[S] YAFWP - Kimba the Dark Elf Lady of Enchantment

[Bostock]

I'm exhausted. So exhausted (and nervous) that I didn't think to make a final dump! Fortunately I had a D94 dump I could glean for the glorious summary below. It doesn't feel right to ladder it, although that does rob you all of such stunning notes such as:

568109   2650'   71   Note: hit me with a cabbage and call me Celegorm, it's Celegorm

Six weeks of effort, three days of cheesily-played pure mage, ~18 recalls, and ~790k turns, one first *band victory of any kind for Bostock... always died or got bored before.

I wanted to get a non-OoI Kimba win, and I wanted to do it under 1.17m turns, so I just kept going after the contest. Vapors of delicious cheese waft from this win, since I decided I couldn't pretend to not know what all the early item flavors were, especially the bad ones. On the other hand, Kimba's opening stats are not fully mage-friendly, so there's that. And I've gotten plenty of cheeseless characters past the stage where these things matter -- though the knowledge did strongly speed up the early dive, mainly via making use-ID XP gains safe and quick.

Like most winners, this one saw many good turns of luck, from 150' ]Agility+4 (originally mistaken for FA!) from Bullroarer (and my WoR back from the dirty rat) to 2000' Hammerhand to 3400' Feanor (!!!) to 4000' Durin (rChaos... in a +CON weapon!) to 4150' Narya and 4450' Nenya... which I kept forgetting to activate! My kit was so good I actually tossed aside Tulkas (also 4450') and was able to field "Mana instead of "Int or even an artifact... I never could understand what "Mana's point was before, but now I see it's a "win more" item extraordinare.

I also had my fair share of close calls, from the forgettable meleeless wizard's constant anguishes of 500'-1000', to a Thunder Giant lightningball down to 1HP when I still only resisted lightning via spell and forgot to cast it, to a 3300' "what, 18 HP?" moment brought to you by the excellent breakcore unit Saruman and the Plasma Hounds, to a 3400' quaff-ID of Death after winning Saruman Round 2, to a 3950' holy-lancing down to 4HP while Dancing with the Stars, with your host Gabriel. But that was it... with 40+ speed under hasting, a 4100' Raal's from Cantoras, and tons of paranoia after that holy-lancing, I was pretty much untouchable. Though I think the 0-MP Aura of Paranoia was the biggest factor of all.

As they say, the great uniques of legend fell easily, though I didn't stick around to farm them much. Tarrasque was the most surprising in its easiness... well, rChaos, castable rDisenchant, and fast damage to tone down the breaths were a great help. Probably the most fun was Gothmog, whom I farmed out of the summoning trap I farmed all game. I'd picked up _Doomblasts by then and just spammed and spammed, finishing off the escorts with Armageddon, then hunted down the limping foe, who manage to start a tough but profitable chain summons before falling.

Sauron was forgettable, easier than Gothmog really. I just pounded and pounded, switching from single-pound to group-pound as needed, and he couldn't keep up. Morgy was pretty tough, decently impressive. The memorable thing though is that I accidentally destructobanished him twice (Raal's-mages with no goal but winning destruct pretty heavily), once because I didn't know any better and once even though I did.

My main means of operation was devices for most of the game, with magic as backup damage, tough-situation damage, and countless buggs. I ran this way mainly to save turncount, which factor was also behind tons of Stone to Mud use and Phase Warping.

My skillset was magic skills (these got maxed), devices, burglary suite without devices or burglary, spell resistance, and forging, the latter decremented to 0 once I had endgame-ready kit.

I only took one quest, at 150' -- to get the money to really dive.

It wouldn't be Bostock without a bug report: Raal's has an perma-illegible spell at the end (100 power), looks like a spell was planned but then abandoned.

A thousand thanks to all in the impressive chain of maintainers of Sangband and of every game it... can't think of the word... from, and not least to camlost, for making all this fun, including the wonderful feeling of a hard-earned victory, possible!

[camlost]

Congrats on the sub-0.8M turn win! I was pretty sure non-OoI was possible (my previous attempt was well on the path until I put on the blinders), but that's a seriously impressive speed.

I agree that Sauron needs a boost.

I've also noticed the illegible spell in Raal's; There's just no code or name for that spell. I guess it'll be a mystery

"Mana is full of win if you can max or near-max spellcasting stat some other way. It's also seriously impressive in the mid-game as a source of mana that outstrips int/skill based mana.

And thanks for the praise, we all stand on the shoulders of giants. Or half-giants.

[Bostock]

Speed seems to affect turn count; if so, that really helped keep the count low.

I forgot to mention the other great operational speeder-upper besides StM and Phase Warp: that was Tap Magical Energy, which turned every device I couldn't use into a tiny little refilling station.

Edit: During the run, I was hoping the illegible spell would be "Kill Morgoth"... though I guess that would have been anticlimactic.

[LostTemplar]

I guess it'll be a mystery

No, please, line 1538 in tables.c:
53, { 0, 10, 20, 29, 34, 41, 47, 54, 54, 54, 54},
change 54 into 53 and it is fixed.

[NotMorgoth]

Congratulations.

I also kept on playing my last Kimba after the competition ended, aiming for a non-OOI win.

But I died of stupidity on DL62 when I forgot to take account of the fact that a necromancer had hasted itself and could double-move me and cast dark ball twice. And then it did.

Still, I wouldn't have come close to your turncount; I was already past 1 million when I died.

My skillset was magic skills (these got maxed), devices, burglary suite without devices or burglary, spell resistance, and forging, the latter decremented to 0 once I had endgame-ready kit.

This illustrates why I think it is a mistake to allow skills to be reduced; it essentially makes item forging a no-brainer for all characters, as once you have endgame kit you can dump the skill and get something else instead. In my experience, endgame characters always have enough experience left over to do this without difficulty.

[camlost]

This illustrates why I think it is a mistake to allow skills to be reduced; it essentially makes item forging a no-brainer for all characters, as once you have endgame kit you can dump the skill and get something else instead. In my experience, endgame characters always have enough experience left over to do this without difficulty.

The end-game is also the point where characters find the most adamant. I've thought about this, but I'm unsure how I feel about forge-dropping. If forge-dropping becomes common, maybe I'll just prevent forging from being reduced. There are still tempo reasons to consider taking or not taking forging.

Very little else suffers from a similar problem (druids and shifters can pick up a shapechange then drop the skill).

I guess I normally win with less than 100 power, so I don't really see the point in dropping a skill to make room.

I guess no one stumbled onto school-switching yet, eh? That one's been patched at this point.

[Bostock]

Heh, I wondered if the note on decrementing Forging would spark discussion.

I'm also undecided on this. While I'm too chicken to consider ever entering the endgame beneath 100 power (...!), I think that there are also reasons even before the endgame that speak for not always taking Forging. Above all it's midgame XP that could have gone somewhere else and maybe provided benefits equal in their era to the boosts you'd be getting in your forged slots. It kind of depends on how much you trust armor drops to be kind to you... if you're fielding artifacts in most slots, the skill kind of goes to waste. (My Kimba winner had artifacts in 3 out of the 5 forge slots at the end... inbetween, it fluctuated.)

Maybe the best way to get a feel for the future is a look at the ladder... given the ability to go above 100 skill, did most people take forging? I'm too lazy to check off the bat.

Edit: Oh... I just puzzled out what "tempo reasons" mean. Yeah. Those. :-)

By the way, NotMorgoth, I died a LOT on the way to victory, and three of the painfully late ones were hasted-monster deaths - a mage, an assassin, and a sharpshooter (Wonder: the spell that kills things... including you!).

[Bostock]

One interesting solution would be decay of forged items if item_power > forging skill * some_number.

(Actually forged items already do kind of decay, if you count acid and disenchantment.)

[NotMorgoth]

I haven't actually had a character at 100 power since the changes, but...

I'd seriously consider dropping stealth, burglary and melee weapon skills for the (very) endgame.

Stealth won't help much against Morgoth, burglary might even be harmful if I want to melee with a heavy weapon, but on the other hand, if I'm not going to melee then weapon skills won't be much use. (I find that quite frequently I abandon melee in the endgame unless I find/forge an awesome weapon, as there are so many monsters that hit to disenchant or drain charges and resistance is relatively hard to get.)


Incidentally, do you have a rough estimate of when the next release will be? I think all the development is great, but I've been holding off on starting any new games because if a new release came out when I was halfway through a game, I wouldn't know whether to abandon the game to try the latest version or to continue it and delay getting to see all the new features.

[LostTemplar]

Nice win, this speed boosting rings of power are awesome, and Feanor too.

[Magnate]

Congratulations.

I also kept on playing my last Kimba after the competition ended, aiming for a non-OOI win.

But I died of stupidity on DL62 when I forgot to take account of the fact that a necromancer had hasted itself and could double-move me and cast dark ball twice. And then it did.

Still, I wouldn't have come close to your turncount; I was already past 1 million when I died.

Congrats Bostock - superb win and brilliant write-up! I still have my last Kimba going (XVII I think) but have been distracted by V hacking. I daresay I will return one day and she will die in moments because all my contextual memory will have gone.

This illustrates why I think it is a mistake to allow skills to be reduced; it essentially makes item forging a no-brainer for all characters, as once you have endgame kit you can dump the skill and get something else instead. In my experience, endgame characters always have enough experience left over to do this without difficulty.

I don't think we should be able to decrement skills, period. There are just too many exploits, of which forging and stealth are but two. Funnily enough the school-switching was one I thought was actually quite an interesting prospect, and not abusable. YMMV I guess.

[Bostock]

One man's exploit is another man's strategic decision - and not necessarily an obvious one; stealth helps limit the array of foes in the Morgoth fight to Morgoth and his summons and makes teleportation more viable, to cover just one example.

I'm more concerned with decrementing making X be (or rather, remain) a skill that nearly everyone takes in every game -- but there might be better ways to address that, especially since the current decrementing system is a nice simple solution to the problems that we all shouted over when 100 power was first introduced.

[camlost]

I agree that school switching is an interesting prospect, but as it was released at some point, you could switch schools without any loss in skill, which seemed like it begged abuse. If you have to start over in the school, I think it makes for an interesting, less abusive scenario.

I wouldn't drop stealth for the Morgoth fight for the reasons Bostock mentioned.

Allowing skill decrementing does seem like the obvious and elegant solution to the max power rule. I am certainly curious how it will affect end-game play. I could always tweak it to only be of use at the end of the game to tweak your skills a little bit (for instance, you couldn't use it to reduce a skill to below 80). That could leave room to wiggle your skills into place, but wouldn't let you reinvent your character.

I left it open so that players could change their mind about some low level skills that change their character a lot; spellcasting and burglary are changes that a player might want to abandon and seem reasonable to allow for such. Maybe disallow skill reduction between skills 20 and 80? Give a little wiggle at the top and some time to reconsider at the bottom?

[camlost]

Incidentally, do you have a rough estimate of when the next release will be? I think all the development is great, but I've been holding off on starting any new games because if a new release came out when I was halfway through a game, I wouldn't know whether to abandon the game to try the latest version or to continue it and delay getting to see all the new features.

I'm hoping to release 1.0.2 beta soon (within a couple of weeks tops). There's a lot of new content, and given my lack of playtesting it, it's probably somewhat unbalanced. It will almost certainly be a savefile compatibility break.

[Magnate]

Allowing skill decrementing does seem like the obvious and elegant solution to the max power rule. I am certainly curious how it will affect end-game play. I could always tweak it to only be of use at the end of the game to tweak your skills a little bit (for instance, you couldn't use it to reduce a skill to below 80). That could leave room to wiggle your skills into place, but wouldn't let you reinvent your character.

I left it open so that players could change their mind about some low level skills that change their character a lot; spellcasting and burglary are changes that a player might want to abandon and seem reasonable to allow for such. Maybe disallow skill reduction between skills 20 and 80? Give a little wiggle at the top and some time to reconsider at the bottom?

I'm afraid I'm just instinctively opposed to decrementing - it offends my suspension of disbelief that you can "unlearn" things. But I am of course free not to use it, so cannot object to it being included. I think it is perfectly reasonable for you to limit it to the top and bottom of the skill range for the reasons you give.