Few Newb Questions

[kandrc]

This is from someone who has never made it past CL ~50, though.

I think I speak for everybody when I say it would be very impressive if you made it past CL50.

[AngelicPenguin]

I think I speak for everybody when I say it would be very impressive if you made it past CL50.

Oh haha - I know I had a character in the mid 40s in ZAngband - I never knew the cap was 50! For some reason I've always thought it was 99.

[Sideways]

Waldern won't annihilate you at this point, in the sense of you getting insta-killed, and pConf would protect you from that side effect; but stunning would still be nasty, as would the raw damage. (You can't resist water itself, but you can resist its side-effects, viz. stunning and confusion.) It's almost certainly best to leave Waldern alone for now.

Breath attacks are based on the monster's current hit points, yes; but they also have absolute upper limits, so as you go deep enough you'll start seeing monsters who seem to breathe at full strength even when they're not at full HP. What happens is that their attacks are so strong that they hit the upper limit even when they're not quite at full strength; as with every other monster, their breath attacks do weaken as they lose hit points.

[AngelicPenguin]

Waldern won't annihilate you at this point, in the sense of you getting insta-killed, and pConf would protect you from that side effect; but stunning would still be nasty, as would the raw damage. (You can't resist water itself, but you can resist its side-effects, viz. stunning and confusion.) It's almost certainly best to leave Waldern alone for now.

Breath attacks are based on the monster's current hit points, yes; but they also have absolute upper limits, so as you go deep enough you'll start seeing monsters who seem to breathe at full strength even when they're not at full HP. What happens is that their attacks are so strong that they hit the upper limit even when they're not quite at full strength; as with every other monster, their breath attacks do weaken as they lose hit points.

Thanks good to know - I ignored him and went down a level. That seems so counter intuitive to me, but I guess he was not native to that level anyway.

Thanks for the info on breath attacks!

[Derakon]

The elemental uniques are not really worth fighting if you can avoid them. They're all pretty nasty and they don't drop any items, so your only reward besides XP is that they won't show up again once they've been destroyed.

[Pete Mack]

Scarabtrices is instantly useful. Those resistance spells let you mow down Smaug & friends without worries. The other book not so much. It does allow you to use up speed potions without worrying about saving them for later. By cl 37 or so you'll have no problem relying on the book. Obviously, for teleport other, you want to maintain low failure rate, so you'll be using wands for a while. Wands and rods have the additional benefit of not exhausting your mana. It's a pretty expensive spell.

[AngelicPenguin]

Can you recharge a staff?

I'm wondering because I found a Staff of Healing and if you can just recharge it from the store or with a wand, does that make it so that you never carry around potions of whatever once you have a few staffs that offer the same thing?

If so, why can't you just recharge them forever in the store?

[kandrc]

Can you recharge a staff?

I'm wondering because I found a Staff of Healing and if you can just recharge it from the store or with a wand, does that make it so that you never carry around potions of whatever once you have a few staffs that offer the same thing?

If so, why can't you just recharge them forever in the store?

You can recharge forever in the store, but that means a finite number of uses before hauling it back. You can also recharge with scrolls or spells, which you can do in the dungeon. The store will never fail, but scrolls and spells sometimes will, destroying the staff. If using a scroll or spell, always recharge an empty device to minimize chance of failure (if you've got a stack, you get minimized failure rate with (number of charges) < (number of devices); you don't strictly have to go to zero).

Devices are subject to draining attacks, which not only depletes your device, but also heals the monster. Regardless, given that !healing are somewhat scarce, staff of healing is liberating. There's also a rod of healing. If I have inventory space when I find one, I'll hold on to it for a while, but they're rare enough that you never get a decent stack, and they have a very long refresh, especially when you're fast, so I usually consider them junk.

[Pete Mack]

You can only recharge staffs in the Alchemist that are allowed to be for sale there. Healing isn't one of them, so you have to rely on the scroll (or the high-level mage or priest spell, both of which are more reliable than the spell.) The staff will eventually break (if it isn't first destroyed by fire.)

[AngelicPenguin]

Ahh - thanks good to know.

I guess I figured the Black Market could recharge anything.

[AngelicPenguin]

You can only recharge staffs in the Alchemist that are allowed to be for sale there. Healing isn't one of them, so you have to rely on the scroll (or the high-level mage or priest spell, both of which are more reliable than the spell.) The staff will eventually break (if it isn't first destroyed by fire.)

I can get the spell right now - I'm guessing the failure rate of the spell is not related to the failure rate when it is actually cast right? Because my failure rate of the spell itself is 50%.

[Pete Mack]

Correct. It's certainly worth using the spell for something as good as a staff of healing.

[Bostock]

Newbie Q! Is there any good reason not to squelch average and good dragon armors once you have armor of resistance or better?

[Sideways]

Newbie Q! Is there any good reason not to squelch average and good dragon armors once you have armor of resistance or better?

There's a good chance you'll find something else (e.g. a non-armor artifact, a shield of resistance, or a combination of items) that will give you resistance to the basic four; and at that point you may well want to return to the dragon armor, for the activation if nothing else.

Note also that exactly how DSM squelching works depends on the version you're playing. In most earlier versions of Vanilla, squelching DSMs meant squelching all types of DSMs - including Multi-Hued/Chaos/Balance/Power Dragon Scale Mails. Nick has improved this, so the current version lets you squelch only "basic DSMs" (Black/Blue/White/Red/Green); but even then, unless you're a kobold, the rPois from Green Dragon Scale Mail is probably not something you want to squelch with an early/mid-game character.

[Pete Mack]

You can probably squelch basic dragon armor at that point, sure. But you don't want to squelch High Dragon armor unless you've already found PDSM.