The Monster Memory

[buzzkill]

>>> players will play a somewhat less interesting, certainly easier Angband

You mean the Angband that every experienced player on this site plays? I thought we liked that game.

No, I mean complete newbs and long time crappy players like me who have never beaten the game. I doubt it will have any effect on seasoned veterans.

[Zireael]

Yeah, I totally disagree with that ^. I already assume everything can kill me, but I dunno how you can claim there's a specific way to play that can guard you against all threats.

When I fight a monster, I would at least like to know:

a) How much damage can it do per round in melee
b) What special powers does it have (breaths, summons, drains, etc)
c) What side-effects do those specials have (disenchant, nexus scramble, etc)
d) How fast is the thing
e) What do I (potentially) get for killing it

Sil tells me all of these things (and more) when I have monster memory, and I can get all monster memory by buying an ability called Loremaster. Players who would rather not have all of this (or who would rather discover it or remember it on their own) can opt to skip it.

I think it's difficult for V to tell me (a), which is fair. (c) is a short-list that can be looked up (i.e. if it breathes disenchant, I can look up 'disenchant' to learn that it blasts my equipment).

If you'd rather be surprised by those things, or have them vaguely hinted to in monster descriptions, that's fine. If you want to define it as 'cheating' to know those things, that is also fine. I just think that's not very much fun.

I don't know what V is but the Loremaster ability sounds nice indeed!

[Timo Pietilä]

I don't know what V is but the Loremaster ability sounds nice indeed!

V stands for Vanilla, IE the unaltered angband.

My problem with "easy" solutions is that they tend to close door for development. Monster memory and monster knowledge in general is a platform where you can build features like kind of like "rune-based ID" for monsters in addition to items or this loremaster thing. If you allow full memory from start, then there is nothing to build on.