Halls of Mist 1.3.2

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Yay, 1000th post!

Also yay, Halls of Mist 1.3.2 is here!

• Windows executable
• OS X executable, courtesy of Darin (see here for some help)
• 64-bit Linux executable (runs fine on Debian and Ubuntu)
• Source.

I'm now using Mercurial, which makes coding faster and more enjoyable. The source package is actually a zipped Mercurial repository, meaning that it includes a hidden .hg folder. Halls of Mist doesn't have an online repository yet, but if you want to contribute patches, we can easily work something out.

Derakon, thanks for recommending Mercurial! It's also perfect for many of my non-coding projects, and there's a lovely book that makes learning Mercurial a breeze.

I'm too tired at the moment to create a change list that makes sense... A couple of notes will have to do for now. I just want to get this more polished Halls of Mist out, quickly!

Notable changes:

• Lots of bugfixes. I combed through all reports here on oook, and I think I managed to fix everything (?).
• Lots of balance problems fixed. Most importantly, Spellswords and Absorb Hit tuned down. Semi-spellcasters have less mana.
• Mist phantasms start appearing sooner, and they are always awake.
• All torches have only 2000 turns of fuel, like the basic Wooden Torch. Torches are somewhat lighter.
• The Circle of Knowledge abilities -- Identify Pack and Fully Identify - always work, but you need to spend two identify points to use them. Also, the weak Scroll of Lore is gone, and Scroll of Identify is back. (It is quite expensive, though.)
• You become acclimatized to the Mist when you spend multiple dungeon levels underground. When you take the stairs down in the dungeons, you receive a randomly chosen skill bonus to Perception, Spell Save or Stealth. You can only get each bonus once -- after three down staircases in the dungeons you are have gone "native" and have the full bonuses. If you return to the surface you lose the bonuses. (Basic idea by Derakon.)
• Berserk Rage now heals 45% of wounds + 15 hits, makes you immune to fear, gives free action and extra blow, and doubles thrown damage. That's all. (Free Action was Magnate's idea.) Rage doesn't gives bonuses to hit anymore; to compensate, Bless and Heroism give bigger bonuses.
• 'R'esting now waits for 50 turns or until you are fully healed. Hit the button repeatably if you need to. (Thanks, buzzkill.)
• All resistance bonuses are capped at 60%. With temporary bonuses they can rise up to 90%. No weird exceptions.
• The maximum stack size is now 30.

A big thank you to everybody who has provided feedback! Without it, Halls of Mist wouldn't be half as good a game.

[Derakon]

Derakon, thanks for recommending Mercurial! It's also perfect for many of my non-coding projects, and there's a lovely book that makes learning Mercurial a breeze.

Hooray, I'm not the only one here who likes Mercurial! I'm glad you're finding it useful, and indeed, source control can be used for more than just coding projects.

Congrats on the new release, and on your 1000th post.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

• Mist phantasms start appearing sooner, and they are always awake.
• All torches have only 2000 turns of fuel, like the basic Wooden Torch. Torches are somewhat lighter.
• 'R'esting now waits for 50 turns or until you are fully healed. Hit the button repeatably if you need to. (Thanks, buzzkill.)

I want to highlight these three innocent little changes. I may have got the two clocks, torches and mist phantasms, balanced right in this version: tight enough, but not depressingly tight.

• Healing takes time. It's a good idea to be tactically alert at every fight, even against monsters that are not life-threatening, just to conserve your hitpoints.
• Unlike in Angband, it's not an automatic decision to heal to full hitpoints after every battle. You heal at the same speed when you're walking around the dungeon.
• Unlike in Angband, you can't just keep escaping tough fights, heal to full, and then try your luck again. Well you can keep this up for some time, but there will be consequences.

The clocks have an interesting interaction with the Ironband-inspired mana system, where you only regenerate mana between dungeon levels. Using spells to kill monsters often saves time! On the other hand, you'll want to conserve enough mana to be prepared for tough situations. Even mages will want to fight hand-to-hand sometimes just to save mana, even if healing takes lots of precious time... You must focus on the overall situation on the dungeon level and make your decisions based on that.

Well, the clocks and the mana system affect the gameplay a lot. I'm aware that some people won't like the pressure, but me and other folks will get a lot more tactical enjoyment out of the game.

[buzzkill]

This all sounds wicked awesome, but I'm really into something else right now. I think I'll have have to burn myself out on that first, cause switching back and forth between the two worlds would be tough (and then there's that new ToME release, a third world... so many options).

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Play other games for a few months, and there could be another version of Mist.

I still need to rebalance melee weapons so that your damage per turn improves more steadily. Like many players have said, at the moment finding a good weapon depends too much on luck.

I'm alternating between playing Epilogue and Halls of Mist myself. I seem to be getting better at Epilogue and worse at Mist: I just keep dying.

[T-Mick]

Very nice! Good to see everything cleaned up.

[ekolis]

I found a "statue of Regan the Human Spellsword" on a pedestal in the dungeon. I couldn't seem to do anything with it, though. Are these statues just for decoration? And can I get a statue of my characters to appear in my future games?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

You get a statue for winning. If you worship a goddess, your statue appears near her altar. Regan (ewan's character that won the last Mist comp) didn't care that much for religion, so she appears alone.

They're essentially just blocks of stone, at least for now.

Edit: If you ever manage to kill the Duke, let me know! I do keep an eye on the Halls of Mist ladder here on oook.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I forgot to mention some changes that might be important for survival.

Proficiencies Recover, Escape, Berserk happen instantly, without taking a turn.

Cure wounds potions don't cure poison anymore. Might be a nasty surprise.

Inspecting a healing, heroism or berserk potion tells you exactly what it does. Generally I want the inspect command to give the player perfect information.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Like before, Darian compiled an OS X version, thanks! Added the download link to the first post.

The work is progressing for the next version. I have rebalanced melee weapons for smoother damage/level progression. Now I'm adjusting rarity for all other kinds of items so that all item types are just as common on every dungeon level. You get different items on different dungeon levels, but the sum of the commonities is always the same.

[buzzkill]

Quick review... having not played any *band in a while this all feels very strange. I remember virtually nothing of Mist so consider me a newb. Playing a kyrrus Mystic.

Achieved level 2 or 3 before descending which was nice. Picked up a hard leather cap, my only piece of armour or weapon.

"acclimatized" should be "acclimated" or "accustomed".

Explored much of DL1 by sneaking and avoidance but eventually ran out of mana and had to run for the (down) stairs with enemies it pursuit. Never found the up staircase. Just made it.

Started DL with a dwarven map and a yellow jelly by my side. Killed the jelly to protect the staircase, but it cost me a CSW. I'm going to see if I can reach the bookshelf/armoury rack room. Picked up a dagger and a better cap once I got there.

Some messages are printed flush left, some are centered (or floating).

Pick up a foo (1d7)?
                                      You have a foo (1d7).

In much the same way enemies sometime bleed when hit, it might be nice if they sometime burn when hit with fire (if applicable).

Returned to town with little mana remaining. Forgot how hostile the town is. Managed to do some shopping but had to flee to the stairs. Luckily @ regains health when descending (from town?).

Arrived on DL3 with another dwarven map and a room full of hostiles. Spend 55 of 80 mana clearing the room. Receive a wand of haste monster and 56 gp for my trouble. A short time later I forced to flee back to town, having used all my mana in the first two rooms.

DL4. Ran from Whiskers. Ran from Brodda. "A nasty piece of work, Brodda picks on defenseless women and children". Why isn't Brodda judged to be evil? Managed some exploration but didn't find much.

DL5. Same as DL4.

DL6. Huge, heavily populated open area. No Stairs. Killed Brodda and cleaned most areas. Still not much loot. Best/only find so far is a wand of slow monster.

DL7. Just starting to feel like I'm in control and I (being unfamiliar with ASCII) walk right up to a death sword, just as I would any other item. From full health, I suffer two wounds before I have a chance to react, WAD? and am left with only 8 HP. If death swords are designed to act as mimics, all well and good I suppose, if not maybe something could done. I was wielding an enchanted torch and have a visible monster window open, something I hardly ever have. It also dropped my STR from 6 to 0 which I'm pretty sure should have killed me, instead I just dropped my speed to -4 which I was able to raise to -1 by dropping a few unnecessary items.

After descending three (or more) consecutive times in a row, would it hurt anything to guarantee an up staircase somewhere on the level. It very annoying when all you want to do is get back to town and level after level is sans an up staircase.

more to come...

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Thanks for the report!

Mystics are strange ones. All the other spellcasting classes have some non-magical combat ability, and much of the strategy comes from deciding when to spend mana and when to conserve it. Mystics don't really have any other options besides their spells. I haven't yet decided whether playing Mystics is fun or not.

My grippli mystic benefited a lot from the grippli archery skill bonus. I was able to hit at least some monsters with my bow, and conserve mana for tight spots. Perhaps mystics in general want to find items with big bonuses to hit?

What should I do with death swords, hmm.

[buzzkill]

DL8. Still searching for an up staircase. STR 0, Speed -2, but I seem to be at that point an a mystic's life where mana is plentiful, 188 max. No up staircase found.

DL9. Dwarven map!!! Explored most of the level. Didn't bother taking on a large pack of orcs. Don't have a means of crowd control yet. Back to town.

Large spans of nothingness interrupted by infrequent encounters leaves the game feeling empty, especially when the solution to said encounters is invariably the same. Firebolt or lightening bolt, repeat, phase if one gets too close, teleport if many get too close. It was more interesting when mana was tight and/or before teleport was a known spell. Even wandering at STR 0 and STR -2 in search of a way back to town wasn't exciting.

Started diving.

DL11. DL13. Nothing to write home about.

DL16. DL17. Found a ring of strength, the closest thing to an ego I've seen. Played recklessly in an effort to generate entertainment. It worked, sort of, but I came t the realization that I don't care if this guy lives or dies which is uncharacteristic of me.

Back to town and done for the day. My apologies if this sounds harsh, just being honest. Maybe it's more of a problem with full-casters than with Mist itself. I seem to recall liking Fay/Mist at some point.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Thanks for the critique, it helps me make the game better.

Now that I think about it, I haven't heard anyone say that Mages or Mystics are fun in Halls of Mist, either before the Ironband mana or after it. People seem to enjoy all the other classes, including Priests.

One possible solution is to remove Mages and Mystics from the game. That would make priestly magic the more powerful realm. I could rename arcane magic to Hedge Magic, in contrast to the more powerful Holy Magic.

Anyway, when I make the split to the classic and future versions, these will be the new classes: Warrior, Rogue, Templar, Shaman, Mage. The new Mage should perhaps have less mana and be more capable with weapons than in Angband. Edit: oh, I forgot to mention that all the five classes will be capable of learning spells, although Warriors have only a little mana.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

For anyone interested, here and here are sneak peaks to the future magic system.