The 3.3.0 release thread

[scud]

The problem with =Mouse is that only pure casters can use it; everyone else has enough reliance on melee for it to be nonviable. That's sufficiently niche that it could use some reworking.

Nothing wrong with niche. Just change from negative damage to actually afraid, give it a +10 mana point or a phase door activation, and rename it the Ring of The Mousey Mage.

[Derakon]

For what it's worth, I went through five half-troll rogues before finally finding a source of Free Action at around 1400'. Two of them died to getting paralyzed (one stupidly tried to melee a Spectator; the other got nailed by a summoned Gorgimaera when blind). Given that the FA stall isn't very interesting, I'm planning to make =FreeAction start showing up at 500' (current min depth is 1000').

Regarding =Protection and the elemental rings, I think we should just ditch =Protection, =ResistFire, and =ResistCold in favor of the elemental rings. Frankly the elemental rings currently show up way too late to be useful, while the current resist rings show up way earlier than they could possibly be relevant. However, a Ring of Flames might still be usable when Fire Hounds come around...

[Timo Pietilä]

The problem with =Mouse is that only pure casters can use it; everyone else has enough reliance on melee for it to be nonviable. That's sufficiently niche that it could use some reworking.

They are useful for melee-chars. I have used them in several cases where using one had given me more damage than +5 reckless attacks. Nearly all of my warriors I have played recently have got in one point in situation where good RoMouse had given them more damage than anything else they have found yet.

One word: Blows.

Lets say your weapon makes 50 damage / blow (elemental-branded Katana for example). You find RoMouse that allows you to go from three blows to four and has -7 damage. That's 3*50=150 vs 4*43=172. With reckless attacks +5 3*55 would be 165.

I also changed the minimum to_dam penalty slightly smaller in my changes to items.

Of course the window of usefulness is short, but so is also Rings of Dog and Reckless attacks, it isn't much different to those.

[Thraalbee]

AC inflation?
It seems to be much easier to get high AC than before. My current character now has a boosted AC of 354, fifty less without Shield. And this with a very useful combo of randarts (from last May version and then the June one).

I never used to care about AC but it now seems that when getting this high AC you have very small difficulties with titans, demons and Dracoliches etc. They rarely hit me. For example I recently killed 24 Dracoliches from a pit in a sequence without having to use a single consumable, just spell heal and one or two activation heals. I have fire immunity. Ranger cLvl 45 with an ok but not great weapon (avg damage 401 vs dragons).

Could be observation error, maybe they did not hit before but as I recall at least Titans used to hit really hard in older games.

/Mathias

P.S. Randarts are clearly much more balanced than before. Still better than standarts but although I have found much good stuff, nothing is insanely powerful anymore. And also although I have more resist and stat boosts than I could ask for (close to "18/***" for all stats) I neither have a really powerful shooter nor melee weapon (playing Ranger).

[scud]

It seems to be much easier to get high AC than before ... I neither have a really powerful shooter nor melee weapon (playing Ranger).

I mentioned elsewhere that I felt like a dreadnought with a peashooter.

My 5 June nightly randart CL50 High Elf Ranger up with...

Average damage/round: 239.5 vs. animals, 239.5 vs. evil creatures,
272.5 vs. giants, 272.5 vs. dragons, 338.5 vs. demons, 338.5 vs.
undead, and 206.5 vs. others.

...which is pretty sad. But, at the same time, with an AC of over 300 and three immunities he could just plough through scores of Us, Ls and Ds with barely a scratch.

Naturally I'm more concerned about the lousy weapon than the quality of the armour!

[ZenDragon]

I see people talking about the june nightlies but when i go to the nightly page (http://rephial.org/nightlies/) the most current is May 24

Am i missing something? Is there a new page?

[tony]

I see people talking about the june nightlies but when i go to the nightly page (http://rephial.org/nightlies/) the most current is May 24

Am i missing something? Is there a new page?

The most current I see on your link is 21st June! Are you refreshing fully? I've found that to be a huge problem on this forum too. I have to press ctrl+F5 to get any updates or else it stays stuck on the last time I visited...

[ZenDragon]

Thanks for the help. Working now

[Magnate]

AC inflation?
It seems to be much easier to get high AC than before. My current character now has a boosted AC of 354, fifty less without Shield. And this with a very useful combo of randarts (from last May version and then the June one).

I never used to care about AC but it now seems that when getting this high AC you have very small difficulties with titans, demons and Dracoliches etc. They rarely hit me. For example I recently killed 24 Dracoliches from a pit in a sequence without having to use a single consumable, just spell heal and one or two activation heals. I have fire immunity. Ranger cLvl 45 with an ok but not great weapon (avg damage 401 vs dragons).

Could be observation error, maybe they did not hit before but as I recall at least Titans used to hit really hard in older games.

/Mathias

P.S. Randarts are clearly much more balanced than before. Still better than standarts but although I have found much good stuff, nothing is insanely powerful anymore. And also although I have more resist and stat boosts than I could ask for (close to "18/***" for all stats) I neither have a really powerful shooter nor melee weapon (playing Ranger).

Thanks for the feedback. Titans still hit really hard (12d12 x4) but the high AC is meaning they miss more often.

Without wishing to cause panic, it may be that there is too much AC on randarts. It ought to be the same in total as the standart set, but maybe it's come adrift. Certainly there shouldn't be anything with more AC than Soulkeeper or Bladeturner. I am wondering how you get to 304 without shield (unless you have a Gondricam-like weapon?).

[Derakon]

They are useful for melee-chars. I have used them in several cases where using one had given me more damage than +5 reckless attacks. Nearly all of my warriors I have played recently have got in one point in situation where good RoMouse had given them more damage than anything else they have found yet.

One word: Blows.

Lets say your weapon makes 50 damage / blow (elemental-branded Katana for example). You find RoMouse that allows you to go from three blows to four and has -7 damage. That's 3*50=150 vs 4*43=172. With reckless attacks +5 3*55 would be 165.

This might have happened back when blows went straight from 3 to 4, but these days you're lucky to get half a blow more from the DEX boost =Mouse gets you, and it's simply never been enough for me to overcome the damage malus. And believe me I've been looking.

[Derakon]

I had a randart character who had a massive AC. Not 300, but still pretty up there. Monsters were missing noticeably more often than usual, even Morgoth. That said, most of my characters are not that buffed out; that guy had a lot in his favor by the endgame.

[jens]

This might have happened back when blows went straight from 3 to 4, but these days you're lucky to get half a blow more from the DEX boost =Mouse gets you, and it's simply never been enough for me to overcome the damage malus. And believe me I've been looking.

My current character uses =Mouse for increased melee damage. Granted he has bad stats to start with, so the extra DEX might help him more than normal. Also, it only helps gainst those that don't resist poison, the other damage is lower with the ring on. I could get a bit more damage by chaning to =RecklessAttacks, but the stealth bonus from =Mouse is good to have as well. Though I do agree that the =Mouse is only useful seldom and for a short span. Lowering the malus to_dam a bit would be good.

[jens]

I like the idea of a random extra effect on rings of protection. But that may be moving things in the wrong direction (e.g. making items better, making game easier). What do other people think?

After one of the recent refactors a functional change has entered ego_item generation: it is now possible to create ego_items for a lot more types of items, among them rings. Since this was not a planned change, and has never been possible there are some issues that need to be fixed before using it for real, but the only fixes that are needed are aesthetical ones. Game play wise it's fully functional, and I've tried out a few already. But I'd suggest to wait on that until after 3.3

Given how rare mushrooms are (and the allocation problems discussed in other threads) I think mixed-blessing mushrooms are mostly terrible right now. It'd be nice to improve them but I'm not sure there'd be time to balance them for 3.3.

I've also generally squelshed all but Vigor, but currently I am trying to use Emergency and Cure Mind in conjunction. Maybe that could be a way to improve them? Make sure that there's a shroom to remove the bad effects of another otherwise better shroom?

[PowerDiver]

AC inflation?
It seems to be much easier to get high AC than before. My current character now has a boosted AC of 354, fifty less without Shield. And this with a very useful combo of randarts (from last May version and then the June one).

IMO it should be hard to get to an AC of 150. That's what M has. Roughly, I think ACs should be halved from where they are now. I played with a simple hack

if (kind->ac > 5) k_info[i].ac = (5 + k_info[i].ac)/2;

and I felt that things were improved, but magical AC bonuses still seemed too high.

I think the point was to try to give the player a reason to use high AC armor in place of a resist. The practical effect was just to nerf monster melee. I'd rather see efforts to make monster melee more dangerous and monster ranged attacks weaker. E.g., I'd like to remove the melee damage reduction based on AC.

[Thraalbee]

... I am wondering how you get to 304 without shield (unless you have a Gondricam-like weapon?).

290 from equipment {Axe +36, Necklace +31, Armour +65, Cloak +19, Shield +44, Helm +28, Gauntlets +52, Sandals +15} and I guess +14 from having Dex 18/190.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11476

Loads of great items. I cleared nearly all levels but did not stair scum or do a level twice except from returning after a recall.

/Mathias