Intentionally making life hard for @

[Angdrim]

Angband is most fun when your survival is very much in doubt. And so I decided that I'm going to give my new @ a handicap. What I've settled on: no teleport other. This is basically going to make Morgoth impossible (assuming I get there, of course). So I might make an exception for the last fight. The only alternative that I can see is killing all of the really nasty uniques before getting there.

Turning off the option that lets artifacts re-spawn when you miss them occurred to me too, but since no TO is going to make raiding vaults hard (and some of them impossible), that would mean losing out on tons of artifacts, and I chickened out and left it on.

My last @ was an ironman win. I thought playing ironman would make the game a lot harder, but it wasn't that bad. Early game is a bit nerve wracking if only because food and light gives you a time limit, but once you get the phial and reliable source of food (or a big stock of it), playing ironman doesn't make a very dramatic difference. A bit trickier with setting up resistances, no guaranteed source of arrows, but not a huge difference.

Any other ideas about how to make the game harder? Anybody else give their @s a handicap?

[Adam]

May depend on version and class as well.
Using Banish and MBan also make the game easier. If all uniques are dead, with using those Morgoth also should not be a problem. Or by abusing assymetric LoS.
From my side I play with rules "No glyphs, no STM or digging unless a vault can't be reached otherwise".

[Selkie]

Drunk Angband is really hard. It makes you sloppy and over-confident.

[Nick]

No healing except against Morgoth is a good one.

[archolewa]

No detection, including no telepathy.

[Thraalbee]

Use only a specific weapon or weapon type. Shovel. Lance (once found). Fists (doable but a very tough and long game). Kill only the last two bosses ...

[Voovus]

In principle, "no teleport other + no teleport self + no phase door" is interesting. However, I found that there are enough annoying encounters to stop this being fun later in the game.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Any other ideas about how to make the game harder? Anybody else give their @s a handicap?

Take on MattB's Challenges:

1. Bog Standard Shovel Challenge: @ may only use a standard store bought shovel (no other weapons or spells) for the entire game and defeat Morgoth with it. MattB succesfully accomplished this.

2. Fists Only Challenge: @ may not use any weapon, launched missiles, or spells for the entire game and defeat Morgoth. Scrolls are permitted. I successfully did this back in the 3.2.x era, but doubt I could pull it off in the current version on the nightlies.

[tangar]

No detection, including no telepathy.

In my variant I got limited ESP option (works on 20 paces).. and all detection radiuses/effects rebalanced, eg Magic Mapping causes temp hallucinations

In principle, "no teleport other + no teleport self + no phase door" is interesting. However, I found that there are enough annoying encounters to stop this being fun later in the game.

check 'Half-Giant' class in Tangaria it can not teleport, but very powerful and got movement bonus.. actually I wanna make 'limited teleport' option - to allow only phase door for this race.. but for now it's disabled completely.

2. Fists Only Challenge: @ may not use any weapon, launched missiles, or spells for the entire game and defeat Morgoth. Scrolls are permitted. I successfully did this back in the 3.2.x era, but doubt I could pull it off in the current version on the nightlies.

Monk class in Tangaria/PWMA it's quite powerful class, and especially great with Hydra race (attacking stuff surrounding her)

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And of course.. zeitnot mode in multiplayer roguelike is super challanging and fun turns going almost in real time (which is not too hardcore cause of macro system), while time slow down when you are hurt.

[Jay]

Here are a few ideas that occurred to me:

- no use of *destruction* or earthquakes

- must read every scroll of deep descent on the level you find it (with the possible exception of DLs 94-98, since you might not be ready for Sauron)

- alternatively, play without using deep descent at all

- must kill all uniques before taking on Sauron/Morgoth

None of these are as challenging as the shovel or fists only challenge but I thought I'd throw them out there anyway.

[archolewa]

Here are a few ideas that occurred to me:

- alternatively, play without using deep descent at all

Are we sure this is a challenge? Most of my deaths happen after reading a Deep Descent scroll. Personally I squash them as soon as I find then.

[quarague]

You could also not use some equipment slots. This gives you a wide variety of extra difficulty. Using say no gloves is not much of a restriction. No rings or amulets is probably quite annoying (rand arts plus some luck recommended to get enough speed). I'm not sure whether 'completely naked' is doable? A mage can do a lot with magic ...

[Adam]

Bookless mages or artfactless games are also a challenge and doable.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Are we sure this is a challenge? Most of my deaths happen after reading a Deep Descent scroll. Personally I squash them as soon as I find then.

Funny, I save them up and then race for the bottom once I think @ has enough power to survive at depth.

[archolewa]

Funny, I save them up and then race for the bottom once I think @ has enough power to survive at depth.

Yeah, I know some people do that. Personally, I prefer to go down the old-fashioned way. This is partially because I'm a cautious player, and so like to be overprepared for Morgoth, and grinding on the bottom floors is nowhere near as fun as descending, and partially because once I'm strong enough for the depths, well then it's fun to engage in wholesale slaughter for a while after much of a game of running and hiding.