Angband has never had the forum presence of Crawl and
that other roguelike. There have been a couple threads but they didn't last long and neither of them had the traffic and experienced players posting that you got with the other threads.
That needs to change.
This is the Angband thread. If you like branches, Macguffins, persistent levels, or winning a game the same day you start playing, turn back now. The best way to compare Angband to Nethack and Crawl is to think of them as a spectrum. On one end is Nethack, which takes Player vs. Environment very literally. Combat is simple, there aren't a huge number of items, and most of the challenge is in understanding the many, many ways the elements of the game can interact. I like to think of Nethack as a very complicated puzzle game. If you understand the game, it becomes difficult to lose.
Crawl is the middle ground. There are much more items, more artifacts, random artifacts, levels are bigger, defence and resistances are more complex, combat's more robust, there's less "fuck you for using an unidentified item" in play, etc.
Angband takes those changes to the extreme. There's 100 levels. No branches. Levels are not persistent, every time you use a staircase a new level is generated and the old level is gone forever. There are 18 resistances to manage. I don't know how many monsters there are but I'm guessing several hundred. Later in the game there are many monsters that can swat you like a bug if you aren't ready for them (By D:40 you'll start seeing enemies that can one-shot you if you don't resist their breath, and the strongest dragons breathe unresisted for more hp than you will ever have). All you have to do is get to level 100 and kill Morgoth.
If it hasn't been made clear: Angband is very hard. It's also kind of tedious. There's a reason Crawl and Nethack are more popular. But Angband is still lots of fun, and I think it has the best interface. With something like 7 or 8 additional windows you can add and customizable settings for them (I have a window with the game screen, a window with my character sheet, a window with my inventory, and a window with a list of visible monsters on my game), you'll never have to worry about dying because you forgot you had an essential item (Actually, you will, but it won't be the game's fault). It's also kind of relaxing, for some reason. In some ways it reminds me more of Diablo than Nethack. You delve as deep as you can (You want to dive
1), then recall and sell your stuff, buy supplies, then recall back and keep diving.
This has been a long post, but I'd like to see a real Angband thread on these here forums. Share your stories! What's the deepest you've ever gotten? I have a character at CL32 and DL35, but since I took a long hiatus I'm a little rusty with him and I've started a new guy who hasn't done anything yet.
1Unlike Nethack and Crawl, it is
not a good idea to explore every level and then move on. Value appreciates very quickly with depth - DL5 is about a hundred times more valuable than DL1 - and if you spend enough time in the dungeon something terrible will happen to you simply by virtue of statistics. When that terrible thing happens, the character who piddled around on DL1 will die, while the character who dove will have the resources to survive.
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Topic: Angband - Are you a bad enough dude to kill Morgoth? (Read 23170 times)