Poschengband game mechanic questions

[Fnord]

It seems odd to have these in either char dumps or the various version threads (where it makes sense for quickly changing newly developed stuff, but not so much the basics).

So, since I have a bunch of them, here goes:

* Resists stack - that's understood. But how exactly does what stack?
** Item protection from double/triple fire/cold/lightning/acid resist: Multiple checks? Percentage?
** Same question for confusion, shards etc.
** I've read that regenerate stacks. But my experience seems to show that hold life does not appear to stack (my current char has 5 or so and still occasionally gets drained)
** Do sustains stack? Anti-Magic? Reflection?

* What (if anything) prevents warping from gravity? Other than, presumably, NoTele - is it levitate? If so, does it stack, and how?
* What prevents slowing from intertia?

* Is there any benefit to one of the ESPs if you have telepathy?

* Checking winning warriors and berserkers, it seems that all of them use Terror Mask - I always found (in old Z!) that rnd tele basically makes an item unusable. Is there a way to prevent this or does everyone just take this risk?

* Where does one best farm the essential things required deep down? Namely !heal/*heal, !life, !res?

* How do people optimize their gear? With a growing stack in the house, it becomes worse and worse to track what items have what properties. ~9 and the inscriptions help to a degree, but even with those, it becomes rather tedious to figure out optimal (for a purpose, of course) configurations. This was simpler in old Z when it either was "resist" or "immune" - now that stacking resists and other things matters more, this becomes a problem for me.

I'm sure there'll be more, but I don't want to overwhelm folks - perhaps we can establish this thread as some sort of knowledge base for curious Posch players!

[Fnord]

Another question - ?artifact creation: What depth does it use? Current? Max? Fixed?

[Derakon]

All of these questions should be taken with the caveat that I'm assuming they're unchanged from Vanilla and/or what I remember of ZAngband.

** I've read that regenerate stacks. But my experience seems to show that hold life does not appear to stack (my current char has 5 or so and still occasionally gets drained)

Hold life is something like 90% reliable, and in the rare case where it fails, the amount of experience you lose will be vastly reduced (so it can be easily restored by killing a few monsters).

** Do sustains stack? Anti-Magic? Reflection?

No, no, and no; you either have them or you don't.

* Checking winning warriors and berserkers, it seems that all of them use Terror Mask - I always found (in old Z!) that rnd tele basically makes an item unusable. Is there a way to prevent this or does everyone just take this risk?

Uncursed items with random teleportation will, at intervals, prompt you if you want to teleport. You can inscribe them with "." to prevent this prompt from bothering you. Of course, if they get cursed then they won't prompt you any more...

[debo]

Another question - ?artifact creation: What depth does it use? Current? Max? Fixed?

Current depth.

Also, re: your terror mask question: The {.} inscription does prevent random tele. To add to this, the "holy trinity" of Berserker Things To Find is

a) Antimagic shell (to vastly boost saving throw)
b) A vamp weapon (gotta heal somehow)
c) Teleport resist, so that you never get teleported to/from/etc.

[chris]

* Resists stack - that's understood. But how exactly does what stack?

All of the regular attack forms support stacking resistance: Fire, Elec, Chaos, etc. Basically, everything that lists a percentage in your character dump.

The game counts the number of source of a given resistance you have and then does a table lookup to get the resistance percentage. (Vulnerabilities give -1, btw). The table is asymptotic: 0, 50, 65, 72, 75, ... Also, when you get hit by an attack, there is some dodging allowed by the player so the listed resistance is actually a mean resistance with a 10% variance (e.g. 50% resistance is 50+-5% and 65% is 65+-6.5%).

Now some attacks also have effects that *might* require a saving throw (And some, like gravity or inertia, don't bother to allow saving throws!). In this case, the effect requires a saving throw against the listed resistance percentage (P) of the form: 1d55 <= P. This means that a single resistance will not spare you 100% of the time like it used to (Rather, there is still a 1 in 11 chance to fail with a single resist). Two sources of a resist are required to completely negate these side effects.

Fear is a bit different, and does stack as well, but each source of fear resistance gives you an extra saving throw. There is no percentage resistance for fear, rather the saves are of the form 1dM vs 1dN and depend on both the player power and the scariness of the situation. In practice, you will need 2 or even 3 sources of fear against some of the scary end game monsters to stand a chance. (There is always !Heroism for temp resist fear and !Berserk gives immunity to fear).

** Item protection from double/triple fire/cold/lightning/acid resist: Multiple checks? Percentage?

Each item in your inventory is checked. First there is a percentage roll based on the power of the attack (3%, 6% or 9%). If this fails, there is a saving throw against your current listed percentage resistance (P) for the element in question of the form 1d66 <= P.

** Same question for confusion, shards etc.

I answered this above. Most effects that allow saves use 1d55 <= P where P is your listed resistance percentage for the attack in question.

** I've read that regenerate stacks. But my experience seems to show that hold life does not appear to stack (my current char has 5 or so and still occasionally gets drained)
** Do sustains stack? Anti-Magic? Reflection?

None of these currently stack. Most of them (except perhaps Anti-magic) could be made to stack. Hold Life in particular is super annoying once you experience gets a bit high. For example, you may routinely loose 100k experience against a dracolich while still leveling up, which is hardly insignificant.

* What (if anything) prevents warping from gravity? Other than, presumably, NoTele - is it levitate? If so, does it stack, and how?

Only NoTele, as you guess. Levitation reduces damage and prevents stunning and inventory destruction.

* What prevents slowing from intertia?

Only Hermes parentage will save you here

* Is there any benefit to one of the ESPs if you have telepathy?

Rarely. But sometimes a monster is mindless and skipped by telepathy, but caught by one of the auxiliary ESPs. Of course, ESP nonliving is very useful for votices and the like.

* Checking winning warriors and berserkers, it seems that all of them use Terror Mask - I always found (in old Z!) that rnd tele basically makes an item unusable. Is there a way to prevent this or does everyone just take this risk?

Other people addressed this. The random teleportation is minor since you are always asked and can avoid this with the '.' inscription. The (+18,+18) is just too good to pass up in most situations, though Amber sometimes is preferable.

* Where does one best farm the essential things required deep down? Namely !heal/*heal, !life, !res?

*Healing* is found deep (L80). And Life deeper still (L100). You won't find many of the latter so don't wait for them. But all resources show up with time, simply explore levels and kill stuff. Try not to use healing resources as you find them unless you have too. Instead, build a stockpile for the endgame. These days, there is plenty to be had. Monsters that "drop good objects" now have a chance to drop useful consumables so that killing stuff (e.g. Great Wyrms) is a good way to acquire resources.

But the easiest way to find what you need is to get a source of clairvoyance, usually the Jewel of Judgement. Then, you can enlighten the level and locate objects in map mode. If nothing interesting is available, you can leave the level and repeat.

* How do people optimize their gear? With a growing stack in the house, it becomes worse and worse to track what items have what properties. ~9 and the inscriptions help to a degree, but even with those, it becomes rather tedious to figure out optimal (for a purpose, of course) configurations. This was simpler in old Z when it either was "resist" or "immune" - now that stacking resists and other things matters more, this becomes a problem for me.

Don't go for perfection. Rather, build your kit around certain items that you really feel you must wear. Be sure to cover all resists as this is important, as well as getting as much stats and speed as you can. For the end game, I like at least +26 base speed but feel more comfortable with +30, though I doubt these particular numbers are scientific.

[Fnord]

Awesome, thanks for the explanations!


More questions:

* Does anything prevent charge draining?
* I've seen people mentionn that they prefer this or that dungeon for doing stat gain. Other than a slight bias in monster creation (and obviously layout), are there fundamental differences? Specifically regarding drops? Are some uniques prevented from spawning?
* What's the point of "teleport to dungeon level" in that shop at that price point? Similarly, what's the point of the 15M random artifact gamble option?

[debo]

* What's the point of "teleport to dungeon level" in that shop at that price point?

I think if you're at close-to-endgame and you have gold to burn, you may prefer to just spend it to go to e.g. Angband 90 or Castle 70 instead of spleunking through a jillion floors you don't care about. (Especially if you're the kind of class that doesn't handle most deep encounters well, and is just going to twink hard to beat the game. I think berserkers might fall into this category.)

I doubt it sees much actual use though.

[Fnord]

Now some attacks also have effects that *might* require a saving throw (And some, like gravity or inertia, don't bother to allow saving throws!). In this case, the effect requires a saving throw against the listed resistance percentage (P) of the form: 1d55 <= P. This means that a single resistance will not spare you 100% of the time like it used to (Rather, there is still a 1 in 11 chance to fail with a single resist). Two sources of a resist are required to completely negate these side effects.

This doesn't appear to work as intended then. I can't count the number of times my (equipped) boots got damaged by acid despite double and even triple resist. I just verified this by looking at my current log - just happened. And it was exploding ants, so not exactly a powerful enemy.

Fear is a bit different, and does stack as well, but each source of fear resistance gives you an extra saving throw. There is no percentage resistance for fear, rather the saves are of the form 1dM vs 1dN and depend on both the player power and the scariness of the situation. In practice, you will need 2 or even 3 sources of fear against some of the scary end game monsters to stand a chance. (There is always !Heroism for temp resist fear and !Berserk gives immunity to fear).

I understand that this isn't as clear-cut as the above, but: I'm playing a half-titan (so have innate res fear) plus a fear resist on gear plus "completely immune to fear" mutation, and I still do get feared on occasion. And that happened in situations that were in fact rather non-scary (such as a Grand Fearlord on telepathy or other situations I don't recall in detail).

[Derakon]

This doesn't appear to work as intended then. I can't count the number of times my (equipped) boots got damaged by acid despite double and even triple resist. I just verified this by looking at my current log - just happened. And it was exploding ants, so not exactly a powerful enemy.

Unless PosChengband has changed this, acid attacks will always try to damage equipped armor. Literally the only defenses against this are a) to get gear that gives immunity to acid, or b) to equip rustproof armor in every armor slot (e.g. artifacts or armor of Resist Acid, etc.). This is distinct from destruction of inventory items.

On the other hand (and again, unless PosChengband has changed this), you take half damage from acid attacks as long as they hit an armor slot that has armor giving at least +1 AC, whether or not that armor is damaged.

[chris]

Does anything prevent charge draining?

Not much. Devicemasters protect their speciality (wands or staves). Balrogs (The monster version) are immune to charge draining, as are Demon Pact Warlocks and any demigod who chooses the Demonic Grasp power.

I've seen people mention that they prefer this or that dungeon for doing stat gain. Other than a slight bias in monster creation (and obviously layout), are there fundamental differences? Specifically regarding drops? Are some uniques prevented from spawning?

It's all about the monsters IMO. I like the Lonely Mountain for mature/ancient dragons which sleep deeply and drop much. Spell caster classes might prefer the Anti-melee caves since monsters can't attack you there.

What's the point of "teleport to dungeon level" in that shop at that price point?

Laziness. If you want to end the game quickly and don't feel like diving you can Trump Tower down to DL98 of Angband and then rush the final two quest monsters. Perhaps you spent the entire game in other dungeons and now have 70+ levels of Angband to descend? Perhaps it might be useful for taking out specific dungeon masters near the end of the game so they don't get summoned?

Also, as already mentioned, berserkers will want to use this once they are powerful enough for the win.

Similarly, what's the point of the 15M random artifact gamble option?

Gold sink? Insanity?

[Fnord]

Unless PosChengband has changed this, acid attacks will always try to damage equipped armor. Literally the only defenses against this are a) to get gear that gives immunity to acid, or b) to equip rustproof armor in every armor slot (e.g. artifacts or armor of Resist Acid, etc.). This is distinct from destruction of inventory items.

I also just verified that I occasionally lose scrolls to fire despite double resist, so I still think that either Chris' description is incomplete or there's some sort of bug at works.

[chris]

I also just verified that I occasionally lose scrolls to fire despite double resist, so I still think that either Chris' description is incomplete or there's some sort of bug at works.

You need triple resist for inventory protection: 1d66 <= P for inventory and 1d55 <= P for most other effects like confusion where P is your listed resistance percentage.

Derakon is correct regarding acid. One way to think about it is that your equipment protects you and your pack, but not your other equipment. I'm pretty sure acid immunity does protect your gear, however.

[wobbly]

All of the regular attack forms support stacking resistance: Fire, Elec, Chaos, etc. Basically, everything that lists a percentage in your character dump.

The help file is out of date on this one (see ?ic):

A common misconception amongst new players is that having multiple
sources of a particular resistance will increase your character's
resistance to attacks of that form. This is not true. You will get the
same benefit from wielding a single Amulet of Resist Acid as wielding a
Shield of Resist Acid, an {Armor-type} of Resist Acid and an artifact
weapon which grants acid resistance all at the same time.

As stated above, however, it is possible to get double resistance for
the low resists (and also poison). This is because these resistances
are also available on a temporary basis by casting certain spells or by
quaffing a Potion of Resistance. Some items may also activate for
temporary resistance and it may also be gained from one of the many
possible mutations. This temporary effect is cumulative with the
permanent effect and will increase your protection against these kinds
of attacks.

[wobbly]

I have a question about rogues & slings. The help file states they get a bonus to using slings. Is it a large bonus? I don't care much about the specific no., more a question of whether it's worth favouring the sling, or whether I'm still better off with a bow.

[chris]

The helpfiles are still woefully out of date. I apologize for this, but they largely need to be rewritten and this is a project that is likely to take a month or more of full time boring effort. At some point, I will do it, but every time I start I get depressed

I have a question about rogues & slings. The help file states they get a bonus to using slings. Is it a large bonus? I don't care much about the specific no., more a question of whether it's worth favouring the sling, or whether I'm still better off with a bow.

Yes, the bonus is large and you should definitely use slings as much as possible. You will be far better off with a good sling unless you find a truly wonderful bow.