3.3RC: minor bugs

[bulian]

A few minor bugs from the june 26 nightly.

- the tag on vault squares preventing teleportation/phase are definitely removed by destruction and probably earthquake (not tested), which allows entry via phase door. I have a screenshot as a jpg showing this exploit.

- hobbit rogues (17 str) wielding a maul get the "this item is too heavy" message. Examining the weapon shows "with +0 str, +0 dex, you will get 1.1 blows."

- branding rings are now completely worthless. They are worse than an attack rod or resist potion, since they have to be worn to be used, and don't recharge in inventory. Either remove them completely, make them a rod, or give them the weak brands, if those are still being implemented.

Perhaps not bugs, but...
- Artifact changes - bring out the nerf bat!
- hammerhand vs. gorlim is now an interesting choice, but completely stripping the bonuses off hammerhand seems harsh - halving them seems more reasonable - what's next, stripping the combat bonuses off elessar? Oh wait...

- elessar is now significantly worse than trickery - +2 speed vs. (+7,+7) was an interesting decision. Now its not. Maybe the root problem is trickery is so good. Two somewhat rare high resists, speed, dex, AND stealth? Why is trickery not an artifact?

- the changes to Narya et al were good - +5 speed makes them competitive with rings of speed, though now Narya + Nenya gives double immunity with +10 speed, which makes them signifcantly better than =speed(+9) + Narya. Overall less interesting decisions to make for end game gear. Slightly reducing the speed might be OK e.g. +3 (Narya), +4(Nenya), +5(Vilya)

[bulian]

Sorry for the double post - one other bug I forgot to include:

- wands of slow monster haven't been showing successful hits, as in messages of the type: "The hardened warrior is unaffected". After wasting 6-7 charges, all with the same response, I gave up and then noticed the hardened warrior was in fact slowed. The same thing occurred with Nar the Dwarf, though he was kind enough to kill the fledgling rogue with a curse anyway. I never knew how useful these wands were until the other thread.

[Derakon]

Monsters are automatically unaffected (with associated message) if they're already at the maximum slowing rate. Are you sure that you never got a "The hardened warrior is slowed" message? Or "starts moving more slowly" or whatever the message actually is.

Also, glad to expose those wands as being broken. It's a nice change from them being useless!

[bulian]

Are you sure that you never got a "The hardened warrior is slowed" message?

Positive. I got one message when the @ used the un-ID'd wand on a jelly. Went into the next room, used the now ID'd wand on the hardened warrior, repeated several times, and doublechecked the message logs to make sure I didn't miss the message, ran away, was confused (me, not the @) because the warrior wasn't following the @, and then proceeded to backstep stab the warrior to death.

[Magnate]

I think you're right that Trickery is too good. I was accused of overly nerfing the elven rings so they got un-nerfed again - as you note, they are now too powerful again and make for fewer and duller endgame choices.

I hope takkaria will allow the weak brands back on the elemental rings. Otherwise there seems to be a consensus for getting rid of them (or at least making them much shallower).

Very sorry that the blows display bug is still there - that code has been a huge pain and needs completely splitting out from describe_combat().

Good catch on the CAVE_ICKY bug - we'll fix that. Also on the slowing messages - still some wrinkles in MON_TMD_ effects, it seems.

Thanks for the report.

[Nomad]

Another bug too minor for its own thread... When money rolls under your feet from a monster drop, you can't pick it up with the 'g' key. Pressing '5' or stepping away and back onto the square picks it up just fine. (Still playing the June 22nd version.)

[Nomad]

And another: !Healing still heals 35% of HP instead of a fixed number like the other potions.

[Magnate]

And another: !Healing still heals 35% of HP instead of a fixed number like the other potions.

That's intentional. Only CLW/CMW/CCW were changed.

@OP: I cannot reproduce the hobbit-with-heavy-weapon problem. Pls can you post a savefile with said hobbit and weapon, showing the bogus info when examining it?

[Nomad]

That's intentional. Only CLW/CMW/CCW were changed.

Oh, right. Just seemed weird, since it's now the only potion with percentage healing, *healing* and life being fixed values.