Nightlies

[d_m]

I'm curious. What was the problem with the previous situation? Or is this about something else, an attempt to make leveling more significant? I cannot guess whether it is an improvement, but it sure does seem strange.

Well, Takkaria made the change, but as I understand it the basic idea is to reduce store dependency, and also solve the "scumming for restores" issue. People have been asking for store services to do restoring for awhile, and this accomplishes the same thing in the other direction--now there is almost never a reason to recall when your stats are drained--you just have to push through until you find a restoration item in the dungeon, or level up.

If you want, you can think about it like a "timed stat drain" but one where you can't just Rest for 1000 turns to make it go away.

[PowerDiver]

If this ends up being a problem for people then bringing back the early sustain rings would work. I would probably prefer to tweak the mushroom of vigor's depth/rarity instead though.

The sustain rings did not go away. They were improved and are called bodykeeping and soulkeeping. I occasionally use them. Well, very occasionally.

I'm curious. What was the problem with the previous situation? Or is this about something else, an attempt to make leveling more significant? I cannot guess whether it is an improvement, but it sure does seem strange.

[Derakon]

So far (clvl 40), I am starting to feel like stat restoring is a little rarer than I'd like it to be. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's too rare though. I've bought one mushroom of vigor all game and seen none in the dungeon. Looking at object.txt, several mushrooms are supposed to show up throughout the dungeon (depths 1 to 100), but I can't remember the last time I saw any at all. I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting squeezed out by the increased number of other items that can drop. I.e. at dungeon level 4, mushrooms only have to compete with sandals, cloaks, robes, and a few potions and scrolls; now they have to compete with every single equipment option and most of the consumables, so they get comparatively far more rare.

[d_m]

This does one thing that I'm not sure devs have considered, it forces you to dive early levels fast, because in early levels you don't have means to restore stats other than clvl upgrades. Get lucky and find potion of XP and you have no other choice than to dive to dlvls with potions that can restore your stats, even if your gear is still bad. Maybe this requires restoring the early sustain rings?

If this ends up being a problem for people then bringing back the early sustain rings would work. I would probably prefer to tweak the mushroom of vigor's depth/rarity instead though.

I was a little worried about this scenario, but so far I haven't had a problem with this (I often don't really dive, my clvl is usually around my dlvl until maybe 20 or so). In fact, I feel like I have saved a bunch of money, compared to recalling to buy a ~400gp restore potion and 2 ?wor for about ~300gp.

I do worry about the mid/upper 40's a bit, but by that point you often do often end up finding stat potions. If reports come in from play testers that this is a bad change I'm sure it will be addressed.

[Taha]

But during early levels, you gain levels fast - except in your special case of a potion of experience. And that gets you to the point where you can start dropping quickly.

Mushrooms of vigor make this work for me - rare enough that you don't use one for a minor stat ding or when a level up is close, common enough that you can save one in case you get really messed up pre stat gain. Also, the gain one / lose one stat potions restore the gained stat first, and those are available fairly early.

My experience is that I now worry less about stat drain then before, since it comes back pretty much automatically. Maybe that will change at higher char levels, but prior to 30 it has not been a problem. It also makes leveling up something to look forward to past the point where HP/SP gain percentages are small, and you already know more spells then you can learn without a dungeon book.
________
AngelOnline

[Timo Pietilä]

Yes.

Takkaria introduced a change so that drained stats are restored on level up, and also removed the restore stat potions. I think Potions of Life have always restored stats though.

This does one thing that I'm not sure devs have considered, it forces you to dive early levels fast, because in early levels you don't have means to restore stats other than clvl upgrades. Get lucky and find potion of XP and you have no other choice than to dive to dlvls with potions that can restore your stats, even if your gear is still bad. Maybe this requires restoring the early sustain rings?

[Derakon]

Labyrinths are crowded period, but the proportion of uniques to non-uniques also seems to be higher than in normal levels. It's difficult for me to gauge if there's lots of "hard" monsters since I'm at clvl 39 / recall depth 3300'...

[d_m]

I'm not complaining (yet, anyway); just wanted to make certain that the dearth of restore potions was intended. It certainly makes that robe of Permanence in my house more worthy of consideration, what with all the Dreads wandering around...

Labyrinth levels seem to favor tossing a half-dozen uniques at you. This doesn't really seem tenable. If I'm going to fight a unique that's remotely in-depth, I want to be quite certain that I won't get disturbed in the process.

Glad the restore change has been OK so far. I think as long as it doesn't have some terrible unforeseen problems it will be a net positive (and make stat drain more interesting).

As far as labyrinths go, I was a little bit afraid of this. I don't have specific code that tries to place lots of uniques, but by a certain depth there are just a lot of uniques that can get generated.

Is your observation that the labyrinth is just too crowded period? Or just that it has too many uniques? Or that it has too many "hard" monsters? I don't have a ton of control over the "generate-me-a-monster" function but if need be I will try to build a new one that's a bit more tunable.

I think it's OK that labyrinths be hard, and to be levels players try to get away from sometimes, but they probably need some tuning yet...

[Derakon]

I'm not complaining (yet, anyway); just wanted to make certain that the dearth of restore potions was intended. It certainly makes that robe of Permanence in my house more worthy of consideration, what with all the Dreads wandering around...

Labyrinth levels seem to favor tossing a half-dozen uniques at you. This doesn't really seem tenable. If I'm going to fight a unique that's remotely in-depth, I want to be quite certain that I won't get disturbed in the process.

[d_m]

I just use a potion of life levels to regain a lost level, and my drained DEX got restored. Intended?

Also, are potions of restore stat gone entirely? I don't think I've seen them at all. Are we expected to rely entirely on leveling and potions of gain stat to restore lost stats?

Yes.

Takkaria introduced a change so that drained stats are restored on level up, and also removed the restore stat potions. I think Potions of Life have always restored stats though.

To be clear: in the nightlies you are expected to gain stats, eat mushrooms of restoration, and drink the relevant potions (stat, augmentation, *enlightenment* and life). I think rods of restoration were removed but those would (presumably) also work, as would artifacts with the restoration ability.

EDIT: It's probably implicit, but I should say that if this mechanic is a disaster then I expect Takkaria will revert it. But so far it's seemed fine (to me). I think the goal was to eliminate reason to randomly recall to town all the time.

[d_m]

Latest nightly (feb 20) won't allow me to move with the keypad, and gives some parse error on loading my preference file. It also changed (corrupted?) my savefile so no older version can open it.

I upgraded on death, and have a backup of my hard drive to restore the monster memory, so back to the old version with no huge loss.

Could you send me the savefile in question, or post it here or to trac? Takkaria made some pref changes a bit ago that may have done this.

Unfortunately as a dev my savefiles often break, so sometimes I miss things like this.

I will try to fix this--but for now anyone playing nightlies should probably back up important save/pref files.

[Derakon]

I just use a potion of life levels to regain a lost level, and my drained DEX got restored. Intended?

Also, are potions of restore stat gone entirely? I don't think I've seen them at all. Are we expected to rely entirely on leveling and potions of gain stat to restore lost stats?

[Taha]

Latest nightly (feb 20) won't allow me to move with the keypad, and gives some parse error on loading my preference file. It also changed (corrupted?) my savefile so no older version can open it.

I upgraded on death, and have a backup of my hard drive to restore the monster memory, so back to the old version with no huge loss.
________
WildonGirl

[Magnate]

Gah. You are correct. I don't know how I missed it (well, maybe writing things at 2.19 AM has something to do with it).

Don't worry, I knew it would be better if we had a separate section for it with a table of tickets, but the problem is that the tickets aren't quite right - they're a motley collection of things people have thought over the past four years, and don't really capture what we want to do on this.

EDIT: I went ahead and created a section anyway. We can always add more coherent tickets.

[Timo Pietilä]

That would be this paragraph:

"There is also a debate to be had around reducing the information available to the player,
....
object detection fail to reveal items in vaults until @ is inside. Etc. Needs more thinking."

It's just underneath the first table on the page.

Gah. You are correct. I don't know how I missed it (well, maybe writing things at 2.19 AM has something to do with it).