Halls of Mist is here!

[ekolis]

I encountered Wormtongue, Agent of Saruman in my game. I thought you took out all the Tolkien monsters?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I encountered Wormtongue, Agent of Saruman in my game. I thought you took out all the Tolkien monsters?

I haven't had time to remove/rename them all yet. For Wormy it will be just a renaming. Flavour texts need work, too.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

BTW, if anyone wants to contribute new names or flavour texts or images for the upcoming PDF manual, feel free! Halls of Mist's world is No Myth, meaning that nothing about the world that isn't already written in the game has been decided.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I just created a proper roguebasin page for the game. Much self-praise but still no pretty screenshots.

[Starhawk]

Getting roflstomped in town before I even had a chance to buy equipment was pretty disheartening on my first play.

If I'm the hero that's going to save the world, you'd think these ungrateful Novice Spellswords would back off a bit...

[Mikko Lehtinen]

The Thin White Duke is smarter than Morgoth. He sends sellswords to kill the hero before he levels up.

Using the (p)roficiency Alertness as your first move helps a bit. And the player has a Scroll of Phase door and a healing potion for purpose.

I often try to buy a short bow and arrows before too many enemies notice me. Or if the weapons shop is too far, I'll buy anything that might help, like armor or a powder vial.

[jujuben]

There's also an option to auto-shop in character generation. No choice of gear, as you start with 0 gold instead, but if the default for your race/class is OK with you, this might make those first couple fights a bit more even.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

There's also an option to auto-shop in character generation. No choice of gear, as you start with 0 gold instead, but if the default for your race/class is OK with you, this might make those first couple fights a bit more even.

Oops, I've broken the option. You'll be better off without the auto-shop option! (With auto-shop you trade a Potion of Cure Serious Wounds, some wooden torches and all your gold to an Enchanted Torch and a cloak.)

Everybody starts with a good pretty good melee weapon (excluding Mystics), some armor, a bonus item depending on the class, some torches, a Scroll of Phase Door, and a Potion of Cure Serious Wounds. Plus some gold.

All the bugs so far have corcerned non-default options or commands that I don't use. I've tuned the defaults for myself and played with them a lot, fixing every bug I've encountered... Good to have new players!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Heh, a cursed Ring of Teleportation and Circle of Nexus is a funny combination. (I always teleport to the circle which happens to be near a kobold army. I tried to make a Circle of Illusions to help against Mughash, but Nexus was what I got.)

Another cool combination is Circle of Nexus + Wand of Harpoon. The low-level wand essentially becomes a Wand of Teleport Other. (Wand of Harpoon is a modified Wand of Call Forth that also damages and stuns the monster.)

Ah, and a Wand of Swap Places will turn into Teleport Other, too. It's a cool device that I would like to see in other variants, too. (Very simple to code.)

Staff of Eden is another new magic item that actually proves useful in my battle against the Imperial Kobold Army. When used, it temporarily blesses you and protects from evil, fire and cold.

[Starhawk]

Has the <B>ash command been removed? If I fail to pick a lock, I'm out of luck. I think that screwed me out of a treasure room....

edit: I like the short combat messages, but they are just a little too short. I'd at least like to know what I'm swinging at, in case I didn't <l>ook at the creature first.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Has the <B>ash command been removed? If I fail to pick a lock, I'm out of luck. I think that screwed me out of a treasure room....

No bashing doors, and just one try to pick a lock (Perception check). The treasure rooms are also teleportation-proof, and you can't mine through a stone wall.

The dungeon generation is tweaked so that it is not necessary to pick any lock.

Invest in Wisdom if you want to raise your Perception! That's the main benefit of Wisdom in the game. There are lots of other uses for Perception; mainly you will find more stuff.

If you do manage to pick a lock, you may open and close the locked door as often as you choose. Most monsters will have a really hard time getting through the door. Use this to your advantage. (Yesterday I locked Wormtongue inside a treasure room and Phase Doored away...)

There are a couple of ways to enter the treasure rooms if lock picking fails. There's a wand that blasts walls (and golems!) into deadly shards, and another wand that destroys doors and traps. Depending on your class, you may need to invest in Presence to raise your Magic Device skill high enough to use these wands successfully... Otherwise you will just waste most of the charges.

edit: I like the short combat messages, but they are just a little too short. I'd at least like to know what I'm swinging at, in case I didn't <l>ook at the creature first.

The short combat messages were coded in a burst of rage against the message flood. I'm sure they can be improved.

EDIT: Have you tried using the visible monsters subwindow? I always play with it, and almost never miss the longer messages. There should probably be an option for longer messages for people who don't use the visible monsters subwindow...

[Narvius]

May I suggest "You strike <direction, ie. "north">"? or something like that? It should prove useful when you multi-attack different opponents (which, as far as I can see, is possible).

[Mikko Lehtinen]

It already tells you the name of the second monster you attack in a turn.

Here's example messages after player melee attack, with another enemy at melee range:

"Hit. Hit. You have slain the Black Harpy. Welcome to level 4. --more--
You hit the Headless. Ouch."

[Mikko Lehtinen]

To clarify a bit, the game doesn't bother reporting any misses, either the player's or monsters'.

BTW, based on my playtesting, attacking two monsters per turn has achieved what I wanted: to move combats from corridors to rooms. Jumping on tables, hopping over bushes, fighting while protected by a magical circle - rooms are much more fun than corridors.

[Narvius]

I had an idea.

Introducing early-game challenges - like a graveyard full of slightly OOD skeletons, who will flood the player given the chance - but with a higher chance for magic circles on the level.

An orc "dining room" - rows of tables, columns and... well, orcs (who are bad at jumping, IIRC?).

Basically things that force you to use the more creative aspects of the game early on, as practice for the later depths.