Halls of Mist is here!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

My cousin sort of promised to sketch an image for the "cover" of the manual. Knowing her style, it will probably be The Thin White Duke about to sacrifice a virgin to the demons of Aether.

Actually that would be even better with a female grippli (frogman) rogue sneaking in the background, about to ambush the Duke... Classic pulp fantasy magazine cover.

[pav]

Ladder now accepts Halls of Mist dumps. Enjoy.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Thanks, pav!

Shapeshifted characters will probably enter the ladder as "Harpy Mage" or something like that, but let's call that a feature rather than a bug, shall we.

I already did one and submitted it

A perfect news item, thanks. Good idea to link to the development blog. Even though it doesn't have much content it serves as a soft introduction to the setting.

[Narvius]

Please, please tell me shapeshifting is NOT permanent. ;_;

Repeated RoC blastings have no additional effects. :/

Also, killed on Level 5 by a Death Sword. I went from full HP to several wounds in one move. oO

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Please, please tell me shapeshifting is NOT permanent. ;_;

Both shapeshifting and temporary blessings from goddesses last at least for the current dungeon level and the next dungeon level. (Town doesn't count.) After that, every time you take the stairs down, there's a 50% chance of returning to your original form.

The other common way to shapeshift besides getting blasted by the Rune of Change is by (q)uaffing from a fountain. You may decide to only drink from fountains you manage to identify with a successful Perception roll when walking next to them. If you make your roll, look at the fountain to see what it does.

The player is supposed to know the effects of various forms, so that you can make educated decisions. However, there's no documentation about them anywhere yet.

Repeated RoC blastings have no additional effects. :/

Rune of Change? Took a moment to decipher that. Yes, you're right. That way Rune of Change feels more like a trap and less like an utility magic device...

Repeated blasts from the rune do work on monsters, though.

Also, killed on Level 5 by a Death Sword. I went from full HP to several wounds in one move. oO

I tend to play with the visible monsters subwindow open. It reveals mimics but it probably should not. It's not fair for the player that subwindows affect how nasty monsters are.

[Narvius]

It was in a corridor. I had only range 1 lighting. It was more a case of a random "screw you" from the RNG (helped by my unpreparedness, of course).

In other news, Halls of Mist is fun.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Shapes

Harpy
Speed +5, DEX +5, WIS -5, PRE -5. Flies over obstacles. Does not have these item slots: melee weapon, bow, rings, body armor, cloak, shield, gloves, boots. (If you have items in these slots when transforming, you drop them.) Unarmed damage Xd3 (claws) instead of the normal Xd2.

Angel
Speed +2, DEX +2, WIS +5, PRE +5. Flies over obstacles. May not wear body armor or cloak.

Ape
STR +5, CON +2, MEM -5, PRE -2, Jumping +25.

Naga
Speed -2, MEM +5, STR +2, Stealth +5, Jumping -25. May not wear boots. Unarmed damage Xd4 (crush) instead of the normal Xd2.

Statue
Speed -5, CON +5, PRE +2, Jumping -25, Armor +25, all resists +25.

Faun
MEM -2, WIS +2, CON +2. May not wear a helmet or boots.

Goblin
Speed +2, DEX +2, STR -2, MEM -2, WIS -2, CON -2, PRE -2.

Ghoul
Speed -1, STR -1, MEM -1, WIS -1, DEX -1, CON -1, PRE -1.

All shapes are possible when getting blasted by a Rune of Change. The first five shapes are possible fountains effects. Some shapes are available as potions, also, but I don't remember which ones.

Both shapeshifting and temporary blessings from goddesses last at least for the current dungeon level and the next dungeon level. (Town doesn't count.) After that, every time you take the stairs down, there's a 50% chance of returning to your original form.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

It was in a corridor. I had only range 1 lighting. It was more a case of a random "screw you" from the RNG (helped by my unpreparedness, of course).

Enchanted Torch (somewhat expensive) would have saved you. It's a tough item to evaluate -- how much are you willing to pay to be save from jellies and death swords, and to get the other benefits of bigger light radius?

In other news, Halls of Mist is fun.

Good to hear.

[Narvius]

Frankly, I've found that after the first three levels or so, switching to exclusively use Enchanted Torches isn't much of a problem.

The thing with the magic circles is brilliant, by the way.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Thanks to Darin for the Mac port!

The Halls of Mist "Mac port" is really an XQuartz/X11 port for Mac, not a true OS X port.

One way to use the executable is to open a terminal, navigate to the Halls of Mist folder and type:

./angband

These two posts will give you more hints on how to use the executables.

[Timo Pietilä]

Ghoul
Speed -1, STR -1, MEM -1, WIS -1, DEX -1, CON -1, PRE -1.

Others count as different species, but IMO ghoul does not. In angband it is just one kind of undead, so it feels like it should not belong in species category. OTOH it does count as one kind of demon according to wikipedia.

Not knowing what is possible in HoM may I suggest replacing that with imp or similar lesser (traditional) demon. Maybe homunculus?

[getter77]

I would vote on removing all the outdated ingame help outright in the interim and focus on getting the manual in good shape then the fresh ingame help ASAP----many players like to learn and wrangle in-game as opposed to messing about with Alt-Tab madness between windows/don't have dual monitors/etc.

For flavour, I'd recommend doing a novel take on it along the lines that Triangle Wizard has with the ingame Trianglopedia. http://trianglewizard.webs.com/apps/blog/ If there was ever a project where fanciful pomp applied to the in-game help made sense...this has got to be one.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

With some magic we could easily have all kinds of documentation formats.

If in-game help files were written in markdown format, which is designed to be perfectly human-readable, I could write a script that transforms these into another format better suited for Scribus (open source DTP app).

I've already written a Python script that generates web-pages out of markdown-formatted text files in folders.

BTW, I prefer the pdf manual mostly because it's perfect for the big attribute tables.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Others count as different species, but IMO ghoul does not. In angband it is just one kind of undead, so it feels like it should not belong in species category. OTOH it does count as one kind of demon according to wikipedia.

Not knowing what is possible in HoM may I suggest replacing that with imp or similar lesser (traditional) demon. Maybe homunculus?

All but one of them are species but they wouldn't need to be. They don't replace your racial bonuses; lizardman apes are stronger than gnome apes. But you're probably right, it would be better for them all to be species for aesthetic reasons.

Homunculus sounds like it should have good Memory and a large bonus to Alchemy skill, but penalties to everything else. After all, in the stories they are often Alchemists' familiars.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Hmm. Monsters that infect you with lycanthropy or ghoul plague could easily be handled with temporary shapes. If you were already in another shape, you would be immune.