Z+Angband 0.3.0 beta released!

[EricCamp]

Thanks.
Point is the wilderness can always sneak up and kill you.....
Just relized this last night after taking on a Dragon who came out of nowhere. Luckily I somehow survived to tell the tale.

[Mangojuice]

Fix the bug, sure. Cancel the effects of the WoR upon surfacing??? I'm not so sure that's a good idea, but, you're the maintainer. What I mean is, had I remembered that recall was still in effect upon surfacing, I could have simply headed back down and wasted a few turns, or read a 2nd recall (not that I had one). I don't really think that a change to the game mechanics is necessary.

Nah, I'm pretty sure no one would ever do this intentionally. I guess that if you read a WoR in town, you could go down to DL 1 to "cancel" the effect without reading another scroll.. but you can still do that after the change. And I can't imagine people would want to read WoR on DL 1 and then ascend so as to recall deeper... sounds like the kind of thing you might do if you had a full inventory, but then wanting to recall deeper is odd.

Unrelated... having played a few modestly successful Z+ characters so far, I was just wondering. Is it 'normal' to just hop from one quest to another. It seems that all I do when I play is try to complete quests. Is there a greater goal I should be aspiring to along the way... and maybe complete just a few quest on the side just to break up the monotony. In my humble, inexperienced opinion, sometimes, especially early in the game, quest rewards seem extravagant. Also, XP for disarming traps and casting spells seems a bit much. My latest character, after quickly killing his quest's target, an Owlbear, gained CL's 7 and 8 by simply disarming the trap filled lair.

I think the goals one should have are the same goals one would have in a game without quests: get better stuff, gain levels, and keep challenging yourself. It's a question of how much doing quests helps with that goal. Early on quests are great, they're a fantastic way to jump up to the high-teen levels. However, quests tend to be less than ideal ways to get good stuff; for that nothing beats vaults you can approach clearing out. Quests also give you stat bonuses but they aren't really a good way to go about trying to max out your stats; they become too slow once you get to the point where you can actually find stat gain potions regularly in the dungeon. I do like the artifact quests though, if the artifact is one that would be of use, which they usually are.

[Mangojuice]

Good stuff. Enjoying all the quests, map is huge. What is the recommended lvl for starting to 'really' flesh out one's map?

Up to you, of course. I can let you know that the toughest areas of the wilderness come in at about DL 64. But watch out for high-level dungeon entrances; you can meet level 90+ uniques there.

[buzzkill]

The bug will be fixed. And also, I think I should make it so that reaching the surface cancels any WoR effect.

Fix the bug, sure. Cancel the effects of the WoR upon surfacing??? I'm not so sure that's a good idea, but, you're the maintainer. What I mean is, had I remembered that recall was still in effect upon surfacing, I could have simply headed back down and wasted a few turns, or read a 2nd recall (not that I had one). I don't really think that a change to the game mechanics is necessary.

Unrelated... having played a few modestly successful Z+ characters so far, I was just wondering. Is it 'normal' to just hop from one quest to another. It seems that all I do when I play is try to complete quests. Is there a greater goal I should be aspiring to along the way... and maybe complete just a few quest on the side just to break up the monotony. In my humble, inexperienced opinion, sometimes, especially early in the game, quest rewards seem extravagant. Also, XP for disarming traps and casting spells seems a bit much. My latest character, after quickly killing his quest's target, an Owlbear, gained CL's 7 and 8 by simply disarming the trap filled lair.

[EricCamp]

Good stuff. Enjoying all the quests, map is huge. What is the recommended lvl for starting to 'really' flesh out one's map?

[Mangojuice]

While fleeing for my life, while attempting a 22nd level quest (clear 2 levels of an underground city), with a CL8 ghoul/rogue, I read a WoR. Before the recall kicked in, I made it to the stairs and took them to the surface. Lucky to still be alive, I immediately headed for town. About 10 turns later, the recall kicked in a sucked me back into the dungeon (doogh). That's not the odd part.

So, still weak from my earlier brush with death, I now find myself in a large cavernous room with plenty of half orcs and mongbats, luckily all asleep. Still fearing for my life, I went through the nearest doorway and closed it behind me. I rested up and detected doors/stairs. I did detect stairs, but to get to them I'd had to have walked back through that cavern again (doogh). So I opened the door and killed a few half orcs that had woke up. By that time the half orcs were dead, the mongbats were waking and I knew that I would never make it to the stairs alive. Well, to make a long story slightly shorter, I did manage to, with just a single phase door and a lot of luck, make it to the stairs 1000's of turns later.

I was surprised to find that when I took the stairs to the surface, I did not appear on the stairway. Instead, I appeared at the point, some 10 spaces away from the stairway, where the original recall sucked me back down at.

That's a great story!

I had a similar experience to yours but I died; I had read a WoR scroll, then made it to the stairs in a quest that was over my head. The thing that sucked: the starting position in the quest had been quite dangerous... when I WoR'ed back in, I landed in the same spot... only now there were no stairs up there, so the orcs murdered me.

The bug will be fixed. And also, I think I should make it so that reaching the surface cancels any WoR effect.

[buzzkill]

Odd recall/stair behavior/bug

While fleeing for my life, while attempting a 22nd level quest (clear 2 levels of an underground city), with a CL8 ghoul/rogue, I read a WoR. Before the recall kicked in, I made it to the stairs and took them to the surface. Lucky to still be alive, I immediately headed for town. About 10 turns later, the recall kicked in a sucked me back into the dungeon (doogh). That's not the odd part.

So, still weak from my earlier brush with death, I now find myself in a large cavernous room with plenty of half orcs and mongbats, luckily all asleep. Still fearing for my life, I went through the nearest doorway and closed it behind me. I rested up and detected doors/stairs. I did detect stairs, but to get to them I'd had to have walked back through that cavern again (doogh). So I opened the door and killed a few half orcs that had woke up. By that time the half orcs were dead, the mongbats were waking and I knew that I would never make it to the stairs alive. Well, to make a long story slightly shorter, I did manage to, with just a single phase door and a lot of luck, make it to the stairs 1000's of turns later.

I was surprised to find that when I took the stairs to the surface, I did not appear on the stairway. Instead, I appeared at the point, some 10 spaces away from the stairway, where the original recall sucked me back down at.

[Mangojuice]

The dagger Nimthank. The description states that it can be activated... if it is being worn. How does one wear a dagger? Shouldn't it be wielded?

Z+ 3.1

also... The death spell Maldection states... 'evil monsters take double damage from unholy fire'... is this correct? Shouldn't evil monsters take more damage from 'holy fire' and good monsters take more damage from 'unholy fire'?

Yeah, "worn" should probably say "weilded" for weapons.

Unholy fire: no, that's correct. The way I see it is, it's hellfire -- meant to punish the evil in hell, so it hits them extra hard. Holy fire also hits evil things extra hard but doesn't hurt neutral or good things so much.

[ekolis]

What, aren't you up on the latest emo fashions? Just stick the pointy end of the dagger into any convenient soft spot on one's body...

[buzzkill]

The dagger Nimthank. The description states that it can be activated... if it is being worn. How does one wear a dagger? Shouldn't it be wielded?

Z+ 3.1

also... The death spell Maldection states... 'evil monsters take double damage from unholy fire'... is this correct? Shouldn't evil monsters take more damage from 'holy fire' and good monsters take more damage from 'unholy fire'?

[Mangojuice]

Hello,

first of all: great work for keeping the ZAngband spirit alive. Me too saw that no more new versions of ZAngband came out. So I am very pleased somebody is continuing it (in its own way).

However I have a few remarks/questions:

1) I found this variant (ZPlusAngand) only by accident. Like I said, until now I was still playing some version of ZAngband. If I would know earlier... It would be great if your site would be easier accessible by searchbots like googlebot, ... Maybe you should add a metadata tag in your page header and a sitemap.

2) I read spell casters can only study a limited number of spells. Is/will be there a possibility to "unlearn" a spell?

3) In Zangband Vampires got damage when walking in the sun/ wearing lights, ... Now it seems to be switched off. Is this how it is intended?

4) The spell 'Ray of Front' (Chaos) uses 0 mana. Bug?

5) The autosave is quite buggy. When autosave occurs, a filename playername.auto is saved (normal). When I close the game and open playername.auto and the game autosaves again, then a filename playername.auto.auto is saved. And so on.

Greetings,
Asgoth

1. I'll look into it.

2. Studying a spell is permanent, so choose wisely! But on the other hand, you don't have to ultimately pass up very many spells.

3. It's intended, but I'm not sure if I like it. Vampires heal very slowly in daylight, but aren't constantly hurt by it. This, I felt, was important to make Vampires even playable given the need to explore wilderness in Z+. (It's much worse exploring the wilderness at night, very very dangerous.)

4. Not a bug. It's 0 mana but it's fairly wimpy.

5. Not a bug. The .auto file is not there for real play, it's there so you have a backup of your game in case a crash corrupts something. So if you're playing "Joe", open "Joe." Both copies should be the same.

[Asgoth]

Hello,

first of all: great work for keeping the ZAngband spirit alive. Me too saw that no more new versions of ZAngband came out. So I am very pleased somebody is continuing it (in its own way).

However I have a few remarks/questions:

1) I found this variant (ZPlusAngand) only by accident. Like I said, until now I was still playing some version of ZAngband. If I would know earlier... It would be great if your site would be easier accessible by searchbots like googlebot, ... Maybe you should add a metadata tag in your page header and a sitemap.

2) I read spell casters can only study a limited number of spells. Is/will be there a possibility to "unlearn" a spell?

3) In Zangband Vampires got damage when walking in the sun/ wearing lights, ... Now it seems to be switched off. Is this how it is intended?

4) The spell 'Ray of Front' (Chaos) uses 0 mana. Bug?

5) The autosave is quite buggy. When autosave occurs, a filename playername.auto is saved (normal). When I close the game and open playername.auto and the game autosaves again, then a filename playername.auto.auto is saved. And so on.

Greetings,
Asgoth

[Mangojuice]

Another question,

What exactly do the auto_destroy_xxx options do? From what I've seen, they appear to destroy all items of that type on the ground, regardless of pseudo-id. Is that supposed to happen?

A lot of the options, including these, aren't in the documentation yet...

Auto_destroy_xxx will automatically destroy all objects of the given type you encounter. Use this, for instance, if you have a good artifact shield and aren't interested in non-artifact shields. The "quick_destroy_xxx" options let you bypass the "Y/N" confirmation for certain objects you choose to destroy. They do take pseudo-id into account, and they understand the difference between weak and strong pseudo-id, so "quick_destroy_good" will let you destroy {good} objects without a query only if they were strongly pseudo-id'ed.

[Mangojuice]

Z+ 3.1 - Having some trouble with a Level 1 quest (cave spiders). It seems that once a spiders flee, it never comes back to fight, even after it recovers it's courage. They don't run far away, but they keep their distance, usually by moving around an obstacle in the room in a set pattern (possibly trying to avoid line of sight). If I'm on a particular grid, then the spider will be on a particular grid (2 squares away). They are fast, and I'm not, and I can't catch them. And, even though it is fully healed, it won't approach me. I can't knock the AI, because it's going to die if it does approach, but it's annoying behavior for a quest monster. Not every spider does it, or maybe it's just that not every spider is in a room with the proper obstacles. Although, I'm now CL10, I still can't kill these little buggers (no missile weapon). HELP.

Edit: Yes, 1000,s of turns later it did flee elsewhere and die. Still, very annoying, esp. for a lev 1 quest.

Yeah, that's the monster group AI. They try to stay out of line of sight, and they only really attack you if they think they can surround you. When they have the right obstacles in the room it can be very annoying, I agree. But even from very low levels you should have some way of attacking monsters at range, even if it's as pathetic as throwing things at them. I recommend flasks of oil for very low-level characters, they explode and do small amounts of fire-based damage in a ball. Good enough to take out a couple cave spiders, anyway.

What I find even more irritating are the low-level wolf/dog quests, where the monsters tend to disappear into the trees, and you can't even see them.

BTW, Cave Spiders (the ones you are probably complaining about) are vulnerable to light, if that helps.

[buzzkill]

Annoying cave spider quest

Z+ 3.1 - Having some trouble with a Level 1 quest (cave spiders). It seems that once a spiders flee, it never comes back to fight, even after it recovers it's courage. They don't run far away, but they keep their distance, usually by moving around an obstacle in the room in a set pattern (possibly trying to avoid line of sight). If I'm on a particular grid, then the spider will be on a particular grid (2 squares away). They are fast, and I'm not, and I can't catch them. And, even though it is fully healed, it won't approach me. I can't knock the AI, because it's going to die if it does approach, but it's annoying behavior for a quest monster. Not every spider does it, or maybe it's just that not every spider is in a room with the proper obstacles. Although, I'm now CL10, I still can't kill these little buggers (no missile weapon). HELP.

Edit: Yes, 1000,s of turns later it did flee elsewhere and die. Still, very annoying, esp. for a lev 1 quest.