Running thread warrior run little questions

[archolewa]

Rods and Staffs fail at spectacularly bad times. I was in one of those "rod of TO or Wand of TO" situations, where I felt the 5% difference really mattered, so I went with the wand. (Note, it failed -- I died).

For this reason I set my low hitpoint warning at 50% rather than the default 30%. Usually gives me an extra turn or two to escape. Also, I tend to TO (or avoid, if TO is still limited and precious) anything that I think has a decent chance of giving me trouble as soon as I see it. If the RNG wants to screw me, I'm gonna make it *work* for it dangit!

Breaths have killed me the most. The Phoenix has been a spectacularly troubling Unique to deal with. I just don't know quite how to deal with those, that's a stealth issue as much as anything, I guess, as I've been nuked out of LOS before.

The Phoenix is particularly nasty because I'm pretty sure it spawns awake, like Hounds (at least, I've never seen it sleep). So, I don't think stealth really helps much against the Phoenix. If I see the Phoenix (through Detection or Telepathy) I abandon the level, especially if he's faster than me (and the Phoenix almost always is when you first meet him).

[whartung]

If you're gifted a ?Acquirement at a low level, it's worth stuffing in your Home until you dive a bit deeper to use it. But otherwise, I'd use it as soon as I find it (in the dungeon, not in town).

I rarely have more than 2 or 3 slots free in inventory as the game continues. Many times I just have a single space. In that light, I much prefer the No Sell option, as I'd just be leaving gold on the ground. At the moment, I am flush with cash with little to spend it on. Even when I buy 24K stat pots in the BM. I've never found cash to be a real problem (sure there have been things for sale I couldn't afford, but it's more rare than not).

Food, CSW, CCW, Curing (staff or rod), Phase Door, Recall (if you have the rod, buy a scroll to port down in to the dungeon so that the rod is charged so you can come back quickly if necessary), Speed (pots and rod), Mapping (staff/rod/artifact), Detection (rod or staff DetEvil), Teleport (scrolls AND staff), Teleport Other (rod and/or wand - rod for the one off, wand for the "He summoned what?", wand fails less than the rod as well), Illumination (rooms, staff or artifact), Light (corridors, wand or rod, the wand can be handy), quiver. Those are the absolute minimum to carry (as they become available).

On my current character, the "extras" I'm carrying are ?Enlightenment, ?Berserk Strength (which I should really dump, they don't do much this deep), rod of Probing (I'm probing everything for the sake of history right now), a magic Crown (that I swap in for Conf resistance, normally I have a Telepathy piece), and a shovel. That's 5 "mostly optional" slots. That leaves me 1 slot of free space. I really should replace the shovel with a wand, but the shovel is really handy. I don't have room for both.

I find Confusion worse than Blindness.

I've not had good luck with crowd control, since most of the time, I get in trouble with Uniques -- on which most of them do not work. Phase Door and Teleport are my CC technique.

Rods and Staffs fail at spectacularly bad times. I was in one of those "rod of TO or Wand of TO" situations, where I felt the 5% difference really mattered, so I went with the wand. (Note, it failed -- I died).

If I get more than one of a thing, I'll sell it to get it IDd, but, seems to me, if you're in good shape, in a safe place, have an escape ready, there's little that can really hurt you by just using it blind. I drink/read/use things right off the ground.

Mind, I'm currently running Cheat Death so that I can learn stuff. Like too much Stunning can lead to unconsciousness (and Free Action doesn't prevent that). Normally I mostly ignored Stun.

Breaths have killed me the most. The Phoenix has been a spectacularly troubling Unique to deal with. I just don't know quite how to deal with those, that's a stealth issue as much as anything, I guess, as I've been nuked out of LOS before.

I don't worry too much about the +1/-1 potions. +1/-1 here and there (usually) is not lethal.

I do wish the Home had quivers.

[Sky]

Just running the numbers out of curiosity. If I'm calculating it correctly:

Lagduf chance to hit AC 40 = 59.37%
Lagduf chance to hit AC 60 = 37.5%

keep going.

[Sideways]

So, for example. Orcs are .. about 50 AC. 40 or 60 doesn't make much difference to them. if your AC is near zero, or even negative, you will get hit much more often. If your AC is above 100, then you will rarely be hit, but in between, there is a whole lot of meh, where 10/20/30 points really do not matter.

If the in-between region is where you go from being hit a lot to not being hit a lot, surely that's exactly where AC does matter?

[wobbly]

So, for example. Orcs are .. about 50 AC. 40 or 60 doesn't make much difference to them. if your AC is near zero, or even negative, you will get hit much more often. If your AC is above 100, then you will rarely be hit, but in between, there is a whole lot of meh, where 10/20/30 points really do not matter.

Just running the numbers out of curiosity. If I'm calculating it correctly:

Lagduf chance to hit AC 40 = 59.37%
Lagduf chance to hit AC 60 = 37.5%

[Sky]

except that none of those scenarios ever happens. you cannot avoid AC, but to consider one armor better than another because one has 40 AC and the other has 60 AC is .. bad.
Heck, even armor WEIGHT is more important than AC.
the way AC works is; each mob has a target AC, due to their innate to-hit value; being a few, or several, points off of this target does nearly nothing, while being completely naked or excessively armored does have effects.

So, for example. Orcs are .. about 50 AC. 40 or 60 doesn't make much difference to them. if your AC is near zero, or even negative, you will get hit much more often. If your AC is above 100, then you will rarely be hit, but in between, there is a whole lot of meh, where 10/20/30 points really do not matter.

And, while you would ALWAYS go for the resists, abilities or activations you need from an armor, i can accept that in the endgame, there is enough difference between a chestplate providing 15AC and one providing 80AC, but anything that's not so drastic wil hardly ever be noticed.

..also, horned reapers are not really a good example. try anything else. Dragons? Wyrms? 170AC or 230AC is nearly the same thing.
I seriously doubt even completely disregarding AC, that you can have a character with less than 170 in the endgame.


if you want to test this yourself ... just try on a couple of rings of accuracy - see how much your to-hit changes with +30.

[Petoften]

Thanks for the additional comments. I'm expecting it'll be pretty hard when I run into hard things - hard uniques, hard dragons etc.

[Grotug]

reckless attacks are good on warriors until you find STR and damage; in Angband two stats - armor class, and to-hit bonus - are nearly irrelevant. A ring of Accuracy +15,+0 may maybe change your to-hit chance % by a couple of points. Likewise, unless you go negative in AC, there is very little difference between AC 50, AC 100, AC 150. Getting a really high AC number, say, above AC230 does have an effect, but it's mild at best - surely mobs like Gothmog are not going to be impressed by your AC, although an orc will be.

You need some experience with the game to be able to tell that drops are not only useful/not useful of their own merit, but also compared to what else drops at the same time.

For example, my esteemed colleague here feels that Ring of the Mouse is not garbage, due to the fact that a ring with say, -6 dmg and +4 DEX, if used with a heavy weapon with a big hit dice, for example a 5d8 Mace Of Disruption, would benefit from the ring, as the +4 DEX makes you attack more often and the -6 is a small penalty.

This is mathematically correct, but does not take into consideration that by the time your character can wield a heavy weapon with the effect described above, they will have access to much better rings, for example, a simple ring of DEX, or Damage, or STR.

for the same reason, rings of reckless attacks are good (i often use two) because they drop so soon, around DL5. A low level warrior with a dagger can easily get 2.7 attacks, which is an extra 27 damage x turn with two rings +5.



btw, selling off is an option that you can turn off - i personally do not use it because i like selling big expensive stuff.
Also, give random artifacts a try. I find that randard sets are much more fun than the default standart set.

Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah, back up the misinformation train there, buddy! Armor class nearly worthless??? And OP is playing a warrior, not a Ranger. Not a Mage. Armor class is very useful for any character that likes to get up close and personal. smh. Sure, it won't save you when X the horrible breathes for 500 or 600 damage and you're low on health, but high AC allows warriors to melee just about everything without losing 250hp in a single turn. Your views on AC are very odd to me, Sky: I've been trying to determine if AC above 230 even makes a difference. I definitely know it does between 50AC, 100AC and 150AC. In the end game I like to have my armor above 177AC. I often take higher AC armor at the expense of a high resist or stun protection or other non essential luxuries. A "solved" character that is a Warrior with low AC is useless to me.

Anyone else want to take a dig at armor class? I know Sky isn't the only here one who harbors such silly notions.

My take on rings of reckless attacks is that the lousy ones often aren't worth wearing (over, say, a good ring of protection [gasp!]). But good ones are almost always worth wearing at the depth they show up provided you haven't found better rings from deeper in the dungeon. Caveat to this being if you have really good AC and really bad melee damage output, then wearing a poor ring of reckless attacks (+4, +3) [-17] would most likely be highly preferable to a ring of protection [+14]. I agree Rings of the Mouse for warriors generally aren't worth fussing with.

One thing to consider about the way AC works is that different monsters have a range at which your AC is going to make a bigger difference. A weak monster (say a lemure) won't notice a difference if @ has 50AC or 150AC. He's going to miss a lot against both characters. But a strong monster (say a Vrock) will notice such a difference. He will miss more against the 150AC @ than the 50AC@ and will hit nearly equally as often against an @ with 0AC and 50AC. Now a *really* strong monster (say a Horned Reaper) will not notice much difference between an @ with 0AC, 50AC and 100AC. He will quickly disassemble into pulp these @s. But he will be significantly thwarted by an @ with 200AC and somewhat slowed by an @ with 150AC as compared to ones with 100AC.

So I think the reason people have the misconception that AC isn't important is because AC is only noticeable if @ is trying to have enough AC to deal with the monsters prevalent at the depth @ is fighting. If your attitude is AC is useless and don't bother trying to have enough, you are right, you won't notice a difference if you have really low AC or low AC, because either AC amount isn't enough to be in the range where monsters at your depth will start being affected by your AC. In short, AC needs to be high enough to match the depth of the monster being fought, otherwise it's useless. If your AC is always really high for the depth your at you will always notice that most monsters are not able to hit you much. Saying AC is useless is kinda like saying runes of protections are useless.

Now the interesting debate on AC comes into play when discussing what the optimum AC / damage conversion rate is. In the final fights is 600 damage to evil with 100AC preferable to 500 damage to evil with 200AC?

&&&

In Angband 4.2.1 stun works even on Sauron and Morgoth and most everyone except undead (and maybe elementals?)

sppf said: Consider how much you would cry if the fire hound/baby red dragon breathed and your scroll of acquirement turned to ash.

Ahhh.. the pain of such a recent memory is still fresh!

My rule of thumb on to-hit for melee classes is that 15 to-hit = about 1 to-dam. So if you find a damage ring (0, +8) it's always going to faarrrr outclass the best accuracy ring (+23, 0). If I find an insane launcher I sometimes mess around with accuracy rings but even then it's not really a smart move given other rings available, but, damn it, I want to use an accuracy ring with a good launcher!

The problem with confuse monster is that if you are trying to hit the monster and the monster moves away from you because it's confused, this isn't helpful to @. What I end up doing is moving next to the monster again only for it to then get its turn and hit me. Therefore I prefer slow monster to confuse monster. Confuse monster might be good if you are playing a Mage or Ranger, though.

@Petoften: You may want to make sure the unidentified rune isn't rPoison or some other useful high resistance.

[Sky]

Does the potion shop sell back stat and xp potions? At which price? Usually I don't have much gold to spare at statgain depth.

+/- is 1000g, stat is 8000g, Exp is 25000g, Augmentation is 50000g.

BM sells at 3x

[fph]

Can't you buy them back?

Does the potion shop sell back stat and xp potions? At which price? Usually I don't have much gold to spare at statgain depth.

[Petoften]

Personally, I just drink them and live with it. Mixed +1/-1 stat-potions are DL30 native exactly like pure +1 stat potions, so you'll miss out on some of the good stuff as well if you plan to give them all to the shopkeepers. I don't think it is an effective strategy.

Can't you buy them back?

[fph]

Any tips how to avoid the wrong stat potions as I try new potions?

Personally, I just drink them and live with it. Mixed +1/-1 stat-potions are DL30 native exactly like pure +1 stat potions, so you'll miss out on some of the good stuff as well if you plan to give them all to the shopkeepers. I don't think it is an effective strategy.

[wobbly]

I found a second damage ring, which adds a little damage, going from 203 to 211, over reckless attacks.

Is it worth replacing for that little boost, or is the 4 to hit bonus on reckless attacks more important?

Accuracy usually isn't a big deal in angband. However if you want to check the monster recall gives a chance to hit & you can check a bunch of stuff you fight through the monster knowledge menu, under ~

[sffp]

Why are mapping and light/illumination important?

Darn, I just dropped a stun thinking it is probably unreliable.

don't fret stun. - it doesn't work against uber elite and is eminently droppable

map/light/illumination/detect

All are about knowledge of the battlefield. You might not need some of those staves/rods because you have spells that light up the room, the hallway or detect evil/object/monsters/surroundings. But knowing that you can back up or dart behind a wall might be the difference between surviving and not

understanding sight lines - sometimes they can see you and you can't see them and vice versa. If they don't see you, they won't breath or summon.
You can get free shots with your bow or wand or spell or your rod of TO or slow if you're in this situation:


.P
.#
@

This is vital for facing things that if they breath on you, you die.
There are some nasty things out there and they don'ts like us at all, do they precious.

Most games end in @death

[sffp]

I usually find a good ring of damage/ring of strength combo works well for max damage
Rings of Strength are nice because they sustain strength too, and losing strength hurts damage as well as carry capacity and therefore speed.

Speed isn't everything, but it's number 1A