Competition 104

[Nick]

Competition 104 is now available from the competition page; it is a FayAngband Ursa Shaman.

Note that comp 103 still has a day or so to run.

[buzzkill]

No 32x32 tile support , but still looks interesting. I'll have to give this comp a try. If it's not too spoilery, what's the meter at the bottom of the screen for?

[Nick]

If it's not too spoilery, what's the meter at the bottom of the screen for?

Experience to next level, I think.

[buzzkill]

The comp ladder can't read character dumps.

[Nick]

Fixed (thanks pav). The win condition is going to have to change, too - probably most uniques killed, with Max Exp as a tiebreak (less is more).

[Hudstone]

Fixed (thanks pav). The win condition is going to have to change, too - probably most uniques killed, with Max Exp as a tiebreak (less is more).

Yeah roger that. 1st char died immediately. 2nd char (CL6) tried a scroll and cursed all his equipment. Made it back to town and blew all his cash on remove curse, after tossing all the trashed equipment, had enough money for boots and a few arrows. Didn't last long. 4th char just died to Faery Cats. 3rd char at least had the gumption to die to Wormtongue. Bees suck Str, Yellow worms suck Dex, ugh, its an exercise in caution.

The trap detection thing is interesting, but when someone does that "Casts and cackles wickedly" thing that you know is creating traps, there's no way to do anything about them except wading through. I know there is Pro Traps spell, but is there anything else?

[Matthias]

From the homepage:

Morgoth isn't sleeping anymore, now he's preparing for war. The minimum difficulty level increases by one each time the player takes the stairs down.

Nice one Does anyone know what exactly one difficulty level represents?

[Roch]

From the homepage:

Nice one Does anyone know what exactly one difficulty level represents?

I get the sense it's one dungeon level.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Hey, cool! I just noticed the competition.

Yeah roger that. 1st char died immediately. 2nd char (CL6) tried a scroll and cursed all his equipment. Made it back to town and blew all his cash on remove curse, after tossing all the trashed equipment, had enough money for boots and a few arrows. Didn't last long.

Scroll of Curse Equipment is EVIL, perhaps too evil. I usually buy one of each cheap scrolls from stores just to identify them. Then I identify all scrolls I find until I've found Curse Equipment.

4th char just died to Faery Cats. 3rd char at least had the gumption to die to Wormtongue. Bees suck Str, Yellow worms suck Dex, ugh, its an exercise in caution.

Yeah, my characters die often, too. On the other hand, Fay is faster to play than most other variants.

I've made the game for my own tastes. I tend to get bored without constant danger. Nowadays I only play a few dungeon levels per day, and I want those quick sessions to be challenging.

The trap detection thing is interesting, but when someone does that "Casts and cackles wickedly" thing that you know is creating traps, there's no way to do anything about them except wading through. I know there is Pro Traps spell, but is there anything else?

Not at the moment. Boosting Wisdom has a big effect on trap detection, though.

In the next version, some characters will have access to one or two Detect Traps per dungeon level.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

A couple of extra points of DEX would have given Star two blows with Flail. This is a quite challenging character!

I've balanced the game so that a warrior or shaman needs either STR or DEX at 14 to be a combat machine. But the heavy weapons specialist needs at least 7 or 8 DEX, too, for the second blow. Only warriors or shamans can get a second blow with a flail.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

A quick note for frustrated mappers: INT helps quite a lot, so you may want to consider restoring it after disease. I often carry INT boosting items, and put them on before descending.

Based on the reports, I'm considering removing Scroll of Curse Equipment. It doesn't seem to add to the fun.

[buzzkill]

Though I was adversely affected by Curse Equipment, I wouldn't say get rid of it. It rendered most of my normally enchanted armour useless (but a few survived with a positive enchantment), but those are easily replaced (with normal items). My nifty weapon took a hit, but I still use it. In other words it set me back a little, but wasn't game breaking. I'll be paying more attention to CE in future games, but so too killer bees, and the aptly named Puck.

If you wanted something short of removing it, maybe give enchanted items a save. The higher the enchantment, the better the save.

[Matthias]

Pretty sure my very first guy got his weapon blasted to 0d0. Maybe higher enchantments are already protected. While that's nice, I have to vote for removing the scroll. It would be less of a problem if you could sell the scrolls for 0 gold like other no selling variants do.

[ewan]

OS X non-functional?

Trying to take a crack at this, but the OS X build has a problem finding the news.txt file - it's there, so obviously looking in the wrong place, but...?

Anyone else having the same issue? Advice?

[Hudstone]

Heh, came across an orange trap in a hallway, well, teleport or summon, neither is too bad, I'll try and disarm it. Ooops, Curse Equipment Trap??? Lost about 8-10 pts of AC, and lost +2 on my +5 Longbow, though melee weapon wasn't touched.

In another vein, a teef stole sum of my munny, and after I killt him, there was no munny. Where did my munny go?