Blinded to death

[Derakon]

I just lost a rogue at around 800'. I tried to take on Gorbag in melee; that was a bad idea, but I couldn't physically run away because he was being escorted by some energy hounds; their breaths as I fled would have killed me. So I used a scroll of Teleport...and landed in a room of light hounds with no exits visible. With about 50HP left, a stack of 8 cure serious wounds, and my only escape being scrolls, I just chugged healing and hoped for a turn when none of the hounds breathed. With ten hounds and a 1 in 5 breathe chance, the odds should be about 10% that a round should pass without any of them breathing, but it never happened. And I couldn't take turns to kill them because they dealt damage almost exactly as fast as my potions healed it.

I'm not going to argue that light hounds are unbalanced because of this. I could have easily survived this by carrying a staff of Teleport; I didn't because 98% of my games don't need one, so I don't go out of my way to buy one and just carry the first one I find instead. I do find it a bit annoying how status ailments work in Angband, though -- you can cure the ailment, but the monster will just immediately pile it on again. Particularly, the only sources of temporary confusion/blindness resistance are so laughably rare that it's simply not worth dedicating inventory slots to them...and heck, there's no temporary source of free action.

[buzzkill]

Would rLight (not that you would be likely to have it) help with this particular type of blindness?

In any case, chalk one up for the light hounds . It's probably been a long time since they scored a victory.

[Derakon]

It would, just as rDark protects you from Dark Hounds. rBlind naturally protects you against all blindness attacks, but doesn't mitigate damage any. And yeah, this has to be about the only way that light hounds are going to score a legitimate kill on their own (as opposed to killstealing something more threatening).

What do you think about the following idea?

!C*W potions => restore HP, reduce timers slightly on status ailments, but not guaranteed ailment cure.
!Neutralize Poison => merge with !Resist Poison
!Cure Confusion: new potion that clears confusion and provides temporary confusion resistance (ailment and damage mitigation); sold in the temple
!Cure Blindness: as !Cure Confusion but for blindness

On the one hand, you no longer have a cure-all potion in !CCW; on the other hand, you get access to temporary status ailment resistance at the cost of inventory slots. The game gets a bit harder as CCW has been weakened, but also slightly more newbie-friendly since it's obvious what you should carry if you're worried about e.g. being confused (and a potion of Cure Confusion would actually be useful the first time you run into an umber hulk).

[buzzkill]

My 2 cents, but I don't really see this as a problem that needs solving.

More specialized potions seem like more (inventory management) trouble than it's worth. CCW is a cure all staple late into the game and I'd hate to see that change. Changing the staff/rod of curing into an early potion with a short term (d4+4) resistance tied to it seems like a better solution.

Or how about eliminating CLW's and turning them into the above mentioned potion of curing. We already have heroism and berserk strength for light-weight HP restoration, and CSW's become available soon enough that CLW's wouldn't really be missed much.

EDIT! Whoops. Change that last CCW into CLW, now it makes sense.

[PowerDiver]

I could have easily survived this by carrying a staff of Teleport; I didn't because 98% of my games don't need one, so I don't go out of my way to buy one and just carry the first one I find instead.

You knew how to avoid this death, and chose not to because it was a low likelihood event. No biggie, start a new game. However, in light of this, it makes no sense to me for you to suggest that the game needs changing because you got killed by a risk you could have avoided but chose to take.

[Derakon]

The change was actually just a general-purpose suggestion that was inspired by my consideration of this death. I'm more curious about the possible ramifications of being able to collect items that give temporary confusion/blindness resistance, and a potential nerfing of the C*W potions.

[PowerDiver]

The change was actually just a general-purpose suggestion that was inspired by my consideration of this death. I'm more curious about the possible ramifications of being able to collect items that give temporary confusion/blindness resistance, and a potential nerfing of the C*W potions.

There are already temp resists. Check out the new mushrooms. Hmm - description neither in effect.c nor object.txt means I couldn't check them out myself. Does one cure blindness without granting a resist? Maybe any mushroom that cures anything should be guaranteed to grant temp resist as well.

There really aren't enough slots to nerf the potions curing stat effects IMO. I'd rather nerf them the other way, reverting to healing fixed x hp rather than x% of damage, but I seem to be alone in that.

[Derakon]

My main issue with the mushrooms is that they're so bloody hard to find. I don't particularly enjoy running around early dungeon levels just so I can stockpile them. If you could buy them that'd be a different story.

(Also, Mushrooms of Clear Mind handle confusion, but not blindness; to my knowledge there's no temporary blindness resistance)

[Timo Pietilä]

My main issue with the mushrooms is that they're so bloody hard to find. I don't particularly enjoy running around early dungeon levels just so I can stockpile them. If you could buy them that'd be a different story.

Mushrooms should be more common than they are (as of 3.1.2 R2041). Agreed. Now they are too rare to be worth collecting.

(Also, Mushrooms of Clear Mind handle confusion, but not blindness; to my knowledge there's no temporary blindness resistance)

There are no temporary blindness resists. IIRC Takkaria has already give thumbs up to my suggestion to move both confusion and blindness from resistances to abilities, so you probably will not get resists to them from Aman/elvenkind/permanence/etc., but can get it from blessed/magi/lordliness/lothlorien/*slay evil*/etc. in future. That means more "random ability" items with useful ability. Currently you (too) easily dismiss everything that is not ESP. It also allows a bit more "complete" set of abilities/resists by offering more combinations without using artifacts.

Also I suggest that we change rconf from amulet of magi to rblindness. Blindness resist is a bit too rare now.

[fizzix]

Also I suggest that we change rconf from amulet of magi to rblindness. Blindness resist is a bit too rare now.

I disagree. Rblindness is also less deadly as you can still use _teleport, _destruct without penalty, and you can sort of see without ESP. I've often worn an item just for rconf (like "magi) but never for rblind.

[Timo Pietilä]

I disagree. Rblindness is also less deadly as you can still use _teleport, _destruct without penalty, and you can sort of see without ESP. I've often worn an item just for rconf (like "magi) but never for rblind.

I'm not arguing which is more important, I'm just saying that rBlindness is now a bit too rare. You get rConf in way more items than rBlind.

[PowerDiver]

My main issue with the mushrooms is that they're so bloody hard to find. I don't particularly enjoy running around early dungeon levels just so I can stockpile them. If you could buy them that'd be a different story.

Mushrooms you find should be useful, but you shouldn't be able to get them too easily. IMO you should not be able to prepare for everything [edit I am talking about the early game here, not the endgame]. When you run into foes that you cannot handle, you use an escape such as a staff of teleportation. If you face an unavoidable death before you can afford that staff, then the game is still early enough that it is not a big deal.

[Magnate]

Mushrooms you find should be useful, but you shouldn't be able to get them too easily. IMO you should not be able to prepare for everything [edit I am talking about the early game here, not the endgame]. When you run into foes that you cannot handle, you use an escape such as a staff of teleportation. If you face an unavoidable death before you can afford that staff, then the game is still early enough that it is not a big deal.

But he explicitly stated that he chooses not to carry the staff. This is the issue: I always carry one, right up until I have a lock and an infinite supply of scrolls, and that's long after tSelf becomes too dangerous to use anyway.

But I agree that we could do with a few more mushrooms ... ewert, you here?

[Tiburon Silverflame]

How much of the problem under discussion here, is at heart a hounds problem? It's the fact that you have a dozen of the *#(@**@ pests, ALL of which can invoke a negative status condition, that really creates the problem.

[PowerDiver]

But I agree that we could do with a few more mushrooms ... ewert, you here?

I just changed my object.txt to have A:10:1 to 100 for all mushrooms. It seems possible someone screwed up and changed some to A:1:10 to 100 which looks like a typo. I just played clearing DLs 1 to 7 and I picked up 6 different types of mushrooms, 15 in total, which seems like enough to me.