You died. Some say that it’s very annoying indeed – you are wiped out now; your character and items disappear forever (only your house remains). But on the bright side – you’ve learned something, you gain new experience, you’ve become a 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 the art of not dying. Below are some advanced strategies for more or less experienced players…
Surviving an attack by a group of monsters
Warrior advice: Grouped 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 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 have trouble with novice rangers, get them lined up in a corridor, and 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 specific 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 or 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 (for priests/paladins) are important spells 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 also work, but a thief can steal only 1 scroll at a time, and a fire attack can only burn 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 that provide speed boosts should be treasured. You should generally carry items that temporarily boost speed (know the spells, or have potions/staffs/rods). However, speed over about +30 does little good for your character, 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 Word of Recall spell. Carry multiple scrolls, or have a Rod of Recall with high level and/or dexterity to prevent theft.
Surviving tips
Very first tip is a basic tenet repeated throughout the guide; however, it is far too easy to become engrossed in your achievements (eg an awesome artifact, maximizing stats, a slightly better item, gaining a second blow, getting a speed bonus, etc) and lose it all due to something very avoidable had you been paying diligent attention.
While playing, always make sure to check for the basics — particularly monsters, stairs, and traps. Don’t lose a character, asserting that you can kill a “C” easily only to discover that a “Jackal” is a far cry from a “Hellhound”.
Similarly, if you just got some nice artifacts / other equipment or achieved a significant accomplishment — take a break. You don’t have to continue to play to enjoy your past success, and when you return you will likely be more able to play diligently.
See a few uniques or other monsters that might possibly give you some trouble — maybe? Perhaps with only slight difficulty? See a vault with some cool treasure, but a few troublesome monsters / uniques? If you’re not highly confident (perhaps even 100%) that you can easily survive the level, you can leave on the spot. Just enter the level, immediately do your detection routine (monsters, stairs / traps, etc) assess the immediate threat, and try to find the stairs immediately to be able to run or read Word of Recall scroll. Further, artifacts can be regenerated (unless you disabled that option) and as you dive, even better items will be available. So, if you skip out on levels just because you want to play it very conservatively, you will still find great items and better yet, you have a higher chance of survival.
Finally.. Don’t try to play a ranger like a warrior — rely on the bow! Similarly for mages, don’t do a Gandalf. He may be able to draw a sword and rush headlong into a pack of orcs, but mages in Tangaria are considerably more fragile. Priests are better equipped to engage in melee combat – with their healing abilities compensating for their somewhat fragile nature.
Information Awareness
Tangaria offers a LOT of information on a LOT of different screens. If you haven’t already, try enabling multiple consoles — ALL of them — and then try out different options / combinations. Being able to view a lot of information simultaneously at a glance is a considerable benefit over having to be diligent enough to manually check each relevant screen each time.
Also, change the text size. Sure you may be accustomed to your terminal font and size for reading; however, you can read and make sense from context a lot easier than you can reliably identify the glyph, colour, and relative position of every character on the screen. You don’t have to play with a tiny (or even normal size font). Using a slightly larger font makes identifying things a LOT easier. The SDL interface is perhaps the easiest for using multiple terminals and changing fonts. This alone may greatly contribute to your survivability!
💡 Players will readily note that corridors are unlit; however, what may not be blatantly obvious is that the dungeon gets darker with depth, until it’s pitch black. ALWAYS carry a light source. DON’T drop a light source for more loot!
Granted, as your character develops, you become more powerful at melee; however, this does not preclude you from using ranged attacks! It is far too easy to start playing a Ranger like a warrior-mage if you get a good melee weapon, but don’t forget your ranged skill! You may be “Superb” at Fighting, but rangers are even better at Shooting — perhaps even “Legendary” or better.
This can be a hard one to do diligently, especially if your melee weapon is powerful, but try to play diligently and use ranged attacks. Try earlier levels where survivability is much higher and try to play without melee attacks for a while to get used to using the bow again. Even as your character matures, try to keep in mind your race / class core strengths.
Scrawled Notes from the Fallen
Learn to stop playing. You can always exit and resume later when you would be in your prime and optimally ready to play as opposed to trying to continue to play as drowsiness sets in. This may be difficult at first, but it can help you avoid running decent characters into the ground for avoidable mistakes…
In the list of characteristics of monsters there is a line:
Spell chance: 1 spell every 5 turns
Spells: BA_WATE BO_WATE BR_POIS TELE_TO
This means that EVERY turn there is a chance (in this case 20%) that the monster will cast one of the spells below. This means that the monster, in principle, can foolishly cast its strongest spell several turns in a row, thereby making things spicy 😀
If you play a character with a small amount of hp (magician or druid) – do not rush to risk fighting high-level monsters until you get a mana shield or a good shape.
S_UNIQUE does not work on final bosses of dungeons (for example, The Wight-King of Barrow Downs).
Monsters summon different monsters 3 times at least (then clones are already possible). The level of the monster depends on the level of the summoner and the level of the dungeon.
Most often, an item has a hidden powers property if it is “of….”.
When playing Tangaria it’s better to disable NumLock mechanically (with a matchstick or piece of paper) or using my addon. Active NumLock locks the keyboard, which may be inappropriate. It’s the same with Caps Lock.
Premonitions (feelings) of higher levels (danger level) may include premonitions of lower levels. For example, “somewhat dangerous” can include “sensation of challenge”.
/afk mode will not save you from hunger if your character is already starving (i.e. it says hungry or weak); however, remember that no food or satiation is wasted while in the town.
Please note that cloud-like spells do not stack (for example, the spell toxic moisture).
When in a party with other players:
– you get a bonus to experience
– monsters don’t get stronger
– you get experience only if the difference between the levels in your party is no more than 7. Examples: 1 and 8 level – both players will get experience. 1 and 9 levels – a player of the first level will not receive experience.
Infravision allows you to see warm-blooded monsters in line of sight in the dark. For example, you can see orcs at the end of a dark corridor. But it won’t give you possibility to see through walls.
Remember that telepathy is not a panacea, because there are monsters with an “empty mind” flag that are not visible to it. Also telepathy in Tangaria got limited radius.
I heard a rumour that open world monsters will have big trouble to hunt you down if you will have high stealth… They will be asleep in most cases, if you won’t wake them up..