[Announce] Poschengband 3.2.0 Released

[chris]

Version 3.2.0 is now available (beta) here.

This release adds a new dimension to the Dragon monster race: Dragon Realms! There are 8 realms to choose from and each has a specific focus. For example, Lore dragons seek knowledge and have great powers of detection and identification. Attack dragons are the best at melee while Breath dragons give up melee power in order to augment their breath attacks. Each realm alters player stats, skills and experience requirements while tweaking the power of dragon melee and breaths. In addition, many realms give innate bonuses (e.g. Lore dragons gain telepathy) so the realm choice is much richer than a normal spell realm. Some information is available in a new helpfile (DragonRealms.txt) which is accessible during the birth process (press '?') or from the normal MonsterRaces.txt file (Press '?' then 'c', then 'h' and finally 'b' ... I'll clean up the help system a bit at some point).

I also made a few minor possessor changes (Monk forms gain stunning, Tiamat now has an appropriate 5 headed body) but for the most part, this release is all about dragons!

Source code and a list of changes are also available.

[Arjen]

*droooooooool*

[HugoVirtuoso]

Brilliant addition! I thought the Rings were going to be the last of the last addition. But, Dragon realms take this to another level!!

[krazyhades]

Very cool! Looking forward to playing and dying as a dragon!

[Tulip]

Currently playing Defensive Crystal Drake, having fun.

Is there any way to apply item auto-destruction to your inventory? When I identify all items at the thieves guild it keeps all the useless potions. Of course I could just drop them, but if there's an easier way, I'd like to hear it.

Also, is there a particular reason Steel Dragons don't have realms available?

[Arjen]

Also, is there a particular reason Steel Dragons don't have realms available?

They are the artificial berserker's of the dragon realm with no magic and no breathes. That would be my guess.

[krazyhades]

I wish I had a better handle on how fear works. As far as I've seen yet, the only help section that addresses it is the bit about charisma as part of character creation. Also, I wish that when the player tries to do something while too afraid, they get a chance to do something else (like move) instead of just eating turns for nothing. By our powers combined, I am captain feelarbitrarilypunished.

Haven't tried the dragons really yet. I think I'm going to try a summoner type next, either necromancer, beastmaster, or high mage[trump].

[chris]

I wish I had a better handle on how fear works. As far as I've seen yet, the only help section that addresses it is the bit about charisma as part of character creation. Also, I wish that when the player tries to do something while too afraid, they get a chance to do something else (like move) instead of just eating turns for nothing. By our powers combined, I am captain feelarbitrarilypunished.

If you want spoilers, you can look here though the details have probably changed a bit since that was written. Scroll down a bit past the first part to the section "Player Fear". I'll try to write something up for the help system, time permitting.

Losing turns is by design, though some actions are easier to do while frightened then others. You can always quaff a potion or read a scroll, so healing, boldness or teleport are good options when frightened. (I think being able to read while frightened is a bit generous, though).

(In general, I don't like spoilers and won't be doing any for Poscheng. If players feel they need them, there is probably something wrong with the game and I'd rather address the underlying issues instead.)

[UglySquirrell]

I wish I had a better handle on how fear works. As far as I've seen yet, the only help section that addresses it is the bit about charisma as part of character creation. Also, I wish that when the player tries to do something while too afraid, they get a chance to do something else (like move) instead of just eating turns for nothing. By our powers combined, I am captain feelarbitrarilypunished.

Haven't tried the dragons really yet. I think I'm going to try a summoner type next, either necromancer, beastmaster, or high mage[trump].

I can't speak for High mage but Beastmaster is lots of fun and now that iv'e changed my macro setup for Necromancer thanks to Chris, im really enjoying that class as well.

If you want to play as a summoner though, i'd say go all out and play a Quylthulg. I just tried one out and they are really fun, and have a very unique feeling to them. You can raise an army to fight for you right at level 1.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I started a new Crystal drake to test out the new Dragon Realms. However, my breath now appears as a bolt attack...is this new? Does that mean I can no longer attack multiple monsters with one breath? I don't recall seeing this before 3.2.x.

[chris]

I started a new Crystal drake to test out the new Dragon Realms. However, my breath now appears as a bolt attack...is this new? Does that mean I can no longer attack multiple monsters with one breath? I don't recall seeing this before 3.2.x.

Dragon hatchlings can only belch a bolt of their element. As they mature, this bolt becomes a beam and then a cone (radius 2). Ultimately they gain the full radius 3 breath attack. This is a new change to partially compensate the fact that dragons now have a spell pool to pay their breath casting costs.

[krazyhades]

If you want spoilers, you can look here though the details have probably changed a bit since that was written.
...
(In general, I don't like spoilers and won't be doing any for Poscheng. If players feel they need them, there is probably something wrong with the game and I'd rather address the underlying issues instead.)

Thanks! Some things I'd figured out rightly, but a lot was way off. It was never clear to me that I was rolling a save when attempting an action while feared. Instead, I had believed that it was binary, you're either so afraid that you 100% fail to act or not afraid enough and so 100% to succeed. Thus, it felt really awful when the game told me I wasted a turn failing to try to attack, because I wrongly thought that the game knew I had a 0% chance and just ate my turn instead of prompting me for a different action.

The core of the feelbad was that I didn't know I was even rolling a save. It may be against your design philosophy, but my first thought would be to show the result of the roll you make, perhaps before modifiers. Or some flavorful indicator of how close it was...you barely manage to summon the will to attack//you nearly strike out but shudder at the last second sort of thing.

I get where you're coming from in not wanting spoilers, and I definitely enjoy finding new things on my own in the game, one of the major draws of a content-loaded variant, but I also enjoy being able to for example toss together a debug mode character to test specific things that my wandering mind comes up with. I'd be useful to learn where fixed drops are (e.g. stages of the arena, Labyrinth, etc) that experienced players know to gun for (and also when to stop...next monster in the arena is a huge jump in power LOL F U player! type of thing). It's weird to me that one might look down on looking things up, but not on getting advice.

Again, a big thanks for the pointer to the fear info. Now I can make educated guesses about the risks I'm taking or not taking instead of just getting lucky or feeling awful and not knowing what was behind those things.

[Nivim]

Conditional failure messages would be good; something that gave you "almost"-"barely" sorts of messages based on the margin you success or fail at-- probably with just 3-5 categories, and incorporated into whatever the usual messages would be.

Focus on this sort of thing is just what you get when you're offering people a snotling challenge.

[Tulip]

I got all the way up to level 24 before realizing my defensive crystal drake had 'm' spells, I feel so silly.

Also, is there a way to make the trees less nuclear green? They hurt my eyes.

[chris]

Also, is there a way to make the trees less nuclear green? They hurt my eyes.

Are you using ASCII? You can control the colors in a preference file. Trees are currently defined to use the light green color in lib\edit\f_info.txt (N:96). What exactly light green means is controlled by lib\pref\colors.prf. I've never edited these myself as I use tiles but it appears the last 3 fields on the V: line are RGB values for the color in question. Edit these and restart the game.

If you are using tiles then you probably need to edit the bitmap directly to change the colors used.