I want more hitpoints

[Estie]

I always load up on oil with a mage. As many as I can carry without being burdened. Yeah, they miss a lot, but the oil is cheap. As I pick stuff up, if I haven't used it yet, I drop some oil so that I remain unburdened. By the time I'm CL 7 or so, it's no longer useful.

Also, I don't know why this thread has had all the talk about lightening bolt. LB is too expensive, because it always beams. MM is almost always better. One you have enough SP, acid and fire bolt are better, too. The only time that LB is good is when you've got a line of light-resistant monsters in a corridor and your MM doesn't beam often yet.

I dont even learn lightning bolt on some mages. If opportunity arises I get it, sure, but more often than not thats not the case.

[Gwarl]

I really like hitting a whole bunch of monsters with one spell, so I appreciate lightning bolt (and dethanc)

Also I know this is a bit of a pile on already but:

If you can survive CL1 as a mage and reach CL2, then you're not any weaker and can just keep going to get CL3. Just takes a bit more patience than with other classes. You can just keep clearing 50' until you're ready to descend. That's how a lot of older versions and variants worked for everyone, but V has had decades of power creep now.

[Pete Mack]

I'll sometimes buy ?bless (along with oil) improve jk throwing accuracy. This will let you take out Bullroarer at CL3.
Mage starting gear:
MB1
?recall
2 torch
~ 10 !oil
A few !CLW
5+ ?Phase
Optional
1 ?bless/!hero
MB2
Food

[the Invisible Stalker]

Am I missing something, or does this complaint boil down to "playing mages as if they were warriors only works if you are not unlucky"? That seems like an odd thing to be annoyed about.

[Pete Mack]

It's more "playing mages as if you are a rogue," but yes. Rogues. From the help pages

A Rogue is a character that prefers to live by his cunning, but is
**capable of fighting his way out of a tight spot.

vs.

A Mage must live by his wits. He cannot hope to simply hack his way
**through the dungeon, and so must therefore use his magic to defeat,
**deceive, confuse, and escape

The easiest way to "deceive and escape" is by avoiding waking up dangerous monsters in the first place. Mage is so desperately vulnerable to death by exhuastion.

[Pete Mack]

Sky--
Really, just don't expect to melee except incidentally to clear weak monsters from your patv until you get max blows with an endgame weapon. The game is not designed to permjt "melee for EXP" before that point. If you are finding that devices/archery/spellcasting is getting tedious, make a keymap for the most common combinations. For example
Keymap m2g5$ will zap a cold bolt at your current target, or prompt for a target if none is currently specified. I usually have at least 4 of these set up, 1 for devices, two for spells, and one for archery.

But do try to worry less about HP and CL, and play to your character's strengths. (Melee is not one of them.)

[Sky]

right now i'm beating myself up for having ever typed MAGE in this thread.

rogues have the same issue. WARRIORS have the same issue. if your only game is bonking mobs on the head and you roll three 1s in a row your character is not worth spending any more time on.

but this argument isn't worth pursuing anymore because everyone here has the same attitude that i see in quake, cs, and every other game where people have played for 20-odd years "i have the game down to a science therefore anyone who doesn't have years to spend on it is a noob and an idiot".

follows list of specifics which is basically the only way to survive with a mage.

hey, but what if someone buys, i don't know, a helm, a shield, and some boots? you know, things which are sold in town and a reasonable player at their first, or tenth, attempt would consider as good starting gear?

no, they need to bleed until they learn to adapt to a game so unforgiving, it's often quoted in name as the very definition of "a hard game".

"angband has had a power creep up"
if we don't consider rings and boots of speed +23, ring of acid branding glaive of pain, randarts with +2 blows, extra blow warrior, destruction giving your free artifacts, and another god knows how many exploits which made the game supereasy, once you knew how.

i proposed a fix which does not impact endgame, barely impacts anything after CL10, and which would make the game ever so slightly easier for a very limited number of people who otherwise would be stuck in a bad situation, but with the fix, those few would be otherwise very much helped.

don't want it? fine, dont have it. but please don't quote me "i have 6.5hp statistically therefore your 1hp per level is totally fine" because if there is one thing i like less than statistics, is bad interpretation of statistics.

"i have no food to eat!" "well it doesn't matter because i had two lunches, so statistically we're cool".


for those of you who don't get my argument, here is a real-life example.

i just got off of Blacklight Retribution. it's my game; i'm in sync with it. i win 80% of every match i'm in, which includes matches joined halfway. i easily do 30-5 while everyone else maybe manages 18-12.

i barely keep awake when playing. only if a high skill player comes in the match, i actually apply myself. however, i understand that what is too easy for me, is not too easy for the other people in the lobby, who struggle with basic gameplay, do not have the skills that i have developed, and that lack the experience to apply them. Therefore, i do not want the game to be made harder for me to enjoy, but rather easier for them. When you are playing bookless priest or store bough shovel, maybe you need to call it a day, but definitely you no longer qualify to give advice on how the game can appeal to new players.

[Nick]

Thank you, that was very entertaining.

One of the things being examined for 4.2 is the player - classes, races and other properties. While I'm probably not thinking of implementing your suggestion, don't think you haven't had any impact - I'm now less inclined to make the early game harder

Angband attracts a certain type of masochist. We feel your pain, but in some way it also validates our choice of pastime. It is a pretty brutal game, and on the whole we want to keep it that way - in the long run, it makes it more satisfying to finally win. Keep trying, keep telling us what you think - it's really important that we don't only hear from experienced players - and thanks again for the rant

[debo]

TC might also want to try Sil -- it removes basically all of the randomness from progression, and pushes it into the combat mechanics instead

[Pete Mack]

Sil is a genuinely brutal game. Angband only assures the possibility of bad luck. Sil guarantees it.

Sky--I really do understand your point: If you spend a lot of time at low CL, a few extra points can make a big difference. But it's a discussion we've had dozens of times here: focusing on this issue tends to teach the wrong lessons. I was an absolutely hopeless player until Eddie Grove posted Tales of the Bold on rgra. You don't need to play optimally. But clearing levels, or just staying shallow for too long, makes it much, much harder to learn how to deal with levels below 3000'.

[Sky]

let me make you a V example.

i'm DL33 and i melee an orc .. or something. Uruk, halforc, something that dies in 2 rounds at most. the key here, is that i have meleed a million of these things.

i hit it, my hp goes down. i hit it again, my hp goes has fallen from 250 to 100. my reaction is "wth ?". i take 1 more step in an empty room, dead.

some invisible dragon killed me.

sure, no seeInvisible is stupid. but it's not weird that most people tackling angband will just think "uhu, ring of damage +14 at such a low DL, i better wear that".

the reaction to immediate visual clues (empty room, 1 mob) is something which players will always have for long before they decide to not stick with angband and instead try darkest dungeon or something else.

diving is another example of an aspect of angband which is counter-intuitive; i'm too weak to clear DL20, let me read two scrolls of deep descent.
Sure, you can do this once you master the game, once you learn to evaluate all aspects which are not immediately obvious to the average player, but, what if you don't? What is you *are* an average player?

Are you really telling me that someone who thinks "i'm still levelling up pretty fast here at this DL, and i'm finding useful gear, maybe i better not risk going down any further for a while" is approaching the game in the wrong way?


ANY game will become too easy when you master it. once you do master it, is it even fun playing? i really don't play FTL anymore because i'm either playing Medium and it's too easy, as i know exactly what to do in all circumstances, or Hard, which is just gambling with the RNG. i dont find either to be fun.

i want to make it clear that i am not saying (although it may seem like it) that "Angband is too hard, make it easier", but rather "Angband has unusual difficulty spikes, make it more even".

Diving, and various "1337" playing techniques, should be something you do once you master the game, not something *required* to play. I'm ok with OOD mobs, escapes, detection, im just not ok when the game says "ok i decided that you die".
Here specifically, it's "you just started, the only option i'm giving you is to melee mobs (it's ok, you have more hp) but IM NOT GIVING YOU ANY HP".

It hardly matters that you will have 1000hp at CL50. When you are a CL3 paladin, and 2 soldier, 2 priests and 2 bandits decide to wake up at the same time, what do you do?

[Huqhox]

I think we're all sympathetic to what you are saying Sky, and certainly I don't think the first few levels are too easy - neither are they too hard.

Yes occasionally your CL3 Paladin gets ambushed by creatures it won't be able to handle and in that case you will die, regardless of how well you have prepared. After all the RNG does hate you. But that's offset by the time when you do manage to defeat a tricky mob, squeaking through with 1hp left.

Angband does have significant difficulty spikes but this is something that is up for discussion in 4.2. 4.1 removed a lot of tedium of detection with the new trap and secret door code, and rune id makes idenification more streamlined so now it is onto the races, classes and monsters. It is improving all the time.

I remember when floating eyes (a DL1 monster) would paralyse your character automatically if you stepped next to one. So your brand new character (unless it was a gnome with built in FA) would walk around a corner and end up next to a floating eye they couldn't have detected. End of game. That doesn't happen any more.

Hounds also used to be a real pain; as soon as they appeared around DL18 they were always in large groups and even if you were being a good @ if you couldn't deal with them you'd have to abandon the level.

So yes Angband is still hard (and yes a game that relies on the player learning an awful lot about how the game works in order to progress) but that learning curve is getting smoother. And that is why your input is valuable. Those of us who have been playing for years and years do lose perspective on just how hard this game is to learn. So keep it up.

To answer the specific point of this thread: if you roll low for you first HP increases then personally that just means I spend more time at the lower levels. I'm not a power diver and don't mind wandering around within stair distance of the town for a bit. There's plenty of XP, kit and $ available to maybe give @ a fighting chance even with the poor rolls

[Mondkalb]

OTOH these unfortunate hit die rolls only happen half the time, you also could be lucky. You could also be unlucky on early dungeon levels to step into a room with some foes and a shrieker mushroom which could get you killed regardless of how lucky you were with hit die rolls.

Nick is right, Angband is for masochists.

[wobbly]

I'm fairly neutral on levelling out the starting hps. If you take a look at poscheng it in fact does (base hps).

In the scenario given paladins have detect evil. Any character other than the human warrior (no infravision) wandered straight in to that situation. If you can't phase out or retreat back to a corridor, what are you sposed to do? Honestly you're sposed to die, learn & adjust your tactics.

As an addenum: removing lanterns from the general store inadvertitly screwed human warriors a little. I'd consider at least giving them a lantern in their starting gear to balance out the lack of infravision.

[the Invisible Stalker]

Sky--I really do understand your point: If you spend a lot of time at low CL, a few extra points can make a big difference. But it's a discussion we've had dozens of times here: focusing on this issue tends to teach the wrong lessons. I was an absolutely hopeless player until Eddie Grove posted Tales of the Bold on rgra. You don't need to play optimally. But clearing levels, or just staying shallow for too long, makes it much, much harder to learn how to deal with levels below 3000'.

I hope this point doesn't get lost in the rest of this thread. Angband is unlike most games that I've played in that it seems to teach new players terrible habits. I had the exact same experience, playing in what I now realise was a ridiculous manner for years until I read Eddie's posts. Players who find their way here get plenty of good advice, which they may or may not choose to take, but what happens to those who don't? Fixing this problem, if people agree that it is a problem, is probably hard, but here's a relatively easy change that could be made: Introduce a town unique like FA's Complainer, but instead of random bug reports have him (or her, or it) dispense snippets of useful, but not obvious, advice.