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 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.