So.. any new features we should get excited about (beside neutral(?) slaves)?
Development has halted in the last couple of months as life has happened, but it looks like the next version will be 1.5 instead of 1.4.3 and include tileset support.
Changes that are already implemented:
Enemies
- Unmourned removed; new undead added, wraiths and spectres, which are much more dangerous
- Attercops added: new web-throwing spider enemy
- mild buffs to serpents and spiders, slight damage reduction on ringrauko and ururauko
- Slaves and orc slavers added in the early game
- Orc leaders now rally troops rather than disarm
Skills
- Forewarned gone, replaced with Outwit, which negates all critical damage if you win a Perception test against your attacker
- Critical Resistance and Hardiness gone
- Will skill: Oath - choose from three oaths which forbid you respectively from singing, attacking fleeing enemies, and harming men and elves and which grant a stat point in return as long as the oath is kept.
- Will skill: Formidable - Enemies do not gain morale or become more keen to attack when you are injured.
- Blocking now doubles your shield roll as long as you did not move last turn
- Inner Light gives a +2 bonus instead of +1
Items
- Glowing items no longer glow when dropped on the floor (slay items will however glow in your inventory)
- Feanorian lamp light radius increased by 1, lamps made more common
- Hand axes changed from 5d1 to 4d2 so they were better early and didn't scale so strongly with Smithing
- New effects: resist bleed, avoid traps (on boots), cumbersome (no crits)
- Many new egos and ego changes; egos more narrowly targeted to slots and types of gear; egos on mithril items in particular improved
- New Angband-appropriate egos; curved swords only have Angband-egos rather than elf-egos
Smithing
- Guaranteed forges now at 100', 300', 500' instead of 100', 500', 900'
- +Smithing items gone and uncraftable
- Now cannot smith curses on artefacts
- Some cost rebalancings
- Breadth of new egos and more early forges has strengthened mid-game, late game has been weakened
Bug-fixes
- Various self-knowledge fixes
- Tutorial fixed
- Smite now shows the main attack in red while active
- Grotesques now cannot be knocked back
- Weapon/shield betrayal updated to be more frequent but less capable of killing you
Changes yet to come:
- Tileset support (the tileset is currently in development - thanks to MicroChasm for the graphics)
- Consumables overhaul to make them more Tolkienesque; this will see an end to Potions of Constitution and Herbs of Emptiness
Implemented changes which will be reworked:
- Song of Whetting had a cost reduction to Song/4 lbs. This proves to be too good, and Morgoth was killed in the beta with a vanilla longsword. Whetting needs a rethink or replacement - sharpness doesn't do enough early, and is a requirement for Morgoth-fighters late.
- There's already been an adjustment to Staff of Earthquakes, but its ability to bypass Evasion makes it the Morgoth-killer's preferred weapon of choice - it may be tweaked within the beta before being replaced with the consumables overhaul
i've always said curved swords should be able to have poison brand. will that be one of the angband egos?
No, for balance reasons I've opted to keep poison to daggers (and the new hand axes).
Current egos on curved swords are:
Murder (stealth, grants assassination)
Udun (flame brand, but no critical hits)
Thangorodrim (+1 con, but no critical hits)
Black Iron (slays men and elves, aggravates enemies)
Vampiric (drains life from enemies, increases hunger, cursed)
No, for balance reasons I've opted to keep poison to daggers (and the new hand axes).
Current egos on curved swords are:
Murder (stealth, grants assassination)
Udun (flame brand, but no critical hits)
Thangorodrim (+1 con, but no critical hits)
Black Iron (slays men and elves, aggravates enemies)
Vampiric (drains life from enemies, increases hunger, cursed)
is a poison version of udun really that much better than udun itself?
Poison hits red S (most common and most annoying), dragons and balrogs. Fire hits undead and maybe some spiders? It's pretty obvious that poison is the stronger of the two at least by the end.
I've really been enjoying working on the new tiles. My goal is to make a tileset that is readable and informative.
I'm planning to post screenshots on the forum to get feedback sometime soon. I am very much open to critique.
I understand that plenty of people prefer ASCII as well, which I totally understand. I actually think Sil looks very good in the ASCII mode. I'm hoping that having a tileset will appeal to at least some of the existing community, and will also lower the barrier to entry for new players.
is a poison version of udun really that much better than udun itself?
Poison doesn't restrict critical hits - which is necessary, as daggers really can't afford to lose them. Poison is the second strongest of the brands, and extending it as an ego to curved swords would make poison curved swords more or less the strongest ego weapons.
Udun provides an ego that is balanced for weapons with slightly larger damage sides and allows the flaming swords balrogs use in canon. Poison swords are not canon to the best of my knowledge. Poison spears are, but severe balance issues exist there.
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