FrogComposband video

[GrimaTheBold]

These are great, thanks! I’m not really a YouTube guy - whenever I’m watching a walkthrough I think I’d rather be playing the game than watching someone else play. But yours were good.

Thanks to your Yeek Yellow Mage walkthrough I’m playing one now and really enjoying. I’d never given that class a shot before - the benefit of fast casting hadn’t sunk in. I haven’t finished the videos, I’ve gotten as far as Troll Caves so far. I’ll watch the rest today.

One question I wish you had addressed (at least so far) - strategy in which Armageddon spells you choose and which you skip. I found it interesting that in Books 1 and 2 you skipped a lot of spells, and focused almost entirely on Lightning in the early game. I’v always assumed I should memorize every Arma spell. Why not fireball or frost ball? Why not meteor?

Edit: one thing that really struck me about your play style is how willing you were to not deal with things. You quickly descended down stairs without waiting for level feelings, you ignored lots of monsters you could have killed with some time/effort, when a monster looks like a hassle you just teleported it away without second thought, and when the level got messy you just "reset" it by recalling and returning. When you entered Vault you just ninja'ed Sting and left. I definitely need to incorporate more of that attitude in my playing. One of my biggest weaknesses in roguelikes is a compulsion to finish everything.

Edit 2: no idea why my apostrophes were all replaced by gibberish when I edited the original message...

[scrarth]

Thanks for watching!

In terms of spells learned, lightning spells in the first book are the most mana efficient and as long as you're fighting monsters that don't resist it you can get by just fine. In the second book shard bolt is good for enemies that resist the base elements, and plasma bolt is good for stunning monsters. You do have a good point about meteor! I waited until Armageddon book 3 to finish off Camelot but I could have done it earlier with meteor I think. Honestly I forgot it existed. There's no reason not to learn every spell, and that might be better, since you would have more damage type coverage - I'm just lazy and don't want to have to make more than a few macros for casting.

I do slow down a bit once I get to the later dungeons, but yeah I do find it easier to ignore most monsters and skip straight to end of a dungeon, or near it. Finishing off dungeons is the best way of getting stat increases in the early game before potions start showing up, and typically you want to speed through the early game since the loot is so much better later on.

[GrimaTheBold]

To be pedantic, I actually think Frost Bolt is more mana efficient. It does one more d8 than Lightning Bolt, for the same cost (3 mp at !Mastery level, 2 mp if you have Dm). But Lightning is still the better choice because 1) it's a little faster for a yellow-mage and 2) far fewer enemies resist it.

I've learned a lot of tactical tricks from your videos. The main one is targeting monsters around a corner with a bolt spell by manually targeting a point beyond the monster - I didn't know you could do that. Also Recall to Warrens Level 1. And of course the Detect Monsters timing trick others have commented on.

[GrimaTheBold]

I just want to say again how much I appreciate this walkthrough. I'm on episode 9 now (killed Tiamat & Vecna), and I'll probably pause - no point in watching the late game until I can actually get a character that far.

I've done a great job of getting my Yellow Mages to around XL 34-36 range - I've gotten around 5 of them that far - but I keep splatting at that point due to overconfidence. Once I can spam Breathe Lightning its hard to avoid hubris. My latest died due to stupidity - walked into Dragon Quest full of confidence but forgot my cure poison mushrooms and thought I could still risk taking out the green dragon room. I should have just skipped that room and failed the Quest.

Oh and thanks to your walkthrough I finally used Trump tower to bring my scrolls of acquisition to DL 98 of Angband. I survived but only got two wands of disintegration (one of which had 395 mana!). Still better than the usual dross I get from reading Acquisition scrolls at normal dungeon depths.

[scrarth]

Yeah being willing to fail quests is a mindset it took me a while to adopt, it's always so tempting to stay that one extra turn that kills you. With the Trump tower trick, I've recently started going to DL 97 instead - the drops are pretty much the same quality, but it's much safer as you can teleport level without running the risk of winding up on DL 99 next to Oberon.

[scrarth]

The Skeleton Gray-Mage is now officially into the post-serpent game.

Serpent fight: https://youtu.be/S1nZoVS278E
Character sheet: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=25310

[scrarth]

And is now finished with all the dungeons. I might continue to play the character for a bit to max out experience since I have such a good dragon slaying weapon, but there won't be any more videos for it.

Last video: https://youtu.be/j5qEVsH1wg4

[smbhax]

This was the best explanation of what someone's doing while they're playing Frog that I've seen, so I actually felt like I could follow a little bit of what was going on, which was really helpful. : )

[scrarth]

Starting up a new stealth focused playthrough, doing an Android Rogue. I'm now recording on my desktop, which means the audio quality isn't quite so bad, but unfortunately I cropped the last couple of rows of the screen, so buffs and dungeon depth don't make an appearance in this video.

https://youtu.be/bAq32nyYaJw

[GrimaTheBold]

I was hoping you would next do either a Stealth build, or a Priest, so this is perfect. I was going to put in a request for these but thought that would come across as a bit cheeky

I love the idea of a melee-focused Priest of Life/Sorcery (or maybe Craft or Trump) but I've never made it work.

[scrarth]

Definitely do feel free to make requests, I'm running out of ideas for characters to play. I've never played around with Priests but it's certainly something I could have a go at.

[scrarth]

The Android Rogue playthrough is now finished.

Last video: https://youtu.be/YipU0vkHBPs
Character dump: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=25395

[shiz]

Big thanks for the videos! I only watched first playthrough so far, and it's full of useful things, advice etc. After watching I finally killed Serpent first time.

[scrarth]

Been playing a rune knight recently that got very lucky with items - so lucky that I decided to record the serpent fight, which ended up being my quickest by far.

Video: https://youtu.be/T-_47pv6aek
Character dump: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=25665

[Mindflower]

Hi there!

Just wanted to say Hello... again! It's me from over youtube.
As a side note: I had much better experiences with .mkv-videos too, considering youtube.

I just excaped Kevlax the Many-Headed, who was waiting for me at the bottom of Troll-Cave, that was a shocker moment. It felt like he was there way too early for this level.

For everyone else: I can recommend this series of videos, as scrarth not only plays well, but goes along with great reasoning and explanations; which helps getting into the mindset of the game, a lot.