Sangband 1.0.1's new thread

[Magnate]

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?

[NotMorgoth]

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.

I'm not sure I agree with this; don't forget that by taking the Oath of Iron you also lose a lot; namely your Magic Devices skill is reduced by 1/3 (AFAIK.) This means using devices as a means of offence in the late game is pretty much ruled out, and it probably makes some of the standard 'utility' devices like wands of Teleport Other unreliable.

In fact, even if I was playing a warrior-type character without burglary I would not automatically take the Oath of Iron, and may choose instead to go with the better devices ability (which is very powerful in the endgame and probably the best way of killing Morgoth.)

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).

Don't forget that it also gives resistance to mana-draining attacks. Although monsters with this attack are rare, they are almost impossible to kill for a non-sorcerer caster because they keep draining mana and healing themselves.

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).

On the other hand, something like this is probably a good idea to make wizardry more useful to non-casters; I had thought about the possibility of defining a 'magical' monster as one that is animated by or composed of magic (eg elementals, golems, many 'mimic' types,) and having wizardry give a bonus against these.

[Magnate]

I'm not sure I agree with this; don't forget that by taking the Oath of Iron you also lose a lot; namely your Magic Devices skill is reduced by 1/3 (AFAIK.) This means using devices as a means of offence in the late game is pretty much ruled out, and it probably makes some of the standard 'utility' devices like wands of Teleport Other unreliable.

In fact, even if I was playing a warrior-type character without burglary I would not automatically take the Oath of Iron, and may choose instead to go with the better devices ability (which is very powerful in the endgame and probably the best way of killing Morgoth.)

Interesting - I clearly don't have enough experience of the late game, as I rated the 1/3 loss of device skill as nowhere near enough of a penalty to consider not taking the OoI. Surely a warrior's extra skill with weapons (including extra shots/might from launchers) offsets the loss of device skill, but YMMV of course.

I don't think I have any problems with the OoI as it stands. I think I'm just suggesting that the burglary oath be made a little more attractive: the extra bonuses with light weapons, better crits from sneak attacks etc., up to +6 awareness, the extra talents - they're all nice, but IMO overwhelmed by the loss of hp and stats from the OoI.

Don't forget that it also gives resistance to mana-draining attacks. Although monsters with this attack are rare, they are almost impossible to kill for a non-sorcerer caster because they keep draining mana and healing themselves.

Again, I think I've never got a caster far enough to notice this problem - so I'll take your word for it. I agree that it's more useful for casters than non-casters, because the tapping talent must be pretty cool.

On the other hand, something like this is probably a good idea to make wizardry more useful to non-casters; I had thought about the possibility of defining a 'magical' monster as one that is animated by or composed of magic (eg elementals, golems, many 'mimic' types,) and having wizardry give a bonus against these.

Yeah, that would work too, I guess - though there currently isn't a MAGIC flag to go by. I thought using monster mana as the guide would obviate the need for any new flag - plus I also think that targeting casters is easier to understand than the concept of a "magical" monster. But there are a lot of casters, and this would overlap with demons and undead, which could be awkward. Just a thought.

[camlost]

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).

This was fixed in r144, you will get messages at the right time. I'm not sure if talents should become available at a fixed level, or at a fixed "skill". I'd entertain thoughts.

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

Fixed in good_work_cond.

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).

http://code.google.com/p/skills-angband/issues/detail?id=84

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.

http://code.google.com/p/skills-angband/issues/detail?id=83

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).

Mage-burglars and druid-burglars can still use a light source. Perhaps you mean shadowstalking mages and Hunters (I'm coining a term for shadowstalking druids here)? I could certainly make all the books readable (add GLOW_WORDS in object.txt). Glowing glyphs seem more thematic to priests and necromancers, though I'll admit that I see no balance reason to limit them. And I always carry all the books I can.

In fact, even if I was playing a warrior-type character without burglary I would not automatically take the Oath of Iron, and may choose instead to go with the better devices ability (which is very powerful in the endgame and probably the best way of killing Morgoth.)

Devices are *really* good. I'm already missing out on use of _Heal, _BanishEvil, and _DispelEvil. I generally don't use attack wands, either, as activation is sketchy, and damage weak compared with weapons.

I was a bit surprised to find that woses are so gimped at spellcasting - why would they be any worse than humans?

The literature seems to be a little lacking in differentiation between them and humans. I'm all ears when it comes to suggestions. Ents and woses racial stats, and skills are really first-run guesses. I expect significant changes there.

[Magnate]

This was fixed in r144, you will get messages at the right time. I'm not sure if talents should become available at a fixed level, or at a fixed "skill". I'd entertain thoughts.

In general I'd prefer talents at a fixed number of skill points in a skill, as the cost to acquire them is then the same. For talents with variable effect, by all means keep the effect in line with the "effective" skill - so let OoI burglars have Nab Object at 40, but its range/weight allowance will be less than for guild burglars. Not sure what to do about nonvariable talents though.

http://code.google.com/p/skills-angb...s/detail?id=83

Awesome - could you add Lightningjaws to that list please? They have the speed and numbers of stormcrows, and although their attacks aren't quite so bad, their blink-towards more than makes up for that. Monsters with TELE_SELF_TO are *much* harder to outrun - my latest Kimba fled a potentially lucrative demon pit because all of tengus, nrulings and imps have it. And quasits too I think - only the homunculi didn't. Actually nrulings are about as bad as lightningjaws, now I come to think of it.

Mage-burglars and druid-burglars can still use a light source. Perhaps you mean shadowstalking mages and Hunters (I'm coining a term for shadowstalking druids here)?

I do indeed - by 'burglar' I really mean shadowstalker: I see no reason why anyone investing in burglary would continue to use a light source! I think it's certainly in-theme for Hunters to be able to cast in the dark: their glyphs don't necessarily glow, but they can read them without light. Shadow-magi are harder to justify: I think I'd just go with glowing spellbooks there.

The literature seems to be a little lacking in differentiation between them and humans. I'm all ears when it comes to suggestions. Ents and woses racial stats, and skills are really first-run guesses. I expect significant changes there.

Ok, will try to play a few and give some feedback.

[Sirridan]

How does one compile this for Linux? Running ubuntu 10, and wanting to give it a try outside my windows box

[camlost]

How does one compile this for Linux? Running ubuntu 10, and wanting to give it a try outside my windows box

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpost.php?p=41195&postcount=6

Or, condensed:
sudo apt-get install gcc libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev subversion
svn checkout http://skills-angband.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ skills-angband-read-only
cd skills-angband-read-only/src
make -fMakefile.sdl install

That will get you the SVN version. If you want to play 1.0.1.169, download the source and extract it instead of svn checkout. This will also build the SDL version, not the console version, if that matters to you.

[Bostock]

/me bashfully raises his hand for preserving the nastiness of Stormcrows, Lamia (Nrulings are chickenfeed), Lightningjaws, and their ilk.

"There should be things to run from or only approach prepared." Yes, I know you approached prepared, but
- you got remarkably unlucky,
- you could have been even more prepared!

[Magnate]

/me bashfully raises his hand for preserving the nastiness of Stormcrows, Lamia (Nrulings are chickenfeed), Lightningjaws, and their ilk.

"There should be things to run from or only approach prepared." Yes, I know you approached prepared, but
- you got remarkably unlucky,
- you could have been even more prepared!

Ok, here's another take on this. There are easy monsters and there are tought monsters, nobody has a problem with that. But if the tough monsters are too tough relative to their comrades, the game becomes limited: all the serious challenge revolves around a very small number of monsters.

IMO, at the moment, the hassle of stormcrows, lightningjaws, lucksuckers, pink elephants etc. is SO far out of whack from the hassle of any other monsters, they reduce the game rather than adding to it.

That said, I think stormcrows in particular have been slightly toned down already a year or two ago, so maybe they can be left as is.

On a related note, I really dislike the "faster than you" mechanic. No monster should scale with the player's stats (except perhaps player ghosts, which are a bit different). But YMMV.

[NotMorgoth]

I haven't been annoyed by lucksuckers and pink elephants as much as stormcrows and lightningjaws, but I think that is probably because they generally occur on their own rather than in packs.

IMHO, Lucksuckers and pink elephants are among those monsters that you don't realise how nasty they are until you get a quest to kill them and end up with a whole level full of them; if you encounter them on their own in a normal level they are annoying but can be avoided so are much less hassle.

Other monsters in a similar category are manticores, minotaurs (how fast?) undead beholders, night mares, air elementals and spirit trolls.

However, I've relatively recently come to the conclusion that my least favourite monster in the whole game is none of the above, but Storms of Unmagic, which in my opinion are a good reason to search for endgame gear on levels 70-85 rather than descending to 98.

I was a bit surprised to find that woses are so gimped at spellcasting - why would they be any worse than humans?

I am assuming that this is because, as far as I can tell, there is a tradition in Sangband, unlike V, of trying to make the races somewhat balanced in difficulty relative to each other (with the exception of the 'easy' races.) Therefore, if they are better than humans in some things they have to be worse in others, and it's not always easy to decide what, or to justify it in terms of what that race is 'really' like. I assume this is the same reason why elves are worse than humans at alchemy and weapon forging.

I'm sure camlost can correct me if I am wrong on this, but this is always the impression I have got as the reason for some of the decisions regarding what races get what aptitudes.

How successful this has been is another matter - like in all variants, con and HP matter a lot so it is hard not to think of giants in particular as overpowered.

[Magnate]

I haven't been annoyed by lucksuckers and pink elephants as much as stormcrows and lightningjaws, but I think that is probably because they generally occur on their own rather than in packs.

IMHO, Lucksuckers and pink elephants are among those monsters that you don't realise how nasty they are until you get a quest to kill them and end up with a whole level full of them; if you encounter them on their own in a normal level they are annoying but can be avoided so are much less hassle.

Other monsters in a similar category are manticores, minotaurs (how fast?) undead beholders, night mares, air elementals and spirit trolls.

Interesting. I think part of the problem with lucksuckers and manticores is that they appear quite early. By the time you meet a storm of unmagic, you are a fair way through the game. Pink elephants are about halfway IIRC.

[camlost]

Jabberwocks, Storms of Unmagic... later in the game, avoiding monsters is usually easier. How about unmakers -- they breed.

Manticores are fast and have a powerful missile attack, but they also drop an exceptional treasure, which is pretty sweet.

As far as making monster less painful, I reduced the casting rate of Manticores (fewer missiles, but still fast), Nruling (having a moment where they don't blink away is nice), and Lightningjaws (so you can actually kill them) seems pretty nice. I slowed Stormcrows to normal speed, but I'll probably make them fast +5 (was +10 before) and reduce their cast rate to 1 in 2 (was 1 in 1) and give them a better physical attack. That way, you won't be able to kill them as they come around a corner, at least not all the time.

Just for the record, pink elephants and lucksuckers seem more like nuisances than dangers (at least alone), and Stormcrows will eventually move you somewhere where you can heal and/or teleport. I think I've only actually died to lightningjaws of the ones listed here. I have lost lots of scrolls to Nrulings, though.

----

Correct about the races. It was an attempt to keep the races balanced, and I made them better with weapons, so magic seemed the natural tradeoff; an 11 cost skill is hardly a major gimp.

Regarding giants, you can tell from my winner history that I think they're good, but I'm probably going to win with a dark-elf, and there's a hobbit winner in my history also. As I've said elsewhere, HP will be more front-loaded for all races, so playing other races should be easier.

[NotMorgoth]

The late game annoying monsters are just that - annoying rather than really dangerous; a storm of unmagic is very unlikely to actually kill you, but it can wreck your equipment with disenchantment and charge draining, or force you to recall to restore lost stats. Unlike many of the others, storms of unmagic are always awake and can tunnel through walls.

Unmakers - look nasty on paper, but I've never really had much trouble with them. Shadow breeders, on the other hand, have often forced me to leave the level.

The monsters that have killed more of my characters than any other are (perhaps embarrassingly,) Farmer Maggot's dogs. Apart from them and manticores, I can't think of any monster that has killed more than one of my characters, though nearly all of my non-dog deaths have been from attempting quests.

I think there is a 'danger zone' from around dungeon levels 35-50 where it seems the power of monsters scales up much more quickly than that of the player character, so it suddenly gets much harder; it is here that most of my deaths occur, but if I can get past 50 then I have a very good chance of winning.

Regarding races - I've never really played giants much, so I was mostly speculating based on my experiences with other races, but of the races I have won with, the dwarf and half orc were significantly easier than the dark elf. I don't actually find hobbits that fragile, as their +2 con makes it much easier to get reasonable HP despite their low hit dice at the point in the game where it matters most.

Having said that, however, I did lose a lot of dwarf characters due to lack of stealth, while my hobbit won on the first attempt. (This was also playing with a dwarf priest, which would no longer be viable with the int/wis swap, though a dwarf necromancer looks like an intriguing idea...)

[Magnate]

The late game annoying monsters are just that - annoying rather than really dangerous; a storm of unmagic is very unlikely to actually kill you, but it can wreck your equipment with disenchantment and charge draining, or force you to recall to restore lost stats. Unlike many of the others, storms of unmagic are always awake and can tunnel through walls.

Unmakers - look nasty on paper, but I've never really had much trouble with them. Shadow breeders, on the other hand, have often forced me to leave the level.

The monsters that have killed more of my characters than any other are (perhaps embarrassingly,) Farmer Maggot's dogs. Apart from them and manticores, I can't think of any monster that has killed more than one of my characters, though nearly all of my non-dog deaths have been from attempting quests.

This is HUGELY my experience - it's also why I can't play without a melee skill. The only way I can kill the dogs is to pump all my first skill points into my weapon or martial art skill, to get it to 9/10/11 before I fight the first dog. I can never defeat either dog with a caster because I run out of mana, and because my skill points have gone into magic I have no skill with a weapon! So I really don't understand at all how you can start a caster with no melee (or missile) skills.

My point about the wose wasn't that 11 is a terribly high casting skill per se, but that they are supposed to be the ultimate druid race. Yet as things stand they make far less attractive druids than elves, or even hobbits. I'd expect them to have 9 casting and/or 7 nature, and more expensive skills elsewhere.

IMO every race should have a path for which it is better suited than any other race (hobbit burglar, DE necro, giant wrestler etc.) - that doesn't mean that's the only viable build for that race, but it's the obvious one, and others are more challenging. Ideally the scoring mechanism would reward these non-obvious builds, but one thing at a time.

[NotMorgoth]

I didn't think they were necessarily meant to be the ultimate druid race - I assumed that was elves' role since the int/wis swap, and woses were more a bit like dwarves used to be, but with a tendency towards nature magic rather than piety.