suggestion: remove fuel, darkness/turn draining revisions

[mushroom patch]

Yeah, the dynamics of summons in angband are totally broken.

As mentioned elsewhere, the point is that all actions in angband have instantaneous effects, including, crucially, teleportation.* This removes the possibility of tactics from angband combat. If monsters can't kill you instantly, they can't kill you at all. The result is that every threatening monster has to be able to breathe on you for max, cast high powered mana storms, etc. or summon something that can.

Assuming for a moment some series of monster and player nerfs that untangled that situation, you'd then have to look at the exponential nature of summoning. The instantaneous summons combine with summoning summoners to create another broken situation.

*: Except, oddly, word of recall -- so it's clear that from the beginning developers understood the need for limits on teleportation mechanics, but somehow failed to see the importance for other types of teleportation.

[Bogatyr]

I'm about to finish my first mage, after having won with warrior.

This is an issue, IMO. It's practically trivial to win with mage by drawing everything into an ASC and using runes to protect yourself. OTOH, it's almost impossible to kill a greater balrog in an open floor plan. As a warrior, I could do enough damage in a cooridor to get one down, but as a mage, the only way I can beat a greater balrog is by building an ASC. Same goes for most things with high HP that summon at high frequency.

I'd love to play a mage with more flexibility in open floor plans and not feel like I have to retreat into an ASC for every unique I encounter. But most major deep monsters are threats to start summoning like crazy. Lich's, Ainu, Wyrms, etc. Some of these I can kill now within just a cooridor, but I think fundamentally, there's a gameplay element missing here.

The trade-offs and choices differences between classes/races are what make the game interesting. Mages are very fragile for almost the entire game (unless you stubbornly stay at stat gain until con is maxed) so have to take much more care not to get into situations where multiple monsters have LOS. They also don't get the biggest damage dealing spells until late in the game (although the attack wands do quite well). In return they get the best utility spells for controlling the contents of the dungeon and the monsters in order to prepare for fights in the way that benefits them most.

Warriors OTOH can be a bit more cavalier about dealing with groups of monsters.

You could always play against those greater balrogs the same way as one plays the final fight. You can TP the GB away then mass banish the rest. I prefer in fact an open floor plan as a mage against Morgoth: he will spend a lot of turns just walking towards you while you can use those to fire wands/spells. I did this with my last mage, who also had a great Sling of Buckland and rounded pebbles of Holy Might, which did more damage per round than the wands of annihilation did I think.

[Timo Pietilä]

Hi angband guys.

tl;dr, see subject line. More specifically: Fuel for lamps and torches has little or no gameplay impact (outside of eating inventory slots in the early-to-mid game). This situation could be improved by simply not having fuel in the game.

I would go other way around, make light sources a bit more versatile, lit flasks of oil could cause temporary fire trap that hurts monsters and lit that area, you could drop lit lanterns that keep illuminating that part of the dungeon and so on.

IIRC NPP rogues could create traps that hurt monsters. That is one feature I really wish vanilla angband could have too. Runes that hurt instead of block.

[Mondkalb]

I would go other way around, make light sources a bit more versatile, lit flasks of oil could cause temporary fire trap that hurts monsters and lit that area, you could drop lit lanterns that keep illuminating that part of the dungeon and so on.

IIRC NPP rogues could create traps that hurt monsters. That is one feature I really wish vanilla angband could have too. Runes that hurt instead of block.

Rogues can set traps in FAangband, I reckon this could "easily" be imported to Angband? ;-)

Regarding light sources, this seems to be mostly a flavor issue, which is quite right in my view. I don't think that I ever run out of light in years, but it did happen during my learning time. (I remember many times stumbeling through the dungeons of Moria, finding my way only by touching the walls ...)
It definitely adds to the gaming atmosphere, if only for newbies.

[fizzix]

FWIW, in my first few tried with a mage, I actually ran out of light once in the dungeon. I assumed the starter torches were enough, and didn't encounter any light sources in the dungeon while resting and recovering my piddly mana to use for magic missile slowly. Next thing I knew... my 5000 turns was up and I was lightless and spell-less and lost in the blackness to die a lonely death.

For your next character, try playing never using an ASC, only use natural terrain. Then you enjoy the tactical challenge of luring a monster into favorable terrain. I agree that ASCs make things boring. But they're not necessary.

That being said, I've had a long history of wanting to refine summoning and summoning mechanics. I think Nick's changes moving towards cone-breath spells finally allows some of this stuff to occur.

[fizzix]

I disagree with Nick that light makes a difference in ironman games. With the current drop rates you find far more light than you need. Of course, we could tweak things so that they did make a difference, but I'm not sure that's what we want. At the very least, if we were going to look at making light and light-radius important, I would strongly consider nicking things from Sil, which does a great job of playing with the light/darkness interface.

[Nivra]

Light very much makes a huge difference in Ironman games.

I just YASD a lvl 28 ironman priest on dlvl 33. The first 15k turns were harrowing, as I only had my default torch to start with. I meant to purchase a second one, but bought a flask by accident. I found the second torch with 500 turns left on the first one. Then I actually ran out of light for a short while, but was able to stumble upon another torch around 10500 turns.

Once I got a lantern around 15k turns, things went much easier. That is, until I decided to try and kill Mihm and Beorn on the same level: dlvl 32. Due to Mihm's Disenchantment and Beorn's insanely heavy melee, and my own slow speed (-2), I had to constantly portal away, then find myself back to them, and lob off one or two OOD, activate my DSM and rings, then portal away again. For Mihm, I ended up digging a custom long passageway so I could portal west and east of it, to kill him. His AI pathing sucked.

Within a couple hundred turns after taking down both, I found myself lightless. My lantern had run out. Now, please note, that I had decided to not stockpile flasks because of ironman inventory constraints. If I had, this wouldn't have been a problem. Also, I had the opportunity to pick up a =Light earlier, and passed on it for similar reasons, never thinking that I might run out of light.

Luckily, I found a ?Enlightenment, and was able to finish up the level, loot my 2nd and 3rd randarts which were both awful, and descend...

into a lightless new dungeon level with no source of light. I stumbled around again across 1/4 of the dungeon, even having to kill this strange "It" that took quite a pounding: several hundred hp of activations, and kept dishing out acid bolts to destroy my gear. I thought he was going to kill me, but @ survived, then found his way to a Fire Hound, and was able to read the Prayer of Light while crouching next to the hound's inner flame. I then took to the methodology of casting Light every 30', so as to preserve my ability to see and cast. While doing so, I came across a reptile that I thought was a small salamander. Turned out it was a Basilisk, breathed on my twice, and YASD.

Of course, next time playing ironman, I'll have learned my light lessons, and prepare for it better.

[Update: Why don't Light Hounds light up a room with their breath?]

[Update 2: Oh, I just remembered. The first time my light failed was actually around 3000 turns. I had found a silver jelly, and successfully avoided it. Then as I cleaned out the level, I circled back, and mindlessly went in to melee it. Boom. No more light. Luckily I stumbled upon the torch a few hundred turns later.]

[MattB]

I *LOVE* the fact that you read a scroll by the light of a firehound!
That's awesome.

[AnonymousHero]

Light very much makes a huge difference in Ironman games.

(...snip...)
Within a couple hundred turns after taking down both, I found myself lightless. My lantern had run out. Now, please note, that I had decided to not stockpile flasks because of ironman inventory constraints. If I had, this wouldn't have been a problem. Also, I had the opportunity to pick up a =Light earlier, and passed on it for similar reasons, never thinking that I might run out of light.

Well, obviously light makes a difference if you just ignore all sources of light!

I'll bet that it won't make any difference for all subsequent games you play -- other than "wasting" an inventory slot. From now on it'll just be a "do X every once in a while to avoid dying" mechanic, i.e. uninteresting.

[mushroom patch]

Just wanted to say it's not good that you can survive by casting light area every few turns. That's ridiculously tedious! Also, from the way you describe your ironman game, I am not convinced that you ran out of light because the rate of fuel generation is too tight. Walking around at -2 speed suggests to me there were other problems...

[edit: lol, sry, skimmed the middle of the post. Your story is literally that you ran out of light because you didn't pick up light sources and this is why you think fuel is relevant in ironman games? You have to understand that when people talk about these kinds of issues, they assume a baseline of competent play.]

[Nivra]

Well, the first time was actually running out of light due to a silver jelly. The second one was an ironman learning experience. Obviously, the degree of tolerance for light-starvation is different in ironman. In a normal game, I would've been able to recall to town on the level my light had run out. In ironman, that wasn't an option.

[mushroom patch]

Yeah, but like, running out of light is usually game over if it happens even in a normal game, so it's kind of important to make sure it doesn't. The point is, though, you always can make sure it doesn't happen quite easily, unless, as in your case, you just decide not to.

[Carnivean]

Just wanted to say it's not good that you can survive by casting light area every few turns. That's ridiculously tedious!

Not when you're doing it for the first time. It's new, fun and scary.

You have to understand that when people talk about these kinds of issues, they assume a baseline of competent play.]

Why? Because cynical curmudgeons are the only market for the game? The adventure of learning the basics is part of the fun. Once you've learned them, you get to go further into the dungeon and learn new things.

You regularly hear people say they never got past x feet in the dungeon before, and light, food, breeders, poison from worms, paralysis from eyes, etc, are the obstacles that make a huge difference to beginners.

Sure, once you have ingrained how to progress down to stat gain and beyond, they're irrelevant. People that can do that regularly are the minority of players, though more prevalent on this forum.

[debo]

Sure, once you have ingrained how to progress down to stat gain and beyond, they're irrelevant. People that can do that regularly are the minority of players, though more prevalent on this forum.

It's true. We shouldn't be taking this subject so lightly; new players frequently fizzle out before getting very far. They just seem to run out of gas.

[AnonymousHero]

It's true. We shouldn't be taking this subject so lightly; new players frequently fizzle out before getting very far. They just seem to run out of gas.

Sure, but would new players notice the absence of fuel for lights? I don't think they'd care.