A minimal band

[thapper]

Thanks Antoine,

With guaranteed !curing I don't need to be so worried about confusion which makes the early-mid game much more manageable.

The rest of my comments were more like observations, don't change anything drastic based on my two hobbit rogues

[thapper]

Summary from dwarf priest: It's hard to find FA. Did I understand the edit files correctly that "FA is native to DL20? I never got that deep and even so it would have been hard to find one without object detection.

[maciejkpl]

Hi,

First I want to thank you for your variants. I find Quickband and Minimal one of most fun to play variants (altogether with Sangband).

Could you please post what is the status of current development?
Or when we can expect next release?

Thanks!

[Antoine]

Thanks for the ups. I'll do an update if I get some more feedback on balance. if anyone else would like to help work on coding that would be very welcome.

[thapper]

I've been meaning to write some more feedback for a while and I was hoping to get a more successful character, proceeding below DL~20.

Since that seems to take a while I'll give some observations now.


Small things:

Trolls and war trolls are the same brown colour to my eyes/screen.

The black market sold a rod of something (charging) and I had not sold it to them first.

Probably inherited from NPP: If I have been shooting, or casting spells, at something and get confused I can continue to shoot (and hit) by using 'n'

I can learn a lot of spells with priests and mages, many more than are in the books.


Balance stuff:

Wands of stinking clouds are virtually useless. I have only seen one type of breeders (giant fruit flies) and they are quite rare. Stinking cloud hardly hurts anything else in the dungeon (to any significant amount). If you want to minimize more, they can go.

Wands of confusion are good, confused things stay confused for a while and even get stunned when they bump into things. Sleep monster seems much worse, all things I've put to sleep have woken up within 2 rounds, one time even the same round I think.

I usually (80% of the time) find free action ("FA) in the BM before I find it in the dungeon. I almost never find it in the dungeon before paralyzers show up and become a problem. Since it is not overpriced in BM I always buy it from there. I don't have a big problem with the way things are but I could also see that "FA could be a bit more shallow.

SI is hard to find but generally does not stop me from descending.

Stat drain was worst in my first games before I got used to the fact that I can not reliably restore stats. I think this works fine, it just took a little bit of getting used to.

Elf mages are hard, I've played them like weak rangers (and they have never survived to become anything else).

The small levels make everything more dense (as intended). This means that even if I can quite easily handle e.g. single dragons on their own when they start appearing I always have to avoid them to not wake up all the orcs in the next room or the umber hulk or something else. 2 groups of creatures + some single creature in a single room is not unusual (around DL 7 or so). Since I've focused on trying to stay alive for a while to give some feedback this obviously slows me down.

Small levels and shafts (+ some detection of stairs) makes it possible to move rather quickly from town to DL10-15, so I often use the stairs rather than WoR to get back into the dungeon and have a better control of escapes when I arrive at some dangerous depth (I've always played with connected stairs so far). If you want to prevent very fast diving you could remove shafts since they in Angband terms now take you down 4 DLs, I don't have a problem with them.



I'm afraid that I have no coding skills so I can't help there.

[Antoine]

Thanx great feedback there

[Malak Darkhunter]

One thing i'm noticing is their are far to many townspeople that drop gold in town. their are numerous drunks/veterans/aimless merchants wandering around and I racked up about 300 gold in just a couple minutes.

The staple of the dungeon past DL 4 are orcs groups of them, the goblins and regular orcs are managble but the black orcs might be a little over powered at early levels. Warriors though can probably handle it okay with a few CCW. I got bombarded constantly by orcs continously being generated, honestly it's to easy too sit tight on the level and level up off of orc, as long as you got CCW and escapes.

The general store sold way to many different types of arrows and bolts, they took up most of store inventory.

OOD is overpowered early, might need to start at radius 1, radius 2 can take out a whole group of orcs as soon as you get the spell.

The DL1 giant snakes are very tough for a begining character, and they are hard to hit, Rattlesnakes act like breathers and constantly spit poison, could be better named the black mamba maybe to better fit the description?

Lembas dosent have in the object description that it slows you down -10speed when consumed..

[Antoine]

Good stuff keep it coming

[Malak Darkhunter]

The "l" look button button is very difficult to use, it dosen't highlight monsters with the yellow square, to view the creatures by pressing directional arrow keys, very annoying.

On Dl9 and things are getting really tough, that level generated Nar the dwarf, giant spiders by the hordes, Uruks with Nar, a half-dozen umber hulks, went through about 6 cure potions to get around confusion, Cold wolfs, this level=instant death if you don't escape it, even with teleport with the small levels their is really no safe spot to go, confusion might be a real problem if that many umber hulks start apperaring.

To be honest this game has been "hell" to try and survive each level, if my priest dosen't make it, will probably try a strong warrior to see the difference in difficulty, my priest even with a 3d6 morningstar enchanted up can't stand toe-to-toe with this group.

[Malak Darkhunter]

And died Shortly after....the white wolves are a little over the top, the only way you can survive these kind of conditions are your consumbables, and when the white wolves are their to breath frost and destroy your consumbables then your meat, maybe take away the breath attack, or cut down the HP/ or number of packs. Honestly I think most monsters are fine the way the are/ but the pack size of everything needs to be cut in half.

I was CL21 by DL7 and their is still 43 levels to go, kind of feels like playing quickband and the end level is 20 or something, over difficulty is speeding CL up to fast.

I think it would balance out in difficulty, if pack size is cut down on all monsters, as it is now it's really a game of escapes,constant escaping. Will try warrior next and see if I can get farther than DL9

[Antoine]

Sounds like the levels could be a bit bigger and the packs a bit smaller

[Malak Darkhunter]

Started a human warrior, and life was much easier currently CL11 by DL3, and he has pretty much destroyed everything without batting an eye on first 3 levels, so warriors definetly are easier to start with, ran into smeagol, he was invisible but beat him to death anyway, wielding an enchanted dagger giving 4 attacks per turn makes a difference.

1 note of interest, I found a potion of restoration in the BM bought it immediatly went the entire last game without seeing one, now for FA and SI, my most worrisome disadvantages.

[Malak Darkhunter]

And Antoine-

can verify that potions of restoration/magic are being sold at the black market as well as rings of might and rings of SI, On DL9 havent found and FA at the black market yet. I found FA in some gloves however.

Warriors are tremendously more powerful than priests in melee, where my priests had a horrible time fighting enemies, my warrior is going through with hardly breaking a sweat, so maybe the difference between the class attack-bonuses maybe what is needed to look at for balance?

Edit-can I recommend taking away the lose dex touch attack from Wights, they already drain experience, and when you have a shortage of restore stat potions/sustains-this is a little over the top, the problem is their are several generated on a level starting at DL12 if their was 1 or 2 generated per level then not to bad, but as common as they are now, their going to drain your dex no matter how careful you are, without a reliable means of restoring it.

[thapper]

I don't think the pack size is too big. You get used to the intensive feeling The same goes for stat drainers, I avoid them carefully and shoot'em at a distance. I saw both rod of detect monster (works correctly) and a rod of recall, was that intended, I remember someone saying something about recall not being meant to exist?

I also saw a dungeon book for sale in the book store ('0'), is that intended? It was way too expensive for me to buy at the time anyway...

[Malak Darkhunter]

I found a rod of illumination and a rod of detect doors/stairs on DL16, as well as my first stat gain potion, a potion of magic. Things seem to get better if you just push deeper, and find the items that you need to survive. But I agree even with a warrior it's intense. I've had a much funner playthrough with a warrior over the priest.