How to Kill Morgoth: Playing Angband

[Blind Guardian]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

rapidly-breeding pile of worms

BARF

Nope, nope, nope, nope!!

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Blind Guardian

BARF

Nope, nope, nope, nope!!

The great thing about Angband (from that perspective) is that even the most horrifying things... aren't. I think they were Nether Worms, which meant there were little dark grey ws everywhere, and that was it.

Lady Morwen is not having a lot of luck. Her basic equipment is too heavy for her weedy Necromancer arms, so she's at a permanent -1 to speed. She nearly got to trade out her (heavy) crossbow for a (much lighter) shortbow - but the bow turned out to be cursed, and made her hallucinate all the time. She has no decent equipment, has only picked up resistances to Electric and Cold (along with her innate Nether resist), and is having to wear a ring that grants a tiny amount of infra(red)vision in order to see anything that doesn't actually glow.

The worst part was just now. She was 15 levels deep, and knew the level had excellent treasure somewhere on it - probably an artefact of some kind. She ran into a pit of minor demons, and cut a swathe through them. Demons resist Nether Bolt, but the smaller ones she could cast the Crush spell on (kills anything with less health than 4* your level, damaging you a bit on the way), and the larger ones went down to a single crossbow bolt each. She was leaving a trail of loot behind to collect once they were all dead.

And then a nruling banished her to another level entirely, and 2/3 of her crossbow bolts - and all the lovely loot - were lost forever.

(Still, at least a different level gave her a Staff of *Destruction* to replace the scroll she read last time. That'll be useful in... about 50 levels or so.)

EDIT: Angband taketh, and Angband giveth. Down on Level 17 (after two trips to town), Morwen has procured a Cloak of Thorongil, which gives her acid protection, protection from fear (nice, but not essential), See Invisible (yay!), and Free Action (ie, no instadeath from paralysis!). Then she fought a werewolf and a zombie orc in the same room, which was great: she just repeatedly vampirised the wolf to keep her health up, and cast Tap Unlife to restore mana by draining the zombie. From that little room, she found an Ivory amulet of regeneration, and a Main Gauche (lightweight weapon, hoorah!) of Carry More Stuff - er, sorry, of Strength. That +2 Strength means she's well below her weight limit again, and back up to neutral speed. (Of course, she still can't hit for toffee, but that's okay - she only actually uses her melee weapon by accident.)

Still lacking Cold resistance (though I have a ring tucked away back in town), but other than that we're good for the next few levels.

hS

[Galadriel55]

I want to say too that though I'm not into games of this sort very much, I have been following along, now cheering on Morwen. You go girl, you fight those Ws and other nasties! Also, really enjoying the drawings. ^.^

[Huinesoron]

Morwen isn't dead yet! She's down around level 28 (and is L28 herself), and has just run into Ibun, son of Mim. She probably won't be fighting him.

As a Necromancer, she's actually a bit of a slog to play. I think it's because there's no rhythm to get into. Waterlily, Cheri, and Kaitlyn just stabbed everything; Lupa chose between shooting or throwing daggers; Celebestel picked an element to fire off. But Morwen has to go through a whole process:

• Is it small? Plink it away with Nether Bolt (unless it resists).
• Undead? Tap Unlife until it's drained.
• Single big monster? Disenchant to weaken it.
• Multiple big monsters? Break out Dispel Life or Dark Spear.
• Living monster that doesn't bite too hard? Vampiric Strike and take its health for your own.
• Pack of weak monsters? Crush them out of existence.

Crush is actually her favourite spell. I imagine it as like a Force Choke; what it does is straight-up kills anything she can see with less health than 4x Morwen's level. So basically, anything with less than 100 HP just dies, at a tiny mana cost and a bit of health from Morwen.

It makes her the first character who has no fear of hounds or vortices. Both of those shoot elemental effects that can really hurt - but both of them always have less than 100 health. One cast of Crush kills an entire pack of hounds, just like that. It's also good against most varieties of orc. And it's a nice finisher against larger monsters - chip away at them with Disenchant, and then Crush to take them out.

(Eventually that process will be Dispel Life > Crush, but right now Dispel Life uses nearly half of her mana, so it's not viable. Dark Spear is cheaper, but has a 50% failure rate.)

hS

[Huinesoron]

Morwen I - (Dun)Adan Necromancer - RIP



I had really high hopes for Morwen. :-/ She'd just found her first dungeon spellbook, gaining access to a high-damage spell, plus a mass Teleport Other. In another two levels she would have gotten Grond's Blow, which straight-up destroys everything for 15 spaces around her - the ultimate emergency escape spell. She had almost a full set of resistances - everything except Sound, Chaos (I've never even seen Chaos), and Disenchantment. She was immune to blindness, and even had all her stats sustained against anything that might leech them away!

Her final act began when she killed a Vampire Lord, whittling it away with Disenchant. Just down the corridor was a room that looked like a checkerboard, out of which a couple of Snagas wandered. Hey, she thought, this could be fun.

A few spaces in, with sight-lines disrupted by the checkerboard, she found the room also contained Impact Hounds. She killed off a few, but they were taking too long, and there's no resisting Force. So she retreated.

When she reached the door, she found it wasn't just hounds in there: Ariel, Queen of Air (a lightning-shooting unique elemental) showed up out of nowhere. She's fast and powerful, and Morwen had to Phase Door away.

She wound up in a room with several sleeping dragons. She needed some recovery time, so she snuck past them to the far end of the room - and then the Impact Hounds found her again. Phase Door!

... it should have been Teleport, flinging her clear across the level. But something along the way had burned up her staff of Teleport, and so she could only jump short distances.

Now she was down past the checkerboard, right next to Uldor the Accursed. She was able to sneak past him - feeling Ariel breathing down her neck - but found a couple of big scary dragons. This is where she SHOULD have fired off that mass teleport spell - but no, instead she tried to sneak past the dragons by using her digging ring to create a tiny passage.

It actually worked - but just past the dragons was a Gravity Hound. They breathe Gravity (ob...viously?), which slows you into the ground and throws you into the wall - even worse than the Inertia Hounds that killed Kaitlyn back in the day. Run! To the north!

... yeah, north was a room full of Gravity Hounds. She got batted about by their breath, and somehow wound up in a tiny empty room with a closed door. Heal! HEAL!

... she got one healing potion down before the door opened. A Shambling Mound - basically an ambulatory compost heap - took one look at her and screamed for help. Everything outside sped up. Morwen was at -7 from the Hounds.

> You hear a heavy roar.
> You are hit by something strange!
> You die.

Thus fell Morwen on dungeon level 41, only one level deeper than my other pure caster character Celebestel. Whether this was a better or worse death than hers is left as an exercise to the reader.

~

Okay, so next I was going to do a Half-Troll Druid, because the idea of this great lumbering beast wearing a dainty crown of flowers amused me. But then I remembered that "half-troll" isn't just a generic fantasy term - it's canonical Gondorian racism:

Originally Posted by RotK: The Battle of the Pelennor Fields

He now was destroyed; but Gothmog the lieutenant of Morgul had flung them into the fray; Easterlings with axes, and Variags of Khand. Southrons in scarlet, and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues. Some now hastened up behind the Rohirrim, others held westward to hold off the forces of Gondor and prevent their joining with Rohan.

So she's a black woman with enhanced strength and durability, and animal-themed powers? I mean, there's only one possibility here.

Shuri - Half-Troll Druid

Wakanda forever!

(This isn't a great race/class combo: a lot of the pluses and minuses cancel out. Her main defining trait is that she's at a whopping -6 to her Dexterity, so she won't be shooting... anything... ever. She should be able to handle herself in melee, though.)

hS

[Huinesoron]

Shuri II - Half-Troll Druid

Well, Shuri I died on level 1 when she tried to stab a small kobold and then realised it was a normal kobold... But Shuri II is doing okay.

She's down on level 16, and has learnt both of her town spellbooks. They're a bit of a mixed bag: she's got a few damage spells, but mostly relies on hittin' stuff. And after two pure casters and a ranger, it feels weird to be happy in melee range again!

Her equipment is sorely lacking: her only basic resistance is fire, and the only artefact she's found is the Phial of Galadriel. What she does have is a Ring of Teleportation, which gives +2 speed but randomly teleports you... unless, like Shuri, you happen to be wearing shoes with a no-teleport curse on them. So it's just +2 speed and occasional messages about how teleporation is forbidden.

I don't expect to see any new spells above dungeon level 30, so it'll be all about better armour, better weapons, and raising her stats. Then, when the more exciting Druid spells come online, the dungeon had better watch out... >

hS

[Huinesoron]

Shuri II - Half-Troll Druid

Shuri's been taking things fairly gently: she's down on DL 22 so far, nowhere near the L30 cutoff. But her 'better armour, better weapons' plan is paying off:

• She found - but is no longer using - Glamdring, an excellent flaming sword. The reason she's dropped it is that she now has two spears: Aiglos, the frozen spear of Gil-Galad, and the (nameless) Spear of Orome. They each give her different boosts, so she's switching between them at need. (Standard is Orome, because it has +4 Speed on it!)
• She also paid quite a bit of money for a Longbow of Lothlorien. Not because she intends to shoot anything (pfffft), but because it has bonus powers: +dexterity, and protection from fear and paralysis. For an otherwise useless slot, that's brilliant.
• She has finally pulled together the basic resistances + poison. The five are spread across four different items, but hopefully eventually she'll be able to combine some.
• She also has a very nice Dwarven plate armour boosting her strength and constitution. It's heavy enough that it reduces her mana slightly, but... eh.
• And she has the Metal Cap of Thengel, which is perfect: she gets +3 Wisdom (her spellcasting stat), and protection from confusion (which is a rare protection for a very common problem).

Things aren't perfect. She just had a long, long battle with a huorn, because she had no effective way of killing it and no way to send it away. But she won eventually, and has taken out her share of Unique monsters (18 so far! Wormtongue is dead.) She's very much a punching character who casts spells when she needs to attack at range.

One thing I sadly have no use for is her Fox Form. I think it has boosted stealth? But it can't carry as much, so she slows down if she shifts - and a slow, fragile creature isn't much good.

hS