Angband 4.2.0

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I would like to suggest an additional spell for Necromancers, "Shroud of Darkness". When cast, it would create a radius of darkness that travels with the @, just as the radius of light does when carrying a lantern.

[DavidMedley]

darkness that travels with the @

Not bad! The necro already travels with a shroud of darkness. I think the key is the necro's darkness needs to fight against the light, which is where a spell like this might come in. Rooms might need to have increasing levels of light for this to work, tho... if it's always just magnitude 1 ambient light then the whole idea of necros casting poorly in the light will be moot.

I'm getting much better at manipulating light and dark now. Stand in dark, use rod of light toward what you want to see... not too bad.

[Nick]

I would like to suggest an additional spell for Necromancers, "Shroud of Darkness". When cast, it would create a radius of darkness that travels with the @, just as the radius of light does when carrying a lantern.

Why do you want this?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Why do you want this?

It just seems to me that rather than darkening a room or large cavern, etc., a necro could wrap themselves in darkness, like you have done for some of the new monsters (black huorn). A necro that did this would be able to cross a large lighted room without losing sight of everything in the room as he does when he casts darkness and he can no longer keep track of all those monsters.

[Nick]

It just seems to me that rather than darkening a room or large cavern, etc., a necro could wrap themselves in darkness, like you have done for some of the new monsters (black huorn). A necro that did this would be able to cross a large lighted room without losing sight of everything in the room as he does when he casts darkness and he can no longer keep track of all those monsters.

I have thought quite hard about this, and I don't think I want to do it - here are my reasons:

1. Spell design - it's not obvious to me what the duration, radius, level, mana cost and fail rate of such a spell should be. It seems that it has potential to be not at all useful, or too useful; this plays into the other reasons too.
2. Philosophy - necromancy is meant to be a dark art, and against the natural order. Necromancers are designed to be hard and awkward to start, and to constantly need to make sacrifices and tradeoffs for their powers. I feel that the current tension between darkening a room for better spellcasting and leaving it lit for better vision is a good representation of this.
3. Overlap - the use case for this spell overlaps considerably with create darkness. If it were to replace create darkness, then the player would lose the functionality of room mapping; if both were kept, it's a bit redundant. In addition, the necro's vision radius increases with level so that not being able to see monsters is a diminishing problem.

All that said, necromancer is a new class and likely to need tweaking; I don't want to discourage suggested improvements. I'm not altogether against the idea. I just feel that it goes some way to removing the intentional difficulties of the class, and risks losing its distinctiveness.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

All that said, necromancer is a new class and likely to need tweaking; I don't want to discourage suggested improvements. I'm not altogether against the idea. I just feel that it goes some way to removing the intentional difficulties of the class, and risks losing its distinctiveness.

Understood, even though I still find it to be pretty bad. Low level necros have a pretty difficult survival to begin with. They basically have to choose to have crappy spell chances in all those lighted rooms, large caverns, and later, those vaults, or be hampered with extreme myopia that is pretty close to blindness. I've found the deadliness result to be pretty out of balance. Or maybe I just don't like being near-sighted.

[DavidMedley]

The black market will do it... for $15K. Under certain circumstances, this is a good deal.

Revisiting this... Just gave a TO wand to the black market. They'll let me buy it back for 10,500 AU... with 0 charges!! I'm not saying you *should* be able to recharge wands at black market - in fact, it seems anti-thematic - just curious why Pete Mack thought you could. Meanwhile, if anywhere should be able to recharge stuff it should be the Magic Shop. Wands of Annihilation are probably already OP, but on the plus side this would give you something to do with all your late-game cash.

[Glorfindel]

Identifying potions and scrolls by value

I hope that this is the right thread for reporting a bug in this version of Angband; I'm still kind of new here and have not yet gotten into the groove.

Anyway, I am playing my first game of 4.2 to have selling enabled, and I have noticed that when I sell a shop an unidentified potion or scroll their offering price varies according to the value of the item. Thus they will offer 13 AU for a Scroll of Deep Descent, but 0 AU for a potion of poison. Naturally this enables one to tell if one has something good.

I think I have read about this bug before, for a different version of Angband. Has it resurfaced?

[DavidMedley]

Pretty sure it's intentional. I also prefer to play with selling on, but no_sell seems to have swept the community and town interactions are of little interest now.

[wobbly]

Negative stealth is shown on the resistance sheet on the character screen as + rather then -. Is this how it should be?

[Glorfindel]

Pretty sure it's intentional. I also prefer to play with selling on, but no_sell seems to have swept the community and town interactions are of little interest now.

I don't know. If I remember correctly, it was treated as a bug that other time. As to playing with selling on, I agree, that is fun, and all my first games were that way, but I have been pretty happy recently playing with no_sell. They are right on the forums when they say it is quite freeing. On the other hand, you are right about its effect on how interesting the town is. I am playing with selling on again because I am playing a rogue, and it just seems wrong to play a rogue with selling disabled.

[DavidMedley]

I am playing a rogue, and it just seems wrong to play a rogue with selling disabled.

haha yeah

[Adam]

Hello, i've seen mentioned that recharge has been changed to backfire less often in 4.2.0 - does this mean that a simple recharge scroll can be used for a staff of the magi with a better chance?
I'm just seeing one in the black market and i'm not sure if it's worth spending all my money on it with a necro (I guess I won't have access to greater recharging. max mana is only 59 and I don't dare to go below dl 40 because missing rPoison already caused some trouble).

[Mudd]

Back after some time and just started with 4.2. Playing a ranger...magic books are a little confusing. Lvl 20 and have learned all spells in 1st Nature book Lesser Charms. Have the Gifts of Nature Book but can't browse it to see whats in it. This behavior is new if I recall - I thought I used to Browse even books i couldn't use? Are there other books I can read currently?

[DavidMedley]

Back after some time and just started with 4.2. Playing a ranger...magic books are a little confusing. Lvl 20 and have learned all spells in 1st Nature book Lesser Charms. Have the Gifts of Nature Book but can't browse it to see whats in it. This behavior is new if I recall - I thought I used to Browse even books i couldn't use? Are there other books I can read currently?

TL;DR Ranger can use "Lesser Charms" and "Nature Craft."

It is a bit confusing, but it seems most people (myself included) love the new system. In-game, if it doesn't say "you can read this book" then you never will; it's not a matter of being too low level. If you look in class.txt you can find what books you can use and all the spells in them. I put into my Angband 4.2 public spreadsheet the names of all the books as well as how much armor you can wear before losing MP, plus other stuff, under the Classes tab. I don't have Ranger spells transcribed under the Spells tab, though.