[Announce] PosChengband 4.0.0 Released

[Therem Harth]

Cool. I'll see if I can get the no-traps branch sorted out then.

/me vacates thread

[AnonymousHero]

I'll try to get things into order for pushing to GH in a few days, I think.

Pushed to GitHub.

Apologies for the thread hijack.

[AnonymousHero]

Nifty. When will you be able to push to GitHub? I want to check this out.

I'll try to get things into order for pushing to GH in a few days, I think.

[Therem Harth]

In my fork of ToME 2.x, I've decided to just remove the monster memory entirely in favor of full knowledge. Much simpler and gets rid of ton of (likely) buggy code.

Nifty. When will you be able to push to GitHub? I want to check this out.

[AnonymousHero]

well i'm just speaking to my own preferences here, but a game where winning is predicated on using spoilers isnt my idea of a fun game. I play randarts because I dont want to memorize all the standarts. I stopped doing fixed quests because sting always seems to be in the same place. and to get the scoop on monsters, im ok with carrying probing :-)

Well, you don't have to use spoilers, but if you're anything like me, eventually you will (passively) memorize what (almost) every effect/monster does. (Of course some things in Poscheng are so illogical that they might be beyond learning this way. I'm thinking specifically the whole "virtues" system here. Thankfully it's optional.)

[murphy]

well i'm just speaking to my own preferences here, but a game where winning is predicated on using spoilers isnt my idea of a fun game. I play randarts because I dont want to memorize all the standarts. I stopped doing fixed quests because sting always seems to be in the same place. and to get the scoop on monsters, im ok with carrying probing :-)

[AnonymousHero]

I think for the most part the issue lies in the fact that, while monster knowledge is preserved across games played on the same savefile, in practice people are not in a position to always only use their one save. They may delete the save on dying, or create a new save with a different name, or make a save on a new version, or on a different computer, or have multiple concurrent characters on different saves.

Yup. Certainly, for me it's mostly about the annoyance of having to start all over again probing things (sounds wrong, doesn't it?). I actually never use Probing items/skills -- I just read the r_info.txt/monster.txt/whatever instead. Turns out it's more convenient to just have it open in a separate terminal/editor and use text-search to locate the monster you care about.

Eventually you get to know most of the monsters pretty well anyway, so even that becomes redundant for all but the most exotic monsters. (Which, granted, there are quite a few of in Poscheng )

If you in practice actually only had to probe a monster once to have permanent access to knowledge of it, this would be fine, but in reality that does not happen for most people in most situations.

This would be much better, but would still have the strange effect of eventually making Probing items into junk items (likewise skills). EDIT: Well, alright you also gain concrete HP knowledge, but that's so marginal that I've not even taken advantage of that information even once during a decade+ of play.

In my fork of ToME 2.x, I've decided to just remove the monster memory entirely in favor of full knowledge. Much simpler and gets rid of ton of (likely) buggy code.

In practice it's not like it's particularly unbalancing.

[Cold_Heart]

I think poschengband would benefit from having a system like "pseudo-id for monsters" where one could roughly evaluate how dangerous any detected enemy is for @ without any previous knowledge or spoilers. E.g. wearing no rFire and evaluating a hell wyrm would tell you "better run away" even though you don't actually know yet that it breathes fire.

I think a system like this will go a long way; a lot of MUDs have it, too.

[krazyhades]

I dont understand the demands for monster lore, isnt a staff of probing sufficient if you're willing to spend one inventory slot and one turn.

I think for the most part the issue lies in the fact that, while monster knowledge is preserved across games played on the same savefile, in practice people are not in a position to always only use their one save. They may delete the save on dying, or create a new save with a different name, or make a save on a new version, or on a different computer, or have multiple concurrent characters on different saves.

If you in practice actually only had to probe a monster once to have permanent access to knowledge of it, this would be fine, but in reality that does not happen for most people in most situations.

[murphy]

I dont understand the demands for monster lore, isnt a staff of probing sufficient if you're willing to spend one inventory slot and one turn.

I just discovered I can use weaponsmith powers to enchant a poison needle, is that a bug?

[Cold_Heart]

Rockets are terrible in both damage per mana and damage per turn.

All schools of magic are good.

[HugoVirtuoso]

The only good realms are ones with rockets. The rest are garbage.

Example of this: Armageddon

[debo]

The only good realms are ones with rockets. The rest are garbage.

[krazyhades]

I agree that Vampirism True is incredible against life-bearing opponents, and definitely carries Death high-mages for a long time, but its utility falls off a ton after level 50 (when basically 1/3 of the game still remains). I like the feel of Death realm in some ways, and I agree that you point out a lot of its strengths, but I still think it is worse than any realm except for Arcane and Craft because of the lack of reliable heals and trouble hurting demons/undead without a golfbag of devices. Also, hybrid classes have a *huge* amount of trouble getting Wraithform castable, and it costs them a huge % of their mana pool, and the hybrids also basically cannot use much of the offense/vamp true. Book casting Genocide is in my experience super underwhelming because of the low power level when you get it; by the time you are higher level yourself it is not really better than a Staff of Genocide, and before then a Wand of Teleport Other is generally as good or better.

So basically, yes, I agree you point out death's strengths, but I don't think that's enough to make it better than Life, Chaos, Sorcery, Nature, Daemon, or Armageddon. I haven't played much with Crusade, so I can't judge there really, and Trump is kindof...odd, not sure how to compare it with Death. I think Death is only clearly better than Arcane and maybe Craft.

[Cold_Heart]

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.

With carrying Death books you save up to four inventory slots (geno device, massgeno device, self-haste device, *id* device), which can be used for other interesting devices or swapitems for extra flexibility. And I don't know what you mean by "by far the least important type" of monsters - elemental "D"s are super good sources of gear and experience throughout the game, and with some resistances you can facetank them with vamp true easily.

It is the most flexible of all schools, providing a good mix of offensive (decent nukes), defensive (buffs, restore life) and supportive (id, summoning, detection) capabilities. Sure, the Chaos has probably better nukes but it has no defensive spells, no summoning and has potentially lethal failure to cast consequences. And Life has no attack spells worth bothering with, no summoning, no haste. So for a build that benefits from flexibility, Death would be a better pick in the long run.

Also, wraithform.