Ironman

Ironman play is a style of playing Angband similar to conducts in NetHack. In Ironman play, the player can only ever descend in the dungeon, never returning to an earlier level.

There is some variation in the style of play in that some Ironmen always take the first set of downstairs that they find, but this rule is not universally agreed upon or enforced.

Because the player does not have access to the shops in Ironman play, resources such as light, food and identify scrolls become a lot more important, and tactics such as experimenting with dangerous potions or monsters to determine the 'hidden' abilities of items may be required.

Ironman play can be enforced in Angband with the birth_ironman option. Two Angband variants, IronBand and IronMan Angband are designed with this constraint in mind.