Bugs and issues in 4.1.0

[Nick]

Now some time has passed since release and I would like to know if this is going to be final ?

Short answer - no. I have been deliberately (mostly) leaving 4.1.0 out unchanged for a while so as to give people a decent chance to play it. Some time soon I will start fixing bugs, and new nightly builds will be coming out.

As to the randart problem, I see what you mean. I have ideas as to how to fix too many individual properties, and too many curses; I'll address that in the nightlies too.

Thanks for giving the current system a good test and for the feedback.

[Sky]

dude. you have an artifact with four sustains, fear/blind/conf, 9 points of physical stats, bonus speed, one immunity, rPoison/Nexus/Shard/Chaos and an offbrand slay. i'm sure you can put up with having to find 3 remove curse scrolls.

seriously, i like this better. because as you get rid of the stronger curses, and can wear the artifact, then you begin to take off the minor ones, and the power slowly increases. better play experience than just a huge bump in power.

[Estie]

Now some time has passed since release and I would like to know if this is going to be final ?

I dont know how many standarts have been cursed, but like half the randarts are. Why ?
Curses belong to Angband, but not as a layer of tedious procedure before any item can be used. We got rid of trap detection and selling, just to introduce this ? Like a trap, a cursed item can be interesting and challenging to deal with under the right circumstances, but please use _sparingly_, not flood the dungeon with them.

The modifiers on artifacts are also less than interesting. Weapons typically have all slays, off-weapon slays are all over the place and pointless because the weapon has the slay already and the greatest challenge when assembling a kit is to filter the relevant mods out of a wall of text that is the artifact description.

Heres is, for example, a typical randart:

the Iron Crown of Valaith [0,+20] <+3, +1, +5, +4, +2> {cursed}
---------------------------------------------------------------
It makes you hallucinate sometimes.
It makes you frail.
It makes you mentally slow.
+3 intelligence.
+1 wisdom.
+5 dexterity.
+4 constitution.
+2 speed.
+1 light.
It causes your melee attacks to slay dragons.
Provides immunity to cold.
Provides resistance to acid, lightning, fire, poison, light, shards, nexus,
chaos.
Provides protection from fear, blindness, confusion.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Sustains strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity.
Feather Falling. Prevents paralysis.
Radius 1 light.

Thats 15 lines of modifiers, and its not an exception, its typical. Surely you can see that there is no way even a majority of these can be relevant to the decision wether to use the item or not ? Most of them must be ignored to get a picture of what that item does. Why this inflation in the amount of modifiers ?

I dont know what has been achieved technically with the new randart code, but for gameplay, I find it terrible as it is. Would it be possible to just go back to the old version ?

I have always played the newest daily from rephial, curious about the changes and eager to test things out. But now that the final version is out, I feel no desire to play it. I am sorry.

[Estie]

I believe the artifact minimum rating is 5.

[Derakon]

That shield has a power rating of 26. I bet that a Dagger of Slay Orc would rate more highly.

[Sky]

i found this artifact

the Small Metal Shield 'Galad' [5,-5] <-4, -2> {cursed}
-------------------------------------------------------
It makes your skin harder to damage, but conduct electricity.
It makes you vulnerable to fire attacks, but resistant to cold.
It makes you slow to recover hitpoints.
It paralyses you every now and then.
It makes you hallucinate sometimes.
It occasionally makes a loud noise.
It poisons you from time to time.
It attracts opponents and weakens the defences.
-4 dexterity.
-2 infravision.
Provides resistance to acid, lightning, fire, cold, poison.
Provides protection from fear.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Prevents teleportation. Aggravates creatures nearby. Drains experience.

When activated, it magically renders you well-fed, curing any gastrointestinal
problems.
Takes 57 to 63 turns to recharge.
Your chance of success is 90.9%


Min Level 15, Max Level 30, Generation chance 106, Power -26, 5.4 lbs
Random shield of power 26.

in a game with preserve off. the level feeling was 4-5. should it not be a minimum of -6 if there is an artifact on the level?

[Fizanko]

Not a bug. You are misunderstanding. If you have found and identified an artifact (i.e., you know the artifact by name), if you leave the artifact behind it is Lost forever and will not be generated again in that game. For example, if you see a "Phial", but never identify it as the "Phial of Galadriel", then it can be generated again (unless you've toggled the preserve mode where artifacts get swept off the board if you don't find them on the level).

Thanks for the precision, i didn't thought it worked like that.

[Sky]

I'm under the impression that i have identified a staff of remove curse twice.

Staff on floor walk to it and (u)se, without pickup, select floor, "you have no curses". Leave staff.

Next level, same thing.

[Pondlife]

if you see a "Phial", but never identify it as the "Phial of Galadriel"

That reminds me of something I experienced in my current game. I saw the phial of galadriel on the ground across a room; and when I looked at it it said "you see the phial of galadriel". I didn't need to identify it, or even pick it up, to know what it was.

I don't know if the phial of galadriel is somehow automatically known about, or if the knowledge is inherited from a previous character or something. But it seemed a bit strange to know what it was without even picking it up.

I think I'd identified the rune of brightness on a lantern previously, so perhaps that's the reason.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

When making a character dump, i noticed several message for when i left artifacts on the ground when leaving a depth (due to them not being any good or too weak compared to what i already had) and labelled as [LOST]....
As said those were only artifacts i wasn't caring about, but just reporting in case there's a problem there.

Not a bug. You are misunderstanding. If you have found and identified an artifact (i.e., you know the artifact by name), if you leave the artifact behind it is Lost forever and will not be generated again in that game. For example, if you see a "Phial", but never identify it as the "Phial of Galadriel", then it can be generated again (unless you've toggled the preserve mode where artifacts get swept off the board if you don't find them on the level).

[Fizanko]

When making a character dump, i noticed several message for when i left artifacts on the ground when leaving a depth (due to them not being any good or too weak compared to what i already had) and labelled as [LOST]

by example

163552   2650'  Found the Metal Cap of Celebrimbor (LOST)

despite in the birth option i have

Lose artifacts when leaving level            : no  (birth_lose_arts)

As said those were only artifacts i wasn't caring about, but just reporting in case there's a problem there.

[Sky]

True, but the standart set has a propensity for glove artifacts to have damage bunuses. This is cool, like having speed on boots and light on lights.
The randart sets dont have a system that says "hey, this is a glove slot, you should lean towards damage bonuses". But it should.

[Derakon]

Also most cesti i fond seem to be stuck on (+0,+3).

Cesti have an innate +3 to-dam, so all this is saying is "this pair of gloves generated as cesti and did not get any additional combat modifiers".

[Sky]

True, i found some gauntlets +5 INT that made my mana pool go down.

Also most cesti i fond seem to be stuck on (+0,+3). And no Arkenstones, of course.

[jevansau]

Generally enjoying 4.1.0.
A few comments on randarts:
It seems much easier to find useful rings and amulets.

The launchers are uncommon and rarely a weapon of choice, but often useful as stat/resistance sticks. maybe they should be balanced more towards damage.

Lights should not have a level cap - if you dive, you may never see one, because of their low level cap to reflect their low power.

Weapons and armor seem OK.

Gloves giving Int without FA or Dex are just annoying.