Balance and pacing (long)

[PowerDiver]

I wrote about staves of destruction littering the dungeon ...

These are definitely not common now. You're unlikely to get one by dlevel 60 with average gameplay.

That's my 3.0 bias getting in the way. I will continue to make errors of this sort.

[Pete Mack]

This is where branded ammo kicks in. Kill him from a distance, fast. Dodge around a corner and !CCW if he nether bolts you.

I'm on DL39 and 22,500 turns. Still alive, but this death knight will give me problems. I had a chance to TO him, but I only have 4 charges left. Trying to think of some way I can kill him. I suppose I could use a potion of speed. I could also take those up stairs that are a few tiles away from me..

[Grotug]

Welcome to the world of power diving

I went from ~60-90 damage to 164-197 damage in about 4000 turns. Still on DL39. Scary to go to DL42 without rPois.

EDIT: Wormtongue just dropped me a weapon that rPois; but i just found Nimloth and +3 speed and +3 stealth are nice! HMMM.

[fizzix]

The finished character that prompted the post is here.

The endgame is very much broken. There are vaults on nearly every level, and you are pretty much guaranteed to get over the top gear from them. Consumables were harder to get, especially !CCW, but when you're packing three immunities and can just banish anything you don't want to deal with, it's not too much of a problem.

I found 3 PDSM in this game. In all my previous games of angband I have only found 1. This is broken. I found all three top tier artifact rings, in all other games I have never done this (although tbh I mostly play randarts and those rings are rarer.) I found deathwreaker, which I've only done once before. I found nearly every artifact armor outside of the super rare DSM ones. I didn't find feanor, but there were lots of boots of speed +10 to choose from in the bottom of the dungeon.

I plan to start running stats soon, but if I wasn't insanely lucky, then I can already recommend a severe reduction to artifact and ego-item generation, as well as an order of magnitude (at least) reduction to greater vault generation.

[Grotug]

Welcome to the world of power diving

I have bad experiences using ?Deep Descents but 3 dungeon levels is a bit more manageable.

[Will]

Well now that I am diving so fast, I don't have that luxury and I have no attachment to the levels as I did before. It's much more exciting and doesn't feel as punishing if something goes bad since it's a shorter game.

Welcome to the world of power diving

[Grotug]

I'm on DL39 and 22,500 turns. Still alive, but this death knight will give me problems. I had a chance to TO him, but I only have 4 charges left. Trying to think of some way I can kill him. I suppose I could use a potion of speed. I could also take those up stairs that are a few tiles away from me..

!Speed it is. DK ended up being surprisingly easy. Then Greater Maia shows up and concentrates on its body; now it's really moving fast! Oop, there appears a big blue D. TO'd the Maia, struggled with the Ancient Blue Dragon but defeated him. Didn't find anything good in the area of two special rooms (feeling 5). Oh well, time to leave. But let me just see if I can get away with exploring the hallways nearby before I ?Recall. Cleared one of the piles of rubble that kept the special rooms secure from returning TO targets. (I used _Tele to enter the special rooms to escape a red h [native to DL41] earlier). Doors bashing open. Read ?Recall. Greater Maia casts a bolt of fire from afar, your staff of mapping burns up! Ring of escaping only helps a little. Back in the special rooms. ?Phase and run until yanked upwards.

It's interesting playing this way. Part of why I did this is because I have a tendency to explore completely every level I play; and by the time I reach DL60s I'm becoming bored of searching for good gear because I've been sifting through every pile of junk and every room of every level. Well now that I am diving so fast, I don't have that luxury and I have no attachment to the levels as I did before. It's much more exciting and doesn't feel as punishing if something goes bad since it's a shorter game.

[Pete Mack]

Cool. Sounds like quicksand.

I just edited the original file. No biggie. Is there a way for me to edit the starting gold? Taking the stairs down from the town has me starting on DL3.

EDIT: You have no more potions of Sleep. Agent of Saruman does something. You die.

[Grotug]

Thanks! I went with 900 instead of 600.

[Nick]

I just edited the original file. No biggie. Is there a way for me to edit the starting gold? Taking the stairs down from the town has me starting on DL3.

Same file, start-gold

[Grotug]

I just edited the original file. No biggie. Is there a way for me to edit the starting gold? Taking the stairs down from the town has me starting on DL3.

EDIT: You have no more potions of Sleep. Agent of Saruman does something. You die.

[Nick]

I am playing on a Mac (Yosemite) and when I try to edit this file I get a message that it is read only. Any way to get around this? Because it's a mac, the file is located in the program's 'package contents'. (right click -> show package contents).

There is actually another option if you don't want to change the standard file. If you make a copy of the file, edit it and put it in your Documents/Angband directory, it will use that one instead - that works for any of the lib/gamedata files. On Windows that's the lib/user directory, and on Linux it's .angband/Angband.

[Grotug]

It's probably read-only because you installed it in /Applications or a similar "global" space that your user doesn't normally have permissions to access. Try copying Angband.app to your desktop and then editing the file.

Yes, I just figured this out after posting. Thanks!

[Derakon]

I am playing on a Mac (Yosemite) and when I try to edit this file I get a message that it is read only. Any way to get around this? Because it's a mac, the file is located in the program's 'package contents'. (right click -> show package contents).

It's probably read-only because you installed it in /Applications or a similar "global" space that your user doesn't normally have permissions to access. Try copying Angband.app to your desktop and then editing the file.

[Grotug]

Go to lib/gamedata/constants.txt and change the stair-skip value, and stairs will take you that number of levels. That was introduced by fizzix in 4.0.3.

I am playing on a Mac (Yosemite) and when I try to edit this file I get a message that it is read only. Any way to get around this? Because it's a mac, the file is located in the program's 'package contents'. (right click -> show package contents).