Blackguard first impressions and missing docs

[Tom Warner]

Just downloaded 4.2.1 last night, have played 3.x extensively but this is my first time with the v4 classes and all, figured I'd make a thread for what I've been finding out.

I like the new online help and it's definitely a great direction to go in, but I think there's a bunch of missing information, particularly in terms of class overviews. I have a bunch of experience playing older versions but there were still a whole bunch of surprises:

- Combat-based SP regen doesn't get mentioned at all. When I started off in the town with 0 SP, I first tried resting to bring it up to full, and didn't figure out what was actually happening until I noticed the points went up while fighting early monsters. Similarly there's no explanation of any of the other mechanics, like SP decay or the healing it gives.

- Similarly the shield-bash mechanic doesn't really have any explanation--seems it gets a random chance to stun or confuse an enemy in melee? Does shield size or AC have any effect on this? Sometimes I 'stumble' when attempting a shield bash but it's not clear what effect that has either.

- There seems to be some inverse relationship between max SP and WIS? I'm playing a half-troll so INT and WIS are both very low, but when I got wisdom-drained by a rot jelly I'm pretty sure it gave me an extra point of SP that went away when I went up to the next level and my WIS restored. Currently trying to find another rot jelly to replicate.

- Leap Into Battle requires a specific enemy to target, but you can't just aim it in a direction and have it target the closest enemy in that direction, like most other spells. This seems like it should work.

- The light-level thing seems neat, but I've not found any explanation on how it works or is relevant to my character, except some mention that Necromancers don't like light.

- Same with the new hunger mechanics -- interesting that the Gorged mechanic came back but it seems kind of weird that you get gorged at 90% instead of by going over 100%. It's also not clear if there's any way you can escape being gorged without waiting for food to digest--are there still potions that make you puke? Do remove hunger scrolls reset your fed level downwards too?

- What happened to the search mechanic? It seems there's no way to just specifically search for hidden stuff anymore, but secret doors appear as soon as you stand next to them. But if I suspect I'm standing next to a trap, would I just stand still for a few turns to see if it shows up?

I'm gonna keep going with this HT Blackguard, honestly have been really enjoying the mechanics as I figure them out. Currently at CL11,DL10 so I'll update with anything else interesting I find--especially excited to see how the higher-level rituals work. But since I've spent so much time complaining about documentation I'm happy to help with that--maybe there should be a top-level help page for character classes, with a detailed explanation of the mechanics for each, plus some tips and tricks?