Thread about the best variants

[Egavactip]

Is there a thread about the best Angband variants, or where people can mention their favorite(s)? I looked but did not find such an animal.

[debo]

I'm sort of new here, but from what I can tell, the notion of "best variant" is a very individual thing The audience for each variant is already so small that I'm guessing that you'll find 3-4 people who are fiercely loyal to a variant, and then a bunch of people who don't care about it much at all. (Most of those loyalists were very likely to have been involved themselves in the development of that variant!)

My personal favorites so far (aside from Vanilla itself) are SteamBand and Sil. Sil is really, unbelievably awesome for a roguelike, in my opinion.

I'm hoping to try Chengband in the near future!

[emulord]

Z(+)angband if you're looking for silliness.
(Re)Posband for flavorfully playing as monsters. Pets is done pretty well
Older ToME is fun because of unbalanced Alchemy, berzerking, or sorcery.
MAngband if you wanna kill internet dragons.
Angband for a standard gaming experience. Make sure the version isnt ludicrously easy. 3.0x is good. 2.x has too poor UI.
Anything else if you're bored.

Google roguebasin and play some random roguelikes also

[Nick]

FAangband.

[Antoine]

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=4237

[buzzkill]

DAJ is the only one on my list that hasn't been mentioned already.

[chris]

faangband.

+1

[emulord]

I forgot to mention hengband. Its like Z, but with less silliness and more difficulty. Good if you want mutations, pillardancing to NOT work, Pokeballs, wilderness, arena, fixed quests, gambling, more races/classes...... Oh and a lot more high level uniques with manastorm :O

[ThunderToads]

I forgot to mention hengband. Its like Z, but with less silliness

LESS silliness? Really?

[nppangband]

DAJ is the only one on my list that hasn't been mentioned already.

How about the variant you just spent 3 months drawing tiles for?

[Fendell Orcbane]

I have only played Faangband,Sil and NPP and they all have their good points. Right now I'm in the Npp tournament so I guess I haven't "really" played NPP, but I like what I see. But Faangband is great for someone that wants a more challenging band experience that is a bit involved than V is. Sil is really great as well but is like the Sword and Sorcery version of V in that its very low magic and pretty much no escapes. But its pretty cool once you get the hang of it and the play is pretty transparent as well. If I knew more code I'd make a longer game based off its "engine" so to speak, maybe something based on the Lone Wolf books or something.

[Egavactip]

What variant has the most "depth" to it?

[ekolis]

I forgot to mention hengband. Its like Z, but with less silliness and more difficulty. Good if you want mutations, pillardancing to NOT work, Pokeballs, wilderness, arena, fixed quests, gambling, more races/classes...... Oh and a lot more high level uniques with manastorm :O

Don't forget Chengband, an offshoot of Hengband which is still under active development!

http://code.google.com/p/chengband/

[Derakon]

What variant has the most "depth" to it?

ToME 2 had dungeon levels in the several hundreds, if I recall correctly. Deep enough for you?

As far as strategic/tactical depth though, that's harder to quantify. There's a lot of variants with a lot of detail out there.

[Malak Darkhunter]

I have only played Faangband,Sil and NPP and they all have their good points. Right now I'm in the Npp tournament so I guess I haven't "really" played NPP, but I like what I see. But Faangband is great for someone that wants a more challenging band experience that is a bit involved than V is. Sil is really great as well but is like the Sword and Sorcery version of V in that its very low magic and pretty much no escapes. But its pretty cool once you get the hang of it and the play is pretty transparent as well. If I knew more code I'd make a longer game based off its "engine" so to speak, maybe something based on the Lone Wolf books or something.

I loved the lone wolf books, sadly they seem to slowly be forgotten over time, can't hardly find anything on the world of magnamund anymore, that would be a good variant, wielding the summerswerd, and defeating the god at the end, who was that evil god you fight at the last book? was his name Chaos?