PosChengband Crash Course Guide

This is meant to be a basic guide to help you get to the end-game that's light on the reading and also as a replacement to the Short Walkthrough in the old pasta.

Current to Poschengband v4.0.2

Contents: (Ctrl+f ?[letter] to jump to the section)
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a Starting Tips
b Walkthrough
c What do I do at level 30+?
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?a Starting Tips:
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-It's best to pick a race/class that looks fun to you on your first time. Even if they end up sucking, it's better than picking an 'optimal' class. That said, the race list in the main pasta gives some solid options for strong starters.
-Read the in-game help files at ?, they are really fleshed out and have a lot of good things there. ?k shows control schemes, ?c has information on all the character creation stuff, and ?ab replaces this guide!
-The gold you start off with is best used to buy a few healing items and replace your torches with a lantern. If you are doing the thieves' quest first, try to spend as much gold as possible and buy some armor/extra food- it will all get stolen anyway.
-I strongly recommend going to your gameplay options (=4) and turning on "Always create unusually small levels" for the early game. This can be dangerous when too many threats stack up (so turn it off once you're done Orc/Icky/Lab/Forest), but you can always reset those levels early on. This makes the early game a LOT quicker so you can get to the fun part.
-Buildings in town are represented by (0-9) and coloured "+"s. This guide will call buildings by the # often.
-You can identify stacks of scrolls/potions by selling one of the stack to the shop. You will also identify the item by buying a copy from a store.
-You gain XP for each HIT on an enemy, and bonus XP for the killing blow. You can level up by plinking at tough things and running away. Just don't get one-shotted by their breath weapon.
-Buy a staff of perception when you can (at 6). Stockpile ?Phase Door unless you can cast it, since shops only stock these inconsistently and you will be using them a lot.
-Do not melee jellies (j) early on if you are a weak character. They are slow to notice you and often you can kill them before they do anything, but when they do hit you they have a variety of very harmful effects that will fuck your shit up.
-Buying Identify scrolls is often cheaper than using the town service, unless either: you have very low charisma and are of a race with a bad shop modifier, in which case the mayor or library may be cheaper, or you have more than 10 unid'd items with you, in which case mass IDing at the thieves' guild (Purple +) may be slightly more efficient
-"F"uel your lantern regularly with flasks of oil. You can also use F to merge torches together.
-If your attributes are damaged (yellow colour), you can restore them with !Restore [STAT], Mushrooms of Restoring, or by paying 1000 gold at the Inner Temple (l.green +) in cities other than Outpost an Zul.
-Artefacts and Ego items will only have their abilities fully revealed to you when *Identify*'d. This service is best found from the Library(bottom-most brown + in a triangular building) in Morivant. Telmora and Angwil also have this service. The new easy_ID birth option removes the difference between *ID* and ID- highly recommended.
-Don't adventure in the overworld or wilderness at night! Go to an Inn and hit "r" to pay a measly sum and set the time to 0600h.
-Wanted Corpses can be returned to the Hunter's Office at the north-west side of Outpost for bonus items and fame. Do this.
-Always ALWAYS ALWAYS carry teleport scrolls/staff of teleport at all times. Carry a lot and teleport out if it gets nasty. This is especially true in the wilderness where the threat level is highly variable and ambushes are very deadly early on.
-Sleeping in the Inn will recharge your devices, but not the charge of "A"ctivated worn items.

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?b Early-Midgame Walkthrough
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You begin in Outpost, which notably is right beside the Stronghold dungeon and contains the Hunter's Office (teal +). The brown + at the top of the map is the mayor's house. The mayor can identify items for you (it's overpriced, just buy scrolls if you can) and gives you your first two quests.

Take the thieves' quest and buy some things. If you are a strong melee character like a Warrior or Hydra and the temple (4) has some healing potions or potions of heroism, buy those and head to the yellow > to the east of town. If you aren't a strong melee character, head to the purple > to the east. Buy healing potions from the temple and teleport scrolls from the alchemist (5) if you can. When you should do the thieves' quest varies between characters, but usually you can do this by the time you hit level 5 on all but the weakest characters.

Take the Warg quest after the thieves' quest and head down to Stronghold:5. The wargs are fast and fairly dangerous, so carry healing pots and don't get surrounded. Stairdance if you need to. You should be level 10 now.

After finishing the Warg quest, you can head down to the bottom of stronghold and take out the boss, or continue onwards to the Orc Cave. If you want to take on the boss, try to find something which lets you dig. He can spam summon many 'p' monsters, which are capable of laying into you with confuse, slow, and blind as well as some other nasty effects. As long as you have !speed and decent damage, he's a push over one-on-one though.

At this point you will probably take your first steps outside the town proper. ("<" to enter the overworld when in a town/outdoor area) The Orc Caves or swamps should be your next target. Buy up 10 or 15 rations (more if you have Regeneration) and head to the Orc Caves. Enter and leave, then head to Morivant.

If you have a ranged attack, and a stock of ?Teleport, !CCW/!CSW, you can head just to the east of Morivant into the swamps(the light blue . tiles that say "swamp" when "l"ooking at or e"x"amining them, NOT the ~ tiles) and kill or wound hound packs, hydras, and ogres until you hit 15-20. Each time you hit enemies you gain some experience, so you don't need to kill enemies and probably shouldn't risk it anyway. Teleport away from anything dangerous or anytime you get low on HP.

If you are a melee dude or you have finished leveling in the swamps, you can now recall to the Orc Caves and mostly safely dive levels and kill Azog. He can have a pretty sizeable posse, so watch out. Quaff !Speed for the fight and he shouldn't be too tough on his own though.

Here, I suggest tagging the entrance to Angband, then heading north to Angwil, then South to Telmora. You now have all the teleport-ready towns unlocked and can fast travel to them from their respective Inns. Do Angband up to Depth 12 for the first two "random" quests (Angband 24 can have some serious shit there and failing quests is bad). Now do the Orc Camp in Angwil, then Doom Quest I if you have some fire resist and See Invisible. Do Sewers in Telmora if you have somewhat decent stealth or a couple Rods of Pesticide.

The labyrinth should be a piece of cake now. The Minotaur is easier than Azog and drops a Rod of Recall, bring door/stair detection, stone to mud/a digger and dive every level unless you see something you want to kill. Remember that reading ?Light or zapping Illumination once will light up the entire level, this wakes up monsters, but is very useful for navigation and ranged attacking.

You should now be able to dive down into the Icky Caves and kill the boss. Make sure you have acid resist (double acid resist for the boss) of Icky Caves. Ubbo is weak to fire and only melee, so use a couple wands of Firebolt and Phase Door scrolls for a relatively easy kill. If you see "Spawn of Ubbo-Sathla", recall and reset the level; these guys are really dangerous breeders.

Camelot is quite a bit tougher, but with >100 AC and a wand of teleport other, most characters can do it; just remember your anti-summoning corridors and that many knights will follow you when you teleport. Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Mordred, and Morgana Le Fay are all more dangerous than the dungeon boss, so watch out for those.
As always, !Speed for bosses.

Forest is really easy for a stat-up and tends to spawn a disproportionate amount of Hounds. Make sure you resist darkness and blindness for Shelob and she's a piece of cake. If you don't have darkness resistance she will 1-2 shot you.

After this, you can probably do all of the Level 30 and under quests. Don't do Vapor Quest unless you resist Nexus, Poison, Chaos and See Invisible; don't do Logrus Master unless you resist chaos and fire (double resist to be sure) or do a lot of damage quickly and can hit him first (i.e. you are stealthy). Anyone who can use a weapon can make use of Sting at this point: so the Vault quest, while somewhat dangerous, is well worth it. The Arena in Telmora is very profitable, and you can probably do everything up to the Ogre Shaman fairly easily now. The Biclops can be quite dangerous without high HP and shards resistance though, so watch out. Remember that you can research monsters for a fee and make sure to bring the correct resistances (this is ludicrously priced in Telmora until you've finished the Barrow quest, so research them in Morivant or Angwil instead- or use spoilers).

From here, a lot of possibilities open up. Below, I'll present some courses of further adventuring to you, and it's going to get very out of depth, very hard, and very fun from here on out.

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?c What do I do at level 30+?
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All the quests after Vault are very hard for their level, though Barrows is fairly easy with a source of reflection and nether resistance. You have quite a few options from here on out:
*Make SURE to turn off "always generate unusually small levels" after you complete the above sections, unless you are crazy, in which case why are you reading this?*

*High stealth character will often head straight to the Dragon's Lair to take on solo Ancient Dragons and other isolated loot pinatas. This is very fast leveling for most characters that can do it, just avoid Great Wyrms and Ancient Gold/Multihued Dragons unless you have loads of resistance. Dracolisks and Dracoliches are off limits too.

*Ranged characters or mages can pretty handily run through the antimelee caves. Some enemies with no ranged capabilities spawn here too for added fun. Just watch out for nasty uniques and breathers, as always. Melee characters and archers have a similar option of taking on the antimagic caves. Yes, archers can do both!

*With a source of levitation, you can head to Lonely Mountain, Giant's Hall, or the mountains around Dragon's Lair/Zul to take on Dragons and level up very quickly. The last of these three options will destroy most of your loot (it can't get placed on "mountain chain" tiles). Do NOT take on Utgard-Loke, the boss of the Giant's Hall, until you are confident taking on a Greater Titan handily. He hits like a fucking truck through double resists as well as summoning his own trucks to truck you up with. Smaug is substantially easier and is guaranteed to drop your 3rd book for your first realm if you are a spellcaster. Just slap on that fire resist and bring a Healing pot or two.

You should be around level 32 or so now, at which point you can take on Angband 24 and 38 relatively safely. You can also probably go deeper into the arena. Good stopping points (by which I mean, don't fight these guys unless you have experienced them or something similar outside the arena and pounded it into the dust without consumables/activatables) are Barney -basically a Gachapin duplicate, Iron Lich, and everything after that; all the fights starting with Iron Lich can be very difficult, so make sure to research and gear for each monster and be sure you can beat them without using items after this point. Here are a few options of what to do from here:

*Arena (the dungeon) gives you shitloads upon shitloads of XP and loot. It's a roguelike wet dream where you can always engage exactly what you want, exactly when you want, for exactly how long you want. Some of the uniques that spawn on the first level are plenty dangerous like Santa, Charon, Itangast, and Yibb-Tsttl. Don't melee Death Molds and Lesser Black Reavers unless you want your shit disenchanted. Greater Titans and Elder Fire Giants are other baddies to watch out for. Once you can safely dispatch every threat on each level, take a few steps down.

*Going down into the deeper levels of Castle, Angband, Graveyard, and hitting up Dragon's Lair if you haven't already are other solid options, though not quite as safe or quick.

*You can also head to the Cave of Magical Darkness, Volcano or Numenor, though this can be pretty tough at times and I'd recommend doing the above first. Dip your feet in though and see how it hurts you.

Once you hit 50 and have a pip in each resistance, wands of rockets/rods of mana balls, and a shitload of healing stuff, you can start taking on the endgame dungeon bosses- for which having their relevant resistances (which is in some cases every resist) is fine- and diving Angband. Most people can't fight the boss of the Arena though, because he is a load of bullshit. I figure if you've gotten to this point you know how to estimate the strengths of your character fairly well. Use your endgame consumables well and often and finally, good luck!

If you want to see a guide on taking down the final bosses of the game, check the last section of the main pasta.