Persistent levels

[PowerWyrm]

In the current state, I suppose the level freezes when you take stairs. This means for example you can clean DL99, go down to DL100, wait for Morgoth to appear, fight as many rounds as you wish, then go back to DL99 to recover while Morgoth stays in limbo at DL100. Basically you don't need healing/restore mana potions anymore. To counter this, variants like PosCheng reset all monsters hps to full when you leave a level. So you can climb stairs to regroup if you want, but it means restarting the fight from scratch.

[Sky]

i agree, that also should be in the game.

[Sky]

well, he's dead.
there was a .. i'm not sure how you call it, but there are some mobs which spawn always in group; in this case, it was berserker, templar and patriarch. i killed the templar and the berserker, and my attention was focused on an Archlich in the next room. The patriarch started following me so i thought i'd just bonk him on the head. He summoned a Dracolich that breathed twice before i could take my fat finger off the key.

[Gwarl]

This build is up on angband live

[Sky]

can uniques pick up artifacts? can uniques in this new variant pick up artifacts?

i have had an artifact in my "known" list that i didnt actually find, i backtracked, and a Ringwrait had it. Couldn't kill it earlier, it was massively OOD. But .. how do i know that he had that artifact? (playing randarts)

Does my list get populated as artifacts are generated in the monster's potential drops? Doesn't that mean that i lose the artifact if i *dont* kill the mob?
example: new DL, the unique Arien is generated. Arien has "The Shield of Dongbig" to drop, if killed. Is this added to my known list??

[Pete Mack]

Nothing is ever truly "lost" in this version. You don't need a house, and in principle you can play Ironman (without forced decent) with an arbitrarily large inventory.
Stash your excess stuff in an out of the way place near the stairs.
Explore the level.
Go down. Drop some items.
Go up, get more items, go back down.
Repeat.
You can never lose anything to trap doors and teleport level because you can always go up and recover your goods

[kandrc]

Stash your excess stuff in an out of the way place near the stairs.
Explore the level.
Go down.

Ideally, you'll place your stashes near alters. And burn your Elbereth, otherwise non-Elbereth-respecting NPCs will walk on it and rub it out.

[Nick]

Ideally, you'll place your stashes near alters. And burn your Elbereth, otherwise non-Elbereth-respecting NPCs will walk on it and rub it out.

It had to come sooner or later

[Sky]

yes but that doesn't answer the question. where are these artifacts? can unique pick up artifacts?

[kaypy]

The artifact was likely generated in the uniques inventory to start off with.

[Sky]

is this different than non-persistent V ? should they get added to my known artifats list? somehow i don't think this is working as intended. Now i have to go back to DL1 and clear out everything.

[Derakon]

is this different than non-persistent V ? should they get added to my known artifats list? somehow i don't think this is working as intended. Now i have to go back to DL1 and clear out everything.

Except that while you're busy killing things on a level, more monsters can spawn, potentially with artifacts in their inventories.

I don't know why the artifacts are being added to your known-artifacts list; that does seem like a bug. But I don't have a good idea for how to handle a monster spawning with artifact in inventory when the player wants to be a completionist and get every artifact.

[Sky]

hmm.. i see what you mean.

we'll probably need a "purge_level" feature at some point.

[Derakon]

hmm.. i see what you mean.

we'll probably need a "purge_level" feature at some point.

At which point the levels would hardly be persistent, wouldn't they?

One possible solution would be to, instead of generating monsters with artifacts in inventory, generate them with "artifact placeholders" in inventory. When the monster is killed, these would generate the artifact only if the artifact hasn't already been generated; more importantly, they would not "reserve" the artifact against future generation.

So e.g. if Wormtongue is generated at 400' with a Dethanc placeholder in inventory, and you don't kill him, later you may find Dethanc anyway. If you then returned and killed Wormtongue, he would drop nothing instead of a duplicate Dethanc.

Or you could have him roll a new drop, but at that point why not just have monsters roll all their drops at the time they're killed?

[Nick]

i have had an artifact in my "known" list that i didnt actually find, i backtracked, and a Ringwrait had it. Couldn't kill it earlier, it was massively OOD. But .. how do i know that he had that artifact?

That does look like a bug - I think there needs to be a change to how artifacts are accounted for now persistent levels are possible.