The fresh mage of Belfalas

[wobbly]

It is therefore essential to any strategy based on exploring some but not all dungeon levels.

I disagree with most of what you said but I'll resist going on another anti-level feeling rant. I'm just singling out this sentence which is obviously untrue. The only thing essential to exploring some but not all dungeon levels is to explore some but not all dungeon levels.

[luneya]

Boredom is subjective. Yes, curbstomping every monster you encounter as a fighter can get boring, and may lead to fatal recklessness once genuinely dangerous things start to appear. But on the other hand, constantly casting detections and working to actively avoid every monster gets equally boring. To minimize boredom, some middle ground is necessary.

This is the main reason why I, unlike many veterans, keep level feelings enabled and actually pay attention to them. Until enlightenment becomes common enough that you can use it on every level, the level feeling is the only information you get to determine whether a level is worth exploring or should be skipped via the first available downstair. It is therefore essential to any strategy based on exploring some but not all dungeon levels.

[Philip]

Well, that's your tolerance for boredom, I think. I would probably stop well before half an hour. I doubt I would be able to go through 5 minutes of boring gameplay. As for killing things, incidental or accidental kills, possibly using devices, will take you through at least clvl 20 or so. The last time I played a mage, I was, despite my hard diving strategy, gated far more by access to books, which is regulated by dlvl, than by clvl or even mana supply, which are gated behind clvl.

The vast majority of monsters are negligible. This includes the monsters guarding floor items, with the possible exception of special rooms with a particular monster density. Even so, V allows you to generate arbitrary items of acceptable dlvl by killing groups of weak monsters.

Hp matters in terms of avoiding instadeath scenarios. Not enough to justify killing monsters for the XP.

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with level-clearing or scumming as strategies. They are a function of tolerance for boredom and a preference for proportion of wins over time to win. They are (in a game with max 5 levels OoD monsters) entirely reasonable ways to play the game, with a particular set of motivations.

[Sky]

Well at some point you need to kill something. You cant get to DL60 with a CL5 w/ broadsword and expect to stay alive. HP and gear come from kills. From vaults that require tunnelling. And even those on the ground are defended.

It takes maybe half hour to get a dunedain ranger to CL20 and i think i can wait that long.

[Philip]

XP is plentiful enough everywhere to be irrelevant, except for tedious classes on a melee-weak class. Diving has nothing to do with XP beyond the part where you can get to clvl 4 instantly if you kill a Maggot Dog before you level up, and that's less "diving" and more "going to dlvl 2 at your first staircase and sometimes it happens". If you're killing monsters beyond your usual abilities, you are diving wrong. Never enter a tough fight if you can avoid it, and if you can't avoid it you're either a warrior fairly early in the game (not much is a tough fight for a warrior fairly early in the game) or you're doing something very wrong. Some deep monsters are remarkably easy to kill and as such are worth killing, but that's quite unrelated to diving, nor is it done for the XP (except for late-game high xp penalty mages, but XP only really kicks in as a factor after a diver has already made it to dlvl 98). Detection doesn't help you kill monsters, detection helps you avoid monsters. Because you don't want to fight monsters, that's why you're diving. Positioning is a vital component of any non-trivial fight, but also has nothing to do with diving. If you're diving and have plentiful consumables (I take consumable to mean a thing you can't buy in a shop because things you can buy in shops are not consumed, they just recharge on recall) then something quite strange has happened. The only consumables that matter enough to devote a pack space to past dlvl 10 when killing monsters are powerful healing and !speed. Divers have less !speed and don't want to waste healing on killing something. There are about 10 monsters in the entire game who are worthwhile to kill using consumables and almost all of them are uniques you kill to avoid dealing with them in the future. The rest are literally just Wormtongue, who divers are quite likely to first encounter somewhere around dlvl 40.

The critical difference between divers and non-divers is tolerance for boredom, really. The main reason to dive is that boredom is lethal, which is not a problem for some people, but is the main killer for others. The secondary reason is that it drastically minimizes time to win, which, again, is a subjectively valuable criterion. While level-clearing is the intuitive strategy, and as such is mostly used by newbies, level-clearing is also the strategy Timo used, and Timo was definitely one of the most skilled players at the time.

[Grotug]

Thanks for the info, i am unfortunately on a Windows System.

Are you on Windows 10? Because the single greatest thing about my new computer is something called "Game Bar", which apparently is an XBox thing, and for some reason there is an Xbox app on my computer that allows me to easily record games. All I have to do is press the Windows +G in a game I'm playing (such as Angband). If it asks me "Is this a game?" I just click Yes. Then I press Windows+Alt + R and it starts recording my game. If I'm wearing headhpones with a mic (which I am because they came with my computer) it will record my comments during game while also recording any audio the game is producing. Pretty dang cool!

[Sky]

Im gonna try to explain diving from the point of view of someone who hates diving;

1. When you enter a level, pretty much everything's asleep.
2. XP are based on the enemy level vs your level
3. With detection, consumables and positioning, you can easily kill a monster way beyond your usual abilities, thus tons of xp.

Thats one aspect; another, which occurs simultaneously:

1. Grinding is boring
2. Boredom makes mistakes

And a third

1. Angband occasionally pulls a dick move, which you can rarely survive. The longer you play, the more likely this happens.
Boredom compounds this problem;
Trying to be ready for everything forces you to grind a magnitude more - therefore compounding again through both boredom and bad luck.

Which is why divers succeed and grinders fail. Think of the player instead of the character (something that sounds suuuper counterintuitive, in a turn-based RPG).

Me, i take it as my mission, to grind. To defeat boredom. To boldly dig out every square of granite in the level.
To find every artifact no matter the risks; clear every slime pit, every summons ... ooouf
Ok maybe not *every* summon.

[Carnivean]

I don’t see the point of diving.

That's because diving is counter-intuitive, but it's ironically safer than hanging around levels and clearing them. It's also way more fun than grinding your way down the dungeon.

It's the newbie players that grind and the good players that dive, so of course anyone that defends grinding is going to be condescended to. They've shown that they don't have that deeper understanding of the game.

[PopTart]

Another reason I don’t dive anymore: on my way to the deep level, I’ll find more good loot than in the deep level itself.

As for early level boredom... make yourself some macros. I have a macro for starting a new wizard, learning spells, ignoring prayer books, etc. Another macro for magic missile. Another for frost bolt. The spell macros are performed with the keys around the numpad and the arrow keys which I don’t use because I’m using the numpad, as well as page up and page down. Moving while holding shift down is a time saver too. A macro for resting until full is also great.

[PopTart]

For what it’s worth, my style is much like Sky’s. Books and magic devices, rest often, clear the level. I use magic mapping a lot, and reveal/detect monsters. It’s nice when I can twinkle toe past a monster, but if I know it’s there then I can avoid it easily by going around it or teleporting/blinking away. Kill the easy ones first to give yourself room for the tough ones. I don’t see the point of diving. Find the level with 1-5 tough monsters that will give you xp, and enjoy the snaga stinky cloud extermination.

[Kodiologist]

Well said. At any rate, my latest @ found some gloves of free action on DL1, so that's auspicious. He's now at CL 26, DL 32.

[Derakon]

Fun broadly comes from two things in Angband: being scared, and finding cool loot. Being scared is easy: just go past your comfort zone. Finding cool loot doesn't happen much in the early game (you may find useful loot, but it's probably not going to make you go "Wow!"), but does happen more often as you go deeper. In both cases the solution is the same: dive.

You don't have to crash dive (taking every down staircase you see), but there's very little reason to hang around killing weak enemies just for the experience. Strong enemies are more interesting to fight, and give both better experience and better loot, so go seek out some challenges.

[Kodiologist]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do I make the early game more fun? I can reliably get a character, or at least a human mage, to about experience level 20, and then it gets interesting. Eventually, usually around 30, I die. Fair enough. I still have a lot to learn about the midgame. But then I have to more or less replay those first few hours. The early game is more interesting if I dive faster, but that of course also makes it more deadly, and then sometimes I get characters killed at like level 10 or 15. It seems to be the reverse situation from NetHack, where the early game is downright unfair, but once you get the Castle's wand of wishing, which is at the midpoint of the game, you're home free (and Gehennom is so easy it's boring; real danger only reappears once you have the Amulet, or if you're unlucky enough to meet Demogorgon). Maybe I just need a break from roguelikes.

[Derakon]

OBS is available for Windows too. It's even easier to set up, since you don't need extra shenanigans to capture game audio like you do in OSX.

[Grotug]

Thanks for the info, i am unfortunately on a Windows System.

This tutorial for Windows systems seems very good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTk99mHDX_I#t=24s