[Announce] Poschengband 3.3.0 Released

[debo]

I still think Sil has the advantage here, but among "traditional" variants poscheng is the best I've found. In general, given how massive and weird the setting and rules are, I'm constantly amazed at how consistently fun this variant is. I haven't been this badly addicted to anything (except sil) in a long while.

[chris]

So, more evilness then?

[chris]

Version 3.3.2 is now available. This release is mostly a bug fix and rebalance release:

* Removed infinite experience exploit with player resting.
* Hounds now spawn in the wilderness.
* Spiders get a better paralysis attack: Paralysis is no longer sleep.
* Fixed (nothing) object bug in wilderness.
* Rebalanced the Blood-Mage. They can no longer choose the Life realm and other healing spells are either illegible (Herbal Healing) or don't work to restore hp. There may be one or two weak exceptions, though. Also, they now have to deal with armor and glove encumbrance issues just like all other mages, but the effects manifest thru higher fail rates rather than decreased spell points.
* The Town weapon shop is kinder about stocking archery supplies.
* Town stocking of certain essentials (Food, Light, Diggers, Recall) is also kinder, but not 100% guaranteed.
* Finding food and recall in the dungeon is also easier. In fact, the ironman_shops option should now be playable as it enables the player home.
* More Possessor/Mimic forms can benefit from Economical Mana (e.g. wizardstaves).

As usual source and a diff are available.

[HugoVirtuoso]

The new item generation in 3.3.2 is interesting. I see *a lot more* of the early-game game essentials, like which is great for dungeon exploration incentives. But, this is counter-balanced by lesser stacks or just single non-stack generations of deeper items. While this new change makes sense, I actually liked the old stack generation more, where you see stacks of Teleport Level Scrolls and so on.

[poschengbandplayer]

you didn't implement my other suggestions :-(.
anyway,i'd suggest you to take a look at the magic eater for the next class being rebalanced.it's fairly easy to get 99 castable fire bolts in under 1 hour.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Regarding 3.3.2:
Potions of Speed seem much more rare now than before...or is it just me?

Edit: It WAS just me. I encountered a stack of Potions of Speed during the Sting while playing my Archon Wild-Talent in 3.3.2. Ok, I'm happy.

[wobbly]

Random thought: Have you considered opening up more ride-able creatures for the smaller races? I would love for my gnome to be able to ride a dog, a wolf or a wild boar.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Question - What decides the Blood-Mage's failure rates nowdays in 3.3.2? INT? CON?

[chris]

Question - What decides the Blood-Mage's failure rates nowdays in 3.3.2? INT? CON?

Int. The in-game class stat tables currently display the casting stat in green (?ce).

[chris]

Random thought: Have you considered opening up more ride-able creatures for the smaller races? I would love for my gnome to be able to ride a dog, a wolf or a wild boar.

That would be hard to do with the current code base. At the moment, ridable monsters have a flag (RIDING in r_info) that enables riding for everyone. (Aside: In this game, everything is a flag so it is hard to parametrize stuff). Having size restrictions on riding might be interesting and certainly would be more realistic but is probably too much work for me just now. There is no concept of monster size and while there used to be a concept of player size, I hastily removed it long ago!

[chris]

The new item generation in 3.3.2 is interesting. I see *a lot more* of the early-game game essentials, like which is great for dungeon exploration incentives. But, this is counter-balanced by lesser stacks or just single non-stack generations of deeper items. While this new change makes sense, I actually liked the old stack generation more, where you see stacks of Teleport Level Scrolls and so on.

I greedily stole Vanilla's idea for item stack generation for this release. Namely, the stacks are controlled on a per item basis (in k_info's M line) and there is a separate probability for actually generating a stack. While I was at it, I adjusted the stack size for various items. Many things now stack in sizes like 1d5 which means you might just find one of them. For Teleport Level, this also only has a 50% chance of generating a stack, so you will find singles quite a bit. On the other hand, there is now a (very small) chance of getting a stack of stat potions so it ain't all bad

Also, I added a TOWN attribute to k_info to determine what is allowed to be stocked in town (excepting the Black Market, of course). You'll notice many changes this release with what is available in town. Many weapons and armors are no longer accessible (e.g. Long Bows and Heavy Crossbows). This will allow finer grain control and is more manageable that hard coding switch statements for town stocking.

[chris]

anyway,i'd suggest you to take a look at the magic eater for the next class being rebalanced.it's fairly easy to get 99 castable fire bolts in under 1 hour.

Can you elaborate? I assume you are buying wands in the town? If so, fire bolts are no longer available but frost bolts still are. How much gold are you spending to do this and where are you getting so much gold so quickly? Perhaps you just got a few lucky drops?

At any rate, having 99 frost bolts early in the game isn't that over powered. For a class that doesn't melee well, they really needed some early game help anyway.

[debo]

I just used 'grow mold' in the chameleon caves... and it summoned a bunch of random monsters They constantly shift like the chameleons do too. This is super entertaining, but not sure if it's WAD

[HugoVirtuoso]

Perhaps the grown mold should appear as mold first and then morph later in the Chameleon cave.

[poschengbandplayer]

@Chris
I didn't know fire bolts aren't longer available.I am playing mainly older versions.

The money is quickly earned trough the random wilderness houses and the scumming of the first level of the icky cave,also,from sea monsters like lizard kings and trolls,and,of course,grendels pack :-).