"New" to Angband, looking for next steps

[jpers36]

I installed Angband 4.1.2 a couple weeks ago after a 15 year hiatus. Back then I never could get too far, but this time around I'm still on my first character, a Human Warrior. I've reached lvl29 and dlvl33 and I'm trying to figure out what my next steps should be. Am I diving too deep? Too shallow? Am I missing any critical protection? Misusing my items?

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21574

[Sphara]

More detection items would be good. Rod of detection and staff of detect evil appear around these depths. Holhenneth does have monster detection but it does have rather long recharging time.

Poison breathers start to appear and you'd want rPois ring as soon as possible. Well at least as long as you have no detection. Basilisk can breathe this character dead quite fast.

Azaghal is a wonderful backup weapon but you'd want to wield the axe of Hurin any other time you're not fighting fire-based monsters. At the moment, Hurin-axe does more damage to almost anything besides dragons and after few more STR/DEX points, it will do significantly more compared to Azaghal.

[Estie]

Thats a good character; youre at a depth where you can kill everything. Sooner or later that situation is going to change - sooner if you start descending now. Next things to look out for are poison resistance, teleport other wand, ESP and always more speed.

You can dump your pebbles; by the time you find a sling better than your xbow, you will see mithril shots. Your xbow is very nice, consider carrying another stack of bolts, basic ones from the market will do till you get better. Mushrooms of clear mind also are superfluous with your helmet. If/when you go deeper, consider carrying staves of detect evil, you might want to detect faster than your helmet recharges. The mage store sells them occasionally.

Bon voyage.

[Pete Mack]

That's a powerful character. Detection from your helmet is fantastic at dl 33. As Estie said, if you need more detection, a staff of Detect Evil is a good backup. There are a few monsters you should never approach without rPoison. Learn them and give them a wide berth--or simply leave the level if they wake up. Before DL 55 or so, this is the list, more or less. (I may have forgotten one.)
* drolem
* greater basilisk
* Ancient multi-hued dragon
Keep an eye out for a better amulet. Just about anything is better than a redundant resist electricity

[jpers36]

Thanks all! I'm dropping the unnecessary stuff, swapping primary weapon, and I'll be looking for poison resistance and detect evil before I go too much deeper.

[Grotug]

Boots of speed on level 1, eh?

Just a reminder that staves of detect evil don't detect the most terrible and dangerous monster of DL42 native depth, the Drolem. If you find a rod of detection; absolutely keep it; very key item. Basilisks and Greater Basilisks breathe a lot so if you see one, know that the greater basilisk will kill you pretty much instantly, and the lesser one will make short work of you, though since your xbow is so powerful if you can get the first shot on it before it wakes up I would take it on (exercising great caution). The greater basilisks are native to DL45, so you shouldn't see any roaming around outside of vaults for some time yet.

One thing I learned recently is that at your depth an armor of resistance with good AC is better than the following low-AC armors of Elvenkind: rSound, rShard, rNether, rLight, rDark, rChaos (with rChaos a maybe). These resistances are not very important at your depth, (most sound breathers you will be killing dead before they get a chance to breathe on you, and the ones that you won't kill easily, you probably don't want to deal with at all). If you find a low-AC armor of elvenkind rDisenchant, I'd probably keep it, especially for a newer player, as I hate having my artifacts/high enchantment gear get wrecked. And definitely if you find any armor of rPois you keep it, (although if it's a robe, it's not quite as clear cut of a decision, as you definitely don't want to let your AC drop too low). Your armor of Elvenkind has pretty low AC. Also, any shield with more AC than your rAcid shield is better, since having a resistance twice confers no additional benefit.

Ideally, you'd find a shield of Elvenkind rPois and wear a high AC Dwarven armor, freeing up the finger for a ring of damage or a ring of rPois.

By spending little time on each level, and little time in each area, you reduce the risk of being surprised by something nasty; keep moving to points of interest and leaving levels if there is nothing super interesting keeping you there. It would be great to find a regeneration item since your stealth isn't very good, meaning that resting isn't very safe.

[Derakon]

Drolems are rare and don't wake up all that easily. Yes, they can deal stupendous amounts of damage and you should avoid them if you lack poison resistance, but I wouldn't stop diving for fear of them.

The resists on Elvenkind armor often aren't worth as much as the stealth bonus, but stealth is one of those things where it's only really useful in certain ranges. If your stealth is terrible, than +1 or +2 isn't going to make a huge difference, and if it's good enough that already nothing wakes up, then again it makes little difference. You want more stealth mostly when you're in that "yellow" range on the character screen, in my experience. Or if you plan to spend a lot of time around sleeping monsters that you really don't want waking up (e.g. sneaking around vaults).

[Moving Pictures]

.... If your stealth is terrible, than +1 or +2 isn't going to make a huge difference, and if it's good enough that already nothing wakes up, then again it makes little difference.

This.

I made a wretched mistake in my last deep-diver. Gave up on 302 AC for a bit more speed, a bit more stealth. It was not, in any way, a wise move. I panicked, forced descent, and was only at a 25-ish speed, wanted 30+ native. Should have kept armour as it was, relied on 302 and a rod of speed to get the job done.

Ironically, I think it was a concern over nether resistance that moved me out of the 302 into 250-ish, and the end result of @'s death? Nether.... a

[Sideways]

edited out because I'm an idiot

[Derakon]

Unless Nick has changed it recently, AC effectively maxes out at 240 and any extra AC beyond that is useless.

Is that in the various PosChengband subvariants? Because at some point Vanilla inflated AC values by IIRC 50%.

[Sideways]

Ignore what I said, it's totally wrong. Damage reduction from AC does max out at 240 but higher AC can still affect hit rates. (Pos-likes have different, lower caps.)

[Estie]

This.

I made a wretched mistake in my last deep-diver. Gave up on 302 AC for a bit more speed, a bit more stealth. It was not, in any way, a wise move. I panicked, forced descent, and was only at a 25-ish speed, wanted 30+ native. Should have kept armour as it was, relied on 302 and a rod of speed to get the job done.

Ironically, I think it was a concern over nether resistance that moved me out of the 302 into 250-ish, and the end result of @'s death? Nether.... a

AC only protects against melee damage. Mosters that do high melee damage are few and far between, combatting them for more than 1 round is a concious decision and so avoidable and even if you happen to take a large chunk in 1 round, it costs 1 ?phase at most to recover the situation.

If you die because your AC was 250 and not 300, you have bad habits.

[Derakon]

AC only protects against melee damage. Mosters that do high melee damage are few and far between, combatting them for more than 1 round is a concious decision and so avoidable and even if you happen to take a large chunk in 1 round, it costs 1 ?phase at most to recover the situation.

If you die because your AC was 250 and not 300, you have bad habits.

What's worse is that a lot of melee attacks deal full damage regardless of your AC. I think any attack that has a special effect (like burn, confuse, drain, etc.) listed on the monster memory, or that uses non-impactful verbs like touch, gaze, shriek, etc. does not have its damage mitigated by AC. In particular, titans all hit to confuse, which means that you're taking a full 12d12 (for greater titans, 9d9 for lesser, 13d13 for Atlas) from every blow that hits you.

The monster will still have more trouble actually hitting you if you have high AC. So it's not worthless.

[jpers36]

Thanks for all the advice, guys! I updated my character dump yesterday, and Sphara's already made some good recommendations!

[Moving Pictures]

AC only protects against melee damage. Mosters that do high melee damage are few and far between, combatting them for more than 1 round is a concious decision and so avoidable and even if you happen to take a large chunk in 1 round, it costs 1 ?phase at most to recover the situation.

If you die because your AC was 250 and not 300, you have bad habits.

The challenge I had was the forced descent/no recall, combined with the need to gear up for the last run. I was running into nasty nether-casters, and felt I needed a little *something* ti get a resist.

Forced D, I have found, puts a premium on making inventory decisions for the long term, with little room left for error. @, a warrior, had chewed up inventory, had little left, and was being chased all around LvL 92 (IIRC) by a couple of nasties, including a reaver, and the TO-and-run routine wasn't getting much traction. I had to make a decision: keep chewing up inventory running away, or try to make a fighting break to a stairway. Were it not for the FD, then a recall, or stair up, or Teleport Level would all been splendid options.

What I learn from that is not to discard teleport level just because of forced descent.