Knowledge base

[CivBesch]

My character now died a dozen times. With the last one I reached level 11, but at a depth of 600 I triggered a summon monster trap and was immediately attacked by a Cobra. Blind, poisoned, no scroll or book reading (Priest). The only thing I could do was die. It took me a few turns of slinging excellent shots with an excellent sling, before I realised he was actually summoned to my left, not to my right. By that time I was very weak and very poisoned. No books or scrolls could be read. No idea what I could have done.

Now here is my question. I read somewhere that it is advisable for a newbie to allow to see the whole knowledge base about monsters in game, even if you had not yet fought them. Can anyone help me how to do that? I could not find it in the standard game options ('=').

On the Mac I could not find where those .txt files are stored (if that is where it should be done).

Thanks for any help

[Sky]

you couldn't drink a potion of cure wounds?

[CivBesch]

I'll have to remember taking that always with me, but sadly occupying a slot

[Mondkalb]

Never walk around the dungeon without a means of healing (or escape, like phase door / teleport level and so on).

[CivBesch]

Thanks for the help, I'll keep that in mind.
Can anyone help me with the option 'knowledge base'?

[Gwarl]

copy monster.txt from /lib/gamedata to /lib and rename it lore.txt

But more importantly, carry potions of cure * wounds even if you're a priest. You need some way to cure blindness/confusion and even if your spells do that you can't use them.

[CivBesch]

thank you for the additional info on blind/confusion.

I cannot find either 'monster.txt' nor '/lib/gamedata' on my mac

[Nick]

I cannot find either 'monster.txt' nor '/lib/gamedata' on my mac

On macOS, you can find all the text datafiles as follows:

1. Open the folder with your Angband application in it in finder
2. Right click (or control-click, or double tap on a trackpad), and then choose "Show package contents"
3. Follow down through Contents > Resources > lib > gamedata

Now all you need to do is copy monster.txt, paste the copy into your Documents/Angband folder, and rename it to 'lore.txt'.

[kandrc]

I'll have to remember taking that always with me, but sadly occupying a slot

Level 11 characters don't need to worry about slots. And regardless of level, multiple slots should be devoted to healing. By level 11, I usually have all three basic healing potions in my inventory (only CLW is purchased, the others found). I'll also probably have cure blind. If lucky, I might have staff of CLW or rod of curing. Lose your worthless wands and staves, and weapons and armor that you'll never use. Don't lose healing and escapes.

[Derakon]

Lose your worthless wands and staves, and weapons and armor that you'll never use.

This is tricky advice to follow when you don't know which wands/staves/equipment are worthless and which are useful.

But as a rule of thumb, devices that deal direct damage or help you to know what's going on around you (e.g. detection, mapping) are probably more useful than the other devices you may have access to at this point in the game.

[CivBesch]

Thanks for the advice. I'll certainly keep it.

But at the moment I am back to level 3 after having been at level 5, due to the following:

Something quite special actually happened twice now, playing Angband. Something I have never experienced before in the dozen of years of using Mac. You see, having been a certified system engineer from Microsoft, it is very common that Windows blocks and needs to be restarted. It also does happen with Mac but only seldom. Usually forcing the program that blocks to quit solves the problem. Rarely one has to restart the pc and only booting it down using the menu's. But now I experienced something never having happened before: while playing angband - not only once but twice in a few hours time: in the midst of the game both the mouse and the keyboard completely blocked - never seen this before!

the only solution is to hard-restart using the start-button. All the experience made was lost. This time, the second time, I had lost all the experience up to level 5 and was thrown back to level 3.

Quite a bug - and quite powerful - in angband!

[Pete Mack]

I somehow doubt it was angband that caused a hard system lock. It's a pretty lightweight user app.
In any case, a crash will lose (at most) the current dungeon level--which is to say, there isn't much difference between CL 3 and 5.

Things you should always, always carry:
Recall
A means of escape
Healing potions, of various strengths (unless you have pBlind, pConf, pStun, and a 0%fail healing spell)
Very early in the game, heal consists of CLW or CSW, and escape consists of ?Phase Door in combination with ?Recall. Soon you'll get Portal spell, which is a rather better escape. Later, always carry a staff of teleportation (unless you are immune to blindness and confusion.)
Good to have:
A means to prevent fear (! Heroism)
A means of Haste self (don't waste speed potions unless you have a good supply already)
A means of doing damage at a distance. Even flasks of oil are adequate in the first 5 dungeon levels or so.