Development version of PWMAngband 1.1.12 released for testing

[PowerWyrm]

Round #2: bows

More variety here:
- long bow of extra shots (or Belthronding): x3 might, +1 shot
- long bow of lothlorien (or Bard): x5 might

Using a magic arrow:
- a warrior does 166 vs all (2 shots) with the long bow of extra shots
- an archer (or ranger) does 407.1 vs all (3 shots) with the long bow of lothlorien

With the best artifact, our archer does:
3 shots/round.
Hits targets up to 160 feet away.
Average damage/round: 1212.9 vs. dragons, and 606.3 vs. others.

A bit more than with a sling of buckland. For our warrior, the damage becomes:
- 247.2 vs all with the best artifact
- 356.8 vs all, 594.6 vs evil with heavily enchanted seeker arrows of holy might

This is less than with a sling of buckland, but remains correct.

[PowerWyrm]

Round #1: slings

Pretty straightforward: nothing can beat a sling of buckland with 2 extra might/shots.

With the best artifact, a warrior does:
3 shots/round.
Hits targets up to 140 feet away.
Average damage/round: 653.7 vs. animals, and 435.9 vs. others.

Now with an archer (same as ranger, but gets the +2 extra shots with all shooters):
5 shots/round.
Hits targets up to 140 feet away.
Average damage/round: 1069 vs. animals, and 712.5 vs. others.

This is ridiculous. Sentence: Buckland slings get nerfed -- only +1 extra shot allowed.

Our archer now does:
4 shots/round.
Hits targets up to 140 feet away.
Average damage/round: 855.2 vs. animals, and 570 vs. others.

Still too high, but this will do for now. For our warrior, the damage becomes:
- 290.6 vs all with the artifact
- 451.4 vs all, 677.2 vs evil with heavily enchanted mithril shots of holy might

I like the result: a perfect combination is on par with melee, and the artifact ammo is way less powerful than before.

[PowerWyrm]

Ok time for another round at balancing shooting vs melee I guess...

Here's my base setup for melee. A warrior with max STR/DEX using:

a) the Mace of Disruption 'Deathwreaker' (7d10) (+18,+18) <+6, +4>

5.2 blows/round.
Average damage/round: 978.8 vs. creatures not resistant to fire, 1734.2
vs. creatures susceptible to fire, 727.4 vs. evil creatures, 727.4 vs.
animals, 978.8 vs. dragons, 1482.7 vs. undead, and 475.5 vs. others.

Since this is pretty much the best melee weapon in the game (excluding Grond and some OP randarts that will rarely see the light of day), I'm gonna aim at equivalent damage when using returning missiles.

[PowerWyrm]

b) a Sling of Buckland (x4) (+21,+23) <+4, +2>

d) a Magic Shot (1d3) (+0,+0) {@f3}
Returns when thrown.

Combat info:
3 shots/round.
Hits targets up to 140 feet away.
Average damage/round: 306.3.

That's another problem...

[PowerWyrm]

Ok reverting artifact ammo to the previous system... I'll nerf the static arts and try to find a way to nerf the randarts by limiting the number of slays and todam they can get. If I end up with supercharged tohit randart ammo, I'm fine with that...

[Derakon]

That's another problem... If anything bad happens (trap door, monster casting teleport level...) you lose your artifact ammo forever.

The tension this creates is a good thing, IMO. If you lead off a fight with your artifact ammo, then something happens that forces you to flee, you should be tempted to try to return to that dangerous situation to recover your artifact. Given the nature of the game, the only way we can get players to take risks (and therefore have fun) is by tempting them to do so, so more temptations is a good thing.

[PowerWyrm]

(and that one likely will forget on the ground at some point to boot)

That's another problem... If anything bad happens (trap door, monster casting teleport level...) you lose your artifact ammo forever.

[PowerWyrm]

especially if it were in a quiver or whatever and not the main inv.

My variant is based on V, so it has a quiver. It's just 8 slots instead of 10, but that's enough to store 2-3 artifacts, 3-4 ego stacks and a magic ammo.

[PowerWyrm]

That said, maybe your ammo is strong enough to merit the slot despite the headache? I also have not yet truly delved into your variant, so take this all with a grain of salt as I'm missing some context.

Yes my problem is the following:
- you have very powerful ego ammo (for example: seeker arrows of holy might) that deal a lot of damage, but they can break and need to be picked up once fired
- you have unenchanted returning ammo (magic arrows/bolts/shots) that deal minimal damage, but never break and return to the quiver once fired
- you have artifact ammo

Currently, artifact ammo not only deal massive damage, but also never break AND return to the quiver once fired. Basically, once you have found one of these, your quiver becomes pointless, since you don't need anything else to shoot. So I tried to make them less powerful, so their damage is less than the ego ones but still better than the regular magic ones... but that still leaves room for overpowered randarts. So instead of reducing their power, I decided to remove the "returning" part and increase their power even more. Basically you get "opening shots". And yes, this makes quiver management more interesting...

[krazyhades]

If it had returning and a cooldown (or similar) I could see it working out, especially if it were in a quiver or whatever and not the main inv. With just returning, you effectively have "infinite stack of uber ammo." but without returning you have "not worth it PITA"

That said, dev-wise that's getting pretty far afield from low hanging fruit, despite being an interesting design concept to entertain.

[Derakon]

It sounds like artifact ammo is either too useless (bad inventory/damage tradeoff) or too good. Maybe artifact ammo is a bad idea?

[krazyhades]

I feel like I'm being something of the bad guy here by saying this, but here goes...

I am sympathetic to the balance troubles, but the poschengband artifact ammo does not really see use, with the unusual exception of a character briefly carrying the black arrow for wyrms before finding a weapon sufficient to clear them cheaply. People just don't use the pcb artifact ammo basically at all, because it's a precious slot for singleton nonreturning ammo that doesn't massively change one's options (and that one likely will forget on the ground at some point to boot). I've never once seen the pebble of david used outside of slingmaster class returning shots. Cupid's arrow is cute but like all single target charm effects in PCB not actually good, and there are easier ways to kill humanoids than carrying around the bolt of William Tell (the scary humans are uniques and harder to reliably find and farm than wyrms, so the spent slot is painful), and only sometimes does the black arrow see play, and then as just a brief stepping stone until a wyrm drops your new weapon.

That said, maybe your ammo is strong enough to merit the slot despite the headache? I also have not yet truly delved into your variant, so take this all with a grain of salt as I'm missing some context.

[PowerWyrm]

Ok, I'm getting tired of trying to balance randart ammo with the current system... whatever I try I always end up with overpowered ammo (over +10 todam and almost all slays/brands in the book). So instead of trying to nerf them, I'll simply leave them overpowered... but remove the automatic ability to return when thrown. You then have some poscheng-style randarts that can serve as opening shots for high damage, but that can't be abused to kill stuff too easily. So here's the new system:
- "return when thrown" becomes a flag
- it is automatically added to the plain and unenchanted magic shots/arrows/bolts and boomerangs
- it is added to a couple standard artifacts (the ones with the lowest power)
- it is included in the artifact power calculation with a high power value to generate either a powerful normal randart or a weak returning one

[PowerWyrm]

Nothing from V this time, but finally all the dungeons are in place. List of changes:

- Parse dungeon names and coordinates from dungeon.txt
- Tweak metamap layout a bit
- Add towns of Umbar and Gondolin
- Add "The Orc Cave" with Azog, King of the Uruk-Hai as dungeon boss
- Add "The Old Forest" with Old Man Willow as dungeon boss
- Add "The Sandworm Lair" with The Sandworm Queen as dungeon boss
- Add "The Land Of Rh&ucirc;n" with Ulfang the Black as dungeon boss
- Add "The Barrow-downs" with The Wight-King of the Barrow-downs as dungeon boss
- Add "The Maze" with The Minotaur of the Labyrinth as dungeon boss
- Add "The Heart of the Earth" with Golgarach, the Living Rock as dungeon boss
- Add "The Small Water Cave" with The Watcher in the Water as dungeon boss
- Add "Erebor" with Smaug the Golden as dungeon boss
- Add "The Helcaraxe" with The White Balrog as dungeon boss
- Add "The Mines of Moria" with The Balrog of Moria as dungeon boss
- Add "The Illusory Castle" with The King in Yellow as dungeon boss
- Move The Glass Golem to The Illusory Castle
- Add "Cirith Ungol" with Shelob, Spider of Darkness as dungeon boss
- Add "Númenor" with Ar-Pharazôn the Golden as dungeon boss
- Add "Mirkwood" with Radagast the Brown as dungeon boss
- Add "Mordor" with The Mouth of Sauron as dungeon boss
- Add "The Sacred Land Of Mountains" with Trone, the Rebel Thunderlord as dungeon boss
- Add "Dol Guldur" with The Necromancer of Dol Guldur as dungeon boss
- Add "The Paths of the Dead" with Feagwath, the Undead Sorcerer as dungeon boss
- Add "Mount Doom" with The Balrog of the Sammath Naur as dungeon boss
- Add "The Nether Realm" with Xakaze, Father of Abominations as dungeon boss
- Move Senyakaze, Sorceress of the Nether Realm to The Nether Realm
- Add "Utumno, Portal to the Void" with Melkor, Lord of Darkness as dungeon boss
- Move Tik'srvzllat to level 127 of Angband

- Fix @R recall inscription
- Fix parsing error in pref files (INERT -> INERTIA)
- Allow the Dungeon Master to summon uniques
- Fix kobold tile mapping (Adam Bolt tileset)
- Don't generate "tough" (house) inhabitants/invaders in the wilderness at night
- Fix monster spell descriptions (lore)

Files updated: binaries and source code.
Files are available for download at the usual location: http://powerwyrm.monsite-orange.fr

[PowerWyrm]

To whoever plays with the beta version... I've seen a house full of GMMs in the wilderness on my local server, not that far from the starting towns. You have been warned

Note to self: only apply "night level boost" to random monsters generated in the wilderness, not to fixed ones.