[Announce] PosChengband 7.0.0 Released

[Fnord]

I also don't understand the removal of classes, items etc.

And I don't get the point of the reforge nerf. Do Ninjas need to be punished, or monster classes?

It would seem to be much better to actually make all slots similar in potential power, avoiding this issue entirely (though certainly a big change).

[wobbly]

For what purpose was this done.

EDIT:
Okay, I read the commit log and while I agree that _Holiness is too strong for its depth, I still really like it as a staff effect.
I propose you keep it in since it has a great thematic set of effects.
You still have much better effects on staves, such as Genocide, Destruction, Banish, and the Storms.

Regarding the damage: I don't think 100 LOS damage is actually very good at all in PosChengband. Sure, it literally disintegrates hordes of orcs and early hounds, but as soon as I get deep enough to find good stuff like _Holiness or _Dispel Foo, I am probably sitting in an ASC, wailing at one monster a time as much as possible or blink-scumming lone uniques- stuff like that. And once the chaff has more than 400 or so HP, I can't clear them without burning all/most of my charges (though it is very nice to have this utility on a healing item for when a summon roll fills a wide open space with harmless low U/u etc..

I'm also curious about this. Holiness is an interesting mid-level utility device, 3-uses in 1 device. It's hard to argue that the heal or the damage is too strong. You can get much better damage on other device, much better heal. At some pt standing in line of sight of multiple enemies becomes pretty risky.

I'm getting the feeling in all of this that you haven't considered the little guys when trying to balance. I'll use the phase spider as an example as I'm currently playing 1:

How is this meant to do damage in the later stages of the mid-game if you nerf all mid-level devices.
The top-tier devices don't drop till low levels blocked by quests they won't complete without mid-level devices.
They already have to grind a lot, what gain making this super-grind. I don't want to kill 1000 great drakes because my only option has become level up for hps.

Please keep in mind that some characters simply can't get much progress through stages in the game without leaning heavily on devices. Game is meant to be fun, not work.

[wobbly]

I suppose it's a bug, though it certainly didn't bother me, but twice now in a game, Sir Kay has summoned Camelot Knights, who, unless they're invisible, aren't there. (Or maybe just the failure message is the same as for success?)

Think that's a joke feature, like - "the demonite summons Cyberdemons", "the deomonite invokes a Starburst"

Incidently Sir Kay is a different alignment to Camelot Knights. If you leave him alive till you get to Arthur they'll punch on.

[Qyx]

Possible bug: (not) summoning camelot knights

I suppose it's a bug, though it certainly didn't bother me, but twice now in a game, Sir Kay has summoned Camelot Knights, who, unless they're invisible, aren't there. (Or maybe just the failure message is the same as for success?)

[nikheizen]

Going to comment on my opinion on the 7.0.0 changes since I just finished a character using them here.

(long-ass post ahead)

Poison: I really like the change up that poison got recently. It's now much more of an interesting effect, but still needs significant work.

• Poison counter is a huge improvement over not knowing how much damage you have stored up.
• The description of many items which cured poison since it was kind of a default to cure poison need to be changed.
• Poison damage numbers seem mostly fine, but IMO the counter should tick a LOT faster and at least every game turn if you have a really high poison value (being able to zap _Curing multiple times between ticks is lame and makes poison really weak).

Free Action: I'm not too sure on this one, on the one hand, I never really got paralyzed once I had like 2 pips of FA on my last character- but on the other, I am very sure there were several instances where hitting that 1% or so chance to fail all my good saves would have got me killed. I am fine with instadeath, but only when it comes down to player fault (and not the "you did not unconditionally avoid the monster with the 1/1000 chance of killing you instantly" type of player fault).
However, I like that you have diversified its effects a lot, and now with several FA sources- it just means that paralyzing monsters are more likely to double turn you (which was a thing anyway).
Honestly, overall I think this is a win.

See Invisible: My character had poor searching/perception skills so this may colour my impression somewhat- but please revert or rework this awful change. Permanently invisible enemies have never been interesting in Angband, but making you require telepathy to actually see the dread pack you are fighting is 100% obnoxious. I swear I could only actually see these DL40 monsters 1/20 turns with 2 or 3 sources of SInv because of this low skill score. That doesn't make the skill more interesting to take, since this is really the only use of it after CLvl 15 or so and Telepathy trumps it 100% unless you were somehow fighting a monster named Tik (haha).

New monster abilities: For the most part I love these, the primary exception is the jumping ability on spiders. Possibly consider giving these spiders a jump ability which teleports them *to* the player (placing them in the nearest open cell or failing if you can't place within x cells).
Considerations:

• Makes them considerably more dangerous to fight in the open.
• Makes them considerably less obnoxious to fight.
• Continues to reward killholing (except disintegration spiders- what fun that would be!).

Also the stun effect on ice spiders and stunning auras in general are a bit too spammy for stun effects that aren't attack brands IMO, punishing characters for having lots of attacks makes me sad.

Stun: Speaking of stun, I am actually really happy that it's not the be-all end-all status effect to apply to an enemy, but I still feel it's quite useful against magickers. Thanks for that.

Unlife: I haven't noticed this doing anything at all. Maybe because I've always had plenty of hold life?

Monster/Lazy/Blue Mage Removals: Can you please explain why you did this? It doesn't seem very poschengband (in my own, personal, interpretation of what that means) to remove these bad/difficult achievable things. I understand nuking some of clouded's monster contributions, but stuff like PGR is odd to me.

I haven't really tried anything to do with recall/ID since I like knowing what everything does (thank you for easy lore) and hate ID game in stuff which isn't like Brogue or Sil (thank you for easy ID).

Also, have you considered looking at PosChengband R's "Coffeebreak" mode? It seems like a really fun way to mix up PosChengband, 100% constant looty/killy madness (looty/killy being one of my favourite things about the game after chargen options).

Anyway, the device changes sound like they might actually be worth giving a shot, so if I give 7.0.1 a try, I'll try to give some feedback on that too.

Hope this was helpful, cheers and thanks for the development!

[HugoVirtuoso]

For what purpose was this done

That's just another step in turning the game into IVAN as MITZE calls the path PosChengband has followed

[Gwarl]

Oh, by the way, it would be fantastic if we could get those savefile headers with text descriptions of the character (Name, race, class, level, dungeon level, killed by) that V and FA have. Please.

[krazyhades]

For what purpose was this done

Looking for and conserving healing and *healing* is the most fun part of the game so it was made longer

[nikheizen]

[6] _Holiness removed. If you upgrade, it still works of course. You just can't find these any more.

For what purpose was this done.

EDIT:
Okay, I read the commit log and while I agree that _Holiness is too strong for its depth, I still really like it as a staff effect.
I propose you keep it in since it has a great thematic set of effects.
You still have much better effects on staves, such as Genocide, Destruction, Banish, and the Storms.

Regarding the damage: I don't think 100 LOS damage is actually very good at all in PosChengband. Sure, it literally disintegrates hordes of orcs and early hounds, but as soon as I get deep enough to find good stuff like _Holiness or _Dispel Foo, I am probably sitting in an ASC, wailing at one monster a time as much as possible or blink-scumming lone uniques- stuff like that. And once the chaff has more than 400 or so HP, I can't clear them without burning all/most of my charges (though it is very nice to have this utility on a healing item for when a summon roll fills a wide open space with harmless low U/u etc..

[Gwarl]

MITZE means installation, rather than compilation. The makefiles needed to be updated at some point when quests were changed, but weren't.

[MITZE]

Reports about the Vapor quest not working could not be reproduced. Is this still an issue?

This seemed to happen because the edit files for Vapor Quest and a few others--Sandworms, Mountain Shrine, and I think one other I can't remember--were somehow not making it in with the rest of the edit files when compiling for Linux. The problem was manually fixed for the server, but I don't know if there's something that stopping those files from being included with Linux compilations.

[chris]

Version 7.0.1 is up in the usual spot. This release is a minor update, mostly because I am about to go online to access all the expected complaints about the 7.0 stuff As with the last release, I'm not finished playtesting and still making considerable design changes. If this bothers you, wait for the 7.1 release which should happen sometime around Xmas ... I hope.

This release addressed a few 6.1 oook reports including:
[1] Problems with quests if monsters are summoned *after* the quest is completed. Fixed. Reports about the Vapor quest not working could not be reproduced. Is this still an issue? If you are on Linux (I think the OP was), try running in gdb and at least getting a backtrace (bt). Also, make sure you are running the correct executable. The build system builds into the src directory. Any executable at the root level was placed there by you, and therefore must be manually kept up to date by you. Also, on Linux at least, you can just run out of src (directories are set by configure).

[2] Minor complaints about message coloring ... weapons of sharpness.

[3] Request to look at mimic design ... I did, but haven't had a chance for playtesting. FYI, mimics are designed to be much weaker in mimicry than possessors. They can learn 5 forms, after all, and they are quite capable of success in their native form whereas the Possessor is hopeless without a current body. They should not be able to count on learning any specific form.

[4] Confusion about device design: In the old days, almost any player could get enough device skills to use (almost) any device. Skills were meaningless for mage types: You could probably do a Mighty Zombie Mage and not notice any decrease wrt devices. These days, *nobody* is above the device system... Well, perhaps a Devicemaster is, but then only in their speciality. And even in this case, race and personality choices matter, as does INT. Every player *might* find Magic Mastery useful.

Wrt devices themselves, the old system had each effect identical (and damage indexed to player level??!). The new system has variability in effectiveness, and I've gone ahead and taken a good hard look at this for 7.0.1. For example, Fire Balls start at around 65 damage, but can go all the way up to 370 damage! If you are in the habit of ignoring certain device types, you might want to rethink that approach. So while a Warrior can't use a wand of rockets, they might be able to snag some other device type that doesn't scale difficulty with power so aggressively. (Of course, warriors are *much* better off shooting.)

Check out the wizard commands ^A"3 and ^A"2 if you don't understand the current system and its design goals. And remember, devices should be considerably weaker than mage spells ... at least until the end game (where device skills really, really matter).

I've also continued to make minor gameplay adjustments, such as:
[1] FA helping with slowing effects from inertia as well as with recovery from being slowed.

[2] Random quest rewards are now 10 levels deeper than the current quest level, but there are fewer reward objects (You can get good stuff early).

[3] There is now more !Healing. _Healing is not required and never really was ... at least before the 6.0 monster additions. If you have it, of course, then it is very nice.

[4] Black Market now stocks object levels commensurate with player level. This is not realistic, of course, but is a nice balance change. For example, stocking OL50 for CL30 is a bit broken. On the other hand, the BM is no longer useless in the late game ... You can get OL70 and CL50.

[5] reduce_uniques no longer removes boss monsters or demigod parents.

[6] _Holiness removed. If you upgrade, it still works of course. You just can't find these any more.

[7] Nexus stat scramble replaced with something else. No spoilers, just play and see!

And remember, I still haven't seen any comments about 7.0. I'll adress those in the next release ...

[Fnord]

Fwiw, I agree with Conker.

[EpicMan]

Quote:
Originally Posted by debo View Post
Instant kills and randomized energy were emblematic of poscheng from the beginning and I would hate to see them go.

Out of interest, what is it about these that you like, if you can explain it?

To be fair, randomized energy predates Chris, it was first added way back in Hengband. Randomizing it does remove the binary can-or-can't-be-double-moved-by-the-SoC in favor of a more graduated "more is better" scale, which is where resistances, free action, etc have all been moving. This is more in line with CRPG-style scaling stats and less in line with Angband's binary attributes.

[CyclopsSlayer]

<mutter><mutter>
So, I was trashing mobs in the overworld with a new 7.0 char. A tough battle with two named at once gave me the Phial of Galadriel, and the Gloves, Cammithrin... Problem is, I'm a Ninja and abhor light... grrr, aargh...