Some weapon questions (spoilers)

[aeneas]

Well, the ride is over. My death was due to my ignorance. I thought the Tarosque was a type of monseter...not a unique. So when it breathed on me once and took me down to a few hundred hp, I thought my safest bet was to use a scroll of Mass Banish. Well, now I know...

That's too bad, but I agree with PowerDiver- everything has to go just so for you to win the first time you get deep. The Tarrrasque is particularly dangerous because, like Kavlax, he doesn't juimp off the screen at you- I've mistaken him for a Rock Lizard before... this might be a place where having played a lot of D&D is helpful, as he's taken from one of those books. He's basically Godzilla. Also, note that anything that is named "The..." is likely to be a unique.

The good news is that it's much easier to get down there the second time. But I'd also agree with PowerDiver that you want to try to get down there reasonably quickly. It's just a lot less painful to lose a character with half a million or a million turns spent than one with over 4 million. Anyway, it can be discouraging to lose your best char so far, but you were on the cusp of winning- if you keep at it you will.

[Wraitheist]

Thanks for the encouragement. I was actually a lot less upset about losing this one than I thought I would be. I decided to take a break from Priests to try some other classes. Now that I've been past stat gain several times, I find the first '1600 or so rather boring. That's probably a good thing, as it encourages me to dive faster. I used to wait around '900 or so for FA, but now I've been diving down to 1400 before finding it. I'm yet to lose a character from paralyze.

[PowerDiver]

[QUOTE=Atarlost;10030]I'm not sure warrior is always right. If you don't intend to cheat having detection and teleport from books can be extremely helpful. It probably depends on playstyle and not all new players like playing warriors. I know I always feel blind playing a warrior.QUOTE]

Nobody ever agrees with me on this, but I remain pretty sure.

I've recently compromised with myself that a half-troll rogue plays pretty much like a warrior with utility spells, so I would not argue against that choice.

[aeneas]

[QUOTE=PowerDiver;10055]

I'm not sure warrior is always right. If you don't intend to cheat having detection and teleport from books can be extremely helpful. It probably depends on playstyle and not all new players like playing warriors. I know I always feel blind playing a warrior.QUOTE]

Nobody ever agrees with me on this, but I remain pretty sure.

I've recently compromised with myself that a half-troll rogue plays pretty much like a warrior with utility spells, so I would not argue against that choice.

I do agree that warrior is the best choice for learning to dive through the first 20-30 levels, and I can offer a rationale. It is precisely because the warrior doesn't get any kind of detection spell that it's a good class for that. You are constantly winding up in almost lethal situations and having to extract yourself from them using things like ?phase, -sleep, etc.

This teaches the tactics of the early game really well, and it also teaches you about the kinds of situations you should fear, in the early game. The only danger is that you can get too accustomed to that, and fail to realize that the tactics that work best in the early game are guaranteed fail past 2000'. That's actually the thing that I think most holds people back- they try to use tactics that work at 1000' at 2500'.

[Atarlost]

You say yourself early game tactics fail past 2000', so why teach them when avoidance and picking off weak monsters with good drops or good experience works for the whole game? Shouldn't you want to teach new players to find out what they're facing, and know when to run and when to fight?

[PowerDiver]

You say yourself early game tactics fail past 2000', so why teach them when avoidance and picking off weak monsters with good drops or good experience works for the whole game? Shouldn't you want to teach new players to find out what they're facing, and know when to run and when to fight?

The way to find out what they do is to fight them. HP are all-important. Detection is useless until you build up your monster memory., and also your real memory remembering close calls is how you know what is dangerous.

[aeneas]

You say yourself early game tactics fail past 2000', so why teach them when avoidance and picking off weak monsters with good drops or good experience works for the whole game? Shouldn't you want to teach new players to find out what they're facing, and know when to run and when to fight?

To learn to play past 1500' you have to be able to get to 1500' quickly and reliably. You can't use the tactics you would at 2000' because you lack the abilities and resources you would use there. The first step is learning to get to 1500' as efficiently as possible- there's nothing interesting before that, for an experienced player, and the strategy is basically fixed. So you need to learn the tactics that will get you there in a fairly short period of time.

You could also use the method Pete Mack has mentioned- you could save a game at 1500' and replay it many times. But if you are not going to do that you have to learn to get to 1500' easily before you can learn to play there- the same logic holds for other depths.

Also, there is some carryover from what you learn there to later depths- the tactics change because the percentage of hp that is dealt in a turn becomes higher as you drop. But there is some carryover.