Roguelike Comp #1-And Chaos Ensued
 

And so it begins! The Comp character is attached, let me know if there's a problem with the file. It goes in your lib/save folder. Z+Angband can be found at mangojuice75 - Z+Angband if you haven't downloaded it yet. This comp will last until 11:59 EST Monday April 20. Once you started the game, you are allowed to make a new save file after you've run your new char through the stores, so you do not have to repeat that tedious chore after restarting the character due to the death of the previous one. Put the file in a seperate folder as I believe you will need to delete the comp file and perhaps the files in the user folder under the character's name before you can restart the character.

The goal of the comp is to either win the game by defeating the main bad guy at the bottom of the dungeon, the Serpent of Chaos, or get to the highest player level possible before the end of the comp. From reading the help files, you have to obtain a quest from one of the towns or cities to get to the level the Serpent is on. So it looks like you MUST do the various quests you can get from the town hall in the towns/cities. (use the capital letter Q in the town hall/warrior hall to get quests by the way, smallcase q won't work)

Feel free to alter the graphics, fonts, and certain options (like the keyset-I have it on roguelike), but do NOT change options that would make the game easier/harder for you as not everyone will be changing that option. In looking over the options, I think about the only one that should not be changed is the Monsters behaving stupidly one (not set), but I may have missed something. Ask if you aren't sure before changing an option.

Feel free to ask questions about the game itself since its a new experience for us, strategy questions, helpful tips, etc are up to you-this is a competition remember. :) But might be nice to post here since this is the first of a hopefully numerous many comps. One tip I will give is to remember the spell system differences in this game. Check your spell limits with the ~ command, though I believe there will be an in-game warning when you come close to filling up a spell-tier. Remember too you can "spell focus" to enhance a spell you have already learned-read through the magic system rules through the help (?) command.

To get an official entry into the comp, you must post the character dump here (do a Shift-C to get to your character sheet, then f to file-file should be in the lib/user folder). These dumps are a lot more extensive than the Angband dumps-they are pretty cool actually. You may want to limit posting them during the comp since they are so big, and may confuse me when I'm looking for final character dumps at the end. So mark your entries in big bold letters or something so I can find it easier. :)

Please though do post your stories of adventure, misadventure, wondrous finds, and ^%^$% your demon patron throws at you, etc. I chose a demon patron, Balo the Jester because he has a wide variety of "gifts" and not too many of the really horrible ones. Remember too that you can get mutations as a beastman when you gain a level. Check them through your ~ command. You should be able to activate your useable ones through the Use Bonus Power command (U for original keyset, O for roguelike).

The starting equipment in the stores is not that great, but that seems to be planned in Z+. I've played a few test characters, and often times have had to go into dungeons without something I normally would have on a character starting out-in this case it looks like no missile weapons, shovels, or lanterns. It would have been mind-numbing to get a comp char with a good demon patron and then find a good starting set-up so deal with it. :) I like the challenge actually of not having everything I want on a starting character.

If you haven't played the game yet, once you get the quests, you can view them through the ~ command, and then you can find them on the world map (Shift-M command). You will see a staircase somewhere in the wilderness. And remember there can be other dungeons out there too, as well as farms which may offer quests. One of the quests you get starting off is very interesting, for what you need to kill and where it is (let me know when you find it :) )

Okay enough of my ramblings, go play and come back with any questions, game stopping problems, etc. Please let me know if you are participating though even if you aren't going to post much about how you are doing in the comp.

Good luck!

Graphically, I'm playing with David Gervais 32x32 tiles - if you decide to use those, you'll have to increase the width and height of your tiles (options under Windows menu) quite a bit. It definitely creates a different play experience. You see less tiles per screen, but it definitely improves my play experience.

where can you get those tiles Mali? I've not played with them before but have been curious.

Latest revisions are located here:

Free File Hosting Made Simple - MediaFire

There is a Z+ folder with the files. From their readme:

Thanks Mali, trying them out now. Look nicer than the others that's for sure though its a bit darker than old tiles. Didn't download the optional file, not sure if that matters.

A helpful tip-some dungeon rooms contain large "pools" of other vegatation/liquid-some of which can be hazardous to your health!

If you don't know this tip already - make sure you always know your escape route. You will inevitably fall into a bad situation and you'll be hating yourself the first time it happens when you don't have a scroll of Teleport or a potion of Healing on you.

Day 1 - Lunchtime report:

Duinith, novice Chaos warrior, buckled up his gear during lunch and descended into the dark dungeon depths. I was a little nervous, not having any scrolls of Phase Door available to me early on, but I had armored up and bought a potion of healing.

It started off a little rocky - upon gaining my first level, I had Balo the Jester tell me that I didn't deserve the level and take away some of my experience, dropping me back to level 1. But after that, the early levels went quickly - once I started learning magic spells, the experience from casting the spells for the first time ended up propelling me through the levels pretty quickly.

And Balo, fickle patron that he is, shined on me. At level 3, I gained a plus to all stats. At level 4, a Pike of Slay Orc (+1, 10%). Although I didn't identify it until later. At level 5, he told me I needed worthier opponents and summoned...wait for it...wait for it...a soldier ant. I disemboweled it in 1 turn and laughed at my patron.

Perhaps not the wisest idea, as at level 6, he told me again I needed worthier opponents and summoned 2 gray snakes, a jackal, and Fang, Farmer Maggot's dog. And to make it worse, I was at a T intersection and surrounded. While none of them were particularly worrisome by themselves, they were beating me down faster than I was going to be able to kill them. So I activated my escape plan and cast Blink. That moved me out of harm's way and I managed to kill one at a time, leaving Fang for last.

I continued to descend down the levels, occasionally Word of Recalling back up when I overloaded on random junk. At level 7, Balo chose to mold me, increasing my Dex. At level 8, he told my deed had earned me a worthy blade, which I put in my backpack until I had a chance to recall up.

My biggest mistake so far was made at 200' where I foolishly fought a red jelly hand to hand instead of slowly ray of frosting it to death - the hand-to-hand combat cost me 3 STR. And then finally, at the depths of 250' down, I was once again rewarded for my loyalty at level 9 with an amulet, ring mail, and guissarme. Time to ascend.

When I get back up to town, I search for some potions of restore STR but I'm outta luck there - going to have to run around with lower STR for a while. However, my phat Balo loot turns out pretty decent. The Ring Mail is 12, +3 of Resist Lightning, the amulet is an Amulet of Sustenance and the Guissarme is Slay Troll (+1, 10%). But the real prize is the short sword from level 7, which is a Short Sword - Chaotic (+6, 30%). Needless to say, I'll be equipping that for the next descent down.

So far, a relatively easy set of early levels, with nothing really exciting in terms of unique monsters or levels. But that's good building block for the stuff forthcoming.

Great start there Mali, pretty much describes in detail the life of a chaos warrior-especially what happened at level 1 lol. Have you received any mutations yet? Done any of the quests?

I've barely started my guy, just enough to get him to level 2 and get rewarded with a Ball of Chain that's making short work of whatever I'm fighting so far. Can't wait till I get back to the surface and find out what it is :)

No, haven't quite reached high enough level for any of the quests - I think they are 11 and 12, so soon. Strangely enough, no mutations either - I was expecting at least one by now.

I'm thinking there's a bug here-was just checking the help files and we should have received a mutation when the character was created. The test character I tried started with one. But Balo just gave my guy a mutation, so I think we will just go on with the character as is. Weird that it would work with one character and not another.

Back in town after running the first level of the dungeon. Currently 4th level. Balo's "rewards"

Level 2-magical ball and chain that I still cannot id-no ID's in town still
Level 3-Polymorphed my wounds into a grazing wound. Gee thanks.
Level 4-First mutation, and Balo must have heard my mutterings about not having enough spell slots cause he rewarded me with a Blink mutation ability that does the same thing as the spell, albiet with a 78% chance of failure

Was checking out the warrior hall and out of curiousity tried the ezamine weapon service there and much to my surpirse it ID'ed my weapon for me. It's a Ball and Chain of Slay Evil. Sweet. :) Get two attacks with it which is an added bonus. Also has a Protection From Evil defense on it. Not a bad starter weapon. ;)

So how exactly do we do this challenge? I've downloaded z+angband and played around with it, but what do we do for the challenge part? Just make our own barbarian chaos-warrior, or use the Duinith zip save? Or somehow base a new character off that? I haven't done one of these challenges, or played Z+ in a while, but I'm really enjoying it and would like to participate.

Hey Tasan,

Be glad to have you-just download Duinith zip save, and put the file in it in the lib/save folder of your Z+Angband folder. Then instead of creating a new character when you start up the game, use the Open option under the File Menu. Pick Duinith and your off. You'll start in town as a beastman Chaos-Warrior-we all start off in the same spot. If you die, you'll need to delete the file in your lib/save folder (and possibly any file in the user folder with his name) and then put the file here back in again to start over. Your goal is to get to the highest level you can before dying or defeat the Serpent of Chaos at the bottom of the dungeon before the two weeks is up.

I created the character for us all to use because chaos warriors can get different patrons each of who can give different "gifts". So this starts us all out with the same patron for fairness.

Does that help?

Just got a mutation (-3 dex grrrr) along with a regular demon patron reward (poly wounds grrr) so seems like the beastman mutation possibility is working.

I'll never know, as my patron saw fit to change me into an Amberite at level 13 or 14. Some quick notes:

• The other towns have a much wider selection. Definitely going to hang out there more often.
• Robin Hood totally sucks. Level 7 quest and he's still brutalizing me.
• There are a lot more quests than I remember from ZangbandTk - definitely makes it interesting.
• I like my chaotic short sword, but at 1d6 damage, I wish I was doing a little more hurting.
• Balo, in addition to changing me into an Amberite, gave me some CON and the ability to eat solid stone. No more shovels for me, baby.

I'm going to try and finish up some of these above ground quests and try and get back to delving.

ugh on the polymorph there Mali. Picked a patron who didn't empahsize that "gift". Not a bad thing to be turned into an Amberite though. :) So what direction is the town that the one quest is supposed to be near but you can't see on the world map?

Boy this version sure had some huge rooms in it. Just found one that had a large mass of rubble in the middle of it, could walk all around it. Found a shovel while digging in it which I thought was appropriate. :)

South. Of course, I first wandered north and the town up that way is much farther north than the one to the south is. I also ended up getting 2 courier quests to two different towns that I have no idea where they are.

In fact I found 4 shovels, 2 wands of magic missile and slow monster, 2 torches of everburning, lots of oil for my lantern, a few cure light wounds potions, and some armor and weapons which will likely be normal which I need to identify. Pretty nice haul actually.

Z+Ang has something a bit different than other variants-random uniques. I've just encountered my first one-Buzduz, the Large Grey Snake. Took me down to half hit points, was getting 2 attacks on me. My shield stunned him a couple times though which was a big help (get a shield people!). Unfortunately the bastard didn't drop anything. Roast Snake anyone?

Didn't have a chance to play it yesterrday, but everything's downloaded and ready to go.

Oooh on my return visit to the dungeon after killing Buzduz, I get a "you nearly faint as horrible visions fill your mind" level feeling....ooooh. The reason for it looks to be a baby blue dragon pit as I'm having to fight several. Balo rewarded me in mid battle by raising all my stats which certainly helped.

He was not so nice when I gained another level in mid-battle. He gave me a mutation that put a black aura around me. That usually means I'm cursed, but not sure in this instance. I also got a spit acid mutation at the same time which is pretty nice.

---this is turning out to be quite the xp gainer. Picked up another level and Balo raised all my stats again! And got another mutation where I can smell (sense) monsters. Picked up another level and that turned out to be my doom. Balo destroyed everything around me which included the pillars I was using to let only one dragon to attack me at a time. Was already getitng low on hp's so damage from the destruction and dragon's breath before I could port out killed me. :(

Knew I was risking death there, but man that was so cool killing all those dragons and getitng levels wondering what the hell Balo was going to do to me next. I'll post the dump here so you can see what I looked like

Deleting the save files and copying the original save in seems to have worked by the way, not that I really wanted to be the one to find out. :(

Sadly I did not get a repeat of gaining my first level with Duinith I where I got that great ball and chain of slay evil. This time he just knocked my dex down. :(

heh found a named Floating Eye on Level 1. Again didn't drop anything. :(

I'm in! Got my first level and was blinded by my patron. Nice.

Welcome and good luck Spork! And they don't call him Balo the Jester for nothing you know. ;)

And good luck to JAG too!

I died by second level. Shame upon me.

aww that's too bad Spork, what killed ya?

I wasn't paying attention and a brown snake got me. I was running around on poison plant tiles and not keeping an eye on my hp's.

I'm up to level 8. I'm not sure about all the stuff that's been happening to me. I know for one fact that I can levitate now, though. Awful nice considering those big planty areas that poison you. I haven't picked up anything real nice yet, or had my god give me anything cool either. Kinda sucks.

Sounds like you have feather falling Tasan, either through a mutation or an item. Will let you walk over pits too without falling in.

Yeah its actually pretty easy to lose track of things. Either while you are walking/running around the dungeon or you've not been in any real danger of dying for a while so you aren't paying attention to your HP's and boom something does more damage than you were expecting. Things can catch up to you while you are holding down the direction key to get down a corridor you've already been down quickly, and you may not see it till you stop, and its already hit you.

Day 2:

So I still have not gone back down into the big dungeon. I've been wandering around the wilderness. I've been to about 8 towns now and I've been doing all the quests in the towns, most of which seem to consist of: "Hey, there are some bad guys (and maybe a unique) in a nearby dungeon - go kill them!" I need to stop doing these as there are an endless number, I'm guessing. I can't help myself.

One of these quests almost got me killed today though. To set the stage - I'm equipped pretty well - I managed to find a Broad Sword (Holy Avenger) which has been extremely helpful. I have a single artifact gained from killing a unique and then some basic armor along with an accuracy ring and damage ring. So for the most part, I haven't been fearing much for my life. Then I get a quest to clear out 1 level of a local mine (danger level: 16). This basically entails clearing out a single dungeon level of all monsters. I ended up bailing the first time due to my inventory being overloaded, so I go back in the second time. I'm level 19 at this point, so as I move through it, I'm not having a lot of difficulty.

I've gotten it almost cleared when one of my new Amberite mutations kicks in and sends me to a different shadow...i.e, resets the entire level. Grrrr. So I start clearing again and halfway through, I run into a pit, which I quickly use my detection staff to determine is full with cats.

For those new to Angband, a pit is a room that has a single point of entry and is completely filled with monsters of one particular class. A popular pit type contain nothing but jellies (bleh) but this one contains cats. Hellcats, Wild Cats, Tigers, and Bakeneko (which seem to be some sort of lightning cat). So I position myself in front of the door and start killing them as they come out. This ends up being mostly one-on-one, although a few sneak by and I kill them. I'm doing enough damage that it only takes one attack to kill most of the cats, but still, I'm getting beat upon as I do it. I'm quaffing healing potions and using my healing staff and I'm not particularly fretting...

...until I hit level 20. Balo, that funloving patron that he is, drops the equivalent of a nuclear bomb on me. Half the pit is completely destroyed and left as rubble and I take an obscene amount of damage.

Suddenly, my single point of defense is gone and that turn I'm surrounded by cats who wail upon me, and I go from 145 hp to 13 hp when my next turn comes around. I immediately teleport out and heal up. I then manage to finish clean up, which takes much longer as I have to play peekaboo with cats through the rubble and some nearby tunnels so I don't have more than 2 or 3 attacking me at once.

Tomorrow, back to the real dungeon crawl - try and get deeper and see if I can't find some cool uniques to kill that aren't handed to me via quest. Lesson learned from today is to pay attention to when I'm about to level and make sure I'm full on hp.

I just hit lvl 2 and got an outrageously good gift to start out. A ring mail of resistance, a ring of damage (55%), another un-ID'ed armor, and an un-ID'ed potion.

I hate you JAG lol. Kinda bummed I blew my good start with my first guy cause the second version isn't getting anything interesting so far.

Mali that's exactly what happened to me with the baby blue dragons! Balo blew up the place (and me). Glad you survived it unlike me. Never really had to pay much attention to when and more importanly where I was going to level up. Now it may be prudent to teleport away if a "nuclear bomb" may be imminent.

Gone downhill since then, got told I needed to be humbled (I guess I did) and lost some stats, also got a +2 dex -4 str mutation so I'm a lousy fighter now.

Well Balo heard my grumbling I guess and gave me something very interesting. A (+5, 45%) Chaotic Rapier. This bad boy gets 3 attacks/round along with the regular chaotic abilities. This reminds me of something different than Angband. Unlike that game, you will need to use a second level of identify, a *Identify* scroll, spell, or magic item to find out some powers of some items. The item description for my new weapon states that it might have hidden powers. Good luck in finding/being able to afford a scroll of *ID* this early on though. :)

Thanks Balo you most humorous of jesters.

So I see the file has been downloaded 9 times now, who else is giving it a try?

Have got the new guy up to Level 10 here's what Balo did:

Level 2: lower dex
Level 3: rotting disease mutation-lower con/chr
Level 4: mass genocide (where were you when I needed it on some dragons?)
Level 5: mass genocide (ahem)
Level 6: ignored (bastard)
Level 7: regeneration mutation-negates rotting disease mutation
Level 8: raise all stats (yeah!)
Level 9: Chaotic Rapier (yeah!)
Level 10: "Death and Destruction pleases me"-yeah Balo I did a number on that door that wouldn't open as I gained my level.

I'm level 9 currently, had to spend some time huffing it back after my first dive since I didn't have recall. My strength has taken a beating which makes inventory management a drag (from 20 to 14 thanks to mutations / patron gifts). On the other hand, Balo's given me a chaotic weapon, ring mail of resistance, a helm of wisdom, and some enchanted mithril shots I was able to sell to get some decent cash to round out my inventory a bit. Still haven't explored the wilderness at this point, only visited the starter dungeon. Other decent loot I've found include boots of stealth (+4) and a lantern of warmth (permanent 2 light radius, res cold which is superfluous with the armor I have, but the permanent 2 radius light is welcome anyway). Not a bad start.

If I survive, I have some nice mutations when the failure chance gets to a reasonable level (teleport at will, polymorph self at will). Other mutations include emitting blinding lights (-1 stealth), a trunk (-1 cha, +1d4 damage), and that irritating -4 str +2 dex one.

yeah I'm currently out of word of recall scrolls too. Not a big fan of going back to town and find no scrolls at the three places that can have it. That's just an annoyance rather than a "challenge"

I downloaded and setup Z+ and the character last evening. Going to mess around with a new one to explore a little bit before opening the challenge character.

Might be a day or two before I can spend much time with it.

Good luck to you Path!

That's why you run to the other towns - they have so many stores that you're almost certainly likely to find a word of recall scroll. The town to the south is a pretty short run.

I downloaded it but haven't got started yet. I'm at a trade show today and probably have to take some people out to eat tonight so I don't know if I'll get started tonight either! Oh well I'll have to put in a marathon session to catch up.

Up to level 12 now. I have the ability to polymorph (level 18 though) and something else high level that I can't remember. I also have an electric aura which is real nice when surrounded by a bunch of baddies, because it can zap them when they hit hit you. Just had a 'nuke' level at 12, which considering I was just fighting some spiders was pretty wasted. Oh well.

downloaded and fooling around with it

And as soon as I'm having some success, I go one level too deep I think...

My undoing was odd. I was in the dungeon, and I had cleared out all possible doors but the map seemed too small still. I was going back to some stairs to head down when I went near a large room I had previously explored. However, now it was filled with Dark Elven priests who were all casting ranged spells at me. I tried to get away but they hit HARD and I died quick. I have no idea why this room decided to fill up like that.

Ok looking back at the screen dump, there were only 3-4 Dark Elven priests, but that was more than enough.

Early going (talking about Angband since I don't know Z+ well yet) my rule of thumb is to not go deeper than double your level until you get some resistances (or decent armor or CCW/healing).

I assume that will be how I approach Z+ also.

After you've been on a dungeon level for a while and depopulated most of it, new monsters begin to spawn. You got pretty lousy luck getting Dark Elven Priests as the new spawns, those suckers are pretty tough for lvl 12.

Well I'm having a run of bad luck. My next guy, level 8, was ignored by Balo for the first 2 levels, so that blew. Then, when I came out of the dungeon the last time, nobody had Recall scrolls, so I went looking for another town. Heading south, like I thought someone on here said, I found nothing. Well, nothing, that is, except for an angry druid who fried me before I realized what was going on. I'll start another one tomorrow prolly.

Sorry you are having such bad luck Tasan, but if it's any consolation, its easy to die in roguelike, especially when you aren't familiar with the game or the particular variant. I hope you keep trying. Couple of quick comments on your character dump.

No footwear or hat? Every little bit of armor helps at low level, so I try to cover all the body parts I can right from the start. Wearing gloves of any kind is generally not a good idea for a magic caster-unless the gloves have free action on them. I see the gauntlets are cursed too, which really sucks given that you are a spell-caster. No luck finding/being able to afford a remove curse scroll I take it?

Don't really need to carry more than the one lantern-they rarely get destroyed/stolen. Be careful with that wand of wonder some bad things can happen with it. I would try to free up inventory space as much as possible-one healing potion type, one type of transport scroll, etc. In many cases, its better just to drop "average" rated weapons and armor, especially the low-end stuff, but I'm guessing that was just stuff you had picked up in the dungeon before you died. Same with ammo, unless you find some really good ammo that does more damage to one type of monster.

Good luck with the next one!

Welcome and good luck Law and Lonnie!

Yeah, all that crap was just a haul. I was just about to institute a self ban on picking up junk. That wand was something I picked up and ID'ed as I was going, I'm too afraid to fire it after reading the description. As for the hat and shoes, well I was too heavy if I put any on. Is that much of a problem?

Oh and on the dieing thing, yeah, I'm an old roguelike player, so I get the whole dieing a bunch thing at first, don't worry about me there ;- )

I downloaded this as well. I've only got a couple of hours of experience with other rogues, and never this one, so I'm feeling my way around.

I'm a bit stuck at the moment, though, with keyboard commands because the help file doesn't seem to be working. Do the in-game help files not work (says Angband file can't be found in the help folder), or did I screw something up with the installation?

EDIT: Ah, skip that. Found the help file. You had to type a "?" to access it. I'm okay now.

SECOND EDIT: Okay. I give up trying to figure this one out: How do you talk to someone to get a quest? There a farmer mumbling about his lost dogs and I'm guessing he wants help finding them. I can't seem to find the keyboard command to talk to him and get the quest.

I think it's "T". In the help there should be a list of commands you can use to confirm.

Roguelikes are one of those things I've tried a few times to get into but never been able to, due to the complexity of all the commands and the non-graphical interface. Is there a way I can try this with more of a graphical interface? Still might not "take" but the idea seems so fun I'd like to give it a shot.

It can be a problem yes, slows you down in combat and movement I think.

I'm not aware of any generic interface you can use from variant to variant just the various tilesets like Mali mentioned above with the David Gervais. However there is a more graphical interface version of Zangband-ZangbandTk (and AngbandTk too). This old version of Zangband (and Angband) uses something called Tcl/Tk scripting language which I know nothing about.

You can go to ZangbandTK @ Abandonia Reloaded to see some screenshots of ZangbandTk. And there's a download link there at the bottom right part of the page. You may have to hunt around for the AngbandTk version. I have a vague recollection of having to download some tcl/tk files when the version first came out, so I have no idea if that download will work for you or not.

Is that the kind of thing you are looking for?

And if you can stand the graphics long enough, I would recommend you try the latest version of Angband-because you can just hit the Enter button to get a list of commands you can use at any given moment which makes it a lot easier than pulling up that long list of commands every few seconds.

Welcome GB! I can understand the frustration in starting out with Angband or its variants, but you'll be surprised how easily the commands become second nature. I would suggest if you haven't done so so far, that you switch over to the original keyset, which is a little more newbie friendly. You can do that by hitting the = key, then the letter a, then the letter a again, the esc key twice. You can find the list of commands through the help file (?, a for zangband commands, 1 for original keyset).

As for your second question, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but in this version, you cannot talk to monster/townspeople. The farmer is Farmer Maggot, who is the first unique in the game. He mumbles about his dogs, which are also uniques to be found in the dungeon in the first few levels. The mumbling is just flavor really and a warning about the dogs.

You can get your available quests from two buildings in town currently. The town hall and warrior's hall. Do a capital Q once you are inside the building to get the quest. You'll be travelling in the wilderness at some point where you will come across farms, inns, and other towns/cities where you can get more quests. You won't be able to do the quests you get from these buildings till you get a few levels, so just head into the dungeon for now.

The letter l for look in the original keyset (or x in the roguelike keyset) will help you look around (use the direction keys) and get info on the various people and buildings, the r key when you are looking at a townsperson or monster should bring up some basic info about them when the cursor is on them.

Feel free to post your questions here, and look at my recent Angband Help and Advice thread too for some other pointers that might help.

Thanks, Thomkal. That helps a ton. For some reason I figured that you could talk to the townspeople and such. I wasn't really frustrated with the experience on the whole, just with that one command. If I get stuck with something, I'll usually just work around it, so it's all good.

I played for another ten minutes (these games are great for quick breaks) while I was doing my taxes and stumbled onto the Warrior's Hall and got some quest to go kill a den of evil warriors to the West, but I didn't realize that it would be too hard for my level.

The next three or four days I'll be kind of wrapped up doing taxes, but I'll use this game for breaks a bit. After that I should be able to dig in a bit more. I started with a Barbarian fighter or something like that, but once she dies I'll give Duinith a shot.

As for immersion into the game, I really like the extra large tile set (32x32) that is mentioned above. Makes for a much cleaner game.

Peregrine, I second Thomkal's suggestion for ZangbandTK above. In fact, that's the variant I started with when I first started playing these games. The list of keyboard commands is kind of daunting, but most of those are used very infrequently. If you're a warrior, it's even easier as you don't have to wander into your spellbook all the time, just run into a monster and kill it.

As to the competition, I was at lvl 14 when I was told I didn't deserve it, so I'm back to lvl 13. I'm going to need to wander some shops though because I picked up a mutation that lowered my dexterity by 3, then ran into a group of moaning spirits that brought my dex down to...5. Yikes. I'm not sure how but my strength is now 12 also, so I'm basically forced to play like a mage and anything I carry reduces my speed. Kind of sad.

Glad to hear you are enjoying it GB. Forgot to mention something else about Farmer Maggot. Havent seen him yet in this version, but guessing you just push by him if you walk up to him. You can attack him with a distance weapon or spell, but be warned depending on the version he can attack back for little or no damage or for regular monster damage. Usually its little or no damage and it takes a long time to kill him cause you generally find him early on when you have no good weapons/spells. In some versions he can do damage like a regular unique, but probably not in this version. He usually drops something good that a beginning character can use-but he's been toned down a lot in most variants over the years-he could drop some really good stuff at times.

Yeah the quests give you a danger level-the level in the dungeon you will go to when you go a quest. So danger level 11 is equal to 550' in the dungeon, so if you can get to around that level of the regular dungeon and feel comfortable there, then you should be able to take on the quests. But the monsters can be a bit different in quests-our first one has swarming insects in it-not sure what that entails, but you can be sure there will be a lot of insect monsters of some kind there-a lot more than you would normally find on a dungeon level.

A fighter-type is a good character for a newbie, spells add a new dimension of strategy and keyboard commands, so you should get the hang of things pretty quickly. Good luck!

Ouch that's some pretty bad luck there JAG. I believe some of the bigger towns may have a place where you can get rid of your mutations, but I think its a random draw as to which ones go.

What I desperately need more than anything are stat potions, but I'm lacking the resistances to dive for them, to say nothing of my weak kill power. Oh, I did find the second chaos book in a shop which could be pretty handy after I gain some more levels.

yeah stats potions are far far away. :) you can find them sometimes in the various black markets/potion stores if you get lucky. Balo could be nice for a change and raise all your stats too.

So I'm up to level 25 and still doing a lot of the Wilderness/Town quests, although I did dive down to about 800' in the main dungeon. Balo has pretty calm, although I did get a electricity running through my veins mutation that cost me a point of CON but causes me to do electricity damage when I get hit. He also shuffled all my stats around - I ended up with the same STR and a better CON, but my INT is worse, which is a bummer, since I'm spellcasting frequently. Ah well.

Does anyone that is Zangband experienced remember what a Ring of Fate does? I've got one and I seem to remember it being good but I don't remember what the heck it does. :)

Balo is a bastard. Started last night and got myself to level 6 or so (only down to 150' in the dungeon). He's reduced my strength twice, lowered my charisma to 4 by wiping my features once and then now giving me a beak (which is actually nice for an extra 2d4 attack), but means that my rations of food aren't working to sustain me so ended up going back to town to pick up some satisfy hunger scrolls.

He also gave me a chaotic main gauche but frankly I'm getting better results from my original broadsword. Oh, and he also gave me a nice lance but I had to sell it because it was just too damn heavy.

In previous games I think the cost to remove a mutation was 10k per, a sum that's far more than I've generated this entire game.

I saw one of those in a store Mali and it doesn't really say what it does. I'm guessing it influences items found on a level/level feelings, but that's a guess.

Of course after I posted this, I found some info on it:


It makes life more interesting, you have more chance to stun monsters and get critical hits. Monsters also have more chance to stun you & have critical hits. Monsters will drop better items, but the monster you encounter will be tougher. Heh one guy said if you like playing a beastman chaos-warrior, you'll like a ring of fate :)

On the right hand it goes then!

I should probably give this a whirl at some point. Too busy playing NetHack though.

I love these games, but some times there is too much depth with the quests, etc.

Thanks, I will check out that version. Is it the same basic thing that you guys are using for this thread, or a different game altogether?

It is similar, a much earlier variant of the Zangband, which Z+Angband that we are using is based on. It will play pretty much the same way in terms of games framework, just a lot of content that either has been added since that point in time or changed since then. Let us know if you need help

Peregrine, also check out zangband.org (I think) that has a lot of helpful game info in an easy to read format, along with spoilers if you want.

Found out by the way that the warrior hall's service to check weapons does a full *ID* on weapons. So found out my rapier resists light as well as chaos.

-also another helpful hint about the warrior hall. If you rest for the night (and it has to be at night), the stores will often "reset" for you. I had to do this after not finding food and recall scrolls yet again after having to travel down to 300' and back after not having recall scrolls the last time I was in town. Now I'm heading out into the wilderness to find that city to the south which damn well better have some. :)

Edit: found Galran. If you follow what looks like a road that leads east out of town then south you will find Galran very easily, It's close. Galran is HUGE and has a LOT of stores. :::drools::: Check all the stores before buying something here because some stores are called "expensive" and you can usually find it cheaper in one of the other stores. And you really will drool when you see some of the stuff you can get at these stores. :)

But even with all these stores, probably five or six that sell scrolls of word of recall, it took me to the very last one to find some. Now that's annoying.

Thanks for the tip. I should've done that a while ago but figured it was just going to compare weapons for me.

Well this ZangbandTk is pretty neat so far - it's much easier for me with the graphical interface, though I still don't know exactly what I'm doing. I made level 2 - do I get more powerful when that happens?

If you leave the main dungeon and reenter, does the dungeon get randomly generated again?

And there are 99 levels to get to the bottom of the main dungeon?!?! Wow, that's a lot of gameplay.

Slightly. Main benefit is more HP and SP. As you gain experience your character develops some of their skills (search, fight, detect etc) which is what improves your fighting capability.

Your stats won't improve without either potions/weapons/artifacts that boost, mutations from the God you worship, that sort of thing. Of course, all of those can effect your stats negatively as well......

yeah that's what I thought it was going to do too, so was very happily surprised when it didn't :)

And to add to what Path said, if you are a spellcaster, you will be told you can learn a new spell. Glad you're liking the interface!

Yes each time you go up or down a level in the dungeon, it is reset when you return to that level. And add in the quests and wilderness and its even more gameplay! Now you can see why the games are so beloved. Totally different playing field each time you start a character, each time you enter a level.

And I just went back in the dungeon after picking up 1600 gold on my courier quest from Galran back to the starter town, and ended up surrounded by swamp, had to use blink spell three times before I could see some non-swamp terrain where I wouldnt take damage. Ouch.

Thanks.

I've been playing Stone Soup maybe once a week during lunch for the past month. Maybe ten/fifteen minutes each time, so it's not much time in total, but I've slowly been figuring things out there. Z+Angband is very similar, but it seems more expansive. The wilderness/quest element is a nice touch.

I like stone soup more for it's quick play. But this is fun too I finally got started and am up to level 5 or so. I got a set of extra eyes on my first mutation which helps me sense things like hidden doors easier. But the next few were of the detrimental type. I think I'm down to 3 charisma after Balo hit me a couple times and a green Naga spit acid in my face as well. Not dead yet though.

Up to level 26 now, still doing town quests. I'm actually almost done though, I think. I've gotten to the point that several towns only have a danger level 99 quest left. A couple others only have mid-30s quests, whoich I won't do yet. After I get those off my plate, diving again I go. I'm a little disappointed in my recent item collection. I've not gotten anything new worth wearing in many levels. Hopefully when I start diving again, I'll find something good.

Heh, I tried doing the insect one, but got myself into trouble quickly. Worse I got stung by a bee and lost yet another strength point which made me lose an attack using my chaotic weapon. Just a sad sad game for me stat-wise. On the plus side I found a potion of restore dex so I'm at least back to normal there.

The insect one was the toughest one I had to do so far. I had to go back up once and before I came back down, at one of the stores I found a ring of Sustain Physique, which protects your strength and charisma. My Holy Avenger protects my dex already, so with that ring on, it was much easier clearing the level as I wasn't crippled by the time I got close to the end, like the first time through.

Found Bullroarer at 400' and dropped three things, but the only magic item was a scroll of remove curse. Shortly thereafter I levelled and Balo gave me my first pet, a Manes Demon...right at the end of the level I was on and since I was heading back up, No more pet...um thanks Balo.