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B0rsuk said:

While this is generally true, MOM has exceptionally bad balance. Mana cost of some summon spells is just crazy.
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I think Sprites are not very cost effective. They have high cost, upkeep, and only 4 shots.
Besides, Sprites are not better at running away than any other creature. I remember, from manual (available on The Underdogs) that there's a flat chance of running away. The chance is something like 50% or 75% per unit, and 0% on Easy difficulty. You'll need a lot more than 4 shots to kill something like a Great Wyrm ! How many groups of Sprites does it take to kill a Wyrm ?

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Sprites do not need to run away. You fire off your shots at a Wrym, and then hit 'End Turn' or whatever the button is, 50 times, and the combat times out without loss of any Sprites. I think you need 3 or 4 to kill one Wrym per combat.

[B0rsuk]

Well, that's a dirty trick. Besides, nature nodes tend to also contain sprites or giant spiders, which mean trouble for your sprites.

By the way: MOM does indeed have useless units. They're called bowmen. I mean the regular bowmen, not longbowmen, not slingers.

[Torin]

4 green books, 1 red, 1 blue

Node mastery, Conjurer, Channeler, Nature Mastery

Send early sprites to attack everything without flyers or ranged. Victory is assured.

If you attack an indy town with only melee units just shoot what you can and when you run out of shots just keep pressed "d" (done) to reach turn limit. You don´t flee so you don´t loose units. In magic ranged attacks, distance don´t affect accuracy unlike physical ranged attacks, so you are well just shooting where the sprites are.
With time a lonely sprite can take any town this way.
When you are able to get some nodes you will be swimming in mana and spamming sprites all over.
Later your summoning skills can be used on stronger creatures. Even taking multiple colors allows you to trade well.
(this is a lame strategy just to win easy, note that channeler is useful in the patched version where it halves mana maintenance)

[Taqwus]

Stryke11 said:
Since these games get so much praise I know I am missing something or doing something wrong. Please help me get the full experience! Is there a tutorial? Tips? Did I pick the wrong game to start with? I've played a relatively new roguelike called Drash and that one is pretty fun, but it doesn't claim to have the depth of Nethack and Slash 'Em.

Modern roguelikes tend to be far more complicated than the original Rogue. (Which has its own irritations, e.g. Aquators).

Two fairly prominent families are the Nethack family and the Angband family. The Nethack games tend to be somewhat shorter, more purely dungeon crawls, more capricious (*lots* of opportunity for extreme fortune / misfortune)... and yes, very irritating if you're not either a veteran player or playing with a copy of the latest spoiler files.

The Angband family tends to be longer and more involved -- many include overland travel between towns (on the surface, no less) and dungeons and what-not. They both require and reward caution -- there's somewhat less arbitrariness, but it's also harder to save yourself by taking a bad chance. Casually entering a full graveyard is a -bad- idea no matter what you have...

You need to invest time in increasing stats, covering crucial resistances and the odd immunity, stockpiling those mana / healing potions -- easier to do than in Nethack, but slow.

Among the Angband family, PernAngband (now refocused a bit and called Tales of Middle Earth, IIRC) included quite the odd variety -- including a character type which could possess the bodies of slain monsters and so forth; there was an ability to forge new magic items; and so forth. Very funky.

[B0rsuk]

There are three other roguelikes worth mentioning here (alphabetical order):

A.D.O.M.
A roguelike that has a lot in common with RPG games. It has a story, quests, etc. It has a lot of interesting ideas, depth, and memorable places. It's just fun. It was my first roguelike. It has some cons, too: it's not being developed anymore (bugs are not going to be fixed, etc), story gets annoying after a while because you have to redo quests in almost the same order each time you start anew. It has some almost worthless skills, like bridge building. It's quirky and on many occasions plain unfair, without a chance to escape.

DoomRL:
The simplest of the three, but it's also refreshing. A breath of fresh air in the world of roguelikes. It's quite simple, but deffinitely fun. Not only it's the most notable Sci-fi roguelike around, but also one where ranged weapons (not spells) actually matter. Even better, ranged weapons pack a punch and it makes tactics important.

Linley's Dungeon Crawl (Stone Soup variant)
http://crawl-ref.sourceforge.net
My favourite roguelike. First, it prides itself on being mostly a tactical game and has few quirks. Mechanics are mostly transparent to the player. Spoilers are of little help in Crawl. It's skill-based rather than class-based, meaning you can shape your character in any way you wish. It has a lot of interesting, innovative spells and items. It's technically more advanced than ADOM, has more gizmos, much more varied random levels etc. It has really good interface - for example you can travel between explored levels by just pressing a few keys, auto-explore long, dull corridors until something interesting happens, etc. Gods of Crawl are a lot more interesting than those in Nethack or ADOM. Each of them has its likes and dislikes and rewards (mostly) something different. Crawl has a lot of depth, a lot of variety (many enemies which require unique tactics, for example giant bats which are several times faster than you and use hit&run tactics), and is also quite fair. It rarely has instant deaths which you can't prevent by playing safer. Also, it's almost immune to scumming - there are very few ways to cheat the system, and you can't, for example, stay on the same level to grind forever (Nethack is infamous for this). Crawl has quite high difficulty, and wanting you dead is how it shows its love. Running away is a common survival tactic in Crawl. But, as said before, it rarely kills you without a warning.

[Wokeye]

I <3 Dwarf Fortress. I only play it with the may green tileset version though. Much purrrtier.

Can't wait for the future patches to fix the bits that really need it (ie military) and add a srategic context (war on gobbos!).

[Foodstamp]

Thats the tileset I use as well. .

I am so terrible at dwarf fortress but I still love it.

[Saarud]

Remember... Losing is fun!

[Endoperez]

I'd suggest that you go to rec.games.roguelike.development and try out the different 7DRL entries. They are roguelikes done in 7 days, and as such are much smaller, easier and simpler than the "normal" roguelikes.

Roguelikes are games where player skill matters as much, or even more, than character skill. Unfortunately, for most roguelikes this means that to have a chance of completing the game, you have to read some spoilers. Some are easier on this regard: all 7-day roguelikes, DoomRL, perhaps something like Dungeon Crawl where you need tactics and good equipment choice, and where you can choose what to tackle next to avoid things you can't handle yet.

[B0rsuk]

Endoperez said:
Roguelikes are games where player skill matters as much, or even more, than character skill. Unfortunately, for most roguelikes this means that to have a chance of completing the game, you have to read some spoilers.

You are confusing game lore / mechanics obscurity and skill. Skill and tactics matters in Crawl, and if you point out an area where Crawl is unfair, the developers will often try to remedy that. Case in point: I managed to get Scroll of Enchant Weapon III and Enchant Armour changed. That is, now their description (at least in trunk) should mention, that they can be used to make some weapon brands permanent, or transform hides into armour.
Nethack is often taken as an example where spoilers have extreme impact on success. Crawl tries to reduce the need for spoilers. Some essential things like racial skill aptitudes are now a part of the manual.