Basic weapon question

[Sky]

eh, all you say is true, Licker. It is however useful to know the pitfalls that you can get in through diving. For instance, i recently told him "get a ring of STR to avoid being drained".
Not half hour after having said this, i accidentally drunk a potion of Exp and then almost immediately got drained. Had STR 13 for hours, desperately trying to find a mushroom of Vigor, or a potion of Brawn, but no.
If i dropped nearly everything from my gear, i still had base Spd -1.

But, as you say, nobody tells you how YOU must play the game. If you want to dive, by all means dive. If you want to grind, then grind. If you get bored and you want to see if you can tank that dracolich .. ok, maybe not that.

[licker]

Oh yes, I greatly appreciate your approach and information Sky. Even if I choose not to follow it

It's a game, people should find out the ways in which they enjoy it and go with that. Certainly understanding sound tactics and basic practices is good. And then it's just down to experimenting with what really helps you to enjoy playing.

I have in the past (though back then it was Zangband which was my preferred variant) done as many 'cheesy' things as I possibly could to maximize my chances at beating the game. Once I started be able to routinely beat that game (or develop characters capeable of beating it) I began to lose interest.

Eh...

Play it how you like, but good advice is always appreciated!

[whartung]

Don't the "drops" get better after DL40? DL40 isn't "peak drop" is it? or does it just enable "peak drop".

Or is it more that "everything you need to tackle DL98 can be found on DL40"?

Because I'm in the early 50's and finding many dangerous things that I haven't seen before.

For example, I've just discovered Time Hounds. Which, I guess, drain EVERYTHING.

"Oh, good to know!"

[DavidMedley]

I've also been curious about this, though I'm a bit scared to learn because every exploit makes me love the game a little less. Is DL 40 really the sweet spot level?

[Nick]

I've also been curious about this, though I'm a bit scared to learn because every exploit makes me love the game a little less. Is DL 40 really the sweet spot level?

Drops should get better until DL100, really.

[Sky]

Don't the "drops" get better after DL40? .

well, yes they do, but; every so often, the game will generate special rooms. Some are rooms with specific objects in them, some are vaults.
Every special room and vault has something better than your standard drops. A greater vault will have objects of X levels depth greater than the level you currently are at.

Most objects in Angband have a basic depth of less than 40 + vault value.
You can find bows of lothlorien, rings of speed, rods of speed / healing / restoration, etc in a DL40 vault.
Now, obviously, the deeper you are, the better the objects. Afaik, the greatest depth value is 127, which means you need to be on DL90+ AND in a vault to find that stuff - think The One Ring, Dragon Armor artifacts, etc.
(obviously, these object can be generated at ANY depth, but the chances are much smaller)

But, greater vaults also have deeper enemies. And, at DL40, a greater vault will have enemies which are considerably easier than the same vault at DL70.
Sure, you may find a Greater Wyrm, or a Horned Reaper, but it will likely just be one or two of these, instead of, say, a dozen archliches, 3/4 uniques, Druji, greater Qultilugs, etc.

So, if you find a vault or good special room on DL30/40/50, you will likely have no problem clearing it out - just teleport out everything that could hurt you. And, you can keep looking for special room as much as you like, because, it's not like anything on DL40 is gonna pose a serious threat, if you have decent equipment, AND you get XP for doing that.
Out Of Depth monsters are something that you should *always* take into consideration, but again, that's what detection spells are for.

Once you go deep, you will need to fight a lot more. And a greater vault at DL70 can be a nightmare, if you dont have really high stealth or unless you are really well kitted.

As you mentioned, Time Hounds and Plasma Hounds are horrible enemies, they wake very easily, have some of the deadliest attacks in the game, and almost no payoff in killing them. Generally if i see them on a level, i leave right away, they are just that deadly.

[whartung]

But, greater vaults also have deeper enemies. And, at DL40, a greater vault will have enemies which are considerably easier than the same vault at DL70.
Sure, you may find a Greater Wyrm, or a Horned Reaper, but it will likely just be one or two of these, instead of, say, a dozen archliches, 3/4 uniques, Druji, greater Qultilugs, etc.

So, basically, you just scum L40 until you feel you're geared enough to dive to 98?

[Sky]

So, basically, you just scum L40 until you feel you're geared enough to dive to 98?

well .. yes.

by geared, i mean that i have the following:
1. base resist
2. rPois
3. pBlind pConf SI FA
4. ESP
5. TO
6. something that does damage
7. a sizable stack of CCW and Spd
8. detect treasure and magic mapping

i also reeeealy like to have rNexus (to avoid being kicked out of good levels) and HL

generally, in the time i get these (teleport others tends to be the most difficult one) i'll also have found a whole lot of stat potions and have killed enough low level mobs to hit CL35.

i really should explian that i dont need to grind for these things. For example, i like to carry a rod of slow monsters, even when i can cast it. This is because the spell failure is higher than the rod failure, early on mana is scarce, so the rod makes sense.
I dont need to TRY to find a rod, because finding a rod is a given - it will happen. Everything i listed above is just stuff that is very common at that depth. I would be foolish if i said "i dont go below DL40 until i have extra blows, arkenstone, *Fire, and pStun" because - while those are great things to have - they are not necessary to be safe at lower depths. And they are also rare, at which point grinding for those can put you into those very rare, very unfortunate situation that occasionally happen in Angband.

Capisc? Grind yes, but in moderation. Like, it's nice to have rods of Detection, but in a pinch rods of detect treasure work just as well.

[DavidMedley]

Interesting strategy. I don't recall reading this particular one before, and a lot of what you are saying makes sense. When I came back to the game in October I got breathed on and killed by something way OOD and while it was very annoying, I acknowledged that it was probably necessary to keep the game interesting. Strategies like this show that OOD monsters are indeed necessary, or there would be even less that could go wrong.

We use turncounts as a tiebreaker between winners. I'm assuming this strategy comes at the cost of higher turncounts (not that everyone cares about this metric)?

[Pete Mack]

This strategy is *very* old. It comes down to 'stat gain at DL 40' and it goes back to well before I joined rgra a dozen years ago.

[DavidMedley]

What I used to read long ago was to stay at DL 30 or a little deeper until your stats were way up. I personally never read that DL 40 is the sweet spot for loot more generally.

[DavidMedley]

For instance, here:

https://thangorodrim.net/TANG/index.html

It suggests you don't go past DL38 without "maxxed" stats. The advice in this guide is not very much like Sky's suggestions in this thread, imo.

[Sideways]

That was back when vaults were rarer (so massively OOD monsters were rarer, and OOD monsters roaming in the open even more so), but some extremely deadly insta-killy monsters (dracoliches, dracolisks, drolems and to a lesser extent AMHDs) were both more dangerous than now and native to much shallower depths than now. AMHDs were DL 43, drolems were DL 44, dracoliches and dracolisks were DL 46; and speed was much harder to find, ESP was also fairly rare (and maybe somewhat underappreciated because of drolems).

So it was a not uncommon strategy to simply grind your way to >550 HP (and rPois for drolems and AMHDs) before entering dracolich territory. Boring enough that most modern players don't do that even when they revisit older Angbands, but it did make basic sense in that environment.

[Sky]

This strategy is *very* old. It comes down to 'stat gain at DL 40' and it goes back to well before I joined rgra a dozen years ago.

i have encountered the same issue with "strategies" in other games that have long-standing communities; you'll have a veteran who has spent years going through various strategies, which has an indepth knowledge of the game, and they will tell a newcomer "here is the latest, most advanced strategy" without remembering what's it like to *not* know the game.

The longer i play, the closer i get to the "dive fast" strategy, but that's on the back of having played this game now for a few years. Certainly that would not be a good strategy to teach someone who - like me - comes form a D&D, kill-every-mob mentality, without them having the time to learn more about angband.

The strategy above is, simply a successful strategy. It completely ignores things like missed moves, tiredness, attention span. All it does is take into consideration the dungeon as it is. AND, it is my opinion, that as a strategy, it is better suited to beginning players than the "mountaineer" strategy everyone here loves so much.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

For instance, here:

https://thangorodrim.net/TANG/index.html

It suggests you don't go past DL38 without "maxxed" stats. The advice in this guide is not very much like Sky's suggestions in this thread, imo.

In my opinion, the advice in that old guide has been thoroughly debunked by numerous players.