A Total Newbie Guide by an Almost Total Newbie

[kandrc]

I did it just last week with everything but nexus and nether, but only +15 base speed and 8 !speed. Was having really bad luck with speed drops, but didn't feel like grinding.

[Pete Mack]

Yep. I've done it (once) without rElec, though I did have temporary resist.

[PowerWyrm]

Frankly you can go after Morgoth naked, provided you got the hps, damage and speed to beat him. Once I won with a character, and only after I posted the dump here I realized I didn't even have FA for the fight and my saving throw was not even 100%.

[Pete Mack]

Going against M without rPoison (or some other important resist) is plausible. You just have to make sure that you teleport away any summoned monsters that breathe the element in question before it gets a chance.
But it only makes sense for really fast divers who are having trouble scraping together a winning combination. Otherwise, it's better to cover the whole.

[wobbly]

It was fine, you just managed to swap out rpoison. Not sure whether you didn't notice or you thought you were fine without it. I've done stuff like that, find something awesome & only later realize something crucial was in that slot.

[Holy_Rage]

Holy_Rage, who started this thread, got his priest to DL99 (in Morgoth-ready shape) with essentially no melee at all.

It was slow and arduous, but it felt safe. I have no idea how the build would have fared against Morgoth. From the end result though, the build was proven to be -not- safe. Or rather, perhaps the build was safe, but my playing of it was not good. (latter probably truer than the former, I doubt there is any kind of safe mode within Angband)

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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?

[Mondkalb]

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

That is ... a lot.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.