Frogcomposband Utgard-Loke

[Seraphimus]

Utgard-Loke is breathing frost for like ~700+ damage. When I looked him up at the beastmaster it says it should do around 280 damage, So I guess I have two questions. Is this intended? And if it is, how are you supposed to deal with that? I mean obviously if I stack enough cold resist it's manageable for a lot of classes but for squishier classes like mages at the level that you can run the giant dungeon he can near one shot you even with 2-3 layers of cold resist.

I'm also certain he's not double moving me because I'm running a time lord With haste up I'm more than twice as fast as he is, double checked my stats and gear, I don't have frost weakness and I've actually come back again later at a much higher level and he still rolls me. ( I will admit to having cheat death on I'm new to the Chengband series of forks and frogcomposband in particular and I find it helps me learn)

also if this is a bug can someone point me to the appropriate place to report it?

[Sideways]

A cold breath from a fully healthy Utgard-Loke does 800 damage unresisted, which is 280 at 65% resistance (so if you have 65% resistance, that's what the monster lore would display). Damage resistance is slightly random, so an individual breath might do 300 or 260 damage, but not anything like 700. Even a double-breath wouldn't do 700 damage at 65% resistance.

700+ damage can be explained if you either fight him with no rCold (this is not recommended) or you fight him at 1x rCold and he double-moves you (this is also not recommended). Having only 1x rCold at that depth is a bad idea anyway, even if you avoid Utgard-Loke; not only does cold kill you, it also destroys your potions. You want 2x resistance to all four base elements (acid/elec/fire/cold) by that point.

Utgard-Loke is an admittedly dangerous guardian for his depth, much more so than Smaug; Smaug tops out at only 600 unresisted damage (210 at 65% resistance, which is what you want to have), but even more importantly Smaug doesn't heal and summon like Utgard-Loke.

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As for whether Utgard-Loke could theoretically double-move you... I'm not sure how familiar you are with the speed system in FrogComposband, and Angband more generally. Utgard-Loke moves at +10 speed, which is 2x normal speed; for you to be twice as fast as him (i.e. 4x normal speed) you'd need to have +34 speed, which is a huge pile of speed for so early in the game, even by Time-Lord standards. I'm surprised (and impressed) if you really are twice as fast as he is.

At something closer to +20 speed, you're only 1.5 times as fast as him; and while you are still very unlikely to be double-moved, it isn't completely impossible due to energy randomness. The probability of Utgard-Loke both double-moving you at that speed, and using both of those turns to breathe cold, is extremely low but not zero. (It is sufficiently close to zero that you can risk it in practice.)

There's a text display option (effective_speed) which displays speeds as energy multipliers; so +0 speed is displayed as 1.0x, +10 speed is displayed as 2.0x, +20 speed is displayed as 3.0x, +30 speed is displayed as 3.8x, etc.; you can turn that option on if you're unsure about the speed system.

[Seraphimus]

That helps a lot, I did have some understanding of the speed system (overexaggerated a bit I'm at +25 playing a klackon) But that helps make a chunk more sense of it thank you, and also answers my other question I guess I put on some cold resist after he ripped me and saw a different number than his actual damage I was just kinda Confused, but even then with 65% resists thats more than half my HP in an attack. That's pretty nuts For where he is probably just not worry about him til much later then, thanks.

a few more questions then, I'm Having a lot of trouble gearing for resists, Any advice? Should I worry about the non base (including fear, paralysis and Confusion of course) resists very much? And when should I start looking for things like chaos and nexus Resist? Also, how important is AC? I can't seem to find any gear that has good resists and also decent AC, is there a specific dungeon that works for loot hunting?

And maybe what do rings of wizardry do, Sometimes it looks like they have Attack and damage mods on them but they (Somewhat obviously) Don't seem to affect my actual combat stats.

Tried googling and looking through the help and searching for stuff but Struggling to really find much info. Everything seems comes back for angband or not at all.

[Sideways]

There's no dungeon that guarantees anything, but at that point your best bet is probably Lonely Mountain, many dragons there and dragons drop plenty of loot. Also, there's the level-42 Dragon Quest in Angwil with lots of dragons; excellent place for early-midgame loot, but you probably want to already have 2x rBase, at least temporarily, when you enter.

AC helps quite a bit if you melee a lot; but if the choice is between 2x rBase and higher AC, take 2x rBase every time. You want 2x Free Action too. rConf is definitely nice, but not a complete necessity if you both have a Staff of Teleportation and some way (potions or mushrooms) to cure confusion reliably.

At this point you want to prioritize rBase over high resists. Once you get deeper you want to have those covered too, especially nether, chaos, shards and disenchantment. Big nether breathers can already appear at DL 40-ish, and become much more common after DL 50, but you can get by without rNether for a while longer if you're alert and keep your eyes open. (It helps a lot there if you know who breathes nether, so you can avoid them; the first big nether breathers are Garm, dracoliches/lisks, spectral tyrannosauruses, greater basilisks, nycadaemons, death drakes and Judge Mortis; and many of those are bad news even if you do resist nether.)

Nexus is one of the more negotiable high resists; it's generally more annoying than deadly, though getting stat-scrambled can be devastating to a character if you have highly lopsided stats and didn't turn no_scrambling on.

0x rFear is bad, and makes being at low health even more dangerous than it already is; 1x or 2x is desirable. But many other things are bad too; you want 2x rBase and Free Action even if it means 0x rFear, and even 1x rNether or rChaos or rConf might be reason enough to accept 0x rFear. Full telepathy would definitely be a sufficient reason.

Damage bonuses on wizardry rings apply to your spells, if you don't have any spells then those bonuses are useless.

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The help is getting updated for 7.1.liquorice (which will be out very soon!); and much of it will hopefully be ported to Gwarl's new angband wiki, which at this point is still very empty. It may then be easier to search for things on the wiki than in the help.

[Pete Mack]

You can always carry temp resist potions, especially if you know the breath attacks of the dungeon boss (e.g. Smaug, Loke, Balrog.) AC only really matters for warrior types who do most of their fighting in melee. pFear (like free action) is critically important, and you want more than one. Again, here you can carry !Hero to help out.

[ster]

Utgard is absurdly overtuned for his depth and drops nothing useful skip him until later.

The best places to get gear mid-game are quests; try the elven embassy (or lost temple of the spider-god if you get unlucky) then underground city in Morivant, the cloning pits and then clear the wreckage in Thalos and eddies in the space-time continuum in Zul (the town in the mountains). Between just the guarenteed rewards from those you should be able to fill out shield, armor, both rings, weapon, boots and gauntlets, and there's speed, 2x Fa and 2x rBase near-guarenteed from those.

Easy lore is more likely to teach you the game than cheat death but you can't turn it on retroactively....

[Sphara]

The very first game I ever beat Utgard-Loke in, was the one I went all the way against the Serpent (died).

I do not have a comprehensive memory of that U-L fight, nor do I have a winning char in Frogband in the first place. But Utgard-Loke is waaaaaaaay beyond his depth, if you feel like conquering his lair, and feeling he's just like any other D:40 monster.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Since Utgard-Loke is extremely OP, how about making the Giant's Hall a deeper dungeon like D:L55 the max depth and Utgard-Loke a dlvl 55 monster?

[Gwarl]

Utgard-Loke is an admittedly dangerous guardian for his depth, much more so than Smaug; Smaug tops out at only 600 unresisted damage (210 at 65% resistance, which is what you want to have), but even more importantly Smaug doesn't heal and summon like Utgard-Loke.

He was less OP when you could confuse him, but I've killed him in timely fashion using no-confuse conducts by doing things like being samurai.