Saving, loading, winning, cheating, and dying

Saving and loading your character should be easy. So, sadly, is getting him killed. Winning is a little harder, but the novice player can take advantage of various cheats to improve his chances down in the dungeon.

Saving and Loading your Game, and Importing Angband Savefiles

Depending on the port of FAangband you are playing, you will have various saving and loading commands available to you. DOS, IBM, and UNIX versions use the commands described in the help file "cmddesc.txt", while Macintosh and Windows users may also use menu options (normally found in the "file" menu).
Be warned that the Macintosh uses preference files to determine where saves should go; it may take a little fiddling before you make them appear where you want them to. If you get errors when saving your game, make sure the lib/save directory exists and, on multi-user machines, that you have write permission.

If you are playing most ports of FAangband, the game will automatically load any savefile named "player" found in <> /lib/save/. Under other systems, the game will wait for you to select a menu option (normally found in the "file" menu) and choose a savefile to load.

If the character contained in that savefile is dead, you are asked to generate a new adventurer, who possesses all the monster memories of the slain hero and starts out using the same options. Otherwise, you continue your game where you left off.

Because of the race changes and introduction of wilderness to FAangband, savefiles from Oangband and Angband cannot be imported.

Winning The Game

Once your character is ready, he/she should head to level 100 of Angband. Morgoth lurks on this level of his dungeon, and you will not be able to go below his level until you have killed him. Try to avoid wandering around on level 100 unless you are ready for him, since he has a habit of coming at you across the dungeon, the Mighty Hammer 'Grond' in hand, to slay you for your impudence.

Morgoth cannot be killed by some of the easier methods used on normal creatures. Morgoth, like all other "Unique" monsters, will simply teleport away to another region of the level if you attempt to use a spell such as destruction upon him. Morgoth, like some other monsters, cannot be polymorphed, slept, charmed, or genocided. Magical spells like Mana Storm and Annihilation are effective against him, as are some of the more powerful weapons, but he is difficult to kill and if allowed to escape for a time will heal himself rapidly.

If you should actually survive the attempt of killing Morgoth, you will receive the status of WINNER. You may continue to explore, and may even save the game and play more later, but since you have defeated the toughest creature alive, there is really not much point. Unless you wish to listen to the rumors of more powerful items buried somewhere in the dungeon...

When you are ready to retire, simply "commit suicide" (using the "Q" key) to have your character entered into the high score list as a winner. Note that until you retire, you can still be killed, so you may want to retire before wandering into a room with 95 Power Dragons crammed inside...

Upon Death and Dying

If your character's hit points fall below zero, he dies. The dreaded tombstone will appear, and you may then dump a record of your character to a document in the /lib/files folder. Afterwards, you see all of your possessions (identified) on screen.

Your character will leave behind a reduced save file, which contains only the monster memory and your option choices, both of which new characters may use. It is very helpful to know something about the monster that slew your ancestor!

Cheating Death: For those who, like myself, find such information helpful...

One of the really neat things about Angband is that your character's life is so important. Let him die, and you start over from scratch. This is one of the secrets to this game's fascination; anyone who cheats death is really not getting the full Angband experience, and any Morgoth-slayers yanked from the jaws of death are not full winners.

But what if your characters seem to die all the time (like mine!), and you really want to keep playing with the same guy? Well, Angband has a few answers for that too. You may cheat death by:

• toggling on the "cheat death" option (see the help file "optdesc.txt").
  This keeps your character ticking, and is even kind enough to give you a running tally of your deaths by setting the character's age to zero when first activated, and increasing it by one each time thereafter.
• making backup savefiles.
• Aborting the game just as the tombstone appears or before.

Good luck!