A Few Questions/Observations From an Old Player

[Oramin]

BTW, I have Himring, Narya, and several Staffs of Holiness. I haven't had to activate Protection from Evil in a *very* long time.

Did the multiple zaps from the staffs stack Protection from Evil up to wazoo? I thought the duration of a zap/activation was reduced if a spell was already up.

For those thinking I'm being unsporting and clearing only rooms that I have elemental immunity for, one of those times was for a room of Green Dragons (of course +30 speed and double resistance is pretty close to immunity).

[Timo Pietilä]

Don't competition characters typically dive a lot more aggressively than I do?

Ok, good to know that you folks have "fixed" the problem in the later versions.

It is possible that RNG is just messing with you. When we deal with rarities that are not "found everywhere, anytime" and with the amount of things to find there just are things that not get created. It can go other way around too, when I started playing angband couple of decades ago I did find Ringil in just about every game I played and wondered why everybody claims it is rare. OTOH I have found Feanor exactly once in all the games I have played and IIRC is was in the version where you were practically walking in a shoe store and artifact rarities were broken.

[Oramin]

Don't competition characters typically dive a lot more aggressively than I do?

Ok, good to know that you folks have "fixed" the problem in the later versions.

[fizzix]

I think you'll find that the devs have in fact rejiggered the odds -- if you played a more recent version you'd probably have found Kelek's by now.

I dunno, my comp character never found the 9th prayer book (did find the 9th spell book though)

[Raajaton]

To each their own. No reason not to play the version you like. However, like Derakon said the spellbooks are certainly more common in more recent versions. On my Ranger winner, I think I found my first Kelek's by somewhere between dlvl 75 and 80 and probably found at least 4 or 5 more copies by the time I finished the game.

[Derakon]

I think you'll find that the devs have in fact rejiggered the odds -- if you played a more recent version you'd probably have found Kelek's by now.

[Oramin]

3.3.2

I'm generally happy with the balance in this version. (Nothing personal to the devs but I think it kind of changes the flavor when you replace non-Tolkien with Tolkien thematic monsters. I kind of like having oddball critters like the Angels and the Tarrasque and they've been around since the early days.)


On my most recent sweep of multiple levels of 97/98, I picked up an extra 6 Mordenkainen's for sale upstairs as an example (+ multiple copies of the other dungeon spellbooks - but not Kelek's). I also found yet another Wrath of God. And this is with a good sized vault (the V shaped one) and some monster pits (dragon and giant) that I cleared.

[Raajaton]

Wow, that's incredibly surprising that you haven't found it yet within that many turns. I haven't had much of a problem finding it personally, although I admit I find it far more frequently when playing a priest or paladin.

What version are you playing on? I've found the dungeon spellbooks to be pretty abundant on the 3.5-dev versions I've been playing lately.

[Oramin]

Ok, you folks might want to rejigger the the odds so that Kelek's drops a bit more often. I didn't find it at all with my previous game (Hobbit Rogue Winner) and I'm still looking for it on levels 97 and 98 with my High Elf Mage.

To give you an idea of how slowly I play:

EXP: 15,679,782

Game Turns: 19,343,693

Standard Turns: 2,695,529

Rings of Power seem to be considerably more common than Kelek's.

[Nick]

Hmm, Ok, thanks. Might be the new virus protection software I just installed (Kaspersky). Ok to delete the *.old file then and test if a new one gets created?

It should be - the .old file should be just a previous player state (presumably at an auto-save).

[Oramin]

Hmm, Ok, thanks. Might be the new virus protection software I just installed (Kaspersky). Ok to delete the *.old file then and test if a new one gets created?

[Nick]

In order to avoid corrupting your savefile in the event of a system crash or similar, the saving process goes something like: move file to file.old, write file.new, move file.new to file, remove file.old. Looks like the last step failed for some reason.

[Oramin]

So, any answers to the above question?

[Oramin]

Ok, I now seem to have 2 character files from yesterday.

The first one is my normal file at something like 6:44 yesterday.

The other one is Oramin244501.old at 6:06 yesterday.

What's with the OLD file?

[Derakon]

I guess the monster memory didn't anticipate that the player would ever have access to gravity attacks (Rift is a relatively recent addition to the mage's arsenal), so no text associated with it exists. Only monsters that breathe gravity resist it -- ditto with nexus, sound, etc.