What am I doing wrong?

[Philip]

Definitely don't fight lesser balrogs, they're generally relatively easy to avoid, difficult to fight, and their drops are pretty worthless.

Pits are fun, yes.

If necessary, don't feel too bad about swapping Narthanc out for a stat-stick of some sort, melee shouldn't be too important, especially for a Ranger with Belthronding.

You have enough hp to fight Kavlax probably, it's just still not really going to be worth the expense.

Otherwise you seem to be doing quite fine.

[Moving Pictures]

Update

Alright. I've taken some of the advice here. Now plunged to 50+, at level 42. Picked up longbow "Beltronding" which is really an upgrade on the longbow of power; helping keep things at range. Also nabbed an amulet that gives +CON and law dragon armour.

AC: 167
HP: 622
SP: 261

Question: Lesser balrogs ... attack or avoid at this stage?

My prime concern now is that Narthanc (upped two points with scrolls) remains the melee weapon. Every item found so far, even the specials, don't give me anywhere near the same damage output. (Caithris excluded: ain't gonna touch that baby.)

I'm not getting level drained as much (save for a single all-stat loss caused by a time vortex mugging).

Essentially, I'm stalking dragons at the moment. Keep running into Kevlax, and I figure at some point, I'm going to crack and go after the blighter.

PS: what sadistic mind creates an open vault of vampires? Had a TP level drop me a few spaces down from an open-door vaultish thing of pretty much every flavour of Vlad imaginable. I took advice and bounced out of that level pronto, but ... yeesh!

[Pete Mack]

There is no conflict between vaults and avoiding fights, most of the time.
1. Use stealth. If the monster doesn't wake up, he is no risk
2. Use knight's move exploit to teleport it away. You get a free shot at a monster at the same speed as you, even if TO fails. If you have 0-fail, this is a no-brainer.
3. Take the occasional < 1% risk of dying (with low-fail mage teleport other.) If you take these risks in a controlled manner, the odds of gaining significant character power from a vault will outweigh a low % chance of instadeath.
4. You can sometimes afford to take a monster for a couple turns, but can't afford to actually fight it all the way.

[ewert]

Lots of advice around, but I'll just throw in my generic two cents. I usually play a mix of dive and grind. And I have a bad streak of completionist in me in Angband somehow. Winning the game without killing all the uniques, max level, all resists + immunes feels inadequate.

Anyways, some generic outline hints from me:
Startup, flasks of oil, phase doors, grind levels 2-3 for a couple levels and some cash to get a shooter and basic gear. You better be near stairs or have enough flasks + phases when the dogs come for you.

After you get some basic shooter going for you, drop down to 10. Farm levels for basic resists, FA, SI, an okay melee and ranged weapon. Some game changers are rings of escape for priest/mage/ranger (ez mode... feels like cheating). Depending on how lucky, careful and skilled you are, you can slowly go down to 20 at the same time. Don't pass 20 without base 4 and SI/FA.

The mentioned detect stuff is important. Use hotkeys and @m1 inscriptions on your stuff by the way. And @z1, @q1, @a1 et cetera. So you inscribe your first magic book @m1, and you can cast spells with m1a instead of maa. If your inventory ever changes, you will still get the right spell off. Also MUCH faster, heh. I always have ^D (ctrl-d) as a detect spell, with ^F and ^G as well for detection (with priest currently detection + map level on ^D^F). I commonly use "x" for Cast-my-basic-dmg-spell-at-nearest-monster. The F-keys for spells without autotargeting. "h" is already game-default as "shoot my weakest missile at nearest monster". You can also use your ranged attack first, like "shoot orb of draining at unique behind small monsters", then use "n" to repeat same shot without having to worry about targeting again.

After you feel you can go past 20 (a couple lucky stat-swap potions for your spellcasting stat helps a ton!), start dropping down to mid 30s. This is usually the make or break time. You either die, or you win the game barring inattention and screwing up. In the low/mid 30s, you carefully pick your battles, loots stuff from ground, to get setup with good enough stats (for mage/priest very easy, just int or wis and con), whatever lucky drops you get, good shooter, nexus resist (time lost from having to redo stats is just too darn bad), base4+poison hopefully (you can live without poison but if you need these hints, you probably won't).

Full utility set of stuff! That is confusion/blindness safe stuff (staff of teleport, CCW potions), escapes (method of teleport, teleport level method, potions of speed can be used for escapes too), vault clearing (granite wall digging with wand or something else, teleport other), healing (phase+staves of CLW, lots of CCW, some !healing). Probing if you are still learning the game! When you see a monster that can throw mana storms, or breathe for 1600 damage, disenchant or drain charges with melee hits, et cetera, probing saves the day.

Getting some basic speed is incredibly useful. Depends on luck though. _Enough CON!_ Seriously. The closer you get to 18/200, the better. A +6 =Con is nothing to scoff at!

After that, I often just slowly descend picking my battles. By 50-60 you should have found speed items, if you haven't time to stop again. Slowly you should be maxed stats, getting some lucky finds, have a great weapon/ranged, et cetera. After that it is just not being stupid, not being careless, and continuing on. At some point, usually 60-70s, I reach a point where I just kinda go "alrighty lets roll", and depending on character I just pretty much drop down to 90+ clearing only opportunity targets. With priests, that's usually clearing what look like interesting vaults on the level (spell weaker version of enlightenment is so juicy). I often kill all but the most deadly uniques on the way... but that's me, definitely don't do that if you are new to the deep levels.

Sauron and Morgoth are usually just a tedious chore for me, but that's a whole other topic how to prepare for them.

[Madoka]

I'm a bit of a newbie myself, having never won the game.

Has the player been unlucky in his drops? He doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of good swag, especially weapons. I'm usually able to ditch the "thanc" daggers by the time I get to level 40. Is part of the problem that once he's forced to melee, he can't hit hard enough?

[Philip]

Eh, everyone has to learn that the elemental uniques are useless wastes of time somehow. All the other uniques before them have at least one drop, so it makes sense to assume they will too.

I don't actually know how status effects work these days, I'm afraid.

[Moving Pictures]

You don't have to fight uniques, though in the first 40 levels or so, it's one of the few reliable ways of generating an object as good, which can be quite handy. Never fight Gorlim he is bad. The other uniques, I recommend not fighting, essentially. Some of the late-game ones you might want to fight to avoid them getting summoned in to the final fight, but there is no good reason ever to fight, like, Vargo or someone.

Vargo. Fire elemental. Went down ea.... no, no, I would *never* do that.

And don't fight Kavlax or Gorlim.

Ran into Kavlax. On a 5-7 level, 37 or so. Made the error of "ooh, that's just a big multi-coloured dragon ..., failed to verify, and then had a near-death experience.


Here's a question: how come "slow monster" almost never works? I am seriously thinking about ditching the rods of slow I have, since anything they can/do slow, I can handle, and anything I really need them to slow, they don't.

[Philip]

You don't have to fight uniques, though in the first 40 levels or so, it's one of the few reliable ways of generating an object as good, which can be quite handy. Never fight Gorlim he is bad. The other uniques, I recommend not fighting, essentially. Some of the late-game ones you might want to fight to avoid them getting summoned in to the final fight, but there is no good reason ever to fight, like, Vargo or someone.

You don't really have to fight uniques to get stuff later on, and you don't have to fight most of them to keep them out of the final fight. They are a fun challenge, but if you would like to win, I recommend waiting until you serious out-level them. And don't fight Kavlax or Gorlim.

In your situation, I would focus on, say, ancient dragons, like you seem to have already done. They drop pretty well on average, give good xp, and they are relatively easy to take out, especially if you have temp speed and distance attacks. Less good for xp but pretty good for stuff are ordinary boring pack monsters, vrocks (don't fight them in melee though). Dunno about anything else at your dlvl, really. Mostly just avoid undead and things that can summon, because that stuff can get out of hand.

[Sideways]

A couple nitpicks. Going slow does not require you to clear levels, and you should not do so. A level clearer does not have a safe level to teleport into. If you rely on having a clear space to teleport into you will probably die, when something capable of moderate burst damage breathes on you after you teleported away from a vault with 130 hp.

I think you overestimate the risk (and monster generation rates on cleared levels) because level clearing isn't something you do. It's true the risk isn't zero, but it's really very close to zero; so close to zero as to be vanishingly unlikely to kill you even over the course of a long game. The risk may be higher in older versions or variants with different monster spawning, but in today's Angband teleports like that are essentially safe, unless Nick changed things since I last played Vanilla. (Also, it's not true that new monsters will spawn awake, at least not in 3.5.1 which Moving Pictures is playing. They spawn with their usual sleep status, which for most of them is asleep.)

That said, of course it's still not the ideal solution. But if a scroll of phase door is guaranteed to put you into a known space with no monsters (say, you're in a zigzagging anti-summoning corridor and there's just the one monster around and you were meleeing him), that's a perfectly safe escape.

[Moving Pictures]

I would not have gone out of my way to engage the sorcerer, and would have even gone out of my way to avoid them, and done my best to avoid the death knights too, they're pretty horrible. I would have probably walked right down the corridor away from the colossus because I am lazy and they are slow.

So what DO you engage, a char at this level/skill/output/capacity?

Make sure you still have Free Action, assuming you swapped out the cloak, it was your boots giving you that.

Good catch.

No matter how many opponents you have, it seems unlikely to me that your best use of your time and mana would be direct damage spellcasting. I would probably avoid that in the future to avoid resting time (monsters spawn while you rest).

OK, maybe I am being entirely slow and stupid here, but ... how do you gain experience points (thus hit points/mana) unless you engage the occasional monster? I mean, at level 1/2, that kobold was a huge boost forward, dangerous critter though it was.

I imagine that perhaps I would been on the lookout for a way off the level the moment I knew there was a Death Knight out there looking for me, especially if I knew there were two of them, because I really don't like those.

What about uniques? At some point, you gotta face 'em, no?

[Philip]

I would not have gone out of my way to engage the sorcerer, and would have even gone out of my way to avoid them, and done my best to avoid the death knights too, they're pretty horrible. I would have probably walked right down the corridor away from the colossus because I am lazy and they are slow. The boots are a great find, you're suddenly doing way more damage now and are less likely to die from a double-move (speed also helps with stealth, by the way, since less turns spent doing things means less turns when monsters can notice you). Make sure you still have Free Action, assuming you swapped out the cloak, it was your boots giving you that.

No matter how many opponents you have, it seems unlikely to me that your best use of your time and mana would be direct damage spellcasting. I would probably avoid that in the future to avoid resting time (monsters spawn while you rest).

When I say run away, if you're in line of sight of the monster and the monster is not a colossus, I basically always mean teleport or teleport level. Walking is almost never worthwhile, and phase door is for repositioning, not as an escape.

Losing all 3 healing potions at once is extremely unfortunate, and I imagine I would have acted similarly to you there.

I imagine that perhaps I would been on the lookout for a way off the level the moment I knew there was a Death Knight out there looking for me, especially if I knew there were two of them, because I really don't like those.

[Moving Pictures]

Alright. So I did as you said: loaded up on the sneaky/stealthy stuff.

Zapped into a level. Got mugged by a nether wraith; managed to hold it off so it didn’t touch. Got mugged by a death knight, teleported it. Disposed of a hydra. That cleared the room ....

Detected doors/traps/stairs.

it’s a 4-5 level.

Snoop about. Murder a baby gold dragon in its slumber, same with a snake. Pick up a hydra .. prepare to line it up at 10 squares, and....

right around the corner is a shadow. ESP didn’t get it, so now I’m toe-to-toe with another level drainer. Marvy – but it didn’t notice, so I murder it.

So now I have a four-head hydra, death knight and a young white dragon in LOS. Knight is my worry, dragons I can handle.

Run away? I step back, but the Death knight whacks me with a spell while I’m retreating, a spell that’s resisted. (confusion, no doubt). I could flee, but it goes fast. Death knight resists cold, so I go with ring of ... acid, which I took off for that CON bonus. Right. I’m not hurt.

DN resists light, which means the psudeuodragon scale is a 50-50 waste of time for 200 points output.

I go for a potion of speed. I still have a turn (not sure how that happens, I’m usually mugged by now).
Now I ponder my offence:
acid ball; 79 damage, 24 mana, 7% failure rate.
Fire ball: 94 damage, 28 mana and a not-so-friendly 29% failure rate.
Now, wtf, acid ball. Best offensive tool I have, I think.

Acid ball fails, white dragon wakes up, bathes me in 20 pts damage that costs me a potion of speed.
Frigit. I drop the armour on it. I breathe dark (whew!) which hits all three. DK is down to half his points. He summons buddies, one of which is .... a shiny new death knight?

White dragon breaths, I lose all three of my healing potions. So I am now down to 11 CCW.
I teleport.

Dragon, red, 15 south, bunch of bandits and a pair of easterling warriors east, 12. Step one east, oh, look, an iron golem.
Mop up the miscreants, ignore golem, go after dracos. Ancient red, in a small room. Load up on resist heat. Spell haste. Open door. Step back; at four squares let loose with the armor. Punch in five arrows before it closes to my square. Prepare to nail it with a ball of acid from the ring that ... frig, I don’t have. (the ring of flames ain’t gonna do much.) Zap rod of cold balls. Knocks another third off. I have yet to sustain a point of damage, feeling ok, decide to settle this the old-fashioned way. It nibbles me for 20 or so points, but sustains eight hits in the process, and flees. Finish it off with an arrrow. Normal axe, normal bow, garnets, potion of wisdom (can’t use: maxxed) is all it drops.

Used up enough arrows now that I can snag a scroll of dispel undead.

Kill a few minor things (elven warrior), find a random bow. Identify: Not better than the one I have, leave it.... and am mugged by a DN. Bolt of netehr, and I’m 100 points down. My fault, didnt scan screen, I think. This is the new friend summoned by the otehr guy, who is down a hall
Haste self (spell); step into LOS, to find a fire elemental halfway between us. Fire spirit bites it on the first arrow. I punch six others into DN, and he/she drops. So far so good. See white dragon/wolf chieftain/evil eye scattered nearby, and proceed to stalk those. Dragon comes after, bites it on four arrows; woolf chieftain needs six or seven. Kill evil eye. Mop up.
Scroll of enchant armour: use this to boost the acid-mangled gloves of agility. They are now 1+2.
shovel (meh), scroll identify (meh) staff identify (hmmm) ... hydra sneaking up. Still hasted. Sneak into LOS. Engagement with 4-head at two squares. Cold ball rod first. Takes it down to two red asterisks. It closes to one square, a rod of frost bolts finishes it. Garnets? Meh.
Still on speed, find nearest critters, a couple of areneas. Squish at range with arrows. Oh, garnets. Meh. Heal, cast a detect monsters, get nothing.

Wander down hall. Find a colossus. At three squares range. (esp no use, right). Knowledge base says it doesn’t resist acid, so we’ll use the ri.... ball of acid? It blocking a way, moves slowly. Acid ball it be.... at three squares.
Didn’t do a thing.
So we do this old-school. It chases me (slowly) up the hall while I empty the quiver.
It dies, no drops.

Later: gravity hounds. Run, sayeth thee, so run. I TP out of there (using spell)
Later: find the other DN, on the other side of some rubble. Plan of action: haste self, resistance, sheild, rock to mud, and a heavy dose of arrows at loong range.
First haste failed; so did the first sheild. Anticlimatic, DN does no summoning, and falls after moving about three squares.
That’s how I like ‘em: dead at long range, with arrows. He drops a ring of protection and a minor magic weapon.
Rest sp.
Scan for critters. Sorcerer way west, and a ghost.
Both go down quickly. Random item:: boots of speed +5. I say sacrifice stealth for speed. Don new footgear. Drop scroll of dispel undead to create space.
Sorcerer dropped a potion of Aug, useless (maxed), so ignore.
Next, dragon. Gold. Ancient.
armor/fire ring/cold ball wand softens it up; arrows do the rest. Its only impact – a spell of fear. Meh.
Drops garnets (wtf?) and gold. Meh.
Another ancient gold drops an amulet of wisdom. Meh.
Spell picks up treasure near a nine-head hydra. Tunnel to section (Two walls, no big, using stone to mud) to avoid gravity hounds. Refrigerants at range take care of issue.
Topside to drop off old boots.

Save for the teleport others, this is pretty consistent with my playing style.
Thoughts?

[Philip]

A couple nitpicks. Going slow does not require you to clear levels, and you should not do so. A level clearer does not have a safe level to teleport into. If you rely on having a clear space to teleport into you will probably die, when something capable of moderate burst damage breathes on you after you teleported away from a vault with 130 hp. Not only do monsters spawn on levels, they always spawn awake. Never rely on a teleport being safe. The only safe teleport is a teleport level, and that's mostly theoretical. The only safe escape is *Destruction*.

Level clearing is, as it stands, bad strategy. You see more stuff by changing levels rapidly, since you backtrack less, you find more vaults, since you explore more area, and you find more sleeping monsters, which gives you more choice in where, when, and how to engage. Going slow is a perfectly viable strategy, it's just that fully clearing a level is not a great way to execute that strategy (unless you find it fun, satisfying, or part of the challenge, which I understand).

[Sideways]

OFirst, others are espousing the "Run Away/avoid combat" approach. Vaults are inconsistent with this.

Correct. Those are two fundamentally very different approaches to the game: the grinding one, and the diving one.

The diving approach is the "in" style, the popular one, the cool one; and it's a very good way to win, and other people here are doing a fairly good job of explaining how to win with it. The other approach, though, while painfully slow (and considerably less cool), is still also a winning one; and since it's much closer to how you've been playing so far, I thought it might make sense to explain how to win with that approach as well, without necessarily espousing it. The needs of that approach are very different from the needs of the other approach, so the advice will be different too.

It's quite possible to find great stuff, even endgame-quality stuff, at 2000'... but you need to either be really, really, really lucky, or clear vaults. Because you're going slower than a diving character would, you are strong for the depth; and even without the extreme, exploity case (hockey sticks), you could probably actually kill many of the bad uniques/other tough guys you see in those vaults, through good use of tactics. Since you "ought" to be deeper, it's not surprising if you can fight out-of-depth monsters with success, and your higher HP gives you more margin for error (as does the fact that a level-clearer has a clear level to teleport into if the fight goes wahoonie-shaped). As Philip noted, though, killing all the big guys is not necessary to clear a vault; you can just teleport (or even lure) the worst ones away, kill the less tough guys (or even teleport them as well), and grab the loot.

None of the above applies or is intended to apply in any way to the fast diving approach that most people here advocate, apart from that bit about teleporting away the bad guys and grabbing the loot. Much of what Philip's said, by contrast, is good general advice that you should take heed of regardless of your diving speed. Fast or slow, you'll still deal with nether wraiths the same way: make the terrain work for you, not it, and use phase door.

Don't worry about your AC; it's high - especially with Shield - even by the standards of a melee character. And as Philip noted, you should probably rely on melee less - though to some extent, the slow grinding approach does go together with an increase in melee use, and also mana use.

[Thraalbee]

#1 rule: it's not "can kill it or not". It's "do I afford to engage with it right now right here? "