New items

[dhegler]

Is there any proper forum to suggest new items for v4? I have been playing it for a week or so now and I am still not sure if I like all the new armor and weapon "runes" or whatever they are called. It makes it a bit more interesting, but also more tedious trying to know how "good" and object really is. In any case, I have some suggestions:

Ring of Teleport Control (Allows an x% chance of choosing where you phase/teleport), a la Hack
Wand of Polymorph can also Polymorph ITEMS
Food type that cures poision - maybe the elvish bread or whatever does that, but I see very few of them.
Expand on Amulets - why only stat boost wisdom or charisma?
Staff/Rod of Cure Critical Wounds
Staff/Rod/Scroll of Mass Identify

I think we also need a lot more cursed items, even if pseudo-ID will find them... I miss those from prior versions...

[Derakon]

v4 suggestions should probably go in the v4 forum.

Per your suggestions:

* Controlled teleport is an amazingly powerful ability in Angband. Every variant that's implemented it that I've played, it's completely wrecked game balance. It might be made to be balanced by making it a short-range line-of-sight teleport though.

* Polymorph can change items -> player spends all his time polymorphing items in the hope of getting better ones, rather than going out and finding better items directly. Even if you could only polymorph things once, that'd still mean that every item you find that you can't use gets polymorphed before being discarded. Can you think of a way to implement this that doesn't promote tedium?

* Elvish waybread cures poison, yeah. Otherwise you're pretty much stuck with potions and spells. Angband's food system is very bare-bones; we've even discussed doing away with it entirely from time to time, since currently it's mostly a "press X to not die" / "screw you, ironman warriors" mechanic.

* Amulets don't boost the other stats because they're boosted by rings instead. This is IMO more interesting, since rings are much more highly-competed slots; if you could boost other stats by amulets then everyone would be running around with an Amulet of Constitution or maybe an Amulet of Strength. As it stands amulets are only interesting stat-boost-wise for priests and for the notoriously-overpowered Trickery amulet.

* No problem with staffs/rods of CCW or Mass Identify.

[TJS]

* Polymorph can change items -> player spends all his time polymorphing items in the hope of getting better ones, rather than going out and finding better items directly. Even if you could only polymorph things once, that'd still mean that every item you find that you can't use gets polymorphed before being discarded. Can you think of a way to implement this that doesn't promote tedium?

I was thinking about this the other day, but was too lazy to start a new thread. Polymorph should be able to change an item or monster into another one of the same depth or lower.

In other words you don't know whether it's going to be an item or a monster that it turns into. So you might get a nice piece of equipment or a Greater Balrog. Probably make it 50/50 item or monster.

I'd have it so that it is more likely to be a similar level to your current one, but there is a chance that it can produce a very out of depth monster/item.

[Magnate]

* Elvish waybread cures poison, yeah. Otherwise you're pretty much stuck with potions and spells. Angband's food system is very bare-bones; we've even discussed doing away with it entirely from time to time, since currently it's mostly a "press X to not die" / "screw you, ironman warriors" mechanic.

I'm pretty sure that at least one of the devteam intends to introduce some wild & wonderful new foods/drinks into v4 - a "do or die" attempt to make the food minigame interesting ...

[dhegler]

v4 suggestions should probably go in the v4 forum.

Per your suggestions:

* Controlled teleport is an amazingly powerful ability in Angband. Every variant that's implemented it that I've played, it's completely wrecked game balance. It might be made to be balanced by making it a short-range line-of-sight teleport though.

* Polymorph can change items -> player spends all his time polymorphing items in the hope of getting better ones, rather than going out and finding better items directly. Even if you could only polymorph things once, that'd still mean that every item you find that you can't use gets polymorphed before being discarded. Can you think of a way to implement this that doesn't promote tedium?

* Elvish waybread cures poison, yeah. Otherwise you're pretty much stuck with potions and spells. Angband's food system is very bare-bones; we've even discussed doing away with it entirely from time to time, since currently it's mostly a "press X to not die" / "screw you, ironman warriors" mechanic.

* Amulets don't boost the other stats because they're boosted by rings instead. This is IMO more interesting, since rings are much more highly-competed slots; if you could boost other stats by amulets then everyone would be running around with an Amulet of Constitution or maybe an Amulet of Strength. As it stands amulets are only interesting stat-boost-wise for priests and for the notoriously-overpowered Trickery amulet.

* No problem with staffs/rods of CCW or Mass Identify.

Whoops - been a while since I have posted, I should have seen the v4 forum...

Teleport control would be great, but with so many other rings that would compete for a slot, per se, I don't see a problem. The LoS is a good idea, or simply give it a decent failure rate.

Polymorph does change items? At some point in the past, I thought I tried it (a la Hack) and figured it was never implemented. I will have to try it...

Amulets I think need more options... By the time you start seeing trickery and weaponmastery, you typically have found one of the artifacts by then anyway. I don't necessarily find trickery THAT overpowered...

Has anyone EVER used a staff of CLW after level 10 or so? I haven't. I would just replace it with CCW, or CSW, I just see the staff of CLW as a throw-away.

Mass identify would be GREAT! Takes away some tedium, especially with all these new excellent/splendid objects lying all over. I think it should identify everything in inventory and on the ground in an X square radius. Too often, I take down an orc/dragon pit, or vault and spend 15 minutes trying to identify everything just so I don't miss something good.

The polymorph item idea where it could polymorph into a monster would be pretty neat...

[relic]

Polymorph does change items? At some point in the past, I thought I tried it (a la Hack) and figured it was never implemented. I will have to try it...

I believe that this was a hypothetical statement:

IF Polymorph can change items ->(THEN) player spends all his time polymorphing items

As far as I know, polymorph does not affect items.

[dhegler]

I believe that this was a hypothetical statement:

IF Polymorph can change items ->(THEN) player spends all his time polymorphing items

As far as I know, polymorph does not affect items.

Gotcha. However, the chance that an item polymorphs into a monster would be cool. OR, a % chance of destruction of the item like recharging staffs.

[relic]

Gotcha. However, the chance that an item polymorphs into a monster would be cool. OR, a % chance of destruction of the item like recharging staffs.

I don't know if you have played Nethack, where you can polymorph items, and polymorphing a pile of items has a chance of destroying some items, and also creating a golem.

[Derakon]

Relic read my post correctly; polymorph doesn't currently affect items, and I'm worried that if it could then tedious play would become more optimal. Items turning into monsters might work as a bar on tedium, though I suspect not. However, I certainly wouldn't let monsters be polymorphed into items in turn; then the player polymorphs every single weak monster they encounter in the hopes of geting a better item than would normally be dropped.

Items potentially being destroyed won't do anything to stop tedium because the player is facing the choice of either destroying or polymorphing the item anyway.

Teleport control is strong enough to take up a ring slot, no question. I'd still be very worried about it being overpowered.

Making better amulets be available would make the game easier. We're rather worried about that lately. And Trickery is overpowered because for most players it's a no-brainer to wear one; it gives speed, poison resistance, a DEX boost (often useful for more combat blows), stealth, and a few other useful attributes. That's amazingly good compared to its competition.

Keep in mind that each equipment slot is not meant to compete with other equipment slots. It's perfectly fine if most amulets are not very impressive compared to most rings or body armors or the like. The game is balanced at least in part around you not getting very many boosts from your amulet slot; if you make the amulet slot stronger, you have to make everything else weaker to compensate, or else accept that you've just made the game easier.

[dhegler]

Relic read my post correctly; polymorph doesn't currently affect items, and I'm worried that if it could then tedious play would become more optimal. Items turning into monsters might work as a bar on tedium, though I suspect not. However, I certainly wouldn't let monsters be polymorphed into items in turn; then the player polymorphs every single weak monster they encounter in the hopes of geting a better item than would normally be dropped.

Items potentially being destroyed won't do anything to stop tedium because the player is facing the choice of either destroying or polymorphing the item anyway.

Making better amulets be available would make the game easier. We're rather worried about that lately. And Trickery is overpowered because for most players it's a no-brainer to wear one; it gives speed, poison resistance, a DEX boost (often useful for more combat blows), stealth, and a few other useful attributes. That's amazingly good compared to its competition.

Even better, half the time, make the polymorphed item turn into a Mimic and make lesser mimics, greater mimics and mimic "lords" or something for average, good and great items...

I always thought poison resist should be removed from the " of trickery. Is there some tolkeinian idea behind this item anyway?

I also think that if warriors get critical hits, casters should get something similar too, but that is just another idea for another conversation.

[Magnate]

Making better amulets be available would make the game easier. We're rather worried about that lately. And Trickery is overpowered because for most players it's a no-brainer to wear one; it gives speed, poison resistance, a DEX boost (often useful for more combat blows), stealth, and a few other useful attributes. That's amazingly good compared to its competition.

Keep in mind that each equipment slot is not meant to compete with other equipment slots. It's perfectly fine if most amulets are not very impressive compared to most rings or body armors or the like. The game is balanced at least in part around you not getting very many boosts from your amulet slot; if you make the amulet slot stronger, you have to make everything else weaker to compensate, or else accept that you've just made the game easier.

I think this pass was sold by JLE. Either we revert the JLE changes so that the amulet slot sucks again (I know some people would like that) or we provide significant competition for Trickery (and tone it down some more).

What I want to know is why aren't Magi/Weaponmastery/Devotion aren't considered really competitive with Trickery? What did JLE get wrong? Are they too niche, or not findable enough, or what? What would make the difference, to make all four equally attractive?

Of course, IMO the way forward is ego amulets, but that's for testing in v4 ....

[Magnate]

I also think that if warriors get critical hits, casters should get something similar too, but that is just another idea for another conversation.

This is on the "revamping combat" radar. Sangband has critical hits with devices (and with spells, IIRC), so it's not untried.

[Derakon]

What does Trickery have that Weaponmastery and Devotion don't? Speed, stealth, and by far the best resistance set (Devotion has light/dark/fire; Weaponmastery has fear/disenchantment; Trickery has poison/nexus). Probably the big reason why everyone uses Trickery is that covering poison resistance is fairly tricky without it -- but it also gives lots of other bonuses in addition to that. In particular, there's no excuse for it giving a speed bonus, even if that bonus is only 1+M2. Compare +1-3 speed to the tiny off-weapon combat bonuses on Weaponmastery and there's just no contest.

As for Devotion, it's really not very compelling. At 1+M3 WIS it can't even beat out an Amulet of Wisdom for priests in need of WIS boosts. Its other modifiers are two low-quality resistances (light/dark, a.k.a. ad-hoc blindness resistance), resist fire (pointless in 90% of use cases), hold life (pointless), sustain WIS/CHA (almost entirely pointless; very few WIS drainers in the game), a CHA bonus (pointless), and +1 light radius.

Amulets of the Magi, in contrast, have several useful features: they're the only way to give INT on an amulet slot, they give blindness resistance flat-out, and they combine SI and FA on the same slot, which otherwise only ever happens on weapons IIRC. Given how vital those two abilities are, getting them on a slot that you weren't otherwise getting much utility out of can make your equipment optimization a lot easier. "Magi used to be the best amulets in the game, and I think they're still decent.

[Nomad]

What does Trickery have that Weaponmastery and Devotion don't? Speed, stealth, and by far the best resistance set (Devotion has light/dark/fire; Weaponmastery has fear/disenchantment; Trickery has poison/nexus). Probably the big reason why everyone uses Trickery is that covering poison resistance is fairly tricky without it -- but it also gives lots of other bonuses in addition to that. In particular, there's no excuse for it giving a speed bonus, even if that bonus is only 1+M2. Compare +1-3 speed to the tiny off-weapon combat bonuses on Weaponmastery and there's just no contest.

Really, it seems particularly daft that Weaponmastery should grant protection from fear, considering that's the one thing guaranteed to be entirely useless to warriors. Personally I think I'd strip the speed bonus off of Trickery and shuffle the resistances around to:

Devotion - fear/nexus
Weaponmastery - stun/disenchantment
Trickery - light/dark/poison

[dhegler]

Really, it seems particularly daft that Weaponmastery should grant protection from fear, considering that's the one thing guaranteed to be entirely useless to warriors. Personally I think I'd strip the speed bonus off of Trickery and shuffle the resistances around to:

Devotion - fear/nexus
Weaponmastery - stun/disenchantment
Trickery - light/dark/poison

Where do these concepts even come from? Is there some mention of these in some fantasy works? Or did these things get added a while ago just because?