A horrific noob's commentated 'band adventures

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by smbhax

I haven't found myself having to grind at all in the beginning of Hengband. The one time I went all the way through the Yeek cave beginning dungeon so far, I came out massively over-leveled, having done zero quests.

(Then I went back and did the beginning quests and, since their scripted content didn't scale, found them to be no challenge, with useless rewards. The "lesson" of that first quest was lost entirely, because the cloaker bounced off my level-19-character-with-free-action and died immediately. Free action also made Old Man Willow, another early quest, feel silly. I suppose this is also pointing to the on/off of the free action buff being a bit goofy--but thank goodness; obviously some developer knew that paralyzing the player just sucks.)

Elevated risk and elevated reward for optional side quests is fine. What strikes me as poor game design and an excellent way to ensure that many players quit your game and never come back is giving such a side quest an intentionally misleading difficulty rating, and purposefully setting it up to assassinate the player as a way to "teach" them a lesson--in a permadeath game, no less. This is going to lose you players, as a lot of people will decide they have better ways to spend their time.

You're probably playing melee classes, they can handle pure melee combat in Thieves Quest already; I was talking about more fragile spellcasters. Also, original Angband already had nasty beginner traps - Floating Eyes can para-lock you right on level 1, the dog uniques are very nasty for weaker characters, Hummerhorn swarms can confusion lock you, and going below level 40 without poison resist can get you instakilled by a Drolem/AMHD.

[smbhax]

Originally Posted by Thraalbee

It is fine that you don't like quests, they are all easily avoided except the final two.

That's good to know! I wasn't sure.

Originally Posted by Thraalbee

Personally I enjoy the level 50+ quests in FrogComposband much more than the final two fights. For instance, I recently took a wrong downstair ending up in the Royal Crypt (level 70? quest) with a level 34 character and made it out alive without failing the quest. I din't get the really sweet loot, but still a very memorable moment and great satisfaction.

That definitely sounds like a rewarding moment; being a noob I stumble through stuff like that in the random dungeons fairly regularly. ^_^

Speaking of Frog, the reason I'm not playing that game--while sometimes watching expert angband.live players seemingly effortlessly dicing their way through achingly cool-looking Frog maps--is that I found even the beginning newbie dungeon experience to be packed with incredibly wonky game balance among the races, classes, and AI monsters (and what's with all the duplicate staircases in there? : p); it feels like almost no balancing of the huge amount of content in Frog has been attempted, and the player is just expected to know how things work, and what to avoid--either by reading about it in advance or doing a whole lot of learning by dying...which is what I was doing, because I prefer to see a game for myself. Hengband's base game experience so far has been pretty well balanced by comparison--not nearly as well as vanilla Angband's, mind you, but enough to be more or less manageable most of the time--which is maybe another reason why this quest thing stood out like such a sore thumb.

[smbhax]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

You're probably playing melee classes, they can handle pure melee combat in Thieves Quest already; I was talking about more fragile spellcasters.

Ah, I see. Yeah, the random class selection I've been doing so far has given me all fighter-category characters. I suspect I'm going to do far worse with spellcasters because of my impatience, but it'll be interesting to find that out. ; )

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Also, original Angband already had nasty beginner traps - Floating Eyes can para-lock you right on level 1, the dog uniques are very nasty for weaker characters, Hummerhorn swarms can confusion lock you, and going below level 40 without poison resist can get you instakilled by a Drolem/AMHD.

I knew about some of that and that's why I qualified my earlier comparison to vanilla Angband with "in recent years." I've also played some Rogue and UMoria, which of course were even more cruel. Hengband is an old enough variant that it inherited some of the older, meaner stuff, and the devs seem to have stuck to that more ruthless attitude. Which is fine, I just wasn't sure what their current design intent was for the quests; I'm glad I found out before I got really far into a character and then got them whacked in some intentionally murderous quest.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by smbhax

Hengband is an old enough variant that it inherited some of the older, meaner stuff, and the devs seem to have stuck to that more ruthless attitude. Which is fine, I just wasn't sure what their current design intent was for the quests; I'm glad I found out before I got really far into a character and then got them whacked in some intentionally murderous quest.

Keep in mind Hengband is maintained by Japanese community, and the devs don't have much contact with vanilla Angband developers. Those nasty quests originated back from Zangband; at least Dump Witness is very early game, Royal Crypt can be a deathtrap for endgame characters.

[smbhax]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Keep in mind Hengband is maintained by Japanese community, and the devs don't have much contact with vanilla Angband developers. Those nasty quests originated back from Zangband; at least Dump Witness is very early game, Royal Crypt can be a deathtrap for endgame characters.

Yeah, and I'm not surprised they aren't interested in changing it at this point. (I think they should and that it would help the game's audience grow--but developers and fans become set in their ways like anyone else, and I'm not going to argue with them over it.) The dev who responded to me on this issue was the remaining one of the four official Hengband team members with whom I had yet to interact; I was surprised by how excellent this member's English is--really remarkable, and, as usual, puts my "I speak American" self to shame. ; )

"Don't have much contact with vanilla Angband developers" isn't quite accurate: backwardsEric has been helping out there pretty regularly--not on game balance, though.

[smbhax]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Those nasty quests originated back from Zangband

Zangband is an interesting example of a game that kind of wrecked itself, at least as far as I can tell from reading about it now, and poking through its remaining web site and versions. At its height it was the hottest thing going in 'band-land, apparently, and had its own development team cranking out content--far more than Angband was, at the time. And variants like Hengband branching off, etc. But then they got really ambitious and replaced their small, fixed map wilderness with a completely procedurally generated wilderness--with no map view, clusters of boringly similar towns, and no obvious way to tell the level of the land into which you may wander, short of running into a dreadfully overpowered random monster--which appears to have been a big turn-off.

I might still be trying to play it except that the dungeon floor generation is either a) really plain and boring--early Angband style, I suppose or b) some really different styles but sometimes really hideous things like these sort of open levels with rows of houses or outbuildings flanked by hedges, which are just an awful, ugly slog. I hope those either came along *after* Hengband forked from it, or that Hengband didn't keep them. ; )

[smbhax]

Angband // Got my first-ever artifact from an ambush by two Numenorean uniques!

Level 27 human warrior at dungeon level 22:

https://youtu.be/4fGANn_Kj3w

0:00 - start & young blue dragon?!?
5:47 - druadan mages = ppp
12:37 - oh just a quylthulg
20:23 - everybody breathes on me
25:43 - "Elec" = "Lightning" resistance?
29:06 - Two Numenorean uniques!
39:15 - whotta haul! 'o' And my first artifact!
54:06 - wrap-up & what's next!

I think that was the first non-baby dragon I've ever fought, that was a nice welcome back to the game. ^_^

18:56 - I mean, with hitting Return in between each direction entry ; )

The character sheet calls it "Elec" resistance but items call it resistance to "Lightning"? 'p' (If the idea was not to confuse it with "Light" resistance on the character sheet, shouldn't it just be called "Electricity" in item descriptions?)

Those Numenoreans (or Númenóreans, if you must : P) were pretty wild! Uh Angamaite ("Angamaitë" :P) of Umbar and Sangahyando of Umbar:

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Angamait%C3%AB
https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Sangahyando

The phat l00ts!!

And uh yeah Numenoreans are one of Tolkien's types of old super-men, like Aragorn was a Dunedain ("Dúnedain" ) one of the non-evil kind. : P

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/N%C3%BAmen%C3%B3reans

And then there's well what these were

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Black_N...men%C3%B3reans

: PP

I guess I probably won't get to fight Aragorn.

[smbhax]

Hengband \\ High-Elf Weaponsmith: 95% Judgment failure ; P

Level 8 High-Elf Weaponsmith @ Yeek cave Lev 5

https://youtu.be/2D4wNE-HxUw

Sophomore outing with a High-Elf Weaponsmith, character level 8, still in the noob dungeon, and it had been a month or so since I played which apparently means I forgot the buttons to use for basic game functions! ]_[ Also I don't really know how weaponsmithing works still, I tried their "Judgment" power gained at level 5 and found I have a 95% failure rate with it (it's basically "Identify"), and I didn't find any magic weapons so I didn't get any weapon smithing juice to work with--and I got one magic armor thing but then wasn't sure if I should use the essences I extracted. Basically I played really really lame! I did at least gain a few levels, get a few levels down in the noob dungeon, and found a decent magic crossbow in a shop. : P

Oh and I got a rod of trap detection or revealing or whatever weird word they called it--can finally clear a big hole in those "x" marks on the map. ^_^

0:00 - start
2:31 - Trying Judgment, Yeek cave Lev 5
12:17 - can't remember basic functions 'p'
16:28 - okay onward sheesh
30:52 - Yeek cave Lev 6
32:36 - extracting essences from {good} armor
35:09 - Rod of Trap Location
46:53 - Yeek cave Lev 7, statue of Ufthak
49:06 - Wis doesn't raise Judgment success rate 'p'
59:49 - junking it up in town
1:14:29 - wrap-up & what's next!

I don't know if there's anything I could have done with that "Wooden Statue of Ufthak of Cirith Ungol"; Ufthak is a unique NPC--on the town's wanted list, as it happens (1:12:39)--but unlike say the little figurines you can throw to create a pet, this statue's description didn't say it does that (just said it was smiling, or something). And it weighed 20 lbs. : P Wasn't worth too much in the store, either, so I dunno--maybe it was just a statue?

Not sure why auto-destroy didn't take out that Filthy Rag (turned out to be [1, -1]--not sure if that's normal for filthy rags : P), but if that happens again I'll have to add them to the auto-destroy list. = p

Since playing I've looked up what little info there seems to be on weaponsmithing; it's simpler than I thought it would be, so that clears up some confusion I had; going to play again as soon as possible, and I'll show the weaponsmithing documentation and try some armor enchanting!

I really didn't need to use Judgment that much; the "just hold it in inventory for a little while" auto-appraisal could handle most of that junk I was finding: ie, if it's just {average}, it isn't magic. : P And like the Weaponsmith's enchanting powers, Judgment only works on weapons and armor.

[Cryomaniac]

Judgment depends on INT stat; if it's too low, you'll have a large failure rate.

Statues are pure flavor items, as far as I know.

[smbhax]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Judgment depends on INT stat; if it's too low, you'll have a large failure rate.

Statues are pure flavor items, as far as I know.

Thanks! Dang it. Well, INT was my next guess after raising my WIS, my lowest stat, from 9 didn't help the 95% failure rate. But I mean, "Judgment," "judge," sounds like you'd want wisdom, right? Of course, the one sentence about it in the game documentation doesn't mention any stat it might rely on. My INT isn't even THAT low, it's 12. This is a fighter sub-class, for Pete's sake! Garhghl barghle