1. 12590291  Matthew the High-Elf Mage, level 50
               Killed by nobody (yet!) on dungeon level 100
               (User 1024, Date TODAY, Gold 1965854, Turn 2254811).

After my previous post, I continued to descend, with a policy of using mass banishment to clear out vaults, and otherwise only engaging with monsters that were easy to kill or had good drops - drujs, for instance, just get banished because they're very annoying and never drop anything. Other than that, meteor swarms took out interesting monsters (ancient dragons of various sorts), and chaos strike was used on Uniques (otherwise it polymorphs the thing you're trying to kill into something more annoying). The various Uniques didn't prove troublesome other than Qlzqqlzuup, the Emperor Quylthulg which summons something pretty much every turn. I shut it into a room, mass banished the summons, and nearly left it at that. But then I realised I could build a tunnel such that I could hit it with area spells and it wouldn't be able to see me, so I did that.

Somewhere along the line, I found Balance DSM and a shield with nether resist - that meant I was finally able to cover all the resistances without swaps.

Sauron was quite a pain, mostly because he kept teleporting away; but he succumbed to chaos strike (and banishing the monsters he summoned). Then it was time for a kit-shuffle - I knew I wouldn't want to swap out the Great Axe of Eönwë (which previously I'd done for monsters with powerful acid or nether attacks), so I could afford slightly less +CON and +INT - that meant I could swap in boots of speed to make it easier to keep up with Morgoth, and that's the kit that's in the dump below.

Then it was time to load up on all my carefully-hoarded Life and *Healing* potions, and go to find Morgoth on level 100. As it happened, the level was created with a huge vault in the middle, which contained Morgoth. So I could clear out the rest of the level's monsters before fighting him. Then it was a case of hitting him with Chaos Strikes, phase dooring out of the way so he could never melee me, banishing (or mass-banishing) the summons, and using the healing potions to keep my HP above 600 (since his mana-storm spell does 600 damage). This requires quite a lot of attention to get right, and to keep on top of mana & hit points, speed, not getting meleed by Morgoth, and removing the summoned monsters. But then he was down to 1* of health, and then **CONGRATULATIONS** :-)

Conventional wisdom is that Mages are hardest to start and easiest to finish in angband, and that would certainly fit my pattern - I've had a lot of characters die young, but actually once I'd reached the mid-40 character levels, maxed my stats and found the final spell book, it was pretty easy to only fight the battles I wanted to (by teleporting or banishing monsters), and the firepower of the higher-level spells is pretty impressive.

( Victorious character :-) )

  1.  3245247  Matthew the High-Elf Mage, level 41
               Killed by nobody (yet!) on dungeon level 60
               (User 1024, Date TODAY, Gold 557651, Turn 1854643).

This is now a higher score than my previous best character, and after substantially fewer turns (1.9M vs 3.5M). I seem to have notably better kit, too, although not Kelek's Grimoire yet.

I found Shelob and Glaurung on the same level, which was a bit alarming. The former was a bit of a push-over, but the latter was more challenging (not least because he summons extra ancient dragons). I should probably go deeper...

( YACD )

A previous update to angband broke the shared scorefile, so I stopped playing (and need at some point to see if I can fish the old score file out of the backups). But 3.5.1 is in unstable, and has restored the shared savefiles, so I thought I'd backport it to stable and have a try. Quite a lot has changed!

  1.    20709  Matthew the High-Elf Mage, level 22
               Killed by nobody (yet!) on dungeon level 20
               (User 1024, Date TODAY, Gold 36257, Turn 631806).

( More thoughts, and the obligatory char-dump )

  6.   545991  Matthew the High-Elf Mage, Level 33
               Killed by nobody (yet!) on dungeon level 44
               (User 1024, Date TODAY, Gold 551061, Turn 1618961).

  7.   542267  Matthew the High-Elf Mage, Level 33
               Killed by an Ancient multi-hued dragon on dungeon level 40
               (User 1024, Date 2008-12-04, Gold 170636, Turn 1804423).

( also, previously )I've finally found the first of the dungeon spell-books, which I would normally expect to have found long ago. Temporary rPoison is very handy (as is temporary double-resist of the other basic breath types). I'm deeper than all but one of my previous characters, which may account for a feeling of being slightly under-powered; an excellent missile launcher would really help there. Comments welcome, as ever.

( YACD )
ETA: I note that this is now the best I've done on the new beta.
ETA2: Amusing, I just descended a staircase, and was insta-killed by a room full of inertia hounds.

( YASD )

Another Great drake death - its shards breath was enough to kill me in one go, even resisted(!). I clearly need to be more careful of the breath attacks that aren't covered by rBase. I learned the value of missile weapons this time, though - Uvatha the Horseman was a walk in the park.

I'm playing the new beta version angband at the moment (more of which anon), but I started a new character, and on its first trip into the dungeon...

Blue Dragon Scale Mail (-2) [30,+10] (charging)              
(lying on the floor at 200 feet (level 4))                                     
                                                                               
Provides resistance to lightning.                                              
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.                             
                                                                               
When activated, it allows you to breathe lightning for 100 damage.             
It takes d450+450 turns to recharge after use.                                 

I have this feeling that DIC

ETA: I have to record the following, on descending to the next level (and finding myself in a room full of novice priests, which would normally be bad news):

You enter a maze of down staircases.
This seems a quiet, peaceful place.
You breathe lightning.
The Novice priest dies. <12x>
Welcome to level 7.
You can learn 4 more spells.
The Novice priest dies.

I appreciate that this is a fatal thing to post, but this character is going really well. The previous level I levelled up thrice, thanks to an orc pit (one of whom dropped a potion of experience), Orfax and Gorbag (who dropped the Phial). I intend to drop the Blade of Chaos in my home, since rChaos might prove useful in future.

  9.    14111  Matthew the High-Elf Mage, Level 21
               Killed by nobody (yet!) on dungeon level 15
               (User 1024, Date TODAY, Gold 4254, Turn 491109).

( YACD )The armour of resistance is handy, too :) [Thengel provides rConf, which is dead handy for a spell-caster]

I've run a couple of insane-divers recently, just for fun, and thought I'd record my auto-roller specification:
STR: 13
INT: 18/50
WIS:
DEX: 18/10
CON: 7
CHR:

The rationale being roughly that INT is the primary stat, the STR increases how much I can carry (those two are as high as it can go), the DEX gives a 20% theft-resistance rate (handy early on), and the CON ensures no penalty due to low CON (I can't usefully start it high enough to get a bonus).

Before the first trip, I am to acquire a lantern (if possible), and at least give consideration to acquiring a longbow.

  1.  2773186  Matthew the High-Elf Mage, Level 40
               Killed by nobody (yet!) on dungeon level 60    
               (User 1024, Date TODAY, Gold 820689, Turn 3297035).

Quite some way clear of the top of the table now :) I surpassed top place on turn 2885471 or so, and at the point I'd reached the number of turns my previous diver died at, I was on 1978434.

The highest exp-kill so far has been The Phoenix, for 56,842.11!

( YACD )Monsters with more than 2000hp or so are proving troublesome at the moment, as I can't seem to find enough mana potions (and my missile to-hit rate is piss-poor, even with that implausible DEX). I'd be happier with disenchant resistance, too.

This character is now 4th place, and as deep as I've ever been before, although noticably less tough than my previous character who was killed at this depth by an Ancient gold dragon on score 900918 after 3,034,800; my score is now 651887 after 2,503,600, so I'm lagging behind a bit.

Dlvl 40 is pretty scary, really. I keep having to run away! Still, I just took out Adunaphel the Quiet, who was quite a big fat kill.( YACD under cut )