Midgame malaise

[VeritasAequitas]

righto, ill bear that in mind for next game :<

[wobbly]

So a couple of comments based on your character dump. I can see a turn in which you used a staff of curing with a bunch of big breathers in range. That was the time to use _teleport again & hope for the best. You TO-ed all those nasties out right? Don't teleport after TO-ing a vault, odds on you end up in the same place they did. So I can't tell what else was in sight before teleport, but if it's just that spider of Gorgoroth you should use a !heal. Using a !heal is almost always preferable to dying. I also see a _banishment, so there was an option to banish spiders. However you do take damage/spider on the level & it has a fail rate. So see rule 1 - Using !heal(s) is preferable to death.

[Pete Mack]

0. Inventory management: Carry:
* wands of TO. Always carry these as a warrior. Rods are not enough. (leave some at home if you are worried about breakage.) Missing these is the proximal cause of your death.
* !rFire and !rCold. These make a huge, huge difference
* Staff of Banishment, *Destruction. These do no good at home!
Don't carry:
* Heavy Elvenkind armor. (Use "Weaponmastery for Disenchantment swap.)
* Rod of acid balls. You aren't a mage! Use ammo.
* Stone to mud. You can tunnel easily enough at this depth.
* Ring of CON. Useless for warrior.
* Staff of Curing. Use CCW or Healing instead. See below....

You are still in the situation of too much fighting and not enough evasion. This is the root cause of your death.

1. Do not fight things in a vault, unless it is a checkerboard or bubbles vault, or you can otherwise ensure facing only one monster at a time. This is where you should be using your wands of TO: get everything dangerous out, then pick up the loot. Those wands are doing no good at home!
2. You shouldn't be running out of !CCW for any reason this deep. Fight non-uniques only if you can kill them without wasting CCW. (For example: don't fight things that blind.) If you look at other similar characters to your own in the ladder, you will see they have 30 or more !CCW.
3. Always carry !rFire and !rCold (or a source of immunity), if you have space in your pack. (And you should!) These make certain greater demons and dragons into easy targets, where otherwise you will be wasting healing.
3. _Teleport below dl 50 is a mug's game, *especially* when you have been clearing a vault. But even this isn't what killed you. You chose to clear blindness while down in HP in line of sight of a bunch of big breathers. You needed to use !Heal. You should have used it earlier, in the vault, and then TO the spider.

[VeritasAequitas]

yeah i relaised my mistake in TP just a little too late, then panicked and tried to clear my blindness, silly error.

Ill take it all on board for next char, but i learned a lot about what you can and cannot do.
as for some other things, i only picked up the weaponmastery amulet i nthe vault i was clearing, i for some reason picked up almost no CCW this whole game, dno where people get them to stack them 30 high :O

perhaps i need to carry more of the things i left at home, i was saving a stack of some of them for the end of the game, but maybe i should carry them instead

and yeah, i fight far too many things, ill work on it. thanks for everything

[Pete Mack]

My current character is a 4.2 mage at dl 65, carrying 34 !CCW. There is no real shortage, though I do miss being able to stock up so easily in the Temple. (Other variants with a bookstore tend to use a ninth building.)

[wobbly]

I disagree on wands of stone to mud. For a start he's wielding Aeglos. Taking the time to dig is waking things up that don't need to be awake. I'd rather hang on to stone to mud for as long as I can, you'll eventually have to give it up if you melee charge drainers but until you have a full stack of TO rods you have to carry wands anyway.

Stone to mud is quicker & works at range. There are a bunch of situations where speed matters, particularly to a warrior who struggles to get stealth. I used this just 5 minutes ago with one of those 4 square interesting rooms. Bang through the wall, bye bye Sky dragon. Bang through the wall, bye bye Wolf of Sauron. Those things are shallow sleepers & trying to wade through its pack will wake it, so if you want to TO it before it wakes you really need to be efficient. Particularly if you need to get rid of multiple targets & avoid having a vortex or hound breathe on it.

[Pete Mack]

Fair enough, though i prefer rings to wands. I just don't usually bother as a late game warrior.

[VeritasAequitas]

thanks for the advice on the potions of resist cold and fire, didnt realise they were so crucial

wait, do people actually not use staves of teleport? i know what i did was stupid after TO the vault, but i mean in general. i really like them for getting out of rough starts and spots. what do people normally do to get out when they arrive on level amongst some nasties + 12 crebans for instance? surely you just leave the area...

Also, didnt realise stone to mud wasnt widely used, it was my primary go through walls method. but i guess people genuinely just ^T through the walls?

[Pete Mack]

By and large, you want to avoid use of teleport as an escape after around DL 50, especially if you don't have pStun. If you tele into a room with plasma hounds, you will die, especially at normal speed. If you teleport after waking up lots of dangerous monsters (say, from a vault), you will also likely die. The only time you should use it at depth is if you accidentally get in fight with a high-level monster that hits to confuse. (Ethereal Dragon, Lesser/Greater Titan, Cat Lord, Giant uniques.) Best to avoid those completely though--teleport them or phase before they get adjacent.

You are better off with TO and a guaranteed escape for backup (Scroll of Teleport Level, *Destruction*, Banishment.)

[Pete Mack]

Big base-element breathers do 1600 breath damage; with single resist this comes to 533 damage--that is still a lot of damage. With double resist, they top out at 177, which quickly goes down as the monster takes damage. Midgame uniques like Smaug do at most ~100 damage with double resist. So yes, !rFire and !rCold make a huge difference. Most characters should therefore avoid the biggest lightning breathers (of which there are very, very few.) Acid works a little differently, as armor cuts damage in half. So Acid damage (like poison damage) effectively tops out at 800 HP, assuming you have useful armor in every slot. With single resist, this drops to 266 damage.

thanks for the advice on the potions of resist cold and fire, didnt realise they were so crucial

[DavidMedley]

Don't teleport after TO-ing a vault, odds on you end up in the same place they did.

Is this fatalism or actually build into the game???

[DavidMedley]

Big base-element breathers [breath damage] quickly goes down as the monster takes damage.

Is that true? I thought breath damage is based on max hp, not cur hp.

[Nick]

Is this fatalism or actually build into the game???

Kind of built in - the teleport routine looks for empty grids at the right distance, and for any starting point there will be a limited number of landing points.

Is that true? I thought breath damage is based on max hp, not cur hp.

Nope, current HP. The first part of a fight against a big breather is much more dangerous than the last.

[DavidMedley]

OK, two very good things to know. I don't want to spark a debate here, but just curious what the rationale for the breath damage declining is? I've never been a fan of the idea that something at 1 HP does the same amount of damage as something at full HP, but that's the standard in Angband and elsewhere. I presume this decision was made by someone in the long-long ago.

[Nick]

I don't want to spark a debate here, but just curious what the rationale for the breath damage declining is?

I've always assumed it's just that the weaker something is the less powerfully it breathes. Why that argument doesn't carry over to melee and spellcasting success is another question