The old thread was getting way too difficult to navigate. Oook's second worst defect (after not having an "ignore thread" feature) is that its threaded view scrolls off the side of your browser instead of wrapping. So navigating long threads gets really really tedious.
Anyway, I just wanted to give some more considered thoughts on 1.0.1 after 16 dead Kimbas.
As I said on the comp93 thread, I think the quest rewards are by and large really good - very few are junk. I think it is worth testing for weight: if dodging skill is >10 (say), ensure that the item does not exceed the weight of the item currently in that slot. Something like that. There was one time when I got a longbow of velocity while wielding one of accuracy - that's definitely a bug, as the two should be considered equivalent. Maybe make sure that the value test is > 120% rather than just greater than?
I don't know if it's peculiar to my setup, but water hounds are the same colour as energy hounds - this has major drawbacks, as you can imagine. I wonder if this is to do with the 128-colour implementation on some systems. I notice that the monster colours are completely different when I play under Windows than under Linux, which is not desirable.
Now, stormcrows. I know I've ranted about these before, and I know they're supposed to be challenging, and I think they've even been toned down a little. But one of my oath-burglar Kimbas sneak attacked one, got two of the best possible crits ("slice into") with a branded weapon it didn't resist, and still didn't kill it: it then proceeded to knock seven bells out of her with one star remaining, and wake up all its mates, and it was all very painful.
I think there is an important design difference between a monster that you avoid unless you're really well equipped (say, able to sneak attack it with a branded weapon), and a monster that you must avoid at all costs, ever. The latter don't really belong in any *band, IMO.
There's a minor bug in talents.c: there are two checks for p_ptr->berserk, when I think the 2nd should be for p_ptr->necro_rage
Onto the main event: casting in the dark. IMO priest books glowing is pointless (priest spell power is lower in the dark), but druids and mages should glow. Otherwise mage-burglars and druid-burglars are pretty much unviable, and it would be a pity to limit the game like that. I'm fine with the 10% additional failure chance, and the extra power for necros (and less for priests). I'm also fine with some scrolls glowing and others not. Ooooh - maybe only the dungeon books of wizards/druids should glow ... not sure how important the early books are later on in the game. The design in V is generally that you can bin books 1 and 2 later on, but not sure if it's the same in S.
There seems little or no point in taking the burglary oath unless you're a caster - a careful comparison reveals that non-casters gain much more from the oath of iron. It would be nice if the burglary oath gave you a bit more, so it could compete with OoI. Maybe a point or so of STR and CON to go with the two DEX.
A small point: membership of the burglar's guild not shown on the skill screen if you are a caster - your realm is shown instead. Maybe this doesn't matter, but I don't think the guild membership is shown anywhere else, e.g. the character sheet.
I have to say I'm glad bowmaking has been combined with weaponsmithing. Every Kimba who raised bowmaking found an awesome ego launcher of acc or veloc., and every one who didn't, didn't! I absolutely love the forging code, it's a work of genius. With weaponsmithing of 40 and a piece of copper I forged a main gauche, chose not to add any essences, and got +3, +5 with fire brand. Awesome.
There is a counterintuitive impact of the new skill-damping code, by which I mean the changes to get_skill where the effective device skills of warriors and the effective burglary skills of non-guild-members are reduced instead of being limited on the skills screen. I got my OoI Kimba's burglary skill to 40 and was surprised not to receive the Nab Object talent: but of course she won't actually get it until skill 60 - and she'll never get either the hit & run talent or the auto-sensing of charges from device skill 70 (as her effective skill will be capped at 66).
I don't think this effect is terrible per se, but I think the way talents are presented needs to be rethought. Instead of "this talent becomes available at a skill of X", we need something like "this talent becomes available when this skill is high enough", with explanation elsewhere that taking an oath will increase the effectiveness of some skills while decreasing others.
Finally, some thoughts about Wizardry. It's the only realm skill which doesn't give extra crits - this used to be balanced by it being needed to find essences, but no longer. It's now totally pointless for any non-sorc to raise it past 40, as the phase warp isn't reliable until well after it becomes available. If phase warp was available at 50 or 55 it would be really quite nice by the time the skill was raised to 75 (when you get the tap magical device talent, if you're a caster).
On the other hand, if we allowed Wizardry to give crits against monsters with mana, that would be really something worthwhile .... some sort of mana burn is still my most wanted feature request (either as a warrior talent, or an ego item property, or something).
Still far and away my favourite variant - and I plan to steal a lot of the ideas and code in future. I'm glad to see that the current trunk still has gnomes and giants even though ents and woses have been added. I was a bit surprised to find that woses are so gimped at spellcasting - why would they be any worse than humans?
Anyway, I just wanted to give some more considered thoughts on 1.0.1 after 16 dead Kimbas.
As I said on the comp93 thread, I think the quest rewards are by and large really good - very few are junk. I think it is worth testing for weight: if dodging skill is >10 (say), ensure that the item does not exceed the weight of the item currently in that slot. Something like that. There was one time when I got a longbow of velocity while wielding one of accuracy - that's definitely a bug, as the two should be considered equivalent. Maybe make sure that the value test is > 120% rather than just greater than?
I don't know if it's peculiar to my setup, but water hounds are the same colour as energy hounds - this has major drawbacks, as you can imagine. I wonder if this is to do with the 128-colour implementation on some systems. I notice that the monster colours are completely different when I play under Windows than under Linux, which is not desirable.
Now, stormcrows. I know I've ranted about these before, and I know they're supposed to be challenging, and I think they've even been toned down a little. But one of my oath-burglar Kimbas sneak attacked one, got two of the best possible crits ("slice into") with a branded weapon it didn't resist, and still didn't kill it: it then proceeded to knock seven bells out of her with one star remaining, and wake up all its mates, and it was all very painful.
I think there is an important design difference between a monster that you avoid unless you're really well equipped (say, able to sneak attack it with a branded weapon), and a monster that you must avoid at all costs, ever. The latter don't really belong in any *band, IMO.
There's a minor bug in talents.c: there are two checks for p_ptr->berserk, when I think the 2nd should be for p_ptr->necro_rage
Onto the main event: casting in the dark. IMO priest books glowing is pointless (priest spell power is lower in the dark), but druids and mages should glow. Otherwise mage-burglars and druid-burglars are pretty much unviable, and it would be a pity to limit the game like that. I'm fine with the 10% additional failure chance, and the extra power for necros (and less for priests). I'm also fine with some scrolls glowing and others not. Ooooh - maybe only the dungeon books of wizards/druids should glow ... not sure how important the early books are later on in the game. The design in V is generally that you can bin books 1 and 2 later on, but not sure if it's the same in S.
There seems little or no point in taking the burglary oath unless you're a caster - a careful comparison reveals that non-casters gain much more from the oath of iron. It would be nice if the burglary oath gave you a bit more, so it could compete with OoI. Maybe a point or so of STR and CON to go with the two DEX.
A small point: membership of the burglar's guild not shown on the skill screen if you are a caster - your realm is shown instead. Maybe this doesn't matter, but I don't think the guild membership is shown anywhere else, e.g. the character sheet.
I have to say I'm glad bowmaking has been combined with weaponsmithing. Every Kimba who raised bowmaking found an awesome ego launcher of acc or veloc., and every one who didn't, didn't! I absolutely love the forging code, it's a work of genius. With weaponsmithing of 40 and a piece of copper I forged a main gauche, chose not to add any essences, and got +3, +5 with fire brand. Awesome.
There is a counterintuitive impact of the new skill-damping code, by which I mean the changes to get_skill where the effective device skills of warriors and the effective burglary skills of non-guild-members are reduced instead of being limited on the skills screen. I got my OoI Kimba's burglary skill to 40 and was surprised not to receive the Nab Object talent: but of course she won't actually get it until skill 60 - and she'll never get either the hit & run talent or the auto-sensing of charges from device skill 70 (as her effective skill will be capped at 66).
I don't think this effect is terrible per se, but I think the way talents are presented needs to be rethought. Instead of "this talent becomes available at a skill of X", we need something like "this talent becomes available when this skill is high enough", with explanation elsewhere that taking an oath will increase the effectiveness of some skills while decreasing others.
Finally, some thoughts about Wizardry. It's the only realm skill which doesn't give extra crits - this used to be balanced by it being needed to find essences, but no longer. It's now totally pointless for any non-sorc to raise it past 40, as the phase warp isn't reliable until well after it becomes available. If phase warp was available at 50 or 55 it would be really quite nice by the time the skill was raised to 75 (when you get the tap magical device talent, if you're a caster).
On the other hand, if we allowed Wizardry to give crits against monsters with mana, that would be really something worthwhile .... some sort of mana burn is still my most wanted feature request (either as a warrior talent, or an ego item property, or something).
Still far and away my favourite variant - and I plan to steal a lot of the ideas and code in future. I'm glad to see that the current trunk still has gnomes and giants even though ents and woses have been added. I was a bit surprised to find that woses are so gimped at spellcasting - why would they be any worse than humans?
Comment