Nightlies embark on long journey towards 3.3

[Pete Mack]

Bugs observed while wandering around town in first trial of 3.3 nightlies.

* No yellow hilite box for player
* Can't change colors of non-illuminated walls through knowlege menu. (I don't like red walls.)
* Weaponsmith store color changes with illumination, despite having 333 as display colors in feature knowlege. (Behaves like 333).
EDIT: This is particularly annoying for stairs down and trap doors.
* 8x13 font is wacky (Windows)
* ?Restore Item is insanely powerful and/or insanely common. It should NOT affect cursed objects, artifacts, or jewelry. (I have no idea what it does to things like disenchanted gloves of Power.)
* Gold drops seem too small given object resale values. I am really struggling to get $.
* Weapon display "you would get X blows" should show fractional blows for a single stat point:

2.7 blows/round
With +2 STR and +0 DEX you would get 3.0 blows
With +0 STR and +2 DEX you would get 3.1 blows

* Free action is not dangerous enough. I'm out of practice & screwed up a couple times. Went way down on HP, but still survived, including vs a spectator(!)

[Magnate]

Bugs observed while wandering around town in first trial of 3.3 nightlies.

* No yellow hilite box for player

I couldn't say for sure but I think that was deliberate.

* Can't change colors of non-illuminated walls through knowlege menu. (I don't like red walls.)

This is known, but admittedly has no ticket yet.

* ?Restore Item is insanely powerful and/or insanely common. It should NOT affect cursed objects, artifacts, or jewelry. (I have no idea what it does to things like disenchanted gloves of Power.)

It is *intended* to restore disenchanted artifacts (and egos I think), but it's not intended to affect non-artifact jewelry. See ticket #1319.

* Gold drops seem too small given object resale values. I am really struggling to get $.

Excellent. Try playing with no_selling and see if it's easier.

* Weapon display "you would get X blows" should show fractional blows for a single stat point

Sorry, I don't think I understand this. Do you mean that you don't like the fact that it shows two different alternatives? Or something else?

[Pete Mack]

Sorry, I don't think I understand this. Do you mean that you don't like the fact that it shows two different alternatives? Or something else?

I am taking this back, now that I understand fractional blows a bit more. (I was thinking that the numbers should be for +1 STR or +1 DEX, if there's any change in fractional blows. But that can be a very small effect indeed.)
EDIT:

[?Restore object] is *intended* to restore disenchanted artifacts (and egos I think), but it's not intended to affect non-artifact jewelry. See ticket #1319.

This totally nerfs disenchantment for no good reason that I can see. Disenchantment used to be something to avoid at all costs. Now, it's just another minor side effect. Also, for ego cursed ego objects, it removes the huge negatives, despite their being part of the ego definition.

[Derakon]

This totally nerfs disenchantment for no good reason that I can see. Disenchantment used to be something to avoid at all costs. Now, it's just another minor side effect.

If Restore Item were as rare as Acquirement, would this still be an issue? Assuming that it were tweaked to only affect artifacts, anyway.

[Pete Mack]

If Restore Item were as rare as Acquirement, would this still be an issue? Assuming that it were tweaked to only affect artifacts, anyway.

I never thought disenchantment was broken in the first place. If you end up with Cambeleg (+5,+3), it's your own fault anyway.
Having Restore Item available in the stores to clean up acid damage makes a degree of sense, although I would have done this simply by removing enchant weapon (to_dam) from the stores.

[PowerDiver]

If Restore Item were as rare as Acquirement, would this still be an issue? Assuming that it were tweaked to only affect artifacts, anyway.

Acquirement is pretty common. I see several a game, even when diving like mad. My current char has seen 2 already before DL47. How many of the roughly 9 artifacts you finally use at the very end get disenchanted in a game?

If you want to nerf disenchantment, just make artifacts resist 100% of the time. Don't try to effect the change under the counter by adding a scroll.

[Magnate]

I am taking this back, now that I understand fractional blows a bit more. (I was thinking that the numbers should be for +1 STR or +1 DEX, if there's any change in fractional blows. But that can be a very small effect indeed.)

It could be null, while we are still using blows_table, as there are still breakpoints (albeit less cliff-edged). One day we will move to a continuous formula, and then you'll be right: we'll need to show the effect of +1 STR and +1 DEX (that will simplify the code a lot!).

This totally nerfs disenchantment for no good reason that I can see. Disenchantment used to be something to avoid at all costs. Now, it's just another minor side effect. Also, for ego cursed ego objects, it removes the huge negatives, despite their being part of the ego definition.

Well, I think #1319 is takkaria's intention to make ?restore_item do nothing other than restore an ego or artifact to its original state, not to improve it at all.

I think it is too common at the moment, but I don't think it nerfs disen altogether. We could give it a chance to fail ...

[pampl]

If disen is being made temporary, why not make it much more pronounced, draining multiple points of bonus at once or being more likely to drain pval?

[Nick]

* 8x13 font is wacky (Windows)

Yes. As far as I can understand, Windows (since at least Vista) has its own 8x13 font that it insists on using. Since that font doesn't have the wall block character or any of the Latin-1 characters, hilarity ensues.

This is why the Windows port now uses 8x12 as default. The 8x13 font is only in for people playing the SDL port in Linux. There is some opinion to the effect that we would be better using the SDL port in Windows too, but I'm yet to see a compiled-for-Windows SDL port.

[PowerDiver]

I don't think it nerfs disen altogether.

The thing that makes disen scary is that equipment you want to keep is damaged irreversibly. If it is reversible, it is not scary.

[Derakon]

I would definitely agree that if Repair Item is going to be remotely commonplace then disenchantment needs to be able to touch pvals and drop enchantments precipitously. If disenchantment stays at its current power level then Repair Item must be at most as common as Acquirement.

[Timo Pietilä]

I would definitely agree that if Repair Item is going to be remotely commonplace then disenchantment needs to be able to touch pvals and drop enchantments precipitously. If disenchantment stays at its current power level then Repair Item must be at most as common as Acquirement.

If you make disenchantment scary during combat then people just avoid all disenchanters until you get resist disenchantment. If you don't, then disenchantment is not scary with repair.

I'm with Eddie here, repair is bad thing. Disenchantment is not broken, no need to nerf it.

If it is not broken, don't fix it.

[fizzix]

My suggestion would be to have:

1 no enchanting scrolls in town
2 repair item is removed but instead enchanting scrolls are very often successful at enchanting to the original bonuses.
3 Enchant to-hit and to-dam can be used on armor but only work if the current value is below the original value. Same for enchant-armor
4 disenchant has a chance of destroying a wand/staff/rod

However, I don't see "repair item" making a huge difference in the game. There are so few disenchanters that it's easy to avoid them. The only ones that are difficult to avoid are Mim and his sons before you have the ability to teleport. But, I often don't have any good gear at that point anyway.

[Derakon]

Okay, what's the problem with disenchanters that we're trying to solve? The only one I can think of is that they're unfairly penalizing players who haven't memorized who all the disenchanters are. This gets back to the whole monster memory thing. So here's my proposal: when the player is hit by a disenchantment attack, they get a message "A cloud of static builds up around you!" and nothing else happens. This sets a timer to 100 normal-speed turns or so. If the player is hit by another disenchantment attack before the timer expires, then the disenchantment goes through (and the timer goes back to 100 turns).

In other words, this gives the player a one-attack warning that the monster can disenchant. The big problem I see with it is that it effectively nerfs the rare breathers, since they're unlikely to breathe more than once before dying.

[PowerDiver]

I'm with Eddie here, repair is bad thing. Disenchantment is not broken, no need to nerf it.

If it is not broken, don't fix it.

I actually see the point of nerfing disenchantment. I'm in favor 1 day in 5 when I wonder how the artifacts ever survived to the current day without having been ruined by some clueless adventurer in the past.

However, if disenchanting artifacts is ever decided to be truly broken, just fix it cleanly. All these complications with repair_item are completely bogus. If you don't want disen to ruin artifacts, then give them IGNORE_DISEN the same way they ignore all of the base elements.