Favourite variants? Hated ones?

[Daven_26d1]

Okay, I've been playing vanilla for about 2 or 3 years now, but I've only started dabbling with variants in the last few months. In the opinion of the humble forum users here, which variants do people think deserve special attention, and which are a waste of compile time? Which are stupid easy or crazy hard?

I found Z suffered from the "nethack school of every kind of silly monster" and this kind of put me off, but I'd heartily recommend ToME for the approach therein to monster/dungeon flavour, and the volume of similar depth dungeons to add to replay.

As far as difficulty goes, when I first played Steamband, I loved it because it was difficult-seeming, but once I'd spent a week learning how to play I managed to get two wins over the next fortnight; (not with mecha/automata either) contrast this to my one win *ever* in vanilla and you should take my point.

Anyone else got anything to share? Apart from the fact that Animeband is dire?

[camlost]

The variants I typically recommend are:

Sangband
Oangband
NPPAngband
Quickband
Unangband
Steamband
Heng/Entroband

The first three are reasonably close to Vanilla, Quick is just really short and fun, and the last three are off the beaten path, and offer quite a bit of replay (ok, guessing on Un).

[AR_chie]

zangband (v 2.5.5 and 2.7.2) - gosh how many hours I spent on it...
posband - hard to play in deep dlev, but playing as a monster is much of fun

I played also gsnband, oangband, nethack and offcourse v

[pav]

Ey is the ultimate affair for me. It was perfect.

[ajps]

Steamband all the way for me. Sure, it still needs polishing up in places but it's the most absorbing and atmospheric variant I've played. In fact, the only one I'd played in years before Vanilla development started up again. Just about everything in it has been thought through and fitted nicely into the game world, so despite its wide-ranging brief it doesn't feel thrown together like many variants that make big changes (old Z, say).

And it's got Wound Points. Which I seem to pay more attention to than the standard hitpoint system, and so die less often.

[Pedro]

My two favorite variants by far are NPP and Sangband. I also loved some features of Ey and weep every now and then thinking it's not being worked on any more, but I don't lose hope that they will keep being implemented in other variants.

[CJNyfalt]

The only variants I have played deep enough to really recommend are:
Oangband
Steamband
Eyangband

Ofcourse there are others I also like, but don't really want to recommend until I have taken time to get deep enough in them, like Sangband, ToME, NPP,FA and sCth.

I dislike:
Zangband and especially Kamband.

and plain Angband is bland to me.

[andrewdoull]

My two favorite variants by far are NPP and Sangband. I also loved some features of Ey and weep every now and then thinking it's not being worked on any more, but I don't lose hope that they will keep being implemented in other variants.

What features do you think need to be ported to other variants?

[takkaria]

What features do you think need to be ported to other variants?

In my variant, I intend to port the combat system, for one. I can't think of any other features that haven't been used in other variants anymore, though (apart from the consistent theme). Perhaps the rebalancing of gold would be a good idea (with the "3 for 1" items).

[Daven_26d1]

And it's got Wound Points. Which I seem to pay more attention to than the standard hitpoint system, and so die less often.

Yeah, the wound system is one of the things that got me really interested; !CLW actually useful!? I just found that most classes get broken after about lvl 20, and suddenly the game loses that danger aspect. My last naturist had a base of 700-800 SP and I had so much regen that I couldn't make them deplete below max until I got my speed up to around +35 or so! I just play goblins now - they don't generally live past about lvl 10.

A lot of people like Steam, huh? It definitely has a lot to recommend it, the detail in the setting for one. Its a shame its been dead for a while.

[Pedro]

What features do you think need to be ported to other variants?

The top two would be:

* Variable spell power. It adds a nice extra strategy to spell casting.

* % resistances. It also adds extra strategy, this time to equipment, and seemed more natural and smooth than yes/no resistances.

I know they're both a matter of taste, though. From what takkaria says, I guess they're implemented in other variants, maybe just not in the ones I know...

[andrewdoull]

The top two would be:

* Variable spell power. It adds a nice extra strategy to spell casting.

* % resistances. It also adds extra strategy, this time to equipment, and seemed more natural and smooth than yes/no resistances.

I know they're both a matter of taste, though. From what takkaria says, I guess they're implemented in other variants, maybe just not in the ones I know...

Ah these two. I had a long hard think about adopting both of these for Unangband. In the end, variable spell power just felt like extra key presses for little gain. You already have a huge number of spells: why complicate it further.

% resistance, I'm more interested in, but Unangband has features that directly make this hard to implement.

Andrew

[Nick]

% resistance, I'm more interested in, but Unangband has features that directly make this hard to implement.

I'm currently implementing this in FA (which ATM has incremental resistances, which are a kind of approximation to true percentage resists). Resistance effect will be multiplicative. Like Pedro said, it seems smoother. Also, I will be allowing negative resists, which does something against the "there are no interesting curses" issue.

[Variaz]

Well, for % resistances, you might want to try my own variant, Portralis, as it does feature % resistances. And for variable spell powers, well, in my variant, the player create his/her own spells, so the power can be VERY variable.

You can visit the forum for more info, and you can download the game under the Downloads section:

http://variaz.proboards3.com

You can also visit the web page, but it's not as updated as the forum is. The forum is almost the main web page you know!

http://www.geocities.com/pericles_2ca

Be warned that Portralis is VERY different from Vanilla, and most likely other variants, so don't be surprised if there's ton of stuff that seems unusual.

[Lipa]

Now that's a coincidence! I was just about to mention how much I adore Portralis, and guess who I find here – the creator himself!

Anyway, I used to play lots of Z-Angband and ToME, but then a few years ago I was directed toward Portralis (at the time, it was called New Angband), and it blew my mind away. This excellent and quickly evolving variant has basically all that I would ever like to see in a roguelike: deep and detailed character design, custom magic spells, huge world with lots and lots of quests and dungeons, an unlimited number of random magic items, and much, much more. So without a doubt, Portralis is my favorite.

Unfortunately though, it still doesn't seem to be that well known, which is a shame. So I strongly encourage everyone to go ahead and try it out! You won't regret it!