Poschengband advice

[Raajaton]

I've been a long time player of Angband looking to get into a variant. I picked up Poschengband over the weekend and fired it up briefly. Suffice to say that even during character creation, I found myself a little bit overwhelmed. I tried a couple of variations, most of which lived fast and died young.

What I'm looking for is maybe a bit of advice as to what would be a good way to get started. Perhaps a strong starting combo, when to go and attempt that Thieves quest, etc.

[Derakon]

Generally when I'm trying a new variant for the first time, I pick the most melee-heavy build I can manage. Lots of HP makes Angband and its variants far more forgiving of mistakes, and optimal melee tactics generally don't change too much.

[mrrstark]

Mauler is fun, simple.

[Philip]

It could be confusing for a new player, since some of the mechanics could take getting used to. Straight warrior is better for a new player, I think.

[HugoVirtuoso]

A good start would be the classic Half troll warrior. Has lots of HP, hits hard, has Sustain Strength, and the Berserk ability.

[debo]

I'm pretty new, but regardless of dude generally what i do is

a) Go to the castle or whatever at north end of town and take the robbers quest, kill the dudes (the quest is east of town) and get the reward.

b) Then I go and take the Warg's Quest (same castle) -- go to Camelot Dungeon (east of town also, purple >) and depending on my dude's strength / melee ability, I dive to DL5 and kill all the wargs. By then I'm somewhere between CL8-15 depending on luck and XP penalty.

The reward for that quest is a semidecent weapon.

After that, I might go to icky caves (SW of town), or if I'm feeling strong I'll buy a bunch of rations and light and I'll go to Morivant (town NE on world map). From there I'll go to Orc Caves and start diving / dying.

The "plan" after that really depends on stuff I find.

Half the fun in Poscheng is how over-the-top everything is, so if you want melee classes don't feel like you need to stick to warrior, things like maulers and other melee classes are p.fun and not that much different.

[clouded]

Pretty much what Derakon said, anything with strong melee is the easiest. Warrior is just the same as vanilla, weaponmasters and maulers get some fun abilities but suffer a little by restricting what's useful for them, berserkers are by far the strongest early but become extremely easy to die with once you get deeper, thanks to not being able to teleport. For races, golem and draconian are both a little odd but not too much so and get some good innate things.

I've settled into a fairly regular game plan which I've found to be the fastest way to start. Of course, it can change a large amount depending on some things, but:

- Do the thieves quest immediately, almost every character can do this unless it's something really bad at the start. A potion of heroism or scrolls of blessing help.

- Turn on 'always small levels' (it's in the '4' category in options) and then get to DL5 of Camelot as quickly as possible to do the wargs quest. Again, pretty much every character can do this, if you really need to you can stair dance to kill the first few wargs, they get their position reset when you leave the level. After that travel back to the surface, remember that levels are persistant and the ` key lets you use autotravel. ID and sell the shield you get as the reward (this depends on class, some get other things), buy a staff of perception if it's available, otherwise buy consumables (especially teleport scrolls).

- Go to the overmap and then to the entrance of the icky caves, just below the outpost. Now that the wilderness scrolls the entrance isn't always visible on the 'M' map when you > on the square, but run around a little and you should find it. If you don't have that staff of perception or a decent stack of teleportation, clear a couple of levels here. Then, travel to Morivant, that's the town in the centre of the world. For the trip there, you want a decent stack of teleport (at least 6) and food (12 should be enough unless you have regen). Stop off at the orc caves to get it in your recall list but don't bother exploring it, the levels are too huge. Once in the town, buy some more food and consumables (a scroll of recall). If you have a bunch of unIDed equipment you can use the thieves guild near your house to ID your inventory for 600 gold.

- Travel to Angband, it's NE from Morivant. Angband has a bunch of random unique quests on set levels, you'll always get at least one {excellent} item from them. The first three quests are on DL6, 12 and 24 - but don't do the one on 24, it can be too dangerous. Either recall or walk back out after the DL12 one, or just the DL6 one if you have a full pack. Travel north up to the town Angwil, ID/sell whatever, the quest items should either be useful or sell for a lot, so you'll have several thousand gold by now. You can recharge your staff of perception at the tower of sorcery here, there's one in Morivant too.

- Recall to the icky caves and descend there until about DL20. I prefer this dungeon because you can force small levels unlike the orc caves, and there are no nasty uniques like in Camelot. Once I've got a staff of detect stairs, I dive to the end of the orc caves to kill Azog, he's a little tough but not that much, worth using a potion of speed on though. If you've got stone to mud, you can dive to the end of the labyrinth too, the minotaur is easier than Azog.

- Travel to Telmora and fight in the arena until you kill the angel, this gets you a rod of detect monsters (very important), you could do this before Azog though there are some sort of strong things you need to fight. Then descend to DL34 of the icky caves, the boss is on DL35. It's another fast, melee dude, this time with acid melee. If you have !speed and !res (or just double acid res) he's not too hard, but you can wait if needed.

- This is where I usually start to do different things. The dungeons which I would consider doing now are the Castle (but it is full of annoying arch-viles), the lonely mountain (can be a pain without levitation), or anti-melee/anti-magic caves (this is a little bit of a jump up, so it can be dangerous). If I'm really stealthy and playing something with good detection or lucked into early telepathy, I might consider just going to straight to DL60 and the dragon's lair. At this point I turn off always small levels, it starts to get dangerous not having space to teleport to.

There are bunch of level 15-25 quests you can do but I generally don't bother, the rewards are usually not that great and I don't find them too fun, but sometimes I still do them. The level 30 onward quests I usually wait a long time to do. Similarly, after the first three dungeon guardians, I usually don't bother to kill any others, unless I want their set drop - the exception being Camelot, the uniques there all drop great stuff so it's worth it, just make sure you resist confusion and blindness.

With time you will probably find your own method, this is just what I slipped into. Other people (like Hugo) seem to do a lot of wilderness trawling that I've never figured out. Poscheng has a lot of stuff so for a while you will get surprised by a lot things. If it won't ruin your enjoyment, I suggest turning on the cheat option for full monster recall for a while, once you get past DL40, there are a lot of uniques that will kill you very quickly if you don't know what they do.

[debo]

Also, get rockets as soon as possible and rocket everything

[Raajaton]

Thanks a lot for the info! I look forward to putting it to use and really sinking my teeth into this game. I now have a nice gameplan for my first few levels, which I think should help immensely.