A minimal band

[Antoine]

that's great for consumables . I guess other chars might have different experiences. In particular you presumably didn't suffer from the lack of !Restore Life Levels, which could be a problem for other races.

meant to ask - do you think a high level rogue is too stealthy or about right?

look forward to thoughts on kit and uniques.

thanx ! a

[emulord]

The scorpions were asleep when I cast it. I think it has to do with the speed system or something. WinXP for me. Sadly I didnt save a copy of the savefile. If it appears it was transient / you can ignore. It didn't affect gameplay much, I just thought it was odd when sleeping enemies stayed asleep 1 more turn allowing me to stack stinking cloud on top as well.

I tried this today but I cannot reproduce it. Things got hurt already on the first turn. Playing on windows 7.

[thapper]

My hobbit rogue died an avoidable death so I guess it is time to sum up some more of my experiences.

Consumables:
!restoration is hard to come by in the absolute beginning but after that no problem. Could be more rare.

!healing is reasonably common when you get deeper but since it is the only big heal (at least for rogues and warriors) it can also get used up pretty quickly. I spent too many of mine trying to kill the mouth of Sauron and Saruman. I know I said you could make them slightly more rare but I might have been wrong. Sooner or later you have to fight some hard battles and then you're going to burn through the stock fast.

!resistance was very rare, I saw 4 all game. I suppose this is intended. It makes double resistance something you only use if you're trying to fight Saruman, Glaurung and the like. Double resist (for the rogue) just to fight a red wyrm would be an awful waste.

!speed was not a problem for me. Rogues can detect objects and get haste self (and I found Ringil...)

_destruct, and _banish I found a handful. I'm usually not using them, just hoarding them in the home. If they are meant to be really rare, so that you only find like 2-3 all game, then they need to be tweaked. But since I couldn't recharge things until very late in the game they would not have given me unlimited supply to banish or destruct in any way.

_magi and _power I found a few. The magi I "abused" a bit in the end when I had access to a recharge just to get more mana for id.

The wands are nice in the beginning but only -TO and -STM saw some use towards the end. Sometimes I would use a -fire ball to attack something around a corner.

I used rods of recall, no other rod, but I guess the other rods are mostly for warriors to get access to some detection.

Did I forget something?

[thapper]

Bug report: I was playing a mage in the latest version, and although Stinking Cloud damaged everything immediately, shardstorm had a delay of 1 turn before it started affecting things. So Scorpions were staying asleep in the middle of a shardstorm for a little bit

I tried this today but I cannot reproduce it. Things got hurt already on the first turn. Playing on windows 7.

[Antoine]

Slay Evil ammo exists but it doesn't seem to be able to be generated on mithril arrows/bolts - that is a bug for me to fix I think.

A.

[thapper]

Also what do you think you will need to be prepared for endgame?

This is my main problem at the moment, I don't know. I can't expect a better melee weapon I think (ringil) and it seems kind of silly to grind forever for an artifact shooter.

I will need more healing, for sure.

I would like to avoid doing the whole battle in melee so I want some appropriate bolts or arrows, but does "slay evil" exist, I haven't found any.

Then there's the problem with other Uniques, should I try to take out most/all of them before I go for Sauron?

[Antoine]

Thapper - excellent feedback thanks, keep it coming. Also what do you think you will need to be prepared for endgame?

A.

[Antoine]

Bug report: I was playing a mage in the latest version, and although Stinking Cloud damaged everything immediately, shardstorm had a delay of 1 turn before it started affecting things. So Scorpions were staying asleep in the middle of a shardstorm for a little bit

That may be a feature - not sure

A.

[emulord]

Bug report: I was playing a mage in the latest version, and although Stinking Cloud damaged everything immediately, shardstorm had a delay of 1 turn before it started affecting things. So Scorpions were staying asleep in the middle of a shardstorm for a little bit

[thapper]

Some of my views on the "early-late game"

Non-uniques:

I like that the wyrms are quite different in difficulty. I have no problem with white, green, and black. I take out blue if they are not too many and bronze occasionally. I leave gold, dracolish, and red alone. I've never even felt tempted to attack a chromatic.

Among the demons I don't mess with pit fiends (that fire attack was brutal with only a single resist) and gelugons (shards). I also avoid balrogs, I have the feeling that they summon other demons too often. I do attack osyluths, they only drain my chr.

Among the undead I avoid the black reavers but I take on the nightwalkers with ranged attack. Reading their description now they look rather similar in threat-level so maybe I should try on some black reavers again. The rest of the undead I kill, from a distance or in melee.

The Qs are as annoying as they should, I usually lack -fire ball so I either avoid (master Qs, normal Qs), melee or shoot (normal Qs)

The Storm giants are still not a joke, cyclopses take a few turns in melee but are mostly harmless.

Since I play a rogue I can pick my fights most of the time. The Ds, Us, and undead rarely wake up unless disturbed.


Pits:
The D-pits feel quite different from vanilla, they will have 15 or more of the wyrm, rest dragons (I saw one with just white Ds). This I can handle for white and black but I really avoid the red pits and I can only handle blue if I can control the amount of Ds coming out. The reason is that I don't have any double resist (except poison) and no healing spell. So dragon pits that can "normally" be a great source of stuff is now more something to avoid.

U-pits I avoid, they often have at least one of the types I don't like to mess with.

From earlier pits I can say that troll pits looked silly since they only had two types of Ts and they have the same colour. Perhaps Trolls can mix in with the orcs?

Graveyards I flee, mixed room of Ds as well.


I'll try to add my views on consumables, artifacts/kit, and uniques later this week. Anything else you'd like to hear Antoine?

[emulord]

Thanks! Idk why I didnt see that.

[thapper]

Emulord: Try,

'='
'a' interface options
'i' automatically display drop-down lists
and 't'oggle to yes.

[emulord]

Dwarf rogue is so far the easiest race/class I've found. My int is abysmal tho. min fail=20%

I dont see that option anywhere...

[buzzkill]

I hate having to hit * to see which item/spell to select. Can the game do that for me automatically?

There should be an option (unless it has been removed) to "always show lists" or something similar.

[Antoine]

Some UI suggestions:

I hate having to hit * to see which item/spell to select. Can the game do that for me automatically? Also in some *band hitting space doubled as * in that context, allowing item/spell use to be quicker. That would be useful too.

Also, sometimes I accidentally mispress a key and identify something that's already identified. Can this be disabled so I don't waste ID?

I hadn't planned to address UI issues in minimal - it's a direct knock off of the NPP UI which is generally pretty good. Feel free to pass comments on to the NPP guys though (or even better, patches!)

A.