Posted on 11.5.2014 02:00
Last updated on 17.6.2014 02:13

Download this dump

422. on the Ladder (of 18816)
20. on the PosChengband Ladder (of 2395)
Best for this player (out of 11)

Comments

Jump to latest

On 11.5.2014 02:00 Fnord wrote:
So, this is my first character well beyond clvl20. I've been hanging around on stat gain for some time, as you can see, and I think I'm fairly well decked out.

But I'm new to Posch, and a few encounters with uniques with as shallow a depth as 45 makes me think I cannot dive deeper without at least +10 permanent speed. The question is - where can I get that without diving further?

Any other comments and advice are welcome, too!

On 11.5.2014 02:29 debo wrote:
I dunno, you seem pretty tough to me. You could probably pretty easily clear giant's hall (well, the final boss will be tough) and get quite deep in Arena and Castle.

You have a staff of speed which is basically like having 10 base speed for most important fights. You already have telepathy so you should be able to pick/choose fights pretty easily.

I've found that there's little use to touring around comfortable depths in PosChengband unless you're really just curious to explore them all, because all it does is lull you into thinking you are powerful :)

On 11.5.2014 02:36 Fnord wrote:
Thanks for the comment - but: What's the fundamental difference in diving in other dungeons vs in angband, other than some uniques being limited? I found that most dungeons seem less favorable in terms of navigation and tactics than the standard Angband.

On 11.5.2014 02:36 chris wrote:
Early speed is most likely from Hobbit artifacts (Merry, Pippin, Sam) and Hagen's spear. Also, a staff of speed is welcome, but as a warrior, it might be too hard for you to use. Your next best bet is to attempt The Cloning Pits quest and hope for a lucky reward (Thror, Aragorn or Shiva's Avatar). But you'll probably get Stomper instead ;)

For The Cloning Pits, you'll need haste as much as possible. I'd prefer 20 !Speed but 11 might be enough. You're pretty darn powerful for that quest, but your speed is just too low so things could go bad quickly if you are not careful. 780 hp at +2 speed is as about good as 390 at +10 speed!

On 11.5.2014 02:41 Fnord wrote:
I actually have some (and had all, I think) of those. But - Hagen is +3, the others are +1 each, and they're substantially less powerful in other terms than my current gear - specifially, Hagen would reduce my damage output to like a third of what it is. And the other ones with their +1 seem feeble!

On 20.5.2014 01:23 Fnord wrote:
So, surprisingly, still alive!

Right now, it feels like I'm too powerful for where I'm playing (which is alternating between Angband and quests - just did castle and M$, both of which seemed trivial at this point). Question is - where should I be at, then? Also, is there something essential I'm missing for diving a lot deeper?

On 20.5.2014 02:17 HugoTheGreat2011 wrote:
Think you're too powerful? Try out Mt. Olympus! Be prepared with *LOTS* of healing consumables, Recall, Teleportation scrolsl, and Teleport Level scrolls

On 20.5.2014 02:33 Fnord wrote:
Not too powerful overall - I've not gone for the Serpent, obviously. Heck, not even 50 yet! My question is more like - where should I be at with how strong I am right now? Dive in Angband? Other dungeons? Quests? This is my first Poschengband char anywhere near this powerful, and it's my first one since ancient Z days a decade ago, so I'm not able to pinpoint weaknesses and where I should be at right now!

On 20.5.2014 04:21 debo wrote:
You can boost the AC of your boots at a smith / fighters hall for pocket change. You can also get rid of your mutations in Zul (the int/wis isn't really that important, and the other two are annoying).

Otherwise, you're looking ok to keep diving in angband? Just don't die.

Did you ever find out what your life rating is?


On 25.5.2014 01:43 Fnord wrote:
And still kicking along. Slowly but surely feeling ready for going much deeper - only issue is my lack of stacked healing, so need to farm that. Oh - and not entirely sure if there's instakill light breathers around...

No luck with reforging, by the way - it seems like that option isn't really meant to spend a lot of gold on. Perhaps I should farm-gamble for potions with that money...

On 25.5.2014 02:03 debo wrote:
There is nothing in the game that can breathe 1300 of any element afaik. Light breathers are fairly tame in general.

On 25.5.2014 02:04 Fnord wrote:
Oh, and life rating is 111 - I actually needed my last !new life to get something reasonable, out of a stack of a dozen or so!

On 25.5.2014 03:35 HugoTheGreat2011 wrote:
The only dangerous light breathers besides the GWoP are Fenghuangs and Sky Drakes.

On 25.5.2014 03:39 debo wrote:
Ethereal dragons can also breathe more light than you might expect.

On 27.5.2014 05:14 Fnord wrote:
So that's what I'm at right now. I need !*healing* (or some other means of that). Where the heck can I reasonably get that? Farming seems impossible.

On 27.5.2014 13:53 chris wrote:
Have you been *identifying* amulets of the magi? My last char found one with +8 to magical device skill. For the end game non-charge draining uniques, it's nice to be able to take them on with a stack of healing staves. Fight them one at a time, and recall to recharge after each battle. Single 300hp healing should be enough if you don't wait too long to use it (e.g. heal when you are at 800hp even!). But carry a *healing* or two for emergencies.

Also, your AC is way too low so you are probably taking an unacceptable amount of melee damage from certain foes. I'd go for at least 170 AC for a melee build but even then, certain monsters will need to be avoided (Ares, Atlas, Destroyer, etc). Stat drain is annoying, but punishing melee beat down is even worse :)

Have you tried shooting seeker/steel bolts to soften things up? Warriors are pretty good shooters and that's a very nice crossbow you are using.

On 30.5.2014 02:46 Fnord wrote:
Well, turns out I basically had bad luck regarding !*heal*. And definitely thanks for the hint about the AC - that kinda never was something I actively considered.

On 30.5.2014 02:51 Fnord wrote:
So now I'm faced with a different problem.

A while ago, some minor greater [sic] wyrm dropped Vilya. Now, between herself and the Ultimate Magus army she summoned, Nenya dropped as well. Among minor things such as Dor-Lomin.

Now I'm facing a serious gear dilemma - if I want to wear Nenya as well, which is more than a little tempting, where do I get reasonable speed? Best boots so far are plus 7 - and without the boots, keeping everything I consider essential is hard. Even if I drop the "least" things such as reflection (which isn't really all that minor), it's a hard task to optimize given the choice!
It is tempting to

On 30.5.2014 02:51 Fnord wrote:
Err, that was Athena.

On 7.6.2014 00:29 Fnord wrote:
So, by now I'm feeling pretty decked out.

There were a couple close calls (some before rekitting to my current stuff): Gothmog (88 guardian) made me deplete my entire healing stock (except some !life) when he surrounded me with Cyberdemons.

And a rather stupid one got me down to a scary scary 14hp. I was fighting Nodens. Summoned uniques. I teleport, he follows, he summons uniques. Repeat. That time, he had a nice mix of friendlies and comparatively harmless ones. I had Nodens down to 1* when I read "Do you follow it [y/n]?" - of course, I followed. Well, it wasn't Nodens who had teleported, it had been Master Tomberry who now didn't have whatever other guy he was wailing on. I was down to 14 hp... had to destroy and leave the level given the unique flood.

On the plus side, took down the Destroyer, a GWoP, Poseidon and a couple other pretty scary things.

I'd go for the Serpent now - if I wasn't once again out of healing stuff.

Also found some rather interesting pieces of gear. For instance, I don't think I have ever seen anything with +6 to a base stat (int in this case, plus speed!) - see my shield.

I also found a pair of dragon wings of Aman - not even that awesome, but it has AC [4, +41]. No typo - a whopping +41!

Other finds such as Balance DSM (where's my !art creation...) pale in comparison, though of course I'm fairly decked out!

On 10.6.2014 04:21 Fnord wrote:
Well, I did have my first go at the serpent. Not quite this gear - switch out Tulkas for speed +10 and weapon for Ruyi Jingu - but still, it seemed almost futile.

The lack of non ! healing is a real pita for this warrior. In fact, I probably would've been far better off leaving most uniques alone and going for J much earlier - allowing for junk summons to fill the place and not wasting !*heal* on other uniques.

That said, it feels like I *should* be ready. Yet, even with 200+AC, the serpent requires so much healing...

On 13.6.2014 01:47 Fnord wrote:
No real gear change. Given that I already had so many uniques down, I decided to not be super stingy and just use what I have to kill whatever uniques I encounter. Quite a few more of those down, so more farming for potions (and possibly gear upgrades - not like there's no room for improvement!) - eventually, with all the (common-ish) hard uniques down, my stock should stop hovering and go up until I have enough to face big J!

On 13.6.2014 23:53 Djabanete wrote:
I've never beaten PosCheng with any class, but when I beat Entro with a warrior, my experience validated the plan outlined in your last comment. I had a premature fight with the Serpent that went badly, owing to there being too many good uniques to summon. It took some time, but spending my potions to kill them turned out worthwhile.

I don't know the various uniques' depth levels off the top of my head, so I don't know who you haven't killed yet, but it looks like maybe if you hunt down, say, Morgoth and Nodens, and then save up !*Healing* and !Life, you should have a good chance to win.

On 14.6.2014 01:26 HugoTheGreat2011 wrote:
Get rid of Sauron and the Unicorn of Order also

On 15.6.2014 02:08 Fnord wrote:
Morgoth down.

He was surprisingly easy. Took 8 !heal and 3 !*heal* - coincidentially exactly what I had on me.

Also used 2 !stone skin (that was all I had), 2 teleports, one destruction (Talos, that spellwrap unique - yuck!) and one genocide (after the fight - Morgoth had just summoned greater undead, and without *any* healing I didn't exactly feel comfortable with 2 iron liches, a lesser and a normal black reaver and a couple other things around.

He dropped ... pretty literally nothing worth taking home, other than vendor stuff. Sucker!

On 16.6.2014 20:48 Fnord wrote:
Upgraded to 3.3.3. for the item stats.

Somehow, I lost ~60 max hp (over 3.1.4) after toing that. Bug? Nerf? No idea.

Nodens is down as well. Compared to my last attempt, he was super easy, thanks to his first summon unique backfiring on him: Not a single summon was hostile to me; Gandalf, Fundin, some dragon and others were all friendly. They dealt with his subsequent summons, leaving me to just knock him down. Used 2 !heal and 1 !heal*.

And: My item creation stats are totally off since I got really lucky. This is still the first level I was recalling down to in Olympus after switching to 3.3.3, and it contains a giant GV (not sure if it has a name, but it's roughly 70x40 sized, and contained no less than 4 !life, several !*heal* and who knows what else - I'm still in there clearing it up). Of course, a couple Hrus decided to get into fights with other stuff, knocking out a ton of space in there, but there's still much to be gathered.

On 16.6.2014 23:05 chris wrote:
Nerf. Sorry ... Have you been below 200hp often?

On 16.6.2014 23:25 Fnord wrote:
Not really! If I get that low, I heal, flee or destroy, unless I'm 100% certain that nothing is near that can do that much damage in a turn.

Updating right again because I think there's a bug in item tracking: Note how the stats say 0 !life destroyed, yet the message log shows that a potion of life was disintegrated right that turn. It wasn't in LOS, if that matters (a vortex was breathing the walls separating me from it away).

I also used !genocide, but they don't show.

On 16.6.2014 23:26 Fnord wrote:
Correction - the ?genoicde shows up in the dump, but not in ~2, probably because I haven't picked one up.

On 17.6.2014 01:05 chris wrote:
Thanks, I'll fix that for next version. If a monster/effect destroys an item that you have detected but not picked up, then it will count as destroyed but won't count as found (since you never managed to get to it).

On 17.6.2014 02:13 Fnord wrote:
Woo! My first Posch winner!

After the vault mentioned, I had a combined 25ish !*heal* and !life, so I figured I'd go for it, and it worked out pretty well. J summoned Metal Babble, The One Ring (I telported the heck out of there) and Null. Teleported some more, and his other summons were (mass-)genocided. And really, after some beating and drinking and beating and drinking, he wasn't all that bad!

On 18.6.2014 21:38 krazyhades wrote:
Nice!

On 18.6.2014 22:08 debo wrote:
Beating the serpent to death with a giant stick must feel pretty good

On 18.6.2014 22:49 Fnord wrote:
I actually completely forgot to activate it (its activation is "growing", increasing its dice for a cuple turns) during the final fight!

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: