Few Newb Questions

[Derakon]

In general, resistance to disenchantment is more useful, imho.

If you know which monsters hit to disenchant, you can avoid melee with them and then disenchantment is almost entirely a non-issue. The only monsters that breathe to disenchant are Chaos/Balance dragons (both of whom have other breath weapons and spells, so they won't breathe it often) and the Tarrasque. You should avoid the Tarrasque, as a general rule. It's rarely worth fighting.

Oh, and Aether Hounds/Vortices, but they have every single breath weapon in the game, so the odds of them using disenchantment are incredibly low.

[Egavactip]

I have two practically identical shields - one resists shards, one resists disenchant. Is one more important than the other?

Disenchant is considerably more valuable, IMO. I frequently go entire games without protection from shards but I wouldn't even try to go without protection from disenchantment.

[Philip]

Disenchantment is odd, because unless you have an endgame-worthy weapon or Cambeleg/Fingolfin it's more or less harmless if you know who to stay away from and/or use Probing. Even then it's mostly Shards is helpful because I think it can occasionally reduce the chance that a potion gets exploded, and that's important. There's also a fair amount of shard damage out there, which is convenient to reduce.

[wobbly]

If you know which monsters hit to disenchant, you can avoid melee with them and then disenchantment is almost entirely a non-issue.

Isn't one of them Sauron though? So if you're a warrior you want it.

[Derakon]

Isn't one of them Sauron though? So if you're a warrior you want it.

My attitude on this is basically "equipment damage is gonna happen, inventory damage is gonna happen, it's not going to hugely impact your odds of winning, so why get torn up about it?" Sure, if you serially melee lots of disenchanters while having poor AC, your equipment could get substantially weaker. But one fight isn't going to make a big difference. If you have good melee and decent AC, Sauron won't do a whole lot to your gear before he dies. Especially if you're using mostly artifacts, which can resist being disenchanted (albeit not reliably).

But yeah, since you know when the Sauron fight's going to happen, it's not an awful idea to get disenchantment resist, especially since he doesn't himself use shards. Shards is IMO more useful for general dungeon-crawling though, since it's more common as a damage source.

[Egavactip]

It is easier to avoid creatures with shards than with enchantment. Few creatures do shards and the most common of them are not dangerous. Even Great Crystal Drakes are easy to take out, if you have enough hit points, because they themselves have so few hit points. So you have gelugons, which I often avoid anyway, whichever Titan has shards, the Wyrm of Law or Chaos (which ever one has shards), and I will typically avoid those regardless.

Disenchantment can come at you suddenly, and then bam, your weapon (or whatever) is one-less, and if it is an artifact of +15 or better, that plus is gone permanently.

Shards are to me the most easily survived/dealt with resistance absence.

[Derakon]

Disenchantment can come at you suddenly, and then bam, your weapon (or whatever) is one-less, and if it is an artifact of +15 or better, that plus is gone permanently.

Shards are to me the most easily survived/dealt with resistance absence.

Right, this is where my laissez-faire attitude towards equipment damage comes in. It doesn't bug me much to have a +19 shield instead of a +20, or even a +17 weapon instead of +20. So my primary consideration is, which of these elements is more likely to kill me? And shards wins that contest, hands-down. As a secondary concern, you're more likely to die due to lack of healing potions (from inventory damage from shards attacks) than due to lack of pluses on your gear.

I mean, they're both pretty marginal elements just due to how rarely you encounter them, but shards is more dangerous (i.e. common on big breathers) than disenchantment is, unless you're fighting the Tarrasque, in which case you deserve what's coming to you.

[Egavactip]

Right, this is where my laissez-faire attitude towards equipment damage comes in. It doesn't bug me much to have a +19 shield instead of a +20, or even a +17 weapon instead of +20. So my primary consideration is, which of these elements is more likely to kill me? And shards wins that contest, hands-down. As a secondary concern, you're more likely to die due to lack of healing potions (from inventory damage from shards attacks) than due to lack of pluses on your gear.

I mean, they're both pretty marginal elements just due to how rarely you encounter them, but shards is more dangerous (i.e. common on big breathers) than disenchantment is, unless you're fighting the Tarrasque, in which case you deserve what's coming to you.

It may not bug you to have a +19 shield instead of a +20 shield, but it certainly bugs me to have a +0 sword instead of a +7 sword.

Disenchantment is much more likely to be encountered in all its different forms than shards are, and whether hurting equipment or dealing damage, it's nasty. I'd rather have protection from disenchantment than shards. I view the latter, along with sound, as the most expendable of the resistances.

[Sky]

Shards will wreck your potions, and earth hounds are everywhere. I lost at least 1 major character to a Gelugon and nearly another to a titans breath. Shard resist is also not very common. Disenchant is rare and so i rDis, fight with Mim and you might lose a couple plusses, but nothing like regularly getting your stack of CCW halved by hounds.

[Egavactip]

Shards will wreck your potions, and earth hounds are everywhere. I lost at least 1 major character to a Gelugon and nearly another to a titans breath. Shard resist is also not very common. Disenchant is rare and so i rDis, fight with Mim and you might lose a couple plusses, but nothing like regularly getting your stack of CCW halved by hounds.

Shard resist is very common--the first special cloak you'll find will protect you from them, in all likelihood. And Disenchant is not rare at all; you've got more bats and molds and eyes than earth hounds, just to mention the little folks, while a number of uniques can disenchant as well, through breath or touch.

[Derakon]

Shard resist is very common--the first special cloak you'll find will protect you from them, in all likelihood. And Disenchant is not rare at all; you've got more bats and molds and eyes than earth hounds, just to mention the little folks, while a number of uniques can disenchant as well, through breath or touch.

For the sake of thoroughness, monsters that can breathe disenchantment: Chaos/Balance Drake, Aether Hound (but not Aether Vortex, surprisingly!), Great Wyrm of Chaos/Balance, The Tarrasque. 6 monsters, though Aether Hounds hardly count given the 1/90 chance of choosing to breathe disenchantment on any given turn (1 in 5 spell chance, 18 spells to choose from).

Monsters that breathe shards: Earth Hound, Law/Balance Drake, Crystal Drake, Shardstorm, Kavlax, Great Crystal Drake, Aether Vortex, Gelugon, Aether Hound, Great Wyrm of Law/Balance, Kronos, Huan. 14 monsters, 2 of which hardly count, by the same logic as earlier.

Monsters with disenchanting melee: Disenchanter Eye/Mold, Ibun/Khim/Mim, Disenchanter Bat, Gauth, Disenchanter Worm Mass, Gorlim, Death Mold, Storm of Unmagic, Saruman, Nightwing, Radagast, The Mouth of Sauron, Bone Golem, Nightwalker, Omarax, Black Reaver, Sauron.

That last list does a pretty credible job of being a list of monsters that you really don't want/need to fight, possibly excepting Saruman and of course Sauron himself. Mim and his sons in particular are an object lesson in leaving fights for later, as when they first show up the player is unlikely to have much in the way of non-elemental ranged damage.

That said, if you're getting your gear disenchanted by eyes or molds (or even bats) then you need to adjust your playstyle. I can't remember the last time I let one of those guys touch my gear without consciously thinking "okay, this might be putting my stuff in jeopardy, but I'm feeling lazy."

[Bostock]

That bit with the vortex is surprising - I could swear I got breathed on by one towards my last (well, and also first) Angband endgame - in fact it annoyed me so much that it drove me to prioritize having access to rDis in case I met another of the little #@$#@$ $@#$$, @##$@ @#$$@, @#$@# @#$ @#$'s.

[Derakon]

That bit with the vortex is surprising - I could swear I got breathed on by one towards my last (well, and also first) Angband endgame - in fact it annoyed me so much that it drove me to prioritize having access to rDis in case I met another of the little #@$#@$ $@#$$, @##$@ @#$$@, @#$@# @#$ @#$'s.

Oh, my mistake -- Storms of Unmagic also breathe disenchantment. Dunno why I didn't get them in my initial tally. Maybe that's what you encountered? Aether Vortices definitely don't breathe disenchantment though. I'm using this file as my reference.

That brings it up to 6 plausible (i.e. non-aether) monsters that breathe disenchantment, vs. 12 for shards. These are both pretty marginal elements.

[Gwarl]

Mim and his sons in particular are an object lesson in leaving fights for later, as when they first show up the player is unlikely to have much in the way of non-elemental ranged damage.

Kite them with magic missile. Put a bit of effort in. They might drop an artifact.

[Egavactip]

That said, if you're getting your gear disenchanted by eyes or molds (or even bats) then you need to adjust your playstyle. I can't remember the last time I let one of those guys touch my gear without consciously thinking "okay, this might be putting my stuff in jeopardy, but I'm feeling lazy."

My playstyle needs no adjusting. And you don't always get a choice as to when you are next to a disenchanter.