a couple questions

[will_asher]

Do Hobbits still get a bonus with slings?
(and if not, why not?)
It doesn't say anything about that in the manual.

What happened to scrolls of door & stair detection? Those can be useful. Sometimes it takes a while to find the stairs.

I like almost all the changes that have been made since I stopped playing several years ago*, but I'm wondering if Nick has considered rebalancing the weapons. A dagger shouldn't be a better weapon than a cutlass (except maybe for a Hobbit Rogue like my current character).

(*It's neat to see some of the things I had in my old variant have been implemented in Vanilla: throwing weapons, more room shapes, passable rubble, um, I think there was something else I forgot too. I don't know why there's lava in the town though. Where is this town?)

[Selkie]

To answer your questions

The town is Pompeii
Hobbits get no bonus with sling, they ain't David let's stick to the canon
If you're too weak to lift a weapon it makes sense a lighter weapon deals more blows - things change in the end game
Scrolls of door stair location sound a bit like scrolls of mapping, only without the mapping. Don't complain or you'll nerf it

[Estie]

Originally Posted by Selkie

To answer your questions

If you're too weak to lift a weapon it makes sense a lighter weapon deals more blows - things change in the end game

It is the opposite in the game though - if you are weak, you want the heaviest weapon you can wield (for more damage with your 1 blow), but if youre strong, you want the dagger since strength grants multiple blows with light weapons and the damage bonus is additive.

[will_asher]

Another thing I noticed: Is it me, or is there significantly more monsters with acidic attacks now? There's even an ant that spits acid? that's annoying.

[will_asher]

I found a vault with the Balrog of Moria. I'm not quite tough enough to beat him yet, but I was thinking I'd try to lure him away from the vault so I could loot it. Then I found a scroll of Banishment, so I banished "U"s but it didn't work. The balrog is still there. What happened? Does banishment not work on uniques or something?

[Nick]

Originally Posted by will_asher

I found a vault with the Balrog of Moria. I'm not quite tough enough to beat him yet, but I was thinking I'd try to lure him away from the vault so I could loot it. Then I found a scroll of Banishment, so I banished "U"s but it didn't work. The balrog is still there. What happened? Does banishment not work on uniques or something?

That's right, banishment does not work on uniques - the confusing thing being that the priest spell Banish Evil teleports away all evil monsters in line of sight, including uniques.

[will_asher]

Fortunately, I was still able to lure the Balrog far enough away to be able to loot the vault. (Where among other things, I found a wand of Teleport Other which would've been useful...)

Another question: Didn't we used to be able to carry 99 arrows in one slot? Why can we only carry 40 per slot now?

[Nick]

Originally Posted by will_asher

Another question: Didn't we used to be able to carry 99 arrows in one slot? Why can we only carry 40 per slot now?

That was changed in 3.4 - maybe as a late balance to the introduction of the quiver (3.1.2). Certainly there was a feeling around that time that the game had become too easy, and there was a bunch of rebalancing done over 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5.

[will_asher]

Just checked my dumps. Apparently the last version of vanilla I played (before the last few days anyway) was 3.1.1.
DaJAngband had a quiver first!

[will_asher]

'nother question: Where's the option to turn tiles off?
(apparently making the slightest little tweak breaks a lot of tiles.)