Let's Play Angband!

Let's play Angband!

Hello and welcome to the first installment of Let's play Angband!. The game can be found at Angband's home site and is free.

First things first, Angband is a rogue-like game, which means permadeath and randomly created dungeon levels. That's the simple explanation, if you want to know more about them I would recommend this Community . The goal of the game is killing monsters, seeking gold and artifacts. All to kill Morgoth, the big bad from Middle Earth.

We join our intrepid adventurer shortly after character creation. Meet Lucas the Hobbit Rogue. He is geared and ready for his descent into the dungeon. Having some cash left over from a previous "burglary" he bought several rations, torches(no lanterns for sale), shield, cap, boots, and gloves. Rounding it out with the must haves for delving, potions of cure light wounds and scrolls of phase door. Here we go!

P.S. I actually run the game in the original Ascii graphics. I've been playing these games for close to 30 years, I prefer the old school style.

The first level of the dungeon is rather dull as usual. A few snakes here, a small kobold there, disarmed a confusion trap, and pack of jackals later and Lucas is already on his way, hitting 2nd level rather quickly. Will clear out this first level and delve down looking for Farmer Maggot's dogs very soon. Named elite monsters are just one of the obstacles on our way to kill Sauron and Morgoth.

Ran into Grip in the hallway outside the first room of level two. Had to drink a cure light potion, but the kill was quick.

Fang was right behind him in a room with spiders and several fellow adventurers. Kited him out into the hallway and killed without need of magical aid. Already at 4th level. Things are going well, knock on wood.

As you adventure your character will have certain feelings about different levels of the dungeon. The creepier the feeling, the nastier the dungeon will be. Usually it represents special rooms, named monsters, or a monster out of its depth, as in from the deeper levels. I think this version has an LF at the bottom left of the screen that tells what level this actually feels like.

Hit 5th level with the character within just a few minutes thanks to this feeling on level two. Now Lucas can learn his first spell, Detect Monsters. You should be using this spell whenever you have the spell points and new areas to explore. Doesn't sound like much but it is a very useful spell in this game. Have to take the gloves off the character so that spellcasting can be used.

Clearing the rest of the level is interesting. Filled with many other humans, like cutpurses, soldiers, scouts, acolytes, and apprentices. Soon I'm already at 6th level. Tempted to just go back up into town and save my scroll Word of Recall.

This scroll when read will whisk you back up to the town from your current depth, although it takes several rounds of charging before the effect takes place. When you read another of these scrolls in the town it will whisk you back to your location. I'm sure you've seen these kinds of effects in other games(Diablo etc).

Lucas is a miser and wants to save his money so we will quickly climb back out to identify a magical dagger found on the ground of the second level.

Well that's what I get for not checking birth options at the beginning of character creation. This delve has the larger gold drops on and the selling to merchants off. This along with no Identify scrolls available, leads me to just wield the magical dagger and get ready for the next delve.