[Announce] PosChengband 4.0.0 Released

[krazyhades]

Wraithform is good, but the majority of death is really shitty lategame. Pretty much everybody who wants it has access to plenty of regular Genocide at similar spellpower with the staves. Early game their AoE and Maledection are good, and as I already said yes their early buff spell is good, but haste is unexciting (literally every character that makes it to high level is already permahasted very very easily), their damage spells are heavily resisted by almost every relevant late enemy (demon/undead/serpent), vampirism true is great but only works on life-bearing monsters (which are by far the least important type to care about).

Death later on is far far worse on hybrids than life, and far far worse on pure casters than chaos.

[wobbly]

Agree on brands. The only thing I've ever used it for is poison resist on a wizard staff. Disagree with death being bad on hybrids. For the paladin you've got a stun, a resist, a haste+heroism+bless & berserk.

If you're a ranger life is going to have to compete with herbal heal. I haven't played a life ranger to see how they compare but I assume the fail & SPs cost are going to be better for nature there. Their 2nd realm tends to be quite bad.

[Cold_Heart]

I'm more or less neutral on removing clone wands...I never used them to grind drops or xp anyways...you get more enough just adventuring the various dungeons.

But Dispel is pretty stupid, yes. It's main purpose seems to be automatically making characters that center around one or more major buffs feel awful and play mostly like worse versions of other classes in many situations. Particularly annoying because most classes that use lots of buffs are hybrids that suffer even more than most because their worse mana pools and casting fail rates make a dispel turn extra punishing. My attempts have led me to decide there is no reason to take a buff realm (especially craft) over one with healing, damage of a good element, or sorcery.

While we're at it, the overwhelming majority of Brand Weapon spells are awful because even on high mages they show up way too late, long after all relevant monsters resist, and all your weapons are already better unbrandable artifacts or egos...and the few great boosted non-ego non-artifacts that you do find you will want to save for artifact creation or reforging, not a worthless branding. Perhaps most egregious is the one in Death, as poison is super useless, the spell shows up super late, and Death is already really bad on hybrids, containing essentially a haste with fear immunity and lowers AC (very serious cost!), the genocides, a reasonable temp resist spell, and that's basically it. But death was pretty bad anyways, because even on pure casters that can use the offense, everything resists, and the power level of the Genocide/Mass Genocide is way too low to rely on...the staff exists at similar power and the scroll at much higher.

While I agree that elemental branding spells are somewhat useless, I can not agree with what you say about Death school at all. I do not know what kind of experience with this school you have but here are some notes from a pure caster (sorcerer) point of view:

1) It gives you early poison resist buff (earliest in game?)
2) It gives you early AoE nuke (earliest in game?)
3) Malediction and Horrify stun greatly
4) Unlimited uses of genocide and mass genocide. I don't you give this the credit it deserves; starting every level with a genocide of inconvenient targets makes life substantially easier.
5) Vampirism True - 300 healing + 300 damage to living in one turn. I don't think you give this the credit it deserves either. This is *the* spell that can keep a mage alive through midgame, melting ancient dragons, wyrms, giants and the like.
6) Animate Dead, Raise the Dead - I don't need this on sorcerer because I have better sources of pets usually, but on 2-school mage or hybrid why wouldn't you want varied and hillarious high level pets that get better the deeper you are, for free?
7) Battle Frenzy claims to lower your AC but in reality it not only does not do that, but it actually gives you 5 AC. This spell is effectively self-haste + self-heroism + self bless combobuff. Most characters would want want want all of this.
8) Id/*id* from book, even semi-reliable, is nice to have in the long run
9) Polymorph V can be useful as well, as it has many interesting properties
10) Nether storm has potentially ridiculous DPS against non-netherimmune targets if you have the mana (I think highest dps from all nukes).
11) Wraithform - this spell alone makes it worth using the Death school.

[krazyhades]

Cool, a new version. I'm happy with the 555 fix. But, not with clone monster. With the loss of clone monster (And 'dispel' still really being 'Uncounterable Dispel All'), that's gg. I guess I'll go for another nightmare win in the future when the game goes in a direction that appeals to me. RIP.

(Disclaimer: I haven't played the latest version, just going by what I read.)

I'm more or less neutral on removing clone wands...I never used them to grind drops or xp anyways...you get more enough just adventuring the various dungeons.

But Dispel is pretty stupid, yes. It's main purpose seems to be automatically making characters that center around one or more major buffs feel awful and play mostly like worse versions of other classes in many situations. Particularly annoying because most classes that use lots of buffs are hybrids that suffer even more than most because their worse mana pools and casting fail rates make a dispel turn extra punishing. My attempts have led me to decide there is no reason to take a buff realm (especially craft) over one with healing, damage of a good element, or sorcery.

While we're at it, the overwhelming majority of Brand Weapon spells are awful because even on high mages they show up way too late, long after all relevant monsters resist, and all your weapons are already better unbrandable artifacts or egos...and the few great boosted non-ego non-artifacts that you do find you will want to save for artifact creation or reforging, not a worthless branding. Perhaps most egregious is the one in Death, as poison is super useless, the spell shows up super late, and Death is already really bad on hybrids, containing essentially a haste with fear immunity and lowers AC (very serious cost!), the genocides, a reasonable temp resist spell, and that's basically it. But death was pretty bad anyways, because even on pure casters that can use the offense, everything resists, and the power level of the Genocide/Mass Genocide is way too low to rely on...the staff exists at similar power and the scroll at much higher.

[Destro]

Cool, a new version. I'm happy with the 555 fix. But, not with clone monster. With the loss of clone monster (And 'dispel' still really being 'Uncounterable Dispel All'), that's gg. I guess I'll go for another nightmare win in the future when the game goes in a direction that appeals to me. RIP.

(Disclaimer: I haven't played the latest version, just going by what I read.)

[Tilurian]

I was trying out Nightmare difficulty and was on level 5 of Stronghold when I was 1-shotted by Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst, a level 92 unique
I'm not sure if I'll try Nightmare again

[Cold_Heart]

Hmm.. has the identification mechanic changed to require *id* for egos? I don't remember needing to *id* robes of elemental protection to cover low resistances, but now I seem to need to do that (4.0.2)?

EDIT: also, is the switch to 3-40 stats style anywhere on the horizon?

[budswell]

Just adding "thanks for all the hard work", I am really enjoying 4.0.1. The new cosmetic changes (charsheet, monsterlist, etc) are great. And the way wands and staves work now is much better.

As for the shopping conversation, I'm happy with it. Don't do to much carry-for-cash once >CL30. Mainly use the shops for *ID* artifacts (I play randarts only for more variation) and enchant arrows (they burn up so easy). And auto *ID* (with normal id) on rings/amulets is great, saves lugging heaps of them back to town.

[krazyhades]

Looking forward to starting a new character on this new version and seeing how the item progression changes feel! I'm still working on my 4.0.1 balrog warrior for now. Having loads of fun.

[wobbly]

Good to see a new version. Thought I'd post this here in case you don't have time to look at dumps. The zombie charisma penalty is giving it fear vulnerability.

There's a mechanics issue where chr is doing conflicting things. e.g. fear, shop, casting stats on mystics, beastmaster, sorcerer.

Now sometimes it works: 1/2 trolls being weak willed, easy to break when injured.

Sometimes it doesn't: zombies are fear vulnerable & not scary.

[Cold_Heart]

I am very excited about the new poschengband. Thank you chris!

[nikheizen]

What is 555, anyway?

It's somewhat of an exploit.
The dungeons heaven and hell occupy tiles on the overworld map.
Since these dungeons are depth 555 and 666 respectively, their tiles are as well.
However, in the wilderness before this update, monsters who could spawn were very rarely dangerous. Despite this, they were still dropping items which had an obscenely high depth level.
This meant +20 speed rings, rings with immunities, amulets which partially prevent summoning, powerful weapons and devices with egos to match etc. etc.

EDIT: Also I would like to say, nice changes Chris. However I am sad about the easy_ID mode giving instant pseudo-ID a-la mpa. I would kill for having *ID* be set aside alone. Possibly giving all races Good Pseudo-ID, but the instant level-35 style ID always felt wierd to me.

[Derakon]

What is 555, anyway?

[debo]

I feel no shame in having abused 555 or cloned a billion caaws. It was literally the best.

[poschengbandplayer]

Pls fix more prompt in next release

http://imgur.com/LsgwGbg