Looky at all you Angband lovers checking out the thread. :)

I killed a cockroach, then got surrounded by rats. I cast a summon spell and summoned a bat. Then A goblin popped out, which I killed. ANother cockroach came out. Most of our kits did nothing, but the monsters had equal bad luck at doing any damage but finally the cockroach killed me. HOw embassessing.

Am trying zangband now. Draconian Piest of Life and Nature. :) Love the character crteation :)

Also love having tail swipe

I downloaded angbañd on my android and it has given the game a new life for me. I currently have a level 30 half elf ranger. The interface is a bit kloojey as expected but its workable. This is the farthest I've ever progressed in the game before. It gets a lot more play because I can always just whip out my phone and play it whenever im bored.

Okay Abe, how do I learn and cast spells in zangband. The help system rattles on about the theories of magic without actually telling me how to do anything? Trying to wade through the command list but haven't found what I need.

yeah cockroaches are actually on the upper end of monster difficulty on level 1-watch out for hobgoblins in particular, and if an orc or gnoll shows up, run. Running away is often your best strategy-and try to pull monsters into a corrridor if you can so you can only be hit by 2 at most (one behind and one in front of you.) If you are near death don't hesistate to read a scroll (you may get teleport) or drink a potion (you may get healing or heal wounds). Better to waste a few until you find a healing/teleport than die and not use them at all.

don't know which keyset you are using, I'm guessing original, but try m to cast spells, and Capital G to gain new ones. In the help menu somewhere there should be a list of commands.

Thom, in CRAWL, I went up a level. I hit m and it says i should choose skills to practice. I choose them and they go dark. But nothing happens. What do I do?

The window interface is really neat. LIke that I can select things and use them by clicking on them. I notice I can move to them too but I don't think i wanna do that. I like the old method. :)

Also how do I use my spells in books. I have to learn them? It's an ability perhaps. I'm a Stalker and have a book of Stalker. Not sure how to use those "spells".

Never mind...got surrounded by an ooze a snake and 3 goblins. That was it :(

CRAWL works a bit different with levelling. Hitting M brings you to your skills page-but you can't raise them-they go up naturally on their own if you are using the skill-so fighting will go when you fight in hand to hand combat. you start out normally with 1 spell level to learn, sometimes more depending on race and class. type Capital M (or if you have a book, r to read it, then the letter of the book on the menu that pops up, then the letter of the spell you want to memorize) to bring up your spells that you can memorize-the ones lit up are ones you can memorize-the spell levels you currently have show at the bottom of that screen-the spell levels you need to actually memorize the spell is at the end of each spell in the spell list, under Level.

Be careful with spells-they can make you hungry quickly-and you often don't have a lot of food to start with-you can cut up corpses (with the letter c) to cut up animal corpses to eat-be careful some can poison or sicken you-look at the chunks before eating to see. Humanoid corpses can also be cut up but almost all will poison/sicken you unless you are a race that can eat them. The strategy here is to safe the food you start with-bread rations most likely and save them as well as meat rations, fruit, vegetables, even a slice of pizza! that you find and eat corpses first when possible-you'll get hungry again fairly quickly when you do this-but you never want to be without food as starvation is a real danger in the early levels.

oof yeah that would do it. don't worry you'll learn how to manage a big mob like that as you play more. ooze are slower than you, so you should be able to run away from them if need be.

Type the % sign to get a screen that shows your stats and how many spell levels you have is also there.

Thanks! Are there any of these where you DON"T have to deal with food? So sick of that as a factor.

I never found food to be of any problem in most variants, it was actually almost like, "Why did you include this at all?" The only hassle from it, in my experience, is for mage-type characters early on when encumbrance is an issue. If you don't want to deal with it, play either Zangband or TOME (one of the older versions, not the TOME 4), be a class/race combo that gets decent strength, and then carry around a bunch of cheap food or scrolls of satisfy hunger once you start making a bit of cash.

I might fire up Zangband TK after my current run in TOME, partially for nostalgia's sake (first *band I ever played) and partially because I love dimension door. My best character in ZTK was a rogue with sorcery who used dimension door liberally.

Food is going to be a factor no matter which race you go with-some deal with better than others and there are items that will help too-like an amulet of gourmand that can show up pretty early. Spriggans need very little food because of their small size-so probably the best race if you want to play a spellcaster type. Kobolds can only eat meat but they can eat corpses of most types without trouble and without having to wait to be hungry to do so. Mummies can't eat or drink but are very difficult for newbies to play and since you can't drink-no potions. Vampires likewise will never starve because they drink blood, but they too are complicated to play. I've played Ghouls when I didn't want to worry about food so much because Ghouls can eat rotten or tainted food and even get a benefit for doiung so. They still get hungry and you have to eat to keep your body together-but there's usually no problem finding corpses to fill up on. a Ghoul Monk can be pretty easy to play-no food worries, no armor/weapons decisions to make. Don't play spellcasters, berserkers, or the bigger races as a general rule if you want food to be less of a factor.

Woot! After several failed games of TOME, zangband and CRAWL, I went back to ADOM. Randomly got a hurthling priest with healing potions, cooking, food preservation, concentration, first aid and healing.
AND two rooms away from starting position I find a ZOO! WOOT!

Killed everything in it and shot up to level 6. :)

Finally looking good and cooking up some nice orc.

Holy Crap, I ran into a Dragon Monster Pit - I didn't even know they had those. There are great wyrms, ancients, etc. That is nasty. I was wondering why I had to kill four Etheral Dragons. I'm getting off this level.

Coward! :) I've seen dragon pits of the lowest level dragon-all the same color in Zangband, and had heard there were pits like yours too, but have never seen one-likely because I seldom get down that far. :)

Those dragons can drop some great items, and who knows there may be a couple artifacts on the floor in there... ;)

Damnit, I ran from the dragon pit into a demon pit complete with many Balrogs. I'm on Dungeon level 40, how about a little break?

Crimson Fox's Bits of Wisdom #455:

"A closed door is a happy door."

Crimson Fox's Bits of Wisdom #942:

"A Powerful Level 9 firebolt is no substitute for a basic swimming skill on a water level one square away from the shore."

Dude that sucks - and its funny too.

Yup :) I used to cheat in these games (I think it was adom) by making a copy of the character file while I was playing. It gets deleted once you die, so it's just a matter of (if that ever happens) copying it back to its original name. Just got tired of deaths like this. I searched and searched and searched for a secret door in that upper room and found none. Eventually had to take the plunge.

Really dumb question, can't seem to Zangband TK to run. I get the following error:

Error sourcing I:\Backup E\Zangband\ZangbandTK\OmnibandTk-1.4\tk\boot.tcl
wrong # args: should be "source fileName"

I also tried putting the directory on my system drive and that didn't work either.

Any help on getting this thing running?

What OS are you running? (not that it will likely help me troubleshoot for you, but hopefully it will for someone else).

Still running XP

I like the new cat race in Tome.

Maybe this thread will help? there's 18 pages so I didn't go through it all, but about 4 or 5 posts down they mention a similar problem and how they fixed it:

Zangbandtk - Reloaded Forum

maybe try redownloading it, or downloading it from another site?

Problem solved posting here just for reference.

You need to have the ZangbandTK directory in C:\Roguelikes and the ZangbandTK needs to have no spaces.

Thanks Thomkal for pointing me to the fix.

Cool, glad it helped, have fun with the game.

so what's different about Zangband TK? Is it different from Zangband?
Check the link I posted earlier that has lots of these. Is that Zangband the same or not?

It's zangband basically with a lot of graphical bells and whistles. Here's a review with a link for a bunch of screenshots:

ZangbandTK @ Reloaded.org

Crimson Fox's Bits of Wisdom #785:

Eventually "one" blink dog and large bat will win.

It's also an olde,r stable version of Z too.

I think someone is dyin gtoo much :)))

where's the source of your version of zang

TK? Same place that was linked to above. The Reloaded page.

that death was just cruel CF. Shame on ADOM! :)

This is what happens when you run out of light...you end up in a room surrounded by spiders and a mage.

which one, Thomkal? :) The swimming one or the blink dogs? I presonally disliked the blinkdog one more, because I couldn't make any progress. It took 2-3 hits before they would die and I was trapped in the corridor while they all just kept summoning others. I didn't think bats could summon others but maybe the blink dogs taught them how. Notice how many of the buggers I killed in my totals and STILL the screen was covered in em. :)

What we really need is a good old fashioned RPG game done in forum.

You guys interested?

the blink dogs one because it was overkill :)

We've tried and/or discussed this at least once in the past here, but if I remember correctly, nothing much happened with it.

Ironhead, did you not buy any torches in town?

Nope - I started off with three and didn't buy anymore. It was my first time through the game so I didn't know how many I needed. I was actually heading up to the surface to buy more torches when my last one went out.

Crimson Fox's Bits of Wisdom #245:
WAHHHHH! Trolls can't read!!!!!

Attachment 2890

I am very happy that I just came across:

Ring of Lordly Protection
+17 AC
Nether Resist
Hold Life
Disenchant Resist
Poison Resist
Nexus Resist
Free Action


That's nasty. They are normally found way deep in the dungeon. I know in some Bands they are the best non-artifact ring you can find and they are at level 100. I'm on 44 and got it as a drop from a minor demon.

Crimson Fox's Bits of Wisdom #625:

Fight Green Slime at a distance unless you want to upchuck your hit points.

Wow, what a ring. Nice one.