A Total Newbie Guide by an Almost Total Newbie

[CivBesch]

thanks for that information.

[PowerWyrm]

In that context, while going deeper, is there a chance that priests can gain strength in any way?
- temporarily?
- sustained strength?

As a priest, you don't care about strength. What you want is wisdom, and quickly, so you can build your mana pool and spam OoD. You will care about strength only for the end game, and at that point it will be probably maxed out naturally.

[CivBesch]

O, that's very interesting.

What's OoD?

[Mondkalb]

O, that's very interesting.

What's OoD?

Orb of Draining - THE priest spell (together with healing spells of course)

[Sideways]

Priests can't do it, but the issue is not damage, it's lack of stone to mud. If you skip the forced descent and do levels multiple times, a priest could be successful in the approach, too, but it would be miserably slow.

See under: any of my priest winners. It's not that difficult to completely clear every level with a priest - even without using any line-of-sight tricks - if you take your time and don't dive too fast.

There isn't any one right way to play Angband. Do it your way and have fun.

[wobbly]

One thing about priest: Holy Orb is a fine spell up to around CL 30 or a bit later. Once you've got good melee damage and low-fail (5% or less) on healing spell, melee is probably cheaper than Orb in terms of risk and mana cost for most monsters. Orb is particularly terrible against non-evil monsters. Use devices or archery if your melee is bad and you're not doing well with Orb. Yes, it's better than most mage spells. But it's still not all that great at a high level.

A bit old but my own experience was this is not exactly true. I mean yes it is true that OOD does a poor job of damaging non-evil but Tele-Othering takes care of any non-evil big hp sacks. (Use the wands & recharge if you don't have the spell). On the other hand greater undead are mopped up pretty easily by OOD & worth a ton of xp. Enough that you won't miss the xp loss from not fighting a bunch of other stuff. A pit of them is worth a heap & if you're careful enough to look for & tele-other the black reavers away you can level quite fast this way.

I also Orbed both Sauron & Morgoth (backed up by anhiliation wands). It is slow, very slow but pretty safe (Note: I destructed the whole level with staves 1st which gives added safety to phase & teleport). So while melee-ing Morgoth is quicker than OOD I'm not convinced that finding an endgame melee priest weapon/setup is quicker than just decending & Orbing him.

[Derakon]

If I recall correctly, a level-50 priest does 225 damage/cast with Orb against evil targets. If they have a 400 DPR melee weapon and a 70% hit rate, then they'll be doing on average 280 damage/round in melee, and they'll need to be spending turns on healing (or re-casting Rune of Protection), phasing, etc. more often. Orb is absolutely competitive against Morgoth compared to the priest's other options; priests just have slow fights in general.

[kandrc]

A bit old but my own experience was this is not exactly true. I mean yes it is true that OOD does a poor job of damaging non-evil but Tele-Othering takes care of any non-evil big hp sacks. (Use the wands & recharge if you don't have the spell). On the other hand greater undead are mopped up pretty easily by OOD & worth a ton of xp. Enough that you won't miss the xp loss from not fighting a bunch of other stuff. A pit of them is worth a heap & if you're careful enough to look for & tele-other the black reavers away you can level quite fast this way.

I also Orbed both Sauron & Morgoth (backed up by anhiliation wands). It is slow, very slow but pretty safe (Note: I destructed the whole level with staves 1st which gives added safety to phase & teleport). So while melee-ing Morgoth is quicker than OOD I'm not convinced that finding an endgame melee priest weapon/setup is quicker than just decending & Orbing him.

I've Orbed S and M many times with priests. It's not a bad tactic at all, even if you can deal out good damage in melee. For instance, maybe your stats are borderline and you don't have sustains; restoration is expensive.

[CivBesch]

So if can orb Morgoth, I'll stick to my priest, but being at 450ft, the risk of meeting him is not too great.

Thanks also to Sideways. I'm now in my 342075th turn and enjoying it greatly. Isn't it fascinating to try and devise a strategy to beat every creature, without the pressure to go deeper fast and learning many tricks and combinations?

[Pete Mack]

Once you get reliable OoD and a good Mana pool, you can kill evil monsters fairly easily. But it's slow, and you still have to be careful not to get overwhelmed. Much later, you'll be using melee combined with healing, almost entirely. But we were talking about newbies here. For getting started, it's not an easy class.

[Mondkalb]

Thanks also to Sideways. I'm now in my 342075th turn and enjoying it greatly.

That is ... a lot.

[CivBesch]

Once you get reliable OoD and a good Mana pool, you can kill evil monsters fairly easily. But it's slow, and you still have to be careful not to get overwhelmed. Much later, you'll be using melee combined with healing, almost entirely. But we were talking about newbies here. For getting started, it's not an easy class.

Well, doesn't that mean that in time Strength would become very important, to fight better melees?

[kandrc]

my 342075th turn

When I was a newb, I'd go down, clear a dungeon level, and come up with loot to sell. If the shopkeepers were less than desirable, I'd go down the stairs and rest for 9999 turns and repeat. After everything was sold, I'd then go through a similar rigmarole to spend all my gold on stat potions (waiting for the BM to refresh). Oh, and don't forget haggling! If I got kicked out of a shop, that required many thousands of more waiting turns. Or shops could get full, and I'd wait for things to sell. Winners (or perhaps better, "winners") in those days had millions of turns. I don't think I was unusual.

These days, with no haggling and no bad shopkeepers, turncounts like that are outlandish. I've had mages stone-to-mud entire dungeons (fun exercise, especially at depth) and still couldn't get close to that.

Anyway, these players who still sell, I think that most of them are younger folks who don't remember the bad old days of haggling. Do they even know that they pay a convenience tax in the "auto-haggling" code? We may soon have calls to bring back haggling!

[Pete Mack]

Sure it becomes important. More to the point, so does dexterity. (It takes a long time to get more than two blows.) Wisdom and Constitution matter more, however. You can get by with bad melee.

[Sideways]

Holy_Rage, who started this thread, got his priest to DL99 (in Morgoth-ready shape) with essentially no melee at all. Realistically, though, a level-clearing priest is pretty much guaranteed to have good melee by the time he reaches the endgame (if he reaches the endgame...) and can use the melee/heal approach mentioned by Pete Mack.

Is 342075 the turncount shown by Shift+C, or the turncount shown by the hall of fame? If it's the latter... well, it's still high, even for a level-clearer, but not outlandishly high.