I want more hitpoints

[Derakon]

Im going to go through the objections one by one when im at my pc, instead of my phone, but the argument is not "a good angband player would have thougth of that", but rather how the game messes with casual players.

Did you mean "new" instead of "casual"? Because there's a big difference, and I would argue that Angband is not really a game for casual players; it's too unforgiving of mistakes.

Additionally, could you please give your opinion on this statement? "Angband is a game in which you are expected to die many times, but in general each time make it a bit further than the last time because of what you learned from the previous character."

[Sky]

i mean casual.

see, I KNOW i made a mistake. i'm still here, no? i understand that no SI and not paying attention to what i was seeing is the issue, bit of a shame the game gave me two OOD rings of damage (one +9, one +14) and i swapped.

but the reason that caught me will invariably catch many other players too.

1) the room LOOKS EMPTY. this visual clue is much stronger than a small "it hits you" message that quickly flashes at the edge of the screen, and which you see thousands of every hour of play, with almost all of them being irrelevant.
(this is perhaps angbands greatest fault and something which could be addressed in a potential UI redesign in V 5.0)
the game is being a bit of a bastard putting a single defenceless mob as bait while having a very powerful death drake which is otherwise hidden.
And this happens in other situations as well. Imagine long empty corridor, it's just natural to hold down the walk button, and yet that can mean death before you have a chance to react. Some aspects of the play mechanics cannot be changed as they are, intrinsically, the game, but some other can, for example have a box (not one that gets covered when the game is fullsized, as everyone without a HUGE screen or two would do) that flashed AND HOLDS important messages for a while, prossibly in BRIGHT YELLOW OR RED.

2) the choice of ring of damage +14 over ring of see invisible should easily be to go with damage, as it doubles the player's output of DPS.
Again, *i* understand that angband is the opposite of this, but it's maybe the only game that gives more importance to minor things over major; the definition of "minor" and "major" is debatable, but if you look at, shall we say, the competition, they do tend to go one way instead of the other.

all the observations you have made are correct, and frankly i'm not beating myself up about that death (unlike my CL45 death to plasma hounds after finding Feanor), but none of those "lessons" are evident from general play. they only become evident after prolonged gaming, and i would add "with forum advice" too.

This is why someone exposed to angband but without the help of years and years of wisdom of experienced players, will simply fall again and again to the same traps.
Oh you died to a stupid death!
Yes but i had good reasons NOT to go with (ring of rPois, ring of SI, ring of FA, whatever) because i had THIS BIG ASS WEAPON.

I agree that the kids of today thing that complex games are dumb and we should not encourage that, but we can make tiny adjustments that help the stupid or unlucky, me included, such as my proposal to not allow exceptionally low hp scores for the first 3 levelups.

Gwarl, for example, says i have nothing but myself to blame. Yes, except the OOD passwall invisible overpowered mob that i can only escape with 1) teleport staff (or fail at 50% cast rate) 2) specific knowledge of WHAT is hitting me 3) enough paranoia to NOT "see a mob in an empty room, assume i can kill it".
One would argue that the variance of possibilities in angband is excessive. But me, and you, have the knowledge of what that means, most casual and sadly (to answer your previous question) new players will not, and just conclude that angband "is dumb".

Egavctip says that angband is a ninja game in disguise of a hack n slash. True, and i would say that the disguise is excellent, so much so that it would fool everyone.





Again, angband is hard for, i agree, good reasons. Marketing it is not the right choice of words, rather, i would say "popularize it". Instead of removing passwall invisible drakes OOD, make it more obvious that you are being hit by something invisible. Make it so that there's no unnecessary struggling at low levels because of a couple unlucky rolls. Tweak out the little niggles to make it into a game where the game experience is smoother and less puzzling to the those who do not have tons of experience.

(difficulty modes can always be added, for those who want to bonk Morgoth on the head with a store-bought shovel ...)

[kandrc]

You keep harping on this ring of damage. The ring choice wasn't the mistake. Insufficient paranoia was. The ring may have been the right choice. It was probably the right choice.

As for =poison resist, in nearly 25 years of play, I don't recall ever having used one. You don't need poison resist. Just don't get breathed at; it's not that hard.

And =see invisible? I rarely use them. Most of the dangerous invisible monsters are evil. It's not strictly needed as long as you have MB3, PB1, or staff of detect evil.

Ring slots are far too valuable to waste on things like these, even in the early game. Get them in another slot, or do without.

98% of my deaths are due to carelessness. The death that you've described here was also due to carelessness.

[Pete Mack]

Would a list of dangers together with example monsters help? I assume the passwall mob is dreads, and yes they'd be bad news OOD at dl 25 (they're native to dl 35.) But they are incredibly rare much out of depth: Vaults are very uncommon below dl 30, and you have to be very unlucky to get dreads as one of the monsters. It's not a case that's worth worrying about, since the odds of it happening are near zero; much lower than other risks:

Here's a partial list
Paralysis: Homunculus is minor risk at dl 15. By dl 25, there are a number of monsters to watch for (Gorgimaera, carrion crawler, ghoul. Ghast, Basilisk, and trapper come soon after.) You van avoid most of these by disciplined detection. The only two that have ever got me past detection are trapper (really easy to miss) and carrion crawler (thought it was an orc Captain.) Of course, I lost a number of characters to sloppy play before getting the hang of diving.
SI: At dl 35, dreads are native. At that point, SI becomes very important, especially if you can't detect them and avoid them. ESP makes a good substitute with only a very few
exceptions.
PASSWALL: Ghosts coming out of nowhere are dangerous starting with dread. After that, ethereal dragon an death drake are very bad news. Ethereal dragon can get you with confusion attack making escape problematic. They also breathe for big damage.

Note that orange, pale green, light blue, and pink monsters all tend to be more dangerous than others. Shimmering monsters too. Of course this isn't reliable, but it's useful as a quick check.
Poison: Dl 40-45 First big poisoners are Ancient green dragon (280HP) AMHD (lots) drolem (lots). Greater basilisk and Deadly Horror do significant damage too. Drolem is the worst: Cold blooded, invisible to ESP, non-evil. Fortunately, it is quite rare, so you can usually survive for a while without coming across one. At this point, light rods start to be useful in hallways without ESP and/or full detection.
I don't usually use =rPois except as a swap. It's a nice thing to have, but you can survive without it if you are careful, especially as a mage spellcaster.

[Pete Mack]

Sky: Here's an example. I used NO l33t skillz. I just bought MB1, MB2, an extra torch, a few !oil and 1 !hero* or emergencies, 1 ?Recall, and a few !CLW and a good stack of ?Phase. (I used extra money/no equipment birth option.) Got lucky with ?Deep Descent at 100' or 150'. When I hit 400', I detected a red icky thing, then went and killed it. Bingo! CL 4 and 5. Total kills at CL 11, 650' High-Elf mage: 72, or 6.5 kills/level. This is *easy* to do. It took 5000 player turns, about 15 minutes of gameplay. I need to dive more because I'm running out of sufficiently high-EXP low-HP monsters. Reached CL 11 on a dark-elf priest. (Dark elves are great targets for EXP, except for Dark Elf Lord and Sorceror, who can kill you too fast.)

* A stack of oil and a single buffing potion or scroll make a huge difference for low level mages and priests. It lets you fight a single low level tough monster (e.g. Bullroarer) as if you were a ranger, and lets you level up to where you can use lightning bolt or cold bolt. I killed Orfax with a few cold bolts, after zapping his entourage with lightning bolt.

[kandrc]

I killed Orfax with a few cold bolts, after zapping his entourage with lightning bolt.

CL 11 is my magic number to take on Wormtongue without Wand of Wonder. With WoW (or a lucky launcher/ammo find), I'll take him on every time, and I've managed to kill him as early as about CL 4.

Orfax, on the other hand, I consider much more dangerous. With teleport to, confuse, slow, summoning, and an entourage that usually includes master yeeks (who do much the same thing, en mass, plus poison), I don't have a magic number, but it's probably more like CL 15, maybe 17 before I'll face him, and it depends on whom he's with.

These levels are with a mage. Other classes, other tactics.

[Pete Mack]

Orfax, not Boldor. Orfax has only 120 HP, so it only takes ~4 cold bolts to do him in. His entourage included only 1 master yeek. I agree is a genuine threat. I managed to isolate Orfax at the end of a long hallway. Picked his entourage off by standing exactly 21 squares from sleeping Boldor. He only got 3 turns awake.

[debo]

I haven't played vanilla in years, but you people are making me want to try a mage.

[Pete Mack]

I used to hate V mage. But after I started extreme diving with it, it turns out to be a seriously fun class. I play almost exclusively High-Elf because it forces me to do extreme things for EXP...and it lets me cruise past 1700' without worrying about See Invisible. It's the one thing a character really needs to dive, because of passwall monsters and the high cost of the full detect spell. I also find worrying about strength to be seriously tedious.

I haven't played vanilla in years, but you people are making me want to try a mage.