Advice

[Nicodimas]

Does anyone know what is hitting me and reduces my charges ? I swear someone thing hits me and my charged items are losing charges. Is this items being destroyed and I am getting the least amount of charges or something.

Went down a few levels and found some P/H pits and doing better for tomorrow. Changing gear helped my resists/AC at the cost of 4 base speed. Some is coming back! Still a ton to remember ..

[Nicodimas]

Yea my heal stuff is way too low.. been saving my *heals* but grabbing some of those this run... to back off these levels and go back a little. I need to find a P pit I think...

It’s probably cause I am running around with 170 AC in DL 50+

I have could up it 200AC with multi hued armor, but lose -4 speed this artifact armor provides. My equipment provides 11 speed atm.

[Pete Mack]

If you're running out of !Heal, try Paladin. It really is the only class designed to kill almost everything, at least once *heal* spell gets down near 5% fail.
Early on it's a bit weak, until you get a third blow and a good weapon. But even minor heal lets you take out big mobs of orcs and trolls, and any monster that doesn't put out too much damage at once.

[Nicodimas]

Made it to charlevel 41 so far this run.

Having a tough time in dl50s as I keep running though all my healing stuff. I have a nexus and sound resist now. Is there anything against that resists time ? Have a feeling... time hounds are coming up soon right ?..

Anchient blues have my number. Almost died with two in the same Room.

I need to probably start figuring out what some of these crazy uniques do! Basically not touching them. Have a feeling I’m going to get TPd into someone crazy room.

(No rings of speed or boots yet!!)

[Pete Mack]

TO is *the* most important escape/evasion mechanism in the game. (Phase door is a close second)

[Nicodimas]

Ya I had like 3 rods/4 wand of TO .. at my home. So lesson learned.

When I say I was greedy I opened a vault and he was between me and the all gear behind him...

[Mondkalb]

Don't bother with death molds. Teleport them away or find away around them.

[Pete Mack]

@Nico--
Tele other death molds, or use archery if you must. They are "everything that is evil in a mold", but "fortunately, they can't move" for a reason.

[Nicodimas]

Got greedy. Got to level dl41..Think I finally found a speed ring and a death mold
Was in the way. Got him down to one bar then his turn..feeling 8 too.

I was far too slow with this character and hadn’t had luck with anything of speed , this still exists right??

[archolewa]

@Will--
The trouble with that is that Blackguards are *different.* Yeah, as always you need spellbook, escape, and healing. But for quite a long time, you will have trouble keeping up with monsters in terms of damage. And even an excellent bow helps a lot less than you might expect, because BG has terrible archery, and his only buff spell doesn't improve it, and in any case you need to fight to maintain mana and even to heal. I haven't figured it out yet.

I think the key thing to remember is that Blackguards (especially low level ones) are *bullies*. Meaning, they do best when they're picking on the little guy. So aggressive diving to a key cut off floor and then hanging around there doesn't generally go well for them. Also, unlike the other melee classes, Blackguards are *very* level dependent early on. An underleveled and overgeared Blackguard is nowhere near as powerful as an underleveled and overgeared Warrior.

I think Blackguard is my most common winning class (maybe competing with warrior), and this is what I do:

Dive pretty aggressively until about floor 10 or so, stopping only to slaughter anything nearby that looks slaughterable.

From here, pretty thoroughly explore each level. You don't need to clear each level, but I like to explore at least 2/3's of the map. Avoid most uniques (except Bullroarer and maybe his orc buddies) until you can use Maim Foe. Once you get Maim Foe, murder all of the orc uniques with extreme prejudice (except maybe Azog and his son unless you have !Speed). You can of course take them on earlier if you find a good weapon (Maul of Lightning, *drool*). Early on, you're on the lookout for a Ring of Open Wounds. Staves of Cure Light Wounds can also be nice for using right after a fight. Once Whirlwind Attack is reliable, rely on that for most of your attacks, unless you're at 1.6+ blows a round. The extra healing you get from casting it is wonderful. Once you get 2 blows, it's your bread and butter. Especially if you can find a nice, heavy weapon with a good brand (Maul of Lightning, *drool*).

By the time you hit the DL 30s, you should have a good stock of C*W potions, decent gear, and Whirlwind Attack should be at or almost at 2 blows, but I honestly wouldn't change my strategy much. You're still going to be slaughtering things, and not rushing floors, you just need to be a bit more choosy about who you kill. You might need to back up once you hit DL50, and redo the 40's a bit depending on how you're looking. I don't generally like to go below DL50 without Werewolf Form unless I'm doing *really* well.

Once you get Werewolf Form, the game changes, and you can start diving more aggressively. Reckless Taunt is also your friend, and you want to make sure that's up before you go up against any big spellcasters or breathers, because it makes it more likely they'll melee you instead.

[Nicodimas]

Its coming back to me made it all the out to Clevel 33 and dlev 37 and things just ramped up quickly again.

Ran into a sorcerer who summoned.. blinks summon blink summon.. ok well I am outta here /run

Ran into a mummified chieftain next time. Don’t remember this guy. Red con.. doesnt sound too bad at 37 and he hit me for 300! Wait mobs hit that hard already??/ teleportlevel.

Then found a nice 6-6 just to see kavalax. Then decided to call it a night. Might go up and few levels to come back to 37. If I remember kavalax is one of the surprisingly hard baddies that I pretty sure used to kill me back when I played this a lot.
What are usually the levels that ramp up in difficultly now and is it monsters can show +10 levels early now ? Just trying to remember whats actually hard hard now.

I did find a rod of probing.. Nm figured this out.

[will_asher]

oh yeah. I've barely tried blackguard.

[Pete Mack]

@Will--
The trouble with that is that Blackguards are *different.* Yeah, as always you need spellbook, escape, and healing. But for quite a long time, you will have trouble keeping up with monsters in terms of damage. And even an excellent bow helps a lot less than you might expect, because BG has terrible archery, and his only buff spell doesn't improve it, and in any case you need to fight to maintain mana and even to heal. I haven't figured it out yet.

[will_asher]

What I do is this:
- Get most basic gear: 1st spellbook, (1st two spellbooks if you're a primary caster), some kind of ranged weapon (even throwing iron shots is much better than nothing, at the very beginning, I get a few flasks of oil and a few shots. Can't rely only on oil because oil can only be used once.), ?phase, ?recall, and several !C*W.
- Go down stairs as soon as you find them (unless you get a good feeling for that level) until about ~dL18-19. I stay around there until I have Free Action and a decent sling or bow.
- Then go down fast (again unless you get a real good level feeling like a 3-8, 8-8 probably isn't worth it.) until dL30-35 because that's where the stat potions start. I stay around there until I have good stats and at least a few decent egos (preferably with basic 4 resists).
- Then go down to ~dL45 or so and look for artifacts, rNexus, and rPois
- and by the time I get past that part, I'm usually dead. (I don't advice copying me in this detail...)

Also, I would strongly encourage you avoid vaults of (almost) all shapes and sizes until the endgame if you're a Blackguard, unless you get *really* lucky and the guardians are unusually weak. Before the endgame, vaults are death traps unless you have very high stealth and lots of teleport other. Blackguards never have high stealth, and they don't usually get lots of teleport other until late into the midgame.

In my experience, I've seen several early vaults that didn't have anything I couldn't handle without much trouble. Just make sure you have good detetction and you can see and handle what's there before you go in.

[archolewa]

Also, I would strongly encourage you avoid vaults of (almost) all shapes and sizes until the endgame if you're a Blackguard, unless you get *really* lucky and the guardians are unusually weak. Before the endgame, vaults are death traps unless you have very high stealth and lots of teleport other. Blackguards never have high stealth, and they don't usually get lots of teleport other until late into the midgame.

In my experience, Blackguards are better off killing lots of monsters, especially uniques, to get good gear rather than raiding vaults.