[Announce] Poschengband 5.0.1 Released

[krazyhades]

Chris considered it "cheating' if you're visiting (or "scumming") that level more than once for the Wargs.

If you're jamming out realtime speed play (cough hugo cough) the fastest way to handle the Warg quest is to temporarily flick on always_small and then stairscum them to hell, since their spawn spots reshuffle when you re-enter the floor...thus you can quickly get them in sequence in the same room. That way you don't have to spend 10000000 years walking around a huge empty level looking for the last 3 idiots. If the last few Wargs didn't usually take forever to find, I would never feel a desire to do this.

I don't really care if some consider it cheap. The Warg quest is very early in the game and not difficult. Dying on it is "psh whatever" and taking a long time to win it because you can't find the last couple is actual agony.

[DavidB1111]

This is why I like the new change for the teleport Debug.
Makes getting to those last few Wargs a bit easy.

krazy, do you have any idea if the rune sword is bugged for you and doesn't count combat rings?

Oh, hey, if anyone ever tried, a Weaponmaster is a good class to run with if you want to use Rune Swords. Their first skill can't miss. So, it eliminates the negative hit penalty. And it's not that difficult to get past the -10 damage penalty with that class too. And I am aware you can't normally get Rune Swords until late game.

You get permanent heroism with Rune Swords at level 20. Literally permanent since you can't take off the sword.

I know that cheating is a morally grey area in Roguelikes, but sometimes you just want to beat up on Vecna without worrying about well, Vecna's power level.

[debo]

I'm pretty sure that combat rings have worked with runeswords in the past. (The standard way to level them up was to use rings to get the tohit to a point where you can hit low-level breeders.)

Is it possible that you're wearing the ring on the your shield hand or something like that? Unless you're wielding a weapon two-handed, combat rings only work on the weapon in the corresponding hand. So, if you have your runesword in your right hand, a shield in your left, and a combat ring on your left hand, it will do literally nothing.

Either that or something changed when they were tweaked a bit, I can't look at the source just now.

[DavidB1111]

I'm pretty sure that combat rings have worked with runeswords in the past. (The standard way to level them up was to use rings to get the tohit to a point where you can hit low-level breeders.)

Is it possible that you're wearing the ring on the your shield hand or something like that? Unless you're wielding a weapon two-handed, combat rings only work on the weapon in the corresponding hand. So, if you have your runesword in your right hand, a shield in your left, and a combat ring on your left hand, it will do literally nothing.

Either that or something changed when they were tweaked a bit, I can't look at the source just now.

First off, look, I'm sorry, I get worked up sometimes because of how defensive I am of things I've done for 20 years without effort. No thanks to my Asperger's.
I really am not crazy, I swear it all to you. I'm really sorry about getting worked up about this. I just, when something happens and I don't know how to handle it, I get upset.

Why in the blue hell would rings not work if they're on both hands? That doesn't make any sense.
Seriously, dual combat/randart rings should work on any character, not just one using a two-handed weapon, or a monk, or a 6 ring slot Dragon.

Sorry for being overworked about it, but things that make literally no sense to someone who's been playing Angband and almost every variant for nearly 20 years, really gets my goat.
And that includes Death having an instant death attack in Oangband.

Anyone have any other idea about the other issues I mentioned, such as debug object rolling being a bit buggy on flags not actually working.
Or the Wizard mode not correctly acting like it does.
Or the cheat_Object not working reliably on Ego-Items.

I tested the ring, that works. What happened to the rings of power? The rarest rings in the game, and someone thought it would be funny to remove the ability to have the tiny bonus to damage from both of them work? Really? THat seems a bit pithy.

Even Ringil's nerf to +5 is understandable.
At least make it an option that lowers score by a little bit. Because this is literally the silliest thing in any Angband variant. Yes, that includes the Ty_Curse summoning Cyber-demons and paralyzing you. At least that makes sense.

Also, is there any way to tell how Runesword power ups work? Like, what makes a kill count?

I'm sorry, It's a magical ring. It should work just fine on any ring slot. Because, why does a helmet give to hit and damage, but not a ring on the "Shield" slot? Can you see the horrible flaw in having this make sense? Why would a magical ring not work, while gloves, helmets, shields, amulets, body armor, everything you can wear works just fine with boosting your damage?

Really, a magic ring being nerfed? What? How does a single ring somehow outweigh every other boosting item for damage in the entire game and get hit with the nerf nuclear bomb?
My mind literally is boggled. I don't get it.

I'm sorry, I just don't get it. Of all the things to nerf. I mean, Marilyths are actually terrible at dual-wielding despite having 4 arms. Can we just concentrate on that being buffed?

[debo]

It surprised me too the first time, which is why it was the first thing I thought of. Pretty sure this is from heng or even farther back (maybe zang?)

I think a lot of runesword builds go shieldless anyways, which would let you use both combat rings.

If you're going to get worked up about weird design decisions, poschengband is very likely the worst possible variant for you

[Pete Mack]

It also makes for mindboggling source code, since so many ad hoc changes have been made, uncommented, over the years. V source is so much cleaner now

[DavidB1111]

It surprised me too the first time, which is why it was the first thing I thought of. Pretty sure this is from heng or even farther back (maybe zang?)

I think a lot of runesword builds go shieldless anyways, which would let you use both combat rings.

If you're going to get worked up about weird design decisions, poschengband is very likely the worst possible variant for you

I've been playing it for years just fine. This is the only issue so far that made me freak out.
You'd freak out too if something changed on you for the first time in 20 years.

I'm sorry for freaking out, I am not crazy.

[GenericPseudonym]

AFAIK the ring change was not just a random nerf, it was for the dual wield system. So if you dual-wield weapons (which you can do in PCB), the left ring affects your left weapon and the right ring affects your right weapon. I guess if you were a Shieldmaster bashing things with your shield then you could make use of a ring on your shield hand too.

I'm not sure why the game doesn't just evenly split slaying between the weapons though, since it already does that with other damage bonuses like from strength or being a Tonberry.

[DavidB1111]

AFAIK the ring change was not just a random nerf, it was for the dual wield system. So if you dual-wield weapons (which you can do in PCB), the left ring affects your left weapon and the right ring affects your right weapon. I guess if you were a Shieldmaster bashing things with your shield then you could make use of a ring on your shield hand too.

I'm not sure why the game doesn't just evenly split slaying between the weapons though, since it already does that with other damage bonuses like from strength or being a Tonberry.

Oh, Okay. I see now. Sorry for panicking. You'll learn that is something I have issues with.
Think of me as permanently wearing a cloak of cowardliness.
I do agree that the split should be done like it is for the Strength.

Also, I should totally try to run a Tonberry with the tonberry weapons, like a cleaver. Or axes in general? Perhaps a weaponmaster dagger Tomberry? Maybe their reduction of blows per turn doesn't affect daggers massively.

I really like the Monster Races to be honest. That's a lot of fun.
So, any other people experience the other issues I've mentioned?

There seems to be another bug, randarts via the debug option o, are constantly being generated as cursed only, at least for elven cloaks.
I think it needs to be looked at.
Artifact creation scrolls seem to work just fine.

Also, the debug option for creating items, via lowercase c has no way to use axes which is really weird.
I'd also like to know why there's no way to disable the auto-picker once you accidentally enable it.
The only way to stop it is to manually remove all lines in the pref listing.

If there's another way, please let me know.

After playing a Tonberry Dagger weaponmaster, I have to say, that is an extremely powerful class. I look forward to seeing how silly the blows per turn can get on a non-Tonberry.

Hey, I found a bug that has nothing to do with cheat options!
The dagger weaponmaster class gives you supposedly a bonus to AC while wielding daggers, but it doesn't seem to actually function.
I tested this with daggers like crazy.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Another bug:
Berserker breakage of all curses doesn't remove the 'Cursed' status from the screen until the screen is refreshed (CTRL-R).

[DavidB1111]

I found another bug, scrolls of *Remove Curse* don't get rid of the Aggravation flag from Rune Swords when their thirst redoubles.
It used to do that, and it does make sense that you can keep it calmed down a bit.
So, that might need to be fixed.

I don't care if my weapon is 9d4, having over 100 monsters beeline for my head at the exact second I enter a dungeon floor doesn't exactly make that damage dice helpful.

I'm hoping this can get fixed, otherwise someone is going to have to guide me through playing with Aggravation.

[isildiy]

Hi
In the newest version (5.2) the recharge spell of the sorcery school seems to be broken. I cant recharge anything with my beastman bloodmage. It would be very nice if somebody could provide a quick fix, because that char is very device dependent and I can't continue the game with this bug.

I tested it out with a munchkin android sorcerer, and the recharge spell worked for it! I believe that it doesnt work because of the new device system and how it seems to "drain" mana from the players pool into the chosen device pool. I guess the bug arises because bloodmage has no mana to transfer and no mechanism may have been coded to transfer from his hp pool to the device?

thx!

[Regalia]

I found another bug, scrolls of *Remove Curse* don't get rid of the Aggravation flag from Rune Swords when their thirst redoubles.
It used to do that, and it does make sense that you can keep it calmed down a bit.
So, that might need to be fixed.

I don't care if my weapon is 9d4, having over 100 monsters beeline for my head at the exact second I enter a dungeon floor doesn't exactly make that damage dice helpful.

I'm hoping this can get fixed, otherwise someone is going to have to guide me through playing with Aggravation.

Don't move much, let the monsters come to you. Having replenishable destruction is good. Use detection even more often.

That or play a psion. They can suppress aggravation.

[GenericPseudonym]

I found another bug, scrolls of *Remove Curse* don't get rid of the Aggravation flag from Rune Swords when their thirst redoubles.
It used to do that, and it does make sense that you can keep it calmed down a bit.
So, that might need to be fixed.

I don't care if my weapon is 9d4, having over 100 monsters beeline for my head at the exact second I enter a dungeon floor doesn't exactly make that damage dice helpful.

I'm hoping this can get fixed, otherwise someone is going to have to guide me through playing with Aggravation.

If the aggravation gets too much for you, you can always get yourself free with a scroll of mundanity: it'll ruin your rune-sword by irreversibly turning it into a mundane (+0,+0) item, but it removes the permanent curse. Also works for any other permanently cursed equipment you get tired of.

That or play a psion. They can suppress aggravation.

You can also suppress aggravation by being a shadow-fairy or a level 40+ scout, although with any of the three it still significantly penalizes your stealth skill.

[DavidB1111]

Okay, I can kind of live with the Aggravation, I just want to know why it's no longer affected by the *Remove Curse* scroll which removes heavy curses, which Aggravation usually is considered. I'm not trying to remove Aggravation from the major few Aggravation Cursed Swords/weapons.

And destroying the Rune Sword on a Rune Sword character seems a bit excessive, especially since getting it to 9d4 was an exercise of tediousness, and I still can't figure out the dang formula.

Detection is not that much of an issue. Wizard Mode acts like Super Telepathy.
Now, if only I could figure out why there are so many Debug mode and Wizard mode and Cheat mode bugs in this version compared to earlier versions.

Something completely broke the Flags setting so you can't actually see what flags an item has, in Control-A o, which plays with an object. Cheat flag for objects is completely broken and only triggers on artifacts or Randarts. Which means you got a whole lot of identify fun times ahead.

Mainly, I'm just confused why Rune Swords had to get the *remove curse* flag not to work on the only thing it should work on.
You get an enemy to curse it, you can remove that just fine.
Aggravation is most certainly not the same as Permanently cursed. And it doesn't just swap your Rune Sword out with one with built in Aggravation, it literally just applies it to it.
Ergo, it should be removed with *Remove Curse*

I mean, why is keeping a sentient angry sword calm a bad thing?
Maybe make it so if you eat enough souls, it goes away.