Re: XL a disadvantage?
- From: byron@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Byron A Jeff)
- Date: 10 Mar 2007 08:45:04 -0500
In article <1173209060.006099.23680@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<masquerade808@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I've heard mentions in many different places of intentionally avoiding
fights and decreasing your own level as a strategy. This is a newbie
question, but what is the advantage of limiting or decreasing your
level, what classes should do it, and when?
I've been out of town otherwise I would have tackled this earlier.
At its ultimate level you're talking about pacifist conduct. It's absolutely
one of the toughest conducts in the game.
Nethack gives characters lots of good attributes for experience. Here are a
few:
- Hit points
- Power points for spellcasting
- improved failure rates for spellcasting
- extra skill slots which can improve accuracy (and damage too I think?)
- intrinsics/resistances
Now to balance the game, there has to be a penalty. The penalty is that the
RNG generates monsters whos level are around the average of your XL and your
DL. So that means that as you level up you get tougher monsters. This is
also true as you go deeper in the dungeon. Finally once you have the Amulet
(or kill Rodney I can't remember which) the DL is maxed out to the bottom of
the dungeon for the rest of the game no matter what XL you are.
Another small penalty is that your XL determines how much gold you have spend
to get divine protection from a priest.
One last thing is that you must be XL14 in order to go on the Quest.
The advantages far outweigh the penalties. In general PCs can collect
attributes/intrinsics that offset the stronger monsters. These include:
- All of the direct benefits of increased level
- Armor class
- Magic resistance/Magic cancellation
- Reflection
- Speed
- Various spells, potions, rings, and wands
- resistances such as poison,fire,cold,shock,disintegration, and the like
Personally I find that in the early to mid game, while trying to collect these
critical attributes, that armor class and speed play a critical role. It's
one opportunity for artificially depressed XL can be helpful: the Minetown
Protection Run.
It's outline in detail in various places. The basic idea is to get to the
Minetown priest at a relatively low XL to buy as much divine protection as
you can afford. There are several interconnected elements required:
- A strong pet
- Cleaning out shops
- Carefully choosing armor for the run
- A pacifist attitude
The pet is critical for the run. It serves many purposes:
- Your monster killing machine
- Shop loot stealer
- Hit point buffer
- Cursed/uncursed item detector
There's an exploitable advantage with the pet. Like you the pet gains XLs.
They start as level 1 monsters and can grow to level 9 monsters (large dog
or large cat). Like you as they grow they can better damage and more hit
points (up to 72 max). But unlike you, the RNG doesn't base monster XL on
the pet's XL, only yours. So you can create a huge mismatch by letting your
pet kill monsters in the dungeon and grow (called buffing the pet) while you
remain at a low XL. The monsters in the dungeon will remain relatively small
(averaging levels 1-3) while the pet grows to a XL9 killing machine. Another
advantage is that as you come across more dogs/cats you can tame them (by
feeding them) and they serve as additional buffers for you.
At the end of the run you get to purchase protection, which is weightless,
intrinsic AC. Up to 9 points is guaranteed with a proper donation ($400 per
XL) to the priest. After that you get a 10% chance of gaining an additional
point per donation.
So I start my game with the MPR by stealing from shops, cleaning out vaults,
buffing the pet, and gaining armor. Then I dive through the upper mines to
Minetown and pay the priest. I find that the protection gives my AC a more
flexible balance between weight (and therefore speed) and protection in the
early to mid game. I'm running monks right now and with protection, the given
equipment (+1 robe, +2 gloves), and the typical dwarven helm and shoes that
routinely drop in the upper mines, I can get my AC down in the -8 to -10
range without too much of a problem. Typically I can function unburdened
because I don't need to wear armor (real bad for monks anyway).
After that, I level up as quickly as possible. Monks happen to gain an
intrinsic/resistance every other XL. By XL9 you have warning, searching,
poison resistance, and stealth to go along with speed, sleep resistance,
and see invisible starting out.
Now post quest there's yet another debate. Typically any XL14 or XL15
character can get access to magic/divine intervention that improves most
of the gains that you get from increasing XL. Full healing for HP, gain
energy for Power points, gain ability to improve intelligence/wisdom for
dropping spellcasting failure rates (along with magic items such as a robe
or the Helm of brilliance). Dragons come along and you can eat them for
a variety of resistances. Also your god can bless you with intrinsics too,
with crowning giving you everything. So there's a point in the game where
additional XLs are of marginal gain. Typically unless spellcasting is a
big part of the characters arsenal, there's limited benefit to improving
XL. Also since the number of experience points to gain levels grows
exponentially, it gets to a point where you really need magic to gain
experience anyway. Gain level potions have several other excellent uses
in the late game (alchemy and a quick exit from a dungeon level for example)
and you may not want to waste them on gaining XLs. Wraiths will give you
experience but getting corpses can be tough (quick hint: never kill wraith
from a graveyard on that level. Lead them up/down as they will following you
up/down stairs and kill them on another level as there's a much much better
chance of them leaving a corpse on a non graveyard level.)
But all in all artifically depressing your XL in nethack long term is a bad
play. There's a temporary advantage for the MPR, but other than that my
advise is to level up.
Hope this helps,
BAJ
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: XL a disadvantage?
- From: nyra
- Re: XL a disadvantage?
- References:
- XL a disadvantage?
- From: masquerade808
- XL a disadvantage?
- Prev by Date: Re: Extinction question
- Next by Date: Re: XL a disadvantage?
- Previous by thread: Re: XL a disadvantage?
- Next by thread: Re: XL a disadvantage?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
