Current master post-4.1.3

[Chud]

I'm afraid I have to say that I'm finding my current necromancer pretty frustrating to play; at CL21, DL16, I have to run away from the vast majority of fights.

Mana pool is too small (INT 17) and nether bolt damage is too low to go the distance against anything other than weak solo monsters. I know disenchant, but with only enough mana to cast it twice at 43% fail, that's no use. I end up playing as a weak melee character now, and bad at that.

Almost everything "resists somewhat" against nether bolt; what does that mean exactly?

Necromancer may get powerful later, but lemures and middle-management orcs are laughing now...

[schatz]

Pile integrity failure

Compiled from master @ 4dab013169b4746e41b16d9cc08c59d4fafad6f2 on macbook.


Pile integrity failure at obj-pile.c:144

Guilty object
=============
Name: & Arrow~

Guilty pile
=============
Name: [Lesser Charms]
Name: Heroism
Name: Word of Recall
Name: Cure Serious Wounds
Name: [Gifts of Nature]
Name: Light
Name: Treasure Location
Name: & Short Bow~
Name: Cure Critical Wounds
Name: Curing
Name: Speed
Name: & Pair~ of Leather Sandals
Name: Clear Mind
Name: Studded Leather Armour~
Name: Light
Name: & Metal Cap~
Name: & Elfstone~
Name: Teleportation
Name: Protection
Name: Light
Name: & Arrow~
Name: Frost Bolts
Name: Fire Bolts
Name: Teleport Other
Name: & Set~ of Leather Gloves
Name: & Lantern~
Name: & Large Metal Shield~
Name: & Fur Cloak~
Name: Restore Mana
Name: & Morning Star~
Name: Lightning
Name: Slow Monster
Name: & Rapier~
Name: & Amulet~
Name: & Arrow~
Name: & Arrow~

[Pete Mack]

Diego-
I agree NPP rogues are a lot of fun. It is worth noting that they also get all the red book buffing spells: resistwnces, haste, ammo brand, etc. Those are all hugely powerful.

[Chud]

I did once see someone - enchantress, I think - shape change into a unique. Although I don't feel too strongly about that overall, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

[Diego Gonzalez]

In fact, my assessment of the current status of the master branch is that all the major components are in place, but there is considerable balancing required.

I think someone posted that the druid lightning strike spell has a strange behavior.

I can confirm that the spell works fine when you target a monster. But when you use the arrow keys without (no specific monster) the ball effect explodes over the player.

About NPP traps... They are useful in early-mid game. At clvl 26 you get an extra trap. Later, most intelligent monsters are aware of them (Ancient Dragons, etc.).

There is an advanced dispel trap that does a nice amount of damage but you have to lure a nearby low level monster into it to be able to hurt a high level monster (indirect way).

In the late game, rogues use more melee and the bonus to slings than traps. I think that rogue is the most fun class to play in NPP (melee, sling, traps, utility spells, stealth)

[Derakon]

I don't have much of an opinion about your other notes, but

* Cold immunity blocks the damage from the ice spear spell (Cantoras et al), but does not block the stun effect.

You just got hit by a sharp rock made of ice. Cold resistance will only help so much in that situation.

[Voovus]

More comments on monsters (old and new), after a few playthroughs with different characters. With apologies for the ridiculous length.

Monsters:
* Gothmog & Lungie - I like their new ability to bash through walls, which has made them much more respectable.
* Greater balrogs - I don't like their new ability to bash through walls coupled with their tendency to be wide awake. The main annoyance comes from levels with demon pits.
* Balrog of Moria - maybe give this chap the bash through walls ability too? In Moria, the Balrog could move through walls. Also, the name sticks out. (How about Durin's Bane the Balrog or something?)
* Lesser balrogs - could these be renamed and Greater balrogs renamed to Balrogs? As things stand, I find they spoil the atmosphere by reducing the dread we should have of the other balrogs.
* Wild dogs - was there a problem with jackals? (The old name had a bit more flavour for me.)
* Creeping coins - the higher level coins usually give very little $ compared to their inanimate counterparts.
* Tan bats - I like the new flocks or terror inducing bats.
* Trees - should they resist poison?
* Trees - feel a bit off balance; these guys (huorns and up) are very tough for their native depth, seem to be rather numerous and wake up fairly easily. Maybe slow them down or make them ignore @ more?
* Winged horror - make it evil?
* Orc trackers - currently can't open doors.
* Hydras - why do 8+ headed hydras drain exp? Feels thematically off.
* Druadan druid - I had this guy shapechange to a brown mold. Amusing, but perhaps unintended?
* Deathwatch beetle - this chap got stuck in web. I'm happy with insects getting stuck, which is quite amusing, but wanted to flag it in case it's a bug (no pun intended...)
* Brodda - should he be evil? My history is a bit rusty.


Monster related:
* Nexus Q, Mage and others - any chance to make nexus resistance block their teleport away spell? The spell is mostly just annoying, and it would increase the value of the resistance.
* Cold immunity blocks the damage from the ice spear spell (Cantoras et al), but does not block the stun effect.
* Can a dying monster drop loot through a wall? My impression is that if there's a long wall of thickness 1, then a monster dying on one side of the wall can sometimes drop loot on the other side of the wall. Possibly this doesn't happen with permanent walls.
* There are lots of monsters past 2500 or so that "aren't worth fighting" and just get TO'd away. (Not offering a solution here.)
* Hitting a greater basilisk with a weapon that is both cold and fire imbued (fire slightly stronger) triggered the fire attack, even though GB is hurt by cold.

[Chud]

Actually it looks like this also applies to lighted rooms on the other side of a wall. I'm guessing this is already known, huh... :-)

[Chud]

Necromancer information leak bug (unless maybe dungeon walls are mostly mica, anyway) - sorry if this has been posted before; I didn't see it.

When it's dark and necromancer-friendly, monsters that illuminate their surroundings also illuminate the other side of the wall they're near. In this case, there's an apprentice on the other side of this wall. You can see the light moves as he does; I merely pressed '5' between these two snaps:

[Nick]

Nick--
The new rogue is kinda boring. The *only* major non-utility spells are detect monster and detect objects--nearly everything else is just a convenient substitute for magic devices, or otherwise not all that useful. Hit-and-run would be a nice melee escape except it leaves the monster aggravated. Create doors and stairs were more useful.

Aggravation happens on any badly failed stealing attempt, regardless of whether Hit and Run has been cast.

The way stealing works is that player stealing skill and monster reaction are calculated as follows:

		int guard = (mon->race->level * (unique ? 4 : 3)) / 2 +
			mon->mspeed - player->state.speed;
		int steal_skill = player->state.skills[SKILL_STEALTH] +
			adj_dex_th[player->state.stat_ind[STAT_DEX]];

		if (player->timed[TMD_BLIND] || player->timed[TMD_CONFUSED] ||
			player->timed[TMD_IMAGE]) {
			steal_skill /= 4;
		}
		if (mon->m_timed[MON_TMD_SLEEP]) {
			guard /= 2;
		}

		monster_reaction = guard / 2 + randint1(MAX(guard / 2, 1));
		monster_reaction += obj->weight / 10;

and then

• If monster reaction is less than steal skill, theft is successful and monster gets a small reduction in sleep (less if the player is stealthy);
• If monster reaction is less than twice steal skill, theft fails and monster wakes;
• If monster reaction is greater than twice steal skill, theft fails, monster wakes and is aggravated.

As Voovus said, stealing has been considerably nerfed from its original status; maybe it needs a bit of restoration. I like the idea of a sneak strike too.

Recharge still definitely needs work. In fact, my assessment of the current status of the master branch is that all the major components are in place, but there is considerable balancing required.

[Pete Mack]

And recharge is anither thing. It is essentially the old recharge I spell, which doesn't work on devices like staff of speed. Make it do something like 25 + (DL-25)*2 + ADJ_MAGIC. That makes it good all through the game.

[Voovus]

When Nick first introduced the new rogue it was a lot of fun, thanks to the stealing ability: @ could steal from uniques that were far too tough to fight. Unfortunately, stealing was also overpowered, because it was possible to steal from the same unique repeatedly on different dungeon levels if you left them alive. Unfortunately^2, stealing then got nerfed to the degree of being useless.

I would suggest making Hit and Run always succeed in stealing from a sleeping monster, but also always waking them up. This way, you can steal from powerful uniques, but will only get 1 item per encounter (unless you kill them).

I find the new rogue as not being anything like a warrior these days. The Recharge spell makes the rogue more of a semi-automatic-wand-lunatic.

For the more melee inclined, how about an assassination oriented spell, such a doing x5 damage to a sleeping monster?

[Mondkalb]

What about a spell that increases stealth temporarily?
And getting experience for sneaking around high level monsters?

[Pete Mack]

NPP traps are good. Add in an amnesia spell (eg. hold or confuse monster(s)), and then both traps and the hit-and-run spell become more useful.

Chud--
In other variants, rogue gets mage buffing spells. Those let rogue fight well above its weight, and better than warrior in many fights. It is quite different in this new incarnation, and much more like your description

[wobbly]

I can conceive of a character that fights mostly by way of traps, but they'd need to have pretty big payoffs to be worth the time investment of setting them up and luring monsters over them.

So O had this & you could exploit the AI so they walked continuously back & forth over them, they were pretty powerful. Sangband fixed this, but then it went to great efforts to make it more realistic & complicated to the point where it was ridiculous time & effort to setup traps & lure monsters. It's a nice system but one that would work better in a true RPG. I think somewhere in between would be pretty fun. Simple O/FA traps, with just the most basic fixes from Sangband.