Basic weapon question

[wobbly]

While my playstyle is quite different to Sky's I roughly agree on where the danger pt is. For me I'll slow down & hang back just before dlvl 50 & the reason is high hounds. I just did a quick little search through the monster list & depth 51 is where +speed hounds start & it includes plasma hounds & those +20 speed time hounds. These coming in to depth is a massive escalation in danger for anyone playing an avoidance strategy.

[Sphara]

I just like the fact that there are several ways to reach Morgoth.

Camping around DL40 is one and it just requires patience and the ability to kill native monsters. TO-wand for occasional big vaults ofc and some way of detection.

My personal preference is to always keep forced descent on. I consider jumping up and down levels before a good treasure feeling hits, a scumming. It's NOT scumming. It's free to practice but I hate the idea. 99 levels is waaaaaaay enough to find necessary items to beat P without using upstairs.

DL40 camping is a better strat with randart-option turned on. As for my experience, overpowered (for their level) artifacts are pretty common. Getting an early item with an immunity and ESP is really not that rare. The weakness of standard artifact game is that you go through same patterns a bit too often.*thancs, Forasgil, Arvedui, Thorongil... But nevertheless, some randarts are just stupid OP. I don't think having attack speed+2 items is very good for the game.

And Sky there made a good point. When a new player with a strong char, ask advice, it's not always good thing to say "you are ready to dive much, much deeper". He doesn't know what's waiting for him. Angband is very good at killing super-powerful characters, who act without knowing their enemy.

[archolewa]

While my playstyle is quite different to Sky's I roughly agree on where the danger pt is. For me I'll slow down & hang back just before dlvl 50 & the reason is high hounds. I just did a quick little search through the monster list & depth 51 is where +speed hounds start & it includes plasma hounds & those +20 speed time hounds. These coming in to depth is a massive escalation in danger for anyone playing an avoidance strategy.

This is usually how my games go as well. I mostly play melee characters, and I dive pretty aggressively until I find myself constantly refreshing levels or teleporting all over the place because I'm constantly getting swarmed with monsters I can't handle. At that point, I generally have to go up five or so floors, and then back down.

That usually happens between floors 50 and 60 depending on how gracious the RNG has been.

Other than that though, I like to go down pretty steadily, and the only time I'll stay at a single depth for any amount of time is at the bottom when I'm rocking a powerful endgame character and need to gather consumables for Morgoth, and/or just want to enjoy a powerful character for a while.

[Sky]

oh btw, if you do camp around the 40s and 50s, just stash away a whole bunch of Deep Diving scrolls.
Voila' - instant DL98.

While this is safer than wandering around the 30 dungeon levels between 65 and 95 (which are packed full of Ainur pits, time and plasma hounds, Balrog lava rooms, graveyards, etc), it does have the negative side effect of bypassing a large number of spawn points for some strong uniques - Arien, Osse, The Mouth, The Witch King, the Titans, etc.
It's obviously better to kill them one by one as they start to appear (more so if you are already maxed in stats), and if you dive from 40 to 98, you are going to find your vaults packed full of strong uniques.

Just make sure you got plenty of TO at hand.

[whartung]

Right now, my WoR is set to 50, and I work my way up until I need to go back to town, which is typically just a couple of levels.

I found deep diving very dangerous. You have to know the one shot breath killers (I don't). You also have to know about Stunning (I didn't). I didn't know I could be knocked out, for example. Most of the other affects you can fight through. But some of those heavy stunning creatures, like Mystics, you have to keep those maladies cleared. Free Action doesn't save you from everything.

It helps to experience having a gazillion animals summoned on you, and how quickly that can turn to disaster.

And that's the key, it helps to EXPERIENCE all of this, not just hear about it. Because it's really easy to get comfortable in this game.

[DavidMedley]

You also have to know about Stunning (I didn't). I didn't know I could be knocked out, for example.

A change I made that I haven't seen anyone comment on: I doubled the length of the "Heavy Stun" band to give more warning before reaching "Knocked Out." It also takes 50% more stun to reach KO now. You're welcome. :-D

[DavidMedley]

But I want to make poison damage-over-time more of a problem, so maybe it'll cancel out.

[archolewa]

But I want to make poison damage-over-time more of a problem, so maybe it'll cancel out.

This risks turning Potions of Poison even more into Potions of Death in townless games.

Im not saying dont make poison more problematic. This is just something to think about, even if the eventual decision is "Meh. This will still only kill characters who are literally 5 minutes old, so not worth worrying about."

[whartung]

Right now, I have not been "punished" by poison, so I don't really "fear" it (outside of breath weapons, of course). I keep seeing things like "You are now more poisoned", but I honestly have no idea what it means.

My pooh brain interpretation of poison right now is that it is something that does damage each turn. When I get "more poisoned", I assume that the duration is being extended. It's not clear to me that the instance damage is being bumped up.

Right now, I don't bother to cure poison in combat. Whatever damage it's doing to me seems minor in contrast to the monsters and their eleventy attacks. So, I don't bother wasting a round to cure it off. Most of the time when I do that anyway, next round I'm poisoned again anyway. So, apparently, curing is usually a waste of a round.

And it certainly doesn't seem to work similarly on monsters. I have a poison weapon that simply hits harder, rather than stacking poison and time on the monster.

Stuns, I clear off when they go Heavy. Because those DO appear to "stack", and "get worse", so reseting them has value, considering the consequences if you don't. Grazes and cuts seem similar, but I haven't noticed them doing enough damage to warrant a turn to cure them off. I'd rather that the monster(s) be dead, and clean up after the fight.

When the monsters are hitting you at 50+ dmg a round, 1 or 2 points to a poison, graze, or cut is basically nothing. But when a Stun becomes a Knockout, well, those 50+ pts per round just became 500pts of unanswered damage during 10 rounds of unconsciousness. So that threat is very real.

[Pete Mack]

Clear stun ASAP. Your melee goes way down with even the first level of stunning, and device/spell fail rates go up significantly.

[Sky]

poison isn't just poison - different mobs poison you for different amunts; tarantulas can easily stack you with 100/200 hp worth of poison, which in the early game means goodbye to a ton of potions.
incidentally, CCW cures poison, as well.

[DavidMedley]

Excellent summary whartung

[Voovus]

But I want to make poison damage-over-time more of a problem, so maybe it'll cancel out.

Is poison in the form of damage over time actually interesting?

When I was a wee lad, running around the Dungeons of Doom (=Rogue), poison would reduce Str by 1 - that was serious business. Moria changed that to the damage-over-time effect, which was fairly boring, and which got carried over to Angband. Maybe it needs a complete overhaul? Like making all healing ineffective for a certain length of time. (Or halving healing effectiveness, if the former is too radical. Or something else, for that matter.)

[archolewa]

Is poison in the form of damage over time actually interesting?

When I was a wee lad, running around the Dungeons of Doom (=Rogue), poison would reduce Str by 1 - that was serious business. Moria changed that to the damage-over-time effect, which was fairly boring, and which got carried over to Angband. Maybe it needs a complete overhaul? Like making all healing ineffective for a certain length of time. (Or halving healing effectiveness, if the former is too radical. Or something else, for that matter.)

Canceling healing would I think be a bit too drastic in a game like Angband, where it's par for the course for enemies to take out a third (or more) of your HP in a single shot.

What if it drained MP instead, or reduced MP's max value or something? There really aren't a lot of enemies that do stuff with your MP, just a few weaker enemies who'll drain a bit of MP for a bit of healing. Now this means that a warrior doesn't have to worry about Poison, but a warrior's high HP means they already don't have to worry about it, so it'd be a lateral move for them at least.

[DavidMedley]

I don't really make these decisions, and I can't promise I could actually get any changes to poison approved. But I really like interesting effects like that. It's actually very fun, to me, when I get poisoned really bad and it makes me puke or whatever.