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I've been playing Angband for about ten months and after going through 50 or more characters, I think I've finally stopped making the stupid mistakes. My patience has improved greatly and I'm not doing things like running out of food while having no Recall scrolls at depths of 500+ feet.
My preferred characters are Gnome Mage and Dwarf Warrior. I greatly prefer the mage, though and finally learned that being Slow (-3) is certain death for a mage in most situations beyond 1-on-1 or 1-on-2 combat.
My biggest problem now, though, is that I can't seem to get a character to survive beyond being level 19 or going deeper than 1000'. In fact, my average is probably level 10 or so at 500'. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, so I'll list the things I think I'm doing right, and maybe that will narrow it down a little so someone can spot the mistakes.
With stats: Str - at least 6, usually 8, sometimes 10. Int - I put as many points as I can into this first (I think it ends up at 18/150). Dex - I raise this to 15 if I can. After that, I think there are usually only a few points left and those go into Con (though I've also experimented with putting them in Cha instead. The mage's spell resistance seems decent enough that I don't increase Wis.
Preparation - light and food aren't problems. I always carry at least 2 Recall Scrolls, one for the trip up and one for the return. Usually I carry at least 4 since the shop doesn't always have Recall scrolls available. Once they start becoming available, I carry a wand or two in case I run out of mana.
Mana and Spells - lately, I've been training in depths of 50' to 400' until I have Identify and started learning spells from the 4th book. This seems to make sure that I have enough mana to deal with monster pits. I use detect traps and detect monsters anytime I enter a new 'screen' of the dungeon. If my mana or hp start getting low, I make sure I have enough mana to cast Teleport. If things look like they might get really ugly, I make sure I have enough mana to cast Teleport twice (this comes up most often when I'm struggling against uniques, especially Wormtongue).
I try not to play for too long at a stretch because I've noticed I start getting sloppy if I've been playing for too long - I've killed a character several times by starting to rush things.
Other than that, I'm just at a loss. One question I do have is about the spells. It seems like in almost every situation for the depths I've been at, Magic Missile is the way to go. Unless I'm fighting 1-on-1 with a monster who can deal out large amounts of damage very quickly, such as hill orcs. In situations like that (since they usually appear in groups) I use higher-level spells to get a faster kill, then Teleport away. To avoid teleporting into a bad situation, I usually clear out the surrounding area when I encounter a monster pit.
Finally, as for the sorts of things that bring about the untimely death of my characters these days - I can't pin it down to any one thing. It just seems like every time I start to get somewhere with the character, monsters I wasn't really having a hard time with suddenly start doing horrible things.
As an example, my last character death came about while I was fighting tengus and dark elves, though I forget the depth. A tengu summoned me into a room with two other dark elves. At this point I was at full HP (or near full) and had plenty of SP. If I remember correctly, I was dead four rounds later. The dark elves both decided to cast spells every round. The round before I died, I had half, or nearly half of my HP left and didn't see any reason that both of them casting a spell on the next round should kill me - but it did. The only thing I can think of was that I was slow, but only -1 and that dark elves are much faster than I previously noticed. This death took me so much by surprise that I just quit and didn't take the time to analyze the message window to see exactly what had happened. I also didn't think to check it out the next time I started a character.
My preferred characters are Gnome Mage and Dwarf Warrior. I greatly prefer the mage, though and finally learned that being Slow (-3) is certain death for a mage in most situations beyond 1-on-1 or 1-on-2 combat.
My biggest problem now, though, is that I can't seem to get a character to survive beyond being level 19 or going deeper than 1000'. In fact, my average is probably level 10 or so at 500'. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, so I'll list the things I think I'm doing right, and maybe that will narrow it down a little so someone can spot the mistakes.
With stats: Str - at least 6, usually 8, sometimes 10. Int - I put as many points as I can into this first (I think it ends up at 18/150). Dex - I raise this to 15 if I can. After that, I think there are usually only a few points left and those go into Con (though I've also experimented with putting them in Cha instead. The mage's spell resistance seems decent enough that I don't increase Wis.
Preparation - light and food aren't problems. I always carry at least 2 Recall Scrolls, one for the trip up and one for the return. Usually I carry at least 4 since the shop doesn't always have Recall scrolls available. Once they start becoming available, I carry a wand or two in case I run out of mana.
Mana and Spells - lately, I've been training in depths of 50' to 400' until I have Identify and started learning spells from the 4th book. This seems to make sure that I have enough mana to deal with monster pits. I use detect traps and detect monsters anytime I enter a new 'screen' of the dungeon. If my mana or hp start getting low, I make sure I have enough mana to cast Teleport. If things look like they might get really ugly, I make sure I have enough mana to cast Teleport twice (this comes up most often when I'm struggling against uniques, especially Wormtongue).
I try not to play for too long at a stretch because I've noticed I start getting sloppy if I've been playing for too long - I've killed a character several times by starting to rush things.
Other than that, I'm just at a loss. One question I do have is about the spells. It seems like in almost every situation for the depths I've been at, Magic Missile is the way to go. Unless I'm fighting 1-on-1 with a monster who can deal out large amounts of damage very quickly, such as hill orcs. In situations like that (since they usually appear in groups) I use higher-level spells to get a faster kill, then Teleport away. To avoid teleporting into a bad situation, I usually clear out the surrounding area when I encounter a monster pit.
Finally, as for the sorts of things that bring about the untimely death of my characters these days - I can't pin it down to any one thing. It just seems like every time I start to get somewhere with the character, monsters I wasn't really having a hard time with suddenly start doing horrible things.
As an example, my last character death came about while I was fighting tengus and dark elves, though I forget the depth. A tengu summoned me into a room with two other dark elves. At this point I was at full HP (or near full) and had plenty of SP. If I remember correctly, I was dead four rounds later. The dark elves both decided to cast spells every round. The round before I died, I had half, or nearly half of my HP left and didn't see any reason that both of them casting a spell on the next round should kill me - but it did. The only thing I can think of was that I was slow, but only -1 and that dark elves are much faster than I previously noticed. This death took me so much by surprise that I just quit and didn't take the time to analyze the message window to see exactly what had happened. I also didn't think to check it out the next time I started a character.
. The main thing is to learn a little bit from every death. It's pretty rare that you can't trace the death back to some mistake, though the harder you push the more subtle the mistakes become. This is why I'd suggest playing some characters whose purpose in life is to get as deep as possible as quickly as possible before dying gloriously. You learn more from dying, so you might as well die a lot for a while. This will also teach you to be paranoid, and paranoia is justified in Angband. The game really is out to get you. Gnome Mages are not a great choice for this though- too few hp, and no simple way to deal a lot of damage right at the beginning.
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