[Poschengband] How do YOU get to Clvl 30?

[ianstonegray]

I've been playing for a while but the highest I've gotten is Clvl 29. I mostly play Hobbit Sling Masters or Tonberry Ninjas. I am still looking for that perfect mix of being able to melee things while having a broad toolbox to snipe from a distance.

Anyway, what is your usual route to Clvl 30 (and beyond)? From the char dumps, it seems that people actually get to these high levels in relatively short time.

Here is my usual path:

- Thieves Quest
- Warg's Quest
- Angband lvl 6
- Stronghold lvl 15
- Angband lvl 12
- Orc Caves lvl 23
- Labyrinth lvl 28
- Orc Camp Quest
- Doom Quest 1
- Sewer Quest
- Tengu and Death Swords Quest
- Mimic's Treasure Quest

I'm usually Clvl 22-26 at this point and will try and bop around in the first couple floors of Camelot for lvls and loot. I will also try and start diving in the Forest and take on Logrus Master. If I can get through that I will be Clvl 27-29, at which point I will inevitably die, probably somewhere in Camelot.


So... how do you do it?!

[wobbly]

I actually find lonely mountain safer then camelot & dragons are easy xp & loot as long as you have the hps or resists. Get detect monster, either from the floor, the BM or Telmora arena. Levitation from somewhere. Go dragon hunting.

Also Re: character choices, consider a half-ogre trump rogue or similar. Telepathy & TO in the 1st book, good with missile weapons, decent stealth, good melee, decent hps, dark resist...

[HugoVirtuoso]

Check out my YouTube channel. You'll see how I roll within 1+ hours of PosChengband gameplay!! Note: I am super fast at how I play PosChengband! My videos show this, indeed! My main strategy is to stay in the wilderness is to fight the dragons at the mountains north of the Volcano as well as those dragons at the mountains south of Angwil. This can be done early in the game too. Boost your melee as early as you can and keep up your HP for safe takedowns.

IMO, the Tonberry Chaos-Warrior is the most fun PosChengband combo to play **EVER**! PLAY Tonberry Chaos-Warriors!! Tonberries have additional melee bonuses, especially with lighter weapons (i.e., <8 lbs?), as I level up and in hopes that the Chaos patron rewards me with stat gains at the right times. This way, I usually get to clvl 25-27 within the 1st hour and and then clvl 30+ by the 2nd-3rd hour. Then, if my melee is 400+, I'm off to the Arena dungeon, which I've managed in a couple of cases, even as early as just after the 1st hour mark from GAME START! This combo (with adequate healing consumables) can take down the Arena dungeon monsters to level up (while being kind of hard at the same time). Once I reach clvl 34-35 or HP reaches > 600, it gets easier. Chaos-Warriors are good at magical devices and fair with spellcasting casting depending on the INT. Later in the game, look for Staves of Cure Wounds, Healing, and Confusing Lights!!

I do have some videos of my best Tonberry Chaos-Warrior so far, Peltor 470, showing how I went from clvl 1 to clvl 50 in ~17 hours of gameplay on my computer. I'll let you all know when they're ready on my YouTube channel.

[GenericPseudonym]

Trying to take on quests too early can be really high-risk low-reward. Chances are you don't *really* care about that rod of chaos strike. I never do the Logrus master quest until I at least have 2 points of rChaos because the reward is kind of crappy and the danger of getting confused and blown up is pretty high.

Camelot also feels more dangerous than similar-level dungeons just because all the uniques there can summon and can follow your teleport, which means you have a very hard time getting out of a bad situation. I'll second the advice to go to level 30 dungeons instead -- Lonely Mountain or Giant's Hall, which will also have better xp and loot because of the higher dungeon level. You can also head to higher-level dungeons like the level 40 Mountain, as long as you have a good way to detect and avoid the scariest monsters.

I usually skip Forest entirely until I want to dive to the bottom to kill Shelob. The big open spaces plus lots of hounds is just plain annoying, and there is very little loot there.

You can also often advance in xp much faster in the wilderness: low level characters with ranged attacks can bully the melee-only hydras in the swamp south of Outpost to get lots of xp and gold (but no items), and higher-level characters with good resistances and a source of detection can go hunt dragons in the mountains. Have either -detectmonsters+Sinv or Telepathy, though, or you might eat a surprise 250 damage from a Great Crystal Drake! Oh yes, and make sure that there's a non-mountain tile like a tree or something next to the dragons when you kill them so there's somewhere for the items to land.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Giant's Hall is fine. DON'T fight the Giant's Hall dungeon guardian at dlvl 40...Utgard-Loke...he's an asshole-and-a-half!!!

[Zop]

I may have touched clvl 30 once as a Warrior-Mage, my favorite. Beating Camelot is pretty hard I found, even with a good speed item, so I would recommend that you do not do this until later. The logrus master is also way harder than it says... but of course, you can get lucky and survive.