Halls of Mist is here!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Here's my thought. Keep things as they are now, you may pick up GP and keep 1/3 of it. Additionally, if you avoid collecting any of the GP on a given level (GP starting level <= GP leaving level), they you receive a divine bounty equal to 2/3 of the discovered GP you didn't pick up, upon either a) taking a down staircase or b) clearing (killing everything on) the level.

What do you mean with divine bounty? Just gold, or a special bonus of some kind?

EDIT: Ah, you mean 2/3 of the full amount of gold pieces. Meaning you would get double the gold when you didn't pick any. OK! But I think another kind of special bonus would be cooler. Ideas, anyone?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Halls of Mist 1.2.3

I'm pleased to announce yet another polishing & bugfixing version 1.2.3. This time we also have a cool new feature: charge attacks with large weapons!

The links in the first post have been updated. The executables for Windows, Max OS X (Intel Macs) and Linux are all now up-to-date.

This release came earlier than I anticipated because some work-related commitments got canceled. Have a nice weekend in the Halls of Mist!



Most important changes

• Large weapons (at least 17 lbs) may be used for charge attacks. After you move, if there is a monster right in front of you, you get to swing at it once. You can't charge at previously unseen monsters. You also can't charge at scared monsters because they are doing their best to keep away from you. If you hit and succeed in a Jumping skill check, the assault deals double damage! You're asked to confirm charging at a sleeping or calmed monster. Large weapons should now be genuinely competitive, and they also feel very different in play. It fits that Warriors are the best class at Jumping (at high level).
• Characters of non-faery races gain Escapes points at levels 15 and 35 as long as they as they are blessed by at least one goddess. This is how the goddesses protect their favorites. "A benevolent spirit carries you away." Note that you lose this power, like any other benefits gained from blessings, while tainted. (Inspired by Arjen's notes that Escapes is needed for surviving.)
• Alertness doesn't give bonus to AC anymore. It now gives +15 to Saving Throw and +30 to noticing traps, runes, and nearby invisible creatures.
• Resting doesn't recover HP and mana at double speed anymore. You may want to rest while moving to conserve your torch. (Thanks, buzzkill.)
• Reroll the stats if MEM is the spell stat and it got lower dice rolls than WIS, or vice versa. You can't roll a mage that has higher WIS than MEM anymore.
• Melee weapons are 14% more common. (Thanks Shinedog, Hallucinationmushroom, and others.)
• Monsters have more drops. 30% chance becomes 35%, 70% chance becomes 80%. Monsters that always have drops sometimes get an extra drop. Chance is 1d20 <= sure item drops.

Other changes

• Randomly generated up stairs are slightly rarer. The chance was 1/3, now 3/10.
• XP-bar is bigger, equal to the monster-HP bar. (Thanks, ekolis.)
• Renamed command: Tunnel a rubble/Topple a tree. Updated help on tunneling.
• The game now picks a large weapon as a starting weapon over other weapons with equal damage/turn.
• Disease rate slowed somewhat, from 1000 to 1500, thanks to Starhawk. It wasn't slowed by more than that thanks to buzzkill . Beware, disease will still ruin your stats unless you are prepared!
• Elves cannot be priests or shamans. Their WIS is just so bad compared to MEM. I want the random choices for class and race to produce competitive characters.
• Made starting weapons more interesting for people with average or somewhat above average STR. Awl-Pike weighs 15 lbs and deals 3d4 damage, up from 12 lbs and 3d3, it's a good weapon for warriors with 13 STR. Mace weighs 13 lbs and deals 3d3 damage, up from 10 lbs and 2d4, good for starting characters with 12 STR. Club gets new stats, it's now identical to the old Mace. Bullwhip is available to everybody at character creation, upgraded damage to 1d5 from 1d4. Upgraded Hatchet damage from 3d1 to 1d6, +1 lb to weight. Upgraded Shortspear damage from 2d2 to 2d3, +1 lb to weight.
• Player melee attacks that blind -- like the notorious light brand -- have a lower chance of success. The check was 1d100 > monster level, now it's 1d50 > monster level. Blinding also lasts for a shorter time. It's still very powerful against lower level opponents. (Thanks, Satyr.)
• Golden weapons weigh more.
• Lowered other special status chances for melee attacks, too, but not as much. Confusion 1d60 > monster level. Cut, Poison, Stun 1d70 > monster level. Many of these are possible results for critical hits.
• Any Y/n confirmations now default to yes when you just press enter.
• Removed all permanent walls from lesser vaults in vault.txt. They might hinder the tunnel generation.
• The !* inscription doesn't block two "harmless" commands, 'I'nspect and 'b'rowse. (Thanks, ekolis.)
• Running stops near interesting terrain. (Thanks, ekolis.)
• Search nearby squares every time the monster_swap function moves the player, not just when you walk. Now searching functions automatically even after Phase Door.
• Removed the search command and the searching mode.
• The Rapiers 'Careth Asdriag' and 'Forasgil' are somewhat rarer. People were finding Careth Asdriag all too often.
• Earthquake now creates rubble, not stone walls. It's now centered somewhere close to the player, not exactly at the player. The player can now actually get damaged by the earthquake.
• You can't find items under rubble anymore.
• Squelch Junk is no longer the default. Many items that cost 0 GP have some value in Halls of Mist: Shamans like bad mushrooms, everybody may use bad potions for mixing.
• No more birth options! I want to design a single game, and not to worry about many different game rules.
• Character dump only shows Cheat options. I don't think other options are interesting enough for dumps.
• Modified scoring a bit. Score is now equal to your experience points. The winner's score multiplier for shallow Min Depth now applies to experience points. You may easily rise to level 50 after killing The Duke, if you completed the mission quickly.
• Winners can't gain any more experience. They can regain lost experience, though.
• Also, I had forgotten to modify winner's score multiplier from low Min Depth when I changed The Duke's level from 50 to 48.
• Gaining experience levels is slower at first but faster at high levels. The table starts with a 1.3 multiplier and ends at 0.85. (Version 1.2.2 had a 1.1 multiplier all around.)
• Some name changes for devices: Wand of Soothing, Wand of Stunning, Wand of Transference, Staff of Detect Aura. (Thanks for the new names, buzzkill!)
• Rewritten the help file section on Winning the Game. (Thanks, buzzkill.)
• You may find the statue of the first winner, Arjen's Flashback the Elf Templar, in the dungeon.

Bugfixes

• Detect_doors had weird bahavior with secret doors in special walls.
• Detect_traps didn't detect inactive runes in walls.
• No message if an unseen monster gets blasted by a Rune of Change.
• Mushrooms of Cure Light Wounds were made of wrong material. (Thanks, buzzkill.)
• Staff of Eden was made of wrong material.
• Double blessings never ran out. (Thanks, Satyr and Arjen.)
• Templars could use Alertness. (I lost notes on who reported this, sorry.)
• Pressing 'n' in response to the to buying dialog resulted in a sale. Now using the standard y/n check. (Thanks, buzzkill.)
• Runes were revealed when unseen monsters got blasted by them.
• Entering many vaults was impossible. Two separate bugs: vault.txt didn't have doors, I added them. And my dungeon generation changed doors into walls. That's important in different context; I changed the rules so that doors can't get removed inside vaults. (Thanks, Arjen.)
• After killing the Duke the game could still end with Duke's world domination when Min Depth rose above 48. (Thanks, Arjen.)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Fast as lightning, Darin provides us an OS X executable for Intel Macs. See the first post for the download link.

[Scatha]

Oh, I remember I had a question:

Some days ago I lost a warrior to some Chaos Cockroaches. Even in retrospect, I can't quite see what I could have done to have a chance of surviving, so I'm wondering whether:
(i) There was something clever I could have done, either then or earlier
(ii) I was just particularly unlucky
(iii) They're systematically unfair (at least to warriors)

I'm kind of guessing it was some mix of (i) and (ii), but I'd like to find out.

What happened was, emerging into a dark room, something from off-screen breathed chaos and I lost some experience. I retreated, to let it come to me, as I had not idea it could be a breeder (this might be an element of (i)). Some of them came, and I could kill some, but by this time there were too many to eliminate. I would gladly have left the level, but the half I had explored had no staircases. I used my only scroll of teleport (I had been buying these whenever available) hoping to bypass them, but it kept me in known territory. At this point I seemed to be totally doomed, and indeed died a little later with no experience.

I suppose that part of the issue is the frequent treelike structure of the levels, which means that a small region can cut them in half. That means that if you want to avoid a region and its monsters altogether you can be in trouble if the component you're in is devoid of stairs.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Yup, Chaos Cocroaches sound unfair. One of those monsters that is much worse in Halls of Mist than what they were in EyAngband. They should be toned down a notch.

Should I avoid having speed 115 for monsters? At the moment the monsters are either 100 or 120. 115 would be a middle step between "equal to the player" and "double speed". Would it be hard for the player to understand and react to?

I changed Teleportation so that it puts the player to a completely random place on the level. Distance doesn't matter at all. Reading your post I realized that uncursed Rings of Teleportation might be surprisingly useful items in Halls of Mist...

I like the levels as they are now aesthetically. Dungeon features like faery portals and bushes make escaping monsters and moving around them somewhat easier than in Angband. That said, the treelike structure of levels is a matter that I'm going to pay attention to. If things looks bad, I'll could introduce something like "aether gates" or "secret tunnels" (situated underneath the rest of the dungeon level) to help the player move to distant areas.

More generally, I should just playtest deeper levels much more. While playtesting, I've concentrated most of my energy to levels 1-23 or so. I'm planning to hack the game to allow starting at level 24 with level-appropriate equipment. That sould make playtesting deeper levels much more fun and efficient.

[buzzkill]

I changed Teleportation so that it puts the player to a completely random place on the level. Distance doesn't matter at all. Reading your post I realized that uncursed Rings of Teleportation might be surprisingly useful items in Halls of Mist...

That's not going to work. Teleportation has always been about distance. To teleport and then still be in the same room, even if it rarely occurs, is a deal breaker. I'd say anywhere within the level except within LoS of previous location (or approximate hack). Warrior types aren't going to be carrying around a stack of teleport like in Angband, probably just one or two. They gotta work.

[buzzkill]

What's "presence"? just found an amulet +1.

Also, some balance observations (v122b).

My boring mage just cleared level 20 at cl19 with 44 max mana.
Haven't seen many uniques clearing or mostly clearing levels. AAMOF, 0 uniques killed. The few I have seen seemed too troublesome to kill.
I've only seen one ego weapon the whole game and 0 artifacts (and one bunch of ego arrows just recently).
No fountains at all this game and not much vegetation lately.
Only one or two alters up to this point and none lately (and never one I could use, no egos).
No vaults yet.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

That's not going to work. Teleportation has always been about distance. To teleport and then still be in the same room, even if it rarely occurs, is a deal breaker. I'd say anywhere within the level except within LoS of previous location (or approximate hack). Warrior types aren't going to be carrying around a stack of teleport like in Angband, probably just one or two. They gotta work.

OK! I'll put in a check to prevent teleporting a too short distance. My problem was the opposite: the distance seemed too short previously in the Mist-style dungeon. At the moment I think Teleport, on average, moves you further away than it used to.

The other problem was that Portal and Teleport seemed to have an almost identical effect. Now Portal is clearly for medium distances and Teleport for long distances.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

What's "presence"? just found an amulet +1.

That's the sixth stat.

I've only seen one ego weapon the whole game and 0 artifacts (and one bunch of ego arrows just recently).

Good. Then 1.2.3 is a move in a right direction. More base weapons means more egos. Much better heavy weapons should help, too.

(BTW, in Mist an ego weapon can often be worse than an out-of-depth nonmagical weapon. These should be now more common, too.)

No fountains at all this game and not much vegetation lately.
Only one or two altars up to this point and none lately (and never one I could use, no egos).
No vaults yet.

Vaults come later. That's why I hadn't noticed the ugly bugs in my playtesting. Please update to 1.2.3 before you descend to vault-depth!

I could keep count of the generated rooms, and boost the probabilities for styles that are the least frequently used in the current game. Should I?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

My boring mage

Fixing this is my number one priority at the moment. Subconciously I've been preferring to play non-spellcasters and semi-spellcasters, so I think I agree with your statement. Thanks for bringing the issue to my conscious mind. We can continue the discussion (and playtesting reports once I've created a special version of the game for that purpose) in the Ironband Mana thread.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

OK! I'll put in a check to prevent teleporting a too short distance. My problem was the opposite: the distance seemed too short previously in the Mist-style dungeon. At the moment I think Teleport, on average, moves you further away than it used to.

No, I misremembered, at least partly. The real problem was that the original Teleport wanted to keep the distance constant. In Mist-style dungeons that often led to repeated teleports between two rooms. If you ended up in a second tight spot, reading a second scroll often wouldn't help any.

[ekolis]

Is it normal that Elnora never attacks (despite her description that she's willing to kill) and just hops around and occasionally tries to steal from you?

[ekolis]

Also, Elnora dropped a copper rod, but when I zapped it it said I wasted a charge. However it remained purple in my inventory and didn't say {charging}!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Is it normal that Elnora never attacks (despite her description that she's willing to kill) and just hops around and occasionally tries to steal from you?

Hmm, flavour doesn't match. I'll give her a slingshot or something.

Also, Elnora dropped a copper rod, but when I zapped it it said I wasted a charge. However it remained purple in my inventory and didn't say {charging}!

Noted. Thanks!

[wobbly]

Noticed a small bug today, an invisible monster hopped onto a table & the square displayed as open door.