Players Guide to Angband

This guide assumes familiarity with the basic mechanics of the game. For details on this, see the user's manual.

As borrowed from a classic rgra post, there are only 3 basic guidelines for winning:

1. Don't die
2. Kill Sauron (dl 99)
3. Kill Morgoth (dl 100)

To achieve these goals, the most important observation is that you don't actually need to kill any other particular monster. And if you do try to kill all, or even most, monsters you will almost certainly die. You will certainly end up very frustrated. The one thing that you do need to do before killing Sauron is go down a lot of stairs.

Before you can kill Sauron you need, in decreasing order of importance:

1. Strong enough equipment to kill him (and avoid being killed in turn)

2. Necessary supplies, as required for 'buffing', escaping dangerous situations, and recovering from damage.

3. Personal attributes:

   1. Sufficient stats and fighting or spellcasting abilities.
   2. Experience and character level

In fact, these rules hold for any dangerous monster you have some reason to kill.

The only hard and fast rule is that the monster can't kill you in a single turn. (That is: your HP is greater than the monster's maximum damage x number of monster turns per player turn (rounded up.)

Quick start

From this point, the guide assumes that you are playing a fighting class (warrior, ranger, rogue or paladin) and race (Dunedain, High-Elf, Dwarf, Half-Orc, Half-Troll.) First, use the 'cost-based' stats selection, and create a charcter with 3 or 4 blows (Don't pick a class/race combinations, like Dwarf Ranger, that can only get 2 blows.)

First, set your stats to get maximum blows. If you have a combination with good dexterity, select 18/10 dexterity, and then set your strength to 17 or 18. Set your spell-casting stat to something low but usable (~12), and spend the rest on constitution. For a beginning character, constitution is least important, because it doesn't add significant HP until well above 18.

Example character:

   [Angband 3.1.1 dev Character Dump]

  Name   Anar                                     Self  RB  CB  EB   Best
  Sex    Male         Age            120   STR:     18  +1  +2  +0  18/30
  Race   High-Elf     Height         107   INT:     11  +3  +2  +0     16
  Class  Ranger       Weight         200   WIS:     10  -1  +0  +0      9
  Title  Runner       Social     Unknown   DEX:     15  +3  +1  +0  18/10
  HP     15/15        Maximize         Y   CON:     16  +1  +1  +0     18
  SP     0/0                               CHR:     10  +5  +1  +0     16
 

  Level                1   Armor      [0,+2]     Saving Throw         50%
  Cur Exp              0   Fight     (+4,+3)     Stealth        Excellent
  Max Exp              0   Melee     (+4,+3)     Fighting            Good
  Adv Exp             23   Shoot     (+4,+0)     Shooting       Excellent
  MaxDepth          Town   Blows      3/turn     Disarming            35%
  Turns              881   Shots      1/turn     Magic Device      Superb
  Gold                70   Infra       40 ft     Perception       1 in 20
  Burden        40.7 lbs   Speed      Normal     Searching            27%

A Fighting Chance

For a melee character, the most important measure of power is how much damage he can do in a single turn. Consider the above cl 1 character with 3 blows from a Rapier(+7,+9), in a fight vs an out-of-depth Bullroarer, with no escapes, no ranged weapons, and no armor. On the face, he has no chance. However, if he can get in the first blow he in fact has a 71% chance of killing Bullroarer in a single turn, and a 95% chance of frightening him.
Further, with full buffing (!Hero, ?Blessing ?Berserk Strength), the character has an 81% chance of killing him in a single turn. As well as improving the to-hit probability from 91% to 95%, this corresponds to a 50% reduction in the chance of failure in a dangerous situation. Finally, assuming 'Anar' does win this battle, he gets 450 experience, and immediately goes jumps to cl 8.

Missile Damage

With proper preparation even a weak character has an almost guaranteed chance of killing Bullroarer, if you meet him at a distance (across a lighted room). An unenchanted longbow does 7.5 damage/shot with ordinary (unenchanted) arrows. However, flasks of oil do 7HP nominal damage when thrown, and do triple damage (21HP) vs fire-vulnerable monsters. Bullroarer has 60 HP, so even a small stack oil will finish him off.

Summary

1. Character power is more closely associated with damage output rather than HP or character level.
2. If you preserve your supplies, you can fight well above your weight. Early in the game, this means using flasks of oil against worthwhile targets; later in the game this means using branded or slaying "ego" ammunition. Good ammunition is too valuable to waste on less valuable targets (like red jellies, or groups of orcs.)
3. Buffing, generally with !Heroism, can be very helpful to get starting characters out of sticky situations.
4. Going deeper in the dungeon is often a more conservative (safer) strategy than staying at a shallow (cl < dl) depth. (cl: character level; dl: dungeon level)
5. HP and character level are easy to come by.

Starting Equipment

Fighting Power

Buy a light weapon that gives you the maximum possible blows, with the highest dice available. This is generally a Rapier, Main Gauche, or Dagger. If these are not available, you may be better of quitting and restarting.

Whenever you have left-over cash, consider spending it on increasing damage with Scrolls of Enchantment (to damage). If you have a longbow, enchant it first. Archery damage is comparable to melee damage with 3 blows, and it is much safer.

Plan to be deep

Always make sure to have a scroll of recall, even on your first trip into the dungeon. Monsters and items at dl 5 (250') and deeper are much (~100x) more valuable than items at dl 1. (The example above may be contrived, but it is representative.)

To survive deep(er) you will want:

1. Escapes:

   • 3+ ?Phase Door
   • 1 ?Recall

2. Protection from secondary effects (confusion, blindness, poison)

   • 1 !CLW (for identification and blindness)
   • 1+ !CSW (for identification confusion)

3. Buffing

   • 1 !Hero (for protection from fear.)

4. Ranged attack to soften up a (single) unique

   • ~5 Flasks of Oil to kill dangerous and/or valuable monsters (throw oil for damage with the 'v' throw command)
   • ~10-20 Iron shots (or arrows for Rangers) to throw at non-dangerous monsters with annoying side effects. (Stat drainers and acid damagers that are between you and the stairs down.) extra arrows for a ranger (shoot arrows with the 'f' fire command.) Shots can be reused; oil can't.

5. Armor

Don't bother with armor. In v3.1.0 and later, armor is very expensive in comparison to AC. You will find it in the dungeon soon enough.

Your starting equipment will include more than enough food and illumination for the first trip down.

The first trip

It's quite possible to get to 500' (dl 10) or deeper in the first trip into the dungeon. Plan to return when either you have enough stuff that your character will be significantly more powerful after reselling it, or if you run out of either escapes (?Phase door), protection from side-effects (curing potions), or damage (arrows if you are a ranger, flasks of oil if you are otherwise weak.)

Since you don't have much, don't spend it on less valuable monsters.

What to kill

1. Any mobs of monsters that you can defeat (kill or frighten) in a single turn and either give good experience (a pack of wolves) or good drops (weaker orcs, novice humans.) If you are deep enough, this is likely to increase your character by several levels in a single battle.
2. Uniques with good drops (Bullroarer, Brodda, Wormtongue)
3. Easy kills that are likely to drop something worthwhile.

What to ignore

1. Monsters that will damage or destroy gear. (jellies, water hounds, etc)
2. Non-valuable monsters that are likely to use up consumables (baby bronze dragons, groups of spell-casters in line-of-sight, etc)
3. Mobs that you can't dominate.
4. Uniques with escorts you can't dominate
5. Monsters at shallow depth. Drops for any given monster get better the deeper you go. Killing a novice mage at dl 1 generally gives nothing; at dl 20 he's likely to drop something worth hundreds of gold. Wormtongue has, on average, a noticeably better drop at dl 20 than dl 10.
6. Things that waste effort. (run-away breeders, low-EXP monsters with no drop. Just close the door and move on.)

What to avoid

1. Anything that can kill you in a single turn.

On Bad Luck

This is rule number one of angband: don't take unnecessary risks. If you take enough low-probability chances of death, you'll never survive to fight Sauron. Such deaths are generally called 'stupid', but that's not always accurate. Sometimes it's just bad luck. But given enough chances, you are guaranteed to receive it. It's the trick to extremely fast dives: the fewer moves you make, the less chance any one of them will be fatal, even if on average, your individual moves are riskier than in slower play. But the strategy applies more generally: unless you are exceedingly careful in play, messing around long enough at any one depth guarantees that something bad will eventually.

Notes

This topic has been covered elsewhere in greater or lesser detail. The original document, The Angband Newibes Guide TANG, includes great detail on survival at various depths, though it is, arguably, overly conservative in strategy.

This wiki page was initially written as an expansion on an rgra post, diving exercise for newbies.