Fast diving, a myth?

**dstyle** · August 5, 2008, 12:40

Generally, I don't dive beyond dlev 25 or so without having FA and SI. Also at that point make it top priority to find an armor of Resistance (even if I have to buy it at the black market). I think that being at dlev 35 without rbase and FA is suicidal.

Rconf and Rblind, you can get by without, as long as you carry plenty of CCW potions and at least 2 Teleport staffs. But if you're spending all of your time teleporting, you're probably too deep. By nature, a mage has to dive more slowly than a warrior, priest, paladin, etc. Of course, remember to detect on every new screen, get telepathy if you can, etc, etc, and all the usual. Good luck.

**Zero** · August 6, 2008, 06:16

Hey there, welcome to the forums.

First, let me address something dstyle wrote:

> By nature, a mage has to dive more slowly than a warrior, priest, paladin, etc.

I disagree. I think mages can dive faster than any other class because the ease of detection and nice escapes allows a greater degree of safety, IMO.

Okay, now getting to the point of fast diving...

Just today, as it happens, I started a new high elf mage (to slack off with while at work). I only created one today, and starting from CL 1 in the town when I arrived for work, I was CL 33 at DL 98 with all mage books and some nice gear when I left. So, power diving is not a myth.

I was like you until just a few months ago. I've been playing Angband for over 10 years, but never came anywhere near DL 98, and would play a single character for a week or more just to get to stat-gain. Then I read kandrc's post (#9) in the thread "Mage's SP", and just couldn't believe that what he was describing could actually be done. But, for the hell of it, I gave it a shot, and died... a lot. I realize now that while his advice was very good, taking an absolute literal interpretation of "take every down staircase" was wrong, so after perfecting my technique, I decided to post my own version of power-diving instructions in the thread "How to Keep Your Mage Alive". The most important advice is to know (1) what items to have for diving, and (2) what monsters give good XP. Because of this, I'll repeat the relevant items and name some good monsters here:

Code:

10x   !CCW                Recovery from spell/breath-caused confusion and blindness
5x    !RLL                In case a Ghost sneaks up on you
0-10x !Speed              If you can find any in black market or dungeon
1-2x  -Teleportation      Essential once Dark Hounds and Umber Hulks start showing up
10x   ?Magic Mapping      Being able to see if monsters can get to you, or if phase door is a possible escape is a major advantage
1x    -Object Location    Makes finding stat potions and mage books easier
5x    ?Recharging         To recharge -Teleportation and -Object Location

Snaga
Cave Orc
Hill Orc
Wolf
White Wolf
Light Hound
Dark Hound
Earth Hound
Air Hound
Vibration Hound
Cave troll
Half-troll
Olog
Water troll
Gravity Hound
Impact Hound
Inertia Hound
Young/Mature/Ancient blue/bronze/green/white/black/gold/red dragon
Vrock
Mumak
Nether Hound

I don't drop much below DL 20 without FA, as Ghouls will kill you, and even Illusionists can also. The nice thing is that there are a lot of different items that can give FA, including dwarven armor, westernesse weapons, defender weapons, gondolin weapons, =FA, boots and gloves of FA, and many artifacts, so it shouldn't take long to find something that gives FA. If you're not playing a high-elf, then see invisible is also necessary.

Also, one thing that I must point out is that I play on a 1600x1200 monitor that lets me see the whole dungeon on one screen. I read one ?Magic Mapping and can then see the whole level. Some consider this cheating. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it does definitely have an impact on gameplay. In the next release, effects like object detection will have a limited range, which will make the game harder. Also, I disable connected stairs, because I really don't like the idea of stair scumming. However, at stat-gain depth, you'll have enough gold to just keep recalling, so it doesn't make that much difference. What I'd really like to see is the level feelings removed completely, but with the autoscummer stuck on.

Anyway, it sounds to me like your "inevitable" deaths are not so inevitable. I don't think I've ever died from recalling into a hound pack. Make sure you have a -Teleportation and some !CCW on hand in case you recall into something nasty. As for your comment about sleeping and being nether bolted by an Emperor Wight, that's your fault, unfortunately. The first thing I do when I enter a new level (assuming there's nothing in sight that I have to deal with first) is read ?Magic Mapping. Being able to see if something nasty is blocked by walls or not lets me know where it's safe to sleep. And I'm constantly casting Detect Monsters and Detect Invisible, so I always know what I'm going to be facing.

One more thing: do you use run macros? I always used to just hold down a movement key, and would die when I ran into something that could kill me in melee in a few turns. Now that I've switched to run macros, I am always disturbed when encountering a monster. And I've found that it's faster, too. I use the x key followed by a numpad key to run. I used to never run, and now would never go back. It's faster, and much safer.

P.S. Creeping Adamantite Coins are overpowered. F*ckers are as tough as Bolg/Azog. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

**g. rodrigues** · August 6, 2008, 11:26

Thanks for the heads up. Just a couple of points.

- I agree with you that dying to an Emperor Wight (or Tarrasque in a vault, or...) while going to sleep is careless on my part. Its one of those risks
you take: most of the times it goes well but then...

- The situation with hounds is really inevitable. Since I land (either from going up/down a stair or recalling) and... I am dead. No time to react. It happened with gravity hounds, with nether hounds, etc. In the latter case I had like 300 hps (I was clvl 29 around dl55). But I had no nether resist, was surrounded, my AC was probably too low, etc. No amount of supplies can save you. It is frustrating, but I guess its just the risk of being at such depths.

- I have to stress that these deaths, never had anything to do with lack of necessary resistances. I only remember one death due to lack of FA. None to lack elemental resistances. It was simply the case that I had too low hps to sustain an attack from the nasties. Of course the cure, or my cure, was being completely paranoid, staying around the stairs, detect everything in sight and retreat at the least sign of trouble. As I said, this strategy entailed a fair amount of stair scumming.

- From the list of supplies, it strikes me that I really need to carry some detect object thingies. Detect Enchantment is only at dl30.

- What do you mean by run macros? I always move around running: left finger on shift, right finger on the numpad.

**Zikke** · August 6, 2008, 15:48

I think by "run macros" he just means, "use the run feature instead of holding down a movement key".

At what dlvl do you usually start finding the non-standard mage books on dives?

**Zero** · August 6, 2008, 16:29

You should never be on DL 55 for more time than is necessary to create a down staircase to DL 56. When you consider the danger you face at that level, you might as well just dive to 98.

DL 55: Good floor loot, and lots of things that can kill you in one hit.
DL 98: Great floor loot, and lots of things that can kill you in one hit.

I generally go no lower than DL 41 (for ancient dragons) before diving to 98. And even then, I'd have high CON and good gear. The thing is that Mature/Ancient Multi-Hued, Greater Basilisks, and Drolems can one-shot you if you don't have poison/nether resist, which I frequently don't have. So I tend to hover around 30-41 using object detection to find stat potions, and kill high-XP monsters.

I just learned yesterday that CL 33 is a critical level, because you get WoD if/when you get Kelek's, and WoD is very useful at DL 98 for collecting artifacts from vaults.

>I think by "run macros" he just means, "use the run feature instead of holding down a movement key".

Exactly. I removed the shift-numpad run macros when I rewrote my .prf file. If I hadn't, I probably would have just learned to use shift-numpad, as rodrigues does.

>At what dlvl do you usually start finding the non-standard mage books on dives?

Uhh... 1?

After much internal conflict, I decided to use the autoscummer. For a very long time, I considered it cheating, but now I think it actually makes the game harder, because you tend to get vaults a lot, and they leak. The variation in monster strength means that when you're looking for stat potions at DL 30, you'll more often get monsters spawning that can kill you in one hit. Ultimately, I think it just makes the game more interesting, but I've played with the autoscummer off, and believe it would not make much difference in the long run.

How quickly you can find Mordenkainen's at stat gain, and Kelek's at 98, depends on whether you have the autoscummer on. Even if it's off, you just need to explore/scum longer until you find it. If you make it to CL 33 and haven't yet found Mordenkainen's, you might want to try diving, as carefully as you can, until you see it and can get it. Be careful though, as you can die very easily if you don't have nether and poison resistance.

[EDIT] I don't know what level Mordenkainen's is supposed to start showing up on. When I find it, it's always either as an out-of-depth item generated randomly, or it's in a vault and I Teleport Other anything in the vault that I can't handle and hope some novice rogue doesn't pick it up before I can get to it. If you do see Mordenkainen's in a vault, take a look at the monsters in the vault to see what is capable of picking it up, and keep track of those monsters.

**Garrie** · August 7, 2008, 12:11

your method sounds like mine... I agree with the posts by rodrigus that WOR into room and dying before you have had a turn is an inevitable death as is hitting a > and being breathed on by 25 gravity hounds before you can think "gee this aint too good a room to stand around in"...

Your concept of > to DL35-DL41 then chill till you have the resists / stats / mana to hit more > then >>>>>DL98 is a lightbulb moment for me. Will have to drop Dwarven Fortress for a bit to see if this concept changes my results.

**ChodTheWacko** · August 11, 2008, 00:47

I've tried doing the insta-dive down to 98.
You then face a HUGE threat of very fast monsters that can walk through walls!

They are a huge threat - you can't teleport them away, and teleport doesn't save you for long as they just keep charging through walls. And it happens all the time. Etheral dragons, several uniques. I don't see how you can survive for long. What do you do, leave the level?

- Frank

**Zero** · August 11, 2008, 02:56

Originally posted by ChodTheWacko

I've tried doing the insta-dive down to 98.
You then face a HUGE threat of very fast monsters that can walk through walls!

They are a huge threat - you can't teleport them away, and teleport doesn't save you for long as they just keep charging through walls. And it happens all the time. Etheral dragons, several uniques. I don't see how you can survive for long. What do you do, leave the level?

- Frank

Hmmm... Well, I've dived to 98 a few times, and there never seemed to be enough of those things to be a problem. Whenever one would step outside a wall, I'd teleport it away. Maybe I just got lucky, but it doesn't seem that way to me. Make sure you have enough mana to keep yourself perpetually hasted, and try for high stealth. Collect -Banishment and ?Banishment and ?Mass Banishment and -*Destruction* and ?*Destruction* until you find Kelek's for the spell versions. Also, keep in mind that line-of-sight rules still apply, even for monsters that can move through walls:

Code:

####
@
####
   L



####
@
##L#



####
@L
####

I don't think that lich would be able to do anything to you until the last frame, and they do always seem to step into the corridor in situations like that, where they are coming in at a shallow angle relative to the corridor, or, to put it another way, when they occupy a corridor wall tile that isn't adjacent to you. Even if that lich is getting two actions for each of yours, you're still safe if you can step left. The lich will first have to step left, within the corridor's wall, to make up for your move, and then it will step into the corridor. You then get to move, and can hit it with a wand of TO.

If the monster is coming at you from a steep angle relative to the corridor...

Code:

###
 @
###

  L

then I'd suggest you phase door as it gets close and use the strategy above.

**aeneas** · August 27, 2008, 04:16

You have to get really good at detection and avoidance. A lot of what you're describing is avoidable once you have enough experience. A lot of the rest makes me think you're not diving fast _enough_. One thing about diving is that it does mean that some low-frequency events can kill you without any way of avoiding them. But they are unlikely to happen to you in a really short game. On the other hand, if you play out of depth, but still slowly, eventually your number will come up. Once you've decided to dive you need to recognize that it's a committal thing- don't dive to a level that can kill you by chance and then spend 200,000 turns there- you won't get strong enough fast enough to avoid getting whomped.

Also, you have to die a _lot_ to learn how to dive. That's a big part of the point- you get better by dying, and then figuring out how you died. Diving lets you die a lot in a short period of time. There's a lot of skill, or at least pattern recognition in Angband, and it takes a while to pick it up. I think it took me about a year (maybe more) to get reasonably good at diving and I was playing a fair bit at that time.

I also think that Mage is the wrong class to learn to dive with. I'd start with a HE Warrior and learn to get to 2500' really fast consistently. Then I'd switch to Ranger or Rogue to learn more about the deep dungeon. Also, emphasize Con above just about everything else (obviously excluding real essentials). The biggest question is, can you survive the situation you're in for _one turn_ so that you get the chance to read ?tele_level, or something like that. That's all about HP. and if you're diving you will never have enough of them.

EDIT: Oh, and stealth is quite important too- as Cliff Stamp once said you are dead if you have poor stealth if you are really diving and deep. You just can't survive if everything comes for you the instant you show your face down there.

**PowerDiver** · August 27, 2008, 06:38

Originally posted by aeneas

A lot of the rest makes me think you're not diving fast _enough_.

I agree with that. I hardly ever play mages, so I didn't want to chime in before, but recently I posted a high-elf mage to the ladder.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=8001

It seems that it is possible to dive with a mage. I made it all the way to 4950' before I found Raal's. I did kill off a dozen earlier tries on their first trip.

Then I figured out I needed to make a quick trip to 100' and back to get money for a +1 longbow and 99 arrows in addition to ?recall and the first two spellbooks before the first real dive.

That's in my patched version, but it isn't so different from Vanilla.

**aeneas** · August 27, 2008, 07:18

Originally posted by PowerDiver

I agree with that. I hardly ever play mages, so I didn't want to chime in before, but recently I posted a high-elf mage to the ladder.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=8001

It seems that it is possible to dive with a mage. I made it all the way to 4950' before I found Raal's. I did kill off a dozen earlier tries on their first trip.

Then I figured out I needed to make a quick trip to 100' and back to get money for a +1 longbow and 99 arrows in addition to ?recall and the first two spellbooks before the first real dive.

That's in my patched version, but it isn't so different from Vanilla.

I haven't played them a lot either for similar reasons, and my fastest win with a mage is a lot slower than my fastest win. But I do think they are divable, and I am inclined to think you could get pretty fast with them. I really didn't think you could dive with a Priest until Cliff started posting, which just goes to show what I know

.

I'm inclined to think that it makes sense to get enough money for a better bow than +1 for the first real dive. Because arrows do so little damage, but bows multiply the damage, the first few pluses are really important. With a +5 to_dam bow you can deal with everything you have to deal with for a long time, even as a mage. My experience tells me that mages should be archers for a long time.

The big problem is later... even with constant haste and resistance your HP are just so low- you have to play very differently because of that. But, if you can move fast at the start I think you can win fast with any character. That initial hump is the slowest thing for spellcasters.

Looking at your dump it's clear you know this. But the thing is... 289 HP? That's really hard to overcome. I think you have to get lucky with Con.

**Zikke** · August 27, 2008, 16:56

I think mages they are GREAT (perhaps the best) divers at high levels due to versatility and escapability, but are pretty hard early on. Once you get ridiculous spells like Word of Destruction, a high level recharge, and some others, you can dive all the way to the bottom with a staff of Healing, staff of Detect Objects, and a wand of TO. I just dove from 50 to 85 to get Raal's spellbook from a vault and it was easier than I thought.

edit: not sure how I can again play a class without DimDoor ^_^

**PowerDiver** · September 5, 2008, 09:42

Originally posted by g. rodrigues

So the natural question, is this kind of diving suicidal? The people that dive fast, what precautions do they take? How do you save yourself from the boredom of yo-yoing through the levels and actually kill something worthy (of loot at least)?

It appears that with luck it is not necessarily suicide. It's not about taking precautions, but rather about trying to survive with what you have. Save up devices to kill high-value creatures, and use missile weapons on everything else you cannot avoid. Mana is generally too important to waste it on damage spells until you get Raal's. If you yo-yo, you are not diving. Boredom is *not* a concern.

This is a synopsis of a dive with a high-elf mage using randarts and disconnected stairs playing my patched version. I was attempting suicide, but failed. I posted a little more detail [mostly whining] to rgra, and I posted to the ladder about halfway through. Here are the milestones.

Spent initial money on longbow and ?+dam.
First trip quick to 100' and back for money for ?recall.

?MB7 [Mordenkainens] at 1250', would toss it many trips later never having used it.

100 hp at 1250'

First elemental resistances at 2000': ring, amulet, and armor.

Full rBase at 2150'.

ESP hat [randart] at 2300'.

Randart armor with rBase at 2400', would not know for some time.

a Light Crossbow of Power (x3) (+11,+21) at 2400' trip following rBase trip.

I was using other rings, only knew I had rAcid and rElec at 2800', simply hoping about randart armor.

?MB5 at 2800'.

Ring of rPoison at 2800'.

FA [ring] at 2800'.

Regen at 3000', finally *ID for randart armor from 2400'.

200 hp at 3150'.

Westernesse(+2) at 3500'.

300 hp at 3500'.

Bronze scale at 3800'

Ring +5 speed at 4250'.

Defender at 4250'

Randart ring with iAcid at 4250'.

Randart amulet with rPoison + rDark + FA at 4250'.

Randart amulet with rBlind and con+2 at 4500'.

Boots of stability at 4500'.

Ring con+6 at 4550'.

Randart armor with rbase + rConf + rSound + rChaos at 4550'.

400 hp at 4550'.

Xbow(x3)(+17,+15){+1 shot} at 4800'.

Randart cloak with rBlind + regen + FA at 4800'.

Ring int+5 [allowing 0% fail if worn] at 4800'.

500 hp at 4800'.

Made it to 4950' using about 294K turns and 22 trips.

Another 12 trips using 60K turns, slowly improving kit and collecting dungeon spellbooks, killing Wyrms and uniques, since bad luck with con boosts on randarts.

Then 2 final trips using 10K turns to finish off S [and most of the summoned uniques] and M.

**aeneas** · September 6, 2008, 06:04

That really is a frighteningly impressive win. The tension level of that game must have been pretty high. It isn't your turncounts that I find really impressive, it's the fact that you seem to get them without big pieces of luck. I've played some very quick games (though not as quick as yours), but they generally involved some early speed and some other nice lucky finds.

Fast diving, a myth?

Fast diving, a myth?

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