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[Cthulhu]

This Sil-Q run is going pretty well, going for the big balls plays.  I've got heavy armor proficiency with the heaviest armor 11 difficulty can make, and I made a shield of wrath to go all-in on melee, forcing everything that sees me to take aggressive stance.  So no more hallway-dancing bullshit, no more flanking, no more bows.  Next I'll get anticipation, the Sil-Q melee ability that lets you reroll misses against aggressive enemies.  I also have amulet of regen, on top of my [+10, 8-30] defenses.  This is basically the angband equivalent of cheibriados.  Pure thunderdome, no bullshit, just me and a hallway and holding down buttons.

[Il Palazzo]

It's been ages since I played various (z)angbands other than Sil. I picked up composband, and can't remember if all non-quest dungeons are infinite or some set max depth? E.g. the Warrens outside the first town?
edit: nvrmnd, I guess they aren't infinite.

[wobbly]

They're a set depth, usually with a boss at the bottom.

[Robsoie]

For my current character on composband the bottom of the warrens was at level 16 (no idea if it's a random set depth on my character run or if it will be the same for everyone) in which thanks to a good use of a berserk strength potion i annihilated "Nizukil, Prince of Rats" and his army.

I "word of recall"-ed later to regenerate the level to see if i had missed a stair and didn't found one, so it's very likely level 16 is the last of this dungeon.
I found a lot of those insanely duplicating "software bugs" joke monsters from old zangband.

[Cthulhu]

I died.  I guess the black w monsters, the whispering shadows or whatever, ignore armor or something, I got obliterated in one turn from like 25hp

[Robsoie]

Seems like the wilderness in  Composband is more dangerous than what i remembered from zangbandtk , after leaving Outpost (the starting town) i was following a road in the hope to find something in the end and i had been attacked in the way by a ratmen/skaven warband with a "Grey Seer" summoning more of them , only survived it thanks to my teleport scroll, then picking them with my light crossbow and the excellent slaying bolts i had.

Had to teleport away another time when the Grey Seer summoned more of them, but once i finally got him with enough bolts i could finish this huge swarm more "relatively easily" despite all the curses thrown my way.

Later i got ambushed by an Orc/HalfOrc/Black Orc warband led by some unnamed (as not being an unique) Orc captain that was quite resilient to the slaying, while there was no summon, the warband was rather decently sized fortunately teleporting away and my trusty light crossbow managed to save me.

As i reached the end of the road i was following and was disapointed to find nothing at all (the road just end in a tile then more wilderness after it where i was expecting another town) so i came back, and when finally i managed to reach the Outpost area at some distance an army of knights and archers attacked me, it was a lot harder than expected as the archers were damaging me fast with focus firing.
Fortunately a teleport and a speed potion allowed to reach town, and in the entrance corridor i finally could use several critical healing potions and then pick them all one by one in melee when the troops finally reached the corridor with my blessed lucerne hammer with its nice damage bonus.

Is there a map somewhere of the wilderness in order to know where are the other towns ? It seems odd the road was leading nowhere.

Funnily when coming back to town at some point i ran into some thief camp (that had some nice loot once i killed the bandits inside) that wasn't there the first time, i guess there's some area loading that happens similarly to the dungeons ones.

I leveled 3 times from this wilderness expedition reaching level 19 so i guess it's as worthy as dungeon exploring when you have enough of the warrens and are past level 15 (so you can have the stuff to survive the wilderness sometime large encounters).

[Il Palazzo]

Press '<' to go to worldmap. You can 'l'ook around there.

And yeah, I just died in the wilderness near the orc caves, to an encounter with a bunch of cockatrices and tax collectors (what?). I think I saw a building there too.

Anyway, one would think playing dragons would be easy. It ain't.

[Robsoie]

Thanks, that will help (EDIT : oh i see the road i followed indeed ended nowhere, so not a bug, i should have followed the other bifurcation that ended into a town)

As i wasn't far from level 20 i decided to recall and go grind in the 16th floor of the Warren.
I ran into another game joke , the "Variant Maintainer"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The poor bugger died to one of the many Software bugs that he summoned (and that i confused with a wand) after getting some hits from my character.
His software bugs summoning (and themselves self-replicated constantly) really helped my character to reach level 20 (as i had enough protection and regeneration so they were near harmless to me)

oh and tips : always have some way (mushrooms from the town) to heal blindness and confusion as they take quite some time to go away you don't want them to get in the way of a battle with an unique.

EDIT : interesting you can move yourself on the worldmap, similarly to Dwarf Fortress in adventurer mode.
But be sure you have some teleport scroll (you should always have a lot of them anyways), an ambush during the worldmap travel can lead you to be completely surrounded by a huge amount of enemies.
On my case while walking from Outpost toward the Morivant town i had an ambush, that was a big blob of bandits and me in the exact middle of that big blob.

Once i managed to get away with teleport and killing more things that were around i was able to resume travel toward the city and finally reached Morivant with much less problems, nice town with more facilities/features than Outpost

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(oh and don't worry your Home in which you stockpile items for later use follow you from town to town

tips about one of the quest, the tengu and death swords

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the annoyance with the many tengus in there is that they can teleport you around, but at the level you should be to attempt that quest the tengus should die quickly to your ranged weapons or melee strikes if they're silly enough to approach you.
the gelatinous cubes are bit more annoying as they are resilient and have acid melee (so make sure to have some layers of acid resistance) they usually spawn several items when they die so chances you'll get something good out of them.
Now the threats are the death swords in the big middle room, they don't move but when you get close they attack and they can hit really very hard with poison effects.
The trick is to  absolutely not go to melee but just shoot them down with your best ranged weapon, they will be destroyed quickly this way.

[wobbly]

I died.  I guess the black w monsters, the whispering shadows or whatever, ignore armor or something, I got obliterated in one turn from like 25hp

Yeah whispering shadows are nasty. They do darkness damage & the only thing that helps is light. If you can't see them they hit hard.

[Il Palazzo]

Is there some wiki for Composband out there? The help text is not terribly helpful.

[Robsoie]

Failed my first quest , in Morivant i had the task to kill 10 Ologs (some variant of the Trolls specie) somewhere deep in the Orc Cave.
So after travelling there i finally reached the target floor with some difficulty (as the Orc Cave is higher level than the Warrens)

Started to kill a few of them thanks to some good use of potions and berserk amulet and one of my ESP targetting trolls , i thought it was going to be ok as i had prepared well.

Then "Xylibbogaz the Disembodied Mouth" unique came, one of the most obnoxious monster this one, it never stop blinking and teleporting away and it is constantly blinding and confusing you.

As said i was prepared so i had tons of mushrooms for blindness and confusion removal, but still the few times i managed to have him in visual range and without being either confused or blind when it was happening so i could shoot him accurately with my trusty crossbow and slaying or elemental bolts the thing refused to die , sometime after being hit a few times he disappeared for a while, then after some more Olog hunting he came back.

At some point something probably summoned lots of monsters (unless some spawned out of nowhere as with this silly unique it was taking a lot of time in that dungeon floor) and i had to teleport away to save my character life, only 3 Ologs were remaining but couldn't find them anywhere (despite my ESP) and more monsters were spawning.
At some point i ran out of blindness mushroom and still it seemed impossible to kill that obnoxious unique (that wasn't dealing any damage, the super annoyance was all the status effects he gives you from afar out of view range and his constant teleporting) , there was a monster (i think it was a blink dog but never managed to find it to kill) that was recalling/teleporting me back to where there were a big concentration of monsters after i had teleported away, it happened several time so at some point i had no choice but to "word of recall" in order to go refill my potion/scroll/mushroom equipment.

because with the unique still blinking around it was just suicidal without any mushrooms left

Unfortunately recalling set the quest to failed, damn :/

Oh well at least the whole adventure was still very good it term of loot, nice ego items and lots of XP that went my way.

EDIT : completed the Tidal Cave (in the water area south of Mirovant) dungeon, interestingly it has only 7 floors (from level20 to 27) though it's mostly water (no idea if in that game water influence anything)

The boss in the bottom floor for my character was Grendel , he had an army of various types of Ogres around him.
Only managed to defeat the whole group with some stairs dancing tactics (as the zone was way too open to avoid being completely surrounded and so dead fast) , for Grendel it was harder as on 1vs1 despite activating my berserk amulet he was hurting me faster than i was hurting him.

But thanks to carrying a nice wand of confusion around, i took the advantage and filled him with bolts and finished him with my nice Tulwar of Westernesse.

So always make sure to carry those utility wands/rods (as they refill with time) , it really helps when they work (as some monsters have some immunity or resistances)

[wobbly]

Is there some wiki for Composband out there? The help text is not terribly helpful.

Unfortunately not, and yeah for the most part the help files are still the old help files from an older variant. One thing you can do is lurk angband.live (even if playing offline) where there's usually someone familiar with the game online. Otherwise its just a case of trial & error till you get used to the game.

[Robsoie]

Shelob !
The damned thing had forced me to retreat from the Orc Cave a lot as i had attempted the kill many times.
But after more ginding completing the Tidal Cave, Icky Cave and Labyrinth minor dungeons (and a couple of more quests) i had better equipment and a couple more levels, with some luck as i managed to deal with her army of spiders and ticks easily with my crossbow so our battle would turn into nightmare.

She still hit like a supertank with the poison and hard cuts but i had managed to soften her from very far (as fortunately she never woke up so i could start shooting from the other side of the cave the thing spawned , and beyond view range so i could fill it with more bolts) and i finally managed to kill the damn thing while berserked/heroism-ed/boldness-ed/etc..-ed   (oh if you want to kill Shelob make sure you can survive long enough because teleporting to another room to rest is out of question as the beast has regeneration so getting away would leave you having to fight her full health again)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Massive disapointement after that epic battle : she dropped no ego item (and even less artifacts one), only crappy ones

edit : weapons "of Sharpness" can be scary when the rolls are in your favour

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Robsoie]

Something that composband does really very well is that it fixes what just put me away from vanilla angband : early dungeon crawling.

As i said before, even in the latest version i find vanilla angband dungeon to be very boring because it's extremely huge and nothing really interesting is in there.
vanilla angband for me start to become interesting +/- after i get over level 20 , because in floors i go at that kind of levels interesting stuff start to happen with enemies that become challenging instead of just being barely noticable when you move through them, and by then my character has now many options and floor exploring become more focused because i need to know when to pick my fights, when to retreat temporarly or urgently , there's more tension and so the game start to open in the actual fun.

But before reaching that point, it's just unfortunately a long boring time for me.

Composband avoid that by a simple but actually genius idea : until you reach the 30th floor of a dungeon, the floors generated are small.
And because they are small you spend a lot less time using the run button (shift+an arrow key direction) ,you have more chance to actually fight something instead of feeling you're just wasting time exploring giant corridors of nothing leading into nearly empty rooms.

And when you reach the 30th floor of a dungeon, it is additionally when you reach the point in which i previously mentionned that i only started to have fun in vanilla angband. And so the floors starting to get bigger does actually add to the tactics as there's more location to find stuff , more area to retreat/teleport away, more zones to get  in trouble etc...

Additionally there's a lot of variety in the dungeon , because you have actually multiple ones with their theme and own terrain that add the diversity you don't really find in vanilla angband.

So yeah, if you want to play angband, i strongly suggest composband (or frogcomposband if you want to have access of a ton more birth and game settings/options but less balance , here the FCPB dev describe the difference between his variant and composband ), it's really good.

[Il Palazzo]

What does reforging do?