My thoughts on 3.1.1

[TJS]

Well I've been playing the new version a fair bit so here are my thoughts:

1) I love the id by use, so much more fun than it used to be lugging everything back to town to buy a load of ?identify. A couple of suggestions though.

It is quite hard to id =FA, so maybe this could id when you get slowed as well as paralysed?

Also if you have discovered resist fire/acid/lightning/cold on a piece of armour can it automatically id next time? I found three armours of resist fire one after another and it is annoying to have to go through the id process for each one. Actually I'd go as far to say that once you've discovered an ability it should id on any type of item.

It is hard for kobolds to identify !poison and !curePoison unsurprisingly.

2) Playing ironman is a bit easier than it used to be with the extra food and light source drops, remove curse etc, but is still really tricky for a warrior with the lack of ?phase, !CSW, !CCW, _dEvil, _teleport, -TO etc. I'd increase the drops of these a bit. Has anyone won the game with an ironman warrior yet?

I'd also like to see more ?recharging (I've never found any in the dungeons in this version), since these would lead to interesting choices about keeping empty staves and wands in case one showed up.

3) Ranged weapons should be dropped with a bit of unenchanted ammo I think. Just a little, maybe 5-10 arrows/bolts/shots. Again this reduces need to go back to town as often.

4) There are a few useless items still. I'd get rid of !boldness. Make _starlight, _light, ?light do loads of damage to light sensitive monsters (more than rods/wands of light).

Wands of confuse/sleep/scare/slow are pretty useless after the first 20 levels. I'd like to see their life extended somehow.

Also I'd like to see earlier damage wands be more powerful than their equivalent rod version (such as wands of lightning bolts). At the moment they are pretty much junk since they are much worse than the rods and they run out of charges.

5) Has the dungeon generation algorithm changed? I found myself in cut off rooms a couple of times (and I had a -dStairs to prove it). Luckily I had a =Teleporation to get myself out of there.

6) Still TMJ especially weapons. I really don't see the need for generating {magic} weapons after around level 20, unless you're going to start giving them much larger -tohit and -todamage values as you get deeper. Same goes for the slay weapons after around level 30. I'd say drop fewer more interesting weapons/equipment. There's probably plenty of squelch options for this, but I really not a fan of the whole idea.

Overall I really enjoyed it and am excited about the direction the game is going. Well done to everyone involved.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by TJS

Also if you have discovered resist fire/acid/lightning/cold on a piece of armour can it automatically id next time? I found three armours of resist fire one after another and it is annoying to have to go through the id process for each one. Actually I'd go as far to say that once you've discovered an ability it should id on any type of item.

This is known as a "rune-based" approach, i.e. once you know the "rune" for resist fire, you spot it on any subsequent item. Makes sense to me.

It is hard for kobolds to identify !poison and !curePoison unsurprisingly.

This should be easy to fix, if there is consensus that resistant races should recognise the effects to which they are resistant (same for dwarves and !blind).

4) There are a few useless items still. I'd get rid of !boldness. Make _starlight, _light, ?light do loads of damage to light sensitive monsters (more than rods/wands of light).

IMO starlight should be changed to a totally unresistable element or removed altogether. _light and ?light have more practical uses so their damage is irrelevant. !boldness should give TMD_BOLD, i.e. temporary resistance to fear, rather than just curing fear. (What, it does already?)

Wands of confuse/sleep/scare/slow are pretty useless after the first 20 levels. I'd like to see their life extended somehow.

There's a long thread on this somewhere, and an open ticket on the tracker. Monster saves against these effects need completely reworking so that they're useful for longer.

I agree with most of your other points (magic weapons, stronger wands, etc.)

CC

[Pete Mack]

Fixing !poison and kobolds is easy - cause damage/3 with resistance, like breath.