[YAWP] Random thoughts about 4.0.5 (long)

[Will]

As a first comment I'd like to say that this post may contain strong opinions that I hope people won't take personally. I really appreciate (in both meanings) the amount of work that has been volunteered towards the development of *bands and I'm really thankful that we're still in a position to play this game 25+ years after it was originally released. Thanks for the great work and feel free to ignore my ramblings

I played angband for the first time in 1994 or early 1995 (actually this is one post of mine I managed to find on rcra) and was immediately hooked. Sadly I don’t think I’ve ever had a winner (without save-scumming), these early versions were really tough. To be quite honest, the game was VERY tedious back then (and I expect until a few years ago) and by the end of the 90s I had moved on to ZAngband which had the perfect “high risk high reward” game style for me (whereas vanilla used to be “insane risk no reward” in comparison). I had a few winners in Z (a klackon warrior and a gnome mind-something at least). I was a regular of the Z mailing-list at the time, some of you might remember me from there under the names of Will or Guillaume Deschamps.

I tried a few other variants, especially one maintained by a French guy (darklord?) which tried to be more respectful (?) of the Middle-Earth canon, with a large external map and several dungeons. I think it was called ToME maybe?

Anyway I recently thought about playing ZAngband again but couldn’t find a compiled version for MacOS (the one available is a PowerPC version and the support for that has been discontinued). This is what brought me back to vanilla…

Glouglou is the very first char I tried in vanilla 4.0.5 and he turned out a winner

Of course I’m quite an experienced (if rusty) player but that still means I felt the game has become quite easy. I’m most at ease with warriors so that was an obvious choice, and HT seemed as good a race as any. I guess that’s one of the strongest combos out there so that definitely helped. I’ll probably try playing a spellcaster soon to see if I notice a difference.

I needed over 2 million turns to win but I really wasn’t watching that at all. I played with the rogue keyset (no numpad on my laptop) and moving diagonally was really a PITA so I moved straight most of the time. I’m quite sure that accounts for quite a lot of extra turns in the end. Competitions to see who can win in the fewest number of turns also points toward the fact that the game has become easier: “back in the day” just managing to win was tough enough…

Regarding the game balance, I’m a bit torn. I’d say the Jewel encapsulates the whole issue as it really trivializes the life-drain phase of the game. Generally speaking I thought I received all the resists I needed way before I met monsters I needed protection from. Maybe I was just lucky but I didn't feel I really got any particularly lucky OOD drop or anything. I remember playing this game and having all my gear disenchanted by the Mim gang, having all my stuff destroyed by the acidic jays, etc. None of that this time. Actually as a HT warrior I had to wait until some really tough uniques at the very end of the game to feel challenged. Everything else was basically a piece of cake. Seriously now, I killed Maeglin and the Phoenix at clvl 40-41 dlvl 43. They are supposed to be some really badass uniques and I didn’t even break a sweat. I killed Ariel, Scatha, Saruman and Fundin on the same level as the other two, without restocking. All in all I’d say Ancalagon (apart from Morgoth) gave me the most trouble (and I killed *all* the uniques in the game, I think).

I don’t feel I was particularly lucky with drops. I found some really nice boots of speed relatively early though (I forgot to take notes for the chardump). I found only one artifact cloak if I’m not mistaken, very few gloves, none of the major speed items nor rings of power, and basically none of the top armors.

In the end I prioritized resists over damage: as we all know "defense wins championships" I dropped shards at the very end and was almost killed by a frigging Gelugon, so I quickly swapped a few items to cover all resists again.

All in all my gearset didn't change much after dlvl 60-61 when I got the Trident (and even then it wasn't so much better than Aiglos for a good while) and Dal-i-Thalion. The turning point for me was reaching lvl 50 as I could drop the Jewel and replace it by a nice "oThievery with rPoison, meaning I could drop Barahir and swap in a big RoS. At that point IIRC I had +22 speed or so, the Trident, all stats maxed and all resists/sustains (except WIS) covered. I wasn't aware of it at the time but I was basically ready to take on Morgoth. I dived fast and marginally improved some items (don't be fooled by the low dlvl on the cloak, amulet or gloves, I had the exact same items earlier and just gained a bonus of +1 here and there) and gained a bit more speed.

Morgoth was really tough: either breathing all the time or summoning big breathers that decided to stay in LOS no matter what.

One major issue complicated the fight enormously: every time I read a ?of*Destruction*, Morgoth disappeared from the level

I thought the first time was a bug, so I did it a 2nd time with the same outcome. And of course both times when he was already at 50%. Needless to say I was getting short on consumables for the last fight, which thankfully proved to be the ultimate one.

I don't know if this change to ?o*D* is working as intended (or maybe I just remember wrong) but I thought it was a major change and obviously not one I liked too much.

On to my thoughts about the game: there’s some good, some neutral and some ugly…

The good:
- well stocked shops (I really hated scumming the town for !rll)
- the change to the way restore stats work is fine. I thought it wouldn’t really work but in the end I felt it worked as intended: drained stats were a hassle at times but didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment either. Full restore on leveling is also nice.
- the distribution of stuff throughout the dungeon is good and working as intended compared to the way it was before.
- winning without Ringil, Cubragol or Feanor. I like that. These artifacts were huge blocks before, a lot less so now. I got +20 speed from the 2 rings and another +9 from various items, which was fine to beat Morgoth.
- the capacity to dive. I really hated having to scum levels for stat gain or that elusive rPoison item. I think more than 50% of my chars back in the day died because I was mindlessly clearing pits after pits of orcs and trolls, keeping the the forward key pressed until the dreaded “it breathes, you die” message. I liked the fact that the rewards for diving were now quite good, and that it kept me on my toes.

The neutral:
- I don’t mind the change to remove curse, even though that’s not the first thing I would have changed…
- no charisma. Actually that's probably a good thing.
- the quiver. As a warrior I didn’t use it that much, mostly to clear shrooms or hounds from afar so I don’t have a strong opinion on that. I could easily have done without. I can imagine that as a ranger it would be game-breaking.
- isn’t the house now smaller? It used to be 2 pages. That became a bit complicated quickly as I was used to stockpiling consumables but also wanted to keep my options open re: resists as well as stash some nice weapons for later on. I probably ended up getting rid of some artifacts I shouldn’t have.
- is Gondor the only item in the game with rStun? That’s the only one I can remember seeing and it’s really game-breaking right now. Why would anyone wear anything else? Stun and paralysis are the only 2 possibilities to lose complete control over a character and just watch them die helplessly. FA is everywhere, rStun not so much.

The ugly:
- warriors with 18/*** in both STR and DEX not getting max blows with every weapon in the game: I know a lot of effort has been made to improve this but this is still very broken in my opinion. I basically never even considered wielding anything weighting more than 10 lbs until the very end game--and by that I mean only for Sauron and Morgoth because they basically resist everything and a big weapon of *Slay Evil* can become vaguely competitive… In the end I used very few weapons: first a main gauche of extra attacks, then the artifact that gives +50 ac (basically a game-breaker at low levels), then Aigos which is imba and finally the Trident of Warth for the last 40 levels of depth. It’s a bit sad that basically nothing save Ringil or maybe Eonwe could have improved my damage (and ego weapons were downright useless after dlvl 40 or so). I probably got somewhat lucky getting ToW, which was compensated by the fact I was a lot less lucky for other slots.
- destruction of scrolls/staves by fire, and of potions by cold, is a bit out of hand. Having to use the 40 cheap potions/scrolls trick is a bit counter-productive. In the end the main issue was with ?tele which are so important to a warrior. I don’t think I ever had more than 3 of those in the second half of the dungeon and that was really way below my zone of comfort…
- the new ID system isn’t bad per se but I still don’t like the way it works. Right now it’s just way too easy in the early game, and way too tedious in the end game. It should be the reverse. In earlier verions I was fine with having to make tough decisions about ID (or lack thereof) during the first few levels, that was part of the fun and I remember that getting the ID spell was a big event for a spellcaster. Right now it all feels dumbed down, and for a warrior pseudo-ID works so fast it might as well be automatic on pick-up. In the end game on the contrary we still have to shift through endless piles of junk and this can get tiring fast. Which brings me to my next point:
- failure rates on non-critical stuff are a bit absurd. A warrior with 18/50 int still has a non-neligible failure rate with non-critical rods such as Detection or ID. Right now that missed turn really makes no difference whatsoever, it’s just a PITA.
- squelching is still a big issue, but maybe I didn’t understand well how the system works. The ignore system works fine for items that don’t require ID because they simply don’t appear in the game. But the squelching based on quality seemed to have in-game consequences that I just couldn’t live with, namely losing a turn to drop a weapon. I was picking stuff up left and right for pseudo-ID and suddenly losing a couple of turns when everything was rated as average. Or maybe I just had the impression of losing a turn? In any case it’s obviously a big no-no.
- I just don’t get why the option to destroy was removed. Seriously, destroy (ZA-style) is great. I love it. It helps tidy up the screen. When clearing vaults and checking stuff on the ground, then killing more monsters who drop their stuff on top of the previous drops, it can get really messy.

I think that's pretty much it. I probably forgot a couple of things, I'd bet nothing important though.

Thanks again for all the effort people have put and are still putting into this game. I really enjoyed playing Angband again!

[Pete Mack]

For "destroy" use squelch/ignore. This is much better than in older versions. Use 'o' to toggle ignore/unignore.

[Mondkalb]

I really don't know if *destruction" worked differently in earlier versions (because I never had a chance to meet Morgoth at that time ).
But it is a common and well advised strategy to teleport Morgoth away before you use *destruction*. He will come back for you.

[Pete Mack]

Angband IS easier than it was back in the day. But diving became popular around 2005 after Eddie Grove posted Tales of the Bold on rgra. That was with the old version. I will also point out that the uniques are unchanged since then the Phoenix and Maeglin are pretty easy to kill so long as you have 10 base speed and reasonable stats. That was true then, too. I usually pass on the Phoenix when I meet it first because I have neither. And it us very hard on inventory.

[fizzix]

A couple comments.

Angband in its vanilla playstyle will always be a game that can be won trivially with enough patience. Because of this balance is difficult from a design perspective. Make drops too plentiful and people who want to play a slower game will find it too easy. Make them too rare and people who play faster will find the game to be too grindy. The basic balance idea I used in the past was to balance around a player that played every level once. This is essentially an arbitrary choice, and you can just as well balance around someone who played every level twice, or five times. But you always run into the same problems. If you balance around someone who plays every level 5 times, then the player who clears each level 10 times finds it easy (and the player who only wants to clear it once, gives up and plays DCSS.)

My advice would be to try again but to turn on forced descent, and see whether you find that an enjoyable experience or not.

In the past the main reasons for death, as you noted, was carelessness. You basically had to pay attention enough when swatting weak monster after weak monster until you accidentally mistook one monster for another and you died. IMO this really isn't good game design. In fact, it's pretty horrid game design. There have been a lot of movement against that, and to be fair, much of it was cosmetic. The existence of a monster list makes it a lot easier to detect dangerous monsters in your vicinity. It's hard to overlook how much a difference that makes, but it's pretty significant.

Weapon rebalancing has been on the list for a while. Right now there are some early game weapons that are just way overpowered. I'm assuming there will be an overhaul to combat at some point, and then we can really get into the nitty gritty of figuring out how to rebalance the artifact set. However, it's important to be a bit realistic in how many upgrades you expect to have for a weapon slot. It probably maxes out somewhere around 10 for angband. Of course, you can get a lot higher if you script it, like what happens in RPGs, but we don't really want to go that route. If you find a great weapon earlier than expected, you're going to skip some upgrades for sure. That's just the nature of the beast.

[Will]

Thanks for the replies.

Re: ignore I really had the impression that when ignoring an average item that was in my backpack, the game made me lose a turn by automatically dropping it (?)

Re: *destruction* I've read up since then and indeed it seems it's the intended behavior. I really can't say if it was already like this before. I was really taken by surprise and that's definitely not something that's nice when fighting the big M Live and learn!

Re: the difficulty, I agree that vanilla is a game of patience. In this sense it's a lot easier to be patient in the current version (smaller and somewhat rarer pits help, for example).

One thing I also underestimated was the effect of the preserve option. I always used to play with preserve OFF because I just loved those "special" feelings. But that certainly accounted for a lot of untimely deaths. This time around I thought I had turned it OFF as usual but actually not. Playing with preserve ON increases survivability a lot. It's probably the first time I actually fled from something

Ironman is a bit the same idea: preserve and ironman move the game from "unlimited resources" to "(extremely) limited resources". As I was used to playing in the 2nd scenario, I guess that participated a lot in me finding it a lot easier this time.

Re: weapons, it's just the life of a warrior. The weapon slot is really the main slot, so it felt a bit weird to be using maybe 4-5 weapons during the whole game, and 1 in particular during about half. Of course if I had found Ringil at dlvl 10 I probably wouldn't have complained

However my main point stands: the big weapons should be more attractive to a warrior, and this is definitely not the case. I understand it's a profound change, though. On the other hand I read here that other classes than warriors can get 6 blows with everything with maxxed stats, so I was a bit surprised. If it's true then that's definitely a bug that needs correcting.

[Derakon]

Thanks for the replies.

Re: ignore I really had the impression that when ignoring an average item that was in my backpack, the game made me lose a turn by automatically dropping it (?)

This should not be the case, certainly not when pseudoing items. In fact I think that, for consistency's sake, you also don't use a turn when dropping items from your pack with the 'd' command, though please don't quote me on that.

Re: *destruction* I've read up since then and indeed it seems it's the intended behavior. I really can't say if it was already like this before. I was really taken by surprise and that's definitely not something that's nice when fighting the big M Live and learn!

Destruction has behaved this way for as long as I can recall (so, the 2.8 days at least if you accept some degree of fogginess ). Morgoth is just a unique monster with the QUEST flag; he's otherwise not special in any way. You may be remembering that artifacts used to be immune to Destruction; that was changed somewhere in 3.x to eliminate a trivial way of extracting artifacts from vaults.

However my main point stands: the big weapons should be more attractive to a warrior, and this is definitely not the case. I understand it's a profound change, though. On the other hand I read here that other classes than warriors can get 6 blows with everything with maxxed stats, so I was a bit surprised. If it's true then that's definitely a bug that needs correcting.

Every other class can reach their class-specific max blows with any weapon, but the max is 4 for mages/priests and 5 for everyone else. Warriors can reach either 5.5 or 5.8 blows/round, I forget which, with every weapon. I agree that this should be changed so they can reach 6 blows, but they aren't at a comparative disadvantage compared to other classes.

Note that warriors can reach max blows with everything but the really heavy weapons like lances, picks, Maces of Disruption, Grond, and the Trident of Wrath, which is unusually heavy. You don't have to stick to daggers for the entire game.

[t4nk]

I played with the rogue keyset (no numpad on my laptop) and moving diagonally was really a PITA so I moved straight most of the time.

Do you know what "movement delay" (in '=' menu) does? Well, maybe you do, but it seems to me very few people understand how it's supposed to be used.
It works like that: you set movement delay to some small value, say, 5 or 10 (50 - 100 milliseconds). Then, when you press (for example) up arrow key, the game waits for the next keypress. Let's say you pressed left key within these 50 milliseconds. Then your char will move diagonally, up and left (northwest). In practice, you'll press two cursor keys simultaneously (50 milliseconds is 1/20th of a second) to move in a diagonal.
It's a pretty good feature, IMO, too bad that it's so obscure

[Will]

This should not be the case, certainly not when pseudoing items. In fact I think that, for consistency's sake, you also don't use a turn when dropping items from your pack with the 'd' command, though please don't quote me on that.

Oh ok then forget what I said, I'll be using the ignoring system also for quality from now on.

Every other class can reach their class-specific max blows with any weapon, but the max is 4 for mages/priests and 5 for everyone else. Warriors can reach either 5.5 or 5.8 blows/round, I forget which, with every weapon. I agree that this should be changed so they can reach 6 blows, but they aren't at a comparative disadvantage compared to other classes.

Note that warriors can reach max blows with everything but the really heavy weapons like lances, picks, Maces of Disruption, Grond, and the Trident of Wrath, which is unusually heavy. You don't have to stick to daggers for the entire game.

The ToW is now a lot lighter than it used to be (from memory I'd say 9lbs instead of 30). This is why it's so good these days.

Bot sure where the cut is but with 18/*** in both STR and DEX I don't think I could get 6 blows with BoC, Executioner's sword, Great axes, Calris and so on. I'd say 6 blows is probably "15 lbs or lighter" territory, if that.

Do you know what "movement delay" (in '=' menu) does? Well, maybe you do, but it seems to me very few people understand how it's supposed to be used.
It works like that: you set movement delay to some small value, say, 5 or 10 (50 - 100 milliseconds). Then, when you press (for example) up arrow key, the game waits for the next keypress. Let's say you pressed left key within these 50 milliseconds. Then your char will move diagonally, up and left (northwest). In practice, you'll press two cursor keys simultaneously (50 milliseconds is 1/20th of a second) to move in a diagonal.
It's a pretty good feature, IMO, too bad that it's so obscure

Wow thanks a lot for that, I'm definitely going to try that as it would be a neat way to solve my problem!

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Do you know what "movement delay" (in '=' menu) does? Well, maybe you do, but it seems to me very few people understand how it's supposed to be used.
It works like that: you set movement delay to some small value, say, 5 or 10 (50 - 100 milliseconds). Then, when you press (for example) up arrow key, the game waits for the next keypress. Let's say you pressed left key within these 50 milliseconds. Then your char will move diagonally, up and left (northwest). In practice, you'll press two cursor keys simultaneously (50 milliseconds is 1/20th of a second) to move in a diagonal.
It's a pretty good feature, IMO, too bad that it's so obscure

How long have I been playing and not known this?! On my laptop, I've always gone to the number keys at the top to move diagonally, but it was a pain so usually I'd just move at 90 degree angles unless diagonal was important. You've just made diagonal easy. Thank you.

Now, If I can just figure out how to hold my @ in place when attacking. The usual method doesn't work on my MacBookPro since ctrl-arrow keys are tied to different view controls for Mac. E.g, ctrl-left arrow brings up the widget screen; ctrl-up arrow brings up the desktop access screen.

[Will]

Now, If I can just figure out how to hold my @ in place when attacking. The usual method doesn't work on my MacBookPro since ctrl-arrow keys are tied to different view controls for Mac. E.g, ctrl-left arrow brings up the widget screen; ctrl-up arrow brings up the desktop access screen.

You can always go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts and disable the ctrl + arrow shortcuts (typically: move space left or right, misson control and dashboard).

On the other I never use this. What do you mean by "hold my @ in place when attacking"? I use "always center view" so maybe that's why?

[Derakon]

You can always go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts and disable the ctrl + arrow shortcuts (typically: move space left or right, misson control and dashboard).

On the other I never use this. What do you mean by "hold my @ in place when attacking"? I use "always center view" so maybe that's why?

On most computers, if you hold down ctrl+direction, then your character will not move from their current position. They'll attack any monster in the direction you indicate, but if there's no monster there then they'll just pass their turn. Can be useful when fighting groups of monsters, to avoid moving away from a safe position.

[t4nk]

How long have I been playing and not known this?! On my laptop, I've always gone to the number keys at the top to move diagonally, but it was a pain so usually I'd just move at 90 degree angles unless diagonal was important. You've just made diagonal easy. Thank you.

Now, If I can just figure out how to hold my @ in place when attacking. The usual method doesn't work on my MacBookPro since ctrl-arrow keys are tied to different view controls for Mac. E.g, ctrl-left arrow brings up the widget screen; ctrl-up arrow brings up the desktop access screen.

You're welcome I assume you're familiar with Angband's keymaps. The game doesn't actually have a command (for example) Ctrl+right; the ui macroexpands that to two keys - '+' and '6'. You can create similar keymaps with, say, alt instead of control; in the keymap menu, enter Alt+right (that is, hold down Alt and right arrow key) as trigger, "+6" (without quotes) as action; then Alt+up as trigger, "+8" as action; Alt+left and "+4"; Alt+down and "+2". That will work with movement delay, too (but if you want to use numpad, create additional keymaps for diagonal keys - 1, 3, 7 and 9. edit: I mean, in addition to 4-2-6-8 numpad keys, since they're not the same as arrow keys).
Hopefully Macs don't do anything interesting with alt+direction