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Angband is rogue-based rpg, similar somewhat to Dungeons and Dragons. It's loosely based on the mythology from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit/The Silmarilian.
More on what Angband is at http://www.thangorodrim.net/ and http://angband.oook.cz.
I finally beat the game, by killing Sauron and Morgoth.
My character dump is here.
I've been playing Angband on and off for years now, longer than I've been playing Starcraft. I've never before come close to winning, let alone actually winning.
In Angband, as you go down into the dungeon, the monsters around you get much, much stronger. How strong you are is based on your level, your stats (which can be increased, but max out at a point), and your equipment (armour/weapon/consumables like potions of healing and scrolls of teleportation). Everything is based on randomly generated stuff, in randomly generated dungeon levels. You may be overpowered vs the monsters at 500 feet deep, and have no chance against the average monsters at 1000'. After a certain point, there are many monsters who under certain common circumstances, can kill you instantly.
Therein lies in how angband is hard. It can take a long time to dive into the dungeon, collecting awesome weapons, armour, getting a nice cache of support items and consumables, killing unique monsters (like Saruman, Smaug the Golden, Smeagol), finding artifacts (like the phial of Galadriel), leveling up (to a max of 50), maxing out your base stats (to 18/100), and you can die in a very short time. When you die, you're really dead. Your character is just, gone. You have to start all over from the very beginning, with completely newly generated dungeons, where you'll find different monsters and items at different times. The only thing your character passes on to your new character is its monster memory, the stuff you find out about monsters (e.g. Sauron resists all elements except acid, a vulnerability you can exploit) as you fight them. Now, combine a long game, largely based in luck and chance, throw in monsters who can be a challenge even after you've beaten Morgoth and the game, and plenty of ways to die instantly, and you have a very hard game.
A few classic ways to die:
(upon generating your new character) The Battle-Scarred Veteran hits you! You die.
(upon entering a new dungeon level and taking a single step) The drolem (offscreen) breathes poison! -more- You die.
(battling a unique dragon, he's at full hp) Kavlax the Many-Headed breathes gravity! You feel gravity warp around you! -more- You die. (atleast you can get resistance vs poison, vs gravity, you cannot; breath-based attacks are based on hp: more/fuller hp, more damage)
I love the game, I encourage everyone who has the time to play it, but it's really hard.
 
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Baa?21244 Posts
Grats haha.
I played a bunch of ToME on and off. Hard work is hard.
Now go beat Nethack 
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How long does it take to play it through once, then?
It sounds like you can't save...
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I played a lot of nethack back in 2001-2002 and never got close to ascending. Those old roguelikes are so hard. 
PH: You can save if you want to continue playing later, but your saves are deleted when you die. If you're playing on your local machine, it's easy to cheat, of course.
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Calgary25991 Posts
I'm not going to lie, this game sounds terrible. I love DnD style RPGs, but you description gives me no desire to play...
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Sweden33719 Posts
On September 11 2009 07:24 PH wrote:
How long does it take to play it through once, then?
It sounds like you can't save...
You can save, and continue playing later, but if you die, you are - well - dead.
I haven't played Angband but I used to play ADOM like 8-10 years ago
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Norway28731 Posts
lol I remember I tried to play angband like many years ago but I think I never got to more than level 5
you are officially the most dedicated poster on these forums
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Lol @ the fluff.
Killing Huan wtf ???
Smeagol after Smaug ?
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I played Mangband (MultiplayerAngband) a bit with my friends, but never Angband.
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On September 11 2009 07:32 Chill wrote:
I'm not going to lie, this game sounds terrible. I love DnD style RPGs, but you description gives me no desire to play...
lol I see what you mean. It's about, going through the dungeons, having epic battles with armies of orcs and trolls, fighting fun uniques (ring wraiths, smaug, guys you can recognize from the books), clearing out vaults and seeing what loot you nabbed. It's about, finding an artifact and going fuck yeah! Finding out the artifact is actually decent, awesome! Seeing that the artifact would fill some hole in your character (giving some resistance you don't have, or an immunity), and then even that you can use the artifact and replace some preexisting equipment without fucking up your character more, holy shit!
It's about, getting your ass handed to you by some monster or unique but getting out alive, finding some awesome weapon or piece of armour, finding that monster/unique again and raping him. It's like Dragon Ball Z where they find some opponent who pwns them, then they train up or magically become stronger and then crush them, then their opponent starts trying too, or gets even stronger, and they barely win with the skin on their teeth etc, same kind of stuff here.
It's just, you die a lot too.
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jeez
tbh this sounds like playing i-wanna-be-the-guy on impossible difficulty. for years. i won't be trying it i congratulate you on your dedication though ^_^
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United States47024 Posts
Wow, congrats.
I've played both Incursion and ADoM for a while, and briefly touched on Angband and ToME, but to actually finish a roguelike takes quite some dedication and luck.
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Congrats. Though you never told me you were playing this game.
Oh wait. ;p
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After I beat nethack two or three times I realized that I had spent the past month obsessing over the game
will not get absorbed into another game like this ever again ><
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Do you guys play Linley's Dungeon Crawl / Stone Soup?
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Nethack, Angband, all the roguelikes are the basis for every dungeoncrawler type rpg ever. And even moreso for the concept of MMOs. Endless grinding for equipment to become more powerful than the most powerful god in the Tolkien lore describes the endgame for Angband. The difference is, if you die, your character erases it's savefile and only outputs the dump. So yeah, anyone beating Angband earns my respect.
I've played something like 40 or 50 variants of roguelikes, started with moria when I was 6. I've never, ever beaten any of them without doing something like save scumming, never even gotten close. ToME and Steamband were probably my favorites. (With scumming I've beaten ToME multiple times with weird things like spectre thaumaturgists, but that's not really an accomplishment).
Diablo is just a nethack rip-off, pure and simple. Nethack is much more... I'm not sure what, but I prefer Nethack to diablo for it's aesthetic feel, but Diablo is what I've actually put more time in. Essentially, within nethack you're capable of performing any action you wish, and dying from some hundreds of thousands of ways (I think the least likely death as of recently was like... juggling a cocatrice corpse while moving down stairs , then tripping and falling down the stairs to have it hit you on the head and turn you to stone). You'll also starve to death tons.
The main distinction between these games and a normal rpg is the endless randomness. Every dungeon is always randomly generated, so is most loot, and there is only a very small collection of artifacts that are always the same (128 max). The town you start in and it's contents vary as well, as for how much shopkeepers will buy and how much they'll sell back, etc. In essence, every time you start a new character, you play a different game.
edit: And yeah, it's probably the most easily and obscurely obsessible about genre of games ever. (Like, if you get addicted to WoW, no one bats an eye. If you get addicted to killing the alphabet, people start asking you who your dealer is. I despise the letter Z after playing these games. No one will ever know what I mean if they haven't encountered zephyr hounds that endlessly whirlpool your character to stun them and prevent them from moving because they move too slowly).
edit: Oh wow kobold warrior? that's crazy.
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Oh my fucking god. I was just gonna make a thread on Angband/Moria/Nethack etc
I absolutely love these games. Countless feverish hours have passed in seconds trying to beat the first 10 levels of Nethack and shoplifting stuff with your pet and stuff. I don't play them anymore but I've played them alot when I was younger.
Graphics definately isn't the important thing in these games, but atmosphere and gameplay. For a RPG-nerd Angband is awesome. I have never come close to beating the game though
Definately one of the most complex games ever
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Good work. 
I know these games are very hard.
I've played a lot of Nethack a few years ago and ascended 8 times, the latest as a Tourist. But how many tries did it take for me to "get" the game and know what to do in each situation? I don't want to remember. 
What's great about Nethack (and probably most other roguelikes) is that they're a) much more hardcore than commercial games can ever be (best example: you die and it's instant game over), and b) they are often very complex. Because the programmers can concentrate on gameplay only instead of art, these games are very deep. The amount of stuff you can do (and have to watch out for) in Nethack is unbelievable.
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Hah, I played Angband some years ago, but never came even close to having a decent character, I would just get trough first like 10 levels and then get killed. xD
Very hard. Congrats on beating it, that's harder than beating a progamer in starcraft.
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EPT
