[announce] Sangband 1.0.1 released

[Bostock]

Buggy Wuggy!

Cycling a store's inventory costs no money. (!) (But it does warn you that it *will* cost money.)

Two buglets when hallucinating:
- "the foo turns to fight" isn't hallucinificated.
- when 'k'illing an object or pile (at least on the floor) you get the "you see a [hallucinated object type]" message instead of "you see no more [hallucinated object type]". True, you're hallucinating, but since you're informed right on the map that the floor now contains one fewer piles, giving the correct (zero) count would give no more information than you already receive.

[NotMorgoth]

I wonder if it would be possible to have points-based character generation like we have in V; it would save time using the autoroller and allow people to start with characters more to their liking.

Also, I've noticed that you've considered penalising characters with low spellcasting stat less, presumably by giving them more mana at low levels, and maybe higher chances of success.

Would it also be a good idea to give characters with low con more HP at low levels? While I feel the amount of HP of endgame characters with maxed con is about right, the current competition has demonstrated how fragile dark-elves and the like are in the early midgame before stat gain.

[camlost]

I have just been reminded that IMHO if anything is overpowered, it's archer-type monsters (slingers, sharpshooters, possibly also horde mumaks, and any others I may have forgotten about...)

They do insane amounts of ranged damage compared to how many HP you are likely to have at their native depth, and unlike some other dangerous ranged attackers (like boulder-hurling trolls,) are likely to fire every turn.

I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing; part of the 'Angband Experience' is that some monsters are overpowered and you have to decide which ones to fight and which to avoid - but I just got a quest for 21 slingers and it reminded me how dangerous they are...

I've found slinger and novice archer quests doable but hard; bring lots of healing and make sure you can get out of range when you need to. Standing in the open is death for sure. Of course, I play giants who have a ton of HP.

[NotMorgoth]

I have just been reminded that IMHO if anything is overpowered, it's archer-type monsters (slingers, sharpshooters, possibly also horde mumaks, and any others I may have forgotten about...)

They do insane amounts of ranged damage compared to how many HP you are likely to have at their native depth, and unlike some other dangerous ranged attackers (like boulder-hurling trolls,) are likely to fire every turn.

I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing; part of the 'Angband Experience' is that some monsters are overpowered and you have to decide which ones to fight and which to avoid - but I just got a quest for 21 slingers and it reminded me how dangerous they are...

[Bostock]

Magnate - actually Stone Trolls specifically are relatively manageable if you aren't running a no-devices game (possible, but hard... maybe a little too hard). They don't resist any elements, but above all, if you haven't been screwed by the RNG, you should have Stone to Mud available by that point, which works as well on animate stone as inanimate. Also, being minor trolls, they're also weak to light - though the rock-remover weakness is a lot more profitable to exploit (as well as more satisfying, somehow).

[UniqueName]

in my opinion evasive monsters are annoying and should be avoided, in the same way as perhaps some kinds of hounds are in V, and maybe slightly overpowered, but not WAY overpowered (they are not nearly as dangerous as stormcrows or lightningjaws for example.) Just hope you don't get a quest to kill them, and if you do, well, there's always the next quest...

I had a Tengu quest on 6. Luckily they don't dodge *confusion real well.

[camlost]

Fair enough - they were my default method of healing for almost all characters, with potions being saved for emergencies and removing status effects like confusion, which probably does indicate that they were too good.

On the other hand, this change will make the midgame much harder for non-priest melee characters, and will probably lead me to put even more points into devices hoping for reliable activation of Staffs of Healing (unless they've been nerfed too...)

Healing dropped from 40% to 30%, which is still substantial. For the record _CMW has EASY_ACTIVATE, but _Healing doesn't.

I've been carrying large piles of !CCW (15-25), and that's done pretty well for me for healing.

[NotMorgoth]

Yes (20% to 10%). I was under the impression that they were crazy good and nerfed to useful. At 20%, I felt like a) Priest's schtick, healing, was accessible to everyone b) too useful mid-fight c) made magic devices too good.

Fair enough - they were my default method of healing for almost all characters, with potions being saved for emergencies and removing status effects like confusion, which probably does indicate that they were too good.

On the other hand, this change will make the midgame much harder for non-priest melee characters, and will probably lead me to put even more points into devices hoping for reliable activation of Staffs of Healing (unless they've been nerfed too...)

[camlost]

Haggling disabled by default in r145. Players who want to haggle will find this feature.

Have Staffs of Cure Medium Wounds been nerfed? They used to be useful, but now they seem more like they should be called Cure Insignificant Wounds.

Yes (20% to 10%). I was under the impression that they were crazy good and nerfed to useful. At 20%, I felt like a) Priest's schtick, healing, was accessible to everyone b) too useful mid-fight c) made magic devices too good.

10% is still twice what cure light wounds does, but unlikely to be used in combat the way a priest's spell will be. They should still be useful to cart around for fast healing out of combat or with low mana or in combination with Phase door. Or at least that's my thinking.

I had noticed that missiles seem to ignore RES_EDGED and RES_BLUNT. I thought it might be a bug, but was hesitant to point it out as it would make playing a warrior almost impossible.

I think that's on purpose for balance reasons.

- RES_EDGED is similarly impossible, e.g. groups of stone trolls make a level totally uninhabitable. Yet it does not grant any resistance to missiles, oddly.

I think you're supposed to have more than one way of killing things. Magic, traps, devices, missile weapons, melee. Or you can just run. Killing everything not required. It is really annoying, though. At least with bless, martial artists can hit everything.

[camlost]

- I'm taking all difficult quests, and that really slows the game down: every non-quest monster is a pushover. Difficult quests should mean more kills required and a deeper dungeon level, but not quite such OoD monsters.

This is redressed in r139.

Docs need work

Noted.

http://code.google.com/p/skills-angband/issues/detail?id=56

- please use ~/.angband/Sangband not ~/.sangband/Sangband - the whole point of the ~/.angband/ dir is so that each variant uses a subdir under it to avoid cluttering ~

Noted.

http://code.google.com/p/skills-angband/issues/detail?id=57

- not enough gold to replace consumables, let alone buy stuff (actually this is only a problem until about 1200' and then is disappears very very sharply - perhaps I just need to dive faster)

I've played through a few games without problem. Is anyone else having problems here. I buy ?Tele, ?PD, !CCW (early !CSW), and ?WoR.

- my biggest gripe: Smeagol picked up Wormtongue's drop and then didn't drop it when I killed him! Normal thiefs do drop items they pick up, so I think it is either specific to uniques or to Smeagol. Presumably this is unintended. I have a savefile if you need.

He should drop it. My one test confirms that Smeagol drops picked up items, though it could be a bug. Send the savefile over. (middendorfproject@gmail.com).

- need to double-tap escape (and esc after many commands - can get stuck looking at the town but with messages saying "that command does not work in stores")
- ! doesn't work at all as a command or in the options menu, but works in inscriptions (means I can't set up any windows!)
- backspace doesn't work anywhere
- ctrl-s hangs game (ctrl-c cancels)

Haven't seen these. I'll investigate on a linux box. Which version are you compiling?

- please warn about xp loss when decreasing skills (I lost xp decreasing and buying them back, without realising it - you can un-buy points you have just bought, but un-buying points previously bought does not return xp, and it's hard to keep track of that)

Or I could just fix it so that if you do that without penalty. And color code it so you know when you're too low. Most of the time, I just press escape if I'm not happy with what I've added.

http://code.google.com/p/skills-angband/issues/detail?id=60

- please allow trap damage to practise burglary even without killing (it does? well that's good but please also consider allowing practise from non-damaging traps like potions of blindness etc.)

It does, but killing does more, IIRC.

Probably all kinds of hindrance (slow, stun, confuse, etc.) from all sources should train skills.

- please let burglars pseudo unknown items in traps (perhaps only if they see it set off)

I think they do. But they don't. You can learn about items, though.
Noted.

http://code.google.com/p/skills-angband/issues/detail?id=59

- don't think I got notification of the Darkness talent becoming available

Fixed in r144. It comes with burglary oath.

[NotMorgoth]

Have Staffs of Cure Medium Wounds been nerfed? They used to be useful, but now they seem more like they should be called Cure Insignificant Wounds.

Also, wands of Stinking Clound are relatively common, and are a passable way of dealing with some of the early evasive monsters.

[Bostock]

in my opinion evasive monsters are annoying and should be avoided, in the same way as perhaps some kinds of hounds are in V, and maybe slightly overpowered, but not WAY overpowered (they are not nearly as dangerous as stormcrows or lightningjaws for example.) Just hope you don't get a quest to kill them, and if you do, well, there's always the next quest...

"Me too!"

Actually, it happens that a feature with which you (Magnate) were experimenting is very handy here: dual-wielding. This attack style doesn't give much more damage per se, but it excels at monsters that are hard to hit either in the traditional sense or due to their being evasive/weapon-resistant.

Also don't forget that your comp character has very late access to ball/cone spells due to their high skill count (albeit this is mitigated by your taking hard quests): mages get Sound Blast in the middle of book two (and Wonder even earlier); necros get Poison Cloud at the end of book one, priests get Orb of Whatever in mid-book-two, and druids... I think they get shafted here, but they've got lots of nice early support magic, so hey.

[Susramanian]

I agree with Bostock on haggling. I don't want to hang around in the town any longer than I have to. I'm playing this game to kill things and take their stuff, not to simulate conversations.

And it is a shame to hide features away, especially clever and well-implemented ones like this. But I'd hide it anyway for the same reason I'd hide away an implementation of filing tax returns or waste elimination for characters: however well implemented, however realistic, they're just not fun.

[NotMorgoth]

- evasive monsters are WAY overpowered - by all means let them dodge missiles and melee, but not bolt spells as well! Ball attacks are very rare for the first 1/3 of the game.

in my opinion evasive monsters are annoying and should be avoided, in the same way as perhaps some kinds of hounds are in V, and maybe slightly overpowered, but not WAY overpowered (they are not nearly as dangerous as stormcrows or lightningjaws for example.) Just hope you don't get a quest to kill them, and if you do, well, there's always the next quest...

- RES_EDGED is similarly impossible, e.g. groups of stone trolls make a level totally uninhabitable. Yet it does not grant any resistance to missiles, oddly.
.

I had noticed that missiles seem to ignore RES_EDGED and RES_BLUNT. I thought it might be a bug, but was hesitant to point it out as it would make playing a warrior almost impossible.

I'd say these resistances are OK in theory but probably overpowered; they should probably give a 20-40% chance to resist the attack rather than 66% which is AFAIK how it works now.

[Magnate]

Go into options '=' and then User Interface '!' and edit 'a' Display Mode. Choose one of the windowed versions.

Note that this does not recreate the old "windowed" mode. You can poke around in config.txt to change the size of the window and subwindows, also.

(Written on batteries in internet cafe so apologies for any errors or careless wording)

I've been playing r129 for the comp, as it's the last built version and one shouldn't really update during a comp. So apologies if some of these have been fixed in subsequent updates. I'm playing in Linux console mode (-mgcu), and I'm certain some of these are specific to that mode.

- need to double-tap escape (and esc after many commands - can get stuck looking at the town but with messages saying "that command does not work in stores")
- ! doesn't work at all as a command or in the options menu, but works in inscriptions (means I can't set up any windows!)
- backspace doesn't work anywhere
- ctrl-s hangs game (ctrl-c cancels)
- please use ~/.angband/Sangband not ~/.sangband/Sangband - the whole point of the ~/.angband/ dir is so that each variant uses a subdir under it to avoid cluttering ~
- please warn about xp loss when decreasing skills (I lost xp decreasing and buying them back, without realising it - you can un-buy points you have just bought, but un-buying points previously bought does not return xp, and it's hard to keep track of that)
- please allow trap damage to practise burglary even without killing (it does? well that's good but please also consider allowing practise from non-damaging traps like potions of blindness etc.)
- docs need to say magic oaths require 20 in realm skill (and OoI 25 not 45)
- docs need to explain Hit Rate and Average Damage on char screen (they still talk about skill bonus and deadliness)
- don't think I got notification of the Darkness talent becoming available
- docs say nothing about casting in the dark (+10% fail)
- docs still talk about choosing spells to learn but this seems to have been removed
- please let burglars pseudo unknown items in traps (perhaps only if they see it set off)
- docs need to give guidance on which scrolls are readable in the dark
- evasive monsters are WAY overpowered - by all means let them dodge missiles and melee, but not bolt spells as well! Ball attacks are very rare for the first 1/3 of the game.
- RES_EDGED is similarly impossible, e.g. groups of stone trolls make a level totally uninhabitable. Yet it does not grant any resistance to missiles, oddly.
- need a message to explain why cannot dual wield if shield slot is empty ("you are not strong enough to wield this as a secondary weapon, swap with primary?")
- docs still list devices costing 15 when it's now 16: suspect other skill costs also out-of-date
- not enough gold to replace consumables, let alone buy stuff (actually this is only a problem until about 1200' and then is disappears very very sharply - perhaps I just need to dive faster)
- consider adding DTrap border from Oangband
- my biggest gripe: Smeagol picked up Wormtongue's drop and then didn't drop it when I killed him! Normal thiefs do drop items they pick up, so I think it is either specific to uniques or to Smeagol. Presumably this is unintended. I have a savefile if you need.
- please keep gnomes, and giants. By all means add ents, druedain, whoever - the more the merrier. More detailed thoughts on weapons vs. martial arts in a future post.
- I'm taking all difficult quests, and that really slows the game down: every non-quest monster is a pushover. Difficult quests should mean more kills required and a deeper dungeon level, but not quite such OoD monsters.

Sorry to rush - keep up the good work.