Quote:
Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc
I've been reading about your experiences for a while, Hui, and found them very entertaining. Now I tried the game for myself, and I can see where the appeal comes from. It's like old-fashioned Diablo (the first one), except in the coat of something still a decade deeper into the past. But I like it! It's well-built. It has probably as much to do with the "real" Angband as... as many other "adaptations" of Tolkien may, but hey. It is at least not pretending.
Certainly whoever has made it must have put quite some effort into it. And I very much enjoy the "classic" RPG element with the classes, races and rolling.
My High Elven Ranger didn't get very far yet and to be honest, I am not sure that I am going to continue, but hey, never say never. It was in any case interesting to try, so thanks for bringing this to our attention.
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Yeah, it's very much a 'Tolkien + fantasy' game. A lot of the 'fantasy' is actually made up for the game (or rather for 1983's
Moria, on which it was based): early-game monsters the Yeeks exist solely because it let them use the letter
y. But the artefacts, and
most of the unique monsters, are heavily Tolkien-y.
Even with that, it's an unholy mashup of the Ages of Middle-earth: Lupa I killed Golfimbul (who famously fought Bullroarer Took) and Mim (betrayer of Turin) one level apart, then popped back to town to take out Farmer Maggot. But there's something utterly delightful about rampaging through the dungeon dressed as a Rider of Rohan, wielding Aule's own hammer to smash Orcs to bits by the light of the Phial of Galadriel. (The title screen quotes the Second Prophecy of Mandos, so maybe we're supposed to imagine that like Turin, all these villains and monsters have come back from the dead to serve Morgoth in the Dagor Dagorath?)
One thing it
does get right is that invading the base of an incarnate evil demigod would be brutally hard. Case in point:
Lupa I - Kobold Ranger - RIP
Lupa made it down to dungeon level 46, and seemed to be in good shape. She had a nice longbow, a variety of arrows (she'd just picked up some Arrows of Wounding, which sounds good), and was still throwing her trio of elemental artefact daggers at anything which needed a faceful of fire/ice/lightning. She had native speed of +3, and had learned the spell of Haste Self, which let her get up to +13. Combined with an auto-recharging rod of Slow Monster, she could at least match the speed of pretty much anything in the dungeon.
She ran into trouble clearing out a strange room filled with lava pits. She actually got through the room all right, but had to teleport a bunch of high-level monsters across the dungeon to do it. When she went to explore the rest of the level - it said there was good treasure there, and the lava vault hadn't really delivered - she avoided the Balrog of Moria, but ran into a tag-team of Harowen the Black Hand (a unique thief) and a Death Drake.
Yes, the same kind of Death Drake that killed Celebestel II out of nowhere. This time she could see it coming, so of course she made herself scarce, right?
Ummm... well, it bit her and only did 20 damage or so, out of her 350. Harowen tried to pick her pocket and teleported away, so it was only the two of them. So sure, let's try this!
> You smite the death drake.
> The death drake breathes nether.
> You die.
Death Drakes: not to be messed with. Sorry, Lupa; at least you're my second-ranking adventurer to date.
Meanwhile... listening to the tales of the fallen Lupa I is someone with a solid grudge against Morgoth, a vested interest in getting into - and out of - Angband, and no particular qualms about how to do it. She's been digging through some old books, and sure, there's pretty dire warnings attached to some of this stuff - but that just means it's effective, right? And in order to get her husband back, there is nothing,
nothing she won't do.
It's time to fight fire with fire.
Morwen I - (Dun)adan Necromancer
>You case Nether Bolt.
>The pitiful-looking beggar dies.
hS