Wizard Mode

[tummychow]

How does wizard mode work? How do I enter it and what commands are available?
I'd like to try it but I don't want to mar up a good character or start a new one yet.

[Marble Dice]

You enter Wizard mode with CTRL-w.

You can execute debug commands with CTRL-a (after accepting the disclaimer).

See this thread for a list of debugging commands.

[Pete Mack]

Also: you will damage your character by entering wizard mode: it will be marked "noscore", and your final record won't be included in the high scores file.

[tummychow]

What's the diff between debug and wizard? And how do I interpret those commands in the thread you gave?

[Marble Dice]

I don't really know what the deal with Wizard mode is, you don't need to manually engage it to execute debug commands. Here's a debug command:

/* Edit character */
case 'e':

To use it, you press CTRL-a, then e. The only documentation is the comment above the line with the command letter, so you'll have to experiment around a bit. In this case, you'll be prompted for new values for your stats, gold, and xp.

[tummychow]

Does debug mode remain on after I activate the command? Example:
Let's say I press ctrl-a, then press e to get my character 'fixed'. When I'm done, is debug mode off until I press ctrl-a again, or does it remain on, overriding previous commands mapped to those keys?

[s0be]

Debug mode is only active until you use a command.

Based on my experience with debug mode... don't use it. You'll just burn yourself out on 'easy' angband (for very difficult values of easy), then not like regular when you play it.

[d_m]

Debug mode is only active until you use a command.

Based on my experience with debug mode... don't use it. You'll just burn yourself out on 'easy' angband (for very difficult values of easy), then not like regular when you play it.

My recommendation is to only use debug mode if you are a developer, are trying to replicate a bug (or confirm a bugfix) or are really curious about particular game mechanics. In those cases, it's best to either use a fresh character, or use a copy of an existing character (to be deleted or suicided after the debugging).

Within those parameters, it's a great feature--otherwise I agree with your assessment.

[Nick]

I don't really know what the deal with Wizard mode is

It gives you the option to cheat death.

[Marble Dice]

It gives you the option to cheat death.

I thought the "cheat death" option did that? Maybe I'm confused because it's redundant. I don't know why anyone would manually invoke it with CTRL-w when there's an option for cheat death.

[Nick]

I thought the "cheat death" option did that?

Yes, it does. Wizard mode also does some other stuff, like giving information about damage dealt or taken, etc.

[PowerDiver]

Yes, it does. Wizard mode also does some other stuff, like giving information about damage dealt or taken, etc.

Cheat death? Info? Who cares.

Wizard mode lets you outfit with Deathwreaker and The One and Thorin and whatever else you might want. It grants other abilities like teleport to where you want. If you use it to cheat death, that means you've been careless.

[edit] I wonder if one could create a sling of buckland (+99 pval) (+99,+99). With 101 shots per round, I wonder if the energy calculation would truncate to 0 energy used per shot.

[fizzix]

Cheat death? Info? Who cares.

Wizard mode lets you outfit with Deathwreaker and The One and Thorin and whatever else you might want. It grants other abilities like teleport to where you want. If you use it to cheat death, that means you've been careless.

yeah, but that would be no fun. You'd use those features if all you wanted was to get a chance to 'see' the rest of the game, without playing it. It's the difference between playing super mario brothers with infinite lives and playing it with constant invulnerability and all holes filled in. Both are cheating, but one doesn't even make it a game anymore.

Angband is a hard game. A new player is pretty much guaranteed to die at some point from lack of knowledge, either about monsters, items or even fundamental game mechanics. Playing with save scumming or cheat death until you gain knowledge of how the game works seems perfectly reasonable to me. At some point you feel like you've graduated beyond the point of needing save scumming. At least, this is how it worked for me. Your mileage may vary.

Again, the main point for me is to have fun. And if someone thinks playing it in a different way makes the game fun, that's fine by me.

[PowerDiver]

There's no point in wizard mode if you just want to use checkpoints. It's trivial to back up your savefile at suitable places to restart.

[Bill Peterson]

A small but useful cheat/spoiler: if you're playing with randarts you can use debug mode to generate a list of the artifacts. Back when the randart code was really, really flakey and generated a lot of aggravating (no pun intended) artifacts I would check to see if it was worth playing the game and reroll if necessary.

BTW, there's a good page of documentation about wizard/debug modes on the Zangband site, http://www.zangband.org/docs/wizard.txt