Hengband vs Entroband?

[Orrus]

My fav variant is definately Hengband, but Ive heard some talk that Entroband is a newer or updated version of Heng?

Can someone outline the main differences between Heng and Entro? Its not immediatly obvious. Unfortunately the Entro website has 404'd.

Thanks!

[Djabanete]

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=557&highlight=Entroband

It took me a moment to locate the search function, but it's there.

EDIT: I guess that link isn't too informative. I understand that the biggest differences in Entro are: addition of several high-end super artifacts named after Hengband ladder characters, and changing the shallowest level of Dragon's Lair from 60 to 30, making it more accessible to younger characters. Some people feel that these changes make Entro easier than Heng. There are also small balance changes that I don't really know about.

[Orrus]

I saw that post, but it doesnt really explain the differences. Just that someone new is working on it and "made changes" =/

I guess I shoulda bumped that instead of making a new post, silly me.

[Orrus]

Hmm I guess Ill just and play it up into the clvl 20s, the differences should be apparent by then.

[chem]

The differences are mainly in artifacts and monsters, especially at the high end. There should be changelists floating around somewhere... likely in the distributed zip?

[Elliott]

This is an old post, but just in case anyone still cares, I was around then, and Entroband was intended to be a "harder, stripped down" version of Hengband. Development stopped after just the first update or two and it didn't really end up especially close to that vision.

Still, there were a number of changes. People have already mentioned the "super" artifacts named after Hengband ladder characters. Also, a new "super" end boss was added, "The Mad Chemist" who is really quite a bit tougher than the Serpent and gets my vote for toughest end-boss in any variant.

Other changes included how the Dragon Cave initial level was changed from 60 to 30. The real reason for that, and I think some other deeper dungeons also had their initial level swapped to 30 as well, was to make it harder for people to scum it for good drops. The dragons you'd find at dlevel 60 are a pretty heady combination of safe to manage and drop lots of loot, especially since you can load up on *slay dragon* weapons. Because of the dlevel, even the regular ancient dragons could at least potentially drop good artifacts. People would get their characters up to, oh, level 35 or so doing whatever and then spend 5-10 levels farming the top level of the Dragon Caves because the loot and xp was unmatched for the time and relatively low level of danger.

He also cleared out quite a few low and mid-level artifacts he felt were repetitive or uninteresting. To be fair, Heng had a LOT of very similar artifact daggers and swords, but in the end it actually wasn't great for ninjas and some other classes that were left a bit short on low to mid level "light" weapon options. He also removed a bunch of low and mid-level monsters that he didn't think were interesting (snotlings, manes, etc among others, I think, which makes some quests appear oddly unpopulated. He planned on going back to fix them, but never got around to it).

He buffed Black Reavers (made 'em faster, I think), I think he also removed a bunch of typos, and we generally suspected he made nightmare mode easier, though he denied it. I believe that's it, but its been a while and my memory is a little fuzzy.

[Orrus]

Thanks for the reply Elliott =)

[Elliott]

You're welcome