FayAngband 1.1, "Tough but Fairy"

[Mikko Lehtinen]

This variant made me start playing again after years of break from the genre. 2x thumbs up Mikko.

Wow, thanks!

[Artagas]

I suggest that you change or remove the fast-breeding "I"-s from Fay (Giant fruit fly-s etc.) for 2 reasons:

1) Farming them for exp seems to be against the spirit of this variant
2) If the player decides not to farm them in the name of fair-play, they will often force him to leave a level (or skip half of a level) without barely getting anything out of it. In most variants this is not an issue but in Fay this hurts you a ton.

p.s.: been playing some warriors, mages, spellswords and a few rogues. This variant is not "Fairy" at all. It is a mean, sadistic, unforgiving, addictive beast. That is what it is.

[buzzkill]

This variant is not "Fairy" at all. It is a mean, sadistic, unforgiving, addictive beast. That is what it is.

It probably just takes a while to get to the 'Fay' part . According to the ladder, no one has even come close to seeing the endgame yet.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I suggest that you change or remove the fast-breeding "I"-s from Fay (Giant fruit fly-s etc.) for 2 reasons:

1) Farming them for exp seems to be against the spirit of this variant
2) If the player decides not to farm them in the name of fair-play, they will often force him to leave a level (or skip half of a level) without barely getting anything out of it. In most variants this is not an issue but in Fay this hurts you a ton.

We had a giant playtesting session with a friend recently, and I came to the same conclusion. I'll probably keep some breeders but they won't give you any experience.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

p.s.: been playing some warriors, mages, spellswords and a few rogues. This variant is not "Fairy" at all. It is a mean, sadistic, unforgiving, addictive beast. That is what it is.

I kinda like the difficulty level. My aim is to make the gameplay so fast that dying repeatably doesn't feel bad. The game should be interesting and challenging right from the start.

I've removed dungeon levels 1-3 and 51-100 from the development version. Town has all the novice adventurers and acts essentially as the dungeon level 3.

Getting rid of the boring low level monsters allows me to reduce monster count. Challenge level should stay about the same but the game plays quicker.

I've also removed lots of unnecessary items (mostly to make the identifying subgame quicker), made item drops less common, and removed gold digging.

[buzzkill]

... and removed gold digging.

2 cents.

I can't fault you for this but I have found that mining is sometimes a necessity in 'very hard' variants, as much as it is a pointless, boring endeavor in most variants. Provided you need great STR and/or a great digger to get the job done, I don't see a problem with mining. Here's a few other options.

Maybe hide treasure contained in veins until 'detected' via magic.
Maybe hide treasure unless passive searching finds it. % chance of spotting obvious gold flecks on surface.
Maybe make tunneling have a low % chance to cause earthquakes/cave-in.
Maybe dissuade STM mining by % chance "The gold transmutes to lead!!".

All said, I've faith in you're judgment, Fay has yet to disappoint me.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I can't fault you for this but I have found that mining is sometimes a necessity in 'very hard' variants, as much as it is a pointless, boring endeavor in most variants. Provided you need great STR and/or a great digger to get the job done, I don't see a problem with mining.

I liked digging in Fay until I watched my friend Matti play. (We spent a day playing Brogue, then a day playing the dev version of Fay.) When a serious min-maxer starts to abuse mining and farming monsters, it gets ugly. And Fay is targeted for min-maxers.

I've doubled the coins found in caves/tunnels. Let's see if that's enough.

I do like your suggestion that Perception helps spot gold veins on the surface. Maybe there could be "interesting walls" in some tunnels, and a successful perception check would reveal a mineral vein (only one try).

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I came up with an idea for a new class, Dervish.

Dervish uses musical instruments like the bard, ambushes like the rogue, and is an expert at making religious sacrifices like the priest. She's stealthy and very good at jumping. Unlike the bard, she has a strict armour weight restriction, and is bad with magical devices and alchemy.

Generally I'm not planning to add new classes, but it seems appropriate to have two classes who use musical instruments. And if I had two music-using classes I could also add a new cool special ability to Bards to make them more special...

What do you think?

EDIT: Of course you haven't seen Jumping and sacrificing at altars yet...

EDIT2: Maybe I could give the dervish below average hitpoints and a special dodging ability. Every time she would be hit by a physical attack, she would try to roll 1d100 under her Jumping skill to dodge in a random direction. If there's free space in that direction, she would move there and avoid the attack. That way Dervishes would usually try to avoid corridors and fight in rooms where they have enough space to "dance".

EDIT3: No, wait, that last one actually works better as a bardic spell!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I decided to add a warrior variant instead of Dervish. Templar is a mystical Rosicrucian knight with a poverty vow and some religious/alchemical special abilities (but no spellcasting). Fay was lacking a paladin, and this one fills the niche perfectly.

I also removed Bard. Bard was unfortunately getting was more and more out of sync with my current design aesthetics. I've been rigolously removing junk lately, and getting rid of istruments helps a lot. Item drops are now much less common and much more useful.

[ghengiz]

minor typo in races.txt

just passing by to signal a minor typo in lib/help/races.txt, in the first line in the Ursa description (line 115) paragraph:

"Large, lumbering, bear-people, they ursa are incredibly strong, and have"

should have 'they' replaced by 'the'

[gimber]

Bug in OSX

Using the OSX port - when casting some higher-level spells, Fay closes immediately ("Abort trap" shown in xterm) if the spellbook menu is shown. So far it happens with poison, nexus, and mana bolt, and happens with any spell if "Augment Damage" has been previously cast.

It doesn't happen if I turn off the "Alternate spellbook interface" or if I turn off "Always show lists in item/spell selection."

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Thanks! That's one obscure bug. I can't replicate it on Linux, so I'm not sure whether I'm able to fix it.

Since you've been playing mages -- would you mind if I removed Magic Missile? I feel it makes elemental bolts and fire/frost mages less interesting.

I would need to invent a spell for Sorcerous Adjurations to replace MM with. Ideas, anyone?

[gimber]

Since you've been playing mages -- would you mind if I removed Magic Missile? I feel it makes elemental bolts and fire/frost mages less interesting.

I would need to invent a spell for Sorcerous Adjurations to replace MM with. Ideas, anyone?

I agree the fire/frost aspect could be enhanced, though removing MM would make things a lot harder, especially once elemental resistances start showing up in monsters but before mana/nexus/poison bolt spells show up.

Maybe a spell that still does non-elemental damage (but less than MM) but adds bonus elemental damage as frost or fire? Ice spear/meteor/cinder/hail?

[Derakon]

My brain's not all here (I'm a bit short on sleep), but when I read "fire bolt" I imagined a spell that you would use in conjunction with a crossbow (hence "bolt"). I don't know how archery-oriented Fay mages are, but I could easily imagine a spell that would brand your archery with an element for some period of time / number of shots. That'd give you the hybrid damage that gimber is suggesting. And it'd gel nicely with rangers, who use the mage spellbooks but are heavily archery-oriented.

Then again, it might be overly powerful...

[ekolis]

Maybe a spell that still does non-elemental damage (but less than MM) but adds bonus elemental damage as frost or fire? Ice spear/meteor/cinder/hail?

How about a spell that does elemental damage, but the element is randomly selected? So you're fighting a fire-resistant critter, you've got a chance that your spells won't work against him