotta kill, or you gotta teleport. They close up to you and melee is really the only choice.

If you're not in a room, then wolves and zephyr hounds won't chase you. Duck around the corner of a corridor and you can rest up to full mana. They will chase you if you drop below half health, though, so have some means to heal from zephyr breaths.

Also: carry attack wands. They'll massively improve your damage output; a Wand of Frost Bolts does considerably more damage than the spell Frost Bolt, for example.

I guarantee that mages do not need to melee a single enemy in the first 2000' of the game, if they take advantage of the resources available to them.

[Monkey Face]

IMO, useful rings for a mage are the strong uniques (Narya, Nenya, etc.), speed, INT, CON, STR, and escaping. If none of these are available, the elemental rings are somewhat useful for their attack (although the recharge time limits them). Free action and See Invisible are useful if you don't have them somewhere else.

Other than that, the rest are pretty useless to a mage.

[Nivra]

I will mention one thing that no one else has mentioned.

I will mention one thing that no one else has mentioned.

When I won with a mage, I found it very useful to learn monster vulnerabilities and resistances. You are the one class with access to ranged attacks using every elemental type (well, except effective poison).

Use it to your advantage.

See a Hydra? Use frostbolt.

Makes picking off mobs soo much easier.

[Sky]

i do that, of course. but i tell you, i read a monster description, it says "does not resist cold", i throw a ice storm at it, and the message says "shrugs off the attack".

i guess i should have not opted for dunedain. or for splitting my stats between STR/CON/DEX/INT.

[bio_hazard]

There's a difference between "does not resist" and "vulnerable to" . You'll get the vulnerable messages when your elemental attack says "e.g. badly frozen" "disintegrates" - same with "pierces" for special ammo.

[Pete Mack]

"Shrugs off the attack" does not mean the monster resisted, just that it will take a while to do significant damage. Switch over to meteor swarm ASAP in any case. It does more damage per unit Mana, so long as the fail rate is low enough. Just make sure to avoid actual kills using the spell, to avoid losing dropped potions and the like.

i do that, of course. but i tell you, i read a monster description, it says "does not resist cold", i throw a ice storm at it, and the message says "shrugs off the attack".

i guess i should have not opted for dunedain. or for splitting my stats between STR/CON/DEX/INT.

[Sky]

do you guys know what the spell Explosion is based on? Shards? Fire? What about Meteor Storm?
The only one which has the element in the description is Rift (gravity), and i assume the Cloud Kill is poison, the rest are self-explanatory (Ice Storm .. cold? yeah that sounds about right).

[Pete Mack]

One other thing: don't forget archery. You get the ammo branding spell as a mage, so use it, with Belthronding, a +2 Sling of Buckland, Haradrim, etc.

[Derakon]

do you guys know what the spell Explosion is based on? Shards? Fire? What about Meteor Storm?
The only one which has the element in the description is Rift (gravity), and i assume the Cloud Kill is poison, the rest are self-explanatory (Ice Storm .. cold? yeah that sounds about right).

Meteor Swarm does meteor element damage, which in practice nothing resists. Cloud Kill is poison, Ice Storm is ice (which stuns and causes cuts; think hurling a giant icicle at an enemy). Explosion is shards.