[Announce] FrogComposband 7.0.nougat released

[Gwarl]

In composband we have randart jewellery *and* reforging.

[Sideways]

I am planning to allow randart jewellery drops at some point, but they will likely not be as strong as they are in Compos. (Though even if I copied Compos's code outright they would not be as strong as they are in Compos, at least the rings, because of changes to how Wm is valued.)

Anyway, I want people to have a real incentive to complete the druj rooms in Royal Crypt; viz. better-quality jewellery randarts than you're likely to find elsewhere without reforging.

Re: statsticks and dual-wielding: remember that the further into the game you get, the more resists, bonuses etc. you'll get from your other equipment, and consequently the less you need from your weapons (and also, you get better shields to directly replace the other weapon with). I think dual-wielding is viable in the endgame, certainly on a character like yours, but it's probably more likely to be good in the middlegame.

[wobbly]

Here's dual-wield for the stat stick in the J-fight.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21245

I'd have better damage with just the runesword but would have scarily low speed & missing melee sustains. Pretty sure I dual wielded most of the game, accuracy isn't a big issue for something with easy access to berserk.

[wobbly]

Originally Posted by Mocht

Berserk is cancelled whenever you use a healing potion, I think this makes berserk borderline useless

you can use vampirism, I think cure wounds staves as well. I used to sometimes berserk Smaug with mages when he dropped the 3rd book. You can get a lot of damage out before you need to heal quite often. The increased device fails make it too risky after a point, but till then it's gold. It's also a less painful way to train the dual-wield skill, because you are actually hitting.

[Gwarl]

Originally Posted by Sideways

I am planning to allow randart jewellery drops at some point, but they will likely not be as strong as they are in Compos.

The drop rates have gone way down.

[Sideways]

Originally Posted by Mocht

Under weapon proficiencies, poison needles are classified as swords

Shouldn't they? They're a stabbing weapon, certainly more akin to daggers etc. than to hafted weapons or polearms.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Originally Posted by Mocht

There seems to be a problem with the auto-destroyer: whatever rule is applied to healing potions is also applied to *healing* potions

Possibly the search type it uses? 'healing' and '*healing*' both contain the string 'healing'?

I use partial name searches all the time when searching the web for things.

[Sideways]

The pickpref should call potions:healing something else, like "potions:of healing", to make sure there's no ambiguity. I will fix that in the default pickpref.

(Generally, in this game, if you want to make something totally unambiguous, you need to put ^ at the beginning of their full name and $ at the end; like ^olog$ to make sure you get an olog, and not a novice archaeologist which contains the string olog. But in this case, the full name of potions of healing is "potion of healing", and by the time you've typed that you've already disambiguated them from potions of *healing*, so there's no need for that kind of trickery.)

[Sideways]

Don't worry about maulers and steel dragons, they're still plenty strong. I did some experiments last night on mauler top damage (for unrelated reasons; Gwarl and kobold were interested) and concluded that with ideal equipment they can get up to >10000 listed average damage against dragons with Maul and Crushing Blow, down from ~12000 without the nerfs (and less than half of that reduction is actually the mauler nerf, most of it is the slay nerf which applies to all classes). That's a drop from absurdly high damage to... still absurdly high damage?

(Granted, the only weapons that get a mauler anywhere near that ballpark are Grond - need to win with something else - and Iron ball - need to get lucky; but if all else fails, maulers always have Drain, which is made of overpoweredness.)

[Sideways]

Originally Posted by Mocht

I can't use maul, the knockback and auto-follow irritates me too much


The hammer of Atlas is 90 pounds, I think there is a 25% chance of it dropping for maulers
The best mauler weapons I've found were Armageddon lances/heavy lances weighing a bit more than 60 pounds, don't know what their max weight is
To get those numbers were you wearing the one ring and that ring of power that gives +3 weaponmastery

Yes, also Robe of Kamikaze Warrior for another +2 Wm, and assorted +to-dam equipment (and the massive crown of chaos so I could equip Grond without heavy wield).

I forgot Atlas. It's still less good than Grond and Iron ball though (Iron ball's huge dice are... huge, and Grond's native kill dragons is what makes it #1 for really massive damage); but it does allow >6000 damage/turn, not far off Iron ball.