where are my arrows?

[Sky]

how rare exactly are arrows of slay evil?

i'm now at 7 million XP, have been grinding DL97 for over a dozen runs, and in the entire game i found ONE stack of plain arrows of slay evil, and no holy might. i think in my entire career i have found maybe 3 or 4 stacks of HM arrows (i see bolts of HM much more often, there was one already in this game).
but slay evil?? i can't even find unbranded seeker arrows, i must have found maybe 3 unbranded seeker and 4-5 unbranded mithril in the whole game .. and you know what my games are like. i've had time to find 2 rods of heal, 1 of restoration, a dragon armor artifact, every ring of power short of the one ring, but still no HM. wow.

[luneya]

Holy might is pretty rare. Slay evil less so; you've just been unlucky. If you don't find anything useful by the time you've hit max level and gotten a really awesome collection of loot in every other category, you can always just melee Morgoth. You won't have the benefit of overpowered ranger archery, but it's still perfectly winnable. (I'm assuming you're a ranger, because if you aren't, why are you wasting time looking for arrows?) People have managed to beat Morgoth to death with shovels; doing it with an endgame melee weapon isn't a problem.

[PowerWyrm]

Holy might is pretty rare. Slay evil less so; you've just been unlucky. If you don't find anything useful by the time you've hit max level and gotten a really awesome collection of loot in every other category, you can always just melee Morgoth. You won't have the benefit of overpowered ranger archery, but it's still perfectly winnable. (I'm assuming you're a ranger, because if you aren't, why are you wasting time looking for arrows?) People have managed to beat Morgoth to death with shovels; doing it with an endgame melee weapon isn't a problem.

People managed to beat Morgoth to death with fists, wearing no artifacts or even egos.

[Sky]

oh no no, that's not what i mean, at all. i *do* have overpowered archery, since i found a ring of power with +2 shots. must have forgot to mention it.

still, what the hecking fick, and diddily do, slay evil arrows shouldn't be so rare that i can max out a HE ranger and only find 20 or so of them. i did CL1-33 at DL30 and 33-48 at DL70, and i'm now at DL98. still nothing. haven't even found any good number of Wounding, i think i found maybe 3 stacks throughout the whole game.

[Derakon]

An artifactless egoless weaponless melee win? Are you sure about that? I've heard of each being done in isolation, but all three conducts in the same run...!

[PowerWyrm]

oh no no, that's not what i mean, at all. I *do* have overpowered archery, since i found a ring of power with +2 shots. Must have forgot to mention it.

maaaaaaaaaaan.....

[Estie]

Thats the thing with archery, you need so many stars to align for it to be imba that it rarely is imba.

Best chance for that kind of ammo are GVs; either keep farming, or cut your losses and kill Morgoth with whatever.

[Derakon]

Thats the thing with archery, you need so many stars to align for it to be imba that it rarely is imba.

Best chance for that kind of ammo are GVs; either keep farming, or cut your losses and kill Morgoth with whatever.

Good launchers show up pretty commonly; all you need is a source of extra shots. In Vanilla your choices are either to be a Ranger or to use a launcher with Extra Shots on it (since no good artifact launchers have Extra Shots), which rules out most artifacts. In randarts you can find off-slot Extra Shots and there can be good randart launchers that also have Extra Shots on them.

In other words, imbalance in standarts is mostly limited to rangers and anyone lucky enough to find a <+2, +2> Buckland sling with good +to-dam; imbalance in randarts is strictly more common because it has those two cases plus potentially other randart-based cases.

[Sky]

it's over. i won, he lost.

i actually had to bail out of my first fight, losing quite a bit of good quality arrows. luckily, on my second try, i found 3 stacks of seeker wounding arrows.

no *destruction, although i had kelek. i also had ONE scroll of banishment and zero MBan, but i did have 30 *heal, 30 heal, 30 mana, 7 Life, 3 rods of heal, and +20 base speed encumbered.

i spawned in the south east corner, and cleared the room (although i could have done so faster), nuked morgot with all i had from a rune of protection, and when he got close i TS to another corner.

if he summoned something strong, like a reaver, i would teleport it away.

instead he summoned dragons and liches. i'm dumb, so instead of teleporting morgot away, i would TS to the opposite side, and wait for him. When he shows up, i nuke him, and then TS back to the opposite side .. and clear out the room of his previous summons, while he comes back.

this has the slight advantage that, while you were fighting morgot, some of them might have moved through the dungeon.

shooting with a 5x Lothlorien (+14 damage, i later found a 4x +24 that did more damage), CL50 ranger with a randart ring of +2 shots.

i can't seem to win with anything besides overpowered characters. two rangers, 1 rogue with a ridiculous weapon with 800 vs evil, and one mage where i basically meleed morgoth and used just rune and MBan.

[kandrc]

i can't seem to win with anything besides overpowered characters

It's easy. You just go down sooner.

This isn't a "dive, dive, dive" post, clearly, since we're only talking about 1 DL. If you never die to Morgoth, you're waiting too long; frankly, it's not even fun if there's no real danger. My last winner took him on with 17 base speed (and only had, if I recall correctly, 7 speed potions). It's not at all rare that I face him with < 20 (though 17 is pretty low). Nor is it uncommon that I take him on while missing one or more of RBase.

And you said you had like 30 *heal*? I can't remember the last time I found that many in a whole game, let alone carried them to the final battle.

I also don't use banishment or mass banishment. I find both of them to be unbalancing.

[Grotug]

That is pretty strange. I seem to always find way too many arrows when I don't specialize in archery, but not that many when I am specifically playing as a ranger. Last game I found tons of wounding, tons of brands, demons, dragons, seekers etc. all before 65k turns.... It's probably one reason I don't like playing Ranger as I'm invariably to find a great melee weapon. HT/Warrior is good enough at archery to try it if I find a good launcher. And last last game I did it again: Found the best sling of buckland and some fine mithril shots of the Berskerker to go with them:

Sling: (+14, +26) <+4>, <+2>
Mithril Shots of the Berserker: (+30, +29). Didn't find any shots of holy might, and forgot to use my Rune of protection against M. I actually don't know how to use a rune of protection against Morgy as a ranger. He just moves wherever he wants. Can't he just move around the rune? Or do you mean you launch at him while he is in your face trying to melee you? I suppose that makes sense when you are doing 1200 dam a round. Seems a bit cheap/silly, though. Launchers are a ranged weapon, heh. My sling was only doing 840 per round with the evil shots I found.

There was one other game I played where I found pretty much the exact same sling. But my last game I ended up mostly meleeing Morgy. For me, if I'm in a place where I can shoot him from afar, he'll summon a bunch of stuff between me and him. I suppose I could banish or m/banish, but I feel a little bit like kandrc, not the funnest way to beat Morgoth. I find it a lot more fun to not use those and bounce all over the level, as it means I can't diddle daddle too long, for if I do, the level will be swarming with Reavers and 1600 breathing dragons etc. I usually have enough damage that I can close out the show with only a couple risks of death during the fight and before the summons get too out of hand. Most games I don't even bother with ?*destructions* as I find there's other stuff I'd prefer to take an inven slot in my home and on my person.

But fighting Morgy without all rBase or less than 20 speed seems pretty ballsy. I still remember that one time I was fooling around with different equipment setups in a GV near the bottom of the dungeon when a great dragon entered the GV off screen and breathed lightning on me when I didn't realize I lacked it and brought me to like 46hp.

Question about Randarts. Last three games I won I played with the same randarts, and all three games I found an acid/slay evil <+2> extra attacks scythe. An insanely good weapon. Now, in all the many games I played Standarts I only found Aule or ToW a few times each. I'm pretty sure the scythe in the randart game was better than the two Standart weapons. Is it easier to find better artifacts in a randart game than standart? There is at least one artifact in the Standart set I've never even found.

[Sky]

i had to figure it out on my own, a rune of protection is something you stand on, and monsters cannot attack you .. for a few turns.

i'm not 100% sure on this, but i think if you cast run *while* the monster is next to you, it only lasts 1 turn.

[Pete Mack]

@Grotug: as far as I know, there is no Holy Might mithril ammo for slings. Weaker ammo is the one weakness of Slings of Buckland. But even Slay Evil or Wounding shot is plenty deadly.

[Derakon]

i'm not 100% sure on this, but i think if you cast run *while* the monster is next to you, it only lasts 1 turn.

Monsters have a chance to break the rune, which chance depends on the monster's level. Morgoth is level 100, which doesn't guarantee that he'll break the rune, but his odds are still pretty good (for him, not for you).

[jevansau]

Because Rangers get the Rune spell, but don't otherwise have need for much mana vs Morgoth, sea of Runes is cheap but effective. What else are you going to do with the saved restore mana potions?