YAWP, [V] 3.2.0 Dwarf Paladin, randarts

[chem]

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11164

First [V] character in several years. Stat gain was the most dangerous part of the game, but I found some BoS +8 from an ogre mage at 1350'. Much later (4950' time) I sold those to buy some from store with better AC.

Played with all randarts; while this helped me collect immunities, the weapons were generally pretty bad and I ended up using the BoC of Slay Evil for most of the game to plug the chaos hole and do good damage at the same time. In general I was unimpressed with the randart generation. Immunities were nice, but otherwise, if an object was powerful enough to be useful it also had aggravate which I did not want. Good ego items were more useful instead. In particular, DSM ego armors and the shields of elvenkind or preservation.

I didn't fire a single arrow or bolt the entire game, as is my preferred playstyle.


Suggestions for V:

1. Make the home larger. After playing with variants that allow for much larger homes, the limited amount is really annoying. It's "not fun".

2. regarding auto-squelch and DSMs, the DSMs either need their own category (not 'body armor') or need to pseudo as excellent by default. I wanted to squelch all 'good' body armors by quality, but that would squelch balance DSM, etc. very bad. Otherwise the new squelch system is good.

3. Having not played V in years, the anti-junk-generation effort in the loot code has been successful. It was a nice change. Also good to see some monsters and ego items from variants.

4. The new vaults and seemingly more frequent vault generation was also good. I noticed that pits often had stuff on the floors, which is a good incentive to clear them, but let's face it -- I still never went near a graveyard.

5. Windows port is slightly buggy, in that I couldn't seem to save my macros (on page down key if that matters) to my pref no matter how many times I tried (so I had to redo it every time I opened the game), and sometimes the game would give a system bell sound when a monster did a lot of damage/ many -more- prompts, even though I had sounds turned off.

6. I scum the black market a lot for potions and whatever else that shows up. It seems that speed items are not that expensive anymore -- BoS +8 only cost me 110k gold. DSMs were cheap too. Prices in general may need revisiting.


That all said, the current [V] was quite enjoyable and is quite a good version. I look forward to 3.2.x or 3.3.0. Please keep releasing versions on a regular basis!

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by chem

2. regarding auto-squelch and DSMs, the DSMs either need their own category (not 'body armor') or need to pseudo as excellent by default. I wanted to squelch all 'good' body armors by quality, but that would squelch balance DSM, etc. very bad. Otherwise the new squelch system is good.

The way to avoid squelching good balance DSM is by auto-inscribing them with !k. The problem with that is the requirement that something has to be everseen to show up on the object info screen where you can set autoinscriptions. Join me in calling out for removal of ever using everseen status for anything.

There are problems with squelching excellent DSM, particularly if you are playing a version where they can be supercharged with the ego "of permanence". In that case, I autoinscribe all DSMs with !k.

[Derakon]

Just to add to Eddie's statement: in case you don't know, you can use the ~ menu to see a list of all the items you've seen, and to set autoinscriptions for those items. Inscribing an item with "!k" will prevent it from ever being squelched, in addition to requiring an additional confirmation before destroying it.

Randarts are a crapshoot. That said, I haven't seen much of a problem with there being nothing between "useless" and "so powerful it has to aggravate". I guess you just got unlucky. That said, I've definitely had times when a particular slot had nothing worthwhile, and that can be particularly frustrating if the slot in question is your weapon.

[buzzkill]

Is squelch a done deal, or is it still being worked on. I'd personally like to see some finer granularity between all but {splendid} and all but {special}.

Upon k'ing gloves of agility (+3 dex), I'd like to see a dialog similar to (without having to squelch all but artifacts)

a) ignore all gloves of agility
b) ignore all gloves of agility (+3 or less)

I'd also like to see a special cases made for the SoS, MoD and BoC (probably DSM's too). Treat these as special items with their own individual squelch dialog similar to... (you shouldn't have to use inscriptions to make up for a lacking squelch interface).

a) ignore all scythes of slicing
b) ignore all {average} ...
c) ignore all {magical} ... etc.

And I know this is a little out there, and stretches the known flavor protocol a lot but, once I squelch a ring of STR+1, I want to auto-ID identical RoS+1 (or whatever identical pval) and squelch them as well. Treat each type/pval combo as potion or scrolls for purposes of squelch. It's nothing but annoying when you find and then ID and destroy your 6th ring of SIR+4 because you're looking for a +5 or better.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

Is squelch a done deal, or is it still being worked on.

I will do it right some day. I have figured out the UI. It's a lot of work, and I have several more important other things on my list that are less work, so it will be quite a while before I get to it.

[chem]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

Is squelch a done deal, or is it still being worked on. I'd personally like to see some finer granularity between all but {splendid} and all but {special}.

What are {splendid} items anyway? I think I saw one the entire game (is this a consequence of weak pseudo-id, being a paladin and not a warrior)? My stuff was always {ego}, {good}, etc.

Re: randarts. Yeah, not having a nice midgame weapon was frustrating. I think my greatest complaint about randarts is that they're, well, "too random". Items tend to lack flavor. Rarely do you see STR/DEX/CON paired on the same randart. You see +CHA on weapons, pairings like +DEX/WIS perhaps, or resist 2-3 of base but not 4, weapons without slays or brands, you get the idea. Even if it's randart, you should be able to pick up an item and say "this is for a warrior (or cleric, or mage)" so that items don't just feel like such a crapshoot. I think tome or npp or some variant took a shot at this a while ago.

[Derakon]

On the flipside, I like random artifacts, because the lack of theming means that it's harder to cover everything you'd like. Flavor stopped being a major issue for me long ago, to be honest.

{splendid} and {excellent} are subsets of {ego}; you get them when you equip an {ego}-marked item and find out if it has any stat modifiers.

[buzzkill]

I believe that excellent items have obvious traits upon wield (+ to speed or branded with fire) and splendid are excellent items but have stat boosts as well. I think ego can mean either excellent or splendid, but not wielded yet, so it's exact status remains unknown. So, {good} means you need to go deeper, and {ego} means you need to wield it to find out more. I could be wrong.

...and Derakon beat me to it.

[Derakon]

{excellent} items in fact have no obvious traits on wield.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by Derakon

{excellent} items in fact have no obvious traits on wield.

That is the distinction. Currently, ignoring the AFRAID and CURSE thing at the end, splendid means having any of:

/* Flag set for flags that are obvious to the player on wield. */
#define OF_OBVIOUS_MASK \
OF_STR, OF_INT, OF_WIS, OF_DEX, OF_CON, OF_CHR, \
OF_STEALTH, OF_SEARCH, OF_INFRA, OF_TUNNEL, \
OF_SPEED, OF_BLOWS, OF_SHOTS, OF_MIGHT, \
OF_BRAND_POIS, OF_BRAND_ELEC, OF_BRAND_FIRE, OF_BRAND_COLD, OF_BRAND_ACID, \
OF_LIGHT, OF_SEE_INVIS, OF_TELEPATHY, OF_NO_FUEL, \
OF_BLESSED, OF_AFRAID, OF_CURSE_MASK