Posted on 26.9.2010 22:13
Last updated on 30.11.2010 11:18

Download this dump

2093. on the Ladder (of 18813)
405. on the Angband Ladder (of 6400)
Best for this player (out of 15)

Comments

Jump to latest

On 26.9.2010 22:13 bron wrote:
This is one of two "no artifacts, no egos" characters I've been working on. This one is a Dwarf Priest, the other is a High Elf Mage (the two sorts of characters that seem like they have a chance). I haven't been able to devote a lot of time to this project, so it has taken a lot of calendar time. The turn count on this character is pretty high because I spend several thousand turns casting "Sense Invisible" so that I can see invisible during the dungeon trip (and so I do many fairly short trips). My plan was to hang out on level 40, looking for worthwhile stuff while collecting stat boosts. Balim has now reached a point where he has 450 HP even without a +Con ring, and good SP without a +Wis amulet. So I'm now in the middle of significantly changing my kit: I'll wear items of rPois and rElec, use the "Resist Heat and Cold" prayer, and rely on the acid reducing effects of armor. Plus of course trying to avoid the nasties in the first place as I finally head deeper. The trouble of course is the speed. After level 40 a whole lot of bad guys move quickly, and Balim is going to have a hard time surviving until he can find a big speed ring, which is one of the reasons why I think a High Elf Mage is a better choice. But this character definitely has potential.

On 27.9.2010 14:55 fizzix wrote:
at 95% saving throw it might be worth it to wear the =SI or a =Con and keep the =FA as a swap.

Watch out for nightmares though, they'll kill you in no time flat.

On 28.9.2010 00:40 bron wrote:
Can't agree with you about =SI. Using the prayer just takes game time; very little real time. And it won't be all that much longer until I get 100% save (or die trying) and can just change the =FA for =Con full time without worrying about forgetting to swap.

On 29.9.2010 08:27 bron wrote:
Dropped to level 50. Been pretty lucky: found a lot of Staffs of Speed and been able to avoid the (many) things I can't handle. Just now made it to 100% saving throw, so it's time to exchange my =FA for something else. I'll probably go with the RoS +3 rather than the +4Con, but I haven't fully decided yet. Next stop is level 60, and hope to find an Amulet of Resistance and some Green Dragon Scale Mail

On 1.10.2010 05:32 bron wrote:
Not too much farther than the last update, but I finally found Godly Insights, which let me reshuffle my inventory nicely. And the Bronze DSM is a plus. With 100% save I'd prefer Green DSM so I could trade in the =rPoison for =+Con, but I'm not complaining. Still using OOD as my primary offensive weapon. It's still pretty effective at this depth, but the bad guys are getting more and more HP the deeper I go.


On 2.10.2010 22:39 bron wrote:
Found some Green DSM and exchanged =rPois for +Con. Max Str, Wis, Con. The character is looking pretty good at the moment. he down side is that it is taking a lot longer to kill the monsters, and so they have a lot more chances to do something bad. Something like Ungoliant or the Tarrasque are going to be really hard to deal with. I'm considering if I should just give up on the Crossbow. Even with Seeker Bolts it will only be doing about 125 dmg per shot, and only if I hit. It's not clear it's worth the weight and the inventory slot for the ammo.

Finding an Amulet of Resistance would be nice, and a big speed ring.

On 5.10.2010 09:34 bron wrote:
Balim is doing very well. Much better than I thought a Dwarf Priest could handle himself. Currently, much better than my no-ego High Elf Mage. The extra HP's really enhance his survivability. It's very slow going. Rght now I'm basically level scumming at dlvl 75: go down, cast Clairvoyance and see if there is anything worthwhile on the floor or any likely looking pits or vaults. Collect what I can, kill what I'm able, and Recall when anything nasty shows up. I'm slowly building up a nice stock of big consumables. I want to find an Amulet of Resistance and a Ring of Speed >= +10 before I go deeper, but I think at that point I'll have to go to dlvl 90 and search until I find some MultiHued DSM. To get a base speed of 20, I'll need a big speed ring, plus Trickery, plus Mushrooms of Terror, so I won't be able to wear an Amulet of Resistance against Morgoth. It's getting harder and harder to kill things. I'm currently heavily abusing Glyph of Warding, But I don;t think even that will be enough against some of the uniques that have lots of HP and do serious amounts of summoning.

On 7.10.2010 07:16 bron wrote:
This game just took an unbelievable turn for the better. I was clearing out a giant pit on dlvl 75, having successfully teleported away the one Lesser Titan, when a Cyclops drops a Ring of Speed +23. I have never seen anything even close to this in all my years of playing. Just a couple of months ago I found a +16 RoS which eclipsed my previous mark of +14. Since I came by this honestly I suppose I'll play the game to completion (it does dramatically improve my chances of survival). But I think I'll probably have to get a previous savefile off of one of my backups since part of the reason for playing this game was to see if it is at all possible to win *without* getting unreasonably lucky. And I'd have to say that a RoS+23 is pretty much the definition of "unreasonably lucky".


On 7.10.2010 17:53 fizzix wrote:
Would you consider finding PDSM incredibly lucky?

On 7.10.2010 20:04 bron wrote:
I'm sort of trying to investigate the notion of "just how lucky do you have to be win with no Egos?". So if I find PDSM, my first inclination would be to branch off another character (like I'm going to do here because of the RoS), and have that branch play without it. I'm currently thinking that it might be possible with a RoS +12 and MHDSM. That last is pretty rare, but I don't see a path to victory for a Priest without it. Potentially, a Mage might be able to win even without MHDSM. Clearly my answers to these questions are not going to be definitive or anything, but they might at least provide a data point.

I'm already convinced that you would need to be unreasonably lucky to win egoless with the current revised drop-level scheme (i.e. the greater of the monster level, or the average of the monster level and the dungeon level). I'm only doing as well as I am by finding and killing relatively weaker monsters (e.g. pits of orcs or Trolls, or pits of Giants or Dragons after teleporting away the Titans and Wyrms) and claiming treasure at depth. If I had to be on level 90 killing level 60 monsters in order to find a speed ring, it would be lots harder. And I'd basically never find MHDSM, since the only level 80+ monsters are a handful of uniques, so I'd almost never get an average of level 90 on the treasure drop.


On 11.10.2010 08:08 bron wrote:
I've returned to this char after my failed foray with toning down the speed ring. The RNG continues to smile on this guy. With the full strength +23 speed ring, I dove down to level 90, and managed to find MHDSM in less than 100,000 turns. Much quicker than I was expecting. I'm thinking that I'll probably go back up to level 70. With no artifacts/egos, and since I already have a big RoS and MHDSM, there just isn't anything else to be had at the really deep levels (other than to kill the uniques). I think Rods of Drain Life (level 75) are the only equipment worth collecting at this point that is deeper that level 70 (except PDSM of course, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to find that). And there are some significantly hard monsters deeper than 70. So I'll probably hang out on 70 collecting equipment (I could use an Amulet of ESP for example) and high-end consumables, and killing uniques, until I reach clvl 50, when I'll start descending again. Hopefully at that point I'll have enough Annihilation and Drain Life (and etc.) to think about facing Morgoth.


On 15.10.2010 09:24 bron wrote:
So I returned to this char after Balim_II's quick demise. I eventually found a RoS +13, and rather than branch again (which starts to feel like cheating), I decide to simply exchange the +23 RoS for the +13 one and continue. I've been less stupid with this guy and so haven't died (yet). But I'm running smack up against the next wall that made me originally think that a HighElf Mage would be a better char: Balim simply can't do enough damage fast enough against the deep uniques. The most effective weapons are wands of Annihilation and Drain Life, although of course that won't work against e.g. Vecna. And without the mage's Greater Recharging, these things often blow up on the recharge attempts. I can't afford to get my charges drained so I have to use ranged attacks, but lack of Banish makes this difficult. I haven't quite figured out what to do, but I haven't given up the fight either.


On 15.10.2010 15:08 fizzix wrote:
Won't OoD do 300 damage against evil creatures? How is that less effective than drain life?

I seem to remember killing Morgoth once only with OoD. and banish evil. It took forever, but was possible.

On 15.10.2010 17:11 bron wrote:
OoD does 75+3d6 which is 85.5 avg.; double that against evil, so about 171 dmg. With the "boost" given to wands/rods, drain life will do over 200, and annihilation over 300. One also has to deal with the non-evil uniques (notably Huan and the Tarrasque). Clearly it can be done if I find enough wands and potions, but it may take a remarkably long time to do so, and every day is one more chance to screwup and die.

On 15.10.2010 19:09 fizzix wrote:
I guess I had a factor of 2 missing on my OoD damage. For some reason I really thought it was 300 vs evil and 150 vs non-evil, not 150 vs evil and 75 vs. non-evil.

On 15.10.2010 20:44 PowerDiver wrote:
How much of a pain is SI? One reason I am trying mages instead of priests is that I always seemed to die when I went below DL70 lacking ESP and SI, playing normal diving priests.

On 16.10.2010 02:28 bron wrote:
I haven't found SI to be much of a pain at all, mostly because I don't leave home without it. I just cast Sense Invisible a *lot*prior to descending, and then come back before it wears off. Typically, in the town I will cast Protection from Evil for all my aura once. Then Sense Invisible for all my aura 3 times, then Resist Heat and Cold for all my aura 4 times, then recall to the dungeon. This keeps those prayers in force for the duration of a reasonable trip. There is no doubt that I live in fear of having the prayers wear off and not noticing, but so far haven't had any problem with it. The greater HP of the priest certainly helps. I have found this char easier to get to dlvl 70 than my mage character has been, but I feel kinda out of the water at dlvl 90 in that I have to avoid an awful lot of stuff, and all too often just recall immediately upon arrival if I don't like the looks of things. But I gotta say, Clairvoyance is *really* nice to find likely looking pits and vaults, or even just stuff on the floor.

I'm sure you could do well with a Dwarf Priest. I find the hard parts have been (1) the first few times going below dlvl40, when the char is still at normal speed and all the monsters are moving quickly, until you find enough Staffs of Speed, and (2) below dlvl75, when it takes too long to kill things.



On 16.10.2010 02:38 bron wrote:
I suppose I should mention that casing SI (etc) on myself takes very little real time: I just cast it once, and then hold the 'n' key until I run out of aura, rest and repeat. It only takes a minute or two of real time. It does eat up the Games Turns a lot however.


On 16.10.2010 08:25 bron wrote:
clvl 50. Killed a few more uniques. I'm probably going to have to mostly put this aside for awhile until after the SuperComputing conference in mid-Nov

On 23.10.2010 06:36 bron wrote:
I took a few hours to work on this char some more. I am now basically hunting high level uniques, and collecting wands of Annihilation and Drain Life. I have been trying to hunt uniques one at a time, by which I mean I decide which one to go after next, gear up for that one, and look until I find it, refusing to engage uniques I'm not equipped for. e.g. I was able to take down Ungoliant by wielding an Amulet of Devotion (rDark), an item I normally wouldn't carry. I just now took out Maeglin, but he summoned several nasty uniques in the process. I think I'll be able to take out a couple of them, but some (e.g. the Tarrasque) there is no way I'm currently equipped to handle (for that I think I'll need an Amulet of Weaponmastery (rDisenchant) and a lot of Drain Life). I have been [ab]using Glyph of Warding a lot. I hate to say that things looks reasonable, since I usually die immediately after thinking that, but as long as I stay paranoid, this guy might actually have a chance.


On 23.10.2010 07:29 PowerDiver wrote:
It's really hard to maintain the paranoia when the game takes so long.

On 23.10.2010 15:54 fizzix wrote:
I think it's actually more dangerous to wait to take out Morgoth and Sauron. You seem to have enough stuff to go for it. Just destruct most of the level before hand and dispel evil anything that get summoned (or Teleport if Dispel Evil isn't at 0% fail.)

On 23.10.2010 20:48 PowerDiver wrote:
One of the choices is 0% fail vs 4 points of speed determined by the amulet slot. Is it worth double moves to have 0% fail?

On 24.10.2010 00:09 bron wrote:
I've asked myself the speed/fail question more than once. I currently believe that speed is better. Without Trickery, I can get up to +28 speed using the Mushrooms of Terror (although right there I lose 0-fail on several spells), which puts me only 1 energy behind Morgoth (e.g. +37 energy per impluse vs. +38). Assuming I understand how this works, that means Morgoth would double-move about 1 time in 12. Note that it doesn't take a double mana-storm to kill me, a mana-storm + mana-bolt is enough (even if I do eventually find a +6 Con ring). The fight will be long: with Magic Device skill at 92, Balim should do 330 dmg per Annihilation bolt, but that's still 61 bolts, plus I fail 12% of the time, plus Morgoth heals during the fight, plus I have to counter whatever Morgoth does during the 1/3 of the time he doesn't move. So figure Morgoth will get at least 10 double-moves, which works out to about 3-4% chance of death with speed of +28. I think the 1% fail, plus lots of [Mass]Banish scrolls is better.

Taking on Morgoth before clearing more of the deep uniques is also a difficult question. I think killing the uniques first is better (although I am deliberately NOT killing many of the shallow uniques, to give Morgoth something to summon). But I certainly agree it is not clear-cut. Maintaining the paranoia is indeed hard, and (as commented earlier) each day and each encounter is one more chance to screw up and die.

On 3.11.2010 06:07 bron wrote:
Killed another half-dozen uniques since the last report. Finally took out Ancalagon which means I can dump the Lightning rings and pick up the Amulet of Weaponmastery and half my Drain Life wands, and go hunting for the Tarrasque and possibly Azriel.

On 23.11.2010 06:47 bron wrote:
With the SC10 conference over I was able to devote some serious time to this. Got through the last of the nasty high-level uniques, and just now took down Sauron. I'm trying to decide on my kit for the final fight. The battle with Sauron did not go so well, which bodes ill for fighting Morgoth, so I'm thinking I'm going to want a few more [Mass]Banish scrolls, and probably a few more Speed potions. I think I have enough of everything else though, so it shouldn't take too horribly long to gather stuff up.

On 23.11.2010 09:12 PowerDiver wrote:
Don't get complacent! It would be so easy to lose focus now.


On 30.11.2010 11:18 bron wrote:
Finally brought this one home. I had 9 scrolls of MassBanish after fighting Sauron, and I wanted a few more, like maybe 12. But the RNG decided to play games with me and I spent literally hundreds of thousands of game turns on dlvl 99 without finding a single one, which is why my experience number is so high. I probably gained 4 to 5 million experience right at the end failing to find MassBanish. Eventually I gave up and took on Morgoth anyway. Morgoth naturally did many fewer mana storms (which I was prepared for with lots of *Heal*), and more summoning of "mighty undead" or mixed (dangerous) monsters, i.e. the kind of things I wanted MassBanish for. But with a little luck (and a lot of annihilation wands) I was able to finish it off.

On 30.11.2010 19:01 PowerDiver wrote:
Congratulations! !! !!!

Morgoth isn't listed in the notes. Did you kill him out of LOS or is that a bug?

Did you leave those weak uniques on purpose, or did you just miss them on the way down? Did it make the fight noticeably easier?


On 30.11.2010 23:36 bron wrote:
Morgoth is there; you must have just missed him (11th line from the bottom). Yes I deliberately didn't kill a number of weak uniques in order for Morgoth to have something relatively harmless to summon. It didn't work out as well as I would have liked since one needs an unobstructed LOS to use a Wand of Annihilation, and the summoned escorts got in the way so I had to switch to (less effective) OoD until they cleared out. On the other hand, if there are no uniques to summon, Morgoth substitutes Greater Undead, which I would have had to use MassBanish on, which is the thing I was short of. So it worked out fairly well for me in this case. Utimately I think a better approach would have been to kill off the uniques ahead of time, but have something like 20+ MassBanish scrolls to deal with summons. That would let one get in the maximum number of Annihilation bolts in the minimum time.

Write comment:

Your email
or Log into forum
Your comment

Send me email when someone comments this dump

Type the text from the above image: