[Announce] PosChengband 4.0.0 Released

[clouded]

Yay chris! These changes look good and I'm REALLY glad you got rid of 555 and clone monster. MPA no selling isn't as agreed upon as you might think, I definitely agree that it encourages too much digging and later on you get absurd amounts of gold (spend 10 minutes digging in the Mine for 1.5M) so I'm interested to try your approach.

[Derakon]

Keep in mind that the logic for Vanilla's no-selling option was that lugging items back to town to sell for cash wasn't fun and therefore shouldn't be rewarded. It's not that the players weren't getting enough cash from the dungeon, it's that they were getting any remotely significant amount of cash from selling stuff. Even if the distribution was 99% dungeon, 1% selling, I strongly suspect you'd still see players bringing back "worthless but valuable" items to town to sell, to get that extra little bit of cash.

The idea was that if you chose no-selling, then you'd have roughly the same amount of cash as a "selling" player would at any given point at the game, without being required to carry around useless crap and make repeated return trips to town just to lighten your pack. I won't try to tell you how PosChengband should play, but I do think that just increasing the amount of cash that drops in the dungeon won't accomplish what the no-selling option was intended to add to the game.

[debo]

If every player got something like alchemy or a lot more gold came from drops, I'd be very happy to play with selling on. I just hate going back to town every 10 mins because my inventory is full.

These changes look great. Looking forward to the eventual release.

[elliptic]

The new changes look good - I'm especially happy about removal of clone monster and of 555 (I was getting tired of watching other people abuse 555, and I use no_wilderness myself...).

As one of the people involved with making the "mpa changes", I thought I'd give my perspective on the three points of contention listed by chris. Other people involved might see things differently of course.

[1] Monster lore: I'd simply prefer to be able to look at monster memory in-game to check each time exactly which eight breaths the Yamata-no-Orochi has. The alternatives are to play with r_info.txt open or to occasionally get breathed on for 600 damage because I didn't remember the precise set of attacks some monster had. Monster memory that persists between games and grows as you encounter new monsters is a cool idea, but there are too many ways to lose access to your monster memory and have to start over with it.

[2] Item lore: I added the L25 automatic stone of lore effect because I almost always found Stone of Lore by around then (usually between L20 and L30) anyway. So if you are going to have access to unlimited ID anyway, why not simplify things and not make players carry it around forever and worry about accidentally dropping it somewhere? That way players can focus more on parts of the game that actually matter.

For ID = *ID*, there are a couple things I dislike about typical *band *ID*. First, with fixed artifacts it encourages looking at artifact spoilers to save *ID* for other items. This leads to wandering around with resistances inaccurately listed in your character sheet (but you know what they are anyway). Second, it is usually pretty confusing and complicated to figure out which items need to be *ID*ed because they might have extra properties - or to figure out which properties you can detect by convoluted testing.

I believe in Poschengband there is a town *ID* service, so these issues aren't as bad as in some other *bands - they just mean that you have to go back to town frequently and spend a little money. This still isn't very interesting.

[3] no_selling: Bringing back items to town to sell them is tedious and uninteresting. There are already more interesting tradeoffs for how to spend your pack space - items that actually do something or that you might want to use some day.

That said, digging for gold is just as bad. Personally I basically never dig for gold, and I think most people who use no_selling don't either. I would be very happy myself if digging for gold just wasn't a thing, and players had to explore and fight in areas of the game that actually contain monsters to get gold.

If there are concerns about monsters dropping too much gold in no_selling, that can just be reduced. I would happily play with no_selling even if it didn't get any bonuses to gold drops compared with selling.

[poschengbandplayer]

Pls fix more prompt in next release

http://imgur.com/LsgwGbg

[debo]

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

[Derakon]

What is 555, anyway?

[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.

[Cold_Heart]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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

[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.)