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#1 |
Apprentice
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 64
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3.3.0 Hobbit Rogue / Death
I ran up a Hobbit Rogue in 3.3.0 (high stealth, decent device/bow) and ran him down to dl 76 in 75k turns to check out a few aspects of game play.
At dl 76 -level 33 -full base_r (rings of cold/fire, shield of lit, all armor for acid) -no high resists inc. poison -speed +6 (boots+cloak) -dagger of westerness, 4 attacks -no stats close to max -<400 hp -sling of accuracy, one set of acid pebbles There was no real way to kill anything significant, the plan was to get to dl 98 and then just poke about and hopefully find : -amulet of speed/dex/con -ring of con/speed -better bos -some kind of weapon (gondolin,heaxy xbow of shots, or pool of wands) -necessary consumables (speed, healing, destruction, genocide, tel-away) And of course actually get something decent for armour like : -shield of elvenkind (nether/disenchant/chaos/poison) -DSM (chaos/law, or some artifact armour) -gauntlets of agility/power -helm of telepathy/might I was hoping for something like a decent d pit and potions of same and some dispel staves to try to make this happen before Wyrms made it into them. I was however put in an awkward situation when I found a staff of power right outside a giant pit. If I could clear it without dying it was likely the exp and possible drop could be greatly advanced. The only danger was teleport to with the titans and then a double hit to confuse. I opened a slot, got off two shots of power and then teleport to, hit to confuse double turn and all HP to zero - blammo. That pit would have been a huge accelerator had it dropped amber/hammerhand and a x-bow of might then it would have been a stroke of genius obviously. A few notes, the game seems very munchkin now, it is similar to other variants which have easy/cheat flags on : -when you id something it gets *id* -artifacts are id when you pick them up -treasure detection (including rod!) now does object detection -there is a massive quiver which expands the inventory -no cursed items? -armor classes were boosted insanely high -stat drains seem to go away automatically (no restore potions ever seen) -monsters seem to have been reworked / difficulty is down -potions of curing cure much more now? I mainly played when Ben was the maintainer and was variant hopping a lot after that and a lot of this is from memory but as a few examples : - there do not seem to be things to breath confusion - Hydra's seem not to be the rolling engines of destruction they once were - I was actually capable of killing a lot of things almost up to dl 40 with that westerness weapon with three attacks and phase door. I can see how someone like Eddie would not be positive about that direction as he spent a lot of time figuring out how to move very fast, survive with sub-optimal equipment and deal with a lot of problems which look to have just been removed from the game completely. There are some nice things : -squelch (infancy but there) -some pits have items in them (animal) -more rooms/layouts -interesting new rings (dog, mouse) -more mushrooms with interesting effects, some +/- I checked out some of the development and it is going in that direction even more and some of the changes are a bit silly like the +150, +250 enchantments. I realize the coding is different but this just doesn't even look like Angband any more when you see a sling +45,+65 on dl 3 or similar. I would be curious to see where the same will be in 1-2 years under the same direction/views. |
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#2 | |||||||||||||
Prophet
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 9,024
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* Stat restore potions are no longer sold in the stores, eliminating an impulse to shop scum. * Stat drainers are not as dangerous early on (providing a gentle introduction to new players), but significantly more dangerous later (since your next restore is not just around the corner) * Stat-gain potions retain relevance even in the endgame. I find Dreads to be much more frightening under the new system, for example. But perhaps we want the restores to be less common? Quote:
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Last edited by Derakon; May 17, 2012 at 19:20. |
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#3 | |||||||||||||||
Angband Devteam member
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So ID and *ID* were merged, artifacts auto-ID as such (think of it as a free determination of their indestructibility) - but only the name, not the properties. And no sticky curses because that stops people IDing stuff by use. It is a valid criticism that these have not yet been replaced by any more interesting curses - this has been at the top of the to-do list for a couple of years now. There are lots and lots of threads with interesting suggestions, but nobody has actually coded them up. Quote:
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Why did we do this? To make heavy armours more meaningful. People now actually wear Adamantite Plate [80,+0] sometimes, when hardly anybody ever did. (Weights were tweaked as well so that AC per unit weight is more favourable for heavy armours.) Quote:
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"3.4 is much better than 3.1, 3.2 or 3.3. It still is easier than 3.0.9, but it is more convenient to play without being ridiculously easy, so it is my new favorite of the versions." - Timo Pietila |
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#4 | |
Apprentice
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 64
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In regards to ID, I think calling that tedious is one of the things that may have been argued to be reworking for a novice as only a novice id's everything before they pick it up, sell it. It doesn't take much thought for example to use a scroll of remove curse as a sort of mass ID. But beyond that it is inventory and shop management and knowing how to balance resting to trigger ID, etc. . If you are refusing to think about all of that and just want to id everything immediately without any thought then I really think that is not in the spirit of how Angband is played, it certainly isn't by people like Eddie and I never did it as it is too high of a cash out lay. |
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#5 | |
Prophet
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 9,024
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![]() I think part of the issue here is that, if I recall correctly, one of the previous versions of Angband (3.1.2?) had absolutely terrible availability of consumables -- item drops had been reduced across the board in an attempt to reduce the amount of junk items generated (since most players don't really enjoy sorting through hundreds of items after every pit cleared), and this accidentally hit potions of Healing and the like. I wouldn't be surprised if the C*W potions were stepped up to fill in the gap. Obviously this was a mis-step, which we can now correct. |
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#6 | |||
Apprentice
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 64
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In order to get a decent grasp of drop rates you need to do some element of level clear which I don't like as you hit cl 50 far too fast which irritates me as the game feels over then. I actually sourced this way back and cut the exp massively (/10). Had I not actually took on the pit, I would have started scumming for high drop low risk monsters at dl 98 and then killed them selectively. The length of time it would take to kit out there would be a decent indicator but you really need multiple games to make any kind of inference. I have ran games before where drops fell almost on command and the character walked through the game like an annihilator. In the next game ran right down to deep dl with no resists, no speed, and little to any stat boosts which leads to a huge stall as you end up not able to kill anything. The best class to play for item drop is something like half troll paladin as while you can move fast stealth is horrible so you can't stair detect/teleport with abandon and you really are forced to have at least basic r, and HP to survive the high attack and prevent double move. Quote:
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#7 | |
Prophet
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 9,024
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#8 |
Apprentice
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 64
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One of the larger changes which almost everyone regards as positive were the artifacts which you can use for healing. They are rare enough they don't make the game trivial but if you add the chance of finding at least one of them with the staff/rod or just stack of potions, it did reduce the necessity of item scumming at the end to either kill the questors and/or trim out the unique list. The trick is to stop the stalling, but not trivialize game play.
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#9 |
Prophet
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, US
Posts: 3,023
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Derakon and Magnate hit most of the main points but I'll add a few more.
3.1-3.3 were indeed easier. These are some of the fastest games around. In addition to your changes the game is way too generous with ego item and artifact drops. This has been corrected in 3.4. Artifacts are much rarer. Ego items are much rarer. Even stat potions are rarer in 3.4, which I don't necessarily agree with, but it does make it more difficult. BoS are an incredibly lucky find for 75k turns. BoS + westernesse is a great stroke of luck. I would say this is lucky even for 3.3, but it certainly is for 3.4. Zephyr hound pack size have not been reduced. They've instead been dropped in frequency (around 3.1 i think). This has certainly made the game easier, because landing in a dark room of gravity hounds is instant death on first move, and the chance of that occurring has been reduced. However, there is a big downside to high frequency hounds, which is what prompted the change. They are so damn tedious, that, in earlier version, you spent 25% of your total game time hockey sticking hounds. (My preference was to retain high-frequency but reduce pack size, but that was not what made it into gameplay.) !CCW is still pretty powerful in 3.4, however you can't carry 99 !CCW anymore unless you want to devote 3 slots to them. Furthermore, they've been dropped to max 60 HP so you need 5 of them to be equivalent to one !healing. All slots (including quiver) have a max of 40. Try to kill Morgoth in 3.4 with 40 !CCW as your only healing. Hell, try to do it with 80. You won't get too far, I assure you. Hydras are pretty rough. They move fast, they have decent HP, and they can hit hard and breathe. 3.4 includes monster weaknesses and hydras are weak to cold though, so they have actually been nerfed a bit. They still are a pain though. I would also like to point out some additional difficult changes that are in 3.4
Typically I've found that I need about 1.5x as many game turns in 3.4 than in 3.3. I also need to spend more time on the first few levels in order to not get slaughtered. I haven't played a rogue yet, but I suspect they're the fastest class, mainly because they're now the only class with access to a full object-detection spell. Everyone else is limited to fuzzy. Roughly 1/3 of pit items are good. Or at least that was my initial implementation. I'm not sure if Gabe changed things when he extracted pits to the edit files. Jelly pits, zoos, graveyards and the new pits of golems, hydras, eyes and centipedes have items in them, ranging from few in the centipede, jelly pits and lots in the graveyards. Also, there is still a large difference between v4 and 3.4. v4 is experimental, and that's where you're seeing the (+45, +60) modifiers. 3.4 does not have the finesse/prowess combat, and I would say that 3.4 doesn't look too different from 3.3 or 3.0.x. v4 however, is a radical departure, and it's specifically designed as such. It's probably best to view it as a variant right now. There may come a time where there is discussion of whether v4 should be Angband 4.0, but that time is not yet. |
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#10 | |
Prophet
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Climbing up from hole I just dug.
Posts: 4,096
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3.4 hydra pits (or something with lots of hydras) did show to me that they are plenty dangerous in vanilla too. 11-headed ones with plasma-attacks in game with very rare stun resist are nasty, and in melee they burn your books, staves and scrolls. |
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