making angband harder

[UglySquirrell]

I know this will not be popular among the diehards, but I am one of the ones that wouldn't like to see stack size reduced. It can take up to 20 or more missiles to take down some uniques and even just tough monsters for a non-ranger. If you have to use an escape with all those missiles on the ground, they will be lost. Also, in my last game I actually got quite tired of having all my arrows/ bolts stacks shredded by fire and acid breathers.

Same with the ! and ? I often carry large stacks of those because I use them all the time.

If you wanted players to carry fewer consumables, you could simply make them a bit heavier. That would impact greatly on the number I would *be able* to carry without having a large speed disadvantage.

That's an interesting idea, but right now encumbrance is a non issue once you get some speed, even mages with 12 strength can carry huge amounts of gear if they have even a small speed bonus, maybe change the way it works either give higher penalties on speed or have encumbrance affect you're attack bonus or spell failure rates.

[Derakon]

Some backstory: prior to the introduction of the quiver, each unique type of ammo took up an inventory slot. So your 40 unenchanted arrows and your 26 arrows (+2, +4) and your 10 remaining arrows of Slay Undead each used a separate slot. This created the undesirable situation of players discarding partially-used stacks of ammo because they were taking up too much space. The quiver was introduced specifically to allow small stacks of ammo to still be useful by not having them take up an entire slot. It wasn't supposed to increase your total ammo capacity, but it did by about a factor of 3 because ammo usually gets generated in stacks of about 30. This made the game easier by reducing inventory pressure and making ranged combat much more viable.

The reduction in stack size is basically correcting for this explosion in ammo capacity. Perhaps it's an overcorrection; perhaps the max stack size should be 30 or 35, or should vary depending on the item type. But it's also a correction that's overdue.

[Jazerus]

If the issue is that ranged combat is too powerful, then I'm not sure that reducing stack size is the correct way to go about nerfing it. After all, ranged combat was always this powerful - it was just irritating to use without a proper quiver, and reduced your take-home loot (which is a non-issue in nosell anyway). Keeping stack size the same while rebalancing ranged combat power in other ways to compensate seems like a better way to reach the desired balance point while also not making part of the game more annoying than it is right now.

[Magnate]

If the issue is that ranged combat is too powerful, then I'm not sure that reducing stack size is the correct way to go about nerfing it. After all, ranged combat was always this powerful - it was just irritating to use without a proper quiver, and reduced your take-home loot (which is a non-issue in nosell anyway). Keeping stack size the same while rebalancing ranged combat power in other ways to compensate seems like a better way to reach the desired balance point while also not making part of the game more annoying than it is right now.

Neither is quite right. Sangband has long had a quiver, has stacks of 99, and doesn't suffer from overcapacity or imbalance because of it. Ranged combat is actually *less* powerful in V than it was, where branded/slay ammo is concerned, and since then the number of calls to nerf it further have reduced dramatically.

But neither means that V shouldn't reduce the max stack size, IMO. Angband is all about inventory management. But it's true that 25 may not be the ideal size, and several good ideas have popped up in other threads (different limits for different tvals, for example).

[Scraper]

The reduction in stack size is basically correcting for this explosion in ammo capacity. Perhaps it's an overcorrection; perhaps the max stack size should be 30 or 35, or should vary depending on the item type. But it's also a correction that's overdue.

Fair enough. I understand your point. You're all doing a great job of maintaining the game and I'm looking forward to sampling the pinata. Thanks to all of you for your continued work and development.

[BlueFish]

I would agree with those who say that artifact rarity should be increased (i.e. fewer artifacts should appear).

At least within my play style, which is "dive as fast as possible but never past 1000 without FA and never past 2000 without poison resist", artifacts (weapons especially) almost inevitably render egos obsolete within the first hour or two of playtime. That's a shame.

I do not agree that overall item rarity should be increased, or at least it doesn't strike me that that is a problem. I'm only speaking of relative amount of artifacts vs non-artifacts.

Might consider making more low-end artifacts which don't necessarily out-class decent egos. Right now even low end artifacts are better than virtually every conceivable ego of the same base type.

I'm sure all this has been discussed, just adding my opinion as to what would make for a better game.

My biggest frustration / boredom is usually finding FA or Poison Resist currently. Also stat gain potions. Artifacts come by the bundle.

[BlueFish]

Also, all the low-end slays are essentially dungeon junk, of no meaningful advantage over merely "good" weapons with the same hit and dam bonus. They sort of undermine the excitement of pseudo-ID'ing an excellent weapon.