You died. Some say that it’s very annoying indeed – you are wiped out now; character, house the items disappeared forever. But on the good side – you’ve learned something, you got new experience, you’ve become better player. You will often encounter new situations that can lead to death. The most important thing here is that you keep in mind your mistakes of the past to prevent them from happening again. A key to winning is a firm knowledge of the monsters that you encounter, so you will be able to decide if you should attack or flee – which is art not to die.
Below some advanced strategies for more or less experienced players:
Surviving an attack by a group of monsters
Warrior advices: Group monsters can be dangerous! Even if you can kill a single creature without too much trouble, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Make sure only 1 can attack you at a time, and for any spell-casting or breathing groups, ambush them from around a corner so that only 1 can see you at a time.
This is the best way to deal with those pesky hounds. A possible exception to this is novice rangers; they can only cast magic missile, and missile spells (as opposed to ball spells or breath weapons) cannot “jump” other monsters in Angband. So, if you’re having trouble with novice rangers, get them all lined up in a corridor, and then some of them will be wounded/killed by magic missiles from other rangers. Of course, you don’t get experience for anything that you don’t kill, but you may survive a bit longer.
How do I know how far to dive?
Try not to descend below a certain depth without certain powers. Free Action and Poison Resistance are particularly important.
1000′ – Free Action, See Invisible
1500′ – Fire, Cold, Acid and Lightning Resistance
2000′ – Poison and Nether Resistance, Hold Life
High-level characters should always have lots of Cure Critical potions or better on hand. If you receive a mortal wound, you cannot heal it on your own. They are also cheap ways to cure confusion, blindness and poison.
Carry multiple copies of the lower-level spellbooks to prevent losses to theft and fire damage.
If you are a warrior, or don’t know the Satisfy Hunger spell, buy 6 rations of food per visit to town. Leave any extra food in the dungeon to free up an inventory slot.
Teleport away and banishment (the latter for priests/paladins) are important magics for emergency use.
Have a way to escape in an emergency if there are too many monsters to teleport away. Scrolls of phase door/teleport/teleport level are good for characters who don’t have an escape spell. Staves of Teleportation work also, but a thief can only steal 1 scroll at a time, or a fire attack can only burn up 1 scroll at a time. On the other hand, you can use a staff while blinded and confused.
For mages and those lucky to have some of the appropriate scrolls, mass genocide is very effective against high-level summoning uniques, as it gets rid of all monsters except uniques.
Speed is important. Items providing speed boosts should be treasured, and you should generally carry around items that temporarily boost speed (know the spells, or have potions/staffs/rods). However, speed over about +30 does your character little good, and may actually be annoying because of the increased food consumption. Also, you may now equip two rings of speed (unlike earlier versions of Angband).
When going deep into the dungeon, always have a way to invoke the spell of recall. Carry multiple scrolls, or have a Rod of Recall and a high level and/or dexterity to prevent theft.
Some combat tactics:
Shoot and scoot — for monsters that are dangerous up close(such as disenchanters), use a heavily enchanted shooting weapon and ammo, and phase door away every time the monster gets near you.
Anti-summoning corridors
When you stay in open place, monsters can summon other monsters, using summoning spell on tiles (x) around you:
............
.......xxx..
..Q....x@x..
.......xxx..
............
To prevent it you can try to dig so called ‘anti-summoning’ corridors:
#########
#@#.#.#.#
##.#.#.#.
#########
In this case monsters won’t be able to see you and summon a lot of stuff. It also helps VS getting massive breath attacks into your face 🙂
So summoners are not as dangerous when fought in a corridor, as they have less room to summon enemies against you. The disadvantage is that the potential treasure drop is also reduced, and summoned undead may be able to walk through walls and surround you anyway.
Quick Diving
Diving into the dungeon to the deepest levels could reward you with extra powerful items from bosses. Some tips based on old Tyron‘s MAngband guide:
If you are warrior or other physically powerful class, you don’t need to kill everything till -250. Try to find a non-mobile monster and kill it with a range weapon or a wand. Blue j ‘s or grey m ‘s could put you to level 3-5 right away. Drop straight to 500’ look for a single wide room (pit, vault, checkerboard rooms). Zoo’s are EXCELLENT) find the door, open it. RUN for the stairs. Stand on them. Let the monsters come to you if possible.. Kill as many as you can with the auto-retaliate.. Then duck under the stairs. Rest, repeat.. At about 13-15th you should have some items (usually about 10).. Warriors can go deeper faster.. Priests/mages stop at 750. Once you are at your personal depth.. recall.
Id weapons and armour, zap wands, activate rods..equip the useful stuff, sell every thing you aren’t using (minus food and oil, healing and TP.) I come up with 1000-3000 usually.. unless the RNG is good to me. But 2 recalls. restock heals and TP (or buy heals and TP if you never had any) I shoot for 4-5 cure crit and 3-7 phase door. Check for rings of PROT.. if you can .. but one. Second order of business.. enchant your armour.. warriors.. enchant your damage. Recall.
Look for vaults, pits(ignore jelly pits), zoo’s, and checkerboard rooms. Stay close to the stairs at this level, you can die FAST. If you come down a level only to be pushed off the stairs by a group of monsters.. run.. run far.. or to a 1 wide hall.. then rest till the come for you. and kill them 1 by 1.. Try to use circular path ways to run so you can stay close to the stairs, if possible run back to the stairs and stand on them to rest.
Things to run from ON site:
Blink dogs
Novice paladins
Novice rangers
Any orc except: snagas, hill/cave orcs.. (there hard.. but doable)
umberhulks
hounds
Groups of gnome mages
At about level 20-23 dive to 950, scum a little, get all the items you see, its close to a good threshold. At about level 24-25 dive to level 1000. DONT go any farther down. Scum from 950-1000 looking for small d ‘s and other tough, non grouped monsters.. slaughter them.. around level 27 I recall.
That’s it. you should be about level 25-30 at the end.. recall depth of 1000 and have some cash and a decent item or 2.. time to settle in for the long haul.
NOTES:
With a warrior, you can survive to 1000 without recalling.. at 1000 you can recall.. stock and do the INSANE push for 1750. 🙂 scum there for a LONG time.. get some good Stat pots. look for some decent EQ (free act, see invis, res poison) then dive to 2100. Stop there for about 5 levels.. get some GOOD armour.. by then you should have a good weapon also. look for ESP like mad.. stock up on heals and TP ( i usually wander around with 17-23 cure crit) dive to 2500 sit on it until 40th or so. The rest.. well its luck, waiting, and a lot of killing..