The Hardest part of Angband

[Timo Pietilä]

In other words, the player should know the drolem breathes for roughly 600 damage in some way. Hiding this feels unfair.

800. Or has this been changed....hm, it is. 2200 listed in monster.txt HP attribute. That's just 733. Boo. AMHD is even less, just 1848?? That's odd.

What about dracolich, does that still do max damage with nether... no, it doesn't.

hmmm.....looks like this is quite old change (done at the time with new HP calc system it seems). Weird.

[fizzix]

Not too much info though. We don't want to remove those precious "it hit for *HOW MANY* points??" -situations.

Eh, I disagree with you on this. At least, I think we should get rid of the out of the blue ones, and leave the "you were careless and forgot to wear cold resist around Huan" ones (yeah...i did that...) Even knowing everything you can still get surprised by a big attack.

In other words, the player should know the drolem breathes for roughly 600 damage in some way. Hiding this feels unfair.

[Timo Pietilä]

What about color coding monsters in the monster list; FAangband uses colors to indicate the danger of the current dungeon level.
Something similar could be applied to monsters; there is already the red coding for OOD and purple for uniques, maybe some colors could be added for indication of how powerful a monster is or if it is of higher level than the player char?

Not too much info though. We don't want to remove those precious "it hit for *HOW MANY* points??" -situations.

[Mondkalb]

What about color coding monsters in the monster list; FAangband uses colors to indicate the danger of the current dungeon level.
Something similar could be applied to monsters; there is already the red coding for OOD and purple for uniques, maybe some colors could be added for indication of how powerful a monster is or if it is of higher level than the player char?
Or perhaps some icons could be added to the monster name to indicate breathers, elemental attacks, spellcasters, and so on.

[Timo Pietilä]

Simple monster knowledge, such as Red Dragons are resistant to fire, Black to acid, White to cold, etc, and that they breath that element for great damage should be pre-populated. Uniques are legends of the land, much like artifacts. There should be some knowledge imparted to the adventurer. Gorlim is a dangerous spell caster, Kavlax's heads breath different elements and have killed many adventurers, etc. Clues to let people have some idea of what they're facing, but not enough to allow them to target a weakness (unless it is common knowledge), or to work out exactly if they're safe.

I have sometimes thought of systems like what I saw in one of the pen & paper roleplaying game which gave monsters "scales" like size XXXL for enormous dragon and XXXS for annoying insects.

It could be useful for give some vague description of different physical attributes of monster in their monster memory entry before you actually know what it can do. For example Drolem, if you see it first time and read the description

"A constructed dragon, the drolem has massive strength. Powerful spells weaved during its creation make it a fearsome adversary. Its eyes show little intelligence, but it has been instructed to destroy all it meets."

you are not much smarter about it's capabilities. A balance drake (not dragon, drake) description sounds just as bad:

"A mighty dragon, the balance drake seeks to maintain the Cosmic Balance, and despises your feeble efforts to destroy evil."

even that it is far less dangerous.

Neither of those really tell you anything about the exact nature of the creature. Only clues you get from drolem is that its symbol green, and it is dragon, so you might be able to expect poison breath. How bad that could be isn't even hinted anywhere.

[Carnivean]

The problem seems to me to be that we don't know enough about monsters to start with, but that knowing everything about them removes a bit of mystery.

Just move the starting point. Assume that the adventurer has some idea of what he's walking into. After all, they wouldn't just decide to attack Morgoth without some research. We get to see them identify weapons' bonuses through use, but they already know how much damage the weapon can do.

Simple monster knowledge, such as Red Dragons are resistant to fire, Black to acid, White to cold, etc, and that they breath that element for great damage should be pre-populated. Uniques are legends of the land, much like artifacts. There should be some knowledge imparted to the adventurer. Gorlim is a dangerous spell caster, Kavlax's heads breath different elements and have killed many adventurers, etc. Clues to let people have some idea of what they're facing, but not enough to allow them to target a weakness (unless it is common knowledge), or to work out exactly if they're safe.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think there's a difference in an unexpected event that can end the game and one that can't. This is probably the biggest difference between randarts and ego-monsters. You won't die from getting an over/underpowered randart. You will die if you encounter an overpowered monster, and can't identify it as such.

And there's the catch. You can identify monster to be "overpowered" (IE. too much to you to handle right now).

[edit] try and die is not the only way to learn the game. When I first time played Sangband/NPP/Z I didn't die on any monster because any of them were "overpowered" or surprising, I died (if I died) because I made some mistake.

[fizzix]

Learning about unknown is the reason I try variants, so to me "learn about this monster" is fairly important thing for the game. I actually feel that there should be something to learn for veterans like me even after ten thousand winnings. Isn't that the reason why people play with randarts? Same thing applies to monsters. Every unknown monster is like new artifact that you haven't seen before.

I think there's a difference in an unexpected event that can end the game and one that can't. This is probably the biggest difference between randarts and ego-monsters. You won't die from getting an over/underpowered randart. You will die if you encounter an overpowered monster, and can't identify it as such.

It's possible that we could leak enough information to allow the player to ID risk but not too much that it feels stale? We can learn a lot from how Crawl and Tome deal with this (both imperfectly IMO).

[Nick]

I think there should be some accomplishment you gain that stays beyond single game, monster memory is one of them. Storing monster memory to separate file has been suggested before and I suggest that again.

I think you can be fairly confident that this will happen in some form or other.

[Timo Pietilä]

I use cheat to know all monster info fairly regularly. I'd honestly rather this be the default. I don't find the "learn about this monster" very interesting, and I'm constantly nuking savefiles that I get corrupted through game tweaking.

I think there should be some accomplishment you gain that stays beyond single game, monster memory is one of them. Storing monster memory to separate file has been suggested before and I suggest that again.

Learning about unknown is the reason I try variants, so to me "learn about this monster" is fairly important thing for the game. I actually feel that there should be something to learn for veterans like me even after ten thousand winnings. Isn't that the reason why people play with randarts? Same thing applies to monsters. Every unknown monster is like new artifact that you haven't seen before.

Ego-monsters were suggested in another thread and if that could be made in some balanced way I would really like it in angband.

[Timo Pietilä]

This is probably the best comment yet... To rely on asymmetric LoS for anything in the game seems "cheap". Not that I don't do it at times, but for help not to die, you need to rely on what several consider a "cheap" tactic, what are you really accomplishing.

To me that's not "cheap", it's just tactics. Monsters can use that as well, so it's not one way thing.

I have played these games back to the original Hack years ago. I just had a lv 33 or so gnome mage take one shot of water from Gorlim and die, after I figured he didn't have horrible attacks. I had all resists except maybe nether, sound and something else, so figured I was safe. How was I to know he could take me down in one single "unresistable" attack.

Lesson you should have learned probably before that already is that resistances do not make you death-proof, so don't rely to them. To learn it from Gorlim is a hard lesson.

In fact for this reason I have sometimes thought about removing all high resists from the game, and leave only protections. It's the side-effect of the thing why you might want a high resist, damage protection is secondary. Removing the damage reduction would teach people that resistances are not something you need (except for basic four and poison, those are one-shot killers without resist).

When dealing with unknown monsters:
If you don't know all of it's attacks assume it can kill you.

This is double-true for deep monsters, because many spell damages scale with monster level.

HP (a lot of HP), speed and some fail-proof escape are your only real defenses when facing unknown monsters.

Also, when looking at monster spoilers here, everything appears to be from Angband 3.1.2 (I think)... Any chance that can be updated? Or somehow load 3.4/3.5 monster data into it, as you would a variant? I try not to use it, but end up referencing it every so often...

AFAIK no monsters have been changed between 3.1.2 and 3.5.

[Bogatyr]

I see probing as one of those "let's identify everything" or "let's wait until the ! of restore life levels shows up" tasks that just takes away from gameplay.

I see both those situations quite the other way around: you need to make a decision to take a turn exposed to a potentially dangerous monster to probe it, and you make a decision not to go further until you restore life levels. Nothing is forcing you to adopt a "boring" style of play, you're making that decision yourself. So you lost some experience, go gain it back if a potion is not handy, and maybe learn that ranged attacks are best against experience- drainers, and make the inventory decisions to favor that tactic.

Decisions, trade-offs, *that*'s what makes the game fun. Dlev40 is a pretty darn dangerous place, I would never take a relaxed attitude there.

It's similar with identify, especially for a rogue where the spell is expensive in mana. identify now, or clear the level first? Rest for more mana to identify, and risk waking monsters nearby or encountering an awake spawn? Carry identify or not? Dive faster, or hover on early depths building a stronger kit and character?

If there were no risk of death, winning would be no accomplishment.
If you want a frustrating game, play original rogue, I don't think I actually *ever* won that game. And yet I kept going back for more.

Angband gives the player much more chances to win in fact I think.

[fizzix]

Then use the "cheat" to automatically know full monster memory, and you won't be fussed by the tedium of having to probe everything.

I use cheat to know all monster info fairly regularly. I'd honestly rather this be the default. I don't find the "learn about this monster" very interesting, and I'm constantly nuking savefiles that I get corrupted through game tweaking. At the very least, I think this should be an option like the "know damage" rather than a cheat that marks your game as null and void.

Also, maybe after the next competition the lobbying to put in mass identify will be stronger.

[Derakon]

I see probing as one of those "let's identify everything" or "let's wait until the ! of restore life levels shows up" tasks that just takes away from gameplay. If there were 50 monsters in the game, no big deal, but there are 100's you'd have to probe, and do so constantly as you dive. I'm already annoyed with having to identify everything not to miss anything and would love a MASS IDENTIFY feature for all inventory and radius 2/3 objects...

It's the strategy of getting every last move in before you die and how you set up your resists, the fun of finding uniques, artifacts, etc. Not the mundane identify and probe everything that makes it fun. I like the idea of saying how something is "powerful" in the monster memory at the very least.

Then use the "cheat" to automatically know full monster memory, and you won't be fussed by the tedium of having to probe everything.

[dhegler]

A level-33 gnome mage has, what, 150 HP? Damned near everything can kill you in one hit when you're that fragile. As it happens, Gorlim is one of those "way more dangerous than he looks" uniques (along with Kavlax, the Phoenix, the Tarrasque, etc.), since he spams hugely damaging attack spells: cause critical wounds, mana bolt, and water bolt. I'm pretty sure any one of those could one-hit-kill a character with 150 HP, and none of them can be resisted (you can save against cause-critical, but that's all or nothing).

As for how you were supposed to know, either probing or turning on the "know full monster memory" cheat option, which IMO is not a cheat option at all.

Finally, regarding asymmetric LOS: I don't abuse it any more than the monsters do. Which is to say, I try to set up fights so that I'm the one doing the hockeysticking, not the monsters; it's functionally impossible to have it such that neither of us can get hockeysticked without digging an antisummoning corridor.

You're pretty close, I think I was between 150-170... But, you don't expect to get attacked by something unresistable on dungeon level 40 or so. Considering I had most everything resisted already, I knew to avoid big yellow D's and undead I was not used to...

I see probing as one of those "let's identify everything" or "let's wait until the ! of restore life levels shows up" tasks that just takes away from gameplay. If there were 50 monsters in the game, no big deal, but there are 100's you'd have to probe, and do so constantly as you dive. I'm already annoyed with having to identify everything not to miss anything and would love a MASS IDENTIFY feature for all inventory and radius 2/3 objects...

It's the strategy of getting every last move in before you die and how you set up your resists, the fun of finding uniques, artifacts, etc. Not the mundane identify and probe everything that makes it fun. I like the idea of saying how something is "powerful" in the monster memory at the very least.