Class/magic feature branch

[Pete Mack]

Philip--yeah, that can be boring. But it can be exciting too. Say, if you have 370HP and 3 base speed at DL 70+

[Derakon]

This is the kind of thing that is usually solved by just going and winning already. Or alternately, by playing ironman, so you can't scum infinitely for vaults to loot.

That said, it might be worth removing Staves of Banishment, or making them impossible to recharge, since they're currently the only way non-mages can (theoretically) get access to unlimited banishment. I've always viewed the vault-banishing thing as something that you're either spending rare consumables on, or only able to do because you're a high-level mage who's already found the last spellbook.

[Nick]

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.

Thanks for the testing and the feedback.

I see your point about using devices and consumables. The aim here is to make the magic realms feel a bit more different from each other - it seems to me that in current V there are a bunch of spells that everyone gets for basically "he gets it why can't I" reasons. It's likely that I've overdone this a bit. And drop rates certainly need to be looked at.

There has certainly been a lot of whingeing about the banishment issue (some of it not from you ); how does confining the banish ban to greater vaults sound?. I think there are actually a few issues with vaults in 4.1 - there are still too many occurring, and Gwarl has kindly pointed out to me how much more sensibly they are handled in his variant. So I probably want to do a bit of a rework anyway.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I've always viewed the vault-banishing thing as something that you're either spending rare consumables on, or only able to do because you're a high-level mage who's already found the last spellbook.

I agree. Apart from the Morgoth fight, I don't use banishment, EXCEPT for what appears to be a very lucrative vault, and then only for getting rid of Q's, v's or Z's that are always awake and going to breath or summon or scream, waking everything up. Vaults are dangerous enough without the Q, v, and Z (sometimes a ,) to deal with, even though they are comparatively low-level monsters in their own right. If I wish to use a valuable resource to deal with those critters, I think I should be able to. And a mage, I see it as one of the compensations for the great difficulty in keeping the mage alive until that point.

Not being able to tell an area is a special room that is banish immune was also a pain, resulting in wasted otherwise precious end-game items.

And now, Morgoth must not be fought in a vault, because of his summons and the inability to get rid of them.

[Derakon]

There has certainly been a lot of whingeing about the banishment issue (some of it not from you ); how does confining the banish ban to greater vaults sound?

Functionally identical to confining it to vaults, since the vast majority of vaults where you'd want to [ab]use banishment are greater vaults.

What is the goal of preventing banishment in vaults?

[emulord]

If vaults had special floor tiles that mean "unbanishable square" I feel like it would be more obvious. Then we could create vaults that are selectively banishable too.

[Nick]

Functionally identical to confining it to vaults, since the vast majority of vaults where you'd want to [ab]use banishment are greater vaults.

My point here was that a lot of the complaints are about not being able to tell what's a vault, and it does seem a bit silly to forbid banishment from interesting rooms.

What is the goal of preventing banishment in vaults?

It always felt wrong to me that you could do it, but it looks like the weight of opinion is against me. I will revert for now.

[Thraalbee]

... It always felt wrong to me that you could do it, but it looks like the weight of opinion is against me. I will revert for now.

I'm with Nick on this. But most people seem not to be, and it's not like we have to use it just because it is there.

[fizzix]

Just to frame the "no banishment in vaults" discussion. It used to be the case that artifacts were not affected by *Destruction*. So a common technique, when the only gear you really needed was artifacts, was to go to a vault and destruct all the monsters and uniques. and then claim the one or two artifacts. When we changed the behavior of *destruction* to also remove artifacts there were a lot of complaints that are eerily similar to the current complaints about banishment.

Personally I think a lot of things are conspiring here. I'm going to write down some of my thoughts on this, but maybe it's useful to put them in a different thread, since it's not particularly related to the feature branch.

[Sky]

remember when *destruct did not affect artifacts?

i used to use it to sort them out from the rubbish.

[Sky]

so, how's the blackguard progressing? can someone tell me the name of the latest build with it in it?

[Nick]

so, how's the blackguard progressing? can someone tell me the name of the latest build with it in it?

There haven't been any new builds for a while (I've taken a break to play the competition), so the last one I told you is the latest, I believe.

[Sky]

righty-oh.

[Sky]

ermm.. still .. nothing?

i want to play blackguard, but those slowdowns made it impossible to play. i mean impossible.

[Nick]

ermm.. still .. nothing?

i want to play blackguard, but those slowdowns made it impossible to play. i mean impossible.

I'm afraid not. I'm doing some work on the master branch at the moment (when I'm doing anything...) to attempt to fix some crash/broken savefile bugs; there's also the rebalance of traps etc talked about on the "New Angband" thread. Once that's done I'll be getting back to the feature branch.