It breathes -more- You have died. Let's play Angband!

Welcome back to Let's Play Angband. Today's update is brought to you by me being sick today. That means I get to stay home and write Let's Play Angband. This also means that I will not be drinking while I write this update. You are welcome. Let's see how this grand experiment turns out by jumping straight into the deep end!



Being an 'excellent' item, Hieronymus Gaylord decides that it's safe to wield-ID this weapon, and discovers very shortly that it has a pathetic bonus on it, and is able to rule out several classes of ego item which is definitely not, among them Slay Animal and Slay Evil (or any elemental brand). This means that it is completely useless for anything except being sold, which means that once again I forgot to screencap an item that I promised I would tell you all (where I am from: Y'ALL) about. He's already got a pretty bad-ass weapon anyway.

Things are sold, dungeon is returned to, etc. It turns out to be another lucky floor, and that can only mean one thing: adventure!



In this case, adventure takes the form of a unique monster that will probably not be very difficult.



Alright, maybe that was an underestimate. Hieronymus Gaylord has a little difficulty taking the fellow down, mostly due to running into an open area where other orcs can circle around into the room and crowd him. That's always dangerous, and instead of teleporting away (like would be smart) he instead casts a blessing spell and takes advantage of the to-hit bonus to smack down the big bad with that mighty hammer of death.



For his efforts, he's rewarded with a moderate haul.



Level 24! Right on, brother. That is a good level, almost halfway up the player level chain. Just a few more until Orb of Draining goes from 'occasional support' to 'room-clearing death ball', which will make it much more useful for clearing out hounds and the occasional large group of explosive growth monsters.



I've got to say that I kind of like some of these new rings. Not for what they do, but rather for how they exist solely to fuck players who think it's okay to just slip on a ring without thinking about it. In fact I'd say that rings (and maybe amulets) are the only things it is never, ever safe to wield-ID in 3.1.1.



Here's what generated that lucky feeling. And here is what my reaction was upon finding them: . Nexus resistance is one of the hardest resistances to get in the game, and it can be death of you on later dungeon floors, because if I remember right, nexus has the unpleasant ability to teleport you around the dungeon and even between floors. Resistance doesn't prevent this, of course, but does decrease the chances of it happening.

Monsters slayed, items obtained, back to town, sell awesome things, another lucky feeling. What will it be this time?



Once again, the item in question is found within mere feet of where Hieronymus Gaylord zaps himself into the dungeon.



Get equipped with: Main Gauche! There's only one kind of ego item that raises both strength and dexterity (and constitution, but that's after the -more- prompt). That's right, it must be:



YES. This gets equipped permanently, because the STR, DEX, and CON bonuses are way more important to a character that survives primarily based on 'hit things' than WIS.

But it doesn't stay equipped for long. Because this gets found not much later. You might notice that in this case, the weapon's ego ability is known right off the bat, before attacking with it. I can only assume this is because extra attacks only come with one type of ego item, and as soon as you equip it, just checking the character sheet would tell you exactly what it is.

Suddenly there is an embarrassment of riches. A weapon of *Slay Evil*, a weapon of Westernesse, and now Extra Attacks? This run is like a gold mine, except the runs that have actual gold mines in them (note: gold mines not a feature of Angband, although 3.1.1 seems to love generating levels where there are extremely high concentrations of buried treasure around a central point) (maybe gold mines would be a cool feature though).

Alright. So, back to town.

This is where I have a serious debate about the best way to min/max this. *Slay Evil* is unquestionably the worst weapon of this lot, which is really saying something; it gets pawned off. It seems like, on the surface, Extra Attacks is the best weapon to keep. Even without knowing the bonus, it does 4 hits with an average of 10hp/hit - that's pretty good. But Westernesse is better for a couple of reasons: It gives free action and the ability to see invisible things. Plus, once its to-damage bonus gets brought up (+4 is pretty pathetic for an ego item) it'll be doing just as much damage as the war hammer to ordinary enemies; against non-hound mob monsters that are going to show up between now and roughly 1250' (floor 25) it'll deal significantly more damage.

Extra Attacks gets sold, and traded up for a Potion of Constitution. Hieronymus Gaylord feels hardier, and is now much less likely to die of cholera.



Hieronymus Gaylord rounds a corner and runs into this nice chap, who obviously just wants to make friends.



Unfortunately, he rolls with the Jets, and Hieronymus Gaylord is a staunch supporter of the Sharks. He even took dancing lessons from them. The only appropriate response is to cast Draining on the entire group of monsters and, as IGN dot com would say, "melt [their] face off with maximum awesome." That is a real quote from IGN. I did not make that shit up.



The battle is fever pitched, despite the fact that Hieronymus Gaylord's moves are way sweeter. It takes an arrow to the face to put the entire face-off to an end. For his troubles, Hieronymus Gaylord seems to be rewarded with nothing, because if there was any loot with picking up, I would have screencapped it.



Scrolls of Deep Descent are, at this point, just about the only way I can bring myself to continue down into the dungeon without picking up loads more shit. So it gets read, taking him down to 800', even though good ol' H.G. has a full inventory. The level feeling is ambiguous, which means it's time for: exploration!



Exploration, as always, leads to trouble. Giant Fruit Flies (I) are monsters which have super explosive growth, which means they propagate like mad, even though they're easy to kill. How exactly they got around to both sides of Hieronymus Gaylord I can't quite remember, but they need to be contained before the entire level is befouled.



This doesn't look good. At that T-junction both the south and west doors are going to have to be closed - there's no way a fruit fly is going to be able to bash through a doorway, so they don't need to be jammed. Which is great news, because Hieronymus Gaylord is too cool to carry iron spikes.

Doors are closed, and the only way out is rushed into, and found to be loaded down with the ugly things. Hieronymus Gaylord tries casting Draining, but that's only going to take out a tiny fraction of all of the insects in the room, and they're going to grow faster than he can manage them. It's time to take drastic action. It's time to try a new strategy.



The solution? Obvious: Use that Staff of Sleep Monsters he's been carrying around forever, which never gets used because honestly, who needs to sleep monsters ever? It's not as if they're dangerous or something. Most of the flies fall asleep, but it doesn't work on them all. But it works on enough of them to contain the growth for a while.

This is also the first time in the game where playing a dwarf becomes disadvantageous. Because they have a miserable stealth rating, and (I)nsect monsters are always very alert, moving even a couple of tiles or engaging in combat is going to wake up one (or more) of the flies and they're going to immediately start breeding again. If this was a game where I was playing, say, a kobold rogue, not only would my character be dead by now but his reanimated corpse would be able to handle this situation no problem.



So there's only one good solution: To do what he always did when he was a small dwarf and totally didn't have a beard yet and all the other dwarves made fun of him, which is lock himself inside of a small room and cry.

Fortunately, crying restores mana, and this means that Hieronymus Gaylord can whisk himself away to another, less insect filled part of the dungeon! Everyone is a winner, except the insects that died.



Let's end this update on a happy note: Hieronymus Gaylord gains a level, and gets to learn his first prayer in practically a billion years!

NEXT TIME: Much like for Bill and Ted, it is party time. It is EXCELLENT.

I... kind of hate to correct you, since I enjoy this LP so much, but I must.

Extra Attacks isn't the only ego-type that grants extra attacks. There's also Fury, which you find much later in the dungeon (extra attacks, fear resistance, can't be harmed by the elements, at a cost of aggravate monster). I've never used them, myself, because really. If something has aggravate monster, it needs to give me something better than fear resistance.

Welcome back to Let's Play Angband. This update is brought to you by the current 410 images of update I have sitting in my Let's Play folder. That's right: At the current rate, that's another 20 updates. Neglecting the fact that a bunch of them will probably get trimmed or combined or god knows what. So for a little while here Let's Play Angband might update both more frequently and with more awesome per post. Think of it as my Christmas present... to you. Unless you're my Festivus giftee in which case this is not my Christmas present to you.

We last left off at an actual good stopping point and not a cliffhanger, so let's pick up at the next convenient point.



First, a stop in at the Black Market to pick up some Boots of Speed. They're only (+3) but every little bit counts; with this, roughly every third turn Hieronymus Gaylord will get a free move. This is going to be much more important than Nexus resist until Nexus Hounds show up, and it might even be more beneficial to cart around then. So his shoes get swapped out.

Back to the dungeon! This floor is: Uninteresting.



So is this encounter with Ulfast, which devolves into the classical '@ touches p' sequence of events what leads to death (in this case, of the 'p'). For our troubles, he drops an item so worthless that I didn't make any note of it.



PARTY TIME. EXCELLENT. I would also like to apologize in the last update for confusing Bill and Ted and Wayne and Garth, which I sometimes do for some reason. To make up for that, here is something hilarious involving Bill and Ted. I will never make the mistake again.



First, a shield of Resist Cold is picked up. The bonus on it is garbage, but it resists cold! Can't beat that, since it's one of the basic resistances that Hieronymus Gaylord is missing.



Wait a minute, what's this mysterious gold-looking armor in the middle of the room?



Oh, holy shit.



HOLY SHIT

Alright, so this chunk of armor is really important for a few reasons. First, 43AC total is an incredible bonus and not to be scoffed at. Secondly, sound resistance is super-important once Vibration Hounds and Gold Dragons (monsters which breathe Sound) come out in force, because sound can cause stunning effects which free action doesn't necessarily negate, but I can't find more information on this. And thirdly: Breathe sound. Practically no monster resists sound, and will be stunned by it, including unique monsters (which makes me think it bypasses free action). That's a long recharge time, so breathing sound is kind of a last-resort sort of attack, but my god.

This is better than an artifact. Seriously. The only way I could love it more would be if it gave a speed bonus, and it's the top of the pops of dragon scale mail as far as I'm concerned.

As you may have noticed, H.G.'s item roster is full, so he explores a little more to see if there are any artifacts hanging around on the level and finding none, heads back to town.



Here's a quick list of the duds Hieronymus Gaylord is rocking right now. He's slowly creeping towards filling his list with ego items. I think I've covered all the ego items he's equipped individually, but it's a nice reference point - right now he only resists acid and cold. Adding in fire resist sure would be nice - basic element resists don't block the nasty effects of fire and acid, but make them much less likely to occur.



Heading down a floor and nearly reaching the delightful landmark of 1000', Hieronymus Gaylord finds a suit of Leather Scale Mail of Resist Lightning. Resist Lightning is the most useless of basic resists (nearly no monster uses it, and it only destroys wands) and seriously. Why would he ever replace that scale mail he's rocking?

1000' (level 20) is obtained. This is a big deal, kind of. We're now officially in what's been termed 'hound depth', which lasts somewhere until the early 30s, where the majority of monsters are going to be hound mobs. A lot of players actually skip these levels by using Deep Descent, but we're cooler than that. We're going to tough it out.



This situation might need a little explaining.

Hieronymus Gaylord wanders into a room that just happens to be filled with a mage mob, and a few worms that're hanging around for good measure. While he's busy fighting the mages, the worms are spawning like crazy because that's what worms do, and he's trying to blast them left and right with Orb of Draining, which doesn't quite work (the failure rate for it is still too high). One of the mages confuses him, which is a death sentence with all of those orcs nearby as well, who thankfully haven't woken up yet. But, H.G. has a trick up his sleeve - you can use staves while confused, and he's carrying Sleep Monsters still. Because it was so useful in the past, he tries it out now, and puts a large number of these monsters to sleep - including the worms.

Then this lovely chap shows up!



Things don't go quite as planned, in part because his mana has been severely depleted, and Hieronymus Gaylord gets the hell out of there. The worms are all either dead or still asleep, so this is a safe move; the room isn't going to get infested with little red 'w's.



But a short trip, a few arrows, and some poking/slashing later, Bolg goes down. You might notice that the experience stats are for a 32nd level character, which should tell you a little bit about how much I've played between this update and my latest game session. SPOILERS: Hieronymus Gaylord isn't dead yet. I apologize for removing some of the tension of Let's Play Angband.

You will, however, notice that H.G. reaches level 26. Inching towards the level 30 barrier!



Have we encountered capital 'O' before? I think that Viki died before any of them showed up, but these monsters are a little out of depth - big O stands for (O)gre, which along with (T)rolls are going to be our mobs from roughly 28-late-30s.



In fact, the ogres are so rough right now that they whittle down Hieronymus Gaylord to a fraction of his full health, and deplete his mana something severe. Fortunately, he has enough to teleport the hell out of there and



Damnit.

However, orcs are pushovers now for the mighty H.G. and his orc-slaying weapon, so he just plows straight through them and is barely even touched. His increasingly ridiculous AC helps.



This, however, sounds promising. Hieronymus Gaylord carts it around for practically forever, before I realize something that makes me an idiot: This is only going to be useful for healing cut damage and confusion (but that's no slouch). Hieronymus Gaylord is immune to blindness, has a prayer to remove poison, and is immune to stunning because he has both free action and resist sound.



Awesome! Free ranged attack! It's worth noting at this point that this is about a billion times weaker than arrows, but it's still something. We'll learn much later how I determined arrow damage (SPOILERS: It works like determining weapon damage).



Back in town, Hieronymus Gaylord takes a browse of the final purchasable prayer book, and discovers that it's not going to be worth buying and then taking up a valuable inventory slot. Prayer and Heal might one day become useful, so it's a nice thing to have on tap, but honestly? Right now he's still better served by gathering up lots of tasty treasure.

Back to 1000', the level is boring as hell again.



However, these are found. I think they're a neat little item, because it guarantees a temporary stat loss instead of a permanent one, which can happen if you're rocking not enough SP to cast. Not to mention the failure rate that increases by approximately one billion percent. H.G. will never have any use for them, because he can fight his way out of an ugly situation, and I'm smart enough to always reserve SP for at least two attempts of Portal.

Wait a minute! This is a lame place to end an update, let's keep going so that I can get through some more boring stuff so that we can get to some really exciting stuff in upcoming updates.

Next unique monster up for death: Nar.



However, he's just a little too far away to begin attacking by conventional means right now. This is a new feature, and I really like it, because now I'm not going to waste any arrows trying to shoot something I can't kill.



He goes down like a chump. Hieronymus Gaylord's battles with unique monsters are even more boring than Viki's, because instead of a draining spam he just shoots some arrows and then smacks them with his cute little dagger. I mean, they take longer, but still.

Again, a unique monster leaves some complete bullshit behind. In this case, a dagger with bad enchantments. So bad that I'm not even going to waste posting an image.



Puttering around the floor, this is picked up after a brief encounter with some hounds. It is completely useless to the mighty Hieronymus Gaylord, but will fetch a high price back in town!



Gripped by avarice, Hieronymus Gaylord digs this incredibly long tunnel just to get to this measly amount of money. Later on he will discover that there's a room just slightly to the north, which would have shortened this tunnel by something like 4000%.



In an encounter with some Air Hounds, Hieronymus Gaylord starts entering the 'trouble zone' of being at about half HP, and breathes some sound all over everything for the first time. The results are predictable: Extreme death and stunning. I love sound.

This might be a good point to talk a little about when to consider your character "in danger" with regards to Current HP/Max HP. The rule that I've followed since I was a teeny little kid playing Final Fantasy is 1/4 health, but in Angband, it should always be more like 1/2 to 2/3rds. The reason for this is twofold: Monsters that can really mess you up could suddenly appear out of nowhere and get in enough attacks to rock your HP down to near-nothing before you can phase out, and monsters that you're fighting can mess you up to the point where you might not get a chance to phase (leading to the infamous "It breathes -more-" message). You'll notice that I've broken this rule many times in all of my games, some of which led to death.

Air hounds can be particularly dangerous because right now H.G. doesn't have poison resist, which means that he's going to take lots of damage from hound breath in addition to the steady HP drain of poison. It probably took somewhere between 5 and 8 turns for his HP to get cut to this point, which means that I should assume he has another 3 at best, unless the hounds start dying like mad. Sound is a good way to handle this, because in addition to the death, it's going to stun them and give a chance to move in and do some melee, or heal up, or both.

But with the hounds defeated, it's down to 1050', and another boring-seeming level.



Uh-oh. Dark green means unique, but big block of sleeping monsters means I'm not worried. The unique turns out to be Gorbag, the Orc Captain. I would much prefer that he were Gor Gor.



The reason why big blocks aren't a problem should be obvious by now. PROTIP: Draining.



Once again, defeat is a dish best served by Hieronymus Gaylord.



Look at all that treasure on this floor! We're going to have to get it all... next update!

NEXT TIME: The update that I've been itching to make since before Thanksgiving. What could possibly happen? Could it be something... good?

Huzzah, update!

Ooh, getting pretty close. You see, the level where a Paladin really, truly comes into his own isn't level 30 where they get more Draining range, but rather when they hit level 33 and learn Heal.

Also, congrats on the Gold Dragon Scale Mail; I checked, and it was generated 1650' out of depth, which is pretty insane.


EDIT: Has Hieronymous Gaylord found any of the themed prayer books yet?

This isn't the first game where I've had Gold Scale Mail, even - once I played a game in the old 2.8.x line where I found some somewhere between levels 13 and 17.

Of course, I was playing a mage, so I couldn't use it.

I think I'm going to have to do some checks on item depth from now on too, because I'm positive that I've gotten things that while maybe they aren't that wildly out of depth they are unquestionably showing up sooner than they should. I knew the getting the mail at that depth was insane, but had no idea it was that insane.

You might have to wait to find out!

Heh, now I've got the mental image of a mage who just found Bladeturner and can't use it...

Gold is nice, but it's not the best by a long shot. Maybe you'll luck into something really awesome, like Balance or Power.

Ah, okay. I actually meant 'yet' as in as of this update's progress, so I guess the answer is no.

Welcome back to Let's Play Angband. This update is brought to you by both the fact that it is snowing outside and so I can't go to the sports bar to watch today's Saints game with a friend (which is why I am writing Let's Play Angband instead) and also by the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA: The official IPA of Let's Play Angband. It's pretty delicious and, as it says on the bottle, has improved with age. That's something new for an IPA. It doesn't usually do that.

Oh yes, and I'm also going to officially announce to the internet that you absolutely need to catch last week's episode of Bones. Hulu, torrent, whatever - between the "Avatar will get you laid" subplot and the fact that it's a take on King of Kong - but with murder! - it might be the best worst hour of television I've ever watched.



Firstly! Hieronymus Gaylord finds a staff of teleportation, which is ungodly useful. The reason for this, if I haven't mentioned it before (I actually do forget these things: This LP is now 41 updates long, after all) staves can be used when you're confused. This means a staff of teleportation is an invaluable item: You can't read scrolls or cast magic while confused, but you can use the staff. This object will unquestionably save Hieronymus Gaylord's bacon at least once.



Screw the amulet of Resist Acid that H.G. has on right now, this is getting picked up. A +2 WIS bonus is nothing to scoff at, even though it won't give him such a massive push that he can get in an extra cast of draining.



There is also a nearby orc pit. These are actually still worth clearing out at this stage in the game, because Hieronymus Gaylord nets close to 1000 exp from clearing it out, not to mention a variety of (not so) sweet treasure to scrounge through. Orc pits continue to be boring, because all I have to do is hold down the '6' key to repeatedly run into monsters and then shoot draining all over the place to clean up the holdouts in the central room once the ranks are thin enough.



You will remember that Viki met her untimely end at the hands of another monster that could summon natural creatures (I believe it was a Druid, and that update is actually the only one I didn't write beforehand). It's time for revenge. And as always, revenge is a dish best served by Hieronymus Gaylord.



Take that, asshole.



However, the 3-headed Hydra (M) is a monster that's a little out-of-depth and hydras are always nasty, besides. So H.G., with his low mana reserves, resorts to using his staff of teleportation. Told you guys it would save his bacon.



He also kills some hounds and gains a level. You'll notice that the experience requirements are getting steadily more ridiculous.



Descending to 1050', Hieronymus Gaylord gets a feeling. A good feeling. Not just a good feeling... a very good feeling! What could it be?



Well, now don't I feel like a schmuck for wasting 13000 gold on a pair of boots of speed. These have a better AC on them so the current set of footwear gets swapped out again. A brief trip back to town to unload his goodies, and Hieronymus Gaylord is back in the dungeon for more hot, thrilling dungeon crawling action.



I wish that I could make more 'I got a good feeling!' jokes but I think that I've completely used up my allotment of them for the rest of this LP. Instead I will make another Wayne's World joke. Why not watch this? I'll wait for you to come back. Join me again after the break.

Once again, the teleportation staff saves H.G.'s bacon, but I'm not sure from what. There was nothing in the previous screenshot that was dangerous at all; just (r)ats, (G)hosts, a rogue, and hounds.



Oh. Now I remember what it was.

Pukelmen are some kind of disastrous (g)olem-type monster which can cast acid bolts and confuse, has loads of HP, and is just generally dangerous. This one is also fairly out of depth, because they start showing up at 1250' (floor 25). This is just out of depth enough to contribute to a special level feeling.



I didn't get a screenshot of this, but this was a jelly pit. Strike two for a special level feeling. I'm starting to get the idea that maybe this level really isn't all that excellent after all, much like Wayne's World for the NES. Or Wayne's World for the SNES, for that matter.



This is the final straw in the ugly, floppy hat of the 'excellent' feeling. This level is excellent like Dana Carvey's career. ZING!



This level feeling better not be a lie. I mean, if the dragon scale mail generated a merely excellent feeling than this floor better be super-awesome, you know?



Once again, an acid hound is the victim of a stabbing that leads to a level gain. Very slowly inching towards 30, and stronger support magic.



Hieronymus Gaylord also gets to learn his first prayer in a while. This one is actually pretty useless, and I start wondering if I need to conserve my spells for when I get the theme books and might actually be able to learn something useful.

Okay. So Hieronymus Gaylord kills a lowly hobbit, who drops an innocent-looking Long Sword (3d5) on the ground. But wait a minute! He knows from picking up junk in the dungeon all the time that long swords are always (2d5). This must be special.

Are you guys ready for the next image?

Because I am!



HELL YES



Oh my god. Check out those bonuses. Check out those resists. Check out that FREE ACTION and SEE INVISIBLE. This is like a weapon of Westernesse on steroids, and also it comes with the power to shoot fire bolts. By the way, I think that 'fire bolts' is a lie, because whenever I've activated it it behaves more like a fire ball. Or maybe just the bolt has a 100% chance to beam or something. Anyway, it always hits more than one monster.

This weapon is so cool there's not even enough space to print how much time it takes to tunnel through granite! That's actually a stat I'm kind of interested in, by the way, because this thing allows tunneling to a degree that it might no longer be worth carting around the shovel.



Here's the rest of the treasure that Hieronymus Gaylord finds hanging around on the floor. None of them can even compare to the equipment that he has now. H.G. has become an unstoppable death machine, who delivers death to everything. Always. Forever.

He goes back to town to sell all of it off for some ridiculous amount of money, and heads back to the dungeon. But I'm too excited to stop now! Let's keep going!

The Random Number God has truly smiled upon Hieronymus Gaylord today.



Oh man, what the hell is this? This looks awesome. So awesome. That's not a pit, though; from the way the treasure is divided up I can tell what kind of room it is. There are rooms that have the surrounding hallway, and then four chambers with a door at each corner; that's what's over there. I can't wait to get in and check out what kind of awesome is to be had!

The monsters waiting for H.G. are actually in-depth (or lower-depth (or is that higher-depth?)) monsters like orcs, hounds, and wargs.



This is actually the least awesome item that H.G. picks up. Well, not quite the last awesome; we'll see something a little less awesome later. He's already got a pretty good bow so this one's going to get sold for much cash dollars.



I think I've explained Acquirement before, but if not: It's a scroll you read that generates a depth-appropriate (or sometimes slightly deeper) special item. In this case I was a fool to read it right now, because all it did was give me an ego item instead of an artifact, and in this particular instance, an ego item that's useless because Hieronymus Gaylord is using a bow instead of a crossbow.



This, however, makes up for it. I'm pretty sure that this is the most artifacts I've gotten in a run. Possibly tied.



Not fantastic, but I'm not going to complain. The (+8,+8) bonus is pretty exceptional and I'll take any STR and CON bonuses that Hieronymus Gaylord can get. In fact, let's take a look at where his stats and resistance chart are at right now:



Looks like H.G. is doing pretty well for himself. He's missing two of the basic resists (in fact, the two that would be most useful for him) but is rocking two sources of free action and has Sound resist already. Check out the stat bonuses he's getting from his equipment, too. Awesome.

Time to go back to town and sell stuff! In fact, while we're at it, let's check out what his dungeon supplies look like:



By now the shovel has been left behind, and is sitting at home, leaking acid all over everything and ruining his hardwood floors. He's switched from scrolls of ID to staves of ID because they're more convenient, but if one gets burned up, he's going to lose more charges of identify. The usual variety of staves/wands (slow/sleep/confuse) plus a small bonus in Teleport Other, which again, is mostly useful against vicious unique monsters who just don't want to leave Hieronymus Gaylord alone. Deep Descent is being brought along because I'm lazy and a little behind the curve as far as delving into the deep, dark dungeon goes.

Oh, and H.G. picks up a potion of charisma on the sly, too. He's so adorable!



Another good feeling. Hopefully it's not a jelly pit and a pair of boots of Free Action or Slow Descent or something dumb like that again.



H.G. is already rocking a pretty great bow and has good shooting skills, so this is entirely unnecessary for him to be carting around.

NEXT TIME: This update provides resistance to fire, confusion. Average damage per hit: 49.9.

I wish I'd get Anduril and Cambeleg at a reasonable depth. ;_;

You didn't even mention the best part about Anduril*: Disenchantment resistance. A lot** of the late-game uniques have Disenchantment branded melee attacks, so direct attacks without the resistance aren't terribly smart; all your great artifacts and stuff will be dulled, and if the bonuses were above +15 to start, those lost points will be points you never see again. Even your weapons can be harmed, which I think doesn't happen with acid attacks.

It's worse than Acid for two reasons: first, a lot of equipment has the 'cannot be harmed by the elements' flag, including all artifacts, and this prevents corrosion but not disenchantment (and even artifacts only get a saving throw against disenchantment, not immunity). Second, Disenchantment resistance is stupidly hard to come by. Of the two times I've had a character live a really long time (long enough for the resistance to matter against a lot of uniques and even a few mobs), the first time I had to carry around the (2d4) dagger Rilia, solely because it provided Disenchantment resistance (it had no other particularly special properties, save a Poison brand). I would have to swap out for that dagger when I fought disenchanting enemies, including a huge chunk of the uniques.

This time, though, I'm rocking Balance Dragon Scale Mail, with its Sound, Shards, Chaos, and Disenchantment resistances, so it's not a concern.

I mean, heck, you didn't even have to fight Ibun, Khim, or Mim without Disenchantment resistance, when they normally require some relatively delicate tactics. Seriously, having Disenchantment resistance this early?

*Okay, maybe it's just one of the best parts. But it's significant though!

**A lot.

EDIT: Also, how did you know that lesser vault was there in advance? Yeah, I know, the treasure layout; what I mean is how did you detect treasure? Did you just happen to find a Scroll of Object Detection? Personally, the way I find about these things myself is pretty much by spamming Sense Surroundings (i.e., Magic Mapping) as soon as I get it...

EDIT 2: Never mind, I see that you have a Rod of Treasure Location.

I quite honestly had no idea that disenchantment became such a problem. I guess Anduril is staying on until I hit another item that's rocking disenchantment resist.

I've never actually seen Mim or his kin attack to disenchant. Maybe I'm just really lucky, or more likely, the only time I've fought him (them) was with Viki which means ranged attacks. Viki did kill Mim, right? As always, I'm too lazy to look, after some 40-odd updates.

EDIT: After reading some 40-odd updates, it seems the answer is "no".

I wouldn't worry about it too much at just this stage; the trio I mentioned above will disenchant, and that's the last you see of the element until, like, 3000'+.

Uh, outside of Chaos dragons, who can breathe disenchantment, that is. And the occasional Storm of Unmagic ([v]ortex type enemy), but you shouldn't see those for a long time.

And I think my horrific memories may be inflating the number of uniques a tad; you don't need the resistance all the time, or anything like that. It's just that in those times when you do need it, not having it is a rather dire problem, and this becomes more common late in the game. All you really need is to keep Anduril on hand and be able to swap to it at a moment's notice; you don't need it on at all times, it's not like you'll die without it.

Welcome back to Let's Play Angband! This update is brought to you by the squash soup I made, along with some baked beets. If you've never had a fresh baked beet you have never had a beet. I'm not joking: Try it sometime. You'll thank me later. It's also brought to you by the fact that I don't have to take a final exam on Monday, which means more time for Angband, which means more Let's Play Angband for you! Hooray!

This episode starts off with a great big bang.



I just got one of these things! Why do you have to keep giving them to me!



So. It offers up confusion and fire resist and slays evil and is branded with flames and.. and.. I.. I just don't know anymore. Anduril is a great weapon, sure, and a big part of that is the massive strength bonus that it gives, but this is a rough choice. This might end up being a secondary weapon that gets filed away somewhere. Like at home. I mean, I'd just bring it as a second weapon slot but honestly, I feel weird doing that. I know it's a strategy that's necessary to survive, though.



I find it mildly hilarious that this katana comes from the west.



I also find it mildly hilarious that after I pick up a boatload of artifacts that give me a set of resistances I really need, I finally get a Defender ego item. This thing is going to get sold so hard. It will be sold until the end of time.



These, by the way, are the properties that a Defender ego-item has. They're really great and I sure would love to get one sometime before an artifact weapon someday! I seem to remember Viki finding one that was an edged weapon, so she couldn't use it.



Let's talk for a brief moment about hound strategies again, because I'm bored of just posting pictures of (awesome) loot and wish that there could maybe be a couple more dangerous situations for Hieronymus Gaylord to get himself into.

This one is pretty simple: Hounds are in a hallway, you're in a big room. Sometimes they can breathe around the corner, but that's a little unfair, so sometimes you want to scoot an extra space back from what's pictured (at the possible penalty of not being able to dispatch hounds fast enough). But for Hieronymus Gaylord, since he has a death-dealing weapon which gets multiple attacks, he's going to be taking these puppies out in just a hit or two.

Here's how this works: You sit and wait. Then a hound appears at the end of the hallway, and you kill it. Repeat. If it's done right and the hallway is a straightaway with no bends in it that might change the hounds' line of sight so they can hit you, this is a fairly safe way to deal with them. Viki used cornering strategies like this as well, I'm sure of it. Did I even mention them? I bet I did. Consider this a reminder then, because effective ways of handling hounds are worth explaining more than once.



Oh yeah! Let's check out some stats on Hieronymus Gaylord, because I just mentioned that he's getting two attacks a turn, but forgot to say so when we were checking out the properties of Anduril. Worth noting: His fight+melee bonus is incredible, and that's why he's rocking so much damage all over the faces of various monsters. Monsters, consider your faces rocked.



Hieronymus Gaylord pops down to 1150', surrounded by orcs, which he conveniently destroys with a few well-placed blasts of draining.



One of them drops this, which is yet another hilarious cursed item. I love that this stuff starts showing up at a depth where players should know that it's never safe to wear-ID, too.



Oh yeah, it turns out that you can get the average damage on arrows by inspecting them, as well. In this case, with Hieronymus Gaylord's current bow, he can deal some pretty serious death with these things; 50 average damage is pretty great. I honestly haven't been using ranged combat nearly enough, and now I think that I will. Ranged combat is the best!

Level up!



Unfortunately, a bronze dragon shows up and Hieronymus Gaylord wishes he'd brought along Totila. Resist confusion: Super important.



However, being confused is no match for his radical armor class and my persistence in pressing keyboard buttons in the general direction of the 'd'. Baby dragons are pushovers!

Somewhere along the way, it appears that Hieronymus Gaylord gets down to 1250', taking him a quarter of the way through Angband.



He has also learned an inordinate amount about Earth Hounds, simply by killing the hell out of them. Of particular note is their average life rating; H.G. is dispatching them in one or two hits for certain. That's also a very short distance to detect the player; 300 feet is only 30 tiles. The only thing that's missing from this report is shard damage, and I don't think that ever shows up.



Suddenly, a novice rogue that's been hanging out with his drinking buddies drops something important after being burned to death. Daggers are never 2d4, are they?



Surprise! I've never thought I'd say this, but this artifact is totally worthless to me. That's right: An artifact is worthless.



Here's why. That's some pretty pitiful per-hit damage and also a really lame special power. For lower-level characters Dethanc and its family members whose names I forget but I know have mentioned before are absolute godsends, especially for rogues, who suck at putting on heavy equipment but have high DEX and so will get 2 (or maybe 3) blows a round with this weapon.



I can only imagine what would happen if I actually attempted to use a missile weapon with the Backbiting property. Does it hurt you? Is it just really stupid? I mean, check out those bonuses(?).



Another floor, another orc pit. Sigh. This one is cleaned out as per usual.



Well, this one at least leaves an artifact behind. And how! Like I said, artifact armor just isn't even going to stack up against the gold dragon scale mail for a while.

Wait a minute! Let's keep going, this update has been kind of lame. I mean, three artifacts, and only one of them is any good? Where's the danger? The excitement?

In a bitter twist, Dethnac sells for about half of what the dagger of Westernesse did.



Oh hey, check this out! Hieronymus Gaylord could use a copy of Ethereal Openings. It's not the best thing out there, but what the heck, the price is right. He picks up that Potion of Strength while he's at it, because more muscles means more hitting!

So Hieronymus Gaylord now has a proper blink spell, teleport, and teleport other. He, unfortunately, cannot learn the awesome spell that completely regenerates the current dungeon floor. God must not love him enough, I think it has to do with all the murder.

Back to the dungeon, complete with a good feeling!



Hmm. This fellow looks like he might be a little bit of trouble, especially after this long line of Uruks (o). Better take a cautious approach.



Well, I guess that Hieronymus Gaylord didn't get messed up too bad, but that's not going to stop him from telling God to cover his ass whenever evil monsters attack him. I'm sure I mentioned Protection from Evil while running Viki through the dungeon, but just in case: Protection from Evil protects you from, well, evil monsters. It causes their attacks which would connect to deflect, which means that H.G. is gonna be quite safe!



The result is predictable, once again.



He drops this crappy little thing. How is Hieronymus Gaylord supposed to ever earn back the gold he spent on that prayer book with treasure like this?



Well, it helps that the regular orcs drop things like this.

I'm going to have to cut this update just a little bit short because it turns out this is a good stopping point. Sorry that it was kind of boring! I promise that next time things will be a little more exciting. In fact:

NEXT TIME: Things are a little more exciting. Unique monsters, more artifacts, and thrilling tales. Two drink minimum.

Can you flip items with negative enchantments in vanilla Angband?

I think our good friend Hieronymous Gaylord is shaping up to be a very successful guy! Which means you'd better get used to finding artifacts that you just sell, because they're worthless to you (if you make it all the way, you can probably expect to have found all of the -thanc daggers, for starters). It becomes rather more common late-game, when most of your equipment is already artifacts (or really spectacular non-artifacts) and you start coming across greater vaults and uniques who drop large numbers of exceptional items.

Regarding Totila vs. Anduril: that's a very tough decision to make. In olde-style Vanilla I'd recommend Totila outright, since resist confusion is just that important. Here, though, you have those mushrooms for emergencies, and Anduril is really swanky... I don't know.

If by flip you mean sell: In 3.1.1, yes. In earlier versions, no. But generally unless it's massively negative enchanted armor you're wearing from disenchantment/acid damage, you're not going to want to waste the inventory slot. Earlier in the thread Viki sold a Broken Sword of Lightning, after all. For a good chunk of money, too!

If by flip you mean bring back up to +: Yes, always.

Don't worry, I've gotten used to it. You'll see why over the next several updates, and by several, I mean "almost every single one I've played to date". H.G. is already my most successful character of all time, and shows no signs of stopping. Dwarf Paladin is a good base to start from.

This is an easier decision than you'd think. You'll see why in the next update or two!

So for all you crazy Angband players what would your top 5 scariest monsters be?

I would say... hm. I'm going to include only non-uniques here; if you want me to list some unique monsters, I'll come back and revise this if you want. Keep in mind that I've never been below about floor 77...

Time Hounds
Jabberwocks
Great Wyrms of Balance
Black Reavers
Grand Master Mystics

...the first two are what immediately came to mind, I looked through my monster recall to find some others that scare the dickens out of me.

1-3. <insert three varieties of Quylthulg here>
4. Any higher demon
5. Any greater dragon you can't get immunity to

Long story short: a U (high demon) or a D. And the Qs summon them.

Quylthulgs aren't so bad if you have Orb of Draining... you can usually manage to tunnel to some location where they can't see you (and thus won't summon), but you can catch them in Draining's area of effect.

My best character had finally cleared out a large portion of a vault and went in to loot it. I didn't see the Greater Draconic Q in the corner until I was surrounded. My teleport spell failed a couple times, and I died after it finally went off and an ice D (only immunity I didn't have) immediately breathed on me.

Ah... yeah, vaults. I guess you usually can't dig there, heh. That's a rather terrifying story, to be honest.

's why I spam Detection as soon as I get the Godly Insights book, so I almost never run afoul of anything without knowing it's there.

FIVE LEAST FAVORITE MONSTERS:

- Inertia Hounds
- Nexus Quythlig
- Colossus
- Punkelman
- Bronze dragons (any kind, w/o confusion resist)

By the way, only one update this week. My life has turned from regular to completely fucking crazy over the last several days, where I have two interviews this week, two more open-ended interviews, Christmas shopping/cards/shipping, regular work, and another freelance article deadline. Sorry, Let's Play Angband. You guys wouldn't even be getting an update except that I wrote this like a week ago. This is why you keep an extra update or two in the LP queue, kids.

Let's get started!

Welcome back to Let's Play Angband. This update is brought to you by me being drunk [ED: not actually drunk now, I was drunk last Friday], because of the "vertical tasting" of Avery's Mephistopheles. The '09 was actually the best, but the '06 ran a close second. You should maybe buy a bottle if you think you can handle a super-strong sweet kinda stout with some hoppy finish. It's a great beer. I also got to have some excellent enchiladas with some pretty good mole on them. I love mole.

As the radio edit says, let's get it started in here. However, everyone knows that LPA is really retarded.



Mim has been in our hearts and minds since dtsund mentioned that he can hit to disenchant, which honestly I never knew, and the only reason why I never knew is probably because Hieronymus Gaylord was wielding Anduril. Anyway, right now he's a safe distance away, but is still probably going to be a bit of a tough bad guy.



A few casts of Draining later, and Mim has melted one of Hieronymus Gaylord's incredibly useful staves. It's on now, motherfucker!



Take that, you dick. This is where I learn that unique monsters, while they might resist paralysis/sleep effects, do not usually resist sound. I'm not ever getting rid of this armor, unless something even radder comes along. And by 'radder' I mean 'way radder'.



Taking advantage of this stunning, Hieronymus Gaylord moves in for melee and gets in a good amount of damage before Mim can even respond. Unfortunately he eventually does, and whittles H.G.'s health down to 50%, at which point he (Mim, not Hieronymus Gaylord) decides it would be an awesome idea to die and leave some goodies behind.



And... and what goodies they are! Oh my!

Colluin, surprisingly, is an artifact which is usually generated at 250' (level 5). This is amazing because it seems like one of the best cloak artifacts I could imagine, but you know what? I bet I'll find a better one... someday. Someday.

The best thing about Colluin is that because it can be activated to add an extra layer of resist, it's effectively the only thing I need to make sure I have maximal resistance against hounds and later nasties like older dragons.

That crossbow, by the way, is fucking awesome. It replaces H.G.'s bow immediately.



This chap drops something significantly less good, and is much more easily dispatched. I'm really starting to love how ridiculous Hieronymus Gaylord's AC is for the level of the dungeon he's hanging around at. If he had, say, 3 or 4 more levels of experience he could be safely scumming around the mid-30s.



Hieronymus Gaylord also finds this hanging around on the ground, and swaps one of his Strength +2 rings for it. This brings him up to a phenomenal 18/150, which is kind of godlike.

The next several images are presented in an oldschool LPA format, complete with gratuitous profanity, which you and your loved ones might enjoy. I know I did.



You are welcome.

And here's his vital stats, so that you can make a Topps baseball card for Ibun, Son of Mim. Rookie season: Completely destroyed. Adventurers killed: 0.



Okay, onward!



H.G. drops an adventurer's stash of awesome, including a War Hammer of *Slay Evil*, in this loot pile so that he has some extra space to cart things around the dungeon. This floor is being particularly kind to him, shitty gauntlets dropped by unique monsters aside.

This might be my least favorite monster in the game right now.

Acidic cytoplasms are (relatively) slow, but get something like 8 hits a round, all of which are acid-branded and so have a chance to corrode. This means once they're in melee range they can seriously mess you (and your equipment) up, and more importantly, they have gobs of HP and a great AC.



This tasty treat, however, makes a fine reward. It could come in handy.



Oh, so that's where that came from. Fuck this, I'm outta here. By which I mean: Hieronymus Gaylord is outta here. Which means back to town, which means selling off all of his phat loot for wicked cash. It's like Cash 4 Gold except that the cash is gold.

In this case, some shopping is done at the Black Market, browsing their inventory and picking up a few potions of Speed. H.G. then goes back into the dungeon, and gets a lucky feeling. This dungeon is a gift from God!

I swear, that's the last one.

Maybe.



Ha ha! I'm not reading these, sucker.



Uh-oh. This looks like quite a sticky situation, although I wonder why there aren't any, you know, uruks in the bodyguard of the King of the Uruk-Hai. I know enough about Tolkien to understand that's kind of weird.



Naturally, things go south, and Hieronymus Gaylord has to book it out of there pretty fast. This is before Azog is even reached, I bet.



Well. I guess that this wasn't that much of a problem after all, was it. Azog drops some pretty good loot, but there's exactly one (1) item here that we're interested in:



+2 WIS GRANTS TELEPATHY

You might remember telepathy from popular character Viki, who used telepathy to find out when hounds were going to ambush her and was able to position herself accordingly. It's just as important for Hieronymus Gaylord, because telepathy is an eventual must for every character. I mean really! It's so cool!



Ha ha ha ha. By the way, telepathy is helping good ol' Hieronymus Gaylord lay the smack down on these remnants of Azog's forces.



This, by the way, is Hieronymus Gaylord's current equipment set. I figure a refresher couldn't hurt, since he's been swapping out things for artifacts left and right.