Competition 93

[Nick]

Does deepest quest mean we can only take difficult quests? I just took an easy quest to try to dive faster but now that I think about it I'm not so sure.

It's just deepest quest completed as in the dump.

[Magnate]

I still wouldn't haggle. If that made the game unplayable, then I'd play something else.

It's not unplayable either way, and money is only a problem for the first 1000' or so.

Am I really the only person in the whole angband community who likes haggling??

[Magnate]

It's just deepest quest completed as in the dump.

And in fact the quest difficulty has no effect on the depth: the depth increases by 100-250' each time (unless you dive deeper with no quest, of course). The difficulty simply increases the toughness of monsters (i.e. deeper monsters and more of them), and the quality of the reward.

I have no qualms about taking easy quests all the way, because difficult quests make for a very strange game: you steamroll over all non-quest monsters because you're powering up to deal with the next quest.

Manticores are now in third place behind stormcrows and lucksuckers as my unfavourite monsters btw.

[Magnate]

My understanding is that changing to no haggling would be technically more difficult but less annoying - so that seems like fair game. There are in fact three options under the Difficulty heading, so it wasn't really too ambiguous.

Also, that excerpt was from a paragraph entitled Honour System. My feeling is that this sort of issue will come up from time to time, but mostly it's easy to be reasonable.

It's actually much more of an issue in V comps with all the SMART_LEARN / FLOW_SOUND type options. Variants with 4GAI don't seem to have so many options which would affect the play of the game.

IIRC the honour system also forbids the toggling of any autoscum-type options from however they're set in the starting savefile. Likewise disconnected stairs, as has been mentioned. I should point out that I've relied on connected stairs to save my life on at least two occasions so far (I'm now on Kimba XVII, so it didn't do them any good).

I don't suppose it matters if anyone turns haggling off - since Leon built the 10% penalty into not haggling, that evens things up nicely.

[camlost]

I usually buy Cutlass, Magic Book, and either armor, !CSW, or !CLW with my starting cash, nearly all of it.


So how much money are people coming back with after completing their first quest?

I came back with 401 gold from DL3 quest, and picked up 283 from the quest. Townsfolk drop another 80gp. I didn't spend any consumables (so far, 2 !CSW, and 1 !CLW), nor have I obtained any meaningful ones. Buying food and torches costs minimal, and there aren't any decent looking weapons (could spring for Long Sword, but cutlass compares well).

I'm playing a sorceror, so I don't need (many) ?PD, ?WoR is optional for next quest (probably DL 7 or so, easy enough to walk), I buy 2 ?Tele, 5 ?PD, and 7 !CSW, especially as my next quest is (easy?) Wood Spiders, so I'll need them to reduce my poison.

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After Wood Spiders quest, I have 813gp, but used 2 !CLW and 3 !CSW. Reward is 562 gp.

At this point, I have 1375gp, 7 !CSW, 2 !Tele, 5 ?PD, books 1 and 2, and a weapon to my name. And a little armor.

I'm lucky enough to pick up Lesser Conjury at 90% off, but even at full price, I'd have 1000gp to burn on consumables.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=10720

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What am I doing differently than you guys? Or is the problem deeper than this? I really thought that the "stores_only_sell" option made the early game richer, and the later game poorer.

[Pete Mack]

That PC hasn't been below 150'. That's Kiss-of-Death if you care about gold. There's a huge step up around dl 6, when a lot of magic devices come into level.
Considering that dl 6 isn't all that much harder than dl 2, you are wasting your time trying to level up at shallow depth. (At DL 3, CL 10, you have zero chance of winning a comp. You have to dive--cl ~ dl/2--to win.)

[NotMorgoth]

Actually, I'm finding it harder to get gold at around the DL 12-18 mark; I'm finding I need to use quite a lot of healing to complete the quests, then having difficulty buying enough more for the next quest without spending quite a lot of time mining for treasure veins.

Before the no-selling change, I found I would often get through the early game by selling (useless) quest rewards, which would get me enough gold buy healing for the next quest.

I think possibly we just need to adjust to the fact that gold income is more linear but less luck-dependent. Previously you might struggle to get any gold for a while but then suddenly find a high value ego item that was not useful to your character, and sell it for enough gold to buy all the consumables you needed for the early game, but now you just have to graft away mining treasure and killing orcs etc for their gold drops.

Maybe if no-selling is going to be a permanent fixture, quest reward items need to also be looked at, as you can no longer benefit from selling the useless ones; I don't know if you've already done this, as I have been finding the rewards in the Kimba games pretty good, but this might just be luck.

As a starter it would probably be a good idea to avoid giving armour that is too heavy to characters with low str, especially spellcasters, and also hard-to-use devices to warriors with the Oath of Iron, even if they have the devices skill.

[camlost]

Quest rewards are tailored, but only to skills/realm, IIRC. Good to know that it's slightly deeper that is a problem money-wise. My last couple Kimbas have lucked into some exceptional treasure drops from a player ghost by then.

This last character found 5.5k in player ghost money, but I've stayed between 3k and 8k give or take. I guess there's a bit of a money that gets sunk into healing with this low HP character. I've increase HP already, so maybe there won't be as much of a gold problem in 1.0.2.

[NotMorgoth]

I think the weakened Staff of Cure Medium Wounds is also contributing to the gold shortage; when staffs where the preferred source of healing, you didn't really have that much to spend money on except recall, phase door and the occasional recharge (which I would be stockpiling anyway.)

Now a lot more gold is being sunk into CSW and CCW potions.

[Magnate]

I think the weakened Staff of Cure Medium Wounds is also contributing to the gold shortage; when staffs where the preferred source of healing, you didn't really have that much to spend money on except recall, phase door and the occasional recharge (which I would be stockpiling anyway.)

Now a lot more gold is being sunk into CSW and CCW potions.

I agree with this - I am sinking almost all my gold before 1000' into !CSW (and ?PD for my warriors, rogues and necros, but that's much cheaper).

I'm not complaining about the no-selling btw, I think it's fantastic. I don't think there is too little money early, it's just tough - but that's good coming from the V-is-now-too-easy camp.

I've only ever got gold on the first quest reward, never on the 2nd or subsequent. Am I doing something wrong/different? I find the quest rewards *mostly* ok - a nice new device, or a stat potion, or a usually useful armour or weapon. I once got a longbow of velocity when I was wielding one of accuracy, and I once got full plate of resistance when I was a caster-burglar wearing soft leather, but those are the only two that felt wrong. I must have finished about 50 quests between all my attempts by now, so that's good going on the rewards.

[camlost]

I agree with this - I am sinking almost all my gold before 1000' into !CSW (and ?PD for my warriors, rogues and necros, but that's much cheaper).

I'm not complaining about the no-selling btw, I think it's fantastic. I don't think there is too little money early, it's just tough - but that's good coming from the V-is-now-too-easy camp.

I've only ever got gold on the first quest reward, never on the 2nd or subsequent. Am I doing something wrong/different? I find the quest rewards *mostly* ok - a nice new device, or a stat potion, or a usually useful armour or weapon. I once got a longbow of velocity when I was wielding one of accuracy, and I once got full plate of resistance when I was a caster-burglar wearing soft leather, but those are the only two that felt wrong. I must have finished about 50 quests between all my attempts by now, so that's good going on the rewards.

It makes sure that the new item is more expensive than the one currently in the slot, but that's no indication of usefulness.

[Magnate]

In the context of ambiguity, I think the players should play for fun and saddle you with the decision later if they happen to win.

I've decided to compile myself the latest version, because the UI issues are driving me nuts. In Linux with r129 I can't compile SDL support and I can't access the UI options because ! doesn't work. In Windows with r129 I can get to the UI options with ! but it crashes every time I press '=' followed by '4', so I still can't set the damn game up how I want.

So I'm going to compile trunk with SDL support. I am unlikely to win anyway, but I acknowledge that there are changes in trunk that make the comp char slightly easier (more starting hp or mana, for example, in r160 and r167), so any entry after #17 won't be truly valid.

Just so's y'all know ...

EDIT: well, looks like I don't get to do this at least until #17 dies, as r167 seems to have swapped the skill indeces for Alchemy and Infusion, so #17's carefully nurtured infusion skill is now zero, and she has 35 fairly useless points in alchemy (since you can't make much without essences, which require infusion to find).

I guess it's back to r129 in the Linux console on the laptop ... I am clearly doomed never to play S in anything bigger than 1024x768 ...

[camlost]

I've decided to compile myself the latest version, because the UI issues are driving me nuts. In Linux with r129 I can't compile SDL support and I can't access the UI options because ! doesn't work. In Windows with r129 I can get to the UI options with ! but it crashes every time I press '=' followed by '4', so I still can't set the damn game up how I want.

So I'm going to compile trunk with SDL support. I am unlikely to win anyway, but I acknowledge that there are changes in trunk that make the comp char slightly easier (more starting hp or mana, for example, in r160 and r167), so any entry after #17 won't be truly valid.

Just so's y'all know ...

EDIT: well, looks like I don't get to do this at least until #17 dies, as r167 seems to have swapped the skill indeces for Alchemy and Infusion, so #17's carefully nurtured infusion skill is now zero, and she has 35 fairly useless points in alchemy (since you can't make much without essences, which require infusion to find).

I guess it's back to r129 in the Linux console on the laptop ... I am clearly doomed never to play S in anything bigger than 1024x768 ...

Try removing r154 and recompiling. That removed bowmaking and consolidated it with weaponmaking. That should fix the indices.

[NotMorgoth]

Should it be possible for dungeon generation to create completely separate and isolated regions with no staircases or connections to the rest of the dungeon?

One of my Kimbas just teleported into such a region, and when it became clear that I was doomed to starve, I used debug mode to check that I really was cut off.

[Derakon]

The dungeon generator makes no guarantee of connectivity, though it almost always manages. I've seen precisely one disconnected area ever in Angband, not counting vaults.