Questions about diving strategy

[Narry]

I still don't understand diving, but I want to learn it.
So... how do you do it?
(Let's assume recall is allowed, and there's no forced descend.)

Let's start in the beginning... how soon do you descend to level 2? What about level 3? Level 5? Level 10?
Do you have certain checkpoints that you have? I mean... must have certain resistances (or Free Action and/or See Invisible) before going to certain depths?

I've understood I should have lots of Cure Light/Serious/Critical Wounds potions, means to teleport myself away from nastier monsters, ranged attacks and of course scrolls of Word of Recall (well, before find RoR).

Additionally, personally, I try to buy a Ring of Strength as soon as I can, to get some extra STR and to sustain it, as there seem to be loads of monsters that reduce it, already in the early game.

[Derakon]

Do you feel comfortable at your current depth? Yes? Then you're too shallow. Dive until you're worried you're going to die, then do your best not to. That's basically it. There are specific strategies that can help you survive, like relying heavily on detection, carefully abusing LOS and using consumables, and so on, but the core of it is to push past what your brain is telling you is safe.

[fph]

Not sure if it's the right strategy, but I have stopped bothering with rods of recall overall. I just bring 5 scrolls down and that's it. Rods save you some money, true, but at some point money is irrelevant anyway. And it's better to have the flexibility to undo a recall, some times.

[Sky]

Play the game any way that you see fit. Check out gameplay videos of other players and if you see a strategy that you like, adopt it into your playstyle.

[Tibarius]

Diving

How you can dive depends on what kind of playing style you like as player as well as what class you play in my opinion.

I play usually mages, until Nick will have them destroyed (just as side note)

A mage must collect character level 3 with 6 SPs at least before he can start to dive.

Then i push down every stairs i find and stay close to stairs basically. Because that is the easiest escape ... leave the level and leave everything behind that could cause any trouble to you. Levels are limitless ...

At level 20 .... i see that i can make some gold. Lantern of True Sight, Ring of See Invisible from the Black Market or a weapon drop with See Invis is required then.

Beyond Level 20 it becomes too dangerous without see invis i think.

Then the next stop is DL 40. Around that deepths the young dragons / dragons show up, the best XP/SPs monsters to my experience. I push CL to around 25. And usually i scum that level until i have at least one potion which pushes intelligence (start with 12 points = 18 INT, first potion pushes it beyond 18/20 usually).

Then it depends on mood and goal ... savety first or lowest turns or lowest real life time to hit CL 50. Mages gain power by leveling up (unfortunately). So they have to grind XP till CL 50. The spell failure rate reduces by 3% per character level.

You can dive with Acid Bolt and kill stationary targets. Sometimes going down is not the fastest way to raise the charater tho. At DL 50-60 some real nasty things show up, which can one shot you. So it is a bit dependant on your preferences of savety if you dive or grind some more.

Hope you can enjoy this great game, as long as it is Angband (what's coming up is Nickband).

[wobbly]

Not sure if it's the right strategy, but I have stopped bothering with rods of recall overall. I just bring 5 scrolls down and that's it. Rods save you some money, true, but at some point money is irrelevant anyway. And it's better to have the flexibility to undo a recall, some times.

I like scrolls for a different reason. Word of Recall fills a slot in 1 direction only. Once you read the scroll that's a free slot to bring something back, same with town spellbooks, they can be dumped in the dungeon to free a slot. I do of course carry more then 1 unless I have fire immunity but they are cheap, you can drop the spares on the ground.

[Grotug]

I agree with Derakon's assessment.

Not sure if it's the right strategy, but I have stopped bothering with rods of recall overall. I just bring 5 scrolls down and that's it. Rods save you some money, true, but at some point money is irrelevant anyway. And it's better to have the flexibility to undo a recall, some times.

I am the same way. I remember the first time I found a rod of recall and initially though what a cool object. But I after thinking about it for a bit decided not to take it. I also like the flexibility of canceling a recall.

Diving is a bit trickier if you are not familiar with all the dangers at given depths. One of the reasons I don't like combos that aren't half-troll warrior is because I find them very difficult to dive. Everything can kill you with most race/class combinations; and I die much more often with more frail combos, even though they get detection of monsters; that's because I still don't have a great gauge on how much damage given monsters do; at least it's harder to gauge it when I have less than half the hitpoints at a given Character level than I normally do with an HT Warrior. I guess the reason I don't know how dangerous many monsters are is because I am killing them before they get to do some of their nastier tricks when I play HT Warrior. I like HT Warrior because it provides the best two attributes that are most important in angband: damage output and hitpoints with minimal fuss (perfect for someone who spent tons of time playing Doom, so I guess I go for similar play style to that game ).

With a HT warrior you can crash dive all the way to DL40 without really worrying much about being one shotted. Though, you will have to worry about death by paralysis if you do not get FrAct by DL23. Even though I do not detect for evil very often or at all before DL40s, it's very rare I get one shotted (I usually die from a combination of factors brought on by brazenness and ignoring early warning signs that things are about to head south). Pack mobs of various kinds often kill me in the DL20s when I dive quickly with HT Warrior if I don't have staff of teleportation.

The other reason I like HT Warrior is because I like the danger associated with it. Often it's not insta-death, but it provides a lot of scenarios where if I am not really careful and smart I will die (and I often do because I am neither!) but it doesn't require this mundane sort of play where you detect all the time, sneaking around only killing prime targets (what's a prime target???). You have to know what a prime target is with the frailer character combos, otherwise you will have a very hard time; and I often don't know, but I agree with Tiberius: dragons are great targets for the drops, gold and XP. But with HT Warrior, most everything is a prime target. I also enjoy acquiring things from killing monsters and getting their drops (especially from a tough unique!) than I do sneaking around finding things on the floor or in a vault).

Probably the best way to learn to dive well is to dive aggressively, detect aggressively and don't mind dying a lot. I would say that see invisible can probably wait until DL28 or DL30. I find that the amount of harassment from invisible creatures is not much worse at DL28 than DL8, honestly; but that's my experience playing as HT Warrior; I'm sure it's different as a mage.

Due note that Mages get free action natively. You generally want to get free action by the time you hit DL20.

[Derakon]

Due note that Mages get free action natively. You generally want to get free action by the time you hit DL20.

I think you meant Gnomes here, chief.

[Grotug]

I think you meant Gnomes here, chief.

Woops! Thank you.

[Narry]

Thanks for all the tips, all of them are appreciated.

One of the problems I have is burden level / speed. Staves are quite heavy (5 lb each), as are spellbooks (3 lb each). Yes, the obvious solution is to invest in strength asap, but still... I'm quite often -1 or -2 in the early game, sometimes even -3.

[Derakon]

What else are you carrying? Do you need it? In particular, if you're playing as a mage, how valuable is that heavy body armor you're wearing?

[Narry]

Potions of Speed and Potions of Cure (Light/Serious/)Critical Wounds.
Scrolls of Phase Door. (Yes, even as a Mage, so that I have a backup plan if I run out of mana.)
As a mage, spellbooks obviously (but just one of a kind).

[Sphara]

Food?
As long as you can recall back to town you barely need to carry any food. This especially if you have SDigest item equipped.

Ammo?
One quiver of 15-20 projectiles should be way enough if you wanna have some mana-free ranged attacks that aren't wands. Last time I played mage, wands did more damage than most of my spells. So you probably won't need any ammo at all.

[Narry]

I would argue for a little bit of food, 'cause I'd hate to interrupt exploring an X-7 or so level just because of hunger.

I agree about ammo. I've done reasonable damage with my spells.

[Derakon]

If you want serious and specific advice, upload a character dump to the ladder so we can see exactly what you're dealing with.