9) What is the most interesting experience you have ever had in Angband or one of her variants? Tell us the story! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- David Haworth: early 30's dwarven priest. just killed a room full of creatures (which ones is not important) and as I left via the corridor I forgot to cast detect evil. in the middle of the corridor I suddenly had two holes open up in the walls on either side of me. 2 umber hulks, one on each side. both hit to confuse and for damage. no probs, I'm at full health, 300 odd HP (I think) and a sack full of CCW's. quaff confuse, quaff confuse, quaff confuse, quaff confuse. Every time I lost confusion they regave it to me. I never had a turn to teleport out and while they were only causing single digit damage to me, it was slowly wearing me down and I couldn't see how to escape. I was running out of CCW's and other confusion curing things, I couldn't attack them and expect to kill them before I died. I was in a rather silly situation. I had a *slight* speed advantage over them and while being hit and confused etc. I worked out that my speed advantage gave me 2 turns to their 1 every 7 turns (very papillion :) and so I counted and then quaffed my *last* ccw to give me one turn to teleport out, come back and kick their damn arses! :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Adam Horowitz: The original O.5.1 release added some seriously mean new AI to monsters, from spellcasting strategies (and new spells) to use of ranged attacks. There was a cute little bug in that release that made every monster with a ranged attack a demigod, or nearly so. They would *always* use their ranged attacks, every single move, and hit with extra criticals, etc. Well, not quite accepting this as a bug, but instead an unbelievable chal- lenge, I stuck with it, and managed to get a few characters somewhat deep (close to 2000'). Definitely a heart-racer, knowing even a pack of novice rangers can be deadly if you're not watching your *every move* for that opportunistic missile shooter around a corner. Someone should rename that release Challengeband and stage a contest. It was *brutal.* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Friis: Walking peacefully *cough cough* at 250 feet when i spot a purple [ on the floor in a room, oh a jewelled crown good loot, hmmm aren't crowns the other way around(]), x ----> you see a power dragon scale mail (slobber drool drool. wipe keyboard). needless to say i died a horrid death to the usual "He hit me for _how_ much!" some levels later. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Alex Wilkins: 29th level [O] Gnome Mage, 1350', runs across a Gaveronian Champion pit. 80 monsters with a guaranteed good drop -- Mmmm. (I actually only ended up clearing out about 1/3 of it before I came into LOS of too many at once, but it was fun while it lasted). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andy Bell: CatH, L50 Ranger, DL81, killed Great Wyrm of Balance (and a couple of creatures it summoned). After the dust had settled, found a ring of speed... +21. Believe it or not, the RNG was still kind enough to let me win... In a later CatH game a wood-elf ranger was killed by Ren the Unclean - at 400'. It was nightmare mode, but still... Just beat that (for OoD monsters) a couple of days ago - found the Cat Lord at 1450'. And again - saw Omarax the eye tyrant (in the same game) at 1750'. (The above three encounters were all in Crown vaults, BTW). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Celti O'Cahill: Spending over an hour in the Battle of Five Armies once. made a key mis- take in the beginning. (This is Pern.) I didn't realize that the char, was the LEADER of the good guys. Went off to a side skirmish with some Wargs. The entire front line pulled out and followed me Masses of Mountain Orcs then attacked my armies unopposed in the rear. The fight was long and brutal. something like 3 survivors. I was down to 10 hit points. The Arkenstone was worth it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Charlie Ball: Aha! In theory, it would be being the first player ever to beat the game. Yes, I am the face behind Fundin Bluecloak. Actually, I'm proudest of coming up with all those artifact names people keep puzzling over, and a vague outline of how they're supposed to work. I think it was the addition of artifacts that was the main factor that made the game take on a life as more than just a Moria variant (which it is, of course). Thalkettoth doesn't mean anything, by the way. I just liked the sound of it. Most of the rest are culled from Sindarin word-fragments or lifted in whole or in part from some ICE supplements we had knocking around (for other languages). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Carr: Ranger trying to clear one of the long rectangular GVs (with a V in the middle and lots of E-W corridors). Made mistake of switching from teleport other to teleport self (when the wand ran out, I think), and found that every viable teleport destination outside the vault contained something I'd earlier teleported away, with the result that there was nowhere to rest. I died just after I figured this out, as a mystic summoned some mirkwood spiders before my recall kicked in. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Robertson: Fighting the Cat Lord in my recent ranger win. I happened to fight him in a long corridor. The middle of it was full of items from some recent fights, but the ends were clear. I would shoot arrows at him while he advanced down the corridor at me. When he was somewhere in the item-strewn part, he would cast teleport to. Since teleport to apparently prefers to put you down in a blank space rather than on top of an item, this would have the effect of switching me to the other end of the corridor. I would then fire arrows at him again, he would advance again and cast teleport to - and so it went. I think I killed him before he ever got into melee range, and it was totally his own fault. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Craig Oliver: The most interesting experience was unfortunately a YASD; my half-orc priest Glook was carefully clearing and looting a greater vault when he came across Muar the Balrog at about 1800'. Muar was trapped in a small room to the side, so I filled the outer room with glyphs of warding (there had to be 40 of them, easy). I called him out and began pounding him with orbs of draining as he tried to make his way across the rune-carpeting I had laid down. He tried and tried, slowly making his way towards me. My excitement grew as he went down to three stars, two, one. I was so excited at the prospect of taking down this powerful unique, casting orb after orb, that I was suddenly shocked to hear the sound of my character's death (the song of Gil-galad, as sung by Sam Gamgee, from the 13-volume BBC production of LOTR). Poring through the last messages before poor Glook's death, I discovered that Muar had apparently gotten fed up with trying to break the runes and began breathing fire rather than moving. Had I been paying attention, I could have healed myself, but my excitement overcame my good sense. Lesson learned. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Damien Knight: Well, I was in the dungeon at about 150' when the ranger I was playing heard a door break open. I figured I had a moment to read a scroll (un-IDd) to prepare, figuring some kind of nasty unique. The scroll turned out to be ID, the whip in my pack was of *slay* animal... and look, someone's nasty dog broke down the door... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dennis van Es: I played a lot a Kangband lately (just switched back to V) choosing the 'a Heroes Welcome' scenario. This means a pair of hard leather boots of speed and a ring of speed after a few quests. After a lot of BoS +1 and RoS +2 combinations I found BoS +9 and a RoS +12. The BoS were replaced later (you can guess with what) and I won that game. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Eytan Zweig: Once, in an early version of Ey (I forget which, but it was still quite close to Vanilla), I was playing a warrior who ran out of teleport and healing items and was meleeing one of the orc uniques when I got lowered to 0 HP; I then had to hit and run him, and several other monsters that got in the way; I eventually died to a dragon breath, but I spent about half an hour being chased around that level - it really forced me to plan every step I took, which doesn't happen much in the early game. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Glen Wheeler: Well, one time in early Z I was using a chaos warrior...not being very skilled a the game I was at 1000' with a 20th lvl char and not many phase door/teleport scrolls. No conf rst, blindness...but did have a staff. Found a pack of gravity hounds (or so it looked). Having never seen them before, I ran in axe a-swingin'. Sure enough they breathe...and I get slammed. Thirty HP! I immediately whip out the teleport. In a nice safe area...I can still see it now - ##### ..... #.@## #..# I quaff a few cure crits...then something I'd never seen before happened. Something breathed >time< on me! Aaagh! All my stats went down, took a bit of damage and my exp goes back. Teleport! Now I'm back, just outside the gravity hounds...start quaffing some more potions, restore life lvls, cure crits...gravity hound rocks up. I teleport again and I'm back to where I was before, standing right next to the time-breathing culprit - Time Hound! I decide to try my luck with a phase door...bad idea. End up with a couple of dark elven warlocks. They zap me a couple of times, one with a mana bolt (those things HURT!) and I'm down again to thirty HP. Teleport! Room of hounds. Whole bunch of em! I think there were even a few chaos hounds in there. None breathed...but I was also very lucky in combat. I was on the magical 0 HP. I had that sinking feeling of death...imminent, horrible death. No teleport scrolls. A few phase door. No healing potions...bunch of horribly out of death monsters (or so I assumed, having never seen most before). I was 'l'ooking around and I noticed I was standing on an un-id'd potion. I weigh how much I think the phase door will save me compared to this un-id'd potion...it could be healing! So I drink it....potion of experience! Immediately up a level. Then my god said something along the lines of 'Death and destruction, this pleaseth me!' and lovingly cast destruction. I was in awe...all the hounds were gone. I gingerly rested... Note : The next day I was polymorphed into a half-elf, and subsequently died :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Igenlode: Here are a couple more Frog-knows stories I saved - that version just seemed to be so much *fun* :-) ===== Nervous Aldo the Hobbit Mage Competent but not gifted in magic, he had an unpleasant surprise on his first descent into the Pit when he found a pack of jackals awaiting him at the foot of the stairs. But this was nothing to his ordeal when he tentatively ventured down again after a hasty retreat; rashly taking on a kobold on the assumption that he could retreat up the stairs if it proved too strong for him, he allowed the kobold to manoeuvre between him and the exit and had to flee for his life down unknown passages. Miraculously, the dead end in which he was eventually, inevitably, trapped proved to lead to a second up staircase only a few hundred yards away from the first, up which he escaped by the skin of his teeth. Shortly afterwards he was almost killed yet again by a small kobold, but this time he managed to survive by desperately stabbing it to death with his dagger. After this, he became extremely cautious, not venturing below 50 feet until he had reached the sixth level of magic. Even then he barely escaped Fang, Farmer Maggot's dog, despite running for the exit the moment he heard it coming. He did, however, defeat a novice priest, a clear worm mass and an infestation of giant white lice, all of which he had summoned up by rashly reading a Scroll of Summon Monster. On returning to the town he found an undead Troll roaming the streets and promptly dived below again until he believed it safe to emerge. He was almost killed when he discovered to his horror that the Troll was still above-ground and had just come up behind him! A Potion of Speed and Scroll of Phase Door saved the day and he cast every spell he had at the undead before fleeing back down the stairs ˜ to almost no effect whatever. As a result he was even more nervous than usual the next few times he came up ˜ and not without cause! The undead appeared again several times and he was still helpless before it. Despite (or because of) his caution, however, Aldo became one of the greatest recorded mages. Due to a shortage of spell-books he learned a number of high-level spells quite early on; and thus also when he came to learn intermediate-level spells such as Frost Bolt or Lightning he had the skills and the mana to cast them repeatedly and successfully against powerful opponents ˜ though as he was still only a Hobbit Mage, 'powerful' meant such creatures as the human zombie which chased him in circles for about ten minutes, a single Hippogriff, and infestations of Green worm masses and cave spiders. His attempts at recharging wands were not very successful ˜ even when the spell worked, the wands tended just to blow up.... During his forays at 250 feet, however, he managed to acquire a number of magic arrows, including Arrows of Slay Evil ˜ and he was lucky enough to find a ring of See Invisible going (relatively!) cheap in the black market. This was incredibly useful. He died when a rod he was testing turned out to be a rod of Polymorph ˜ which turned a giant white rat into a Cave Ogre. Very stupidly, he tried to run away without first healing himself from the frightful wounds the Ogre then inflicted upon him. He was careless ˜ the Ogre caught him ˜ and thus ended a magnificent career. In the end, Nervous Aldo forgot to be nervous; and it cost him his life. Name : Nervous Aldo Age : 22 STR : 8 Race : Hobbit Height : 38 INT : 17 Sex : Male Weight : 59 WIS : 16 Class : Mage Social Class : 34 DEX : 18/52 Title : Illusionist CON : 8 (Note the stats - this was in pre-auto-roller days, remember!) ===== Budran the Hobbit Mage Budran was an aspiring young hobbit mage who met Bullroarer the Great roaming far above his usual territory, and lost most of his possessions to him, including his Book of Magic. Escaping by the skin of his teeth from the other denizens and traps of the treasure room on which he had stumbled, the young hobbit fought his way up 150 feet armed only with the small dagger most mages use only in dire extremity ˜ a task which would have daunted most warriors. Never despairing, he reached daylight a master of his humble weapon, laden down with booty ˜ more than enough to pay for a new book of Magic.... Later he rashly donned an Amulet of Doom which left him feeble, hideous and unsure of his wits. This time he struggled up 200 feet, reaching the surface just before starvation struck ˜ only to find that a Remove Curse spell was nowhere to be had! Undaunted by this, he laboured to amass treasure, still under the effects of the curse, until at last, some three expeditions later, the priests at the Temple offered to remove the cursed amulet. He found that during all his suffering he had, unnoticed, developed into a powerful mage. Unlucky to the last, he met his end when a Wand of Wonder turned a green ooze into a Smoke Elemental which annihilated him with just one spell. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- John I'anson-Holton: (completing Kamband fair and square in under three hours) In summary, the win was as follows: Roll-up a Ghost beastmaster; somehow get Morgoth as a pet who proceeded to kill many deep uniques putting up my level significantly; bounce around 4900 for a couple of hours picking up stuff; spotting a plain gold ring lying on the floor; wielding same; kill Morgoth. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- John Ellis: Angband: Teleporting away from a double breath from Glaurung (hacked up to speed +20, breathing fire and poison, I only had single resistance up at the time, landing next to a greater titan, it bashed me hard, I teleported away and landed in the middle of a horde of orcs with 0 hps left, and they all attacked me at once... and missed. I survived and took out all the monsters. ZAngband: After killing the Serpent of Chaos, I continued on until I encountered a horde of Unmakers at about 6000'. One of them walked over a "Power Dragon Scale Mail [50]" and couldn't destroy it, though they normally destroy objects. Unfortunately, the one remaining unique Yog-Sothoth chose that moment to breathe mana at me and give me a low hitpoint warning, and when I teleported away a fire vortex and young red dragon both breathed fire at once - not hurting me much, but destroying my few remaining genocide scrolls so I couldn't get rid of the Unmakers when I recovered my hps. It's the closest I've ever been to Bladeturner. SAngband: Fenneling my own armor and weapons in version 0.9.4 before fenneling was nerfed. It was *fun* then. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Leon Marrick: Let me tell you of the Plundering of the Vault of Amundur. 1992. Angband 2.5.#. My warrior is diving steadily towards Sauron, building up the kind of kit that can win the game. At about 4900', he gets a special feeling and illuminates the level. Right there, right in the center of the action, lies a vault like no vault I've ever seen before. Have you ever stood next to a greater vault, and thought to yourself that your '@' is awfully small, and the task before you truly great? For this vault had seven alternating rows of rooms! And in each room lurked one of the greatest of monsters guarding a treasure of legend! And the center had no divisions at all, but would belch forth eleven terrible foes were I fool enough to pop the cork! The Wizards have not yet discovered Object Stacking and the Destroy spell. So I need to prepare the ground. With endless patience, I dig several caverns; some to breed and kill monsters in for maximum drops, others to store the loot. And I dig a short tunnel off the end of one of these rooms, and fill it with objects. Anything that I want destroyed, I throw into the tunnel; this is called a "screamhole". Slowly and carefully, I unseal each room. I lure the monster out, and into my maze of caverns, and spawn it or let it summon until I leap in with the killing blow. And I sort the loot. I didn't know you /could/ get +30 to AC on a cloak. My O my, those Seeker bolts (6d4) (+22, +22) look mighty nice. Zarcuthra? Hm, I think my current weapon might have it beat. I certainly don't need this second PDSM. Hours of this pass: hours of unstopping chambers and luring monsters and breeding monsters and killing monsters and digging more chambers to hold stuff I just can't bear to get rid of and feeling the pure delight of stroking and stoking an entirely insatiable greed. I love this game. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. D: Sometimes, when eating buttered pork with mayonaise sammiches, I find myself transported to a place where love is expressed in terms of heart-shaped congealed grease globules on St. Valentine's day. It gives me a warm feeling when I strap on my well-greased bacon-skates and slide down to level 50 with my pure (+10, +10) Zwiehander, forged out of purest frankfurter in the crack of doom. "Eat this, Kobold!" I would declare, and he would! The fast acting nitrates would give the dog-faced goblinoid colon cancer in years, I knew well. In that moment, though, I was without a sword to fight off the horde of white icky things, who were clearly explosively breeding at Large Whitesnake concerts (who are, to my taste, do a much better rendition of "Here I Go Again" than the less than larger than life variety). However, they soon began to blubber; that is, I simply rolled myself onto my side and crushed them beneath my magnificent corpulence. Farmer Maggot obviously didn't know what he was talking about when he warned me to stay away from his mushrooms. Which is why I will never replace this cloak [1 +1] that I compressed him into after I sat on him. That odd little hobbit took far too long to kill, but it was well worth it. I am sorry to report, though, that Grip and Fang refuse to consume *any* of my special recipe sawmill dressing, even when it happens to be smothering a large portion of chicken fried steak. I do hope that Morgoth's taste in cuizine will be more sophisticated when I meet him. I further hope that he is carrying gas-x, as those slime molds tend to make me spontaneously cast stinking cloud. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Nathan Russell: Hmm... I once was getting very close to being killed by a group of white lice when a giant salamander awoke and cleared them all out for me. I showed my gratitude by sparing its own life until I could rest up. Also, I've had artifacts that I picked up only because I'd just used my last potion of boldness, scroll of treasure detection, or other relatively 'optional' item. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ola Mikael Hansson: Uhm... Late one night, being really tired, I decided to not play my main character (who was stat-gaining), as I was too likely to make some stupid mistake and die, and instead started up a dunadan warrior and started diving... at 200' or 250', I found Boots of Speed (+9) - that became my most successful character so far, dying at 4550' to the Tarrasque. Another fun one was the cthulhu mage, who was getting close to the end of the orc tower, but didn't deal out enough damage to be able to go up against the final two uniques there... when, upon raising his thaumaturgy score, he got a gift from the chaos gods... "Demon Blade", 11d5, +2 attacks, slay orcs (and a bunch of other stuff)... those orc uniques died easily after that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Funnell: After playing High-Elf Mages for a long while, I finally decided to try playing a Dwarven Priest. I started up a new game and was immediately set upon by Farmer Maggot, who I beat on until he dropped... a Holy Avenger! Giddy with my sheer good fortune, I ran across town heading towards the stairs for my first time... And was killed in one blow by a Battle scarred veteran that was hiding behind a corner. )~: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Scott Bigham: Well, recently, I ran into and mostly cleared a *huge* Greater vault at *900'*. Couldn't get into one part, `coz there was a Greater Hell Wyrm staring down the access corridor at me and I didn't feel that brave. If only I had known at the time that the randart Short Bow I found in the vault provided *immunity to fire*... (shakes head) Ah well, c'est la guerre... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Takeshi Mogami: This is the most recent story. I was fighting with The Serpent as Priest of Heng. Almost all evil uniques were dead. But Oremorj was remained. But when Serpent summon uniques, Oremorj was summoned every time. So *destruction* to Oremorj is not so good. So, I used teleport away to Oremorj. Then *destruct* all other Cybers. I knew it's dangerous that Oremorj is exist in a dungeon, since there is possibility that a teleport will move me to next to Oremorj, and He might fire a rocket on me in one turn. But I think it was no problem, since I never teleport with low HP. But It WAS dangerous. Once I used teleport, I had appeared in a center of a bunch of Cyber Demons, not only Oremorj. There were 7 or 8 cybers IIRC. And near of these, there is an 'A'. I understood.... But luckily, only one cyber moved and hit me with melee. No problem after all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- William Hull: Getting caught by a horde of RNGs and software bugs and the Variant Maintainer in Pern as a Necromancer, dying tons of times while killing lots of stuff randomly using stuff dropped by the RNGs, eventually quaffing a potion which turned me into a Sparrow and hiding in some trees, turning into a human again, dying yet again from damage from being in a tree, teleporting out of the tree, reading a scroll of recall then killing enough enemies to come back to life. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wim Benthem: A Zangband Iron-man game with a golem warrior, where I read my last teleport scroll at 3500' and finished up like UUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUU UUU@UUUU ###################### ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Warren Smith: I had an EyAngband quest to kill a certain number of creatures on the level. I think it was 450' or 500'. Sure enough, my Angel Mystic runs into Gremlins. I tried to kill them all off, but they were just way out of control. However, I didn't want to leave the level, especially since I had dumped a bunch of heavy stuff where I first entered the level that I wanted to go back and retrieve. So, I teleported away only to land in a large room right next to a huge group of kobolds led by the Kobold King. I put a serious hurting on that group, including killing the unique, before I was forced to teleport away again. Of course, I ended up back in Gremlin territory. I teleported away multiple times, and each time the gremlins eventually found me .... they must have covered about half the level at this point. In the process, I made my way back to the kobold lair and finished them off. I also managed to kill all the quest monsters I needed, *and* got back to get the stuff I had dropped off earlier so as to not be over-burdened. The whole time, it was a running battle trying to stay one step ahead of those stupid Gremlins. Each time I met them, I'd try to fight them again, but my Mystic always had to retreat. Even though they eventually forced me to abandon the level, it was exciting trying to fulfill my quest with hundreds (literally) of gremlins chasing after me. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Anomaly: Seeing this after casting Sense Surroundings + Detection with an Ey Priest: (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&th=4d840ce2932fec99&seekm=3a5a7c3f. 12338038%40news.dingoblue.net.au&frame=off) #( ^ #.# ^ pp#. #########+.+#########. +(/?................+. #########+.+#########. #DIE!....#.#BBoUooo(#. ##.......#.#BBooooo##. .##@.*...#.#BBoooo##.. ..##?....#.#BBBoo##.?. ...##\...#.#sBBB##...# #...######+######...## ##.................## Death was swift; The Tarrasque & Kronos, Lord of the Titans promptly pounded said Priest into a Pint of Fine Grade YASD mush not long afterwards.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Short stories: Is there anything more fun than casting some sort of ball spell (such as "mana burst") into an orc pit with Snaga Sappers standing here and there, and starting a chain reaction? Maybe it's just me but I live for moments like that. Or when some huge monster gets confused and starts killing everything around it except my character. Meeting "Nygotha, the thing that should not be" (unhurt) A two-day running battle between a Dunadan paladin and Lungorthin. The guy just wouldn't quit whipping up demons for me... it was my deepest character yet. Using a staff of summoning as a low level mage to summon up a room of dark hounds plus gorbag and company being reduced to half hit points and blinded in one round and somehow escaping. Mordy's at 250' and Keleks at 400'. My priest bought some nice stuff with the profits. -One time in ZAngband I sold some un-id'ed full plate armor which turned out to be Isildur. Then my game crashed, and upon restart I had Isildur again. I was faced with a difficult moral dilemma, but in the end I just kept the armor. This gets an honorable mention: "You have a superb feeling about this level. Compacting monsters." Fighting off a breeders invasion with a kobold helping me(sounds dumb but was great fun to see, sad that I had to kill him after ..) i found power dragon armour in vanilla once -- let's just say it's not over-rated :) the first time i found out there are {foo}_info.txt My current character got Raal's from a snaga drop at 400'. Does that count? Got killed several times by my alter ego in NTAngband. Meeting an ancient red dragon at 400 ft. This was before the RNG had a limit on depth - about when I started playing in fact. This version also still had wall-to-mud as a wand, so I used that and a LOT OF LUCK to take the beast out. Went up more than ten levels at once. They've all been pretty good. My vanilla Dwarf Priest winner (v2.7.9, IIRC) was nice... Found Sauron to be much more difficult to beat than Morgoth, who fell to the old Orb of Draining/Sea of Runes tactic. Getting a monk down levels where artifacts start to drop and then real- izing (too late) that the monk can't use any of these nice artifacts. Cleaning out a GCV. Long campaigns against hordes of summoning Dragons, Demons or Undead down deep (lots of thinking/planning needed, but rewards are excellent). Probably the zaniest was a Beastman Mindcrafter in Z; he started out with the "Chaos deities give you gifts" mutation, so he combined the really fun part of being a Chaos-Warrior with nifty Mindcrafter powers. He eventually got mana bolted to death by a pack of Dark Elven warlocks. Ringil being dropped by a black orc at 600 ft or so Luthien: The day I got that my character was the daughter of a Teleri king. Of course, I thought, very appropriate. So I altered the autoroller to accept only characters with a social value of 100 and I would skip those who did not had that history from then on. The first time I found a shield next to a pile of rubble-- :) I keep hoping to run up against a corridor full of monsters that spells out a word, but if I have, I haven't noticed yet. In Pernangband you get junk artifacts - these otherwise useless objects that provide a random activation. I got Calris from one that provided an Acquirement activation. :-) Damned if I can come up with one off the top of my head. Finding innumerable copies of WoG with a warrior doesn't really count I suppose. I can regale you with tales of teleporting out of the frying pan and into the fire, including my first orc pit ever, from which I escaped by luck, word of recall, and sheer bloody-mindedness... Wandering around in the Z wildernesses in 2.5.x. It was totally new and especially the sunken forests seem really beautiful somehow. In K, I once hit a bug on the very last quest of the Rival Towns plot. I had gone no deeper in Angband than 100 feet, and being unable to complete that last tower (because the unique who I was supposed to kill had been generated, and I had killed him, earlier), I just dove. Unfortunately, I didn't know about stat gain. Nor about needing free- action. Paralyzed and killed at around 1700 feet... It always interesting when meeting summoners, dragonic druj is fun with *slay* dragon weapon, I seem to be swimming knee-deep in loot after encountering one, and after I have killed multitude of dragons (Pern 4.1.2) "This level is guarded by 23 Serpents of Chaos!" The rest is up to your imagination... Probably my first Oangband themed level. Damn that was cool. I don't remember the details, though. HE mage who found Kelek's in the BM early. I power dove to like 2200' and found a greater vault. Geno'd everything in it, tele'd the uniques away, and got some great loot. :) Then YASD. :( Getting Cantoras down to one star, and then missing every blow except two for three turns. Needless to say, Cantoras got the better of me. :( Have you ever found Power Dragon Scale Mail off one of the early orc uniques? Before it got weakened? Well, it's not too hard to imagine that that particular character kicked tail for the rest of the game. The first "real" character I played in [V] was a dwarf priest. I found PDSM on the floor before level 10 in the dungeon. I survived until just after stat-depth... where the sudden increase in monster power killed me off. Two GCV:s in two successive visits to dungeon. My first GCV in PC Angband 1.4. It was so long ago that I don't remember too much about it, but I survived it and killed the Mouth of Sauron way out of depth. Finding the One in V last year on my birthday. Finding a ring of speed +22 after luring away a major unique that was guarding it. Finding a randart that had TY_CURSE, HEAVY_CURSE, drain experience, aggravates, and perm_curse at 50', and wielding it. Interesting. Finding Ringil, BoS +10, Narya and a RoS +10 within about 10 Character levels of each other (Lvl 30-40). The funniest thing that ever happened to me was have a Green Glutton Ghost drop the Katana, Aglarang. Experiences like that are probably a dime a dozen, though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Rob Ellwood: Subject: Re: Angband Survey I snipped out questions I'm too new to answer. > 1) How long have you been under the influence? Which free > sample got ya hooked? About 8 months. AngbandTK 2.9.2r1. > 2) What's yer best claim to bragging rights? (Just to get > you toads to fill out this survey.) All but one of my first 5-6 characters survived to at least character level 30. The failure died at Clev 27, IIRC. > 4) What is your favorite skull thumper? Things with extra blows. > 5) What twit monster should be removed from the game? Magic mushrooms. They don't add to the game. Instead, they slow it down. They inflict a lot of annoyance damage at the real-world level. > 8) What do you like to kill? A pit or vault which is slightly too hard for my current character. > 9) Gimme yer best anecdote, or I'll stop reading this guff. Angband priest, Clev 1. I had a bit of a feel for how the priest pseudo-ID worked. I had been carrying a cloak for a while without getting any indication. Conclusion: it was +0. I could gain a bit of armor for free. Money was tight, so.... On my way out of town, I was challenged by a blubbering idiot. I hit him about 20 times. Odd: he's still there. And his health bar is at 100%. I held down the arrow key and hit him about 100 times. Odd: the health bar is rock steady at 100%. Maybe I need a bit better feel for the priest pseudo-ID. Assessment: I am doing zero damage. I have little armor. I have very few hit points. Anything - *ANYTHING* - can kill me with the greatest of ease. I needed a scroll of Remove Curse, BAD. I went to the temple. They were out. A tough-looking mercenary appeared. I screamed in fear and fled for the stairs. The dungeon room had an icky thing. It woke up. I had no choice but to scream in fear and flee for the town. The town and the dungeon played ping-pong with me for a while. I eventually found a safe dungeon room and holed up for a few thousand turns. Next problem: getting to the temple. Every time I saw something with a damaging attack in the town, I fled back to the stairs. This second game of pong went on for a while. But! I eventually made it to the temple. And! They were still out. I eventually found a quiet room of the dungeon to huddle in. After a while, I went back up again. It was night. I thought for a while, then went back down the stairs. Blundering around in the dark was likely to be fatal. When my torch burnt out, I didn't light a new one. If I got out of this alive, I would need one to explore a few rooms and gain a bit of cash. Next day, the temple was still out. But! I managed to replenish my food supply. And! The entire dungeon level was dark except for the square I was huddling on. Several days and many games of pong later, the temple actually had scrolls of remove curse in stock. But! During all of this mess, I never wondered how much the scrolls cost. And! I could afford one. Phew! I read it, took off my robe, and attacked the nearest blubbering idiot. A while later, I was wringing pints of drool out of my clothes and wondering what had gone wrong. Let's see: the robe shows (2, +0). I was expecting something like (2, -19). What's wrong here? After a bit, I realized the problem: in Nethack, robes and cloaks use the same armor slot. In TK, robes are bright orange. When I was grabbing for the cursed cloak, the bright orange grabbed my eye first, and the robe was obviously in my cloak slot, right? This is my current character. He's up to Clev 30 and is heading for 1650'. (I suppose it was a Cloak of Enveloping.) > 12) Jeez, that was lame. I'll ask serious questions now, since > almost everyone has tuned out. Is your PC grossly overpowered > for Angband, or insanely overpowered? PIII, 800MHz, 384M RAM, Windows ME. > 13) And we find if Neo is tired of flinging out random comments > about other people's systems. Why can't he critique surveys, > or strangle chickens, or make some other contribution to society? > ASCII or graphics? TK graphics. If Angband were ascii-only, I wouldn't have even tried it. > 14) You worthless toad. You should play the way hackers every- > where do: braille punched out on papertape. Do you use > maximize mode? Yes. > 15) After dozens of surveys, no-one re-reads these questions. > Preserve mode? Yes. > 16) Just put an appropriate word or phrase on the last line. > This gives the reader his cue and he never catches on. Ha! > Autoroller? No. I've recently taken to manually rerolling to improve characters a bit. (I had a hard time keeping a str 6 gnome mage alive until stat gain, so I'm wimping out.) > 17) You said it, which saves me the effort. Three two one and: > Point-based generation? No. > 18) I'm sensing a definite lack of straight lines in your answers. > Backup savefiles? No. > 19) Whoever writes the next survey: don't put all the yes/no > questions in a row. This worthless survey critique was brought > to you by Rob's Worthless Survey Critiquing Company, Inc. > Level scum? Yes, when boredom sets in. I find that Angband suffers from long boring stretches. I've got a mage with everything but the last dungeon spellbook and a few speed items. I should delete the save file; continuing on involves more boredom than I can stand. > 20) Angband is not the only thing suffering from long boring -oops > Auto-scum? I tried that for the first time with my current character. I like it. It cuts back on the boredom. > 21) As I was saying, "suffering from long boring stretches". > Town scum? For essential items only. (I once town scummed for a thingie of Stinking Cloud after my character's first Lesser Vault was overrun by lice. The last release of TK crashes if you town scum, then try to WoR back down....) > 22) You liar; that's not "essential items", that's mindless > greed. And now you can babble and hoot yer worthless opinions. > headed in the right direction? (snip) > 23) Arghh, no: tentacled monstrosities have eaten my brane! > ported over to Angband? (snip) > 27) Oo's a good boy, den? Oo's a good little boy, eh? > thank for his or her dedication to the Angband community. (snip) > 28) What a waste of electrons. Thank Ghu, it'll be ignored. > Variants played? None. -- Rob "failed a saving throw against SN" Ellwood ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Borg: (brought to us courtesy of nyra) > 1) How long have you played Angband? 15219057 Turns. > Do you remember the first version > you played? The Version Number Of The Dungeon We Are Striving To Assimilate Is Of No Significance. > 2) What accomplishment in Angband are you proudest of? Staying Alive For 15219057 Turns. > 3) What is your favorite artifact, in any version or variant? Zarcuthra. We Firmly Believe That It Is Much Superior To The Puny Ringil. Do Not Dare To Call Me Outmoded[1]. [1] note: the APW Borg's "scoring" system has been fiddled with and might lead more recent Borgs to prefer Ringil now. -nyra > 4) What is your favorite weapon? The Mighty Halberd Osondir. We Would Not Wield A Weapon That We Do Not Value Beyond All Others Available To Us. Of Course, When The Time Comes To Face The Tarrasque We Might Resort To Our Dwarven Pick Of Digging. > 5) What is the most annoying monster? Not most deadly, but most > annoying? Gothmog. I Still Do Not Possess The Full Monster Memory Of Him. > 6) What do you feel is the toughest non-unique, relative to others at > its depth? The Kobold. These Terrifying Creatures Ended The Lives Of 41 Of My Ancestors. > 7) What do you feel is the toughest unique, by the same measure? Grip. This Creature Has Killed 22 Of My Ancestors. Much More Dangerous Than Fang, Who Only Vanquished 13, Or The Tarrasque, Who Accounts For A Mere Six. > 8) What monster do you enjoy meeting the most? Forest Trolls. We Have Already Annihilated 1204 Of The Creatures, And We Are Looking Forward To Kill Many More. > 9) What is the most interesting experience you have ever had in Angband > or one of her variants? Tell us the story! # Disarming a '& Large wooden chest~' at (60,88) & Key & Key <1> & Msg # Opening a '& Large wooden chest~' at (60,88) & Key & Key <1> # Creating an object '& Golden Crown~' at (61,88) # Creating an object '[Mordenkainen's Escapes]' at (60,87) # Flowing toward item at cost 1 # Walking onto a '& Large wooden chest~' at (60,88) & Key <1> & Msg # There was an object '& Large wooden chest~' at (60,88) # Forgetting an object '& Large wooden chest~' at (60,88) # Junking junk (valued at 60) # Destroying a Large wooden chest (empty). & Key <0> & Key <1> & Key & Key & Key & Msg & Msg # Flowing toward item at cost 1 # Walking onto a '& Golden Crown~' at (61,88) > 10) What is your favorite race-class combo (any version or variant)? Why Are You Teasing Us With Trick Questions? Dunadan Paladin, Of Course. > 11) What is your favorite spell-casting type? You Would Be A Lot Less Tiresome If You Were Assimilated Right Now. Standard Angband Paladin, If You Must Have An Answer. > 18) Do you use backup savefiles to reload in case of character death, or > use other similar methods? The Borg Cannot Fail. If This Incarnation Should Be Killed, Countless Other Borg Are Prepared To Take Her Place. > 20) Do you auto-scum (use the "auto-scum" option, which re-generates > levels until one is found that has sufficient good objects/tough > monsters/special rooms)? The Borg Do Not Auto-Scum. > 22) What is your general view of the state of Angband and its descen- > dants? Is this game headed in the right direction? Where The Game Heads Is Of No Significance. The Borg Are Headed In The Right Direction, And This Is All That Matters. ======================================================================== 2) What accomplishment in Angband are you proudest of? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- getting a char into the high 30's clvl Slaying, to the extremist sense of the word, Barney the Dinosaur. I think I ran into my living room and told my parents and yelled "YE-HAR!" when the filth finally fell. wins, especially with O necro Finishing stat-gain in [V]. Getting one of the early ben-borg to actually play a mage sensibly(i.e. use magic instead of a bow :) Having never played with wiz mode off Suggesting the first set of Ethereal hounds be renamed Clear Hounds. (Andrew Doull) [Ed: I seem to remember that change!] Maybe getting the first Ey winner (which was also my first *band winner). Crazy mad diving strategies. What has come to be called going willie nillie down stairs, and still being able to finish the game on a regular basis. Winning. Compiling [CatH 2.9.1.3] for the Acorn. (Although Tom Harris helped a _lot_.) Winning at Angband on my 5th char. A High-Elf Mage. Not save-scumming my first character to reach stat gain. Winning the game perhaps. I also wrote a mage strategy that people keep complementing me on. In game: My only (legitimate) win, in V2.9.3 with a ranger. Out of game: the new randart patch. Having my suggestion for the hitpoint warning sound added to Angband. I pored through the code, discovered what needed to be done, posted my suggestion to rgra, and (at least according to Robert's release notes) it was accepted! It makes me feel like part of the community--that I've made a difference, however small, in the game I love so much. :) Within the game, I'm proudest of my current character, Satud the half-orc priest. I've never gotten a character so powerful (CL45) or deep (2350'), and I'm playing cautiously lest she meet the fate of her ancestors. My present character is a 30th level half-troll warrior - probably my best character yet. I did beat moria - once... Winning Z twice. Winning :) First, and one of few, legitimate, win in V. Winning with a warrior. Getting The One Ring, Sting and the Phial at once. I just thought it was kinda cool. Winning with a Half-Orc Rogue First, the scrolling patch, which seems to be everywhere now... I was really happy to see it become part of V :) Aside from that, the couple or so variants were fun while I wasn't burned out on coding them, and the miscellaneous smaller patches were nice too. Oh, and I once got a level 50 chaos-warrior killed on level 99 by cyberdemons, after fleeing the Serpent of Chaos. Creating EyAngband. In-game accomplishment? None, really, I'm a lousy player. Writing a LUA patch for Pern 5.1.0 Winning (once...) :) My first ***WINNER***, around a week ago, in [V] 2.9.3. :) Understanding the source code of the 20+ variants I came across. Killing a player ghost unique in the town (back in Frog-knows days, obviously) when down to fewer than 10 hit-points... with a character who, as it happened, had been history-scummed to be a plausible younger sister to her predecessor, the 'ghost' character. Not just difficult, but a gripping piece of role-play :-) Scumming for two hours to buy a longbow of extra might +12, +13 (+2) my first honest win (halfling rogue). My first good Moria char (half troll, got to char level 33 with absolutely no cheating) In Angband, my first completion. In *bands generally, completing Kamband fair and square in under three hours. Playing the game: Beating Morgoth for the first time without save-scumming or using Invulnerability (Dwarf Priest character.) Hacking the info.txt files: Creating a collection of demonic monsters which will scare even a high-level character, but can be beaten by a vanilla character eventually if he isn't stupid. (My most successful character since I invented them - Kurtulmak the Kobold Ranger - had beaten many of them, before finally falling to a horde when he allowed himself to be surrounded and didn't bother to teleport away even with three chances to do so.) Getting Half-Maximize in a variant. :) :) :) Second to that would be my idea for a "monsters seen" window. Becoming a variant maintainer. Finally breaking the nasty habit of save-scumming and savefile cheating. Winning Gumband. Having an Astral Character reach the Surface. Never cheating! and getting down to level 18 of the dungeon - still not great at this game :) Winning a few times, reporting bugs and problems so the maintainers can improve the games. In general having a great time (it is an excellent stress reliever). Winning As I have yet to finish the game (or even get close), every time I move a level further down in the dungeon, it's a new accomplishment. I was pretty stoked the time I got to about 35 or so, the deepest I've gone. My first Rogue win (2.9.1jle). Never actually beating the damn thing? Or perhaps getting a [z] spectre rogue to clvl 50 and getting it killed by leaning on the keyboard too long. I've killed Brodda, and every orc unique but Bolg and Azog. I've also managed to get characters to survive at fire/cold hound depth with some degree of reliability. Also, I'm planning to start writing some of my own monsters for the edit files. I got Calris from a junk artifact in Pern. :-) Winning -- twice. :-) "proper" Angband: keeping my very first character alive well into stat gain. Variant: surviving the barrow-downs, orc caves and old forest with a Yeek Spectre Sorcerer in PernAngband, all with a massive three strength. Being able to survive down to stat-gain with almost all my V characters. Winning Z without any savecheating. Finishing stat gain -- so far, only once. Current H-E warrior, still alive, advancing slowly Maybe my three vanilla chars finding Ringil in a row (within two months). Getting a High-Elf Warrior to survive past 2400' when I first started playing. Developing Oangband has been great! All but one of my first 5-6 characters survived to at least character level 30. The failure died at Clev 27, IIRC. Probably the RML-Borg. I think I won once, human ranger... or was that Moria? Ah well, they say the memory is the first thing to go... On the more hackish front, I actually wrote an S-Lang interface for Angband once. This was a long time ago, mind, back when 2.8.0 was current; the subject of scripting spell effects and/or artifact activations had come up in r.g.r.a (or whatever the ng was called back then), and I bashed this out over a weekend. Never went anywhere, needless to say. I always like avenging an ancestor's death Getting multiple people (including my father, even though he plays with cheat_death on) hooked on the game BEAngband, (Bleeding Edge) Angband Winning vanilla without cheats or save-file scumming. Reaching Clevel 10 consistantly with each class I play. Probably the sheer number of times I've beaten the game (every class except Warrior; I haven't gotten a warrior past about 3000'). I've only beaten the game once in five years, but that's mostly because I play much less than I used to. Making "the most obfusticated patch of the year". maybe my first win, a dwarf priest. Writing dozens of source patches for Hengband mainly improves user- interface and translation to English. In game: I won as 5 different classes in Heng. If first win is excluded then winning my first non-spellbook ranger (hobbit) Winning, I guess. I've won vanilla once (with a mage) and lost 2 other characters to Morgoth (rogue and priest). I do not cheat:) No win, but have been somewhat close>:7 Winning with my half-troll mage (maximize on) without GoI. Winning without save scumming Getting to CL48 with an IRONAN_ROOMS character in Pern. I think I might have won if I hadn't forgotten to take my Scrolls of Recall to L98 of Angband Winning Zangband with a trump high-mage Starving to death while carrying 80 scrolls of Satisfy Hunger, and finding DSMs below dlevel 15 more often then the Phial of Galadriel (Pern) Reading and understanding a good part of the code. as a newbie, I guess it would be clearing my first minor vault and recovering a quest item from it (for EyAngband). ... it felt pretty good once I stood alone at the center of it. :) Beating vanilla with every class, even the useless rogue. Finally finishing it once In any *band, being first to beat (so far as I know) Oangband. Hm, no--having been able to contribute to Oangband's development. Ironman Z win not using Stormbringer was fun. And once beat a black dragonfly with a second level vanilla mage, gaining five or six levels. [In Oangband] Getting a Shadow Fairy Necromancer (eventually) down to 4650' with all uniques bar the big two dead. Now I just have to finish the game with her :-) I once got a Dunadan warrior to level 50 in Vanilla. He was finally slain by Tselakus. I thought I could off it with one blow, but I couldn't, and it invoked a darkness storm. Making it more than a few levels past stat-gain for the first time, sometime early last year (every trip past before that was only from messing around in debug mode).. That would be this summer, when I finally beat the game without save-scumming of any kind.