YAWP [S 1.02 b3] Moji Pittan the Irresisting Ent

[Bostock]

Finally succeeded in my no-spell-resistance challenge attempt. Yes, playing without Spell Resistance is still a challenge after the changes to the skill -- just a provenly doable challenge now instead of an arguably undoable one.

Moji Pittan took Infusion, as usual in my attempts, with the intent to infuse some spell resistance into his endgame armor and to do a meaningful amount of dragon-breathing. Likewise as usual in my attempts, he never infused anything more meaningful than some late-midgame light/dark resistance (though that was pretty meaningful) and never did any game-changing breathing at all. The lategame-forged-armor "statboosts to beat" bar to cross plus the 15% base "just because" forging failure rate spooked me out of infusing spell resistance, and the breathing cooldown prevented meaningful dragonbreathing. I never learn.

Likewise as usual, I shamelessly zeroed Forging and Infusion after they'd fulfilled their purpose: I was already playing one challenge game; why play two at once? This run added one addition twist in the same vein -- I went with one point of Shapechanging from about 1000 turns in up until finding Druidic Transformations. As it gave me Permanent-class access to the Bear transformation saving me many turns of play/hours lost on characters that would have died without the "exploit", It was probably the most powerful 1-XP investment in the history of Sangband.

His most successful predecessor, an Ent Priest, made it all the way to Morgy before being mindsmashed-to-slow and then mindsmashed again (maybe twice?) in one round, at hasted 30+ speed and 600+ health (I should have taken notes). Vengeance was thus especially sweet.

The twin keys to the actual win (instead of a merely strong attempt) were sticking with Elendil over Palantir and biting the bullet on MP over MIM in the neck slot for the last couple recalls. That swap became, I think, permanent during the Cantoras fight. (I made a point of hunting him down as I had horrific visions of what could go wrong if Morgy summoned Cantoras and I fatfingered.)

OK, gotta go babysit my daughter *cough* wrapped this one up at my workplace *cough*, but will happily tell more in Q&A.

[Bostock]

A few thoughts on the Weather system, now that they can't be dismissed as sour grapes from a sore loser.

I no longer have any real quibbles with the overall power of weather control and the effect of weather on Druid balance. However:

* While the connection between heat/cold and fire/ice spells is clear enough, the remaining types were unclear to me without source diving. I find the hiding of what influences what to be false difficulty, and I don't think the game gains from it. Actually I find feeling forced, rather than just tempted, to source dive to be a false-difficulty red flag in general. For contrast: I'm happy to remain ignorant of the precise mechanics of how poison attacks affect the player or how Scrolls of Madness work.

* I don't mind the potential for weather reports to be stale and/or inaccurate, but I don't like how weather-changing spells don't update the report, as I see this again as false difficulty: you can work around it by taking and referring to outside-of-game notes on what spells you've cast since the last weather report. The temptation to take out-of-game notes is another false-difficulty red flag right there!

* Arguably, the damage estimates for spells should reflect the latest (happily potentially false or stale) weather report.

I'll leave it at that, as less is more.

[NotMorgoth]

Originally Posted by Bostock

* Arguably, the damage estimates for spells should reflect the latest (happily potentially false or stale) weather report.

Yes.

And congratulations on the win.