
   [angband3.gif] General Survival Tips
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       Going down the dungeon - how fast is too fast?
       Different people play differently, so there is no one answer, but
       here are some suggestions for different styles of play. If you are
       less familiar with the game, the risk is higher, if you are more
       familiar with the game, the risk is lower.
       In other words, people who have played longer can go down faster
       and still die less. So, find the speed that is right for you. The
       fastest reported player plays at 50 feet per level + 100 feet,
       which can be safely done for the first 1000 feet with mages - with
       proper care, of course. But other speeds have been recommended,
       ranging all the way down to 5 experience levels per 50'.
       If you aren't sure, then here's a suggestion: For each level,
       follow the border of the dungeon and explore each room on the
       outside of the dungeon. (i.e. not the middle). If you had no
       problem, then go down a level. If you did, stick around. This is
       still pretty slow, but is still reasonable for first timers.
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       Basic Pointers
       (1) Don't even so much as sneeze unless you have full hit points
       and full mana. There's just no reason to explore without full
       health.
       (2) Don't invite trouble. That is, when in a room with two
       sleeping monsters attack one, kill it, then the other. Sounds
       stupid, but there is a very close scenario: When fighting groups
       of monsters, fight them -one- at a time. Don't run in the room and
       invite group beatings.
       An elaboration on this: if you are being attacked by a group, get
       into a hallway and fight from there. That way, you can -only- be
       attacked by one at a time:
   #.....CCC..........#
   #....CCCC..........#
   #######C############
         #@#
         # #
       In fact, you should almost never be beat on by more than one
       monster at once. you can always run into a tunnel, or attack from
       around a corner if the monsters you are fighting have breath
       weapons.
       (3) If you see a monster you're not sure if you can beat, then
       -don't- attack it. Why take the chance? Also, put your ego aside,
       and run away if you start losing a fight. Try not to run away at
       the very last minute, in case your teleport spell happens to pick
       a bad time to fail. Also, be ready to run if you attack a fire
       type monster - and don't have any fire resistances. Same for many
       others.
       (4) Probably the quickest way to die can be summarized in one
       thought. "All right, I've been hitting this guy a few times, he
       should be almost dead... OH NO! I have no more (hit points/mana)!
       *dies about 5 turns later*.
       Don't run out of mana. Don't run out of hit points. If you start
       running pretty low, then leave. Don't say 'Well, I'll just save my
       last 6 mana points to teleport away' cuz if you roll badly, and
       are stuck in a fight with no mana, you die. (Mages, anyway).
       Note, though, that panic spell casting can save your hide. You
       have nothing to lose if you're gong to die anyway. See the bottom
       of this page.
       (5) It is wise to kill all the easy monsters you can before taking
       on the harder monsters, i.e. kill any monster you see. If you
       clear out lots of area, then if you have to run from a fight, you
       will have more clear areas to run to or teleport to. (A troll may
       be no big deal when you are at full strength, but if some unique
       is beating on you, and you teleport to a room with a troll in it,
       odds are you'll have to run from the troll).
       (6) Check stores often. Check all stores everytime you are on the
       town level. You never know when something will be on sale. It pays
       to keep valuables in your home rather than selling them right off
       - you never know when a 'bargain' could turn up. (has anyone seen
       a ring of speed +1 {to clear}? how much was it?)
       (7) When you're going to attack something, you can always get the
       first blow if you are careful. If your opponent is also moving
       (and at the same speed), then if there is a single space between
       you, don't move into it. Wait on the spot for one turn (if you
       search rather than do nothing you may pick up an adjacent trap at
       the same time). Your opponent will move next to you, giving you
       the first blow.
   @.R <-- wait!
   @R  <-- hit!
       If your opponent moves at double speed (like a cave spider), you
       would move away from it if there was only one square between you,
       and stay still if there were two squares.
       Using Fang as the example :
   @..C <-- wait!
   @C.. <-- hit!

   @.C  <-- if you waited, Fang moves and bites. So, take a step back,
   @C.. <-- hit!
       Of course, if you are using a spell or missile weapon, you can
       shoot at any time. But you can always know whether or not your
       opponent will be able to hit you on the next turn and act
       appropriately.
       (8) When you find a chest, don't open it in a corridor. If it
       isn't in one already, take it to a big room. Make sure the floor
       isn't all cluttered with rubbish. Always search chests for traps.
       If you don't find any, search some more. Disarm the trap before
       opening the chest. (Note: if you just cast disarm trap, you don't
       need to even search for the trap in the first place.)
       If you are just about ready to go down another level when you are
       thinking of opening a chest, wait, and take it downstairs with
       you. You will improve your chances of getting good stuff, since
       the value of the stuff in the chest is related to the depth of the
       level that you open the chest on. Don't open a chest in the town.
       (9) Common locations of secret doors.
       When you see either of these two patterns, search for secret doors
       at the place marked ".":
   ##########       ############
      '.'                    '.# (in any orientation, of course)
   ##########       ##########'#
                             # #
       Also, almost all 'dead' ends have secret doors. In general, there
       are usually doors near doors when in corridors.
       Common dead ends which are a waste of time to search:
          # #
          # #
          # #                                 ####
          # #               ###                  ###
          # #               # #                  # #
    ####### ###    ########## ###########      r #'########
    #                                          o '
    ###########    ########## ###########      o #'########
                            # #                m # #
                            # #                  # #
                            # #                  # #
                            # #               #### #
                            ###                  ###
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       Skills for all levels
       Okay, you're fighting a bunch of monsters, and the room is getting
       filled with garbage! This is bad - a monster surrounded by junk
       can't drop new treasures. (don't kill Wormtongue if he's
       surrounded by arrows! Wait 'til he takes a few steps into free
       space). There are a few techniques for getting rid of treasure:
       (1) Quaff any useless potions, read any useless scrolls (if safe).
       (2) Keep retreating as you fight, so the monster you kill next is
       over 'blank' areas.
       (3) Take the treasure, and throw it in a corner of the room. In
       fact, stand either in the corner or a square away from it, and
       throw items towards that corner, like so:
   #jj   where the j means some junk object.
   #@j
   ####
       An item thrown towards the corner will fall onto another object,
       and dissapear. So, you can get rid of as many objects as you want
       by just throwing them into this self-made garbage disposal.
       (4) If you have the Create Door spell, stand in the middle of a
       pile of treasures, cast Create Door (a door will destroy any
       object on the space that it was created on), and then cast remove
       door. Any object adjacent to you is now gone. Repeat for the rest
       of the pile.
       Don't forget that traps take up space just like treasures.
       If you run into a fire or acid breathing monster and there is a
       good scroll, staff, or whatever nearby that you can't pick up
       right away then move away from it!!
       If you have a WOR scroll and run short on room to carry things
       then ditch food if you have any (after eating). You won't starve
       as long as you can get back to town. However if you only have
       _one_ Word of Recall you are taking a big risk. What if it gets
       fried or stolen?
       Stinking Cloud is great for Filthy Urchins, but not absolutely
       necessary: If two can attack you at once, back around the corner
       of a building. They only come around one at a time (don't walk
       into them!!). If you suddenly get two together, don't risk it,
       just back away ('round the next corner). If you get in a real jam,
       Phase Door. Better than losing about 10% of your cash.
       If you are a spellcaster with a recharge and an identify spell (eg
       mage, ranger), or the priestly equivalents, and you have a couple
       of wands or staves of the same kind, and you can't carry both,
       then rather than just dropping the one with the fewest charges,
       recharge it. It does not matter if the recharge has a high chance
       of failure. If successful, identify it. Keep going until it has
       more charges than the other wand of the same type. Now recharge
       the other wand. Keep recharging and IDing the one with the lowest
       charges until one is destroyed. You can often get a great many
       charges on a wand this way. A character who does this will have
       really full wands, and so a better survival chance. Of course, you
       must be in a relatively safe place to do this.
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       Useless items aren't always useless
       The power of junk: If monsters that steal objects annoy you a lot,
       fill your inventory free space with junk. Once in a while, you'll
       just lose rubbish. This can be quite a pain, however. Learn to
       kill thieves from a distance.
       Don't throw that Wand of Clone Monster away! Instead, search for a
       monster you can destroy fairly easy and which drops some nice
       treasure. Choices are '$' for low-level characters, 'd' for
       mid-level and 'D' for high-level ones (no Dracoliches of course,
       but perhaps Ancient Blues or Whites...).
       Great Storm Wyrms, Ice Worms, or Hell Wyrms drop better treasure.
       This is especially nice when you have immunity to whatever they
       breathe (e.g. if you've got Narya, clone Hell Wyrms etc).
       Then, when you are alone in a room with that monster, hit it until
       it is nearly dead, clone it and kill the one you hit before. Hit
       the new monster until nearly dead and so on until the wand is
       exhausted. The Wand of Clone Monster is recharged very easily (low
       chance of losing it). You will get lots of money, some nice items
       and many experience points.
       There is ONE major time it's useful to let a critter breathe on
       you: If there are a slew of weaker critters that are picking at
       you, AND you are resistant to its type of attack, encourage it to
       breathe. This will wipe out all of these weaker critters, so you
       can thank the breathing critter by destroying it. (that's
       gratitude for ya)
       There are times when a Wand of Wonder can be used quite safely
       (two illustrations from recent encounters):
                    # #
          ###########@############
          #                      #              #
          #                      #        #######    d
          #                      #          @        .
          #                      #        ################
          #         n.o          #
          ########################

       If you don't actually target any of the creatures, but off to one
       side, then they can't be hasted, healed, or (worse!) polymorphed.
       Targetting is a major help, but the idea still works without
       targetting. In the above diagrams, you would aim at the dot. You
       miss out on line-of-sight effects like lightning bolts, but all
       the ball effects still work - and there don't seem to be any bad
       (for you, at least) ball effects. About the worst that will happen
       is nothing. There is a vanishingly small risk that you have an
       invisible creature lined up - though High Elves should be safe
       from this as well.
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       Survival at low level (0-1000 feet)
       If you are willing to save up for a Wand of Drain Life (via the
       black market), it can make many monsters much easier, but you
       might not get enough charges to make this worthwhile. This wand
       doesn't work on undead, though.
       Once you get the hang of it, the first 1000 feet is a fairly safe
       area. It can be played as fast as one experience level per 50'.
       You stand a chance of dying a few times if you play this way:
       level 2 - Fang and Grip can be a pain if you're only level 2. If
       you stay at full health you shouldn't be at much risk. Use Magic
       Missiles, potions of oil, and/or missile weapons. level 8 -
       Wormtongue is easy to handle if you buy yourself a light crossbow,
       reasonably enchanted, and quaff a potion of speed before you
       attack him. Kill him with room around him so he has room to drop
       his stuff. Flasks of oil can also be used effectively against
       Wormy.
       (Again, don't be dumb. If the first thing Wormtongue does is frost
       bolt you, LEAVE. You haven't done any damage yet, and you're not
       at full strength anymore - why bother?) Wormtongue can dish out a
       -lot- of damage quickly if you get unlucky. Just leave before he
       kills you, and try again.
       If you are fighting things like baby dragons, where you can take
       one breath weapon, but not 3-4, then you are often better off
       fighting toe-to-toe than from a distance. At least getting clawed
       and bitten won't fry your potion of speed. They breathe much less
       often when they also have the choice of biting and clawing you.
       Besides that, the first 1000 feet isn't too bad. Most uniques can
       easily be taken out with a few phase doors, the (+8,+8) light
       crossbow, and bolts.
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       Survival at mid level (1000-1700 feet)
       Things get progressively harder and harder from here on.
       Expect more and more groups of monsters. Especially hounds. Take
       out all that you can, then teleport away, heal, then come back and
       kill as many more as possible. It's nice to keep beating on the
       same group of monsters, rather than waking up groups of monsters
       (it becomes very hard without a unique weapon to kill a group in
       one attempt, but a good missile weapon can do the trick).
       Keep Potions of Speed at all times - there are a lot of speed 2
       monsters, who can -really- dish out the damage.
       Stay the same, keep scanning with Detect type spells before you go
       forth into uncharted areas. Learn as much as you can about where
       you're going before you actually go there. Retreat if you drop to
       1/3 hp or Mana and still haven't taken out the same creature you
       started fighting. If a creature drops you more than half your HP
       in one `turn', retreat and re-think strategy or better prepare.
       Teleport Away items are no longer optional, they're essential.
       Save an inventory slot for a Rod of Teleport Away. Two or three if
       you're a warrior. Keep an eye out for Wands of same. If you're a
       priest, keep your eyes open for the prayer book Ethereal Openings
       -- it's the first of the "special" prayerbooks, is reasonably
       common below around 1200', and has a Teleport Away prayer in it.
       The failure rate is a bit high when you first get it to rely on
       this spell.
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       Analysis of levels > 1700 feet
       There seems to be a substantial jump in nastiness at around
       1750-2000'. Sort of like in Moria. By here you'll want at least
       the elemental resistances (fire/frost/acid/lightning, and poison
       if possible)
       2000 - 2500 ft. Like 1000 - 1500 it seems; progressively nastier
       but no real sudden onset of nastiness. Watch for speed items and
       good armor, e.g., DSMs. They're uncommon, but, with the general
       increase in treasure here, quite possible. Spiffy rooms, of
       varying degrees of spiffiness, become common here. That's where
       you'll see most of the really nasty monsters.
       2500 - 3500. Over this 1000 feet or so, there is a big jump in
       general nastiness. Hell Wyrms (and worse), Chaos/Nether/Ether
       Hounds, high level undead (Nightcrawlers, Black Reavers, etc).
       These monsters will frequently appear outside of spiffy rooms (aka
       vaults). Undead pits, VERY difficult and dangerous even for high
       level players, become common about here.
       Undead pits are probably best avoided, especially when you first
       enounter them. They are usually not worth the hassle. However,
       there are some hints for tackling them elsewhere in this guide.
       The unique angels also appear around this depth and are probably
       worth avoiding.
       3500 - 4950. Except for high level uniques, pretty much anything
       that can happen in the 4000's can happen in the high 3000's. This
       is because the highest level non-unique monsters are about level
       75. So it doesn't get wildly nastier, although nasty monsters get
       progressively more numerous as you descend.
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       Strategies of various winners
       From: Guy Evans <Guy.Evans@brunel.ac.uk> :
       Having hung around at 1000ft for free action I am usually around
       level 25 odd. I then tend to dive fairly rapidly to around
       1500-1600ft for the gain stat potions. This is when the game gets
       hard and interesting :-) I stay at around this depth till all my
       stats are maxed - I find this a very boring part of the game.
       Once my stats are maxed I dive again, this time to around 2500ft
       making money by selling extra gain stat potions and any dragon
       scale mails etc. Once I have around 1.3 million buy a ring of
       speed. Don't go below 2500 without a speed item. Usually by now
       the character is fairly gross and can drop at a reasonable rate to
       4950ft. Note my last 2 completions didn't find boots of speed till
       they had hung around at 4950ft for a _long_ time (you need to have
       2 to kill Morgorth as a gnome mage). That is it's easily possible
       to survive with only 1 speed item for the majority of the game
       (slowing down to fast when killing Tiamat is always interesting
       though!).
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       Things to do if you're going to die the next turn
       These are things you shouldn't do on a regular basis. But, if
       you're about to die, the rules change.
       
    1. Cast a teleport/phase door spell, even if you don't have the mana.
       You might pass out and die, but more likely, you'll teleport out,
       and maybe lose a constitution point. Much better than dying.
    2. Do a last minute Bash. You might even stun the monster.
    3. Shoot the monster with a Wand of Polymorph.
    4. Shoot the monster with a Wand of Wonder (risk of Clone or Heal).
    5. Read some unidentified scroll/potion in hopes that it is a
       teleport scroll or healing potion.
    6. Put on a teleport ring. Teleport rings don't work instantly, but
       you could put it on and hope it teleports you away -soon-. You can
       even carry an uncursed teleport ring around for such
       circumstances.
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