Several questions about 3.3.0

[mightbecactus]

Hi All,

I recently finished a game on 3.0.9 (ref Maurice Greene on the AAR) and decided to start up an Ironman Elf Mage on 3.3.0. I've noticed a few differences between the versions and I was hoping to get some help:

1. Uniques. So far my guy has killed Smeagol, Bullroarer and Mugash and all three were a total breeze compared to what I was expecting. Especially Bullroarer who normally owns me when I first see him. He died after I think two shots from a wand of wonder. Mugash collapsed after I think only 3 frost bolts. Has the difficulty been wound massively down in 330? Or are some of the uniques just weak while some are stronger than before?

2. Pickup items seems broken. No matter how I toggle the always-pickup option, there seems to be no way to walk over items without picking them up, unless you go in to options and toggle the always pickup flag and then go back to switch it back. I used to be able to hold the shift key to walk without pickup. The help file suggests semicolon ( to toggla but this doesn't work either. Neither does any other character (have experimented with many).

3. Squelch and destroy doesn't work at all. I hit 'k', it nicely asks if I want to ignore all of these items, I say yes, but they don't disappear. On top of that I'm forced to pick them up in an annoying combo with the problem above.

4. Macros don't seem to work properly anymore. I used to have a simple map from ',' to '*', this meant I could tap the comma key near my hand instead of pressing shift-8 every minute or so. Anyway, in 330, the macro works but only in common play. It doesn't work say after I've hit 'f' to fire. Instead the comma goes in literally instead of as a '*'.

Any help appreciated!

mbc

PS I'm on Win XP SP 2

[Magnate]

Hi All,

I recently finished a game on 3.0.9 (ref Maurice Greene on the AAR) and decided to start up an Ironman Elf Mage on 3.3.0. I've noticed a few differences between the versions and I was hoping to get some help:

1. Uniques. So far my guy has killed Smeagol, Bullroarer and Mugash and all three were a total breeze compared to what I was expecting. Especially Bullroarer who normally owns me when I first see him. He died after I think two shots from a wand of wonder. Mugash collapsed after I think only 3 frost bolts. Has the difficulty been wound massively down in 330? Or are some of the uniques just weak while some are stronger than before?

This is interesting. The uniques themselves haven't changed much if at all, so I'm wondering what else could be giving this impression. We have to discount the wand of wonder, because you could quite easily have got two lucky rolls for high-damage attack effects. Mughash collapsing after three frost bolts sounds strange - I wondered if he's been given HURT_COLD, but he hasn't. Device damage is now boosted by your device skill, but that boost wouldn't be much at low levels. Again maybe just lucky rolls.

2. Pickup items seems broken. No matter how I toggle the always-pickup option, there seems to be no way to walk over items without picking them up, unless you go in to options and toggle the always pickup flag and then go back to switch it back. I used to be able to hold the shift key to walk without pickup. The help file suggests semicolon ( to toggla but this doesn't work either. Neither does any other character (have experimented with many).

Are you saying that you still pick things up automatically even with auto-pickup off? That doesn't sound right. I think you mean that the old 'flip pickup' command is gone, and you can't temporarily toggle that option for one move. I don't know much about that change, but I do know that the intention is to restore that behaviour eventually. Sorry for the inconvenience.

3. Squelch and destroy doesn't work at all. I hit 'k', it nicely asks if I want to ignore all of these items, I say yes, but they don't disappear. On top of that I'm forced to pick them up in an annoying combo with the problem above.

4. Macros don't seem to work properly anymore. I used to have a simple map from ',' to '*', this meant I could tap the comma key near my hand instead of pressing shift-8 every minute or so. Anyway, in 330, the macro works but only in common play. It doesn't work say after I've hit 'f' to fire. Instead the comma goes in literally instead of as a '*'.

These two are both covered in the new help file for 3.3.0: lib/help/330.txt, which is accessible from the in-game help menu (first item). The relevant parts are:

Macros no longer exist. Everything you could do with macros you can now do with keymaps - and more.

You can no longer destroy items - they are squelched instead. You can toggle the visibility of squelched items by using the 'K' command.

... that said, both of these issues are works in progress, not yet perfected. You can't squelch part of a stack of ammo, for example.

[joelsanda]

Hi All,
1. Uniques. So far my guy has killed Smeagol, Bullroarer and Mugash and all three were a total breeze compared to what I was expecting. Especially Bullroarer who normally owns me when I first see him. He died after I think two shots from a wand of wonder. Mugash collapsed after I think only 3 frost bolts. Has the difficulty been wound massively down in 330? Or are some of the uniques just weak while some are stronger than before?

You know, I thought I breezed through Bullroarer, Smeagol, and Wormtongue pretty quickly. Of course, I've never reached CL or DL I'm at now; which I supposed may mean my play has improved, but I kind of doubt that. I did get lucky with a nice longbow, but these guys always whipped me in the past.

2. Pickup items seems broken. No matter how I toggle the always-pickup option, there seems to be no way to walk over items without picking them up, unless you go in to options and toggle the always pickup flag and then go back to switch it back. I used to be able to hold the shift key to walk without pickup. The help file suggests semicolon ( to toggla but this doesn't work either. Neither does any other character (have experimented with many).

Not seeing this. I have the option toggled off unless it matches my inventory and that works as expected.

4. Macros don't seem to work properly anymore. I used to have a simple map from ',' to '*', this meant I could tap the comma key near my hand instead of pressing shift-8 every minute or so. Anyway, in 330, the macro works but only in common play. It doesn't work say after I've hit 'f' to fire. Instead the comma goes in literally instead of as a '*'.

I have two (fn' and max') and they work as expected.

PS I'm on Win XP SP 2

I'm on Mac OS X 10.7.2.

[Derakon]

Macros no longer exist. Everything you could do with macros you can now do with keymaps - and more.

Not quite. The one thing you can't do with keymaps that you could with macros is have the keymap activate when the game is in the middle of prompting you for input (e.g. for clearing -more-, or selecting a target, etc.). Some players had macros set up to hit escape a bunch of times and then cast a spell, for example -- that's no longer possible with keymaps. mightbecactus's example of the keymap not working properly was of it not sending a '*' when at the targeting prompt, which would be a similar case. I'm afraid the only suggestion I can provide is to use an extended keyboard, if possible, since they have a * key near at hand.

[Jungle_Boy]

I'm not sure when it was added but are you aware that the 'h' command automatically fires the first projectile in your quiver at the nearest enemy? this largely prevents having to do fn*[enter] all the time.

[Timo Pietilä]

This is interesting. The uniques themselves haven't changed much if at all, so I'm wondering what else could be giving this impression. We have to discount the wand of wonder, because you could quite easily have got two lucky rolls for high-damage attack effects. Mughash collapsing after three frost bolts sounds strange - I wondered if he's been given HURT_COLD, but he hasn't. Device damage is now boosted by your device skill, but that boost wouldn't be much at low levels. Again maybe just lucky rolls.

I'm guessing Hi-Elf Mage. Even at low levels that combo has 56 + 13/10clvls, so it is 69 already at clvl 10 which is something you get fast and 82 at clvl 20.

As for wand of wonder, if you get lucky you can squeeze out of that spells that can nearly one-shot Wormtongue, so killing Bullroarer with two isn't that odd. OTOH you could as well had healed and hasted him so it is a gamble. WoW is quite effective weapon against (very) low level uniques. With some luck it does a lot more damage than any other weapon you might have at that point.

[mightbecactus]

Thanks for the great advice guys, please allow me to clarify:

- I killed bullroarer on about clvl 9 and mugash on about clvl 12, the guy is an Elf Mage (not High Elf) with 18/40 int. I think my frost bolts were doing 6d8 when I attacked Mugash.

- Magnate thankyou I did indeed mean that 'flip pickup' is gone. But is this not highly problematic for everybody? If you want to charge at a ranged monster (say a kobold archer), but lying in front of you is a large piece of unidentified armour that would slow you down, surely going in and toggling either (a) always_pickup or (b) squelch_armour just so you can walk over it is a frequent pain? I surely must be missing something; ie there must be some other way people play to make it work. I mean, it's a bit annoying now but when he's rifling through the drops from an orc pit it will be a nightmare.

- Thanks Derakon that is exactly the problem (ie macros don't work inside prompts any more). Sounds like I will have to get over it

- Thanks Jungle_Boy I will try that h command out

On the difficulty, I have noticed other things that appear to be 'better' or 'easier' for the player. For example, my mage is wearing armour that has base 20 AC! I think it's studded leather or something which was about 11 AC in the older versions. So allow me to ask a simpler question : Does anyone have any firm examples of any aspect of the game (be it uniques hp, spell power, missing/weakened artifacts, rarer resists or anything whatever) that is harder in 330 than 309?

Sorry if I sound critical of the game, there's a lot that's been added I really like about it eg 'Ring of the Mouse' that trades off damage for stealth, monsters dropping a small stack of a certain scroll instead of just one etc.

cheers
mbc

[Timo Pietilä]

So allow me to ask a simpler question : Does anyone have any firm examples of any aspect of the game (be it uniques hp, spell power, missing/weakened artifacts, rarer resists or anything whatever) that is harder in 330 than 309?

Not really. 3.3.0 is a bit harder than 3.2 though, so direction is OK. 3.4 will be a lot tougher based on what I have seen this far. Can't say if it is harder than 3.0.9 yet, but way harder than 3.2 or 3.3.

[Derakon]

A note on armor: the effectiveness of armor was rescaled at the same time that AC from armor was -- current AC of 350 should be equivalent to old AC of 250. So your numbers are bigger but that doesn't mean you're better protected.

[takkaria]

- Magnate thankyou I did indeed mean that 'flip pickup' is gone. But is this not highly problematic for everybody? If you want to charge at a ranged monster (say a kobold archer), but lying in front of you is a large piece of unidentified armour that would slow you down, surely going in and toggling either (a) always_pickup or (b) squelch_armour just so you can walk over it is a frequent pain? I surely must be missing something; ie there must be some other way people play to make it work. I mean, it's a bit annoying now but when he's rifling through the drops from an orc pit it will be a nightmare.

I would suggest turning off autopickup, myself, and just using 'g' when you're on an item you want to pick up. I used to use autopickup, largely I think because picking up stuff manually used to be a bit of a nightmare, but the UI has improved a lot since then.

[mightbecactus]

Thanks guys,

I found that with some repeated trying / toggling / reloading, eventually the squelch mechanic started working as if by some miracle; so the game is now immediately dropping things from my backpack and making them disappear as soon as they are ignored and I can toggle visibility as expected. I'm not sure if others have had a problem with it or if it is worth reporting as a bug to the team.

Thanks takkaria I didn't know you could type g to pick up - I'll give it a go tonight and see if it works better for me. I'm still instinctively hitting - to flip pickup and growling each time but will get used to it I'm sure.

Thanks Derakon RE the point on armour class.

Regards
mbc