348 replies to this topic

[Sabreman]

Crasher stupidly succumbed to a room full of giant white mice. I bloody-mindedly thought I cold hack my way through, but of course when there's more than a handful they breed faster than you can kill them. I found myself in a dead-end, out of potions. The most annoying thing is that I had a scroll of Word of Recall, only I completely forgot about it in the mélee

It's crashed a couple more times, too.

[Potatoe]

Sabreman, on Oct 4 2006, 02:45 PM, said:

Crasher stupidly succumbed to a room full of giant white mice. I bloody-mindedly thought I cold hack my way through, but of course when there's more than a handful they breed faster than you can kill them. I found myself in a dead-end, out of potions. The most annoying thing is that I had a scroll of Word of Recall, only I completely forgot about it in the mélee

It's crashed a couple more times, too.

Heh, I had a situation like that, but with blue worm masses, I ended up killing like a thousand of them, I would have been a goner if not for electric aura and cold resistant armor.

[BeefontheBone]

Crashed? That's still very odd - did you try disabling the sound?

White mice shouldn't ever really kill you, but they're not worth farming for experience since they're so low-level - just kill 'em when there's one or two, or pick up any goodies in the room and close the doors on them (they, unlike some breeding monsters, can't open them). The best worm farming experience I ever had was with a chaos warrior - a load of green worm masses were spreading over one of those big open levels with me in the middle hacking at them and vaguely wandering towards the stairs when I levelled up, and my patron decided to genocide all the worm masses on the level on my behalf, for which I still received experience. That was lots of fun.

[Sabreman]

I think it must be a sound issue - I'm hoping it is, anyway. I'd be pretty miserable if I thought that there was some other unknowable problem preventing me from playing this game comfortably. I'm going to try running my next characters without sound. One of the crashes was yet again on picking up copper, but the other was on encountering and engaging a kobold. It's never crashed in Zangband, only Angband, but then I've read somewhere that it's best to practise in Angband because Zangband is so much more challenging.

[BeefontheBone]

I jumped straight in with no problems - ADoM, IVaN, Dwarf Fortress, LDC and most other roguelikes I've played, with the probable exception of DoomRL, are less forgiving of beginners IMO - TANG and this thread, and possibly my unfinished guide (I'm still open to help with that, it could do with a bit of a revival) should get you started fine. There's definitely not enough of  a difference to warrant putting up with it crashing on you

[Sabreman]

Bit weird - I was hacking about in the first dungeon to the east of town (now playing Zangband), and upon killing one of many, many novice mages I'd fought I got a message saying I'd completed a quest. The mage dropped 25 arrows of Slaying (very nice), and some average armour and a magical stairway appeared. The thing is, the only quests I have on the go are the two initial ones and Old Man Willow's quest. I guess I must have somehow fulfilled the requirements of a quest without actually picking it up?

Down the stairway was just another level by the way, though it did seem to be abundant in items.

[BeefontheBone]

That'll be one of the random quests, the number of which can be set during character generation. You get a message at the start of the level, something like "You find a scroll reading 'Be warned, this level is guarded by X XXXs!'" or something similar (the monsters are usually a bit out of depth and can be a unique sometimes), and you won't be able to go deeper than that level until you've defeated them (unless you teleport). They drop an extra special reward (often including artifacts from higher levels you may have missed; that's how I normally get the Phial of Galadriel) and some stairs appear.
The Warg quest the mayor in the outpost sets you functions pretty much the same way - if you ask him for a quest after completing or failing the rogues' den quest you can't get past level 5 without defeating the wargs first (without teleportation. The Trump Tower can provide a teleport to any level at a huge cost if you're in a bind (though it's affordable for Trump mages), but scrolls of teleport level are usually easier to get hold of.

[Juni Ori]

Umm... Can you find Phial of Galadriel in any other way?

[BeefontheBone]

It can be dropped on level one - I've found it on there a few times (and in fact used to scum for it a bit, until I realised it gets dropped a few levels later more often). Missing it isn't much of a problem, though - the far superior Everglowing Light of Edison is a quest reward later on (if it hasn't been dropped already).

[Sabreman]

Doing pretty well with a Dwarf fighter (playing it safe, I know). I've done a few quests and got myself a nice sword and shield, gone to the town SE of the outpost (Amaril or something?) and am starting to explore the dungeon there. Do different dungeons have different difficulties?* or is it just based on how deep they go?

Also, I kept running into a Greater Hell Beast which didn't seem to be able to harm me at all, but did follow me around gazing at me and slowing me down. A right pest.

*There's a sentence

[BeefontheBone]

Ooooh, liking my current character! Just got a +1 to all stats boost from my chaos patron, have had several weapons dropped including a trump warhammer, I killed smeagol and he dropped a pair of boots of levitation, then I accidentally summoned Wormtongue from reading a scroll of summon monster but managed to defeat him, he dropped some armour of resist acid and a lovely helm of seeing (and gave me loads of experience), and I've mutated the Polymorph and Dazzle (which is great) powers, an extra pair of eyes and a beak (which is also great). Looking good so far

[BeefontheBone]

That previous character was, as is so often the case, killed by my own overconfidence. Bloomin' tempting ring of fire from the Orc Camp quest...

In an extended answer to Juni's question about the Phial, I got it earlier from Nurgle as a gift on making my first level up

To quote my message log from just now, though:

Quote

You are no longer subject to uncontrollable flatulence.
You feel like you're trapped in reality.
You move with less assurance.
You stop regenerating.
You become susceptible to magic again.
Your magic items no longer look delicious.
The walls look unappetizing.
Your scales vanish.
You are cured of the horrible wasting disease!

D'oh! You'd think those chaos mages in their tower would realise it was the disease I was after getting rid of. I've gone from a handful of good mutations (eat rock's great, scales are good, magic resist is fantastic, free action and regen are very handy) and a couple of irritating ones (alter reality) to just polymorph thanks to needing rid of the wasting disease (it occasionally reduces stats, with a chance of doing so permanently - can completely cripple you given enough time). Gah.

[BeefontheBone]

Sabreman, on Oct 6 2006, 07:36 PM, said:

Doing pretty well with a Dwarf fighter (playing it safe, I know). I've done a few quests and got myself a nice sword and shield, gone to the town SE of the outpost (Amaril or something?) and am starting to explore the dungeon there. Do different dungeons have different difficulties?* or is it just based on how deep they go?

Also, I kept running into a Greater Hell Beast which didn't seem to be able to harm me at all, but did follow me around gazing at me and slowing me down. A right pest.

*There's a sentence

Missed that one somehow. That's Angwil. The dungeons are identical, there's just multiple entrances - they all go down to level 100 if you ever get that far.

Greater Hell Beasts are irritating; I just managed to kill one for the first time (Got spawned on a relatively small level so he couldn't teleport around too much) They're only worth 25/clevel experience, but he did drop a T-shirt[1], which I've not seen before.

Hmm, it's "terrible" according to my autosense - that means it's a cursed artifact IIRC.
Heh, it turns out to be the T-shirt "I killed the GHB and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!" [1,+0].

Oooh, just got a Blue Dragon Scale Mail and a selection of hefty weapons, including a Scythe of Slicing, from a Large Steel Chest on level 22, then got knocked down to 1HP by Bolg and a bunch of his friends who appeared unexpectedly. That was a close one.

[BeefontheBone]

Another new character. Started out as a Mindflayer Chaos Warrior (with the intention of focusing more on the magic side), but got turned into a Beastman and then a Human along the way. I've mutated both horns and tentacles (practically guaranteed for a Mindflayer) for 2 bonus attacks, then I just found a quarterstaff of no less than 3 extra attacks. Wooo! Now I just need a ring of slaying to add damage bonuses to all 7 attacks per round I can make

Oh, and I just found the Armageddon Tome for the first time - hugely destructive high-level Chaos magic. Would've been slightly more useful if I'd still been a mindflayer, though.

[BeefontheBone]

And another rare book find - Blessings of the Grail, which includes the naff bless and heroism spells for no apparent reason, alongside the utterly awesome Bless Weapon (tries to add the (Blessed) flag to a weapon, hugely useful for priests and paladins, and even to make some cash if you still need it at level 50 or so), Divine Intervention and Holy Invulnerability spells. Not a lot of use to my Chaos Warrior, mind, but will fetch max purse from temple shopkeepers or be kept to look at Strangely, it was dropped by a Grave Wight (lvl 30 undead, rather weak for that stage) during a random quest on 24 - not as the quest reward but a normal drop. The reward is a dagger, probably Nimthanc or Natharc (meh), unless the RNG was incredibly stingy. Only got life drained a tiny bit too - High Elves have awesome saving throws

EDIT: Yup, Nimthanc.