Zangband revival?

[Mangojuice]

nexus ? - I don't think so... I suppose hit with that weapon could blink/teleport/banish from level monsters... I hate that effect.

New ideas:
- potion of curing - it's to similiar to !of cure critical wounds - maybe it should only remove confusion, poison, blind etc... without raising HP
- high priest class - new class that is similiar to high mage - there is such one in branding patch (I hate carrying bag with libraries of 2 kind of magic)

That's a good point about potion of curing. Actually, I think I may just remove it. Right now the only difference is that !curing removes hallucination but !cure crit doesn't. So maybe I'll just add that ability to !cure crit.

High priest class: Nah. Truth is, priests already get a better spell progression than Mages in Life magic. If you hate having two schools, then
don't use your second school Or just play a paladin - they only get one school, life/death, but they can cast all the spells in their school.

As for advanced brands: there are already Trump Weapons (which activate for teleportation and give nexus resistance), Vampiric Weapons (like a nether brand but better), and weapons of Chaos. I'm a bit reluctant to go to more advanced brands; I think the difficulty in obtaining rare type attacks is an important element of game balance.

[Jude]

This was discussed elsewhere...why not make mushrooms better/more interesting? Instead of just having them duplicate potions, they could have more extensive tradeoffs/disadvantages or the ability to do something cool with them like brew them into potions of your own or idk.

[buzzkill]

This was discussed elsewhere...why not make mushrooms better/more interesting? Instead of just having them duplicate potions, they could have more extensive tradeoffs/disadvantages or the ability to do something cool with them like brew them into potions of your own or idk.

I've never played Z, but love Amber (hooked on FA right now).

Mushrooms do seem to be a duplication of potions. Their main purpose seems to be to give you a new set of items to identify.

Perhaps they could have 'simple traits' with random strengths and durations. For example a "shroom of healing' may heal 10 or 200 HP. I 'shroom of strength' would give a boost of 1-10 for 10-200 turns. Give them a better chance of being more powerful the deeper they are found. Don't reveal the specifics of the effect to the player (even through ID, maybe just weak,avg,strong).

Back in the old days of the C64, Ultima IV had you mix reagents to come up with your standard spells. Another option would be to let you mix (or brew) mushrooms together to come up with new and unpredictable results. Spellcasters should be better at this.
Example: You have two or more relatively useless types of mushrooms. Mix them together and see what happens. Results should not revealed to the player until the resulting reduction is eaten (6 shrooms mixed together might produce 2 identical mixtures). Cursed mushrooms would be likely to produce bad effects but add POWER and DURATION to the mix. 'Helpful' mushrooms add good properties but not much power. Known mixtures could be saved in monster memory for re-creation (although impurities in the shrooms would prevent an EXACT duplication, modified duration or strength, or on rare occasions even a know mixture would fail). Some mixture are incompatible and would simply 'fail' and work as a poison/blind/slow would (these would not be saved).

A third (and probably a lot easier to implement) option is to add impurities to the shrooms. Change the description to "a mossy (insert color here) mushroom". Mossy would indicate to the player that this is an impure shroom. Only reveal the mushrooms main property through ID. It's secondary and other effects should be weaker and shouldn't be revealed to the player.

Fourth option, have the potency of mushrooms weaken over time (unless specially preserved). They would have VERY POWERFUL effects when 'fresh' but would degrade over time (at first quickly, then more slowly, until eventually the would become ROTTEN, that means 'eat at your own risk for minimal effects'.)

I'd like to see some change to mushrooms in FA too...NICK.

[Arendil]

If you really want to reactivate Zang, that would be great. I'm probably at minority, but I love the way wilderness, cities, shops and dungeons were implemented in later versions (i.e. 2.7.2-2.7.5). There were some drastic problems with balance, but overall total randomness in world layout is a great thing. Themed dungeons, small dungeons, limited in number of levels and/or in level size, maybe towers (i.e. dungeons up), many types of different quests.

Some of this was implemented, some was going to be, and some would just fit in. Too bad, it never got finished. Maybe this time?...

So, anyway, good luck with your project.

[Mangojuice]

If you really want to reactivate Zang, that would be great. I'm probably at minority, but I love the way wilderness, cities, shops and dungeons were implemented in later versions (i.e. 2.7.2-2.7.5). There were some drastic problems with balance, but overall total randomness in world layout is a great thing. Themed dungeons, small dungeons, limited in number of levels and/or in level size, maybe towers (i.e. dungeons up), many types of different quests.

Some of this was implemented, some was going to be, and some would just fit in. Too bad, it never got finished. Maybe this time?...

So, anyway, good luck with your project.

I think you'll like my variant then. I also like the random wilderness; my beef with recent version was that *themed* dungeon-diving can get a little repetitive (how many Bloodletters of Khorne must one kill?)

My version will have farms, inns on the roads between towns, random quests of many different types, and level-type "feelings" in the Wilderness, so you don't wander into a really hard area without warning.

[Arendil]

I also like the random wilderness; my beef with recent version was that *themed* dungeon-diving can get a little repetitive (how many Bloodletters of Khorne must one kill?)

A simple remedy would be plenty of short dungeons. One won't get bored if themed dungeons were about 10 levels long...or maximum 20. Second idea is to have many different "themes", so many, that only some of them can appear in any given game, and most likely, each one only once.

My version will have farms, inns on the roads between towns, random quests of many different types, and level-type "feelings" in the Wilderness, so you don't wander into a really hard area without warning.

Sounds cool. Illusion of real world, total freedom of movement, a lot of randomness and many different types of quests and dungeons, plus some fixed content like special levels here and there, is all I ask from a roguelike.

So, good luck. I appreciate your effort, and hope you can manage to finish your plans.

[Jude]

I like the sounds of your plans.

I also like that guy's idea about mushrooms...something really needs to be done about mushrooms.

Also, how about adding some new interesting mutations?

[Donald Jonker]

I like the sounds of your plans.

I also like that guy's idea about mushrooms...something really needs to be done about mushrooms.

Also, how about adding some new interesting mutations?

In my humble opinion, mushrooms ought to be scrapped entirely. As I see it, all the mushroom reform opinions fall into two categories:

1. Mushrooms should behave like potions, but sometimes with different effects.
2. Mushrooms should have unique uses/bizarre qualities.

In the first case, you might as well just make another flavor of potion. Shift all instances of mushrooms of restoring to potions of restoring. Moreover, there is absolutely no need whatsoever for both a mushroom AND a potion of CSW/cure poison/etc. I would much rather run across the potion versions, so it won't take up another inventory spot. The bonus to game flavor isn't big enough to justify having both.

In the second case, as in the alchemy suggestion above, I think you run the risk of making the game too Nethackish. I'd rather not have to remember a slew of special rules governing the outcomes of various combinations of mushroom/potion flavors. *bands are games of strategy and tactics, not games of checking a spoiler every five minutes to discover another hundred unnecessary interactions.

If you must have mushrooms, make 1 variety with a randomized, unidentifiable, game-changing effect each time you try one (permanently boost/reduce a stat, create/remove mutations, etc.).

--J

[nobody]

i totally agree that some of the proposed changes for mushrooms would make the game too nethackish, and thats bad.
i love zangband, and i love the crazy wilderness in 2.6-2.7 and am excited to see the possibility of someone working on it again. any chance in heck of getting it up to a current angband codebase? i imagine thst would be alotta work

[takkaria]

In my humble opinion, mushrooms ought to be scrapped entirely. As I see it, all the mushroom reform opinions fall into two categories:

1. Mushrooms should behave like potions, but sometimes with different effects.
2. Mushrooms should have unique uses/bizarre qualities.

I considered what you said about removing mushrooms and reducing them down to potions for V, but I figure that there is value in keeping them. (Hairy molds from pre-2.7.x versions of Angband have already been removed, and they merely duplicated mushroom effects.)

I went with the second, but without any of the NetHackish interactions you deride (and rightfully so). They just have effects which nothing else has, mostly very mixed effects. It might turn out that people never use them, but I hope that they do. If they don't, maybe I'll remove them and make a selection of the potions mushrooms or something like that, instead.

Anyway, I certainly feel that removing mushrooms is a big anti-flavour move, and would advise other variant maintainers to not remove them.

[Nick]

Anyway, I certainly feel that removing mushrooms is a big anti-flavour move, and would advise other variant maintainers to not remove them.

... like you have any power over us, mortal. Especially Un, where the whole game is based on mushrooms for the first few levels (well, kind of).

EDIT: Starting to rethink the wisdom of posting pre-caffeine...

[Antoine]

Anyway, I certainly feel that removing mushrooms is a big anti-flavour move, and would advise other variant maintainers to not remove them.

Can't stand the things myself I took them out of Iron (and Quick? can't remember).

But if you have a plan for making them better in V then that's good.

A.

[nobody]

also i forgot to mention i too hate the lava, rubble, water, etc levels

[Jude]

If you must have mushrooms, make 1 variety with a randomized, unidentifiable, game-changing effect each time you try one (permanently boost/reduce a stat, create/remove mutations, etc.).

--J

I like the sound of this too

Basically I like any idea that involves making mushrooms not the same as potions, however simple or complicated

also i forgot to mention i too hate the lava, rubble, water, etc levels

Yes these levels have to go

I'm playing 2.4.something and there's a few annoying level types but it's NOTHING compared to the awful ones in the newer releases.

[Mangojuice]

My take on mushrooms is this:

1. Mushrooms are already different from potions in minor ways. First, in recent version of Z, and in my version, you find mushrooms in small stacks (2-6 or so), whereas you only find one of each potion at a time. Second, they are food and potions aren't. Third, Z has object theming, which means some monsters are going to be more likely to drop "tools" i.e. food, light, diggers ... without good mushrooms, those treasures could kind of suck.

So, I don't mind some mushrooms duplicating potions. A mushroom of cure serious wounds is not a good cure, but it's better than a mushroom that does nothing but feed you. Also, mushrooms tend to duplicate crappy potions, which is another problem.

That said, mushrooms need more unique abilities that potions don't have. I like the random powerful mushroom idea, and I have some others up my sleeves that will be interesting, but I'll let them be a surprise.