Class/magic feature branch

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Playing a dwarf paladin on the feature branch on angband.live.

What the H3$$!!! I just used "single combat" against the Balrog of Moria. Defeated him. But when the cell disappears, @ is faced with the same Balrog of Moria, at full health, in the same position as before invoking single combat. BUG!!!

[Nick]

Playing a dwarf paladin on the feature branch on angband.live.

What the H3$$!!! I just used "single combat" against the Balrog of Moria. Defeated him. But when the cell disappears, @ is faced with the same Balrog of Moria, at full health, in the same position as before invoking single combat. BUG!!!

I've been tossing up between two quite different responses, so I'll give you them both:

1. Thank you for playing the new branch, and for reporting the bug. I will look into it when I get back to development (which I'm not really getting time for at the moment).
2. Why on earth would you not expect bugs in a completely new game mechanic on an experimental branch?

You can choose to take notice of either, neither, or both of those responses

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Why on earth would you not expect bugs in a completely new game mechanic on an experimental branch?

Just thought I was late enough to the party that paladins had pretty much already been worked out. Was going to work my way through the revamped classes and then tackle the new classes, expecting to be increasingly helpful finding bugs as I closed in on them. Been leaving the feature branch to experienced variant players as having, perhaps, better input given their experience. Hugo wanted me to play a dwarf paladin, so I started there. Gwarl said he sent you the savefile, so hopefully it will help. I don't know, it just has @ at the start of the encounter, only this time with less hitpoints since he already fought the battle through.

[Nick]

Gwarl said he sent you the savefile, so hopefully it will help.

I think the savefile did help, in an unexpected way.

A look at the message log indicates you actually used single combat on a greater balrog.

So good news for both of us - I have no bug to fix, and you can keep on playing

BTW, I though you might like to know that the vault near your character has the following comment from its author in the vaults file (it's originally from O):

# This will probably be even tougher than fighting Morgoth.
# On the other hand, the rewards are /immense/.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

A look at the message log indicates you actually used single combat on a greater balrog.

So good news for both of us - I have no bug to fix, and you can keep on playing

I was almost certain I TO'd a greater balrog, then cast Single Combat, aimed it at The Balrog of Moria standing right next to @, fought the Unique in the cell, and bounced out to be facing him in the exact same position. Maybe I failed the TO? I'm an idiot...

BTW, I though you might like to know that the vault near your character has the following comment from its author in the vaults file....

I don't recall ever seeing the particular vault before, or maybe skipped it in the past. Then again, given the foregoing incident with the Balrog, maybe I just don't have any memory at all. I'll give it a try...

EDIT: After a big scare when @ was frozen without getting any responsive turns, even though not paralyzed, and hps went down to 140 while surrounded by Greater Undead, it got unstuck in time and @ managed to clear out the vault. It was 'meh. Treasure feeling of 6, and just okay drops. (Gwarl said the freeze was the result of @ throwing an object, and the bug has already been reported).

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Completed my first feature-branch play through - a Dwarf Paladin. I found it playable, apart from a few hiccups (some of my own making ). The only bug (at least it bugged me) to report is the spellbook order in autoinscription and ignore pages. Eventually I might figure out which one is valued as what, but previously, when they were ordered by "value", it was easy to be consistent in autoinsciptions (book m1 always book m1, etc.) and to ignore lesser valued books easily.

[Chud]

I've read through most of this now but I may have missed some things, so apologies if this has already come up...

Thematic ways for necromancers to deal with undead---how about a "charm undead" spell, essentially; make it an area spell that affects some percentage of undead within LoS -- 20%, 30%, maybe? Sucessfully charmed undead now fight the others for you; you can effectively turn a room full of undead on itself, give or take some balance tweaking.

[Sphara]

@Nick

Please check MELEE ACCURACY code for monsters in the new feature branch.
In my first game I thought it was just the shield bash that made me near untouchable. But now I am playing a druid and I take almost no damage in every fight (fighting with 1.0 attack flail of freezing and 44 AC). Things like stegocentipedes, tigers, half-orc packs that used to be a nuisance for an early weak character do absolutely nothing now. I could take out a half-orc pack almost surrounded by them with 44AC and 79HP. Damage seems to be right, if the monster can actually land a hit.

When I take it against monsters with ranged attacks like uruks and black orcs, arrows start to land with huge accuracy, HP quickly goes down and I actually feel like fighting.

There has got to be a flaw somewhere. If there isn't, I'm gonna take the laughs and go pick a lottery ticket for tonight.

[Nick]

Thanks for all the reports everyone - when I get back to actually doing stuff on this branch I will be following them up.

[Sphara]

Thanks Nick.

Sorry 'bout flooding the thread with an another example but unless I've missed something, I shouldn't be able to hold down attack key against 4-headed hydra with 47 AC?

The 4-headed hydra misses you. <7x>
You freeze the 4-headed hydra.
The 4-headed hydra misses you.
The 4-headed hydra bites you.
The 4-headed hydra misses you. <6x>
You miss the 4-headed hydra.
The 4-headed hydra misses you. <4x>
The 4-headed hydra bites you.
The 4-headed hydra misses you. <3x>
You freeze the 4-headed hydra.
The 4-headed hydra misses you. <8x>
You freeze the 4-headed hydra.
The 4-headed hydra misses you. <8x>
You miss the 4-headed hydra.
The 4-headed hydra misses you. <4x>
You miss the 4-headed hydra.
The 4-headed hydra misses you. <8x>

And Bolg's demonstration of his accuracy:

Bolg, Son of Azog misses you. <8x>
You freeze Bolg, Son of Azog. It was a superb hit!
Bolg, Son of Azog misses you. <2x>
Bolg, Son of Azog hits you.
Bolg, Son of Azog misses you. <5x>
You freeze Bolg, Son of Azog.
Bolg, Son of Azog misses you. <8x>
You freeze Bolg, Son of Azog.
Bolg, Son of Azog misses you. <8x>

[Ingwe Ingweron]

One of the oddest bugs I've ever encountered. Playing the feature branch on angband.live. Returned to the game where I'd left off, on DL35, but the Phial of Galadriel no longer provided light. @ wasn't blind, and the activation still worked. But walking around, no light. Then @ read a scroll of word of recall (while standing in a lighted room, since @ couldn't "see" in the darkened hallway), but instead of being yanked upwards, @ was yanked downwards 5 levels just like a deep descent scroll. Confirmed the message history and inventory, and there was no doubt the scroll was Word of Recall. Gwarl confirmed he'd made no changes to the feature branch.

On the new level, Galadriel again provided light, and a couple levels later, upon finding a Word of Recall scroll, recall again worked properly. *Very Strange*

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Any logic to the distance the Cloak Colannon activation teleports @? Namely, "about 60137074270f the largest distance you can go".

[Nick]

Any logic to the distance the Cloak Colannon activation teleports @? Namely, "about 60137074270f the largest distance you can go".

I think that's self-explanatory

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Finished second run-through in the feature branch. This time with a High-Elf Rogue. Don't remember once successfully stealing from a unique (have they been made immune?).

Don't know that I like the general philosophy underlying many of the feature branch changes, now that I've done a paladin and rogue runthrough. Relying more on devices and consumables is all well and good, but it just means playing more like a warrior. And I think the distribution of some of those consumables/devices needs to be looked at. (E.g., stone to mud seems very rare deep in the dungeon.) The inability to Banish or Mass Banish in vaults or special rooms (often difficult to identify, resulting in wasted scrolls, charges, or mana) is what, supposed to "balance" the game? It just makes the game more tedious.

If the reason for rune-id, trap and door changes, streamlining ignore, etc., was to make the game far less tedious, the whole Banish prohibition just serves to make large steps in the opposite direction. To a lesser extent, so does the new consumables/device reliance "balance". My feeling so far - playing the feature branch is just tedious. The completely new classes might be interesting (have been working through the changed classes first), but, all-in-all, it's more fun playing Vanilla than suffering the tedium imposed in the feature branch.

[Philip]

Personally, when I ran a mage through the deeper levels in V, and would mass banish every critter from a vault, TO the uniques I didn't feel like killing, kill the rest, and loot the vault, it felt very tedious. Superficially rewarding perhaps, but tedious. The only challenges I couldn't easily remove entirely were uniques, and they were quite easy to remove temporarily. Not to mention they are generally fairly weak outside of potential for burst damage, so even the challenge they provided was not impressive. Even Morgoth eventually went down like a chump, which was rather disappointing. This does somewhat suggest that banishable vaults are not the (main) problem, that being that the deeper levels are boring outside of a couple uniques who any character who made it there is at liberty to ignore anyway, but I feel like it's at the very least worth a try.

By contrast, in O/FA, which has vaults immune to banish/destruct, vaults are a place where stealth can suddenly matter, calculated risks and difficult decisions are made.

It would however be nice to have some form of visible distinction between vault tiles and non-vault tiles (even for teleportation purposes).