I had to put the ZangbandTK directory in C:\Rouglikes to get it to run.

If that doesn't work, check the link I put up for dwardzala-the reloaded forum one-there may be something in there that can help

Just beat the game!!! Final Char Dump, on level 101, after getting the items from the Serpent of Chaos and delving another level. I got the mutations moronic and superhumanly strong during my fight with he Serpent. I got a few failures of Mana Storm, and got random effects, which twice gave me mutations.

CONGRATS! I sometimes think this thing is just like playing Calvinball from Calvin and Hobbes. Like you just make up stuff and monsters and items as you go along. :)

Heheh, it's part strategy. I've played Zangband specifically, and Angband formats in general, enough to know how to win consistently. This was my third Beastman Mage, the first two died within a hour. Once I got out of an hour, I know how to win. I know what abilities are needed when. In fact, I killed the Serpent at level 47, and then got to 48 with its death, before I was even at my top level. I mention the chest trick I figured out with level 97 earlier, where you Trump Tower down to 97. A lot of great items are acquired in the wilderness quests, so you want to do them, but if you have to leave or fail, you don;t get another shot at the quest and the prize, so there is a balance when to go and when not to go. Many of my items I finished the game with were prize rewards (Cap, Boots,Armor, but the armor is generic and could have been from anywhere). Etc.

Oh, the main reasons I went back and played Z again was I had just read the Chronicles of Amber again by R Z.

So now that you're an expert, want to give me some hints at starting? There are so many choices and decisions and places at the beginning I'm not sure where to go. I haven't been bothering with the town at first. What's a basic tutoial of the early game?

Woohoo, congrats Abe! Maybe someday I'll get one to the end too.

<----takes a look at your mutations. Man you are one freaky looking dude. ;)

For early character, I'd go with something solid, with a good backup available. For example, some might suggest a Chaos Warrior, but the combination of having the magic that is the most powerful at range with a dude who wants to move in and smash face is not obvious to play, and lacks late game power.

I recommend staying away from any of the races that are in the bottom 20ish. Steer clear of any that has a nasty XP penalty. Forget Amberite, High Elf, etc.

If playing the graphical TK, here are the races I'd consider - Half Elf, Elf, Gnome, Dwarf, Half-Orc, etc.

Grab what's good for your class. INT for magi, WIS for Priests, and maximize the physical stats for all classes. I like gnomes as an early race, because they have Free Action inherently, and that's a major power to start with. They make good magi, but magi aren't a good class to start with - although they are my favorite.

I would absolutely take a class with a realm of Magic at the start, it will help you to learn both the might and magic sides of the game. I'd take a healing realm early, and that means Life. the best Life mages are Priests, so going with Priest makes sense. Steer clear of Warrior Mage, the XP penalty is enormous and Arcane Magic is not that hot, or High mage, you want access to two realms.

Don;t play Monks, Mindcrafters, they are to complex, and not flexible at all.

Priests are great at Life (or Death if you prefer), but weak in their second school.

I would go with sorcery or nature. Preferably Sorcery. In fact, I would NEVER play any magic using character without Sorcery. Here is what Sorcery gives you:


1). Lots of detect spells. Detect treasure, monsters secret doors and traps, etc
2). Identify and then later super Identify. (Life has Super Identify only in its 4th and rarest book, Sorcery has it in its second book in stores)
3). Recall, so you won't have to stock scrolls or a Rod.
4). Teleport Self, to immediately remove you from harm when you are overwhelmed.
5). Teleport Away to send away a bunch of enemies in a row. Life already has a Teleport for all in Sight, but only evil ones, still good, but more limited. Having both is nice.
6). The very powerful, and highly underrated Dimension Door. The ability to teleport to any space on the screen that you choose is very powerful.
7). Haste Self. Giving yourself a permanent +10 to speed by having this on at all times is just unfair. It's is very good with Life's boosts like Heroism and Bless.
8). Recharging. I've already mentioned in the thread how good this is
9). Magic Mapping, and later, Clairvoyance, show you the map of the whole area, and that's a massive amount of info to use and abuse.
10). I like putting the front monster to sleep in a line, and then stopping the line from moving down the corridor and attacking me. It's a good way to fight monsters without magic or rage attacks, like Trolls and orcs.


The weak things about this combo - your ultimate spells are very similar, you have very little direct damage (Holy Orb is it for a long time), you have no ability to destroy a wall with a spell (like Chaos or Nature could do). Play this carefully, as a buffing warrior who speeds, blesses, protection from evil, and Heroism once you find the Grail tome, and you'll be more powerful than a warrior while rocking all of the cure magic back up.



The other Magics:

Stay very far away from Trump. Not for the weak, or those who want strong characters .
Stay far away from Arcane, it's a weak realm with just tools, not powerful spells.

Chaos - Lots of damage dealing, light, teleport away, confusing monsters, polymorph self, destroy walls, Word of Destruction, Arcane Binding is a weak Recharging, not much else. There's no subtlety here. Once in a blue moon, I want to Polymorph an enemy.

Nature - Eat food, destroy wall, Light, some modest cure spells, destroy walls, some adequate damage spells, some detect spells, Nature Awareness, mega identify, Stoneskin and resistance spells.

Death - Malediction, Malediction, Malediction - it's your Magic Missile spell, it can do other things, and it destroys cursed items - so you can use it to sort of ID stuff early in the game before you an ID it, some damage dealing spells, modest detect spells, sleep, Vampiric Drain as a pseudo-heal, the very powerful Genocide and Mass Genocide and Omnicide, the Berserk buff (later, Battle Frenzy, which is Berserk with speed), and an Identify in the final book. Late.


That's my quick assessment of the other realms.

Thanks! exactly what I'm looking for! :) I think that's why ADOM is so appealing. No big decisions. No shops. Get a lot of variety out of race/class combos but no big things to learn. Altho there are obvious characters that are uberpowerful compared to others.

Playing a Dark Elf Elementalist now and rocking the house. Finally solved the mad carpenter quest and cleared out the first dungeon and made it back to the city without dying.

Only survived the mad carpenter fight because I had an unidentified wand of lightning bolt! :) ZZZZTTTZAP! :) Killed him. And I was totally out of powerpoints hehehe. Got so lucky.

FOr Zangband I think I'll then start with a basic race and basic fightery class and see how far that gets me. Boost up str/con and power thru it. That way I can learn what the game is like. And then I'll delve into magics (which is no doubt where the powerful characters lie) Awesome that they made powers based on Zelazny stuff. Variety is cool.

Crimson Fox's Bits of Wisdom Rule #135:
Sometimes randomly "trying out" wands is a bad idea.

As I was out of pp and in a tight corridor surrounded and I had blink dogs multiplying out of view, I decided to use my "teal wand", since my other unknown wand helped me kill Yrrwie the mad carpenter. And the force that came out of the wand did not ask for a direction but instead bounced off the walls seveal times, each time going THROUGH me and my items as it went. Check out my final HP total. I had like 66 HP total when the fight started. (which was great for a mage).
Attachment 2905

It showed me my items identified then...
Attachment 2906
Really...I don't FEEL blessed.
Maybe the wand doesn't like dark elves.

Congrats on the winner Abe. My current guy is looking really good after having survived a way out of depth Ancalagon the Black (lvl 90 dragon on lvl 61 in Mordor) and his cohorts, getting two awesome end game artifacts out of it (Golden Crown of Gondor and Light Crossbow of Cubragol). I may be able to do some more equipment shuffling now.

Heh JAG, I'm playing ToME as well right now with a sorceror after rereading the challenge we did where we played with one. Got a "FumbleFingers" quest on level 1 to kill 20 Poltergeists, which are of course invisible and of course my level 1 nobody couldn't see them. So had to blindly manathrust whenever I ran into one-so it took an hour or so and killed 18 before I finally had to give up and go back to town. Got the Eru spellbook "See the Music" there which lets me see invisible. Made it much quicker and easier. :) And FF gave me +3 to my Magic skill which was sweet. Level 8 now after taking out the thieves quest and ready to see what awaits me on Level 2 of the dungeon.

I see you haven't put any points in sorcery-I'm doing what I did in the challenge-points in prayer, sorcery, spell-power, and magic-device. It's a testament to ToME that you can play the same class two very different ways and still find success.

Heh, that's brutal trying to kill invisible creatures in such a way. I think the town potion store sells either pots or scrolls of detect invisible though, that mightve been a way to go.

As a mage/sorc, I usually do the house quest before anything since you can pick up about 5 levels (depending on race) with minimal risk (and you can just restart if you botch it and die) and then be in better shape for surviving the first couple Princess quests.

Next time I play this kind of char, I'll probably go for full sorc skill points to access all the fun spells and have some spare skill points for other indulgences, but for now it is rather enjoyable actually having some hps.

yeah I had bought some scrolls of detect invisible, but since I knew I was going the Eru route I figured I'd get the first spell for that while I could. wasn't sure how the Eru spell worked, so the scrolls were insurance in case it didn't work the way I thought it would. I wasn't sure my manathrust would be strong enough to do the house quest right away so I put it off till I did the first level-would do the quest first now that I've tried it this way that's for sure. :)

So I get to level 2 of the dungeon, and FF appears and tells me he lost his sword...to a bunch of Poltergeists! I think the quest RNG is broken... :)

well it took me three or four redo's of level 2 before the elusive last poltergeist of 9 finally showed up, but at last I will be on my way to level 3. and thanks to FF for yet another +3 to my magic skill.

Well ToME made it up to me for having to do multiple Poltergeist levels-next up after those was an easy princess kill 5 novice rangers level-the reward was a Robe of Permanence that sustains all my stats and gives me several resists with the biggie being life draining. Thank you Princess!

Oops accidently killed the Princess with my Noxious Cloud spell, but not before she dropped Hard Leather Boots of Levitation-sorry about that Princess! :)

Wow, that's a terrific item to get that early.

I've been putzing around the bottom levels of Erebor looking for fountains of *healing* and killing Great Wyrms looking for useful items, but no luck there with either and I think I'll just carry on for now without them. Got a couple more guardians to try to kill for The One Ring before I have to dive through Angband.

*clapclapclap*

HAHAHA

First time I've found the ring without diving Angband. To Mt. Doom!

LOLOL! Awesome JAG! hehehehehe that's so cool and the Arkenstone of Thrain too! Thorin'll be so pissed at you!

Congrats and Good luck JAG! And I can't believe you haven't gone back to Level 1 to pick up all those treasures waiting for you there. I mean C'mon Man, how can you pass up a Ration of Food? :)

Yeah, I always get the lamest fates.

Heh. Abe, have been reading the LotR ww game. OMG that poor hobbit! You're right about that! :) wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

I chucked The Ring in the Great Fire (Mt Doom is a great stressful level with every really nasty monster in the game other than Q's) and managed to whack Sauron there, so all that was left was to dive Angband to kill Morgoth. At level 82, I got a Princess quest for Greater Rotting Q's (big sigh). Even worse, as I approach where they are, there are a number of co-aligned creatures hanging out there. Sure enough they wake up and the Q's happily fill the area with tons of greater undead. At this point, any sane person would reset the level and start this mess again...but I decided to meet the challenge head on. At one point my hps dropped to about 440/1500, so I decided to get away and heal up. I probability travel...

Right into a group of roughly 20 water hounds (this seems to be a recurring issue for me at the deeper Angband levels). The silly thing is I knew they were there and had sealed them in with stone, but didn't realize where I would land with my warp through the wall. I knew I was dead. "The water hound gestures fluidly...you are engulfed in a whirlpool!" (irresistible attack). Miraculously, I only had to take 2-3 before I ended up 90/1500 hps and was able to get away and recuperate. Closest call to death since the Orc Caves.

Now I'm on level 84, one away from the hardest of the special levels, Dim Gates, with tons of Q's of all sorts in horribly inconvenient places.

I don't have a char dump available, but Ive added a couple nice items, a randart mage staff and a ludicrous randart ring that gives +10 speed and constitution (almost the ideal combo for a mage).

<---shudders at the thought of the more powerful Q's. Good luck on surviving them in Dim Gates.

Quick question:

In ZangbandTK is there any way to add more sounds, like a sound when you get hit? I seem to have a difficult time monitoring hit points when I am fighting a crowd of stuff, even with the progress window up.

And Morgoth goes down (oddly the sheet isn't marked as a winner, but I killed him and have his crown in my inventory). Not much more drama in this one, other than I accidentally destroyed some spellbooks I had no replacements for (*smacks forehead*) and had to spend some time fighting a bunch of undead to get new ones. Morgoth wasn't too bad, he invoked The Hand of Doom once and knocked off 1k hps, but with reasonable healing, he just took a while to bring down.

I might take a go at the Void for the first time.

nice JAG, has he retired yet?

I got the 2.3.5 tome working again. altho I think there are glitches. When i move across town, sometimes i see multiple @ in the line.

I finally found a windows version of nethack. hahaha! that was the one i played a lot in college.

I don't know if there is a way to add more sounds or not, but there is a setting in most Angband variants to give you a warning on screen when your hit points fall below a certain percentage. I have mine at 20% personally. I just checked ZangbandTK, and if you go into options (=key) and then click other, you will then see Base Hitpoint Warning.

Yay JAG, congrats! You might as well try the Void right? My sorcerer is slowly (very slowly) tooling along, most of the level quests have been easy-but had a bit of a scare when I got Mughash on one level-and from where I started on the level I had no choice but to take him on first, or go back up. Stayed and two nicely placed Manathrusts finished him off. Princess only gave me weapon rewards though, so not that thrilling a victory.

Yeah, I'll gie it a go. Probably will do a bit more prep work too.

This is also the first game I ever found the Blood of Life (potion that allows you to survive one death).

For those wondering what The Void is:

The Void is where you banish Morgoth's spirit after "killing" him in Angband. It's a big, mostly empty dungeon full of not only lots of ancient dragons, demons, and other fun stuff, but also the Spirits, which can be found nowhere else and are just itching to kill you.
*
In addition, there's no air, meaning that without proper equipment you're apt to suffocate, there aren't any precious walls to block mass summoning spells, the monsters there can reach level 150 (monsters in Angband only get up to around level 115), and on the second-to-last level is a portal to the Nether Realm, a burning wasteland full of pits of level 150 demons, at the bottom of which lurks Tik'srvzllat ("Tikki" for short), whom you must kill before fighting your way BACK out of the Nether Realm and into the Void for a final showdown with Morgoth. Oh yeah, and you can't recall, so you have to do it all in one shot. Scared yet?

Yay JAG!

Very:eek: :eek: :eek:

okay so I'm continuing to play ToME, and I've made it to the orc caves and I drop down to the next level and I hear the sound of a little bell-its a town level! My first one! So I eagerly make my way to the stores and find none of the eight will buy anything I have to sell...bummer! And these stores have such great stuff too, most of which I can't afford or can't use-if only I could sell some stuff! So I walk into the next to last store and what is it?...Dragon Scale Mail Store! waaaah! As a sorcerer, I probably couldn't wear any of it anyway, but the cheapest is over 40000 gold so I can't buy it anyway. Waaah! And lets not talk about the Book Store I had to walk out of with no purchases.... :(

I shouldn't have walked into the last store after all that heartbreak, but I did and what is it? A speed ring store! 5 rings with the highest bonus being +11 and the cheapest just over 200000 gold. :::wipes up drool::: I had to settle for buying metal shod boots (6,+8) of Dwarven Endurance for just over 16000 gold. Couldn't pass up the +4 to STR and CON given that I'm a wimpy sorceror with a low STR and sucking up hit points by taking skill points in sorcery.

*cough* there's a reason there's a 'steal' option in the store options *cough* The smaller things are, the easier they are to steal. Like, say.....a bunch of rings.

Heh

Hey that's a great idea thesloppy! I don't steal from stores normally, so forgot I could do that here since it won't matter if these stores close...

...tried to steal a ring of speed...fail! ...tried to steal a ring of lightning (+15)...success! ...tried to steal an indestructible amulet of charisma...fail! just for the heck of it, a Light Axe (Defender)...fail! Just for the heck of it, a Broad Sword of *Slay Troll*....success! And finally just for the heck of it, a Law Dragon Scale Mail...failure. :(

But thanks for the idea sloppy-that was a fun few minutes. :)

Good try! I do pretty much the same thing with town levels....can't sell anything, usually can't afford anything, and don't really care if the stores shut down. It's a recipe for looting!

I'm just a lawful kind of guy, what can I say? :) I just figure sooner or later, I'll need a particular store to be open. Speaking of stores-I went back to Bree after my stealing attempts then back down to the orc caves dungeon level I was on-and the store/town is still there! Ya didn't tell me that would happen before I went stealing everything lol.

Nice Thomkal, thats a great group of stores for your char. Even if you can't afford the prices now, you'll be swimming in more money than you know what to do with before long (I think I'm at 1.8 million) and you can go back when you have additional funds. Those boots are a terrific find as well. You should post a char dump when you get a chance.

Hehe. Sorry about that....they'll open back up eventually, for whatever it's worth.

I know this isn't Angband, but thought I'd share.

I'm playing Nethack and figured I'd go with a dwarven Valkyrie. Go down to the Mines and things are going well until I hit a polymorph trap. I get turned into a floating eye, but when my pet hits it, he turns into a Master Mind Flayer! Score! So I find another polymorph trap and turn into a fire giant, and start pummeling things. Up until... A umber hulk confuses Fido the Master Mind Flayer who turns and sucks my brain...