(1) Something has gone a little strange with the messages for objects on walkover. The first time @ walks over an object, a message appears regarding the object, however, thereafter one must actually use the look or inspect commands to see what the object is. For example, during melee, one might not have time to pick up an object dropped by a monster, so leave it on the floor until battle is over. Previously, you could walk over those dropped objects and the message would say what it was. Now, nothing, not even that you've walked over an object. You have to check and recheck to make sure you didn't miss something. EDIT: Apparently this happens when there is any other monster in sight. FURTHER EDIT: Also failed several times to pick up ammunition inscribed with "=g" when running over it, have to backtrack and then the ammo is retrieved. Are all these unintended consequences of the "run one too far bug fix"?

(2) While the stripped down command help files are fine, I find it difficult to understand how a newbie is supposed to glean that the stealing command is "+" "alter grid".

(3) Not sure stealing is working. After dozens of attempts for a 16th level Dunadan Rogue to steal from Wormtongue, all he does is shout everytime and wake things up. Not one success in dozens of tries. Maybe just extremely unlucky, but I doubt it.

I think we must first agree on what the goal is.

1. The stronger races are easier to play, and hence more newbie-friendly.
2. All races offer a comparable difficulty, hence the stronger races must be nerfed somehow.

Both 1 and 2 are legitimate goals, but they lead to opposite directions. It's a political decision.

An intermediate solution is:

3. The stronger races have drawbacks, but they are drawbacks which matter more to experienced players than to newbies.

The old idea of having an experience penalty fits well with 3. Maybe the XP penalty just needed to be adjusted rather than eliminated? Or maybe the XP penalty doesn't seem like a drawback to newbies, but it's actually harmful because the more time you spend in the game, the more likely you are to die (as diving teaches), and then it must be eliminated?

OK, looks like my fix to the running bug has broken pickup. I'll try to get a fix up soonish, but it will probably be a day or two.

On stealing: Uniques are harder to steal from; sleeping monsters are easier to steal from; your stealing skill depends on stealth and DEX; and heavier items are harder to steal. There are three outcomes - success, failure (monster wakes), and complete failure (monster wakes and shouts). If you're getting repeat complete failures, you're not ready to steal from Wormy yet. Good point about the command list.

I'm currently studying the theft mechanic in detail and will hopefully report on it in a few days.

As things stand, a level 16 Dunadan Rogue with no extra stealth bonuses, normal speed and with Dex below 18/50 wouldn't be able to steal even a ring from a sleeping Wormtongue. The maths gets in the way. (Might just pull it off if you slow monster the chap.)

Here are my answers/opinions/feelings on a few of the points that have been brought up recently. I'm trying for the most part to progress the discussion rather than finish it; that said, at some point discussion over the form of 4.2.0 will cease (and I guess discussion on the form of 4.2.1 will start...).

This pretty much sums up my feelings. The argument was made - and accepted by me - that for Humans their only real advantage was their relatively lower XP requirements, which is why all other races now have an XP modifier of 120. I think there is an argument for increasing the XP modifiers for Dunedain and (especially) High-Elves further still, but I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced by it. My feeling is that there is no reason for equivalence between races (and please note this is an Angband comment, I'm not being a bigot).

All that said, I do think that having one race strictly better than another (ie no relative disadvantages) is probably not desirable. Given that High-Elves are almost strictly better than Elves (Elves have better disarming skill), I'm probably OK with increasing the High-Elf modifier a bit. Dunedain I would leave where they are - while they are strong, their lack of infravision is a notable disadvantage compared to most other races. I also think it's actually a good thing to have some races which are more new-player friendly.

The intent of the food changes is to make food a more integrated part of the game, rather than a dull mini-game which (aside from warriors) gets sidelined quickly. So, philosophically, food should be something enjoyable, and a well-fed character should be better equipped to face danger in some sense. The flip-side to this is that a character that doesn't eat, but rather just magically removes their hunger, should not get the same benefits as a character that eats actual food.

Now I think that the food system as it is in current master has gone some way toward this goal, but could still use some improvements. My current thoughts are:

• Ranger's Satisfy Hunger spell should instead be something like Foraging, and should give a better food value
• A greater variety of food should become available, with varying benefits

I'm a bit reluctant to include extreme optimisations for players who have won a lot. I'd rather spend my time on improvements for the average player, and I figure if you really want this enough you can hack the game yourself :)

This is a nice idea in some respects, but I feel that having to watch out for your town book supplies is one of the prices a spellcaster pays. Maybe if they were deep and rare enough - how do others feel?

This is do-able, but time-consuming and likely to open a can of bugs. Is this something other people want?

Currently everything is ordered by cost (and note that ammo is in reverse order to all other gear); mithril arrows are immune to fire and acid damage, which ups their value. This is how the game has always done it, but again I'd be open to change if there's sufficient demand.

What sort of thing are you thinking of?

The monster changes for 4.2 have possibly made these guys a bit more interesting (read dangerous).

Atmosphere :)

Also, from 4.1 there are 5 categories of DSM for ignore - basic (Red, Blue, White, Black, Green), multi (Multi-Hued), High (Gold, Shining, Law, Chaos), balance and power.

This is a good summation. As for ideas for 3, how about if more powerful races had a lower level cap? Like, you topped out at level 40 for a high-elf and level 50 for a human, and everyone else was somewhere in-between? Newbies will die before the level cap becomes relevant. The biggest problem of course is that this limits spell access for full casters; a lot of the really class-defining spells would be unavailable to high-elves if we used the numbers I suggested. But both the level caps and the spell levels could be tweaked.

Fireproof town spellbooks as a moderately rare/deep thing are a good idea IMO. They serve a similar quality-of-life improvement as finding Rods of Recall vs. ?WoR. Maybe have them start appearing from around dlvl50?

Just dropping by to say that ctrl+dir changing from attack in direction to steal from monster (or make a trap) when you play a rogue is something that annoys me about O/S (playing an S rogue atm). It actually completely overwrites the funtionality so you can no longer do it at all and if your muscle memory fires you end up waking everything up accidentally. By the way Nick if you ever go back to FA, ctrl+dir attacking doesn't work at all there which is a bummer.

I actually highly recommend Vanilla implement an "attack in direction" command like composband did, which can be targeted with *t. If you aren't next to the targeted monster then you move towards it, this provides a very simple and predictable auto-fight command macro which you can use to clear weak monsters by just hitting a single key.

New builds up on the nightlies page and angband.live with the following changes:

• Fix the bug I introduced fixing the running bug
• Fix a couple of vaults which were allowing corridors to connect to them with no door (thanks Sphara)
• Start updating the help files
• Use 's' for stealing from monsters instead of overloading the alter ('+') command (thanks clouded)

Is it considered "correct" to have disconnected levels? I have one that isn't technically disconnected (maybe), but in practice it is because it's connected only by the permanent walls of a vault. I don't really mind this, but I couldn't remember whether this wasn't supposed to happen or not.

http://www.chud.net/images/Screensho...2010-46-42.png

http://www.chud.net/images/Screensho...2010-47-10.png

My opinion on non-flammable shop spell books is they aren't necessary.
To me, each immunity has a Second-Best reason for seeking it. Non-flammable books would mitigate the Second-Best reason for Fire Immunity.


My food opinion:
I loved (because it was so easy) 4.1.3 getting Slow Digestion and never worrying about food except to eat an occasional Elvish Waybread. 66 gold from starting equipment and I wouldn't think about it again.

That said, what I've seen in 4.2 seems good. At least there'll be no hunger deaths.

Someone mentioned "better mushrooms". Perhaps they mean better versions of the same stuff that feeds longer and sustains benefits longer? I'm usually happy enough as I gain more Inherent Speed that spells, food, and effects last longer, relatively speaking. But it could be real nice to have really-long-lasting when you can't find that resist confusion or ESP item.

And/Or add ones meant for unique resists: Time, Gravity, Water, Aether?