Angband 3.5.0 released!

[ekolis]

Why doesn't wearing a Ring of Escaping cause a Fear status to appear? The effect isn't obvious, so players might be confused as to why they can't attack, until they examine the ring...

Also, I drank an un-ID'd potion off the floor. It said "You see no more Potions of Blindness", but I wasn't actually blinded! Do potions of blindness have a chance to fail now? Oh wait, I was a dwarf, duh :P

I do like the new creeping coins mechanics, though. It might be nice if they got the initiative and attacked when you try to move into them, though!

Is it just me or are light weapons still vastly overpowered?

And I just got slaughtered by a 4-headed hydra on level 12. It was even a "doesn't seem too risky" level! o.O

[Derakon]

Is it just me or are light weapons still vastly overpowered?

The combat rules haven't changed, so yes, light weapons will be preferable for melee classes in the early game. In the mid- and late-game heavier weapons remain competitive, as they always have.

[ekolis]

Oh, OK. I guess that makes sense then. You need mad fighting skillz to master the heavy weapons

[gglibertine]

In exchange for not being able to sell things, you get significantly more money from cash drops. There's no way to guarantee that you get the same cash as you would otherwise (it depends on how often you returned to sell stuff / how willing you are to mine treasure veins), but generally I find that with no-selling on I have just enough money to buy consumables and get the occasional big-ticket item from the Black Market. Eventually money stops being a serious concern, much as it does in a selling game.

Given that, the reason to play with no-selling is so you can focus on items that have utility rather than items that sell for a lot of money; the two often have very little to do with each other (since utility to the player is dependent on many factors).

I was iffy about this one as well until yesterday, when I started to get really tired of the whole "collect up valuable objects until inventory is full, tp upstairs to sell them for money to replenish necessities" routine. I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice if I only had to carry the things I'm actually going to *use*? Oh, THAT'S why he implemented that. Cool idea!

So now I'm wavering between continuing to play my 31st level half-orc rogue (who's doing quite well but still needs to get her con up before she dives much below 1000') and creating a new character with different birth options. I'm intrigued by the recent discussion of priests and paladins being easier to win with, since the last time I checked the consensus was still that mages were the best bet.

I think the perspective is a little different from 1000' than it is from my computer chair

[Derakon]

I'm intrigued by the recent discussion of priests and paladins being easier to win with, since the last time I checked the consensus was still that mages were the best bet.

Wait, what? Mages haven't been easy to win with since they took away Globe of Invulnerability. All of the changes to mages since then that I can think of have been making mages easier, and they're still the hardest class in the game.

[gglibertine]

Wait, what? Mages haven't been easy to win with since they took away Globe of Invulnerability. All of the changes to mages since then that I can think of have been making mages easier, and they're still the hardest class in the game.

It's been quite a while since I last played, and I never played mages anyway because I'm just too combat-oriented.

[Zikke]

It's been quite a while since I last played, and I never played mages anyway because I'm just too combat-oriented.

I've melee'd Morgoth to death as a mage several times

[Nick]

Amazingly, everyone has missed the big news here.

For the first time ever, Angband has a higher version number than Nethack.

[ekolis]

Amazingly, everyone has missed the big news here.

For the first time ever, Angband has a higher version number than Nethack.

Any bets on how long until Angband has a version number twice that of Nethack?

[Nick]

Any bets on how long until Angband has a version number twice that of Nethack?

I think I have a conflict of interest...

[ekolis]

I think I have a conflict of interest...

Gonna pull a Java and call the next release version 40?

[Timo Pietilä]

It's been quite a while since I last played, and I never played mages anyway because I'm just too combat-oriented.

Globe of Invulnerability went away about twenty years ago. Something like that.

However "easy" and "fast" are not synonyms. Fastest to win are probably rogue or ranger, mage being a bit faster than warrior and priest and paladin going last, but especially priest is easiest to win with even that it probably is slowest of them all. Priests just wont die, they allow you to make a lot of mistakes that are not immediately fatal, because it just takes one spell to restore your heath back to full (and myriads of ways to get rid of the thing threatening you, and detection which detects everything).

However both paladin and priest lack unlimited haste, which makes their progress a lot slower than magic-types. Thumb-rule: "if it is faster than you, it can kill you" makes them avoid a lot of monsters that mage & co can fight.

[gglibertine]

However "easy" and "fast" are not synonyms. Fastest to win are probably rogue or ranger, mage being a bit faster than warrior and priest and paladin going last, but especially priest is easiest to win with even that it probably is slowest of them all. Priests just wont die, they allow you to make a lot of mistakes that are not immediately fatal, because it just takes one spell to restore your heath back to full (and myriads of ways to get rid of the thing threatening you, and detection which detects everything).

However both paladin and priest lack unlimited haste, which makes their progress a lot slower than magic-types. Thumb-rule: "if it is faster than you, it can kill you" makes them avoid a lot of monsters that mage & co can fight.

Well, I have been playing Angband for just about 20 years (with another ten years of very silly nethack variants my best friend and I thought up before that[1]), but it hadn't been quite *that* long I just remember the guy who taught me the game saying it was easiest to win with a mage, hardest with a warrior. (Strangely enough, I've never actually met anyone else in RL who played Angband. Or even knew what it was.) Obviously the warrior will be easier at the beginning and the mage harder, but stuff changes later on. Since I kind of suck at games anyway, I've never even made it past L35 or so, so all I know about winning is that someday I'm going to have to stop getting so excited about melee that I forget to watch my HP.

It's a testament to just how complex a game Angband is that there are so many tradeoffs you can make, and how they affect gameplay.

[1] My friend and I added three ridiculous classes and a variety of silly monsters to Nethack, but I won't waste space in this thread describing them -- though I am highly tempted to hack something similar into Angband at some point for my own amusement. If anyone actually cares, send me a message and I'll post about it in a more suitable forum.

[Antoine]

I wish someone could convince gglibertine to stop using that sig about ch*ld p*rn. I don't like it and I don't want to visit a forum where people talk about that. If he wants to post about ch*ld p*rn he should go to a ch*ld p*rn forum not do it here.

A.

[Nick]

I wish someone could convince gglibertine to stop using that sig about ch*ld p*rn. I don't like it and I don't want to visit a forum where people talk about that. If he wants to post about ch*ld p*rn he should go to a ch*ld p*rn forum not do it here.

A.

I wish Antoine would address people directly if she had a problem with their posting