Halls of Mist 1.3.0

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I checked the code on alchemy skill checks. No problems; and id is working just fine for my bear with 30+ alchemy. It's just that with a handful of players there's always one who gets really unlucky.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Berserk underpowered, hmm? I guess it depends on your melee weapon. It more than doubles damage per round for my warrior, good for killing uniques.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Berserk combat bonuses apply to ambush chance, too. It's an awesome combo with distracting powder vials.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Halls of Mist 1.3.1

The bugfix release 1.3.1 is now available! I updated the download links in the first post.

Changes:

• A great overhaul for the dungeon generation! I stormed all the places where bugs loved to hide.
• The player always starts near walls. That's a more logical place for an up staircase (if you get one), and also a bit safer place to start.
• All cul-de-sacs now have either stairs or faery portals. Faery portals are a bit more common, but I didn't change the numbers for staircases. There are still two down staircases and a 30% chance for an up staircase.
• The two guaranteed down staircases can't be near each other. This should make escaping tough levels easier.
• Similarly, faery portals can't be next to each other.
• Phantasm clock tightened. "Mist-die" still starts at 1d250, but the game now rolls 1d900 (not 1d1000) every turn when trying to remove one side from the Mist die. You now roll the Mist die *twice*, and if either of the rolls is 1, you get a phantasm. (Thanks buzzkill and Starhawk.)
• Mana cost of Holy Sigil reduced from 15 to 2. Mana cost of Glyph of Warding reduced from 55 to 5. (Thanks, Scatha.)
• Bugfix: Scroll of Lore gets properly identified when read. (Thanks, Starhawk.)
• Show only two (different) messages about torches running low on fuel: at 100 fuel and at 10 fuel. (Thanks, buzzkill.)
• Summon scrolls and Circles of Summoning now summon real monsters. Returned them to the original monster level. (Thanks, Starhawk and Scatha.)
• The faeries you get from Fountains of Summon Faeries are real.
• Wizard mode summon monsters also summons real monsters.
• Summon scroll are somewhat rarer and come in stacks of 1d2 instead of 1d3.
• Everybody now leaps instead of hopping. (Thanks, buzzkill.)
• Resting doesn't have options "rest for SP" or "rest for both SP and HP" anymore. (Thanks, ekolis.)
• Hitpoints are now generated non-randomly.
• +2 bonus hit points to everyone at first level! (In total, everyone gets +5 bonus hit points at first level, compared to Angband.)
• Mage gets +3 to Perception. He's pretty good at it.
• Rings of Mana are much shallower, 32 -> 20.
• Wand of Magic Missile is slightly more common and slightly more expensive. One less charge on average. Made it positively tricky to use for beginning characters, more difficult than Wand of Slow Monster. Damage increased from 2d6 to 2d10. It's a treat to characters with a high Magic Device skill.
• Wand of Stinking Cloud is slightly more difficult to use.
• Elemental attack wands have a bigger chance of appearing on shallow levels.
• Wand of Harpoon starts with an extra damage die. (They depend on player level.)
• Many deep devices are slightly less deep.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Wand of Magic Missile is slightly more common and slightly more expensive. One less charge on average. Made it positively tricky to use for beginning characters, more difficult than Wand of Slow Monster. Damage increased from 2d6 to 2d10. It's a treat to characters with a high Magic Device skill.

This change is probably relevant in the competition. The three spellswords have wildly different scores in Magic Device.

[buzzkill]

Feature request: DaJ does this and it works nicely, meaning mostly that I like it. Unmoving monsters (death swords for example) should be permanently mapped once their location is known. This will prevent idiots like me from forgetting where they were, and walking into them a second time.

Bug: Monsters sleeping in direct line of a rune's ray are not affected by it when the rune is triggered by another monster. Perhaps monsters shouldn't be allowed to be placed (asleep) in line with an active rune.

[buzzkill]

I just had an idea. if you want to encourage fighting in rooms and fighting multiple enemies at once, give a bonus of some sort for killing multiple enemies, I guess two would be the max (with melee), in a single turn. Maybe additional bonus for killing 2 when surrounded by 7. Seems to me that fighting in corridors is almost always preferable, even with pushovers.

Bonus could be chance to swing at a third (and thus adding to the bonus), XP bonus, GP bonus, drop bonus, or lore point recovery (maybe berserk).

[Patashu]

Feature request: DaJ does this and it works nicely, meaning mostly that I like it. Unmoving monsters (death swords for example) should be permanently mapped once their location is known. This will prevent idiots like me from forgetting where they were, and walking into them a second time.

Unrelated, but this is something I would like for Sil and its violet molds

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I just had an idea. if you want to encourage fighting in rooms and fighting multiple enemies at once, give a bonus of some sort for killing multiple enemies, I guess two would be the max (with melee), in a single turn. Maybe additional bonus for killing 2 when surrounded by 7. Seems to me that fighting in corridors is almost always preferable, even with pushovers.

"Almost always preferable" is probably exaggeration. It's very beneficial to fight on tables and platforms, and ambushing sleeping monsters happens almost always in rooms. In the new versions, charging with a heavy weapon is much easier in rooms. Fighting in a room also saves you some time.

Your ideas are fun, but I'm mostly happy with the balance now. The biggest reason why I wanted to move fights into rooms were the new terrain features, and I think they are pretty interesting now. I don't mind that corridor-fighting is still a good tactic.

I do have an idea for a new monster special ability: tunnel-fighter. I'd probably give it to worms, and to some humanoids that are used to underground-fighting. Tunnel-fighters get a big defense bonus in corridors.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Feature request: DaJ does this and it works nicely, meaning mostly that I like it. Unmoving monsters (death swords for example) should be permanently mapped once their location is known. This will prevent idiots like me from forgetting where they were, and walking into them a second time.

Good idea. I had one character killed by Escaping into a Death Sword that I had forgotten was there.

Bug: Monsters sleeping in direct line of a rune's ray are not affected by it when the rune is triggered by another monster. Perhaps monsters shouldn't be allowed to be placed (asleep) in line with an active rune.

Hmm, perhaps.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

What does the Berserk proficiency do for me?

EDIT: Never mind, I see it's just like the potion -- woefully underpowered considering it takes away my ability to Recover!!!!

I'm having second thoughts on this -- you're probably right. Now that healing has been boosted, Recover is better than Berserk. I should probably buff the healing power of Berserk Strength.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Starhawk, you would probably like it if both abilities of Circle of Knowledge -- Identify Pack and Fully Identify -- worked automatically, without an Alchemy skill check? But either of them would require two identify points to use.

Alchemy skill is already required in drawing the circle. It's annoying for stupid characters that it requires additional skill rolls to use the abilities.

Just like you said. I seem to have lots of second thoughts today...

[Starhawk]

Starhawk, you would probably like it if both abilities of Circle of Knowledge -- Identify Pack and Fully Identify -- worked automatically, without an Alchemy skill check? But either of them would require two identify points to use.

Alchemy skill is already required in drawing the circle. It's annoying for stupid characters that it requires additional skill rolls to use the abilities.

Just like you said. I seem to have lots of second thoughts today...

Yes, considering how hard it is for a stupid character to get a Circle of Knowledge to begin with -- and how hard it is to identify anything through regular means, if you're bad at Alchemy -- some sort of auto-ID somewhere in the game would be wonderful.

Another feature request: I'd like to be able to <T>rample vegetation in addition to Toppling trees and Tunneling through rubble.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Some brainstorming for redesigned stats and skills:

Strength (STR)
   Forceful Shot	carrying capacity
   Parry		maximum weapon weight
   Pierce		maximum armor weight for jumping bonuses
Dexterity (DEX)
   Jumping		maximum blows per round
   Snapshot
   Slash
Hunter Instinct* (HUN)
   Ambush		infravision
   Perception
   Stealth
Intelligence (INT)
   Alchemy		known spells and fail rates
   Navigation		ritual magic
   Magic Resistance
Aura (AUR)
   Magic Device		spell range
   Presence**		ritual magic

[* when reduced: "you feel tamed".]
[** haggling, check for doubling the duration of calm and fear effects]

[ekolis]

No more CON? So hitpoints are detemined solely by race, class, and level?

edit: I also think Hunter Instinct is a rather silly sounding name for a stat... maybe just call it Instinct (INS), and rename Intelligence to Schooling (as in Steamband) to avoid confusion with the abbreviations?