How to Kill Morgoth: Playing Angband

[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

[Huinesoron]

Shuri II - Half-Troll Druid

Still not dead, but not doing great. Shuri has tried three times to explore DL40, and on each attempt has been stymied by horrible monsters. Her worst moments so far have been a pack of Gravity Hounds which threw her around the room and brought her down to 2 health (out of 350!), and a Master Mystic who summoned Manwe-knows-what and knocked her down to 20 before she could teleport away.

She has some nice equipment - she's found a reusable Rod of Speed, which combined with her equiment means she can be at +17 speed whenever she wants, on top of her spell to Slow a monster - but is lacking two crucial things:

- Teleport Other. She desperately needs a way to send big scary monsters away. Most of her 'flee the level' moments have been because something decided it was going to summon more monsters, and just overwhelmed her. A wand of Teleport Other would make DL40 a breeze.

- Her dungeon spellbooks. Where are they?! She has space for 6 more spells, but no books to learn them from. I'm really feeling the lack.

She's back in town at the moment, buying some more healing potions - she goes through those things like crazy - and after that is going to try running DL38 and 39 a few times in the hopes of getting some good equipment before facing 40 again.

She did kill a huorn just now, though. That was satisfying.

hS

[Huinesoron]

Shuri II - Half-Troll Druid

Still still not dead, and what a difference a day (or two) makes! Yesterday Shuri fought and killed Mim (Betrayer Of Turin), and he dropped one of her dungeon spellbooks. "Goodness," she thought, "that was lucky!"

Well, it was - as was stumbling across both of the other two in the following 24 hours.

So Shuri is now thoroughly equipped with spells. Her absolute best two are Haste Self, which fully replaces her rod and potions of sleep, and Become Pukel-man, which transforms her into a living statue.

Her Pukel-form is insane. It loses 5 speed (but she's currently at +9 from her equipment, or +19 if Hasted by her new spell), isn't stealthy (but who needs stealth?), and as a transformation can't use any items (but transforming back is instantaneous, so she can always transform-teleport if she's in danger). In exchange, she gets:

+4 Strength, +4 Constitution, +20 to her saving throw (taking it to 85%), +20 to Armour, +0.7 blows/turn, protection from stunning, resistance to Shards, immunity to poison, Damage Reduction, and something which reduces her chance of having her experience points leeched away to nil, without actually being Hold Life itself.

This is incredible. She punched Tom and Bill the Stone-Trolls to death without taking any damage. She smashed her way through a massive pit of Wights, each of which tried (and failed) to steal her XP. She cracked open a vault and just beat up everything inside it. She beat up Lorgan the Easterling - who had twice forced her to flee a level - and then punched all the monsters he summoned to death as well.

On top of that, she's very nearly got full resistance coverage from her equipment. She's never seen Dark or Sound resistance, and has had to give up her amulet with Disenchantment resist to get Nexus resist back, but other than that she has a full set. Her only major hole is protection from blindness, and I guess Hold Life if she's not being a punching statue at the moment.

She's currently on DL 41, with a character level of 34. When she hits CL 35, she'll pick up three new spells: Eagle's Flight (become a Great Eagle; I'm assuming this at least grants massive speed boosts), Revitalise (restores all stats and XP to max, AKA "who needs Hold Life anyway?"), and Rift (shoots a beam of gravity that has a chance of teleporting the monsters it hits away, aka "stupid Night Mare, get out of my way").

... oh, and she bought a wand of Teleport Other from the shop, but with her Pukel form she hasn't had to use it yet!

hS

[Huinesoron]

Shuri II - Half-Troll Druid - RIP



This was a foolish death. I was fighting a Maia of Mandos in Pukel-form, and just held down the forward button and punched it. I wasn't aware that Maiar could shapeshift, and had about a second and a half to process that a) the Maia was now a Time Vortex, b) they can breathe Time not just to reduce your XP and stats, but to do serious damage, and c) Shuri II was in serious danger of

> You thump the time vortex.
> You strike the time vortex.
> The time vortex breathes time.
> You die.

It's always the breath weapons that get me. Hounds, Hydra, Drakes, and now Vortices. None of my high-level characters have just been stabbed to death.

Shuri slides neatly into... third? Third place on my chart, dying on DL 44: two levels above Lupa, and miles above Waterlily. Despite that, I think she might actually be my favourite so far: the Druid gets Haste, Slow, and a weak Teleport Other spell, plus the all-encompassing Pukel-Form. With the truly ridiculous speed bonuses she'd pulled in (she was natively at +9, which could have been +12 if I'd kept my old armour instead of swapping this one in for the resistances, and then she could cast Haste for another +10), she was well set to stomp her way down into the second half of the dungeon.

I'm probably taking a break from Angband for a while now - the constant deaths do take a toll - but for the future, remaining races are:

- Human (my first character, Haleth, was human, but no version hit DL30).
- Half-elf (human optimised for shooting)
- Elf (the quintessential Ranger)
- Gnome (innate device user who can't be paralysed; shares Elf stat bonuses, so plausibly a Noldo)

Classes yet to be played are:

- Priest (the magic half of Waterlily; gets bonuses from Blessed weapons, which show up a fair bit; the Spear of Orome is one, actually)
- Rogue (casts some Mage spells and knows Pickpocketing, which... steals... stuff? I don't know, but it sounds like it would go well with high Stealth, perhaps by way of the Bat or Fox forms)

No idea where I'm likely to go with that!

hS