History VideoGame / Angband

* PoisonMushroom: There are a few potions which inflict debilitating effects, such as Slowness, Sleeping, and Poison. One of the worse ones is the Potion of Salt Water, which makes you sick and dangerously hungry. These potions can at least be thrown at enemies to hurt them.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: "Evil" is an inherent quality of some enemies, and is always highlighted in their description. There are many in-game effects that act upon evil enemies: the Detect Evil spell senses them, and some weapon brands cause extra damage to them. It's also possible to gain protection from evil, which repels their attacks.
* {{Animorphism}}: Some player classes can learn transformation spells which allow them to adopt animal forms, such as bats or foxes. This gives you benefits such as increased speed or heightened senses, but you can't use items.

** Several of the named weapons are this. Mostly because they are too slow. Even a suped-up orc slaying sword like Orcrist does less damage to an orc compared to a vanilla +10 Main Gauche that gets three attacks a round.
** At early levels, Wands of Wonder can throw out far more lethal spells than you would normally have access to but since the effects are entirely random and can include hasting and healing the monster, they are more trouble than they are worth unless you are desperate.

* {{BFS}}: Weapon weights are ''far'' higher than real life equivalents. This is due to the way the game handles melee attacks per round - the number of attacks is based on the characters class, strength and dexterity but the deciding factor is the weight of the weapon. This means that, especially early on, the best weapons for even strong and fast warriors to use are counter-intuitively lightweight daggers and whips as they get more attacks and more potential damage per round than with a big heavy sword. In order to keep this formula intact, weapons with higher damage per blow have to be inordinately heavy to avoid breaking the game. Fixing this issue would require a complete rebalancing and recalculation of the combat system so it's been basically unchanged for many iterations of the vanilla game, though some variants have tried to do so.

** Rods/Wands of Light in general, which light up a long line of tiles. If you rely on any kind of ranged attack, you'll need to spot monsters from as far away as possible, and these babies really shine in long corridors. You'd also be surprised by how many enemies are vulnerable to light in the early game.
** Teleport away. You don't have to kill absolutely everything. It's far safer to punt a dangerous monster to the other side of the map and loot the treasure behind it than to try and fight.

** Teleport Scrolls will move you a good distance away and are essential for a sudden escape.

** It's highly recommended to carry some kind of missile weapon as there are lots of enemies (such as jellies and molds) that you don't want to fight in melee as they have nasty debuffs, can wreck your equipment or both. Even casters should do so as some enemies can drain mana, resist a lot of attack spells or regenerate hit points faster than casters can regenerate mana points. You can also still fire missiles when frightened (albeit at a penalty) when melee attacks are impossible.

** Many enemies have these - most notably dragons, but some lesser enemies like giant salamanders have them too. ''Angband'' can get quite abstract about what constitutes a breath weapon - there are monsters that can breathe darkness, or light, and there's even an enemy that breathes ''time''.

* CharacterClassSystem: The vanilla game has eight classes but variants can go berserk with this with loads of different classes and multiple backgrounds.
* CharacterLevel: Each time they level up, each class gains hit points (and mana points if not a warrior) and gets better at various skills. Some special abilities such as the warriors fear immunity and rangers extra shooting speed are also dependent on reaching certain levels.

* CloakOfDefense: There is a cloak with an unnaturally high enchantment and immunity to elemental-based attacks. It is also made of an exceptionally thick and durable material, which protects the wearer from blasts of crystal shards.

* ContinuityCameo: Almost every unique enemy in the game is a character from Tolkien's works - including many minor characters that most people won't even have heard of unless they're very familiar with the books.

* CycleOfHurting: If you've fallen victim to an enemy with a debilitating status effect (confusion, poison, etc) and you can't kill it, this is probably how you'll die - being slowly picked to death and unable to recover.

** Also the cornerstone of the player's melee damage, since bigger damage numbers typically result in less damage-per-turn compared to getting multiple blows with a weaker weapon. Right from the start of the game, 3 blows/round with a 1d4 dagger will vastly outdamage any heavier weapon that only strikes once.

* DisabilityImmunity: Warriors have this in some ways. Unlike every other class, they cannot use magic and have no mana. This means they can't cast spells by themselves and have to rely on magic devices if they want to use any magic. However, they are immune to mana-draining as a result, and also aren't bothered much by blindness; a blind warrior can still swing a weapon in front of them (which, since they're a warrior, will hit with a lot of damage), whereas a blinded mage cannot read their spell book and is therefore completely cut off from their primary source of defense.
* DiminishingReturnsForBalance: As a weapon or armour pieces plusses increase, the chances of Enchant scrolls and spells working on them decreases. Essentially this means they top out around +15 on any plus - you can't keep enchanting your sword until it gets +100 to hit and +100 to damage. This is to stop high level priests with the right spell book from destroying the game as they can cast these spells over and over again.
* DisadvantageousDisintegration: Scrolls, potions, and rings can be destroyed by certain elemental attacks, which is a problem when you're fighting groups of enemies - you may have to hold back your more powerful area-of-effect attacks to avoid destroying the loot that you're fighting for.
* DiscOneNuke: Finding a Potion of Experience early in the game - as they are not scaled instead giving a huge flat gain, finding one early can advance you twenty levels making the early game much more trivial. Somewhat downplayed as you will be less powerful than an "organic" character of that level as you won't have found level appropriate equipment and items and won't have found the stat gain potions to match limiting your power until you do.
* {{Doorstopper}}: Spell books are ''heavy'' meaning, counter-intuitively, that pure casters should, after maxing their primary casting stat, put as many points into strength as possible to avoid speed penalties from lugging all their spell books around.

** Fighters: Intelligence and Wisdom - as they'll never cast cast spells they don't have to worry about mana points and the saving throw bonus for Wisdom is anaemic unless the stat is very high.
** Mages and Necromancers: Wisdom and Dexterity. These classes use Intelligence for mana points, Wisdom has the same irrelevance as previously noted for Fighters and Dexterity is only useful for fighting, shooting and a minor armour class bonus, none of which are important for full casters.
** Druids and Priests: Intelligence and Dexterity. As full casters relying on Wisdom, Intelligence is irrelevant and Dexterity is not important for full casters.
** Paladins and Rangers: Intelligence only. They need all other stats to fight and/or shoot and cast their spells.

* ElementalEmbodiment: Various elementals can be met throughout the game, mostly sticking to the classical elements, but occasionally venturing into more abstract territory (eg. smoke elemental, ooze elemental).
* ElementalPowers: some enemies have them, or have resistances to certain elements. Players have to rely on magic devices, rare branded equipment and high-level spells if they want to do much elemental magic.

* EnergyAbsorption: Silver mice have a light-draining bite, which exhausts your light source. Some enemies can also drain and feed on your mana.

* ExperiencePoints: Earned for killing monsters, pickling locks, disarming traps and for casters, the first time they successfully cast a particular spell. The current iteration of the game doesn't discriminate between classes, they all require the same (race based) amount of experience to level up.

* ExplosiveBreeder: Some creatures have the "breeds explosively" attribute, meaning they can spawn copies of themselves. The most notorious class would be lice, which are faster than normal and moves erratically in order to maximize the number of offspring. Self-replication is something fairly unique to the ''Angband'' roguelike family, and can get away with it because of its non-persistent dungeons (in other roguelikes, they would clog up the level permanently, which could unbalance the game). Characters with only single target attacks, especially melee only ones, should kill them as soon as possible to avoid potentially either having to flee the level or worse getting trapped and suffering a DeathOfAThousandCuts. Some variants of Angband put an upper limit on explosive breeding (such as a maximum of 10 generations), but can still fill up a large rooms.
* FantasticLightSource: Light is very important in ''Angband'' - the dungeon is largely pitch black, and you need light to be able to see where you're going, what's around you, and to read scrolls and spellbooks. For this reason, it's vital to carry a light source with you at all times. There are a few mundane sources of light available (torches and lanterns), but also several magical ones. The most common are enchanted torches, which might be magically brightened, or even everlasting. There are also a few magical artifacts which produce light, all from Tolkien's works: the Phial of Galadriel, the Star of Elendil, and the Arkenstone of Thráin. The current iteration doubles down on this by making one square radius light torches the only purchasable light sources - this can mean characters without infravision can stumble right into very dangerous stationary enemies such as jellies and molds before they see them.

* GemstoneAssault: one of the game's elements is 'shard', which means pieces of crystal/rock. Some enemies (eg. earth hounds) can breathe it at you to inflict lacerations, or are composed of it.

* InventoryManagementPuzzle: You can only carry a certain number of different items and while most items will stack, they have to be exactly the same (you can't stack partially used and full torches together for example). Carrying too much weight will also, depending on your strength, slow you down and make you vulnerable. It's generally recommended to return and sell stuff (if the option is available), stash spare equipment and consumables in your house or outright discard less useful items if your speed drops into negative numbers as this means monsters can get multiple turns against you which can be very dangerous. It is possible to increase the number of inventory slots by editing a text file, but this doesn't help with the weight issue and can cause problems with the inventory handling interface and display. Setting it ''too'' high will cause the game to crash if you pick up too many different things.
* InvisibleMonsters: Invisibility is an innate property of some enemies, usually ghosts and spirits. If you have no way to sense them, the only way to know they're there is when they attack you, at which point your best bet is to strike blindly and hope to get a lucky hit. The game provides several methods of detecting invisible enemies, the most common of which is the Scroll of Detect Invisible. If they're warm-blooded, it's also possible to sense their body heat via infravision, even if you can't see them.
* KnowWhenToFoldEm: Retreating is a vital skill. The only thing you have to do in the game is defeat [[FinalBoss Sauron]] and [[TrueFinalBoss Morgoth]] -- everything else is just getting powerful enough to do that. If a situation is going to cost you more than you gain, the most profitable move is to just get out of there -- there's infinite more dungeon to find a better exchange in.
* LevelOfTediousEnemies: Monster pit room types, which are single closed rooms filled with monsters of a given type. Most often, these serve as a stream of opponents that try attacking the player, often with good item drops. Some of them are more tedious, such as the jelly next that is a disorganized placement of jellies and mushrooms (a monster type known for being dangerous stat drainers or status effects despite being immobile, and one of which can shriek to alarm enemies and haste nearby ones). The tedium can get dangerous at deeper depths, because some of the opponents can teleport from the pit, or summon additional creatures.

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Averted. While Warriors rely on magic devices (with their limited charges and failure rates) for things magic-using classes can do intrinsically, their durability and damage output are second-to-none. The lack of utility is is quite neatly evened out by the ability to shrug off damage that would kill a SquishyWizard and kill the source that much quicker.

* MassiveRaceSelection: Angband itself only has eight races, but variants tend to go crazy with this. ''VideoGame/ZAngband'' has one of the most extensive selections. The ''VideoGame/ZAngband'' variant ''Entroband'' has thirty-seven races and twenty-seven classes. Averted by a newer variant ''Sil'', in which you can only choose Noldor (High Elves), Sindar (Grey Elves), Naugrim (Dwarf) or Edain (Human).
* MegaDungeon: The game measures its dungeon depth by feet underground, not numbered levels, with players traversing randomly generated levels of the fortress Angband to destroy Morgoth. Angband extends infinitely down, but Morgoth is generally found about a mile straight down.

** Gold is useful throughout most of the game for buying equipment and consumables. Having said that, in the default game the shops will never carry the best equipment and consumables (aside from the Black Market, which charges three times the normal cost of everything), you'll need to find these in the dungeon so eventually money becomes essentially useless unless something useful shows up randomly in the Black Market.

* MoneySpider: Generally averted. Mostly only monsters that are likely to carry money (i.e. humanoids) will drop it, however there are some anomalies. Some of the "slime" type enemies do so, as do Nagas (essentially human headed snakes) and intelligent reptilian enemies such as Dragons and Hydras somehow drop loads of items and/or money when they die. Bizarrely non-corporeal undead such as Wraiths also carry stuff!
* MonstersEverywhere: Every level has some monsters and levels can sometimes contain special rooms or 'vaults' literally full of monsters, often higher level than would normally be found on the level you're on.

* OneStatToRuleThemAll: Speed. High levels of speed mean you can act two or three times for every time a standard speed monster can. It's pretty much a requirement to have at least +30 speed when fighting the FinalBoss Morgoth so you can match him in speed so he doesn't get two consecutive turns to act against you which can be fatal.
** Secondarily, after your primary stat it's ''strength'', even if you are a Mage or Priest. The reason is that you have to carry a lot of gear to survive and strength affects your carrying capacity. If you are overloaded you start taking hits to your speed which can be fatal. Spellbooks are ''heavy'' so perversely after maxing your intelligence or wisdom you should dump the rest of your points into strength!

* RandomlyGeneratedLoot: The game uses this method for ego items and random artifacts. One starts with a basic item, like a Hard Studded Leather [7,+0]. With a numeric bonus, that might be a Hard Studded Leather [7,+3]. If it gets an ego, it might be an Elven Hard Studded Leather (increases stealth, detects orcs), a Hard Studded Leather of Resist Fire (reduces fire damage), or with two egos, an Elven Hard Studded Leather of Resist Fire! If it becomes a random artifact (or randart), it receives a unique name, like the Elven Hard Studded Leather of Felorith, and some random powers. Because this is ''Angband'', most ego items and randarts look like average junk until the player identifies or psuedo-identifies the items.

* StatSticks: Defender weapons. Also artifact bows and other missile launchers for classes who generally use spells or magic items for long range fighting. Mages will often choose melee weapons that boost their speed and spellcasting stats over actual combat effectiveness as they rarely engage in melee.
* SuperiorSpecies: High elves are the best or near best choice just about every class except priests (where Dunedain are top) due to their good stat bonuses (except wisdom), ability to see invisible (very useful at low levels and saves you finding an item with this and using up an equipment slot for it) and light resistance (which is one less resistance you have to find an item for and use an equipment slot for). They also have decent infravision and good starting skills. This is countered by them requiring more experience points to advance than any other race.

* TaughtByExperience: One way of identifying items has always been to just use them and see what happens. For equipment in particular, anything more than basic combat bonuses requires the effect to be triggered (i.e. being hit by an acid attack to learn your shield resist acid). With the addition of rune-based identification, such properties will be known on sight for the rest of the character's life. By the endgame, an experienced adventurer will know all the myriad properties of a powerful artifact just by picking it up.

** The town level is full of beggars, harmless drunks, street urchins, and various mangy animals. They're generally no match for you whatsoever, even at your lowest level, so you can kill them with abandon (and they even sometimes drop money). Some of them are dangerous to low level characters - Mean Mercenaries are an even fight for a starting character and Battle Scarred Veterans remain dangerous for a few levels. Squint-eyed Rogues and Street Urchins can steal gold from you and should be avoided or killed at range and the Rogues have a damaging melee attack that can surprise an unwary player. Extremely incautious players can even find themselves being punched to death by an Aimless Merchant.

** It's doubly frustrating, as you are in a dungeon created by a rogue archangel as an impenetrable fortress. There is little better justification for it being a MobileMaze.

* WeakenedByTheLight: Light is one of the elements in ''Angband'''s elemental system, and some creatures are harmed by it. Many different magical items can produce bright light for this purpose.
** Some player classes are specifically adapted to the dark, and suffer penalties in light conditions. This makes it more beneficial for them to skulk in the shadows - or, with the right magic, to create their own darkness.

* PoisonMushroom: There are a few potions which inflict debilitating effects, such as Slowness, Sleeping, and Poison. One of the worse ones is the Potion of Salt Water, which make you sick and dangerously hungry. These potions can at least be thrown at enemies to hurt them.

* PoisonMushroom: Potions of Salt Water, which make you sick and dangerously hungry.

* InvisibleMonsters: Invisibility is an innate property of some enemies, usually ghosts and spirits. If you have no way to sense them, the only way to know they're there is when they attack you, at which point your best bet is to strike blindly and hope to get a lucky hit. The game provides several methods of detecting invisible enemies, the most common of which is the Scroll of Detect Invisible.

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: Retreating is a vital skill. The only thing you have to do in the game is defeat [[FinalBoss Sauron]] and [[TrueFinalBoss Morgoth]] (or their variant equivilents), everything else is just getting powerful enough to do that. If a situation is going to cost you more than you gain, the most profitable move is to just get out of there -- there's infinite more dungeon to find a better exchange in.

* MakeMeWannaShout: Gold dragons (and gold dragon flies) can "breathe sound", which stuns anyone hit by the blast. You can do this yourself if you find a set of gold dragon armour.

* '''legacy characters''' - your character is considered a descendant of other characters (played by you) that came before him or her. Any new information your character learns about the monsters of the dungeon will be passed to his or her descendants, so that they may be better prepared.

* DropTheHammer: Priests are mostly restricted to using bashing weapons[[note]]You ''can'' use edged weapons at a penalty, unless they are "blessed" in which case you can use them without restrictions[[/note]]. Also, Morgoth's hammer Grond, which shatters walls all around when swung.

* DestroyableItems: Angband doesn't guarantee the safety of your items at all[[note]] Artifacts are immune to most damage and certain items are to specific types[[/note]], and there are many enemies who have the means to damage your equipment and destroy your resources. Players can expect to replace and upgrade their resources fairly often as they progress into the dungeon. You can also destroy items ''yourself'' by accident, especially with area of effect attacks. This can force players into less safe ways of dealing with enemies if they don't want to do this.

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: A vital skill. The only thing you have to do in the game is defeat [[FinalBoss Sauron]] and [[TrueFinalBoss Morgoth]] (or their variant equivilents), everything else is just getting powerful enough to do that. If a situation is going to cost you more than you gain, the most profitable move is to just get out of there -- there's infinite more dungeon to find a better exchange in.

* LuckBasedMission: Unless you hack the game, the higher level spell books for the caster classes have to be found randomly in the dungeon.
* MagicallyIneptFighter: The Warrior class can't learn or use magic at all.

** Enemies always make noise when struck by a spell or missile, even if you can't actually see them and you'll always hear "a scream of agony" when you kill a non-visible enemy, even if it's something like a mushroom patch so you know you've killed them.

''Angband'' and other *bands have a few features that make them distinct from other roguelike families:

* ExplosiveBreeder: Some creatures have the "breeds explosively" attribute, meaning they can spawn copies of themselves. This is something fairly unique to *bands - ''Angband'' can get away with it because of its non-persistent dungeons (in other roguelikes, they would clog up the level permanently, which could unbalance the game). Characters with only single target attacks, especially melee only ones should kill them as soon as possible to avoid potentially either having to flee the level or worse getting trapped and suffering a DeathOfAThousandCuts.