[Announce] PosChengband 4.0.0 Released

[Regalia]

Not if you're hasted

Yes, preemptive speed helps for sure. I guess I'm a bit biased since I lost decent and prepared characters on every one of those quests.

[nikheizen]

Yes, preemptive speed helps for sure. I guess I'm a bit biased since I lost decent and prepared characters on every one of those quests.

If they weren't hasted, they probably weren't prepared!

Just kidding, I'm sure you were hasted, but yes, Dark Elven Lords, Death Swords, and Mimic Quest can all very suddenly turn sour depending on monster action without much input from the player.

[GenericPseudonym]

I have an annoying bug to report: +10 speed buffs from potions, staves, rods etc actually override the Psion's speed buff, which can go up to +20 depending on the level of the spell.

When the "normal" speed buff wore off, I got a "you feel yourself slow down" message but jumped up from 14 speed to 24 because the psionic buff was still running.

[wobbly]

Playing a death rogue & remembering a few tricks so came back to this.

In fact, training the riding skill was more dangerous than the actual battles.

Dig into a wall or use a door, 1 square for the enemy, no room to fall off. Haste your mount, buff then spam summoning.

Then, when I felt very comfortable at DL 23, I tried the Old Man Willow quest - and was overrun. That huorn at the very beginning just would not die, then repeated miscasts (plasma bolt, I think), and the vorpal bunnies and the sabre tooth tiger were more resilient and dangerous than I thought. Then of course my character phase-doored next to some 'Y' and got killed. Didn't think that I would rise such a commotion with gear granting about +3 to stealth. I might have made it if I had used the potions of speed from the beginning and also had brought my pet arch vile, but still... At least partly it felt like YAAD. It seems that priests of death should postpone this quest until they can cast plasma bolt reliably. Has anyone else tried to beat this quest with a priest of death?

In any case, I will definitely come back to this variant. Keep up the good work, chris!

Pets make the town quest easier & death has enslave undead. You can find revenants and skeletal tyrannosaurouses in the labyrinth using detect evil. If you haste a skeletal tyranosauraus it'll run down a lot of fear vulnerable enemies.

[Destro]

Working on a character and recording every moment. Well, at least from level 26 onward. Level 25-26 was overwritten and everything below level 25 was cheese wilderness farm.

Currently she's level 31 doing level 38 runs of the Angband dungeon as an Artemis Sling Weaponmaster. It's the best character I've had in a while that isn't a monk or berserker and I've only had 2 really close calls so far. I'm going to keep pushing this character. I managed to get a clone monster wand (finally) very recently and it has increased my exp gain massively in my short time owning it. I've only had 2 really close calls on death so far and my character has really good tools available now to survive scary situations.

All in all, my gear is terrible (except for my thalnos gloves) and I'm amazed that I haven't died yet. Look forward to my eventual RIP video where I QQ!

[wobbly]

Turns out you can give creatures nightmares in this version. Horrify no longer wakes sleeping monsters.

[clouded]

Hi chris, can you buff ring replacement arts? Like by a lot. Here's a sample of rings:

b) The Ring 'Dragonfire' {*El;AcPoNtSoCa;Si A:Lightning Ball Power (The One Ring)}
c) The Ring of the Dark Lord {*Co;PoNtDiFe A:Frost Ball Power (The One Ring)}
d) The Ring of Eternity (+3) {Sp;*El;NtSo;Fa Power (The One Ring)}
e) The Ring of Power (+4) {St;*Fi;CfShDi Power (The One Ring)}
f) The Ring of Elvish Power (+13,+6) {*El;CfNt Power (The One Ring)}

b) The Ring of Dwarvish Power {*Co;NxCaDi;Fa Power (Vilya)}
c) The Ring of Merlin {*Co;PoSh Power (Vilya)}
d) The Ring of Dragonkind {*Co;AcEl;Fa Power (Vilya)}
e) The Ring 'Avatar of Destruction' {*El;CoCa;FaLv Power (Vilya)}
f) The Ring of Giant Strength {*El;AcCf;FaSi Power (Vilya)}

These are unacceptably bad compared to the standarts, the same goes for all the others generally. Also note how they are all basically identical.

[Pete Mack]

Yep. Without combat bonus and stats, Ring of Power is junk. Remember that the uniform alternatives at that point are Ring of Speed, Ring of Damage/Slaying, and Ring of Con or (rarely) Tulkas. (This is mostly fixed in V.)

[chris]

I just uploaded a band-aid 4.0.1 release in the usual places. You should be able to post html dumps to oook now (Huge thanks to Pav!!!), and plain-text dumps from Windows should display properly on oook. Other changes are mostly playtesting adjustments ... You can view the commit logs on github for details.

I haven't managed to read very many character dumps yet, but I did read some forum issues and perhaps the following comments will help:
[1] The game now has an ego lore system. While the player is born with innate knowledge of some ego types, like Gloves of Free Action, other types must be learned. To learn an ego type, you may (1) *ID* the first one you find, (2) sell the first one you find, or (3) Examine an ego in a shop (e.g., The Black Market). You definitely do *not* need to *id* every ego you find. For this release, I spruced up the Inspect to command to hopefully make the mechanics clearer.

[2] Selling has long had a bug: The offered price was based on unknown attributes of the item. This leaked information about object quality to the player, and is no longer possible. Pricing is now based on the *known* quality of the item (even if only pseudo-identified). Sometimes, this can work out to your advantage (e.g. Worpal Blade). Other times, not. Its up to you if you want to *id* before selling, but I seldom bother. Sell or *id* the first instance of an ego type to learn it, but generally, don't bother *id*'ing subsequent instances to sell. The only exceptions to this are Elemental Resistance and Celestial Protection.

[3] Shopping and Town Services are based upon the player's race, charisma and *fame*. The last is particularly important and makes fame useful for more than simply reforging.

[4] Devices: Rods cannot be destroyed, and recharge 10x faster than wands or staves. There is less overlap between the device types now as well. Finally, some things like Stone to Mud and Teleport Away are deliberately more difficult, but there are late game alternatives.

[5] Sorry if people find *id* cumbersome, but I personally enjoy the tiered object lore system. Sure, *id* is now more important, but it is also more common, and late game there are even staves of *id*. You definitely do *not* need to *id* everything in the game, just stuff you plan to use. My experience is that I id 10% of the objects I find, and *id* another 10% of those (so only about 1% of drops overall), and I definitely *id* more than I need to and only because/if it is commonly available. A typical game might use 200 *id*s, which is less than the amount of food I eat Its really not a big deal and not having cheesy automatic full object knowledge does lead to interesting game scenarios that I'd rather not remove.

Finally, Hugo, the Windows HTML screen dump menu should be working again Also, its not documented, but Ctl+] automatically generates screen dumps (screen.txt and screen.html in /lib/user, I think).

Edit: Also, make install should be working on Linux with regard to helpfiles and other non-compilables. As for the usleep putenv issues, gcc warns for me if I don't add declarations, and I can figure out how to shut gcc up on the issue. If anybody knows the correct way to do this, I'd appreciate feedback.

Edit:
[6] Use Ctl+v to recenter the viewport (map) in the event that messages are overlapping the player. This happens if you wander near the top of the dungeon, or if you are getting a lot of messages. Personally, I usually macro this command to Shift+5 on the numpad, which is very ergonomic if you are shift running a lot anyway.

[debo]

A typical game might use 200 *id*s, which is less than the amount of food I eat

I should have known that the poscheng maintainer would remember how much bread he ate.

[clouded]

*ID*

Yeah it's not that bad later thanks to the *ID* staves, that is a big improvement. Though it still seems a little weird in some places, I remember once *ID*ing a craft weapon (the one with all elemental slays) to sell it and the price actually went down. Also, staves of genocide are a great addition.

By the way, yesterday I gave the Vapor Quest some Doom Quest II treatment. This quest always takes forever and it has annoying hidden monsters, so here's a new, smaller, more lethal version: https://bpaste.net/raw/7ecede0e7d99

The most notable monster remains (weird fume) and there's now a shimmering vortex which can shriek and wake up all the air elementals which will quickly swarm you. It's harder so I upped the danger level to 40 and also added six rings and six amulets as loot inside, it could be worth trying it early for those.

May update or make some new quests too, I did this one impulsively.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I wonder if Chris would make the new quest idea official. Anyways, great to see a PosChengband update!

[Arjen]

By the way, yesterday I gave the Vapor Quest some Doom Quest II treatment. This quest always takes forever and it has annoying hidden monsters, so here's a new, smaller, more lethal version: https://bpaste.net/raw/7ecede0e7d99

Looks nice and a bit less bothersome than the current, and with the vortex and water elementals, a bit more dangerous. Only point i might tune down a bit, are the 6 rings and 6 amulets as loot. 2-3 of each might be better. Or a chance that several are plain.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Usual place for the PosChengband update is here for easy access (from the most recent posts)

[Destro]

Really cool update. Somehow I've made it to level 40 for the first time ever on a char without dying yet so I'm going to try and beat the current version before updating. I doubt upgrading would effect my save but I kind of want to beat the game 'as is' if possible.

I can't wait to take advantage of ego lore. I kind of don't get point 2 of the update with pricing. My items never factored in unknown attributes. I always buy *id* when I think I will make a profit and the price goes up or down based on what the *id* reveals. Like, if I try to sell spear of hagan the price will be crap but if I *id* it then it will factor in the speed and the price will shoot up. But cursed items will maybe go down to 1 when they'd be worth a little bit unid'd. Either way I'm sure it fixes something so I'm looking forward to it too.