A Cheery Wave Hello and Some Newbie Questions

[Timo Pietilä]

There is this phase when I feel invincible with priests, when I have....

Heh. The invincible phase. Been there, done that. A lot.

To me the hard to resist thing in that is undead pits. I'm priest, undeads can't hurt me, Right? Right??

[Timo Pietilä]

Oh, weird. Well, there's a very good reason to keep the other classes from getting access to that ability: it's cheesy as hell. We want the player to have to weigh the pros and cons of diving into that vault full of nasties without being able to make a fully-informed opinion. If there are no unknowns to exploration, then it ceases being exploring.

In old angband that was solved by not being able to look at things that were not in your actual LoS. Maybe instead of * the object kind could be revealed, but not the exact type (like pointy weapon, polearm, dungeon book, ring, potion). Or not, I'm happy with *. Priest alter reality/clairvoyance combo was really cheesy.

[Timo Pietilä]

Also, don't underestimate the attack wands, especially Dragon's Flame and Dragon's Frost. They can go a long way to extending your combat performance before you get Raal's Tome.

Maybe the added damage output from device skill should be in the item descriptions? I just tested, and examining wand of annihilation with mage or warrior shows same damage output. AFAIK device skill does affect that damage output. Or was it in some variant?

[Timo Pietilä]

Next question, for anyone with the time and inclination to answer: What does the item description for the Scroll of Acquirement mean? Does it drop weapons or armor, or just generic items?

from generic items it can create anything that is counted as "good", IE things like dungeon books, rings of speed, for anything you can wear it makes them at least ego. No upper limit, but probabilities are affected by dungeon level (just like normal item creation, if item minimum depth is 1000' it needs to pass out of depth checks if read before 1000').

[edit] added "things like" in generic items.

[Derakon]

Maybe the added damage output from device skill should be in the item descriptions? I just tested, and examining wand of annihilation with mage or warrior shows same damage output. AFAIK device skill does affect that damage output. Or was it in some variant?

Yes, it absolutely ought to be in the description; the fact that it isn't makes attack wands look a lot worse. A simple "You get an X% bonus to damage from your device skill" line in the description should suffice.

Mages are amazing at using attack wands. The formula is that you get (device skill - level of wand)% extra damage. So a level-40 mage with 18/200 INT would have a device skill of 99 (neglecting modifiers from race, and assuming I read the code correctly), giving nearly a 40% damage boost to Wands of Annihilation, or 50% to wands of Dragon's Flame/Frost.

Endgame Wands of Annihilation beat out casting Mana Storm when you're fighting Morgoth, assuming you can recharge when he's not in LOS.