A minimal band

[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...

[thapper]

Emulord: Try,

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

[emulord]

Thanks! Idk why I didnt see that.

[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]

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

[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.

[Antoine]

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

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]

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]

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.

[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?

[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.

[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

[thapper]

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 did not have the opportunity to try on scorpions or other fast critters, that might have been the difference...

[thapper]

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?

No I did not suffer from the absence of !restore life. You made it part of !healing in Minimal, right? That makes !healing even more valuable for non-hobbits.

A high level rogue is *very* stealthy, I like playing like that way so I don't think it is too much

But seriously, I could tiptoe around, picking up objects or one-hit killing monsters in a group without anything waking up. So perhaps it is too stealthy, and especially perhaps Minimal is too hard if you have no stealth. With the small levels you have to flee the level very often if you cannot kill everything that is around (I should write a comment about level size in the late game as well).

I'm having a CL25 elf mage character running right now with terrible stealth that flees from everything. I could dive down to ~DL20 but then all I would do is flee and I would have to rely on luck to find some good stuff on the ground in the short moments I stay on each level (a bit exaggerated, but basically that would be it). I have to stay much more shallow (~DL10) if I want to explore anything on the levels.