Angband 3.5.0 released!

[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.

[ekolis]

I think I have a conflict of interest...

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

[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]

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]

Amazingly, everyone has missed the big news here.

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

[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

[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.

[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]

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

[ekolis]

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

[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]

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

[fizzix]

Thanks for the effusive praise OOD. I think everyone on the dev team appreciates it a lot.

[OOD Town drunk]

I would like to thank everyone involved in the latest update! (and everyone who has ever participated in making the game what it is today)

I have been playing Angband since about 1998, and have watched it slowly evolve over the years. I can easily say that it is about as close to perfect as a game can be, and yet somehow, each update seems to bring it even closer to perfect.

This latest update is a serious one. I haven't yet made it past the early mid-game, (My most successful game so far was about dlvl 40/clvl 25) but what I have seen in the early game has been fuggin sweeeet!

The first 20 levels or so used to be somewhat tedious. Now they are much, much (...much, much, much....) more enjoyable, primarily due to the fact that ego weapons are now found commonly from the jump.

One might assume that this would make the early game much easier. One might assume incorrectly. I don't know if the early game enemies were buffed at all, in order to balance the better early game equipment, or what was done exactly, but the challenge remains perfectly intact.

Another change that I have enjoyed immensely, is the greater amount of variety involving dungeon layout. After more than a decade of virtual spelunking, the dungeon design had grown quite stale. The addition of new rooms/vaults/passageways has done wonders in remedying this situation.

Also; NEW ENEMIES!! There is nothing more thrilling than running into a completely unknown foe.

Over the past year or so, (since I joined the oook forums) I have made a number of suggestions on ways I felt the game could be improved. And then 3.5 came out. It turns out the Angband Gurus who are in charge of the code listen to their gamers. I have run into quite a few of the suggestions I have made. Which is awesome. For example, there are now direction and range indicators for enemies in your enemy term window, similar to those located in the item term window. Also, you can now dump your autoinscriptions to a preference file, as you could with macros and such before, allowing you to avoid another tedious early game job: setting up dozens of autoinscriptions. Those are the only two I can recall off the top of my head at the moment. (Other than the change/removal of charisma, which hundreds of people have suggested)

There are many, many (...many, many, many....)more, but I believe I have made my point. In the event that I have not made myself clear and simple enough, allow me to clarify and simplify: I AM LOVING ANGBAND V3.5!! Thank you takkaria and d_m and fizzix and magnate and myshkin and blubaron and Elly Jones and Bardur Arantsson and Ben Semmler and Brett Reid and Gabe Cunningham and Han Boetes and Janeene Beeforth and Nick McConnell and Seebs and Nomad and PowerWyrm and any/everybody else who helped on the best version of Angband yet!!

More than anything, I would like to thank the coders for listening to people like me. Every time I ran into something that I had suggested, it had me literally tearing up... maybe not literally literally, but figuratively, I was literally tearing up.

HAPPY SPELUNKING!!

[OOD Town drunk]

2. Something's wrong with the character history display under "knowledge" - most of the past items all have the same turn number (162,015 in my case)

I ran into this issue in 3.5 and I believe I know what is going on. I do not know, however, if it is an intentional addition or not.

It seems that if you use the task manager to end your game, it will edit your current save file, changing all of your character history line items turn counts to your current turn. I discovered this during a run in which I was cheating a bit. If you utilize the task manager to end your game, (even on the tombstone screen) it will end without overriding your current save. Not something I always do, but sometimes I play with a drink or two (or more) in me, and I require a handicap.

Like I was saying, I am unaware if they added this as some sort of save-scum flag, or if it is some sort of glitch in the code, but as far as I have seen, this is how this situation seems to happen. It will continue recording your turn count correctly afterward, but the second you end the program abruptly, it will again alter your save file character history record.