angband 3.4 plx no spaghetti

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

I tried it and got almost immediately killed by acolyte. 12+ points of damage by single curse from this early monster? Haven't yet played much, but that feels a bit overkill for dlvl 2 monster. Curse is distance spell which doesn't require unobstructed LoS like bolt-spells, so I bet many many players will find early game a lot harder, especially with low-HP chars (mages, priests). This was only one acolyte, I wonder if there are 20 of those. 120+ points of HP required to dive past where they start to appear in groups, and run like h*ll when you see them? Or am I just being unlucky and this has been here before 3.4?

I think so. That's "Cause Light Wounds" which hasn't changed for aeons. It's always been available to novice priests and paladins (now called Acolytes and Gallants), and they've always come in packs fairly early on. IIRC they've always been pretty dangerous if more than one is in LOS. I don't think anything has changed since 3.3 about their frequency of appearance, damage output, casting frequency or anything else.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

I tried it and got almost immediately killed by acolyte. 12+ points of damage by single curse from this early monster? Haven't yet played much, but that feels a bit overkill for dlvl 2 monster. Curse is distance spell which doesn't require unobstructed LoS like bolt-spells, so I bet many many players will find early game a lot harder, especially with low-HP chars (mages, priests). This was only one acolyte, I wonder if there are 20 of those. 120+ points of HP required to dive past where they start to appear in groups, and run like h*ll when you see them? Or am I just being unlucky and this has been here before 3.4?

It seems that everytime I make a suggestion about shuffling monsters deeper or earlier I get rebuffed strongly. In fact you've been one of the biggest opponents of this in the past!

Yes, there are some horrid imbalances in the monsters in the early game and gallants are probably the worst offenders. They should either be dlevel 10 or be stripped of cause_1. Also soldiers and gallants get 2 melee attacks, which means no one can handle a group of them early. Even 2-3 soldiers are dangerous on dlevel 3. Soldiers do more damage than hill orcs and they're dlevel 2!

What would I do?
Soldier single 2d4 attack - dlevel 3
Acolyte remove cause_1 replace with CONF, melee up to 1d7
Gallant remove cause_1, one attack at 1d8, spell at 1_in_12 (only spell is FEAR)
Scouts, apprentices and cutpurses are fine, although I could see dropping scouts to a single 1d5 attack since they have the ranged attacks.

There *should* be a reasonably early cursing monster, but it should *not* come in groups. That monster exists, and it is the kobold shaman.

Sadly, I'm not sure I can justify these changes for 3.4 given the lack of time to testplay them, and the very high chance that there will be strong objections.

[Derakon]

Scouts are perfectly fine as-is, since they teach you to fight monsters with missile attacks in corridors where only one monster can use them at a time.

And as long as you take acolytes and gallants seriously, they're manageable. "Take them seriously" generally means "run the hell away", granted, but what's the early game without a little fear? Is it that big a deal if your level-4 character gets killed? Even if it's through no fault of their own? The dungeon should feel dangerous, and these guys are part of that.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Magnate

I think so. That's "Cause Light Wounds" which hasn't changed for aeons. It's always been available to novice priests and paladins (now called Acolytes and Gallants), and they've always come in packs fairly early on. IIRC they've always been pretty dangerous if more than one is in LOS. I don't think anything has changed since 3.3 about their frequency of appearance, damage output, casting frequency or anything else.

Apparently I was just unlucky. My next char didn't have any problem with early levels whatsoever. Maybe that is one part of the game I go past so quickly that I don't have much recollection how I actually do it.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Apparently I was just unlucky. My next char didn't have any problem with early levels whatsoever. Maybe that is one part of the game I go past so quickly that I don't have much recollection how I actually do it.

The early levels are a bit harder in 3.4 but not terribly so. The nerfing of !oil is actually the biggest difference for me. Grip and Fang can be dangerous since you can't kill them off with 2 !oil.

[jgbrowning]

Now I'm wanting spaghetti......

joe b.

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

I find that the game has been ruined. In the pursuit of making the game shiny and accessible to new players, they have ruined it for experts. .

Without getting into a debate on communism vs fascism, groups can be made to function as a cohesive unit with use of a clear vision and mission statement. The group then works towards this and members can come in and out of the group and it should be fairly stable as you are getting an average or smearing effect which is much more robust than one maintainer coming and going. Ideally this vision and mission statement are public and can be of course discussed by the group, I think you very clearly stated the vision of Angband proper.

As for the change was it just difficulty or were the actual mechanics changes? I agree that difficulty or in more general times balance is a line which once crossed the game can be almost ruined. i am not sure though that someone being able to understand the mechanics in three months is a sign of issues. I don't recall it taking three months for me to understand, but that was quite a long time ago. I started in 94 in the glory days of mages being greater fighters than warriors once they were booked out and having the ability to cast GoI at will.

The biggest problem with Angband is a few key points which you have really pushed to an extreme in game pace :

1) the goal isn't to kill everything, it is to kill one (ok 2) things so the sub-goal is to get level/kit

Now with this in mind it quickly becomes obvious :

a) the game is about resource management, make clw equal to healing and scrolls of teleport other equal to *genocide* (genocide + wod on uniques) and watch how trivial the game becomes

b) getting levels/kit is exactly about getting levels and kit and not killing everything

Once you get these two points you develop a basic strategy which is :

i) horde all resources and do not waste them on trivial engagements (!, ?, Z, r, etc.)

ii) detect, salvage (rinse and repeat)

Now you move onto small refinements such as for example as you advance things which were thought to be useless are not. For example infravision is usually neglected by a novice, but an advanced player who would get +6 infra early would see it as a godsend. Telport other is basically = empty vault of all monsters and make it a store with zero cost.

Again it simply is part of the detect + salvage strategy. I carried out a few experiments with this early by doing things like taking a priest once they had wod, and even a mage who found a staff of same and just went right to d98 and just destructed until I was full kit. You you miss ros, bos, etc. but that doesn't matter they will roll up again.

Once you have full artifact kit of your choice you can now relax on wod and actually clear to get the rings, boots, etc. as required and then fill out the potion, scroll list. This however makes the game fairly trivial and it could be argued that you are actually breaking game play mechanics.

This is why I argued (long time ago when I first did it, in the nineties) that wod should have a chance to break artifacts on the level and that genocide would drain max hp when you use it. This would move them back to being emergency management and not ultra-scum techniques.

But Angband (and the variants) has always had this if you are willing to exploit it. It is no different than for example in Heng (and variants) where some people scum for eat magic as the starting mutation for beastman which is insanely powerful. Or to a lesser extend ensure all characters start with a white aura.

The list goes on with things like farming which is why I noted that all summoned/cloned monsters should have no drops and give no exp because if you want you can simply turn a venom wyrm (or law if you don't have clone) into a bunch of scrolls of *acquirement*.

But back to the beginning, is there some list/thread which raises points of objection or even a change log (non-bug related).

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by Magnate

As the person responsible for the largest number of changes that Eddie doesn't like, I too would be really interested in your views.

Is there a change log, non-bug related.

[Derakon]

Here is the changelog for 3.2.0, which I believe is the easiest Vanilla release so far. There are links to other changelogs in the sidebar; you should note that 3.3 changed Teleport Other to be a bolt instead of a beam, and change Destruction to remove artifacts from the level (without destroying them, i.e. they can still be generated if they haven't been ID'd).

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

This is why I argued (long time ago when I first did it, in the nineties) that wod should have a chance to break artifacts on the level and that genocide would drain max hp when you use it. This would move them back to being emergency management and not ultra-scum techniques.

As Derakon pointed out. You can't WoD scum for artifacts anymore. I'd actually be ok with removing them altogether, but I don't think that's *entirely* fair. I have experimented with a version that allows monsters to save against destruction, in which case they get moved to right outside the destruction zone (or across the level).

Banishment (or genocide) is a lot trickier. You can make the penalties more onerous, but then you run into the problem of where you only wanted to kill the 2 pit fiends that Morgoth summoned but instead you kill the entire demon pit on the other side of the level, and guess what, you're dead. Maybe that's a justified death, you should have know there was a demon pit there. I still don't like it though.

Furthermore, banishment remains the only non-terrain way to deal with a situation where Morgoth summons 2 or more great wyrms. mana storm + great wyrm breath = death for 90% of characters. Summoning is not as dangerous as it once was for most enemies, but Morgoth and Sauron are still as dificult as ever. Even now, Morgoth summons so much that fighting him without significant terrain modification is fairly infeasible.

Right now the solution to overpowered banishment is rarity. Only mages have unlimited banishment and they have to find Kelek's first. Getting a mage to Kelek's is not a trivial task, and that can be the reward. Other class are reliant on single-use scrolls and very rare banishment staves, (which always seem to blow up on recharge for me). Nevertheless, opinions on the overpoweredness of banishment and suggestions for modifications are always desired.

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

The list goes on with things like farming which is why I noted that all summoned/cloned monsters should have no drops and give no exp because if you want you can simply turn a venom wyrm (or law if you don't have clone) into a bunch of scrolls of *acquirement*.

Cloning great wyrms is incredibly dangerous. Cloning elemental wyrms that you have immunity towards is more feasible. But I don't think this is a useful strategy in Angband. It's certainly only marginally more useful than exploring, if at all.

One more point that I want to address.

=CliffStamp]
i) horde all resources and do not waste them on trivial engagements (!, ?, Z, r, etc.)

ii) detect, salvage (rinse and repeat)

for the first point, you are at least 4x more likely to get an artifact from killing a late game unique than you are any other monster. That and keeping them from being summoned in the final battle are really the incentives. (You can add extra incentives to the final battle by allowing summon uniques to also teleport uniques on the level to the summoner). You still have a good chance of picking them up from vaults, but generally vault tackling is reasonably fun, even if you can do it with limited danger.

for the second point. Try playing a non-rogue in 3.4 Fuzzy detection has really changed how effective salvaging is, but simultaneously encourages players to explore more (or at least encourages players like me to explore more). I think a lot of your points have actually been addressed in recent versions, or at least some of the cookbook and boring gameplay strategies have been looked at. Opinions and feedback are much appreciated.