angband 3.4 plx no spaghetti

[d_m]

Warriors get more HP, higher max strength and constitution, an extra blow (warriors max out at 6, mages at 4, the rest at 5), and fear immunity.

I don't agree at all about endgame. (IMO) the point where warriors suffer is the in the midgame before they've found the right items (detection, escape, teleport other, etc). Once the warrior has those things they do very well.

Of course, the play style is different and they do have to focus on saving up consumables, but overall it's not a huge problem, and of course the extra HP are a huge bonus.

[Derakon]

The extra HP the warrior has are their single biggest feature; they get a whopping +9 to their hit die; paladins and rogues are at +6, rangers at +4, priests +2, mages +0. Functionally this means a warrior has ~225 more hitpoints than a mage at the endgame, all else being equal. But all else is probably not equal, because warriors are also free to ignore INT and WIS and thus can pile on more CON-boosting gear.

Besides that, warriors have the best melee skill in the game, and the second-best archery skill; they'll hit more often. And of course they have the best STR so, for what that's worth, they'll hit harder too.

I'm inclined to agree with d_m; warriors come roaring out of the gate, hit a slump once they reach the point that they can't just slaughter everything in their path but they don't have the abilities to avoid the dangerous stuff, and then hit a solid middle game once they have Detection rods and telepathy. They're far from the easiest endgame (that's almost certainly priests) but they also don't have the hardest (rogues, I'd guess? Maybe mages?).

[Malak Darkhunter]

The extra HP the warrior has are their single biggest feature; they get a whopping +9 to their hit die; paladins and rogues are at +6, rangers at +4, priests +2, mages +0. Functionally this means a warrior has ~225 more hitpoints than a mage at the endgame, all else being equal. But all else is probably not equal, because warriors are also free to ignore INT and WIS and thus can pile on more CON-boosting gear.

Besides that, warriors have the best melee skill in the game, and the second-best archery skill; they'll hit more often. And of course they have the best STR so, for what that's worth, they'll hit harder too.

I'm inclined to agree with d_m; warriors come roaring out of the gate, hit a slump once they reach the point that they can't just slaughter everything in their path but they don't have the abilities to avoid the dangerous stuff, and then hit a solid middle game once they have Detection rods and telepathy. They're far from the easiest endgame (that's almost certainly priests) but they also don't have the hardest (rogues, I'd guess? Maybe mages?).

The biggest problem with warriors that I'm running into with warriors is adequate healing, they take a lot to keep going, and not trying to kill everything in sight but to polish off those uniques before facing morgoth. healing potions seem to be much rarer now, and the biggest thing I disagree with is stores start selling less stuff once you reach deep dungeon levels, and you cannot replace your consumables very easily, your feeling it bad both ways, I had 2 here lately get around level 90 and just not being able to keep healed up to fight. But I'm sure your better with warriors than I am, I know you've beat it with warriors, priests I can tell you all about, had a NPP rogue once, and honestly he was pretty powerful, mages-never got much farther than about CL20 or so, not my playstyle, but hope to invest some time into 1 soon. Had a Sangband necromancer winner wich was the most powerful character I've ever had, truly unstopable, but Sang is different.

On a side note never tried a warrior before V 3.3.2 wonder what the difference is on older versions like 3.0.6 or earlier?

[fizzix]

healing potions seem to be much rarer now.

I don't think this is true. Or at least I think healing potions are more common in 3.3 and 3.4 than they were in the past. Magnate can probably query the stats database and answer this for certain.

stores start selling less stuff once you reach deep dungeon levels, and you cannot replace your consumables very easily

As far as I am aware, there haven't been any changes to consumable availability besides limiting stack size to 40 in 3.4. The only changes were availabilities of ego weapons/armors in the non-BM shops. !CCW should still show up just as often as it always did.

[Derakon]

If your dungeon trips take a fixed number of player turns, then as your speed increases, the number of restocks the town will perform per dungeon trip will decrease -- town restocks happen every 10k game turns, which is 1k normal-speed turns but 2k +10-speed turns.

So I guess if you're making short dungeon trips with a high-speed character, then restocking could be an issue. But vital supplies should show up in high-enough quantities that they won't run out. What exactly are you short on? If it's healing items, then yes, learning when to spend them and when to save them is fairly important. Potions of Healing are for unique-killing; potions of *Healing* and Life are for Sauron and Morgoth. However, not all uniques are worth killing...

[Malak Darkhunter]

I don't think this is true. Or at least I think healing potions are more common in 3.3 and 3.4 than they were in the past. Magnate can probably query the stats database and answer this for certain.



As far as I am aware, there haven't been any changes to consumable availability besides limiting stack size to 40 in 3.4. The only changes were availabilities of ego weapons/armors in the non-BM shops. !CCW should still show up just as often as it always did.

I'm not looking at the math, but it seems once you start around, DL 70 stores start to sell less, and I've noticed this on several occasions, to the point of CCW not showing up anymore, basic consumbles, wor,phase door, sure, but honestly at that point in the game CCW is not really very helpful, you find a few regular healing potions that help keep you alive but big healing potions, like life I found about 3 of those in my last half-troll run.

I found 1 rod of healing, which helps but takes forever to recharge, so it's basicaly a 1 shot go, ellesar, that helps but again it takes a while to recharge.
and I found maybe 20 to 30 potions of heal. Warriors might not be my strong suit, but I still don't feel like the odds are that good, on DL90 and later, but that's just my perspective as a player. Now if you find a select group of artifacts/ Deathwreaker/ Aglarang/ Glaive of pain/ then you stand a better chance. My best weapon was Calris, and it took forever to try and enchant it up to be useful, and it aggravates. My second best weapon was Anguriel, but it also aggravates. I like playing warriors but I don't like the limited availability of healing. It's no fun hitting DL90 and having to hide and teleport away all the time. And the game punishes you, if you don't wipe out the uniques as you come across them they all get jumbled together on the later levels, so you are forced to deal with them, maybe something could be done about that.

I like how the variants like Sang/O have handled warriors with abilites to compensate a melee character, and store investment in Sang to pay for the chance to find good items in stores, I like having options, not have my options taken away. but that's my 2 cents i'm a a good player, but not a pro, their is others better at it than me.

[Malak Darkhunter]

If your dungeon trips take a fixed number of player turns, then as your speed increases, the number of restocks the town will perform per dungeon trip will decrease -- town restocks happen every 10k game turns, which is 1k normal-speed turns but 2k +10-speed turns.

So I guess if you're making short dungeon trips with a high-speed character, then restocking could be an issue. But vital supplies should show up in high-enough quantities that they won't run out. What exactly are you short on? If it's healing items, then yes, learning when to spend them and when to save them is fairly important. Potions of Healing are for unique-killing; potions of *Healing* and Life are for Sauron and Morgoth. However, not all uniques are worth killing...

probably right about the store stocking per 10k turns hadn't considered that. Just to be curious whcih uniques do you considered to be not worth killing?
Tarrasque, Charchoth, Azriel, gabriel,Atlas, wolfhound of the Valar? my problem with leaving high powered uniques is they always come back on the last dungeon levels when your trying to save up for morgoth, guess a bunch of teleport other will be useful here?

[Magnate]

Here is the changelog for 3.2.0, which I believe is the easiest Vanilla release so far. There are links to other changelogs in the sidebar; you should note that 3.3 changed Teleport Other to be a bolt instead of a beam, and change Destruction to remove artifacts from the level (without destroying them, i.e. they can still be generated if they haven't been ID'd).

Here is a complete list of changes between 3.0.9b and 3.3.2, albeit without the same narrative as on the rephial pages.

[fizzix]

probably right about the store stocking per 10k turns hadn't considered that. Just to be curious whcih uniques do you considered to be not worth killing?
Tarrasque, Charchoth, Azriel, gabriel,Atlas, wolfhound of the Valar? my problem with leaving high powered uniques is they always come back on the last dungeon levels when your trying to save up for morgoth, guess a bunch of teleport other will be useful here?

The old idea was to not bother with any unique that wouldn't get summoned with an escort. So you seem to have gotten the majority of the list. I never found this to be a big deal, provided you keep at least 1 ?banish for each escorted unique you haven't killed yet (gothmog, feagwath, vecna, lungorthin, moria, and maybe gabriel/radagast and kronos). The basic strategy is then, banish Z. Ensure no graveyard/demon pit/dragon pit on level, or that you've destructed or banished it. Fight in a destructed area. If the summon produces multiple uniques that can kill you with their attacks, teleport then banish, otherwise just banish the escorts.

In 3.4 summoning doesn't bring escorts anymore, so even the escorted killing need will soon be obsolete. Basically the idea for me is, you kill any unique you can kill without wasting too many resources, because those deep uniques give you the best chance, outside of vault hunting, for hitting a top artifact. The biggest problem for me is that there are just too many uniques to hunt them all down, it's incredibly boring.

At some point I'd like to give more incentives, both positive and negative for killing uniques, but that might be far off. Positive incentives might be better drops. One negative incentive idea I have is to allow the SUMMON_UNIQUE spell to call uniques that are elsewhere on the level to the summoner. This way, you're going to have to TO the tarrasque over and over again.

[Malak Darkhunter]

In 3.4 summoning doesn't bring escorts anymore, so even the escorted killing need will soon be obsolete. Basically the idea for me is, you kill any unique you can kill without wasting too many resources, because those deep uniques give you the best chance, outside of vault hunting, for hitting a top artifact. The biggest problem for me is that there are just too many uniques to hunt them all down, it's incredibly boring.

At some point I'd like to give more incentives, both positive and negative for killing uniques, but that might be far off. Positive incentives might be better drops. One negative incentive idea I have is to allow the SUMMON_UNIQUE spell to call uniques that are elsewhere on the level to the summoner. This way, you're going to have to TO the tarrasque over and over again.

This sounds good, I agree, 3.4 sounds better all the way around.

[Derakon]

Basically the idea for me is, you kill any unique you can kill without wasting too many resources, because those deep uniques give you the best chance, outside of vault hunting, for hitting a top artifact. The biggest problem for me is that there are just too many uniques to hunt them all down, it's incredibly boring.

This is basically what I do too. Once I get down to dlvl 98, I keep playing until I have good enough gear to take out Sauron and Morgoth, and then I go for them. I'll kill uniques in the process if I think doing so is reasonable, but most of them get to live. Summons during the final fight are a bit of a pain but they don't make the fight impossible by any means.

[fizzix]

Summons during the final fight are a bit of a pain but they don't make the fight impossible by any means.

The question is, should we make it worse for better gameplay? Or are positive incentives enough? Or are there enough incentives as it is? I don't have a clue, but it's something that I've been mulling over for a long time now.

[Timo Pietilä]

As for the change was it just difficulty or were the actual mechanics changes?

There were quite a few mechanics changes, some of which made game far too easy (for example rarities didn't go high enough and The One Ring was just as common as nine other not-too-rare artifacts). 3.4 seems to be a lot better than 3.3.

Based on your list of what makes game trivial you might like 3.4. I do, it actually feels more like 3.0.9 than 3.3.

BTW I have a keymap for F10 which for some reason always activates window menu outside of game itself (on Windows XP). Similar keymap in F9 doesn't do the same (F9 is bless, F10 is protection from evil)


A:[Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape]p1c
C:0:[F9]
and
A:[Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape]p3e
C:0:[F10]

[ghengiz]

BTW I have a keymap for F10 which for some reason always activates window menu outside of game itself (on Windows XP). Similar keymap in F9 doesn't do the same (F9 is bless, F10 is protection from evil)


A:[Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape]p1c
C:0:[F9]
and
A:[Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape]p3e
C:0:[F10]

so, trying to cast "protection from evil" using that keymap full of escapes on xp opens the window menu? mmm....I see an hint there...that is, don't waste time on trying to save your work, it's doomed, just exit using the file menu, and RUN RUN RUN AWAY from xp!!!

[takkaria]

There were quite a few mechanics changes, some of which made game far too easy (for example rarities didn't go high enough and The One Ring was just as common as nine other not-too-rare artifacts). 3.4 seems to be a lot better than 3.3.

Based on your list of what makes game trivial you might like 3.4. I do, it actually feels more like 3.0.9 than 3.3.

BTW I have a keymap for F10 which for some reason always activates window menu outside of game itself (on Windows XP). Similar keymap in F9 doesn't do the same (F9 is bless, F10 is protection from evil)


A:[Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape]p1c
C:0:[F9]
and
A:[Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape][Escape]p3e
C:0:[F10]

Now that there aren't macros anymore but just keymaps, the [Escape]s should be unnecessary (unless I don't understand the code, which might be the case). No idea about the windows menu though, that is quite weird. (PS, there is updated keymap documentation in 3.4 beta's customize.txt like I promised for 3.3. Sorry it took so long!)