PosChengband Sorcerer advice

[grodrigues]

Trying the very classic combo High-Elf Sorcerer with patient personality -- you can see it here: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16477. A 160% xp penalty of Sorcerers, together with 190% from High-Elf makes for painful level gain. Add to that a natural propensity for turtling, not having a feel for the best places to go and you have a pretty lousy play time (although turn count is surprisingly not too bad).

This character faces two major problems. The first is the somewhat lackluster Stealth. Parked at the initial depths of Dragon's Lair, it doesn't take much time for everything to be at my throat, and I usually have to bail out. Even with all resistances covered (except Time), and the basic elementals covered twice or thrice, I cannot take more than one or two hits. I have not found a way to improve the situation, but then I have accumulated much more crap than I can handle (I guess I can be diagnosed with compulsive hoarding).

The second, related problem, is that the damage output is somewhat lacking. The idea of the PosChengband spell progression seems to be that costlier spells are less effective in average damage per mana poin, but kill things fast enough that they end up being much better, e.g. you do not have to consume pots or cast healing spells, or even face backlash. So let us take as an example Rocket in the Earth, Wind and Fire book from the Armageddon realm. Great spell, doing gobs of damage. Assuming no resistance and a clvl of 36, 10 castings will deal about 2000 damage for 280 sp; standard Wyrms have double that. Add Healing (HP indicator is at 50%: one breath and I am into reds, when not into double digit HPs. A few times the only thing that saved was the tiny buffer provided by Heroism) and I am out of mana. And this for killing a single Wyrm. Which is I why usually do not do it and stick to ancient dragons or the several 40-ish lvl drakes. Eat mana is nice and all, but I usually just pick the wands from the floor and go from there, and it just does not seem to be enough. Any ideas? As things stand, I am loathe to dive lower into the Dragon Lair, or even Angband. Even in the Telmora arena, my next foe is an Iron Lich; in normal circumstances, I am confident I could beat it (Heal is a real life saver), but with no access to mana potions I have no intentions of risking my fame for it.

Also I am working under the assumption that the Dragon Lair is really the best place for stat gain and gear at this point. I never tried summoning either; the spells, or the scrolls at home (or capture balls, or...). Is that a good option for a Sorcerer?

[clouded]

Your mana seems quite low for a Sorcerer with high Chr, try lowering your equipment weight? Eat Magic is extremely effective, the best devices to use are rods of elemental bolts, decent mp gain and very fast recharge. I'd spend that gold you have at the gambling shop in Morivant buying rods.

What you should be hunting at this level is hounds. Consider a Hell Wyrm gives around 30000XP, is very dangerous and hard to kill - a pack of nether hounds gives something like 9000 x 10 XP and aren't dangerous or hard to kill.

Summoning is very strong, the easiest way to kill high HP uniques. The strategy you should use is to summon until you get a couple of summoning monsters and dismiss everything else, then send your summoners to attack your target, they'll do the summoning for you while you hide in safety. Remember you don't get much xp when your allies kill things though.

[Cold_Heart]

1) Your gear is way too heavy. For sorcerer, penalties apply after 4lb of equipment (shooter not counted). And the penalty is very heavy on your mana, so consider some much more lighter gear.

2) Craft 2 book has helpful stuff, as does chaos 2, you should get those. On the other hand arma 1 and sorcery 1 can be safely discarded at this point. I'd also carry demon 2 for castable rnether and crusade 2 or 3.

3) Don't need to carry curing, carry !Cure Critical Wounds instead (unless you have some silly mutation and can't cure it)

4) You have very good detection as is, no need for !enlightenment imo;

5) High damage spells start out expensive and with poor dmg/mp but they improve a lot. At CLVL 40+ plasma breath is wonderful.

6) That million of cash you have I would invest into gambling for random rods. acid ball, acid bolt, fire ball, cold ball are quite common and restore 40 mp per eating, plus they recharge - good replacement for clarity pots when you have like 7 or so.

7) After the above adjustments, I would either hang out more or less safely at lonely mountain 40 looking for a vault, a bit less safely on graveyard 40 also looking for a vault, or very, very carefully on arena 50 killing what you can in search for third books.

ADD: it seems like you already have death 3. You can use vampirism true to pretty much destroy most living targets.

Cheers.

[grodrigues]

Thanks for the help. Here are my (half-formed) thoughts:

Summoning is very strong, the easiest way to kill high HP uniques. The strategy you should use is to summon until you get a couple of summoning monsters and dismiss everything else, then send your summoners to attack your target, they'll do the summoning for you while you hide in safety. Remember you don't get much xp when your allies kill things though.

This sounds so... cheesy.

Your gear is way too heavy. For sorcerer, penalties apply after 4lb of equipment (shooter not counted). And the penalty is very heavy on your mana, so consider some much more lighter gear.

Ouch, never figured the penalty was so high. Took off 4 pieces of gear and regained about 100 mana; even Cleopatra with its Charisma bonus had a net negative penalty. Two things I tend to find essential, besides resistance coverage: Telepathy -- have only one source; and going back to using the spell all the time is quite bothersome -- and Reflection which has no spell equivalent, but there are a couple of possible sources.

Craft 2 book has helpful stuff, as does chaos 2, you should get those. On the other hand arma 1 and sorcery 1 can be safely discarded at this point. I'd also carry demon 2 for castable rnether and crusade 2 or 3.

Armageddon 1 has the most cost effective spells: I can Lightning / Frost Bolt to death ancient dragons and 40-ish level drakes with no problems and still have plenty of mana available. I suppose here the retort would be: make the changes proposed and aim to fry bigger and better fish. Sorcery 1 on the other hand has Phase Door, Teleport and Recharge, and only Teleport has an equivalent in an already present book.

Craft 2 has, as far as I can see, Elemental Cloak, Protection from Evil, Berserk and Giant Strength. I do not know what the latter does exactly and the other 3 while nice, do not strike me as essential. As for the Crusade books, there always seem to be functional equivalents in other books; e.g. Holy Orb seems functionally equivalent to Mana Burst, except it is more expensive and only hurts evil. The dispels are LoS but the damage can vary a lot. Hmmm, we'll see.

Don't need to carry curing, carry !Cure Critical Wounds instead (unless you have some silly mutation and can't cure it)

Curing heals 50 which is better than the 6d8 from CCW, and since I tend to find more than I spend, it is not a problem. Besides, the former also cures Hallucination against Berserk of the latter; Chaos and Nexus (??) can cause Hallucination, but is there anything that causes Berserk? Besides self-inflicting it that is.

You have very good detection as is, no need for !enlightenment imo;

Ah good point. Cannot quite remember exactly why I hauled those things around.

That million of cash you have I would invest into gambling for random rods. acid ball, acid bolt, fire ball, cold ball are quite common and restore 40 mp per eating, plus they recharge - good replacement for clarity pots when you have like 7 or so.

Was saving money for reforging, but will try. I see some ladder dumps where in the comments, people talk about spending a couple million in rods, then some more millions in reforging, etc. How do they amass so much money?

After the above adjustments, I would either hang out more or less safely at lonely mountain 40 looking for a vault, a bit less safely on graveyard 40 also looking for a vault, or very, very carefully on arena 50 killing what you can in search for third books.

Actually I already have all the eleven third books (but oddly still no fourth book; probably have to dive deeper).

Edit: by the way, forgot to ask the following. Does wearing the Stone of Chaos make any siginificant difference for the damage output of Chaos spells? I only used it a bit, and spotted no big difference.

[Cold_Heart]

0) you don't need a source of telepathy from gear - trump 1 book covers this

1) arma 1 spells are cost effective but against the alive targets you'll be using vampirism true anyway, and against everything else rockets or plasma breath. it's not needed. as for sorcery 1 book - you say phase door, teleport, recharge - but trump 1 has phase door and teleport, and recharge you don't really need since you normally recharge things in tower for money (and without risk of blowing up those precious devices)

2) craft 2 is for giant's strength. it improves your hp, which for the *most* squishy class in game is pretty big deal. Protection from Evil doesn't hurt either.

3) crusade 3: dispel evil is a lovely room-cleaner; at mid-40s and later, star burst becomes a great source of light damage against certain things that dislike light

4) you will have tons of cash, just sell expensive ego armors (elemental/celestial brestplates etc) to shops. after finding sorcery 4 and obtaining alchemy you will literally be swimming in cash so go and spend it freely.

5) I don't think stone of chaos improves damage; I what school-specific lights do is reduce mana costs or improve casting chances, but I am not sure.