@Sky Did you powerdive the second half of the game? I find that unless you're a mage or rogue, powerdiving and grinding the high 90s is not a particularly good idea. I do best if I descend fairly steadily. Map/Treausre detect most of each level, and go after any gear I can get to and uniques I can fight.

If I do that, I have little difficulty handling the bottom of the dungeon, especially as a paladin. Between Single Combat and Slay Demon Balrogs are almost loot pinatas.

@sky--
Powerdive to DL 84. Greater Balrogs are DL 85, and Lungorthin or Gothmog from DL 90+ will bring more.
Also, detection is a necessity unless you have very high stealth. Greater Balrogs wake up very easily in ESP range. Detect at greater distance and they are more avoidable.

Started a rogue now after Kavlax took out my promising human warrior (note to self - do not angband during work calls regardless of how boring)

I'm noticing that I can't use p to start my magic (previous versions had p and m as interchangable...)

The new Random birth functions (*) or (@) in the nightlies for 4.2.3 are very cool! :cool: :D

Can necromancers eat Lembas? (It is poisonous to orcs, and Gollum refused it.)

I have to agree with Sky here - I dont like the late game either. The beefed up new monsters are fine, but the density is not. Everything either boring through walls or having supreme pathfinding means @ is forced into tactical combat the moment he sets foot on the level. While this increases the danger, it also makes the dungeon small. It feels like I am entering a big weird-shaped room and it removes a strategic level of the game - decisions where to explore, what to avoid.

I want Angband to reproduce the feeling of Moria in the book. And that was not an action flick racing from one combat encounter to the next, it also had passages where the tension came from the darkness, the fear of the unknown, the decision which path to take.

I understand why Nick has done all this, but there are other ways to increase game difficulty. Lowering @ hitpoints for example. While that means more chances for instant death, I very much prefer it over the overblown mess that we have now.

I played tome2 for a long time, but returned to vanilla when I got sick of the monty haul game. I have a similar feeling again - having played the extreme new vanilla, I find myself yearning for a more basic game. Thats what vanilla should be, in my humble opinion. The new vanilla is like an extreme variant.

Nick - I am sorry for making this post. I love most of the things you have done, but the changes to monsters and pathfinding break it for me.

OK, I'm listening, and I have a few questions:

1. Which monsters are the main problem? Would it be solved by, for example, taking away tunneling from balrogs and making storms of unmagic rarer?
2. Which classes are giving you the worst experience, and is there a noticeable difference?
3. What gameplay difference are you seeing from better pathfinding?
4. Is part of the problem too many vaults/pits/special rooms?

It's also worth saying that one of my aims was to make the increase in danger more steady as you descend, to get away from the old "get through statgain, and then dive to speed ring depth" technique that had arisen because there were few new monsters below level 50. One of the consequences of this is that DL98 should now be noticeably more dangerous than DL70.

ad 1: Those two are the main offenders; uniques could be less frequent and hounds of Tindalos are also in the "destruct or leave level" category. Nether worms turn vaults into simple pits. I dont know if it would solve, but it would go a long way.

ad 2: Its the same for all classes.

ad 3: Teleport (other and self) doesnt get rid of most things. Sometimes, a dangerous but dumb monster would be visible through ESP, but blocked by geometry. You could deal with lesser threats while keeping tabs on the dangerous one, aware that phasing was not an option.

Generally speaking, you could do interesting things on a level; now, everything thats left is destruct or banish.

ad 4: I am not sure. The thing is that I want to spend most of my time on vault levels, so if you make them rare, I just keep searching longer (as it used to be).

On dlvl 60 a great vault is a terribly dangerous, but potentially lucrative feature. On 98, it becomes a lucrative safety feature thanks to perma walls.

To preserve the risk/reward status of vaults, you could make great weapons, the high dragon armors, rings of speed, the top artifacts as well as the super monsters like sky dragons all native to depths > 100. Storywise, it can be justified - the book is full of hints of things that are older, dangerous in their own right and that dont care about Sauron.

Alernatively, place Morgoth on dlvl 75.

For that kind of suspense you might like to dig out Rogue.

OK, I'll start there.

I'll have a think about what's possible and plausible here. I think the main issue is that monster hearing now is pretty much a "find the shortest path to the player" algorithm, and what we probably want is something extra in there that the player can exploit sometimes. Perhaps if a monster is close by direct distance but further by path distance they will have trouble finding the path (which would look like your "by geometry").

Let's keep that up our sleeve and see how other things work first :)