Re: Thoughts of suicide! (Within Angband.)

Timo Pietilä wrote:

You explain there quite a lot of your playing style which, I might
say, differs a lot from my playing style. Ethereal dragon is for me
much more dangerous because I usually don't have confusion,
blindness, light or dark resistances before meeting it, but I _do_
have high damage capability, HP and speed.

My playing style emphasis on detection, stealth, speed, HP and high
damage much more than resistances.

Given that I play mages, HP isn't something which can really be
emphasized, at least not until statgain or afterwards - and I've never
made it to "afterwards". Aside from that, and the fact that speed is
hard to get reliably until the spell is cheap and effective enough to
keep constantly on, those are the primary points of my playing style as
well, I think - though stealth becomes less important later on as the
difficulty curve (WRT ability to kill any given thing if it became
necessary) ramps up.

At dlvl 40-50 (2000-2500) I might not even have poison yet, just
basic4 (usually) and whatever else my best armor gives me.

I've only had poison resistance in maybe three games so far that I
recall. I do focus on higher resistances a bit more than you may,
primarily confusion+blindness given that a mage is dead without his
spells.

I don't care much about high resistances because they don't give you
much protection against damage, only side-effects matter, which makes
blindness and confusion most important of those and sound after them.

But they do all make some difference, so I do aim for all of them. Some
are more important than others, but that just means I value something
providing them above something providing the others.

At that point I avoid many monsters, but because I am fast (potions
of speed or staves of speed, if nothing else. Collect them from the
beginning)

I'm reluctant to spend a slot on just one purpose, and because these are
consumable, relying on them is impractical and unsafe. The only
consumables I rely on at any point (aside from recall scrolls and e.g.
CCW, which can be bought in bulk without much difficulty) are staves of
perception, which can be recharged at leisure whenever there's need to
use them at all.

and I have high-damage weapons

As I've said, I play mages - and IME at least, mages cannot safely focus
or rely or depend on melee against anything not much weaker than they
are; the only safe thing to do is to keep a distance and pound away with
ranged attacks.

Adunaphel is not very dangerous to me. He simply doesn't stay alive
long enough to be any real danger.

If starting out from full HP, with a reasonable set of resistances etc.,
and (importantly!) not already beset by or otherwise trying to deal with
other opponents, I could probably manage something like this as well. In
practice, however - particularly given the detection range involved -
those are fairly narrow circumstances which I'm not sure have ever
arisen.

Ethereal dragon OTOH can blind and confuse me _with_ very high damage
which makes escaping or fighting it very hard. I just can't stay more
than one round in LoS of it and even that might be too long.

As I say, I'm not positive I've ever encountered an ethereal dragon, but
if I have the encounter was not memorable enough for me to be able to
pick it out at this point. Again, I suspect that the much reduced
detection range is an important factor in this; it gives me the chance
to escape by teleportation, clean up other things which would be a
distraction, and wipe the dragon out at leisure, which is impossible
with Adunaphel short of getting very lucky.

Adunaphel can only netherbolt me which is much less damaging than
Ethereal Dragon breaths. Netherbolt is also only one spell out of ten
of his arsenal and five of them do not cause any damage and four
makes only small damage and he uses them a lot, which means that
meleeing him is valid killing method.

For mages, I am skeptical that this is even close to true.

(Not to mention that I am very leery of experience-draining effects,
nether bolts and Adunaphel's melee among them - probably due in large
part to the level dependency of mages' spells and success chances.)

That large arsenal of non-, or low-damaging spells also means that if
he netherbolts me I can just blink and drink few CCW:s and be OK
again and ready to continue fighting.

How often do you even have a chance to drink that many potions after
blinking before Adunaphel is adjacent again and already attacking you?

Because of Adunaphel has summon monster corridors are better place to
fight than open rooms. Less room for summoned monster and blinking
gets you out of his LoS usually.

That really depends on the layout of the corridor in question. It's also
vastly less practical if melee isn't safe, which as I say seems to be
true in my experience. (This is also why anti-summoning corridors have
never seemed practical to me either. Standing next to the unique isn't
safe; having hosts of other monsters between you and it isn't safe
either; the anti-summoning corridor avoids the second danger at the
expense of guaranteeing the first.)

Pass_wall means that he will come after you,

It also means that (at least in versions I remember playing much) magic
missile and similar spells can't hit him most of the time, because they
won't go into walls - another reason I tend to stick to rooms.

but because he can't make much damage at any single time just stack
of CCW is enough to keep you alive. About four potions of CCW
counters one nether bolt.

How many do you bring with you?? I tend to take a stack of 10 per dive,
primarily for countering confusion and blindness while I lack the
matching resistance, and sometimes find myself running low on supplies
to even take that many. (Not to mention that it isn't safe to take too
many, for fear of being overburdened - a particularly likely thing at
the Str levels available to mages with any respectable Int.)

(Also, see below.)

Just don't let your HP to go too low not to survive second nether
bolt if you land in his LoS after blinking (usually not the case in
corridors).

CCW is unable to reliably restore HP by the amounts necessary to keep
going in any serious combat; if the enemy can do more damage in the time
required to use a potion than can be cured by even *two* of the potion,
much less one, then that potion is effectively useless for healing
damage in actual combat. Since the next healing potion is much deeper
and rarer, there is no practical way to heal in combat at that point for
anyone without priestly 'magic'; indeed, for well past the depths I've
ever reached, the *only* practical way to heal is by resting.

I therefore dismiss this argument as specious.

--
The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
.

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