A Few Comments about V

**Marble Dice** · December 15, 2009, 22:50

Hi there! It's true the general store no longer sells lanterns. I've always though this was strange, but since the light radius of well-lit torches was increased to 2, it doesn't bother me too much. You'll also notice the Phial is a lot harder to find these days.

2. The general store will purchase lights, food, and anything they sell in the development version of the game (so called "nightlies" - which will eventually become 3.1.2 some time in January).

3. I didn't use auto-scum, so I can't really comment on that one.

4. I think everyone agrees that mages need some re-working. Currently, (again, in the nightlies) offensive mage spells have had their casting costs reduced by 50%. I'm not sure if this change will stick, but mages (and ranged damage) are slated for some serious rebalancing in the upcoming future.

**PowerDiver** · December 16, 2009, 00:24

Originally posted by Marble Dice

2. The general store will purchase lights, food, and anything they sell in the development version of the game (so called "nightlies" - which will eventually become 3.1.2 some time in January).

When did that change? Was it an approved change?

**Marble Dice** · December 16, 2009, 01:28

Originally posted by PowerDiver

When did that change? Was it an approved change?

Takkaria had a ticket open for it, unless I misunderstood http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/288

Even if they don't buy lights and food, they should at least buy back what they sell, from a user interface stand-point.

**fizzix** · December 16, 2009, 01:29

Originally posted by Malatar

3. Lack of autoscum for more interesting levels. I understand this isn't something that everyone likes, but I'm a compulsive level clearer, and hitting boring level after boring level gets quite tiresome. Perhaps it could be put back in and just defaulted to off? It isn't something that you'd have to have, but it's an option that makes the game far more enjoyable to me.

autoscum heavily favored putting more dangerous monsters on a level. Since the easiest thing to create a good level feeling were pits, you wound up with a lot of jelly pits. Other things that helped boost level feeling were OoD group monsters like hounds and trolls.

I think autoscum was turned off mainly because the level feelings were broken and it was doing a very poor job at picking 'interesting' levels. If you're getting bored with clearing a level of weaker monsters, the easy solution is to just diver deeper! You'll get better loot too!

**PowerDiver** · December 16, 2009, 02:07

Originally posted by Marble Dice

Takkaria had a ticket open for it, unless I misunderstood http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/288

Even if they don't buy lights and food, they should at least buy back what they sell, from a user interface stand-point.

That ticket is very strange. It has his name on it, so I guess he shouldn't complain.

I implemented "refunds" hack at one time. They buy back an equal number to what they sold of a slot so long as the slot remains. Something like that is important when selling is otherwise disallowed in case you spend all your money and forget to buy food or recall or such.

**Malatar** · December 16, 2009, 05:32

Originally posted by fizzix

autoscum heavily favored putting more dangerous monsters on a level. Since the easiest thing to create a good level feeling were pits, you wound up with a lot of jelly pits. Other things that helped boost level feeling were OoD group monsters like hounds and trolls.

I think autoscum was turned off mainly because the level feelings were broken and it was doing a very poor job at picking 'interesting' levels. If you're getting bored with clearing a level of weaker monsters, the easy solution is to just diver deeper! You'll get better loot too!

I'd have to disagree about this. I loved seeing a good level feeling because it meant that when I explored I could have the joy of finding nasty things that could kill me, as well as the agony of jelly pits and hounds.

Anyway, diving quickly doesn't fix the problem of obsessively compulsively exploring the entire level, when each level is boring... I think on my current character I did 25 dungeon levels with only one "good" level. It's snore inducing.

Again, I think that just leaving it as an option that people can turn on would be a better solution. Don't worry about balancing it anymore or anything, but leave it as a feature that people can play with if they want.

Originally posted by PowerDiver

I implemented "refunds" hack at one time. They buy back an equal number to what they sold of a slot so long as the slot remains. Something like that is important when selling is otherwise disallowed in case you spend all your money and forget to buy food or recall or such.

This is an interesting idea. I'm sure we've all groaned at characters who overspent and couldn't buy recall, especially. Don't you love killing aimless merchants trying to get just enough to buy a scroll of WoR? ;-)

**buzzkill** · December 16, 2009, 05:55

How about a 'boring level' counter, to insure that no more than 'some percentage' of all levels are boring. If the number of 'boring levels' exceed more than 'some percentage' of the total levels generated, then auto-scum kicks in. 50% sounds about right.

**Magnate** · December 16, 2009, 22:19

Originally posted by Malatar

I'd have to disagree about this. I loved seeing a good level feeling because it meant that when I explored I could have the joy of finding nasty things that could kill me, as well as the agony of jelly pits and hounds.

Anyway, diving quickly doesn't fix the problem of obsessively compulsively exploring the entire level, when each level is boring... I think on my current character I did 25 dungeon levels with only one "good" level. It's snore inducing.

Again, I think that just leaving it as an option that people can turn on would be a better solution. Don't worry about balancing it anymore or anything, but leave it as a feature that people can play with if they want.

It was removed as an option because the maintainer didn't like it, so I doubt it's coming back any time soon. That said, the post about level feelings being broken is correct.

I'm afraid the game is not designed for the clearing of the entire dungeon - this is why the dungeon is infinite. If you want to play a roguelike that rewards clearing levels, try Crawl or ADoM.

**Timo Pietilä** · December 17, 2009, 13:42

Originally posted by Magnate

It was removed as an option because the maintainer didn't like it, so I doubt it's coming back any time soon. That said, the post about level feelings being broken is correct.

Game with autoscum created too easily pits, but is also created more vaults. Currently vaults are IMO too rare.

That said, level feelings were broken. Pits, no matter how deep monsters they had, should not give as good level feeling as vaults. In fact most useful level feeling was "excellent", because that almost always meant some excellent single (or sometimes multiple) item, if it were Suberb it was almost always pit or vault. That single "excellent" item was almost always more useful than vault full of ordinary "good" items.

Originally posted by Magnate

I'm afraid the game is not designed for the clearing of the entire dungeon - this is why the dungeon is infinite. If you want to play a roguelike that rewards clearing levels, try Crawl or ADoM.

In old days there was no preserve mode, and no autoscum. All levels were quite interesting, but not extremely so. Without preserve mode you got "special" -feeling if there were artifact on the level, but that could also mean pit or vault. If you found pit onto "special" level you still needed to check entire level to make sure there is no artifact there. That was bad. Not very bad, but bad. Anyway you needed to clear full levels every now and then, and game *was* designed for that. Not every level, but sometimes.

Some of the variants have more useful level feelings. Someting that tells you if there is items or monsters that are worth checking out.

**fizzix** · December 17, 2009, 14:28

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

In old days there was no preserve mode, and no autoscum. All levels were quite interesting, but not extremely so. Without preserve mode you got "special" -feeling if there were artifact on the level, but that could also mean pit or vault. If you found pit onto "special" level you still needed to check entire level to make sure there is no artifact there. That was bad. Not very bad, but bad. Anyway you needed to clear full levels every now and then, and game *was* designed for that. Not every level, but sometimes.

Some of the variants have more useful level feelings. Someting that tells you if there is items or monsters that are worth checking out.

Personally I think there should be some reward for level clearing. It should be weak enough that it doesn't really entice someone to clear a level if they had no desire to anyway, but it would throw a bone to the OCD level clearer that wants to play Angband. It could even just be a pile of gold that you get if you kill 95-98% of all the originally spawned monsters. The main point is you get a message 'congrats, you've cleared the level (even though you avoided that greater balrog)'

**PowerDiver** · December 17, 2009, 18:51

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

Game with autoscum created too easily pits, but is also created more vaults. Currently vaults are IMO too rare.

I run into plenty of lesser vaults. Greater vaults are too rare.

Perhaps during room placement, a greater vault should overwrite placement of rooms that are not vaults, instead of deciding it does not fit. Another approach would be to generate the first room to be placed 10 or so times and use the one with the highest rating.

**Zababa** · January 4, 2010, 05:20

I have a comment on the level feelings: I like them broken as they are. The name "level feeling" suggest it is something the @ thinks about the level, his first impression. Nothing more. It's not a deep scan and a direct correspondence to the value of the best item present.

I've found a nice artifact in an "uninteresting" place. And many a level with "very good" feeling I found as boring as the others. Since I have never really cared about level feelings until the current public beta 3.1.1.1626, I thought this is how things should be and how they have always been: They seem to me like a slightly unreliable proportion to value of items which can be found on the level. You can trust them, but just don't be disappointed if you trust them too much.

If they would be a reliable indicator of loot value, we don't need to conceal their real meaning by the euphemism "level feelings" but can call them "spoilers" and instead of writing "you have a superb feeling" we could write "there is at least one artifact on this level".

**Nick** · January 4, 2010, 11:42

Excellent comment. I'm inclined to agree.

**Magnate** · January 4, 2010, 21:49

Originally posted by Nick

Excellent comment. I'm inclined to agree.

Ugh. I hope you're in a minority of two.