Z+Angband 0.3.2 stable release

**RogerN** · January 22, 2009, 21:46

Obnoxious: trappers and lurkers on quest levels. Currently these mimics are not revealed by any form of detection. You have to walk right into them before you can find them. This is particularly obnoxious during quests when you must kill all the monsters on the level. More than once I've had to spend 15 minutes walking over every tile in the dungeon (or close to it) just to find the last mimic, even after all the other monsters are dead.

Is there some reasonable way to make these monsters less obnoxious on quests?

**Mangojuice** · January 23, 2009, 08:23

Originally posted by RogerN

Obnoxious: trappers and lurkers on quest levels. Currently these mimics are not revealed by any form of detection. You have to walk right into them before you can find them. This is particularly obnoxious during quests when you must kill all the monsters on the level. More than once I've had to spend 15 minutes walking over every tile in the dungeon (or close to it) just to find the last mimic, even after all the other monsters are dead.

Is there some reasonable way to make these monsters less obnoxious on quests?

Well.. no, not really. I suppose you could set their graphic so they show up more obviously to you, if you are really that bothered by them and don't consider it cheating ('%' - interact with visuals).

**Donald Jonker** · January 23, 2009, 15:48

Originally posted by RogerN

Obnoxious: trappers and lurkers on quest levels. Currently these mimics are not revealed by any form of detection.

Might they show up with the [l]ook command? I know this is the case with Heng and other variants.

**buzzkill** · January 23, 2009, 16:56

That does sound really annoying. Why not just consider the quest complete when only undetected/unencountered mimics remain. In other words, if you encounter it, you have to kill it, else quest over. Unless, of course, the quest is to kill mimics.

BTW, I would consider Mango's advice cheating, but I consider a lot of commonly accepted practices to be cheating. Given your circumstances, I'd cheat.

**buzzkill** · January 25, 2009, 09:09

Fatal error!!![y/n]

I recently received a Fatal error!![y/n] in game message immediately before the game crashed to desktop. Selecting 'y' or 'n' or pressing any other key didn't make a difference. Running Z+3.2 'beta' on WinXP. 16x32, big tile, DVG. It happened quite a while after drinking a potion of booze, but while still hallucinating (maybe as it wore off?). I have a save file with the save point just a few turns before the crash. It is able to be duplicated, in fact, it seems to be unavoidable.

**buzzkill** · January 26, 2009, 20:21

Z+3.2 'beta'. Started a new character and descended into the sewers beneath my home town of Mengwath View and found myself totally surrounded by rubble. Intentional or bug?
I didn't bother to tunnel. I had connected stairs so I just surfaced and went back down again and found a 'normal' dungeon.

**RogerN** · January 26, 2009, 21:24

Originally posted by buzzkill

Z+3.2 'beta'. Started a new character and descended into the sewers beneath my home town of Mengwath View and found myself totally surrounded by rubble.

I don't think that's a bug. Occasionally you'll find a level which is filled with mountains of rubble. In sewer dungeons it's also common for staircases to be surrounded by rubble. Just dig yourself out if you have to.

**Mangojuice** · January 26, 2009, 21:32

Originally posted by buzzkill

I recently received a Fatal error!![y/n] in game message immediately before the game crashed to desktop. Selecting 'y' or 'n' or pressing any other key didn't make a difference. Running Z+3.2 'beta' on WinXP. 16x32, big tile, DVG. It happened quite a while after drinking a potion of booze, but while still hallucinating (maybe as it wore off?). I have a save file with the save point just a few turns before the crash. It is able to be duplicated, in fact, it seems to be unavoidable.

Could you send that to me?

This is definitely not supposed to happen. It gets triggered when the game tries to look up the name of a monster that happens to be a hero and finds that no name has been assigned. But Hallucination might have something to do with it.

**buzzkill** · January 27, 2009, 03:28

Originally posted by Mangojuice

Could you send that to me?

You already have it. I included it with my latest DVG update just a few days ago. I'll send it again, just in case you didn't get it.

**PaulBlay** · January 27, 2009, 19:39

I'm new to Z+Angband, but I notice that the General Store often has no food rations on offer. I haven't starved because of this yet, but I'd hate for that to happen!

=====

Separate point. When targetting the use of 'c' when no monster is in sight acts the same as if you'd used '*'. Personally I would prefer it if instead it produced a "no valid target in sight" error.

**RogerN** · January 27, 2009, 23:21

I killed Brand, but he didn't drop his crossbow for some reason. I double-checked the monster file and he does have DROP_CHOSEN. The crossbow did drop in my previous three games. Does this mean that I'll never be able to find it?

Speed seems to be extremely rare in Z+. I've been hanging out on dl99 for a very long time without finding any. If it wasn't for the Spear of Hagen and haste-self spells I don't know what I'd do.

EDIT: This is somewhat of a moot question now. I went ahead and challenged the Serpent with only +12 base speed (+22 with haste)... and won, thanks to high-level Death magic. The dump is here.

**PaulBlay** · January 28, 2009, 20:43

Random(?) crash.

Just started playing with a new rogue (not even level 2). Go down to level 1 of dungeon, surrounded by
:::
:@:
:::
rubble. I go to 'T'unnel and the game crashes.

**buzzkill** · January 29, 2009, 05:40

Comments please...
I recently undertook a Level 18 quest to kill Ornlome, the Zombie. I assuming he is one of the 'new' random uniques. I was, at the time, an ill equipped CL11 Skeleton Monk, AC25. I quickly found his lair and descended, expecting to get my butt kicked, not expecting victory. Upon arrival I detected monsters and found only Ornlome, asleep in a corner. I then cast detect aura and proceeded to sneak around his lair collecting 3 potions, 3 wands, and 3 scrolls (most still un-id'd). There were no companion monsters. I returned to the staircase (anticipating a hasty retreat) and Ornlome was still sleeping, so I lit him up and pounded him with Malediction (until my mana ran out) and then flasks of oil (until they ran out). He still 60% HP left, so the rest was hand to hand combat, which lasted about 20 rounds. He did lousy damage, missing frequently, probably averaging about 5 damage per round. His life draining 'touch' was pathetic. The one time he did 'touch' me he drained exactly 16XP. Ironically, just enough to knock me back to CL10. Upon death, he dropped nothing, which was slightly disappointing. I took one last look around his lair during which I fell into a spiked pit and almost died (49HP-40HP=almost dead). This is all fine and good, but when I got back to town and requested my reward I recieved...
1. 5900GP, woo hooo, this would have been fine all by itself.
2. I also received a wisdom boost.
3. I also gained CL's 13,14,15,16....
It just seemed way excessive for killing a single lone (sleeping) monster. He wasn't that tough, just hard to kill. He must of had a ton of HP. Although I do, as a skeleton, have natural resistance to life draining, I was otherwise very weak. No special weapons, armours, magic items, nothing.

**RogerN** · January 29, 2009, 07:01

1. 5900GP, woo hooo, this would have been fine all by itself.
2. I also received a wisdom boost.
3. I also gained CL's 13,14,15,16....

There are a couple of factors at work here:

1) Due to the random nature of some of these quest monsters, you'll occasionally encounter one that's no challenge at all. Thus the rewards seem a bit lavish. However, sometimes you end up fighting a monster that's unexpectedly difficult (e.g. twice as fast as the base monster type and can hit to confuse)...

2) In my experience, characters below level 20 gain levels *very* fast by completing quests. On the other hand, the quest XP rewards for high-level characters are almost worthless.

I absolutely *hate* quests of this type: "clear X levels of a certain dungeon". They take forever to complete, and you can't fail them on purpose just to move on.

**buzzkill** · January 29, 2009, 15:09

Originally posted by RogerN

I absolutely *hate* quests of this type: "clear X levels of a certain dungeon". They take forever to complete, and you can't fail them on purpose just to move on.

What's the down side to abandoning quests (simply ignoring them and moving on)?
Is there a limit to the number of quests that you can have active at a particular time?

I find the "clear x levels" quests I nice way to waste the nighttime hours, since I hate wandering the wilderness at night. Other than that, they are time consuming and difficult, especially when summoners and teleporters and encountered.