Halls of Mist is here!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I made a quick lock picking test to ensure it isn't broken. I succeeded with both of the locks that I tried with a 39% Perception.

[Starhawk]

It's a pure 1d100 <= Perception roll.

In the beginning of the game Rogue's Perception isn't that high, but it's the only class that improves Perception with experience.

Maybe your Wisdom is too low? In the stat range 5-15 even a single point of Wisdom is quite important for Perception. It's tuned so that beginning characters will have very different skills scores based on their stats.

The +25 Alertness bonus doesn't help here! It's only for finding traps and noticing invisible creatures.

Even then my rogues are in the 50-60% range of Perception most of the time. Still haven't opened one of these rooms. The level messages are taunting me... I know there must be ego items behind the doors. Then I could try out those altars.... aaaaargh.

Might be an interesting use of lore points for the rogue to either auto-master a single lock/trap/rune... or to 'reset' his opportunities to master those things throughout the level.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Considering I haven't seen any gear worth mentioning yet, and I'm usually spending all my gold on stat-restore/uncurse/etc, yeah. 4AC plus the other benefits is at least marginally more helpful than a single identify per level.

Maybe Alertness shouldn't grant AC bonus at all, but bigger bonuses to trap detection and saving throw. I'd like it more if it was an option for special situations, not an automatic play.

I think disease takes away stat points FAR too quickly.

Agreed. I'll tune it down.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

On another note, what's up with treasure room doors?

Even with a rogue with Alertness enabled, with really nice Perception, I have never, ever, ever managed to pick one of the locks. This is driving me batty.

It's a pure 1d100 <= Perception roll.

In the beginning of the game Rogue's Perception isn't that high, but it's the only class that improves Perception with experience.

Maybe your Wisdom is too low? In the stat range 5-15 even a single point of Wisdom is quite important for Perception. It's tuned so that beginning characters will have very different skills scores based on their stats.

The +25 Alertness bonus doesn't help here! It's only for finding traps and noticing invisible creatures.

[Starhawk]

On another note, what's up with treasure room doors?

Even with a rogue with Alertness enabled, with really nice Perception, I have never, ever, ever managed to pick one of the locks. This is driving me batty.

[Starhawk]

+4 to AC isn't that helpful by itself, or is it?

Considering I haven't seen any gear worth mentioning yet, and I'm usually spending all my gold on stat-restore/uncurse/etc, yeah. 4AC plus the other benefits is at least marginally more helpful than a single identify per level.

What's so bad about hallucinations? Just Rest and they're gone.

I'm used to playing through them, because in Vanilla they don't last very long. ~500 turns is what I'm noticing in Mists. Which is fine I guess, if you're in a safe place to rest that long and you're not sweating it on torchturns...

Carrying a Potion of Cure Disease is probably a good strategy even if you don't take Potions of Disease into account.

Yeah, I wish I had that luxury. My Templar managed to get whacked by a disease-carrying monster in the first couple rooms of DL1. Just in finishing out the level, I've lost eight stat points to the disease. Not only that, I didn't find enough gold in the level to buy a cure. So I'm going to have to suicide the character. I think disease takes away stat points FAR too quickly.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Townspeople seem a bit off in their races/classes - there's a "highborn" race which is not available for players, and the mages and spellswords are casting magic missiles, not fire/ice bolts!

Highborn isn't a race, it's a social class. Most persons from Skultgard are humans.

Yeah, fire/ice bolts would be more interesting...

Instead of making bad mushrooms squelch fodder, how about letting them be used in alchemy?

Hmm, possibly. In the meantime, I'm going to add a couple of very good mushrooms to the mix, to make mushrooms more identify-worthy.

I found a locked door not IN the wall of a room but NEXT to it, just inside the room... that seemed rather meaningless!

Sometimes things like that happen, hopefully only rarely. Dungeon generation seems to require an endless list of fixes for special cases.

[ekolis]

I found a locked door not IN the wall of a room but NEXT to it, just inside the room... that seemed rather meaningless!

[ekolis]

Instead of making bad mushrooms squelch fodder, how about letting them be used in alchemy?

[ekolis]

Townspeople seem a bit off in their races/classes - there's a "highborn" race which is not available for players, and the mages and spellswords are casting magic missiles, not fire/ice bolts!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Not really, but then again I'm stuck under CL15. I end up needing Alertness as my first move in most levels just to stay alive -- especially since I'm under pressure to make every level count, clear everything, and go ever deeper whether I find useful gear or not. (Generally, not.)

Sometimes Identify aids survival more than Alertness, I think? Consumables are generally quite powerful and they come in stacks. Knowing their use might save your life. I tend to put Alertness on when I see big, trapped rooms or when I need Saving Throw against tough spellcasters. +4 to AC isn't that helpful by itself, or is it?

I'm keeping my eye on the Lore mechanic. Maybe I can find a way to make the Identify/Alertness choice more interesting.

Meanwhile I find myself wishing for identification, because pulling a potion of disease or a mushroom of hallucination by random tasting sucks a LOT worse than in vanilla. But I've never had a character with more than one Lore point and have never been able to afford an Identify scroll (too busy buying Remove Curse, Cure Disease, etc, etc).

There are some tactics involved in tasting potions and mushrooms. A Circle of Lifeforce acts as a nice antidote against many or even most bad potions and mushrooms, making tasting them much safer.

What's so bad about hallucinations? Just Rest and they're gone.

Carrying a Potion of Cure Disease is probably a good strategy even if you don't take Potions of Disease into account.

[ekolis]

Interesting... would not have thought of gnomes as psychotic killers! I guess it's the quiet ones they don't suspect?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Huh, sorry about that. I reduced the number of known spells -- there's less but more useful spells in books. Didn't think that would happen.

Yeah, I was just going say before your edit that gnomes do know how to make killer melee weapons. You should try a gnome warrior with 14 strength sometime.

[ekolis]

Am I just getting really unlucky with stats sometimes, or are mages not always supposed to be able to start out capable of learning a spell at level 1? (This time I'm a gnome, who even has a MEM bonus!) Kind of hard to survive when you have no way to kill anything... :P

edit: oh, wait, this gnomish hatchet should make short work of low level enemies! 3 blows for guaranteed 3 damage apiece? Whee!

[Starhawk]

Thanks!

Speaking of Alertness... I tried to make Identify and Alertness compete with each other, so that the player would have to make a hard choice every dungeon level. Is it working for you?

Not really, but then again I'm stuck under CL15. I end up needing Alertness as my first move in most levels just to stay alive -- especially since I'm under pressure to make every level count, clear everything, and go ever deeper whether I find useful gear or not. (Generally, not.)

Meanwhile I find myself wishing for identification, because pulling a potion of disease or a mushroom of hallucination by random tasting sucks a LOT worse than in vanilla. But I've never had a character with more than one Lore point and have never been able to afford an Identify scroll (too busy buying Remove Curse, Cure Disease, etc, etc).

I very much like the auto-identify on weapons and armor. That makes up for it a bit. At least consumables are a little more of a fun choice. Do I risk it, or do I carry this crap around for a while longer?