Newbie questions about Sangband

[Magnate]

Ages since I've played sanband so unsure on this one, but I'd double check your not accidently wrestling instead of using karate. From memory unarmed defaults to wrestling & you need to press a key to switch to karate.

It's the vertical bar character, |, to switch from W to K (which is shown in the left pane). That's why Karate is not being practised.

[Nick]

1. I noticed the exp you gain through using unidentified potions / scrolls / mushrooms / etc is really high! Eating a mushroom of blindness at power level 12 increased my experience by 25 points! Taking into consideration that potion of restore X are always for sale in the town, are there any really dangerous (I mean permanent harm / instant death) potions / scrolls / mushrooms / etc ? I remember potions of Death from the old times, are they still around?

I believe every item is survivable, essentially - IIRC potions of death leave you on 0HP.

[wobbly]

3. Even though my current character only fights using Karate, it is constantly grayed out (I don't have enough practice to increase it efficiently). It didn't happen with swordsmanship. What is the reason, and how do I make the situation better? Right now I have 65 unspent experience points, because I'm waiting for Karate to become white.

Ages since I've played sanband so unsure on this one, but I'd double check your not accidently wrestling instead of using karate. From memory unarmed defaults to wrestling & you need to press a key to switch to karate.

[Derakon]

The only practical way to avoid acid damage to your equipment is to not get hit by acidic attacks. Mostly that means avoiding the melee attacks of 'j' monsters. You don't have to kill everything you see!

Eventually you can find gear that is immune to acid, and thus cannot itself be damaged. And you can find gear that grants immunity to acid, at which point all of your gear is protected (as are you yourself). But until then, every acid attack will attempt to damage one of your armor slots. Take heart: this does reduce the damage you take by half, assuming the slot selected a) has armor in it, and b) that armor provides a nonzero amount of AC.

[FlayedOne]

Thank you for the reply. After reading through some threads, the combat system seems like an improvement compared to the old Vanilla.

The rouge died on dlvl 8 .

Stealing and trap setting is not under 'p' or '['. The only talent I had was Sneaking despite having lvl 20 burglary. I couldn't find anything in the commands list either.

About acid damage - so there is no way around it - I have to dive because otherwise I'm losing my whole armor set everytime I go into the dungeon? Perhaps I should get some ranged attack... Does 'spiritual hammer' spell (holy damage) work against all, or only against 'evil' monsters?

What equipment should I be carrying to stay alive? Right now I'm carrying:
- 5 scrolls of teleport - should I replace them with staves? You can't read when you're blind / confused , but they have no failure rate. To use staves I would have to put points into magical device skill
- 4 scrolls of word of recall - just in case of fire / acid / theft
- 5 potions of cure critical wounds
- a few potions of speed - usefull for both escapes and fights
Should I add anything / switch it to something else?

I made a new character, this time I'm trying to make something similar to the monk from Zangband - currently on dlvl 5:

Karate:                  19
Dodge:                   20
Perception:              10
Stealth:                 10
Spellcasting:             5
Magical Power:            5
Holy Aliance:             5
Spell Resistance:         5
Disarming:                5

A few things seem really strange though:
1. I noticed the exp you gain through using unidentified potions / scrolls / mushrooms / etc is really high! Eating a mushroom of blindness at power level 12 increased my experience by 25 points! Taking into consideration that potion of restore X are always for sale in the town, are there any really dangerous (I mean permanent harm / instant death) potions / scrolls / mushrooms / etc ? I remember potions of Death from the old times, are they still around?

2. A character with 10 Karate seems to deal more damage than a character with 25 Swordsmanship / 20 burglary with a (+5,+5) sabre ;/ I understand that weapons have a higher potential thanks to magical enhancements, but it still seems strange.

3. Even though my current character only fights using Karate, it is constantly grayed out (I don't have enough practice to increase it efficiently). It didn't happen with swordsmanship. What is the reason, and how do I make the situation better? Right now I have 65 unspent experience points, because I'm waiting for Karate to become white.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Sang also uses the Oangband combat system, where heavier weapons can give more damaging criticals than lighter weapons, so you might be able to kill faster if you make a good hit with a heavier weapons, there is a thread about that somewhere here.

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=2954&highlight=Oangband+combat

To use "skills" like stealing, weapon forging ex it will probably be under either the "p" key or the "[" key should display a list of usuable skills.

[Malak Darkhunter]

I'm not an expert here but I play Sang regualry, you have to invest some skills into at least of the weapon like professions..ie swordsmanship for sharp weapons, jousting for hafted weapons, clubbing for blunt weapons, as you raise those skills your ability to hit more often goes up with the skills, you can raise them up too skill level 100..raising a skill in one of those abilities make you better with that type of weapon....there is also karate and wrestling, unarmed skills.

as far as light weapons goes I believe they are for weapons under 10lbs ? something like that but again that's just a guess from something I read once..you can also dual wield lighter weapons.

as far as hit rate dropping down, have you checked your armor modifiers?
heavier armor often bears a penalty to hit..shown in brackets ie (augemented chainmail [-2]. the -2 is a negative to hit due to armor weight.

fire and acid will destroy player inventory. Acid will eat up your armor finding items that resist acid will protect your equipment, it's a pain but that's the nature of the game. once you survive long enough to start finding artifacts your equipment will be pretty much resistant to acid, but paper scrolls and stuff will not...in sang there are also blankets of protection that protect your inventory..but be warned! some of those are often cursed. Disenchantment will negate the pluses on your equipment so beware of those attacks also. good luck on your burglar, right now I am playing a no artifact dwarf using forging skills, it's been tough but it's also a lot of fun.

[FlayedOne]

Hello,

Recently I started playing Sangband, and I must say, I'm really confused.

I'm trying to play a rouge / fighter kind of character using melee with light weapons, so I invest mainly in burglary and dodge.

1. What surprised me is the fact, that the more points I invest in burglary, the lower my hit-rate on dungeon level 1. Shouldn't it get higher, since I'm using a sabre (pretty light weapon, or is it too heavy for a burglar?)? A fresh character gets around 88 hit rate against a grey mold, but a character with 8 burglary gets ~75. Investing into swordsmanship doesn't seem to affect that either. Only my fighting skill description changes. Having a (+6,+6) sabre doesn't seem to change it either. The same goes for average damage. What is even more perplexing is that no matter whether I use a (+6,+6) sabre of (0,0) dagger my average damage after attacking a grey mold is stuck at 4 or 5.

Am I misunderstanding something? Should I ignore the values? It seems like I'm killing faster with a sabre than a dagger.

2. Is a short sword a better weapon for a burglar than a sabre? What does "light" mean in the burglary skill description?

3. Should I invest into swordsmanship as well, or is it better to invest only in burglary if I'm using light weapons?

4. How do I steal? Supposedly burglary lvl 4 should allow me to do it, but I don't know how I can use the skill.

5. Any advice for this type of character? Right now, I'm investing mostly into burglary, dodge and perception, with a few points in stealth and disarming. Is it too many skills? I'm dying horribly pretty often. I tried using swordsmanship instead of burglary, but it didn't seem to make any difference.

-edit-
6. It seems like almost all monster on levels 5-10 use acid, which burns through my armor very fast. Thankfully my dodge is lvl 30, so I have 17 AC without armor, but it still is really annoying. The damage also burns through my scrolls. How do you deal with it?