Why developing my variant is often more fun than playing

[will_asher]

because I suck.

I've once or twice in the past gotten past dL60, but in what seems like the past thousand games (most of them very short), I can't seem to get past dL15.

Okay it's partly because I don't like sticking to the easiest class/race combos, but it's mainly because I suck.

I know how to play smart, but I don't seem to have the patence.

[Nick]

I hear you, brother.

[Antoine]

because I suck.

I've once or twice in the past gotten past dL60, but in what seems like the past thousand games (most of them very short), I can't seem to get past dL15.

Okay it's partly because I don't like sticking to the easiest class/race combos, but it's mainly because I suck.

I know how to play smart, but I don't seem to have the patence.

Try Quickband. (a) you can get through the early game pretty quick, and (b) even if you suck and die, you haven't lost much coding time.

Can post the new version if you want...

A.

[Therem Harth]

Heh, me too. Which is why my attempts at variants have chiefly been oriented toward making the game less time consuming and less insanely difficult.

[camlost]

Yes, this is totally behind some of my efforts to make the early game easier in S...

I just need to remember to make the end game (which tends to be more fun) more difficult.

[Magnate]

Yes, this is totally behind some of my efforts to make the early game easier in S...

I just need to remember to make the end game (which tends to be more fun) more difficult.

Um ... before you do that, can you point me towards all the complaints that S's endgame is currently too easy??

[camlost]

Um ... before you do that, can you point me towards all the complaints that S's endgame is currently too easy??

Complaints, maybe not. But it's always seemed easy compared to the mid-game and the beginning-game. Or maybe that's just giants. I made Sauron harder (nastier spell set), which was the major too-easy culprit, so maybe it's just fine now.

[Derakon]

It's always been my experience that the "strong and dumb" races are far easier to play in any Angband variant than the "weak but smart" races. Physical sturdiness counts for a lot.

[NotMorgoth]

And Sangband's giants are really 'strong but not all that dumb'.

I guess their lack of stealth hurts them most in the midgame, as that's where there are most likely to be monsters you would rather avoid than fight - but by the endgame, if you are ready to take on Morgoth you should be powerful enough to fight almost anything.

[Spacebux]

Current Play Comments/Thoughts

These are comments prior to a long rant I have of the game in general. I'll try to be terse.

Along the comments above about the game being harder in the beginning vs. middle vs. ending: a lot of that has to do with game experience... knowing that by a certain depth you'd better have SeeInvis or RPoison covered makes a huge difference in the player's ability to survive the middle- and even end-game points. Kavlax and Azriel are usually the humps of the game. Get past those two and you are likely to win.

Experienced players who feel the end-game is rather bland are players who know very well what's coming! While, I do agree with the sentiments that the end-game is a bit of a let-down in the current version... just a bit, mixing up the higher level uniques a bit would be better. (I comment more on this in my coming rant.) I like the other commentor's ideas about giving Sauron more spells, but I have a few other ideas for you to ponder.

My friend and I setup a rather fun challenge: A Half-Troll IronMage competition between us. This was quite exciting. As most Mage players would select Half-elf or Human at worst for a race, I thought this was actually a great combo for a Warrior-Mage. Indeed, if the Half-troll can survive the earlier levels, the latter half of the game is quite enjoyable.

Here are my comments from this experience:
a. Mage spells are now either under-powerful &/or Warrior melee damage is too powerful. I heard they authors reduced missile damage, such that even Umbar is hardly worth the effort! I found Cubragol to be the ultimate option, dumping Bard, a couple bows of Lothlorien, and the other artifact bows in the process. My point: melee trumps power, but speed trumps missile power.
b. As a MAGE(!!!), I was averaging over 1,000 hps of dam / round with the Glaive of PAIN (a wonderful Beat stick with an elemental ring). Things got even better for my mage (worse for the enemy) when I came across a Mace of D *Slay Demons* +2; then the ultimate - Deathwreaker. Oh boy - 1,200 hps/dam/round... who needs spells??? Granted, one will not find beat-sticks like these every game, however, there are many other weapons that will do more damage than spells; one is sure to find along the way.
c. As a MAGE, I only needed to use mana for defensive and informative purposes. I never bothered to cast Chaos Strike or Mana Storm in the latter stages. I even went melee with Sauron and Morgoth.... as a MAGE, with the G. of Pain. When your beat-stick does more than Chaos Strike and is more reliable than Mana Storm (even at 18/200+ INT), a couple quaffs of potions of Herosim/Berserk rage is all you need. Save the mana for Banishments and speed boosts if you need them.

d. I do like the changes in adding ego flags to DSM. Some would argue (and they would be right) this makes many artifact suits rather sub-par. Indeed BalanceDSM of Permanence or Speed rules night-&-day over most artifact suits. GreenDSM of Speed >> Thalkettoth. I like that. Why? Because it adds more options to the game rather than... "oh, I hope I can turn up Caspanion again!!!" I am all for diminishing the importance of artifacts in the game. Indeed, I'd rather see variables set on the artifacts themselves so each game would have slightly variable artifacts. I.e., one game might see the short sword Sting with 2d7 + 2 swings / round. A subsequent game would generate Sting with 1d7 + 1 swing and maybe HoldLife as a bonus... I think it would make the game slightly more interesting to have at least a small variance in the attributes of artifacts in the game, and/or allow the game to create some of its own artifacts or pull from a much larger set of artifacts than the current game permits. Is that what Randomize Artifacts does? Along the same lines, not every unique needs to be as hard as the last or harder. I know some of the higher uniques are quite the push-overs, actually - e.g., Scatha *yawn*, Oramax, Fundin... I know they are easy prey, for the most part, and don't feel they all need to be ultra hard. Like artifacts, though, it might be more interesting if the mobs themselves also had a bit of variance in HPs, resistances, speeds, and so on. Might make the experienced players feel a bit more vulnerable, and place more importance on those rods of probing.
My only gripe to the addition of ego flags to DSM is that PDSM and Razorback, et. al., are diminished as well, making them LESSER suits compared to ego-DSM suits. MultihuedDSM itself is effectively better than Razorback now. MultihuedDSM has no -4 to-hit penalty. No Aggr. Mob. penalty. Those two items make it more attractive (in my opinion) to Razorback which only gets you ImmElec (which does little for most players who carry few rods/wands/rings) and RDisenchantment (which is found in other items or on other suits, like BalanceDSM, even!). PowerDSM is just a little better now, though, it was a REAL TREAT to find in earlier versions. But this variety in 3.2 has quite a few resistances removed from it. So, not quite the find it used to be. Also note: MultihuedDSM of Resistance is redundant.
I am hoping this distribution of ego flags will also carry over to normal equipment, though not in such a high percentage. It should be quite unusual to find Leather Armor of Stealth or Resistance or Speed.
BTW -
:::: what happened to the "Robe of the Magi" ??? Why did you nix that?
:::: why do shields of Permanence only protect Str/Dex/Con?? What happened to Int/Wis/Chr?
:::: Defenders & Holy Avengers are worthless finds thesedays. In older versions of the game, they were a happy thing to find. Now - practically, junk.
:::: Stairs ought to work in both directions, after an IronMan player has successfully killed Morgoth. If you can recall to Town at that point, why can't you use the stairs? Winners keep diving, whiners want to run back up? is that the attitude?



I have a much longer rant to post. Perhaps I will break it up into several slices for commenting sake.

Spacebux

[Derakon]

Just a couple of quick notes:

1) Randomize artifacts does in fact completely change the artifact set each game. You get a new set, where each artifact in the standard list is turned into a new artifact in the random list. Currently, rings remain rings, amulets remain amulets, and light sources remain light sources (so e.g. the Phial changes very little even when randomized), but all armor and weapons are completely mixed up so you might have e.g. Ringil's power level applied to a shield this game. The actual powers are completely random; the game just tries to make an artifact of similar power to the original. The only artifacts that aren't random are the One Ring, Grond, and Morgoth's Massive Iron Crown.

2) Angband mages take a page from Gandalf and are capable of holding their own in a fight. They aren't pigeonholed into having to cast spells to deal damage (though they are capable of this if they choose). Your damage numbers with the Glaive of Pain seem suspect, though -- say you had +40 damage off-weapon, that means dealing 4x 9d6 + 70 for an average of 406 damage/round, or 658 damage/round with a branding ring. Deathwreaker is 4x 7d8 + 58 (average 358/round) up to 4x 35d8 + 58 (average 862/round) if you happen to be fighting undead -- more likely a mere 484/round against fire-resisting evil, though. Do you have a character dump so we can see where you were getting this damage from?

[Spacebux]

Dam / round

Sorry - I did not mean to mislead... I am also holding the shield of Haradrim giving me an extra swing / round.

a) The Mace of Disruption 'Deathwreaker' (7d8) (+18,+18) (+6)
Found lying on the floor at 5050 feet (level 101).

+6 strength, tunneling.
Slays animals, evil creatures, undead, dragons.
*Slays* undead.
Branded with flames.
Provides immunity to fire.
Provides resistance to fire, dark, chaos, disenchantment.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Aggravates creatures nearby.

Combat info:
5.0 blows/round.
Average damage/round: 843 vs. animals, 843 vs. evil creatures,
1051 vs. dragons, 1051 vs. creatures not resistant to fire, 1467
vs. undead, and 635 vs. others.

[Timo Pietilä]

These are comments prior to a long rant I have of the game in general. I'll try to be terse.

Can't read your comment. Could you please edit your comment and remove all the unnecessary colors and stupid font-settings from it so that it becomes readable.

[will_asher]

(quote from another thread)

I also play quite slow, just about 10-15 minutes at any time, maybe hour or two max in a day, so it takes a while for me to get into endgame and win.

I should try doing this more often. I remember when I used to have a character on a computer I didn't use often and would only play that character about 15 minutes at a time, and I did a lot better playing that way.

[buzzkill]

I should try doing this more often. I remember when I used to have a character on a computer I didn't use often and would only play that character about 15 minutes at a time, and I did a lot better playing that way.

I've found that my best games occur when I play in short bursts, just an hour or two at a time. I believe that the biggest improvement in my play is recognizing when I 'just don't care that much anymore', and turn it off for a while rather than trying to artificially make the game more fun (ie, taking stupid risks just so I can narrowly survive). The downside is that it's takes months to play through a successful character and competition time-frames seem unbearably short.