Hobbit Ranger

[Grotug]

It may have been boldness or even slime juice mold hah. Good point about slowness and sleep, didn't realize that!

So, normally I wouldn't be paying attention to the differences between most critters I can just clobber through as a warrior, but there is one lowercase critter I have come to be aware of, even as a warrior, and that is the skeleton ettin because he is tougher than most other lowercase critters of his ilk. But as a hobbit, I have to pay attention to everything. So I see a pit of lesser undead, and in it it has 5 mummified trolls that do more damage but have much less health than the skeleton ettin, but are higher DL and worth more points. I really don't get this. It seems to me their higher melee outpout is more than offset by their lower hitpoints. I guess I will find out when I take on the pit. It has 20 skeleton ettins and 5 mummified trolls. I'm much more worried about the ettins.

EDIT: I don't know if anyone has tried doing this, but I have a room with one single monster that I definitely can't deal with. Now if I could lure him out of the room somehow and then teleport back to the room (which might take a lot of tries) I could theoretically get inside the room and not have him pursue me, if I can lure him far enough away from the room, that is. The danger in mind is Eöl and I am native speed +9 and 225HP. I have a ring of escaping I could use to help lure him away, but I have no other means of hasting myself. I'm pretty sure if I can lure him far enough away from the room and then teleport around for awhile until I land in a position favorable to going back to the room without encountering him I could do it. The item in the room probably not worth it, anyway, though, (feeling 5) and I have already gotten good stuff from drops (gloves of power, !Augmentation). These gloves deal a serious penalty to my SP from 44 with gloves of FrACt to 33 with Power! But they allow me to maximize my speed and give Oromë a bit of a boost. Hmm... I'll probably pass on these shenanigans. But has anyone ever attempted such a ruse?

[Thraalbee]

Certainly, when strongly motivated and good chance of survival. Easier when you have a staff of destruction so you only need to lure him away far enough to allow destructing him without destroying the room in question.

[luneya]

It may have been boldness or even slime juice mold hah. Good point about slowness and sleep, didn't realize that!

Juice use-ids every time because it's a food source. But boldness is an even more likely candidate than the harmful potions, if you haven't found it yet. I generally make it a point to buy a potion of boldness in town ASAP because it's a pain to use-id and dirt cheap to buy.

[Grotug]

Certainly, when strongly motivated and good chance of survival. Easier when you have a staff of destruction so you only need to lure him away far enough to allow destructing him without destroying the room in question.

I guess I should have ID'd the ?Destruction instead of just reading it. Woulda been handy! I don't think the resources I may end up having to expend trying to isolate Eöl will be worth whatever item is there. 5 feeling levels are dime a dozen at this depth.

This Hobbit is putting out some serious melee. Just as I was about to leave the Eöl level I saw a diamond ring I hadn't noticed earlier near me and it was +9 damage. Then on the next level after _teleporting away from a storm giant that confused me I killed a dark elven druid and it dropped ToW. Not sure if I should go with the extra damage or keep the speed and intelligence of Oromë, 264 vs non rFire and ToW does 340 vs non rPoison and 478 vs Undead. I'm kinda wishing I was just a warrior, although the excellent stealth is pretty cool since I can just sneak up and whack for the first hit on many monsters and device skill is nice, too. But what do I need these magic books for? Magic missile is replaced by my xbow and rods of frost/fire bolts, and I can teleport self using a staff which is better than using books which don't work when I'm confused. I think I like the paladin spells better since the 2 mana heal is so much more useful than the red book's 3 mana heal. I think I prolly go with ToW and maybe do away with the spell books entirely for a bit. I like the phase but is it worth an extra slot when I carry ?phase anyway?

[Grotug]

So I never did go with the ToW. Instead I found a ring of INT <+4> and then a ring of INT <+6> and since the pair of rings triple my SP I decided to wear both rings and keep Oromë. Nevermind that I'm trawling DL60 without rPoison and 246HP and TO'd the Bile Demon who kept coming back (with my 31% fail rate book cause I have no other source) 6 times. I'm damn lucky he never breathed on me, though I did self haste as well so I could safely use hockey stick (I nevertheless failed many times and TO'd him next to me). 181 SP and regen and I'm still always running out of mana. I have 246 health and is very difficult to level up since I'm not able to kill anything of consequence. But I'll just stealth my way deeper into the dungeons (about to read a ?DD). I found some good bolts to go with my high damage xbow, but I really need a good bow.

I'm on DL69 and my CON is 12..... This is a bit ridiculous. My max HP is 265. When I was CL 21 it was over 200 back in the low DL30s. lel

EDIT: Wahoo! I got my first pot of CON! Now my max HP is 267!!

[PowerDiver]

I'm on DL69 and my CON is 12..... This is a bit ridiculous. My max HP is 265.

Isn't it invigorating?

[debo]

Isn't it invigorating?

I really hope that was a constitution pun.

[Pete Mack]

Yeah, extreme diving with a mage is a lot of fun. Everything can kill you anyway, so you might as well go to dl 99 and scum for vaults. Any Divisi is likely to have a couple!CON or AUG. Another suggestion is to put some stat points into CON if you want to dive fast. You can mostly ignore STR as a HT mage.

[Grotug]

I am wearing a cap of Regen and an amulet of ESP and dropped a helm of Telepathy (stupid!) and just picked up a necklace of the Dwarves. So hoepfully I'll find another helm of telepathy soon!

Having 273 SP is fun. I can pretty much be perpetually hasted if I want. In fact, I just found a RoS [+7] but it knocks off like 80SP so I will not wear it (my two rings of INT are now +6 and +5). I'm carrying too many books, though. Not sure which I should drop. I also stupidly didn't hold onto, I guess, what was the second Raal's Tome of Destruction (I thought it was Gilmore of Power, but I got the books confused) I found because I thought I had stored the first one in my home but hadn't.

I've actually, surprisingly, been fine with my CON, except when I failed to phase using book spell after Catlord summoned me to her. After her turn I had 26 health and was confused. So I healed, but was again confused at the start of my turn (I had also foolishly dropped my _telportation)Got lucky and after !CCW I wasn't confused at start of my turn and ?phased away. Took awhile, but I did finally defeat her with bolts (not so easy given the constant summons).

Think I'm gonna forego Mordenkain's escapes for now, as nice as door and stair creation are. But Door creation can be a life saver if you have an instadeath breather down a long corridor. And since I just DD'd to DL76 I will be facing many many instadeathers now. So I think I will keep it. I did drop the book that self-teleports though, as it has no great spells.

Pete Mack, PowerDiver: yes,it's a blast going around with less than 300HP at these depths.

Wow, found another ring of INT <+6> bringing my INT to 190 but it didn't increase my mana pool at all. How come? SP is still at 273.

[Pete Mack]

MB2 is useful in two cases when deep:

1. No ESP and very weak, you need to illuminate evert hallway.
2. ESP and near endgame strong with Clairvoyance device, you need XP fast, so teleport around the dungeon checking for high value targets.

[PowerDiver]

Wow, found another ring of INT <+6> bringing my INT to 190 but it didn't increase my mana pool at all. How come? SP is still at 273.

The rules for stats are inconsistent and slightly strange. If you care, look in src/tables.c and you should be able to figure out which effects max out when. I think they range anywhere from 18/180 to 18/220 for max benefit depending on the table.

My guess [can't be sure] is that you shouldn't be worrying about SP so much. The important thing is failure rate on whichever spells you truly depend upon. If you can get away with one int ring for those minimum failure rates, you'd probably be better off with a different ring as opposed to more SP.

[Grotug]

But the excessive SP is great for casting all the time for everything. I am about to buy a ring of CON <+5> though, which I may swap out. Having that much SP saves on resources, though. Just picked up ?Transformations; not sure if it's worth carrying around for the greater recharging and buffs, though. Prolly save it in my home for later.

I am gaining XP very slowly. I'm on DL81 now and only CL36. There are very few high XP targets I can go after with 275HP. I suppose I could swap out an INT ring now, but means less incessant detecting monsters and more difficulty creating stairs.

I have a question: I have Superb stealth; and I don a piece of armor that increases my stealth by +3. I still have superb stealth. Do the monsters know the difference or do I only get the benefit when it goes to the next level (heroic)?

Should I wear a ring of CON <+5> or a ring of speed <+7>? My base speed before wearing the ring is +10. If I wear the CON ring I go from 275 to 329. Seems it might be the way to go.

OMG Tensers lets me brand my ammunition!!!! My word that is huge. I was gonna say, for the top book it didn't seem that great cause I thought the branding was for melee weapons only, but ... ammo branding sure is great!

Wow, not only does it brand the ammo it enchants it! This is why powerdiving is so much fun; cause the stuff you find makes a real difference. When I used to play Paladin at a normal non diving pace, by the time I found the last book it basically had no impact.

Wow, I thought the (+4, +4) frost was good but the second batch got (+6, +6)! Hobbit Ranger is fun.

Hmm, maybe speed is more important than CON. As long as I can hockey stick my opponents with the TO, I should be good.

[Derakon]

I have a question: I have Superb stealth; and I don a piece of armor that increases my stealth by +3. I still have superb stealth. Do the monsters know the difference or do I only get the benefit when it goes to the next level (heroic)?

I did the math on this a few years ago; if I recall correctly, roughly every +3 to stealth halves the chance a monster wakes up on any given turn.

The textual descriptions on the character sheet don't correspond to any breakpoints so far as I'm aware. They just assign a label to each range of values.

[Grotug]

Cool, thanks! So now the question is do I wear Dwarven Chaos or Hithlomir? The Dwarven gives +2 CON and my device skill increases the damage by 96%! I just found Narya and swapped out the CON<+5> ring for it. So I could use the boost but I dunno, I think stealth is more important. TOing the instakiller while he's asleep is a pretty safe move.

So I've been casually using seeker bolts of slay evil (+12) and just bought a haradrim from the store (+14). The bolts now do 506.6 against Morgoth and his ilk. Should I save the bolts for the final fight or figure I'll find better ones? I think I'll hold onto them; I'm gonna be able to take on Saruman soon.

[Pete Mack]

HT mage has exceedingly terrible archery. Don't save ammo for high-AC targets. Just kill undead unique. Note that top wringwraiths are some of the few high value targets you can actually kill with low HP. Same for many non-unique undead. They are a pain, but they generally do less than 300HP damage with spell effects, tho' there are a few exceptions.
Note: with less than 18/200 INT you are at particular danger with low HP. The usual way to get by is zero-fail TO. With 1% fail and less than 400 HP, a failure will eventually kill you. Focus on CON and INT alone. Even speed takes second place for you.