feature/monster

[Nick]

Phase Spiders now sound like reskinned Blink Dogs. I'm also a little sad that we're losing driders and both kinds of aranea, which means there's no proper "magical spider" aside from Phase Spiders who are kind of one-trick ponies. What was the reason for their removal?

Phase spiders were already reskinned blink dogs Adding the extra spell actually makes them different, unless I give it to blink dogs as well...

Driders and araneas are pure D&D monsters; I'm not planning a crusade against D&D dark elves, but mixing a spider with one seems like the most non-thematic thing possible. I feel like there are plenty of spellcasters, and Tolkienian spiders are brutal and aggressive, but not magical. That said, the >DL30 spiders do have spells, but they are more things like slowing, paralyzing, etc rather than fire bolts.

[Derakon]

Phase Spiders now sound like reskinned Blink Dogs. I'm also a little sad that we're losing driders and both kinds of aranea, which means there's no proper "magical spider" aside from Phase Spiders who are kind of one-trick ponies. What was the reason for their removal?

[Nick]

Latest builds for Windows and macOS now up on the builds page (source is here) with the following changes:

• Allow monster.txt to be copied to lore.txt for full monster memory (this had been broken)
• Rework spiders:
  • Spider webs can now be woven by some spiders. They take a turn to clear if you walk into one, also a turn to clear for most monsters, although some (insects etc) just get stuck in them
  • Driders and brown ticks removed
  • Scorpions nastier (especially black, formerly grey)
  • Araneas and elder araneas replaced by abyss spiders (from O) and ancient spiders (idea from Sil)
  • Added spiders of Gorgoroth, which are similar to Shelob but deeper (a bit like children of Ungoliant in FA)
  • Mirkwood spiders and phase spiders moved deeper because of buffing (webs and teleport to respectively)

I'm pretty happy with this generally, but webs may be a bit OP - interested to hear comments. At some point I plan to introduce Slay Spider; the obvious artifacts will get it (Sting, Gothmog) and maybe some egos.

A couple of general comments about the progress of this branch:

• It's gone much faster than I expected
• But that's mainly because I've been on holiday, which stops tomorrow
• I'm inclined fairly soon (a week or two) to just pull it into master and continue development there - if anyone can see a problem with that, let me know.

More generally, please do give feedback on any aspect of this branch; so far the lack of negative feedback is encouraging me to be creative, which is something of a double-edged sword

[Nick]

Note that the monster.txt copied and renamed to lore.txt no longer works. That may be intentional? Given all the changes, I want to play through with the unknowns for awhile, but after several games, that will get old.

No, not intentional, thanks for pointing it out. I have added extra types of info into monster.txt without adjusting the lore reading and writing sufficiently.

EDIT: Maybe. Do you know if the problem occurred from first build of feature/monster, or only later?

EDIT2: No worries, found the problem, will be fixed in the next build.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Note that the monster.txt copied and renamed to lore.txt no longer works. That may be intentional? Given all the changes, I want to play through with the unknowns for awhile, but after several games, that will get old.

[Nick]

This is terrifying. So a Demon Pit at depth will generate what, 20 or more wall tunneling, very dangerous monsters. That seems far too dangerous. Furthermore, the three Balrog uniques often appear together (the "friends" code). That also seems completely overboard to have all of them zeroing in on @ right through the walls.

Possibly - we can see how it plays. Any of these changes can be reverted or adjusted as needed.

Hooray! Children of Ungoliant from FAAngband. Hopefully you will also be adding the "Web" terrain from FAAngband as part of your spider rewrite.

Something along the lines of the Children of Ungoliant will probably make it in, but there are other things to do with spiders too. And yes, there probably should be webs, but probably implemented in the trap layer (which currently contains traps, door locks, decoys and glyphs of warding).

[Ingwe Ingweron]

[*]Greater balrogs buffed and moved deeper, and they and the deep balrog uniques get the ability to tunnel

This is terrifying. So a Demon Pit at depth will generate what, 20 or more wall tunneling, very dangerous monsters. That seems far too dangerous. Furthermore, the three Balrog uniques often appear together (the "friends" code). That also seems completely overboard to have all of them zeroing in on @ right through the walls.

I have started looking at spiders, and it seems to me that they are a microcosm of what needs attention in the current monster list. Fifteen non-unique spiders, 12 of them appearing by dungeon level 26, and many of them utterly forgettable. Expect big changes here

Hooray! Children of Ungoliant from FAAngband. Hopefully you will also be adding the "Web" terrain from FAAngband as part of your spider rewrite.

[Nick]

Oops, also forgot - Saruman and Sauron are now Ainur

[Nick]

Latest builds for Windows and macOS are up on the builds page (source is here), with these changes:

• Major rewrite of Ainur:
  • lesser Maiar, greater Maiar, blue wizards and Istari are all gone
  • Stole an idea (if not much of the implementation) from NPP of having Maia attached to given Valar (so Maia of Oromë, Maia of Varda, etc) - there are 8 types of these (corresponding to the High Ones of Arda), with stuff in common but thematic differences. All have shapechanges.
  • Removed all existing uniques (Arien, Ossë, Radagast), replaced them with two new deep uniques (Makar and Meássë)
• Moderate rewrite of giants:
  • Uniques (Polyphemus, Atlas, Kronos) removed, replaced with mid-level uniques stolen (in concept) from Sil (Nan and Gilim)
  • Storm giants buffed and moved a bit deeper
• Two new monster spells - storms and balls of light (starbursts)
• Thinking monsters which shapechange into non-thinking monsters are now still detectable by ESP and use smart spellcasting

This is not the last word on Ainur or giants, but we'll see how these changes play out.

I have started looking at spiders, and it seems to me that they are a microcosm of what needs attention in the current monster list. Fifteen non-unique spiders, 12 of them appearing by dungeon level 26, and many of them utterly forgettable. Expect big changes here

[PowerWyrm]

"nruling"? Is that related to "nurgling" (there's such thing in another variant, ZAngband or CthAngband probably)?

"deep balrog [...] get the ability to tunnel"
I thought we got rid of this nightmare long ago... At leat in my variant, pit walls are made of titanium

[Carnivean]

I'm not a great fan of Arien/Radagast/Osse either, or, for that matter, any "good guys" in the monster list.

They've simply realised that @ is on a murderous rampage that ends when they take Morgoth's crown and supplant him as the supreme evil of the land. The "good" monsters are there to prevent that while the "evil" monsters are trying to save themselves.

[wobbly]

In theory, to avoid stepping into elementals, you could just merge them into Ainur. Perhaps modify them a bit, they're rather boring and unthematic as it is, and not particularly interesting to fight, especially since there is only very rarely a good reason to. The emptied E glyph could be turned into 'E'lves, and maybe the sons of Feanor could be added there, so it's not just dark elves you fight.

I agree that ainu (or alternatively rauko/demon) are thematically better fits for elementals. On the other hand they have a mechanical purpose (same detects as a golem) which may need filling if moved off the E.

[Nick]

Thanks for the comments. I have actually come up with a decent solution, I think. There are three deep Greek-themed giant uniques (Polyphemus, Atlas and Kronos), and three mid-level ainur uniques; I'll essentially swap the roles these are playing. There are some good candidates for both big ainur uniques and mid-level giant uniques in early Tolkien writing.

Alatar and Pallando could be added as monsters that appear together, like Angamite and Sangahyando. I suspect that would make them interesting enough to warrant inclusion, and they could be given complementary roles (ideally also a spell which teleports one to the other when they are separated) where one has good melee and healing and teleport to and such, while the other is better with elemental spells. I am worried about how thematically appropriate it is, though.

This is a possibility.

In theory, to avoid stepping into elementals, you could just merge them into Ainur. Perhaps modify them a bit, they're rather boring and unthematic as it is, and not particularly interesting to fight, especially since there is only very rarely a good reason to. The emptied E glyph could be turned into 'E'lves, and maybe the sons of Feanor could be added there, so it's not just dark elves you fight.

This is an interesting idea too. I think I'll just start making ainur something that makes sense, then move other things around as necessary.

What's a/an nruling? (Unless it's the geometric cousing of an ncolouring.)

They're from O (invented by Leon Marrick, I'm guessing), and are memorably annoying

And while on the subject of demons, I think it might make it more enjoyable if similar monster types, like demons, had similar resistances/vulnerabilities. This would reduce the load on player memory, that was mentioned not long ago. In case of demons, maybe make them all fire/darkness-themed? If you really miss your gelugons, I'm sure you can genetically engineer them into some other species.

I take your point, but I think that demons actually work pretty well at the moment. As it is most of them are fire-based, with a few interesting exceptions; as I was going through, I felt they were fairly coherent.

[Voovus]

I'm not a great fan of Arien/Radagast/Osse either, or, for that matter, any "good guys" in the monster list. (Except for Bullroarer, but only because I find he is one of the very few monsters who is actually fun to fight.) If you're not happy with just renaming blue wizards into purple wizards, why not just remove them altogether? There's way too many monster types around as it is.

What's a/an nruling? (Unless it's the geometric cousing of an ncolouring.)

And while on the subject of demons, I think it might make it more enjoyable if similar monster types, like demons, had similar resistances/vulnerabilities. This would reduce the load on player memory, that was mentioned not long ago. In case of demons, maybe make them all fire/darkness-themed? If you really miss your gelugons, I'm sure you can genetically engineer them into some other species.

[Philip]

If we're going to add (or rework) maiar, then Eonwe is something of a natural maia to add. The description text could include something about Eonwe believing they have a destiny to defeat Morgoth, so you should go ahead and get out of their way. Abilities are a bit tougher to gauge, since despite leading an army to defeat Morgoth, we don't really know what Eonwe actually does, AFAIK. Summoning combined with powerful melee, but maybe no good ranged attacks, to make the fight interesting tactically?

Alatar and Pallando could be added as monsters that appear together, like Angamite and Sangahyando. I suspect that would make them interesting enough to warrant inclusion, and they could be given complementary roles (ideally also a spell which teleports one to the other when they are separated) where one has good melee and healing and teleport to and such, while the other is better with elemental spells. I am worried about how thematically appropriate it is, though.

One lower level maia that would vaguely make sense is the Eagles. However, they probably fit the 'B' glyph more naturally, and wouldn't fit the generalist spellcaster with decent melee role the rest of the maia seem to have.

In theory, to avoid stepping into elementals, you could just merge them into Ainur. Perhaps modify them a bit, they're rather boring and unthematic as it is, and not particularly interesting to fight, especially since there is only very rarely a good reason to. The emptied E glyph could be turned into 'E'lves, and maybe the sons of Feanor could be added there, so it's not just dark elves you fight.