3.3.0 Hobbit Rogue / Death

[CliffStamp]

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.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

A few notes, the game seems very munchkin now, it is similar to other variants which have easy/cheat flags on :

3.3.x is easier than we want the game to be; that much is certain. 3.4.0 is trying to redress the balance, but I wanted to directly address a few of your specific concerns. Thanks for the feedback, incidentally.

-when you id something it gets *id*
-artifacts are id when you pick them up

If I recall correctly (these two have been in for awhile), the goal here was to eliminate the advantage that memorizing the spoiler/edit files gives you. Perhaps it would be better to ID everything that is nonvariant about the item, and leave randomly-assigned abilities un-ID'd?

-treasure detection (including rod!) now does object detection

Object detection always existed; the two have simply been merged now. The rod is new though.

-there is a massive quiver which expands the inventory

The original goal of the quiver was to make it reasonable for the user to carry around ammo after losing a few of the items; previously, the value of a stack of 10 arrows was very low. However, the initial approach was flawed because the maximum stack size was 99, which meant that the player could carry absurd amounts of ammo. The stack size (for all item types) has since been reduced to 40, so that should fix this problem.

-no cursed items?

This is all part of trying to eliminate the "ID game", which is generally seen as being more tedious than fun. In this case, the goal is to eliminate the need to ID every single item before you dare wear it. There's been plenty of discussion on this and particularly on how to continue to spring nasty surprises on the player while still making them willing to wear unknown items.

-armor classes were boosted insanely high

Armor class has been rescaled, actually. The goal was to increase the impact of body armor relative to the other armor slots, and to make a bigger difference between e.g. a robe and a suit of plate armor. If I recall correctly, the old AC 250 is the new AC 350, or thereabouts.

-stat drains seem to go away automatically (no restore potions ever seen)

Stats restore automatically on levelup now. This has a number of convenient effects:
* 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?

-monsters seem to have been reworked / difficulty is down

If anything, compared to the Ben Harrison days, there are more powerful monsters now. The only monster-related nerf I can think of compared to back then is that zephyr hound pack sizes have been decreased -- which was mainly done to combat the fact that the midgame was all about killing dogs.

-potions of curing cure much more now?

Yes. IIRC C*W potions were dice-based back in the day (e.g. 8d4, 8d6, 8d8 healing?), and were basically useless for restoring HP. Then they went to restoring a flat amount (15/30/60?), and now they do percentile-based healing (10/15/20%?), or the flat amount, whichever is more. Probably what we should do here is go back to the flat healing, and possibly make a Potion of Curing that does all the ailment-cures that we currently use Cure Critical Wounds for.

- there do not seem to be things to breath confusion

Confusion as an element is gone, yes. Personally I rather liked it but other people thought that it didn't really make sense to breathe a status ailment (like there's no monsters that breathe blindness or hallucination). 3.4 should introduce baby chaos and balance drakes though.

- Hydra's seem not to be the rolling engines of destruction they once were

I don't think hydras have changed much if at all, so the big difference must be in your character's power. Again, we're working on fixing those balance issues.

- 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.

Monster locations have also been rescaled a bit, again IIRC. Part of the goal there is to eliminate the "wasteland" of dlvls 60-90 where there are basically no new monsters introduced. This does mean that the difficulty curve earlier on is a bit smoother, since some monsters that were previously powerful for their depths are now "properly" located.

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.

I'm certainly beginning to think that we don't need as much precision in the finesse/prowess bonuses as we're currently using. +1 prowess on a weapon is less than +1% damage (it's multiplied by the heft of the weapon, which is always less than 1), which in turn is generally less than 1HP of extra damage. We could divide all the numbers by 10 without losing much.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

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.

I just love how "dl76 in 75k turns" - which is an impossible feat for about 99% of players - is just a warm-up for you.

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

Well, that doesn't sound like item generation was overly munchkin then - not much in the way of uber finds there (no artifacts worth mentioning).

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
-no cursed items?

These are all related to a huge set of changes to ID since you last played. Many people fed back that the ID minigame was the least interesting / most irritating part of the game, so we moved to ID-by-use rather than relying on spells, scrolls etc. You now learn about plusses when you attack, AC/resists when you get hit, slays/brands when you hit something, etc.

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.

-treasure detection (including rod!) now does object detection

This was acknowledged as giving too much away - 3.4 has 'fuzzy' detection which is a huge change in the other direction. Try it and let us know what you think.

-there is a massive quiver which expands the inventory

Yes, this was very contentious. It was designed to prevent six stacks of 5-10 arrows from taking up five inv slots, but it's too generous in 3.3. In 3.4 it's been dramatically reduced (max stack size is 40 IIRC).

-armor classes were boosted insanely high

No, the scale was recalibrated. It was roughly doubled, so AC 200 now corresponds to ~100 in 3.0.x, and so on. The benefit of AC has not changed: it still absorbs up to 60% of physical damage, and prevents monsters hitting you as often. AC 200 should result in the same amount of damage absorption and monster misses as AC 100 used to.

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.)

-stat drains seem to go away automatically (no restore potions ever seen)

This was to prevent store scumming - another topic of much feedback. Drains now restore on level-up - you level up so fast you probably didn't notice them, but it means they're much more dangerous in the late game when level-ups are few or finished.

-monsters seem to have been reworked / difficulty is down

Not really sure what you mean by this - can you expand on it a bit? Monsters haven't really had much of a makeover, and to my knowledge haven't been significantly weakened.

-potions of curing cure much more now?

They cure a percentage of hp - again, this is something that's been reverted in 3.4. It's very nice that you've picked three examples of things that have been nerfed or reverted in 3.4, given how much criticism has been made of our reluctance to do this!

- there do not seem to be things to breath confusion

Correct - confusion was an anomaly, being both a status ailment and a damage element. It's now only the former. There are plenty of breath elements left (15 IIRC).

- Hydra's seem not to be the rolling engines of destruction they once were

I don't remember them being too bad, but perhaps you are thinking of NPP where they are deadly. Or maybe they were toned down well before I came on board (3.1.0).

- 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.

That doesn't seem to be terribly different from how I remember 2.9.x playing - if I was lucky enough to find a Westernesse early, it would indeed kill most things until about dl40.

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.

I'm not sure which problems you mean but I don't really buy that. A lot of the changes were the results of Eddie's lobbying - in particular the streamlining of ID. It is true that he has spoken out against the quiver, which is one reason why stack size was reduced. I don't *think* he objected to the changes to the restore mechanic, but I can't be certain.

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 +/-

Glad you like these - though items in pits could be seen as munchkin ;-)

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.

That's a completely different combat system, which is 10x more granular. It takes a little while to reconcile the +45,+65 sling in your mind to the equivalent of +4.5, +6.5 - but not too long.

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by Derakon

IIRC C*W potions were dice-based back in the day (e.g. 8d4, 8d6, 8d8 healing?), and were basically useless for restoring HP. Then they went to restoring a flat amount (15/30/60?), and now they do percentile-based healing (10/15/20%?), or the flat amount, whichever is more.

That is one of the biggest changes because if you pour money into those potions and you can last 1-2 rounds and the monster can not distance attack (or you are willing to corridor) then you can kill anything. The consumption of healing potions/staff used to be a real critical point which is why a rod of healing (and especially two) meant it was open season on all the uniques you were avoiding. If you can phase or tel-away and then just drink 5 ccw it makes a lot of the game very easy as it isn't that difficult to get 99 of serious/critical. This alone is enough to seriously change how the game can be played.

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.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

That is one of the biggest changes because if you pour money into those potions and you can last 1-2 rounds and the monster can not distance attack (or you are willing to corridor) then you can kill anything. The consumption of healing potions/staff used to be a real critical point which is why a rod of healing (and especially two) meant it was open season on all the uniques you were avoiding. If you can phase or tel-away and then just drink 5 ccw it makes a lot of the game very easy as it isn't that difficult to get 99 of serious/critical. This alone is enough to seriously change how the game can be played.

I definitely agree, and am happy to hear Magnate say that this has been changed again in 3.4. We're iteratively approaching balanced gameplay.

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.

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by Magnate

... not much in the way of uber finds there (no artifacts worth mentioning).

Not that I saw, but my kill rate was really low I was only killing things way under depth like the orc guys at dl 60 or a dragon when I could get double resist and first/buffed move.

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.

I don't remember them being too bad, but perhaps you are thinking of NPP where they are deadly.

Could be, NPP was the first variant I went with heavily and tooled around in. My memory is that they are speed hasted, can breath, hit heavy, and can even do really nasty things like plasma at later levels. They also have useless drops so are not worth consumables.

Glad you like these - though items in pits could be seen as munchkin

I only saw them once, detect treasure and there were a bunch of them. It wasn't something I would attempt as the risk/reward was too high aside from finding a scroll of mass banishment as I assume they are all rolled good or better. Even then though I likely would have not done it as I would have been thinking of end game unless I was simply stagnated and had no speed at dl 60+.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

Could be, NPP was the first variant I went with heavily and tooled around in. My memory is that they are speed hasted, can breath, hit heavy, and can even do really nasty things like plasma at later levels. They also have useless drops so are not worth consumables.

NPP's hydras are awesome, and way more dangerous than Vanilla's. We should import them. The problem is that they'd need a nerf to fit Vanilla's lower power curve, and it'd be too easy to nerf them into not really being notable again.

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by Derakon

... I wouldn't be surprised if the C*W potions were stepped up to fill in the gap.

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.

[fizzix]

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

1. destruction removes artifacts (preserved if applicable), so no more destructing vaults.
2. teleport other is a bolt, not a beam (I think this is in 3.3)
3. TO rods and wands are now much more expensive to buy from the BM
4. additional monster pits, ainu(angels), golems, vampires, hydras, eyes, people, etc.
5. Morgoth's summons are harder to deal with (although Lorgan's are weaker)
6. No more enchant scrolls in town
7. Starting stats are weaker for most classes. Your rogue is going to have a tougher time in the early levels with his town-bought dagger.
8. Branding rings no longer brand
9. DSM recharge times are down (this makes things a bit easier)

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.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Derakon

NPP's hydras are awesome, and way more dangerous than Vanilla's. We should import them. The problem is that they'd need a nerf to fit Vanilla's lower power curve, and it'd be too easy to nerf them into not really being notable again.

Uh, NPP high-level hydras as they are would be the most dangerous thing almost including Morgoth in vanilla. They would need to be toned down a lot, otherwise no thank you. In NPP breath attacks are conical with diminishing damage at distance. That makes all breath-based attacks way less dangerous if you just keep your distance. This same doesn't apply to vanilla.

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.