Class/magic feature branch

[Moving Pictures]

I thought we'd addressed traps. A chest that fires nine needles? Really?

[Nick]

A few quick thoughts:

• Rangers will not be a complete looking class until the monster list is redone; I'm aiming to have monster tracking of the player done by smell, sound, sight and "life force detection", and rangers will get spells to manipulate the first two or three of those
• For now I'll probably give rangers better archery, and possibly do monster traps
• Some of fizzix's priest issues are improved by removing race experience modifiers; I'm also considering playing with the experience curve
• Monster list redo is needed to improve pacing as well (some actual deep monsters, for example)

I hope to get an update out this weekend which will address some of the class issues that have come up during the comp (note - few complaints about rogues or paladins...)

[Nick]

Originally Posted by bunnies

Just beat M with HE mage

Some comments:

Here is what I've changed for the next build:

Originally Posted by bunnies

+ Losing CurePoison. Annoying, but non lethal. I used to mbd and R& (both macroed), which takes <5 seconds. Now I have to spamwait to wear off Pois, while !CLWing to top myself up, while watching for monsters. Annoying. !CCW and !NeutralizePois is not always available at this stage

There are a few like this which have gone because of class differentiation, and an attempt to get away from "everybody gets everything, except warriors" syndrome. Made !NeutralisePoison a bit more common.

Originally Posted by bunnies

+ Losing SatisfyHunger. Annoying, but non lethal. It used to be when PermLight was available I could keep going without surfacing. Now I have to use a slot or two on food / ?SatisfyHunger (more weight), and keep food unsquelched (more junk on floor to parse). Although food is almost always available in the dungeon, it's annoying when you've spent alot of time clearing a vault and go hungry without food on the level

Nothing yet - there may be some changes to food coming to make it more interesting generally.

Originally Posted by bunnies

++ Losing DisableTraps. There is no way to overcome traps if I haven't found devices or book2. If I want to walk through a corridor in a mini vault with a trapdoor or summontrap in the way, I used to disabletrap, or tunnel around the problem. Now I can do nothing except turn back, or roll the dice and pray

Third book is now a town book; this should fix several issues..

Originally Posted by bunnies

++ Losing SpearOfLight. Ranged lighting into rooms and down corridors was a crucial spell in the mage repertoire for advance vision and gathering intel at all stages of the game. Now I'm crippled until I find devices, and they occupy a slot in my inventory nearly the entire game (unless I find 'A' enlightment)

++ Losing StoneToMud. Terraforming the environment is another crucial mage spell, for gaining tactical advantage, taking shortcuts, getting to vaults, and is relevant at all stages of the game. Similar to previous I have to collect devices and occupies a slot in my bag the entire game, and I feel crippled without it

More casualties of class differentiation. Added wands of Light and StM to magic shop (and removed wands of Stun and Hold Monster).

Originally Posted by bunnies

+++ Losing TeleSelf. This one is lethal. It used to be available at cLvl 7, now I need _Tele which costs 2900gp and isn't always available in the shop. The spell isn't just escape, it disengaged. Now if I get into a bad situation I spam ?Phase and run to staircase hoping whatever isn't fast and doesn't catchup

Now in a town book.

Originally Posted by bunnies

+ Acid Spray. Barely used. Failrate too high, range too low. Used FrostBolt 98% of the time. By the time it becomes decent I had other options

Reduced failrate, made it radius 10 instead of 4. See if that's useful.

Originally Posted by bunnies

+ Disruption. Barely used. TO was good enough, and I like to think that if you're in a situation that requires you to TO a clump of enemies you probably screwed up anyway (short of summoners)

I think you're right, I've removed this.

Originally Posted by bunnies

++ TapEnergy. I love the concept behind this spell, but I couldn't make it work. Failrate is too high when I get it. When the failrate is low enough the amount of sp I get in return is too low to justify it's usage. I tried to continously recharge a stack of low wands + tap combo, but it's not worth the effort. It's easier to just R& in a safe spot, or !Mana during a fight.

Reduced failrate and doubled the amount of mana.

Originally Posted by bunnies

+++ Losing Haste. This one is lethal, and huge. Without perm/temp speed, +10+ speed mobs are downright terrifying. Mages are already squishy enough, combine that with mobs that can run up to you and hit you for 3/4 hp. I mostly ran or TO'ed them away

Another class differentiation casualty - I'm trying to avoid giving this back to mages, we'll see how it goes.

Originally Posted by bunnies

++ MeteorShower vs ManaBolt. I used to take down mobs using a combination of Haste + MeteorShower. ManaBolt feels like a poor replacement. The damage dice is actually almost similar to FrostBolt, but costs 3sp more. If the monster doesn't resist cold I just used FrostBolt, if it does and it's tough I just avoided. In fact I barely used ManaBolt throughout the whole run

Increased the damage considerably.

Originally Posted by bunnies

ThrustAway. Didn't use it, didn't see a need.

This is actually a powerful damage spell as well as the thrusting effect - I made it high level because of that. I've left it as is for now, but maybe it should be earlier.

Originally Posted by bunnies

++++ FastCast. I love the concept of this spell, it gels so well with how mages are supposed to play. Unfortunately, it's only available so late in the game. But when I got it, it's so overpowered when used in conjunction with temp speed that I feel it should be nerfed. I used this together with ManaStorm to blow away all the end game content

Noted - it's now in the third book.

Originally Posted by bunnies

+ MageBook is same colour as RogueBook is same colour as potions. It's slightly confusing, and could do with differentiation, since the books are mutually exclusive

Chenged the rogue book map colour, and the inventory colour for arcane and divine books.

[bunnies]

Love the changes! Some comments:

Originally Posted by Nick

There are a few like this which have gone because of class differentiation, and an attempt to get away from "everybody gets everything, except warriors" syndrome. Made !NeutralisePoison a bit more common.

I don't have an issue with spell removal, I'm actually quite on board with the changes. But I'm not sure if making !NeutralisePoison more common is the solution for this one though though.

The key issue here is one of user experience, and I think DCSS's solution for this one is pretty good. Translated to Angband, it would look like this:

• On poison, display 3 numbers for HP: current / afterpoison / max e.g. 100(80)/150. 80 is the remaining HP after poison wears off
• On a single R&, wait until poison wears off. If poison would cause death i.e. afterpoison HP is < 0, warn user, or disallow R&
• On subsequent R& without poison, heal to full as per normal

Only two commands required for healing to full. No more "wait spamming" until poison wears off, it's annoying and dangerous. I think this would be a "truer" solution, and !NeutralizePoison doesn't have to be made more common, although it could serve as a stopgap fix

Originally Posted by Nick

Third book is now a town book; this should fix several issues..

Will test to see how it plays out

Originally Posted by Nick

More casualties of class differentiation. Added wands of Light and StM to magic shop (and removed wands of Stun and Hold Monster).

Love this one! I think these are core functions regardless of class

Originally Posted by Nick

Reduced failrate, made it radius 10 instead of 4. See if that's useful.
Reduced failrate and doubled the amount of mana.
Increased the damage considerably.

Need to test these as well

Originally Posted by Nick

Another class differentiation casualty - I'm trying to avoid giving this back to mages, we'll see how it goes.

(On removing haste) Might work with FastCast in Book 3

Originally Posted by Nick

This is actually a powerful damage spell as well as the thrusting effect - I made it high level because of that. I've left it as is for now, but maybe it should be earlier.

No idea, I'll give it another go

[Sphara]

Played the new HE mage to 1300ft using 3 deep descents. Just some thoughts:

Didn't miss Stone to Mud as much as bunnies. It was a goddamn powerful spell and would have seemed a bit like an overkill to me as mage's starting book also have Detect Monsters and Detect Traps. Disabling traps in some unfortunate situations might become some kinda russian roulette, though. But didn't happen to me yet.

Acid spray I still barely have any opinion as frost bolt kills everything that isn't cold resistant. Fail rate is still pretty high.

Otherwise I played it just as I used to.

[Nick]

Didn't get as far as I would have liked, but the build page now has new builds for Windows and macOS with the updates to mages outlined in my last post in this thread, and a fix to the Tap Magical Energy with full mana crash. Source is here.

[Moving Pictures]

Working a half-orc mage through the system. Haven't played a lot of mages, but here's my two cents/drachma/peso/copper pieces.

Playing style: the mage has become a tool-user Grab stuff, recharge. Rinse, lather, repeat. I plucked a wand of annihilation fairly early on, and recharged the ever-lovin' heck out of it, essentially turning a spell point into about 200 points of guaranteed, irresistible damage. Racked up a lot of dead uniques with that wand, until it went blooie. Until Dungeon book 4, was using wands of acid bolts, cold balls, etc., etc.

I think my playing style has evolved considerably in the last few months, but even being hyper-stupendous-cautious, I lost a whole bunch of mages in the first few levels (deep descent the culprit for a few; summoning another.) The only reason the current one made it to DL 50 (CL36) was due to a DL8 randart bow (x3), iCold, rAcid, pFear, +4 CON that turned it into a ranger - at least on low AC targets.

Liking the electric arc. Scales well, I thought, through early levels.. Nerfing stinking cloud was wise, as it did not scale well: became irrelevant too quickly.

Not grasping the use of disruption. Doesn't seem ... worth anything.

Mana bolt is now the go-to assault. I sense a shift from devices to spells as the mana points accrue, although without serious toys, there's not enough mana points to do serious whittling - yet.

The recharge spell - and its lack of blooie - leads to a completely different playing style than I've ever explored before, using a stack of wands/staves. Let's just say that liches aren't allowed to do the touchy-drainy, and I may have to really alter tactics when the balrogs show up more regularly.

[luneya]

Originally Posted by Moving Pictures

Working a half-orc mage through the system. Haven't played a lot of mages, but here's my two cents/drachma/peso/copper pieces.

Playing style: the mage has become a tool-user Grab stuff, recharge. Rinse, lather, repeat. I plucked a wand of annihilation fairly early on, and recharged the ever-lovin' heck out of it, essentially turning a spell point into about 200 points of guaranteed, irresistible damage. Racked up a lot of dead uniques with that wand, until it went blooie. Until Dungeon book 4, was using wands of acid bolts, cold balls, etc., etc.

Annihilation is an endgame wand; it's traditionally one of the weapons of choice for mages vs Morgoth. If you managed to pull one early and recharge it many times without explosion, of course you shredded everything. That's not an indication that anything is OP, but merely that you got a really lucky OOD find.

[Sphara]

Originally Posted by luneya

Annihilation is an endgame wand; it's traditionally one of the weapons of choice for mages vs Morgoth. If you managed to pull one early and recharge it many times without explosion, of course you shredded everything. That's not an indication that anything is OP, but merely that you got a really lucky OOD find.

Just having finished a high-elf mage I can certainly back up Moving Pictures here. I didn't find Annihilation until very late game.
Wands I found did the killing job a lot better than spells I had in first three books. What I assumed being a 3rd book all-around killer spell, Mana bolt, was a huge disappointment damage-wise. Compared to it, wand of fireballs, destroyed everything that wasn't resistant lot faster.

I barely needed Restore Mana in anything else than recovering from late Banishment fails. In the very late I did use some Mana Storm just because it's a mana storm. Still, wasn't as reliable as acid balls wand because of the high fail rate.

Thrust Away spell had too short range to be even closely competitive with the wands. Well, at least I killed Khamul with that because he appeared to be omni-resistant.

I know the wands have always been great for a mage but now they are just overwhelmingly better compared to this new spell set. And rods? Why bother carrying those when Recharging spell barely fails at all?

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Sphara

Just having finished a high-elf mage I can certainly back up Moving Pictures here.

Thanks for the feedback - note that there is a new build up which probably changes the experience quite a bit.