What is this?

I don't think this is a bug. You can only refuel from one lantern at a time, so doing that unstacks the lanterns, so your inventory is full, which drops the last item.

Issues page now fully updated, I believe.

I disagree. It makes sense for the now empty lantern to drop. I think that is far more intuitive then random item you didn't touch falling out. I certainly expected the empty lantern to drop. I suspect it is what most people would expect too. It is also how things behaved when devices used to unstack. The device droped out, not your healing potions or your scrolls of destruct.

I have discovered a problem with stairs to other map sections. I have a town that should have 3 exits, east, west and north. The north exit is nowhere to be found. I have explored every cell and removed all the rubble along the north of the map.

Exo's patch (originally written by a user called Exo) is the code for automatically producing output like this every time the game is saved and/or the player's details otherwise change (e.g. they move to a new area - though I think that triggers auto-save in FAA). This is what allows angband.live to show the player's race, class, level and current location and display a red death message when they die.

Gwarl is claiming FAA does not actually need Exo's patch since it has V-like savefiles, which in this particular respect are more "readable" than most variant savefiles - but there are some big disadvantages with that approach. Firstly, V doesn't need to include any information about the location besides the depth, and consequently FAA savefiles don't display the full location in plaintext either; but CharOutput would. Secondly, it requires Gwarl to actively do things, and apparently to do them again every time there's a new release - at least one of the recent V releases (4.2.0 or 4.2.1 or maybe both) was missing this information for weeks despite having fully V-like savefiles. Thirdly, including Exo's patch in the game itself allows updating CharOutput more often than the savefile if desirable. Fourthly, Gwarl's approach does not actually include producing a CharOutput.txt, but it's a nice file to have; on angband.live players' CharOutput files are publicly accessible but their savefiles are not, so the CharOutput files allow you to check how other players are doing even if they're not currently online (this would be even more convenient in V, since V does not support checking users' progress through the Hall of Fame).

I think I found some use for them offline too debugging something or other, but I forget what that was - maybe I was just debugging CharOutput itself... or it might have been related to possessor code or to discrepancies in what monsters were displayed as having killed the player.

The Frog version of Exo's patch (updated by me) is here (it gets called from the save routine and separately on game start), you should be able to adapt it easily or to write new code with the same formatting.

Agree with wobbly, this is most definitely a bug. There is no way any item but the empty lantern should drop.

That's a "fixed" bug. Reopening.

EDIT: Actually unfixed bug, still not fixed.

grammar in necro spell
 

Vampire Strike in Necro 3 always gives the message "You bite the ...", even for uniques.

I got the message "You bite the The Thief of the Mountains."

A thanc-ful vault in Nargothrond 43 must have broken the record for the cumulative appearance of thancs, by having 2 Narthancs and 3 Dethancs appear in the same vault.

Clearly, a thancsgiving bug! (copyright: vertigo - Angband.Live) :)

Just tried to compile & launch the game.
Adan Paladin, first location (West Beleriand). Found the wand of Dragon's Breath + energy hounds pack.

Aim the wand and..
Welcome to level 13.

Do not fix this :-)

Thancs for reporting

Report Batch #14
 

Spellbooks: The [I]nspection text for spellbooks should probably tell you who can actually use them; since the hybrid classes can only use two or three books out of five, the only way for the player to know if it's a useful book for them or not is by either reading the code, or by actually having the book in their inventory. Is that dungeon book in the black market one that I can make use of? Who knows.


Inscriptions: It'd be a convenient thing if there were some way to just wipe all the auto-inscriptions clean (those that you determine via the object menu) at once; it's something I'd probably use at the start of a new game, for instance.

It says "You can read this book" if it's usable to your class; I guess it could also say if you can't.

No, that's good enough; that was me being a derp and not paying attention, was thinking of the old FA system that went "a book of *foo* for *class or classes*."

Report Batch #15
 

Dragonform: The various dragon forms all have a bonus to device skill, but you can't actually use devices (except for activations? I didn't check that) while in dragonform.


Object Flags: Is there some reason that e.g. aggravation exists as both a normal flag and as a curse? If you want it to be unremovable, why not just use the curse flag at power 100?

Got a random crash on trying to enter Nargothrond 53, unfortunately no save to reproduce it from.

The latest fix to player_place() does seem to have fixed the multi-@ problem on recalling to levels with a dungeon entrance, I wonder though if it also broke something else since I'm now crashing on level gen quite frequently again.

Update: Entering towns, either by stairs or by recall, causes a lot of crashes now, though in somewhat strange ways. Sometimes it seems to happen every time, sometimes it almost never happens, not sure what the common thread is though it seems to happen more in Belegost and more if I've spent time away.

Further update: Confirmed that crashes are caused by the change to player_place(), the new call to square_set_mon() is very problematic. If there is no fake @ (or fake @ has not been placed yet) then the call uses the player's last coordinates from the previous level, which are frequently outside the bounds of the new chunk. However, even after reverting the player_place() change occasional crashes still happen, so something else is also causing them.

Further update: Wilderness vaults cause crashes if random_vault() returns NULL, since make_formation() doesn't check whether a valid vault was returned. I suspect there is still something else too...

Further update: Ignore this part. I added a temporary msg() call in town_gen() for debugging purposes, which for some bizarre reason turned out to cause chunk list corruption if a message had been repeated on the previous wilderness level. Don't ask.

--

It seems the Windows version of FAA now crashes on game initialization unless faangband.ini is already present.

--

On entering a wilderness level, @ is sometimes placed slightly off the stairs instead of directly on them; is this intentional?

Running isn't being interrupted by sleeping monsters properly. I end up attacking them if they are in my path.

With a debug build on OS X built from the latest source (commit f416de0), a scroll was placed in the permanent wall bordering a wilderness area. I've attached the save. Attempts to reload from the save generate an assertion failure at line 1518 of load.c. The last of the call stack at the point of the assertion failure is

OK, thanks. I have added more checks for when monsters (and now objects!) are generated in the walls, but I would really like to understand how it's happening in the first place. Has anyone noticed whether it's particular types of level? Or if it's just at the top boundary (which is the only place I've seen it) or others?

I've mostly seen it at the top boundary too, but I feel like I saw it happen at the east boundary last night while debugging other stuff.

Only seen it on wilderness levels, but not sure if it's limited to particular wilderness types.

From rodent:

"it crashes when I recall to ephel brandir and it seems easy to reproduce from that save but hard otherwise"

The druadan ranger summons animals. Sleeping animals....

Please find attached the correct randart for rodent's report.

Managed to continue play by avoiding the recall to Ephel Brandir, and got a weird situation somewhat later where the object list displayed one "unknown item" separately from the other unknown items and without highlighting it in red, although it did still use the red * symbol for it. When I went over to inspect the item it was not there, so it had been either destroyed or picked up in the meantime (or had never really been there in the first place). I verified that it was not an item being ignored, but other than that I don't know what the issue was. There was a Maia of Oromë on the same square.

Rhukath scored a Ring of Utility on DL 6 with +6 strength, intelligence, dexterity, damage reduction and movement speed. I think that has to be a bug somehow. (Are movement speed and damage reduction even supposed to generate on rings?)

So far there's been two, the object one reported earlier and one with a monster, both at the top boundary in wilderness areas (Hithaeglir 2 and Eriador 6). The second one was after recompiling with the added checks.

Also, the evasion special ability triggers on the Complainer's complaints so one gets the occasional "You evade the attack!" intermixed with his rambling.

Morgoth does not generate on Angband 100 reliably; I needed 3 tries to get him to generate. He also did not drop Grond or his hat when I killed him. I did get tagged as a winner, and the stairs to Angband 101 generated properly.

Adamantite Plate Mail
 

Should probably have flat damage reduction on it; I was surprised it didn't already, given its theme.

It looks like the ragged option in make_edges() allows for the boundary wall to be zero elements thick. So a monster or object could be added there and then the paranoid rebuilding of the boundary in populate() would put a permanent wall on top of the monster or object. Changing the

parts in the ragged part of make_edges() to

should fix that if I'm understanding things correctly.

Yes, that looks right. Thanks :)

Some minor cosmetic issues:

"You see a grass." "You are on a grass." "You are on a lowland trees."

[20:09] Rhukath: ooo crash
[20:09] Rhukath: when I activate my bow
[20:09] Rhukath: it works fine on arrows
[20:13] Rhukath: ok it only crashes if you use it in a shop
[20:13] Rhukath: nope there we go
[20:13] Rhukath: it's if it tries to brand with poison

Crash on activate to brand ammo.

Quick review of game balance after 2 deep runs, ent blackguard and drúadan druid. Will cover the latter combination in more detail since it is the less balanced one, ent blackguard seemed to have better balance though I might have just been unlucky with the loot.

Druid is an interesting class. There's a lot of nice and quite unusual synergy between the various spells, and even between the spells and items (e.g. Rods of Light and the Lightning Strike spell). I would say, though, that it all works a bit too well; while I was very lucky with loot, and had the benefit of a strong race (drúadan), and eventually leveled up all the way to CL 50 (which is now quite rare in V), I do also think druids are OP. (I also feel that FA, with its large and sprawling map, likely shouldn't be balanced around skipping almost all of that map en route to a CL 38 win like V is; but that consideration aside, druids are OP compared to other classes.)

What makes druids OP isn't a mystery. Their toolkit is just too complete: mage-worthy offensive spells; great utility (haste self, mapping, detect life, stone to mud, slow, confuse, repositioning); restoration; good stealth; good melee... my guy even had good HP, and while that might have been because of the drúadan (and the luck) their HP's definitely not a problem. Druids have the upsides of every other class without the downsides of any, and on top of that, their spellset's almost perfect for loscheese. About the only things the druid toolkit is missing are Teleport Other, an emergency healing spell and a Leap-into-Battle-style rush attack, and the last one isn't something they need.

Most of the above likely goes for V as well, but the specialities available in FAA (like Channeling and Heighten Magic) also go together well with the druid kit, which calls for using cheap offensive spells over and over again. In addition, finding highly effective resistances is very easy in FAA.

Suggested remedies:

- Massive nerfs to loscheese, which is both easy and unexciting
- Druid being jack of all trades is likely fine, as long as they are also the master of none; increase the mana costs on the early offensive spells, reduce the power and/or dramatically increase the mana costs of the book 5 offensive spells (!restoremana is super-common, so high mana costs are easily coped with if the spell is worth it), and maybe nerf their armed melee a bit. Possibly chuck out a few spells; druids could very easily get by with 4 books, although this would bring them out of line with the 5-book classes. (These changes need to go together with nerfs to loscheese; otherwise they simply encourage even more loscheese, and increase the tedium without increasing the difficulty.)
- It is too easy to accumulate resists; random objects (randarts, random jewelry, egos with random attributes) just generate with so many of them so often. Encourage them to either generate with fewer resists, or generate with (much) lower resist percentages, or both
- Nerf randarts in general
- Nerf loot in general. FA's old-school stinginess with loot was part of its charm and flavor, and knowing you might find a truly horribly bad object was part of the fun

--

All that detail about druids and randarts aside, the biggest imbalance in the game right now is the brokenness of the economy. Item valuation needs to be thoroughly revisited before any official release.

Thanks, very helpful.

Any ideas how? I don't think it was OP in FA1.4, which has the same los rules. Is it the set if spells that druids have? Or do the monsters need to be smarter to deal with it?

I know ego ammunition is totally broken - where else is this a problem?

The druid spellset really plays into it, but any class can exploit it, for some of them it's just a bit harder. Even on the blackguard my plan was to cheese Morgoth and I expected it to be very easy; but it's not something blackguards otherwise rely on, since they don't have as many ranged options as druids do and (even with Recharging) the charges on the best offensive devices are limited. But druids can rely on loscheese as a key tactic for most of the game; though they absolutely do not need to do so, I killed a lot of high-level uniques like Pazuzu and Sauron and the Tarrasque face-to-face.

Loscheese also trivializes some high-level uniques, like Wiruin and Qlzqqlzuup, in an extremely boring way; they're the special cases always best killed with loscheese, even on classes with limited ranged options.

My main suggestions for nerfing loscheese:
- Allow monsters to cast some types of spells without requiring LOS on the player if they've been hurt by the player since their last move. Obviously not all spells are suitable for this; suitable spells include summons, heal-self and possibly blink-self/tele-self (I'm somewhat unsure about the wisdom of allowing the latter two)
- Tweak monster AI so that monsters with breath/spell attacks will always try to get @ in their own LOS

Implementing both of these would massively nerf loscheese, and would seriously discourage attempts to kill any of the big bosses (Mîm, Glaurung, Ungoliant, Sauron or Morgoth) through an entirely cheese-based approach. It would not eliminate loscheese entirely, though; many high-level monsters, including summonless dragons and especially hand drujs, would remain highly cheeseable. (It would also allow partial cheese against healers and summoners, as well as other LOS-based tactics like using LOS to guarantee a safe teleother, which are not necessarily undesirable.)

Additional (less powerful, more coding-intensive) possible nerfs would be:

- Change LOS and/or projection mechanics to reduce asymmetry, perhaps allowing multiple paths between squares. Eliminating LOS asymmetry altogether isn't required (or even very helpful since loscheese doesn't necessarily require LOS asymmetry), but it would limit the power of hockeystick-based tactics
- Allow monsters to hit the player with splash damage from ball (and possibly breath) spells; this would also nerf hockeysticks by allowing a monster like Sauron (a frequent hockeystick target in V) to fire darkness storms and nether balls at the square next to you

There's no way to eliminate LOS exploits completely, but as long as they're not game-breaking or encourage unfun ways to play that's okay.

Ego ammo is the big one, just fixing that will go a long way. But there's a fair bit of other very weird stuff, like the Iron Helm of Gorlim selling for >130K even though it has -25 INT/WIS and aggravation on it.

The ego ammo issue, though, is symptomatic of a larger underlying problem; ego ammo's just the place where it's most noticeable and most easily exploited. The value of egos and ego attributes doesn't properly account for the item they're on; a whip of shocking is worth about the same as a lochaber axe of shocking, even though with O combat the former is worthless and the latter's potentially a Glaurung-killer. Valuation is also extremely arbitrary. Apart from the ammo thing it isn't too bad - especially with selling off as the default - because while it is deeply flawed, people will seldom either buy or sell any ego item, so their pricing barely matters. But solving the underlying problem and bringing items' nominal values closer to their practical values would be ideal, and doing so could also help elsewhere (like with the OP randarts problem) by allowing item-power sanity checks based on accurate valuation.

Shooter Egos
 

Was going through the code to check, and discovered that slings and crossbows don't get any special egos to them. Moreover, Extra Might looks like it used to be +1d2 multiplier in old FA whereas in new FA it looks like it's a straight +1--which really limits how useful slings can be in the current state.


EDIT: Apparently there aren't any sling standarts either :(

Just to add to Sideways comments, the AI for killwall actually approaches along the line of cheese. I tend to not really set up cheese. I'm just waiting at a sensible looking spot and... the target is just very cheesable, so I cheese it.

Weird History Bug
 

During character generation, sometimes when rerolling the history, ect. (by backing out twice when you reach the screen for modifying stats and then going back into it again) the history gets weird. Obviously avoidable and possibly harmless, but thought you'd want to know anyway.


Attachment 1881

Wrong Check for Shooting Bonuses?
 

Right, I half-suspect that I'm reading code wrong again, but while looking at the code to see the exact particulars of the various specialties, it looked to me like some cases for calculating shooting damage incorrectly checked for Armsman instead of Marksman; lines 370 and 411 of "player-attack.c" (sorry, would've made those proper links but I can't figure out how to get that to work :().

I'm supposed to have rLight from the Holy Light speciality, but it isn't reflected on the character sheet. It also isn't showing the rShard from steelskin curse, though it is showing the vElec and I've identified the rune for the curse itself. At first I thought it might have been because I was missing the rLight and rShard runes, but now I do know rLight and the resistance still isn't displayed; in any case, in these situations I feel these runes (and definitely the rLight) should be taken as given.

Found a Studded Leather Armour that was shown as (+0,+0) [12,+17]; the (+0,+0) disappeared when I sold-ID'd it (it was wolfhide). Probably related to studded leather armour normally having -1 to-hit.

Gaining a specialty takes zero energy (seems okay to me), but that means the status updates don't take place until after the next action that takes energy - leading to possible confusion if one immediately checks the stats on the left or in the character sheet. Should gaining a specialty call update_stuff() in addition to setting the update flags?

Report Batch #16
 

Torches: are "lit" and use up their fuel even when it is daylight in the wilderness and you don't actually need them (although IIRC they don't use up their fuel when it is daylight in town).


Wands of Magic Missile: have awkward phrasing in their flavor text. "casts a bolt or beam of a missile." Something like "fires a non-elemental bolt or beam" would be better, I think.



Misc. Weapons: Thrusting Spears, ect. still have flavor text implying that they give a minor AC bonus, when they don't actually do so.


Light/Darkness Devices/Scrolls: Scrolls of Darkness benefit from device skill; as Scrolls of Light do not, I can't tell whether that's supposed to be intentional. I think the situation is the same for the Staves. Wands of Darkness nominally have a damage aspect to them (I'm guessing because they're paralleling Wands of Light), but as far as I've seen nothing is susceptible to weak darkness, so there's no point to it.

Report Batch #17
 

Balcmeg: Maybe it's just that I'm used to it from other variants, but Balcmeg feels like he should have an orc escort; certainly his flavor text makes it feel like he should have a band of orcs under him.


Ammo Prices: While your recent adjustment somewhat addressed the problem, ammo is still worth a lot more than it probably should be; I'd put the divisor at x1.5 to x2 of what it is now, maybe even more. As it is, a good stack of baseline ego ammo still sells for 15k plus, a lot more than most non-ammo egos you'll find early on.


Shop Restocking: As I'm currently taking my time getting to the dungeon, I can confirm and am stressing that shops do not shuffle/restock their inventory while the player is wandering the world map, whether in town or the wilderness; they only shuffle/restock when you're in the dungeons.

Tried to use Paladin's Single Combat against a hill giant, after I killed it I was stuck on Arena 55. Attempting to get out by recalling home made the game crash; I did find myself back in Belegost on resumption, but now I cannot recall out of Belegost, I get "nothing happens" when I try. (Edit: I managed to recall from Thargelion 11 and that fixed the recalling out of Belegost, but now Glaurung's refusing to generate on Nargothrond 55.)

--

Lesser bugs:
- another double-the bug: "You no longer have the the Artifact of Namesake"
- bad pluralization on "the mangy-looking leper has 1 hit points"
- I was able to recognize a sword on the ground as the Sword of Idril while blind, even though I couldn't see its dice or bonuses
- if you're standing next to both a normal trap and a monster trap, the D disarm command automatically attempts to disarm the normal trap (if the monster trap is a modified one you can use + to disarm it, but if it's a basic trap, you are left with no way to disarm it)
- Rhukath got stuck in a short disconnected corridor on Eriador 6 (a wilderness plain), the corridor did have the stairs to Eriador 4 in it but was otherwise surrounded by permarock. (A similar thing happened to me too, not sure what kind of level that was on.)

--

RFE: give trap manipulation its own dedicated command, rather than being stuck with the general-purpose + key. Using + for trap manipulation can complicate normal use of +, and it's also not explained anywhere in the help that + is the trap-manipulation command in the first place.

Black Market Giveaways
 

Not sure if it's specifically the Black Market or if it can occur in other stores too, but it's possible for objects with zero value (according to the game) to be available in stores.


Attachment 1885


EDIT: Also, after buying the valueless lantern I was able to sell it for a profit at the general store.

Shapechange RFE
 

Give bearform and any other logical shapechange candidates a digging bonus.

Report Batch #18
 

Quarterstaves: Flavor text makes the lack of a two-handing preferred/required rune conspicuous.

--

RFE that you'd probably get the gist of from the following:
[09:13] MITZE: There was a "vault" with a few egos objects in it
[09:13] MITZE: although it was really more of a clearing with few or no enemies
[09:13] MITZE: Chest in the middle
[09:13] MITZE: Maybe it was supposed to be a picnic?
[09:14] wobbly: were there ants?
[09:14] MITZE: I do not think so
[09:14] wobbly: probably not then
[09:14] MITZE: Wait is that a thing?
[09:14] MITZE: I thought you were making a joke there
[09:14] wobbly: yes it was a joke. ants at picnics
[09:15] MITZE: (and if it isn't a thing it should be)
[09:15] wobbly: chest full of honey cakes
[09:15] MITZE: vault/special room for plains regions that's just a square clearing with food guarded by ants
[09:16] MITZE: I think I saw a thing on the Git for themed chests
[09:16] MITZE: if it were possible to do in a non-hacky way I'd say make the chest have more food in it

Balance review: petty-dwarf paladin. I picked this combo as one that would wash out the taste of the cheese, and also because petty-dwarf mage requires a lot of care and patience at the start due to super-low HP so I shuffled petty-dwarf here.

This was an extremely strong @, possibly even stronger than the druid. However, @ was also super-lucky with equipment, and while the druid also had decent luck with equipment, I think it matters more on paladin. A druid can get by with a crappy kit since they can rely on spells for damage, meaning the weapon slot's open for statsticks and it doesn't make any difference if they never find a true killer weapon. Resists and speed are also less important for druids due to loscheese and eagle-form repositioning (plus they get Haste Self and Resist Poison as spells, and a statstick weapon makes it easier to compensate for weaknesses elsewhere), and sustains and even Hold Life are wholly unnecessary. A paladin, on the other hand, could be left quite mediocre if they never find a good weapon, and a melee build means they have to be prepared to take a hit and suffer all kinds of attacks even if they pick their fights carefully.

Consequently, paladins would presumably be hurt more than druids by a generic loot nerf, while druids would obviously be hurt more by a loscheese nerf. I think this is good and more evidence that both are needed :)

Paladin mana costs are very high compared to a lot of other classes. I don't think this is necessarily bad, in that the SP requirements for many other classes are super-low, and clearly paladin doesn't suffer too badly if I won the combo on my first attempt and ended up being really OP. Nevertheless, it felt a bit weird that even though I allocated more points to WIS at birth than the default allocation did, I was still very frequently in situations where I couldn't use prayers at all at the time I nominally got them since the mana cost exceeded my max SP. (It's true I had -3 WIS from petty-dwarf, but that just cancelled out the extra birth WIS.) The not-really-availability of such prayers is not a disaster, and somewhat delicate to fix since lowering the mana cost would make paladin even stronger while increasing the prayer level would also affect failrates (and might discourage even larger investments in WIS); so I'm not sure what the best solution to this is, or whether one is needed at all. I did use many of the more expensive prayers very sparingly due to the cost.

Since Single Combat is super-buggy right now I only used it that once, so I cannot say how its normal availability would affect the balance. Glaurung bugged out of the game as a result of that one cast, so I had to kill Ungoliant for the other speciality instead, can confirm my observation from the previous time that she did not drop her unlight cloak. Morgoth also again failed to drop his artifacts.

The device skill damage-increase display is buggy; the actual damage calculation in cmd-obj.c is boost percentage = (device skill - device level) / 2, but obj-info.c has boost percentage = (device skill - device level), causing the boost to be wrongly displayed as twice its actual size.

(I do think cmd-obj.c has this right and obj-info.c wrong - the damage from offensive devices certainly doesn't need to be boosted any further. If the original intention was that the boosts should actually be as large as displayed, the base damage for most devices should be adjusted downwards accordingly.)

Report Batch #19
 

Stealing, Monsters, and Drops:
For the record, considerations over current pickpocketing's lack of usefulness:
[21:29] MITZE: I have not really found a good use for pickpocketing
[21:30] MITZE: I guess maybe stealing from the exceptional dropper uniques?
[21:30] MITZE: but those are either easy to kill or things you want to kill anyway
[21:30] MITZE: for specialties or so morgy don't summon them
[21:31] Nick: I maybe there need to be monsters with good drops, but super hard to kill - like if living dungeons had good drops
[21:31] MITZE: ugh those things
[21:32] MITZE: I already learned not to fight them
[21:32] Nick: Exactly


--


Vaults: Again for the record, I feel that they're a little too common, wilderness or no.


(Coated) Shield Ego: Doesn't seem to spawn with its fire vulnerability.


Spellcasting/Armor Weight: Extremely minor, but the effects and message of wearing too much armor weight don't seem to come into effect until 1.0 lb after the weight restriction i.e. at 36.0 lbs for a rogue when their limit is 35.0 lbs. I understand that this is probably due how the penalties are calculated and that the message only appears once there is a penalty, but it seems disingenuous to me for the message to not happen at soon as you reach the threshold or cross over it by the slightest bit.

The automatic digger selection needs a lot of improvement. I had 3 weapons (a cutlass that digs magma in 50 turns, a quarterstaff that digs magma in 33 turns and a whip that digs magma in 400 turns) and it was clearly autoswitching to the whip, which wasn't even my equipped weapon.

Art Flavor Text
 

I think that whatever fix you implemented to make randarts not have their description consist of just their object power score made standarts not have their flavor text; looking at standarts I have they definitely have descriptions in the art edit files but not in-game.

This would be entirely possible, except for the fact that I haven't attempted any such fix :)

Report Batch #20
 

Well regardless, something caused randarts to not display their power anymore; if it's unrelated as I said standarts don't display their unique description text anymore either.


Rings of Combat: As far as I've seen any ring of combat that approaches being something good has aggravation on it. Not that aggravation shouldn't generate on them at all, but I feel that it's practically guaranteed starting at far too low a object power level.


Stealth and Aggravation: I know that Dark-Elves can make good use of such objects, but I just had a ring (it was combat) generate with both a bonus to stealth and aggravation. This seem weird?

You set off the ancient mechanism! A section of the ceiling falls in behind you!

It would appear Chicken Little was right.

I agree with this & Holy Rage has also made comments that something is out here. Angband 2.9.3 had a much slower power curve, even without O being a harder variant. Modern V is very fast to power up.

I don't think you need to power down all the way to old fashion angband (which can be painful at times), but I don't think the power curve is right at the moment, if you want players to actually spend time in the wilderness, instead of it just being there.

My latest @ seems to have inherited the (largely worthless) home inventory of a previous @ of the same build who died young. Might be something quickstart-related.

The web vaults in Nan Dungortheb seem to have a fair few scorpions in them.

Are these actually correct? A minimum of -3 on -1+d2. I've got gloves that look like these except without a move speed bonus or a description. Just a set of leather gloves.

Lighting Issue
 

I appear to have a shimmering vortex that's projecting its light through the wall, to the east of my @.


Attachment 1891

Dragon's Breath Wands
 

Something in the latest bunch of commits appears to have undone the device skill boost (or at least the game displaying such) for said wands. Only Dragon's Breath though--Dragon's Flame/Frost appear to still have device skill boostage in their [I]nspection info.

Can ents ever learn the feather falling rune? While testing the character sheet, I used wizard mode to equip and ent with boots of slow descent and to set up a pit trap. Upon falling into the pit, the ent didn't learn the rune, which may be the appropriate thing to happen.

A dark elf with boots of kicking did learn the aggravation rune (despite the SHADOW ability). Though that one's going through the "learn after wearing something for a little bit" mechanism rather than the one feather falling uses.

I've got an armor of Elvenkind that makes the game hang if I try and purchase it. Is this a known issue?
If not, do you want the save file and randart file?

I just go to purchase the armor from the armor shop.

Not known, yes please.

Spell lists
 

Sorry if this isn't the proper place to ask; is there any plan to rework the spell lists in the future for FA to be more akin to the original? And are you planning on retaining the 5 book system or going back to the classic 9 books?

Having a lot of fun playing FA 1.4.4 while I wait for this to get to a slightly more playable state. Thanks in advance!

The -1+d2 for the movement speed will evaluate to 0 or 1. If a pair of them generate with a zero movement speed bonus, @ shouldn't see the ego description unless @ already knows the movement speed rune. Do you remember if that was true for what you saw?

The min-values part will keep the gloves from generating with a movement speed adjustment less than -3. I put in -3 because I was unsure if Nick's intent was to have this ego always generate with a movement speed penalty (-1*(1+d2) = -3 or -2) or to have it the way it currently is.

0 or 1, surely? A d2 is a coin flip with values 1 or 2; d2-1 is 0 or 1.

It's the gloves I'm wearing in this dump

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=23770

So yeah it'll be just a set with zero move bonus. That's a little odd to my mind, as it doesn't have the name, but it also doesn't have a ? for an un-ided rune.

Yes. Corrected my post for that.

Since the object has zero for that modifier it doesn't have that rune (per the implementation in Vanilla and FirstAgeAngband) so no '?' for it. If the character doesn't know the movement speed rune (along with the rest that are involved) then the character won't know the Thievery ego. This object won't show description for the Thievery ego until that ego is fully known.

Completely logical but also baffling for the player. We are used to unknown ego times always having {??} if they do not have a name yet... being nameless and yet without {??} is a strange state!

Is it intentional that Create Darkness has no effect when used in towns during the daytime?

You see an Ent lords of misrule

I'm not sure, but I think it's correct behaviour.

This is a known bug, but fixing it breaks savefiles, so I'm saving up savefile-breaking stuff to do at once.

Hi,

Any chance of a later Windows build?
Or alternatively, any tricks for getting this to build using MinGW or Cygwin?

Thanks,

Report Batch #21
 

Mushrooms of Turbulence: Currently look like they can't generate, as their alloc and effect lines are commented out . . . but the game acknowledges their existence in the object memory; I have two mushrooms left to ID in my current game, which are Purging (which I see in the shops, but somehow I've not seen outside of them) and Turbulence (which neither rodent nor I have seen at all, and look to have a flavor associated with them in my object memory even though they can't actually generate).


Disarming: I just failed to disarm a chest, despite having 100% in both physical and magical disarm.

With Hybrid Dungeon, it seems impossible to get below level 54. Taking stairs or reading Deep Descent causes a hang every time.
This was due to the bad definition for Glaurung.

Actually fixing the entry allowed access to 55. Defeated Glaurung and recalled to town. Now attempting to recall hangs, while a deep descent aborts quickly without an error.
Experimentation shows that any level with a defeated guardian (30 in this case as well) is inaccessible. Making the guardians non-unique allowed access to those levels.

Attempting to go to L56 still fails though - now with
Assertion failed!
Program: C:\Gms\FAangband20beta-win\faangband.exe
File: gen-room.c
Line: 1175

Expression: square_isempty(c,grid)

Issue was in world.txt - doesn't like type VALLEY, or not having up and down stairs.

Thanks, and yes to a windows build soon

A couple of things I'm finding are too common:

Potions of englitenment - if I drink 1 every level chances are I'll find 2 to replace them.
Potions of aug - I suspect you could collect these & use them like mushrooms of vigor.

You can build it with MinGW by running "make -f makefile.win MINGW=yes" in the src directory; but the compiled game won't actually run without faangband.ini, which is currently missing from github. If you have an angband.ini for V you should be able to copy that and rename it to faangband.ini.

Scrolls of Curse Weapon/Armor
 

Also have their alloc lines commented out in the object edit file, so like Mushrooms of Turbulence they don't seem to be able to generate, though the game still looks to acknowledge their existence by virtue of having assigned a flavor to them that you can never learn because they don't generate.

See my earlier post for a few issues with hybrid dungeon mode.

More Shopkeeper Talk
 

"Identical resistances on different pieces of equipment do not stack."

Artifact Activations
 

Some standarts don't appear with the activations that they should; they have activations according to 'artifact.txt' but they don't generate with them in-game.


Listing all the arts I've found that are missing an activation below:


'Taratol' (missing 'Haste Self', listed as SPEED2 in the edit file)
of Earendil (missing 'Curing' or 'Cure Wounds' or something, I forget what the actual in-game name is, it's listed as CURING in the edit file)
'Colannon' (missing 'Teleport', listed as TELEPORT100 in the edit file)
of Caspanion (missing 'Door Destruction', listed as DOOR_DESTRUCT in the edit file)
'Belegennon' (missing 'Phase Door', listed as PHASE_DOOR in the edit file)
of Celeborn (missing 'Banishment', listed as GENOCIDE in the edit file)
of Himring (missing 'Protection from Evil', listed as PROT_FROM_EVIL in the edit file)

When I change levels with telepathy a bunch of enemies flash up in my monster list, just for an instance. You probably wouldn't see it without a pause from lag. They are different to the list I can see from the starting position of the level.

I think this is actually a known and now fixed issue where resistances to unresistable elements were generated.

Probably not. I'm certainly planning to keep the smaller numbers of books, it's possible the spell lists will be reworked a bit. Did you have anything particular in mind?

The clear mind spell was a favourite of mine, as well as 'resist magic' IIRC. Having an early spell to protect from the many blindness spamming nrulings in the early game of old FA was huge.

Runes of speed / mana were cool as well, but I don't expect those would fit as well into a shorter spell list since they're more specialized. I play almost exclusively mages though, so I don't have the widest or most balanced viewpoint for the other classes lists.

My character is re-finding artifacts he already found before, I think it might be caused by the Ungoliant thing but I'll mention it here just in case it's not.

A couple of compiler warnings
 

Pull from 23/8 9am AEST.
Deep descent from L28 of Amon Rudh causes a crash. Standard wilderness.
Attempting to get to Talath Dirnen 29 is consistently crashing with:
Assertion failed!
Program C:\...faangband.exe
File: cave-square.c
Line: 1400
Expression: square_in_bounds(c,grid)
Looks like some issue with RIVER.

Combo review: Adan Necromancer.

This is by far the most difficult combo I have tried in FAA yet, especially in the early game. Early necromancer combines mage's squishiness with a lack of good offense or utility, which makes survival very challenging; and while Adan is an extremely strong race, it probably also contributed to the challenge through the DL20 start. The early-game balance on necromancer is very different compared to every other class (even mage), it feels extremely underpowered by comparison; though it might well be the case in actuality that necromancer is balanced while every other class is overpowered.

In the midgame (from CL 20-25 to stat gain) necromancer remains weak in terms of offense, but is not in much immediate danger as long as the player stays alert and doesn't allow gazing eyes to hide under the mouse cursor. This seems to encourage tedious, grindy play - certainly that was my reaction, though a less wimpy player might react differently. The big problem is that the spell fail rates are really really high, even in darkness; it's only with stat gain and higher CL/INT that the offensive spells really start pulling their weight.

Stat gain, and the strong book 4, seem to be the things that eventually pull necromancers out of suckitude and make them fairly strong in the late game. Late game necromancer is basically a weaker druid (which is still enough to be strong!). In theory necromancer resembles a weaker druid throughout; but the similarity becomes more noticeable later on (especially in terms of the spell set), since many of the druid-like spells aren't really viable prior to stat gain.

Dark Spear is the most drastic example of the necromancer/druid comparison. It is extremely similar to druids' Earth Rising - a fairly strong beam of an element almost no one resists - but Earth Rising is CL 14/SP 5/difficulty 40, while Dark Spear is CL 25/SP 10/difficulty 60. Dark Spear does somewhat more damage than Earth Rising per successful cast, but somewhat less damage per SP. Due to the high fail rate and relatively high cost, I only really started using Dark Spear well after CL 30 - at which point a druid has already been enjoying Earth Rising as a staple offensive spell for almost 20 CLs. And Dark Spear is still good enough (and ultimately cheap enough) to eventually become a staple offensive spell for necromancers too!

I think if the fail rates for necromancer spells were lowered across the board, it would reduce the grindiness and tedium and make the class more fun to play without affecting the difficulty much.

--

One caveat: necromancers do have one early offensive spell with a decently low fail rate and a good SP-to-damage ratio, namely Miasma. I only got very limited usage out of it on this particular @, since lack of rChaos meant I could only use it in emergencies; by the time I did get rChaos it was polymorphing things into death molds. But if a necromancer lucked into rChaos very early, it could really help them kill things.

--

It occasionally felt a bit strange that Dark Spear and Storm of Darkness work so well against creatures of darkness; even Morgoth, Lord of Darkness, doesn't resist dark.

Jewellery
 

Attachment 1897


Not sure if you still want stuff like this to still be possible; if not, well, it can still happen, though it's not quite as ridiculous as the +4 blows amulet.

This would be maybe OK if it were a once per game level of rarity, I guess - it does at least have the vulnerabilities to make it interesting.

I'm currently finishing off unarmed damage display (for the character sheet), and I'll get onto this next.

And another example of an excessively useful item:
It did come with the poisoning and skin to stone curses (at strength 1 and 15) but still.
The treasure feeling for the level was 9 :) although there was a minor artifact on the level as well.

OK, I really hope that was from before I fixed jewellery. Are you doing your own Windows compiles now, btw?

Here is a Windows build of the latest development version. Things done recently include:

• Combat now pretty much identical to FA1.4
• Deep descent bug fixed
• Unarmed combat shows on the character sheet
• Ridiculously OP jewellery should no longer be available

Thanks Nick. I've got compilations working now, but looking at some of the files in my download makes me think I didn't get an up to date download.
With this new version, I'm getting chunk_copy() level bounds failed going north from level:WEST_BELERIAND:19:PLAIN to EPHEL_BRANDIR:0

Some minor issues:
- an alarm trap I discovered by walking into it was not displayed properly until I returned to the area later
- Vampire Form description claims it costs 50% of your HP, but the actual cost is 25%
- Soul Siphon description should mention that it only works on living monsters (the name does hint at this, but it should be spelled out)
- shapechanger death messages don't reliably indicate the monster's true race (not sure if this bug occurs every time or only occasionally)
- I have not tested this myself, but Eriloth says interacting with the letter "ú" in a character history causes the game to crash

There's a lot of minor typos and grammar errors, I should probably get around to fixing those myself at some point and sending a pull request; although some of them will break savefiles like the lords of misrule did.

This one is fixed now (by taking all those characters out of history - ideally we would have better handling of them).

My feeling is that most of the major bugs are now fixed. Probably time to add new features and introduce more bugs.

A couple of observations:
Speed is really hard to get. In a long game with quite a lot of time at L99 and L100, partly because Morgoth was hard to find, I found exactly 1 ring of speed (+3 I think). +4 was the most speed I ever saw on a ring or amulet.(Apart from the OP ring mentioned earlier.) I did see 3 rings of power, but these had no speed.

The game is really promising and fun.

Thanks for the comments. I may have to tweak jewellery chances a bit.