A Total Newbie Guide by an Almost Total Newbie

[Holy_Rage]

Hello fellow Angbandim,

I recently started playing Angband and the deepest I have ever been was Dungeon Level 42. After a series of (mostly) disgraceful deaths, I have reached the following conclusions which will hopefully spare other fellow newbies from their untimely death:

1) don't touch molds and jellies and mushroom patches. Ignore them
2) don't touch traps. If you want to pass, delve around
3) the moment you see gravity hounds, run.
4) idem for Kavlax.
4A) I can't stress how useful it is to play with PURPLE uniques enabled from your Options in order to be able to apply #4.
5) keep rations in case you stumble on a potion of Salty Water
6) Set HP warning at 60% or more if paranoid
7) never leave base resistances ignored at ANY point
8) if it looks difficult, it is.
9) never leave the starting town without a Scroll (or other means, such as Rod) of Recall

I will update this after DL 42 or when I have something meaningful to add.

Game on!

[debo]

Pfft. You didn't even mention buying a lantern.

[Pete Mack]

Rule number one. Play deliberately. Don't rush, and make conscious decisions about which monsters to fight. The biggest problem for a newbie is trying to fight everything, and either dying to exhaustion after running out of healing, taking one step too far before healing, or taking on a monster he has no business fighting.
Kavlax falls in the latter bucket.
Various orc uniques fall in the former ones: together with their entourages, they can easily run you out of supplies if you aren't ready for them. Nar the Dwarf is the same.

Other really bad news individual monsters up through the early midgame:
Gorlim the Betrayer. He's just about as dangerous as Kavlax.
Ethereal dragons(!) and death drakes.
Plasma hounds, which WILL get you if you use teleport self regularly after CL 50.

And of course there is the Drolem (offscreen).

[Mondkalb]

2) ... unless your character is a rogue.
Also, it depends on the trap type. Be careful with trap doors.

[Pete Mack]

I never delve around traps. Not finding them at all (and stumbling on them unexpectedly) is a bigger risk. I have lost a total of one character to known traps in hallways. You can pretty much evade summonses by phase door,
and stat drain isn't that big a deal. I suppose if there's a trap door between me and a GCV, I'd delve around it. But it hasn't happened yet. (The known trap death was to a paralyzing trap while fleeing dangerous enemies.)
I have lost a few starting characters to pit traps at very shallow depths, but those deaths cot me nothing--and even the paralysis death only cost a 1/2 hour of play.
Now that traps in vaults have been nerfed, even trap doors aren't a significant risk. It used to be you had to assume there'd be a trap door between you and the good stuff in (say) diagonal vaults. But that just no longer is the case. I pretty much stopped carrying disable trap rods when I realized this. Holy Infusions is the same.

2) ... unless your character is a rogue.
Also, it depends on the trap type. Be careful with trap doors.

[PowerWyrm]

1) don't touch molds and jellies and mushroom patches. Ignore them
2) don't touch traps. If you want to pass, delve around
3) the moment you see gravity hounds, run.
4) idem for Kavlax.
4A) I can't stress how useful it is to play with PURPLE uniques enabled from your Options in order to be able to apply #4.
5) keep rations in case you stumble on a potion of Salty Water
6) Set HP warning at 60% or more if paranoid
7) never leave base resistances ignored at ANY point
8) if it looks difficult, it is.
9) never leave the starting town without a Scroll (or other means, such as Rod) of Recall

1) That's why you have missile weapons... those immobile monsters won't harm you from distance, but you can
2) Traps are currently either harmless or mildly annoying, shouldn't be an issue
3) When you "see" a gravity hound, it's probably already too late, since many of its friends are probably nearby. Unless you're a warrior without ESP/rods of detection, use detection to avoid them.
4) The midgame can be harsh because of the following: Kavlax, Lorgan, Gorlim. Fight them much later on.
4A) Uniques are now uniques, you don't need purple color. Of course, in the old days, Kavlax was looking like a baby MHD...
5) Food is less an issue now, but keep a source of food ready in any case
6) Many veterans still use a 50% hp threshold here...
7A) Don't try to fight an ancient red dragon when you are actually vulnerable to fire
7B) Watch out when you swap around your equipment... you can still be killed at level 50 by one great ice wyrm breath if you forgot that your armor which you switched for a dwarven balance DSM was your only source of cold resistance.
8A) If it looks difficult, it will be less difficult later, so just move on.
9A) Never leave the town without MULTIPLE sources of recall, unless your DEX is at least 18/150 and you have fire immunity, because scrolls can be burned and rods can be stolen

10) Watch out for your light source if it's not permanent
11) If you can, detect often. The most dangerous stuff is stuff you cannot see.
12) Always have an escape ready
13) Nothing is "too good to use". Dead characters don't use items.
13A) "Too good to use" items are also very valuable. If a fight requires many high end supplies, just forget it.

[Estie]

ad 5) potions of cure wounds have a minor nutrition value; if no food and eating a mushroom of purging, drink a few till recall kicks in.

ad 6) I use colour code for hp reminder.

ad7) base resists are vital, but only relatively late; I prefer free action, see invis, even poison resistance if I can get it over rbase early on. rings/amulets of resist base elements - squelch as found; there are plenty better options.

@debo: lanterns cost a thousand bucks now; truly the shopkeepers have learned to rip @s off.

[Sideways]

2) Traps are currently either harmless or mildly annoying, shouldn't be an issue

Holy_Rage wrote this guide shortly after having a CL33/DL42 character insta-killed by a summoning trap.

@ walked into trap - AMHD appeared - having +10 speed, the AMHD got the move - AMHD breathed - dead @.

[Holy_Rage]

Thank you all for your feedback. This is meant to be a work in progress by someone who is slowly making their way down the depths of Angband for the first time and is chronicling their findings. My conclusions could be utterly wrong for all I know and that is very much a possibility. But it's fun discovering things and balancing priorities when you simply don't know a pip about what's going on around you.

Otherwise, the advice sounds great. Anyway, on to the next bullet set:

10) Speed - Damage - HPs = the holy triumvirate of Angband. It's better to kill fast than enter bouts of endurance. They only need to win once, you can't afford a single defeat.
11) Use Detection as much as possible and try going where treasure shows, not clear every single level room.
12) Detection - Telepathy - Clairvoyance = for the discerningly cautious player. Sense Evil and Detection afterwards at regular intervals. There is a certain helm artifact that allows you to Detect without being a spellcaster. For the poorer fellow newbie, Rods of Treasure Detection and Mushrooms of Second Sight.
13) Do not ignore or underestimate {A}ctivated abilities. They will save you more than once. Detection, lighting rooms and corridors, breath weapons, powerful bolt and ball attacks.
14) Establishing Line of Sight can be a blessing and a cause of utter doom at the same time. Make sure that the creature facing you is not a caster or has breath/ranged abilities. If so, when in doubt, seek to break LoS at all costs.
15) There are things out there that will kill you in one or two rounds. Max.
16) There is no need to burn all your resources on a tough Unique, when you could be clearing entire vaults in a cheaper and safer way.
17) My house, my castle, my pantry. Stocking the right stuff as you find them is apparently crucial. Sources of Banishment, *Destruction*, *Healing* are clearly a must for the discerning hoarder.
18) If playing a caster, keep two copies of each spellbook on your @. The weight is well worth finding yourself without the tools of your trade.
19) Save often when playing online. Pray all the time (applies to both online and offline mode!)

At CL 36/DL 49 now! See you soon for the next bullet set (hopefully!)

Ladder Link

[luneya]

Pfft. You didn't even mention buying a lantern.

A newbie couldn't possibly know about the classic "1. Buy Lantern 2. Kill Morgoth." That joke is from the 2.x era. In 3.x, the general store stopped carrying lanterns.

Plasma hounds, which WILL get you if you use teleport self regularly after CL 50.

I'll never forget my first encounter with those guys. I was playing something like a half-troll warrior, and had been able to kick the ass of all the low-level hounds at their initial depths; the plasmas were the first high-level hounds I ever saw. "Another pack of hounds? Kill them first so they don't wake up something dangerous with their beaths." *Wades into melee* *Immediately disintegrated by a half-dozen plasma breaths*

14) Establishing Line of Sight can be a blessing and a cause of utter doom at the same time. Make sure that the creature facing you is not a caster or has breath/ranged abilities. If so, when in doubt, seek to break LoS at all costs.

Another important reason for tracking whether your foes have ranged attacks is phase door. In a battle that you deem worth fighting against melee monsters, phase door (either the spell or a large stack of scrolls) is a good way to keep from being surrounded; it's a semi-reliable way to buy yourself time to quaff lower-level healing potions without having your gains immediately reversed by fresh monster attacks, thus letting you conserve rarer potions for more desperate situations; and it can be combined with recall for a risky-but-feasible desperation escape if you've been so foolish as to get into trouble without a better option. If the foes have ranged attacks, none of this is possible. Especially not in cases where the ranged attack is worse than the melee (high-level hounds, dragons, etc.). But it's still true that most of the monsters (especially in the early-to-midgame) are melee-only, so it's worth always carrying that big stack of phase door scrolls, at least until you've reached a level as a caster-class where the mana cost of the spell is trivial and the fail-rate is zero/minimal.

17) My house, my castle, my pantry. Stocking the right stuff as you find them is apparently crucial. Sources of Banishment, *Destruction*, *Healing* are clearly a must for the discerning hoarder.

Yes. Also be sure to stockpile speed potions (keeping either a staff of speed or a tithe of the total stock on hand for emergencies). If you're a caster, stockpile mana potions similarly. Likewise any attacking consumables that you might need for the endgame (wands of annihilation for mage, holy might arrows for ranger, etc.). But don't bother stockpiling the latter unless you're in a class that needs it; on rare occasions, a warrior who finds a really good launcher and a stack of suitable holy might projectiles will take on Morgoth at range, but until you find that lucky launcher, assume that you're prepping for a melee battle.

Don't be tempted to stockpile huge supplies of weapons (or if you do, make these the first things to toss when you run out of space). Store one weapon of the category "I can't wield this effectively yet, but it will be much better than my current item once I max str and dex" (and, in the early game, possibly an additional midgame weapon or two, for swapping purposes while in the stat-gain phase), and toss anything that's not as good. Storing swap equipment in other categories can be useful as a way to get around the "I found this great artifact but can't equip it without leaving a resistance hole" problem, but unless you are playing mage or ranger, your melee weapon is your primary killing machine, and any abilities that it may have that don't increase its actual damage are irrelevant. Thus, there is no reason to ever store a half dozen different ego weapons.

19) Save often when playing online. Pray all the time (applies to both online and offline mode!)

Praying probably won't help. But it can't hurt either, unless you start playing NetHack instead of Angband. So I guess it's worth a shot.

[Monkey Face]

A few comments:

10) Speed - Damage - HPs = the holy triumvirate of Angband. It's better to kill fast than enter bouts of endurance. They only need to win once, you can't afford a single defeat.

Speed is primarily to keep the opponent from getting multiple turns against you without you having a chance to respond.

11) Use Detection as much as possible and try going where treasure shows, not clear every single level room.
12) Detection - Telepathy - Clairvoyance = for the discerningly cautious player. Sense Evil and Detection afterwards at regular intervals. There is a certain helm artifact that allows you to Detect without being a spellcaster. For the poorer fellow newbie, Rods of Treasure Detection and Mushrooms of Second Sight.

Detection is primarily to detect monsters and enabling you to stay away from the ones you don't want to fight. Treasure detection is significantly less important.

14) Establishing Line of Sight can be a blessing and a cause of utter doom at the same time. Make sure that the creature facing you is not a caster or has breath/ranged abilities. If so, when in doubt, seek to break LoS at all costs.

Line of sight (LOS) is very important if you are using ranged attacks. The ideal situation is when the monster is in your line of sight but you are not in theirs. This will allow you free shots. It's especially useful for monsters that don't chase you such as Q's. The way to do this is to be two spaces away from a corner while the enemy is at the last spot around the corner. (Search the forums for hockey stick for more details.)

14)18) If playing a caster, keep two copies of each spellbook on your @. The weight is well worth finding yourself without the tools of your trade.

Once your dexterity is high enough that you can't be stolen from, you don't need to worry about keeping extra copies of the dungeon only books (the ones after the first 4). They can't be burned. If you have fire immunity and high dexterity you don't need extras of any of them.

[Pete Mack]

@Monkeyface: speed also increases damage proportionally. At 2x speed, you do 2x damage per turn. In a dragon out fight, the figure of merit is :

Damage*ENERGY*((HPMAX-HPMIN)/HPMIN+1)
Where energy is the discounted speed (identical up to 24 or so, with rapidly diminishing returns after speed 30)
HPMIN is the minimum HP safe to have vs. your current enemy. For Morgoth, that's 600. You can normalize this by dividing by energy*damge for the current enemy.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Pfft. You didn't even mention buying a lantern.

Or a shovel, just a shovel, no other weapon, just a bog, ordinary, store bought, shovel. Go forth and kill Morgoth with that shovel.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

4A) Uniques are now uniques, you don't need purple color. Of course, in the old days, Kavlax was looking like a baby MHD...

If you play using ASCII, playing with purple enabled is still important.

[Sky]

How much damage can you even do with a (+15,+15) shovel? 250?