Current master post-4.1.3

[Nick]

OK, so I think monster colours can be reverted straightforwardly, with necromancers (who used to be kind of mages) being pink and druids (who used to be kind of priests) I guess yellow.

So then nature books become yellow, and we can rename so that half-casters use a subset of full casters' books. And we can rethink the names so at least some of the old ones come back.

How does that sound?

[PowerWyrm]

Yeah change back the colors. Makes no sense to have new colors. Also what makes no sense is having classes using the same realm and different books, it's really confusing to find a nature book and not being about to use it because it's not for druid but for rangers. Now that books can hold different spells for different classes, it would be nice to find generic names for them so each class of the realm can use them with their own spells.

[MWGE]

I must admit, of all the changes it's the colours that are really throwing me off. I don't "get" them.
The rest I'm either happy about or wholly neutral on, and that's fine of course.
But if I had one "please put it back" plea...it would be this.

[takkaria]

The new colours for mages just don't make sense to me - neither the spellbooks or the monster. The others do, though. I would really like to have the red back, especially cos we've lost all the names of the old mage books.

[Nick]

I was having a hard time killing a mature multihued dragon. I had gotten it down to half health when I had to flee (_Teleport). There were other lesser multihued dragons I was fighting at the same time as well. At some point during the fight, mirkwood spiders joined the fray, putting webs everywhere.

When I finally returned to finish off the dragons, the mature one was stuck in a web. I was able to melee him without taking any damage. It was kinda cool that it got stuck, but its complete helplessness seemed like a bug to me. I guess I can see a baby dragon getting stuck and being helpless, but it's a bit odd that such a powerful dragon becomes completely incapacitated by a mirkwood spider web. Now, if it was a web spun by Shelob or Ungoliant, I can see a mature dragon getting stuck (and even an Ancient dragon in Ungoliant's case) but for a mature dragon to get stuck in a web spun by a mirkwood spider? That doesn't feel right. Of course, having different web types based on nastiness of the spider that spun them would be a lot of programming work, but I think it would go a long way for immersion and verisimilitude!

Thank you, that was a bug. Spiders can just walk through webs, some monsters (notably insects ) get stuck in them, and most monsters clear them the same way as players, so it takes a turn. But I had forgotten to give that to dragons. I guess at least it wasn't Ancalagon...

Some of the new monster colors don't make complete sense to me. I know there isn't really a system of colors for what can poison, but I've sort of learned that orange and green are colors that often poison. With the new colors, I don't feel there is any rhyme or reason to what monsters poison in melee and what doesn't.

IIRC the only ones I've changed are the player class-like ones ('p's and a few 'h's), so they're:

• Warrior - brown
• Mage - light blue
• Druid - light green
• Priest - yellow
• Necromancer - pink
• Paladin - white
• Rogue - dark blue
• Ranger - dark green
• Blackguard - dark grey

The aim is for the main casters to be similar colours to the books they use, and then the half-casters from that realm to be kind of a shade off that (although necros/blackguards are a bit different from that, but 'black' seems right for blackguards). Hope that makes sense.

[Adam]

Uniques certainly shouldn't be immune to trampling, otherwise you'd have the weird situation of e.g. Mughash preventing a Horned Reaper from reaching you.

I read such a story years ago on Let's play archive which I found funny (I don't know if those monsters did change since then or not)

https://lparchive.org/Angband/Update%2040/

"Sauron, the Sorcerer summons his servants.
Yikes. We got Ungoliant, the Unlight, Omarax, the Eye Tyrant, and...Golfimbul the Hill Orc Chief

Ungoliant and Sauron are a nasty, nasty combination. For that matter, Omarax is pretty nasty too. We throw up some doors to buy time...and then discover something amusing:
Omarax can't push past weaker monsters! Neither can Ungoliant! They're both stuck behind a hill orc whose most notable achievement is getting his head whacked off by Bullroarer the Hobbit! Meanwhile, Golfimbul has zero interest in moving closer to us; we outlevel him so badly that he's automatically afraid of us. "

[Derakon]

Re trampling: it checks for highest xp right? Uniques get some protection by being bags of xp?

I think it's based purely off of native depth. Having uniques be pushed past instead of trampled seems like a reasonable solution to me. Uniques certainly shouldn't be immune to trampling, otherwise you'd have the weird situation of e.g. Mughash preventing a Horned Reaper from reaching you.

re: white wraiths, I guess the question is whether you want the player's first wraith encounter to be a friendly "this is what you can expect from wraiths" lesson, or a traumatic "this is what you can expect from wraiths" lesson. I can pretty well guarantee the latter will stick better.

[wobbly]

Re trampling: it checks for highest xp right? Uniques get some protection by being bags of xp?

[Grotug]

I was having a hard time killing a mature multihued dragon. I had gotten it down to half health when I had to flee (_Teleport). There were other lesser multihued dragons I was fighting at the same time as well. At some point during the fight, mirkwood spiders joined the fray, putting webs everywhere.

When I finally returned to finish off the dragons, the mature one was stuck in a web. I was able to melee him without taking any damage. It was kinda cool that it got stuck, but its complete helplessness seemed like a bug to me. I guess I can see a baby dragon getting stuck and being helpless, but it's a bit odd that such a powerful dragon becomes completely incapacitated by a mirkwood spider web. Now, if it was a web spun by Shelob or Ungoliant, I can see a mature dragon getting stuck (and even an Ancient dragon in Ungoliant's case) but for a mature dragon to get stuck in a web spun by a mirkwood spider? That doesn't feel right. Of course, having different web types based on nastiness of the spider that spun them would be a lot of programming work, but I think it would go a long way for immersion and verisimilitude!

Some of the new monster colors don't make complete sense to me. I know there isn't really a system of colors for what can poison, but I've sort of learned that orange and green are colors that often poison. With the new colors, I don't feel there is any rhyme or reason to what monsters poison in melee and what doesn't.

I like the idea of a web spell. Seems plausible a high level druid might be able to cast it from a deep book? It does have the potential of being OP, though.

[Nick]

I should have planned ahead and made one post...

Necros getting RNether at some point would be OK thematically, but also I think they would be getting it just when theyr'e already getting powerful. And it feels more like something they can channel rather than an intrinsic thing.

No to the death drake thing

Thanks for the _Darkness thing, easily fixed.

And I think white wraiths should go deeper, to where they were designed for. I see the attraction of leaving them, but then they're way very challenging for depth, and while I'm not against that happening sometimes, I don't think white wraiths are the monster I'd choose.

[Nick]

"The Maia of Orome intones strange words.
Huan, Wolfhound of the Valar shimmers and changes!"

Yes, I have to work on the messages.

That's quite a surprise...that the Maia of Orome (level 52) can change form to a deep level unique (level 90). Fortunately, I already had the Maia down to 2 stars and a couple of well-placed mithril arrows and it died. Presumably it gets all the abilities of Huan while it assumed that form?

This seemed appropriate since Huan was Orome's dog

The Maia will get Huan's abilities; the melee is the thing to worry about, because breaths go off HP, which doesn't change with shape.

[Nick]

Another couple of small observations... should uniques be able to be trampled?

"The berserker tramples over Ulfang the Black." :-)

They always (I think?) have been able to, but it has always seemed a bit odd. The other options are for the trampling monster to be able to push past in the case of uniques, or just to be trapped.

In the monster knowledge though, Ulfang is still listed as "alive". Also in the monster knowledge, I have two entries for Beorn -- "Beorn, the Shape Changer" is "dead" and "Beorn, the Mountain Bear" is "shape".

Yes, a unique can't be killed by another monster, so Ulfang has to be alive. And all monsters which only exist as shapechanges are marked as "shape" in the monster knowledge.

[Thraalbee]

White wraiths are tougher now, and were meant to be deeper (level 38, not 26) - it looks like I've failed to fix that. ...

I say keep them where they are. A perfect pal to Umber Hulks. My ironman blackguard is stuck at c level 30 due to their drains, sure a pain, but now hold life has meaning and hobbits has a clear usp.

[Chud]

Text errata, in description for the Staff of Darkness -- "... fires a ball of with radius..." (two spaces after "ball of", seems likely a %s goes there which is empty or undefined).

[Chud]

One other quick thought (sorry for posting these all one at a time as I think about them) -- how about necromancers have inherent nether resistance? Or maybe earn it at level 30, as some other class bonuses work. It seems to fit with a class that makes heavy use of nether as a weapon.

It also would make sense, though might be unbalancing and might be hard to implement, that certain thematically matching monsters would be non-hostile toward a necromancer, or would suffer significant attack penalties (death drake, nether wraith, etc.).

I'm not saying this because death drakes are a serious pain in the butt at certain levels. Not at all. Nope. Has nothing to do with that. Honest. Really.