ComPosband

[HugoVirtuoso]

The Glass Castle, Anti-Magic cave, and Anti-Melee cave don't have Dungeon masters. Perhaps they should so players have more mid-game chances to get stat gains.

[Gwarl]

Yeah. Mine too. Not for stat-gains but because reaching the bottom of a dungeon is anticlimactic if there's no guardian.

Dungeons in general are going to get a reshuffle. Glass castle will become crystal castle and only partly made of glass. Glass walls will show up in some other dungeons. I might get rid of anti-melee cave and replace it with something else.

[Gwarl]

Changelog before I forget:

• Dragons should be generally more lethal at close range
• Evil creatures no longer automatically resist nether (demons/undead still get resistance/immunity)
• More quest shuffling, nerf studded leather gloves
• Some fixes to things that didn't work properly

[GenericPseudonym]

Those nether changes sound like a huge buff to Death realm. 700 damage netherstorms against everything except demons/undead sound pretty powerful.

[Gwarl]

I'll start handing out resist nether flags to high level enemies like candy in order to compensate

[Gwarl]

Some more changes:

• Holy grail activation is much better but the cooldown is longer
• Added orcish uniques from the first age
• Almost all the clouded/elliptic monsters are in. Babbage analytical engine is back (among others).
• Morivant gets another questline: fighters guild offers quests
• Orc cave goes down to DL32 and is home to trolls
• Artifact damage dice updated to reflect changes in the base weapon types

Updated on github and live.

[Sideways]

Had a good test run at ComPosband, which ended at Angband 98 when I got double-mana-stormed by Nodens in one turn for ~900 damage (and triple-mana-stormed over 2 turns, with a failed healing attempt in between). Here's a review of what ComPosband was like, intended both for players curious about ComPos and its current status, and as feedback for Gwarl as its maintainer.

Characters have an easier time in ComPos than regular Pos for several reasons. Weapon dice have been improved slightly, and many glove base types have small native to-hit/to-dam bonuses. Gloves of Slaying can now have off-weapon slays, which are overpowered but also fun and make picking the best gloves more interesting. The early healing potions have been buffed, which is probably currently the largest gameplay difference between ComPos and Pos. It's pretty much meaningless in the late game, but makes a huge difference in the early game; in particular, staves of cure wounds (while still useful) are no longer the critical early/mid-game items they are in Pos because potions of CCW now fill that role. Potions of curing have been essentially obsoleted, and I think it's Gwarl's plan to remove them from the game entirely; there's nothing else to do with them, really, unless Gwarl wants to give them a niche by making them significantly more useful against timed effects (read: poison) than CCW is.

I played as a half-orc weaponsmith. Half-orcs are a new race in ComPosband, and felt fairly strong (the version I played had a bug whereby I didn't get free rDark even though I should have done, but this has been fixed since). Weaponsmiths have been upgraded slightly in that they have two new combo-essences (Clarity and Vitality) that they can add. Clarity is combined rConf, rBlind and rFear and is actually a surprisingly useful combination in the late game. Vitality is a bunch of useless things that no one will probably ever add (but I suppose that just shows how useless the corresponding single essences are...) I believe Gwarl is planning to modify Vitality and add other similar combinations later.

There are several new quests which have been rather buggy in early versions of ComPosband, but most of the problems have now been sorted out. Gwarl is still working out the right balance for them, and I'm sure he would welcome input from test players. Elven Embassy was really brutal when I played it, and I had to bail out; Gwarl has already modified it to make it easier, but it's probably still best to keep your eyes open there. Gwarl has also reverted most of the quest-related changes Chris made in 7.x, with two exceptions: he kept the old Haunted House and Doom Quest II instead of clouded's new ones. I don't think Gwarl has any strong opinion about Doom Quest II, so he might bring clouded's version back if people want it. (clouded's Haunted House was deliberately not reintroduced because Gwarl prefers the original; watch out if you're used to clouded's version, because the original is much more dangerous.)

There is a new town, Thalos, which for some reason best known to Gwarl has been given an Arabian/Middle Eastern flavor. When I played there were no quests in Thalos, but Gwarl has now moved Orc Camp there and might add more quests later. (Given the flavor I wouldn't be surprised to see Gwarl put a djinni quest there...) Other details about where Thalos fits in are also still being worked out; for example, currently Thalos and Telmora have redundant arenas. (I believe Gwarl's long-term plan is to turn Camelot into another new town and put a non-redundant arena with Camelot monsters there, but it will likely be a while before he gets that far.)

ComPos is still very much a work in progress, but the major game-crashing bugs have been fixed (for now...), so if you're interested you can grab a copy from github and have a good time. Big ellipos fans are warned, though, that while Gwarl's plan is to add back most of the quality-of-life things that ellipos has, he hasn't got that far yet. (People less enthused about some of those things are warned that Gwarl plans to add back most of the quality-of-life things that ellipos has - and may even go further than ellipos did - so if you think things like easy ID dumb the game down too much, now's the time to convince him to make them optional rather than forced.)

[Gwarl]

Changelog:

• Stronghold replaced with warren (animals and boldor)
• Bandit hideout for southering uniques
• You can recall from dungeons without slaying their outer guardians
• Samurai charge mana while resting as in ellipos
• Warrior-mages have fighting and device skill buffed to be the equal of rangers, but are still worse in all other respects
• Changed formula for starting gold. Higher minimum, higher average, lower variance
• Fixed ESP flags broken in the last version
• Chance of being ambushed on a road reduced

[PowerWyrm]

The variant name, however, is perilously close to "compost band".

Or CumPosband. That would be fun: a variant where every monster is a breeder and breathes DNA

[Gwarl]

That was crude and unneccessary.

[poschengbandplayer]

Hello and thanks for your effort!


Did you keep the 7.x changes to see invisible and paralysis as is?
If so, in my humble suggestion, I think that paralysis should be super nerfed and that 2 or max. 3 resist para. sources should be enough to give complete immunity.

Maybe make it so that an excessive amount of resist paralysis (lets say 5 or 6) should give complete immunity to ancient foul curse as well

IMHO see invisible should give complete see invisibility at 3 sources as well. But if your searching is low you will not see the real glyph of the monster but instead a pink "U" (for unknown)


Also, another suggestion would be to make detect X spells reliant on searching too. If you have low Search skill, a detect object/monster spell will only show you "u" (unknown) glyphs. but the higher your searching goes the better results you get. Another approach would be to remove detect spells entirely. Each time a dungeon level is entered, a die is rolled and depending on your search skill, some (or all) of the map and objects of it are shown.



Please let me know if you like my ideas because theres alot more from where that came from :P

[HugoVirtuoso]

Hello and thanks for your effort!


Did you keep the 7.x changes to see invisible and paralysis as is?
If so, in my humble suggestion, I think that paralysis should be super nerfed and that 2 or max. 3 resist para. sources should be enough to give complete immunity.

Maybe make it so that an excessive amount of resist paralysis (lets say 5 or 6) should give complete immunity to ancient foul curse as well

IMHO see invisible should give complete see invisibility at 3 sources as well. But if your searching is low you will not see the real glyph of the monster but instead a pink "U" (for unknown)


Also, another suggestion would be to make detect X spells reliant on searching too. If you have low Search skill, a detect object/monster spell will only show you "u" (unknown) glyphs. but the higher your searching goes the better results you get. Another approach would be to remove detect spells entirely. Each time a dungeon level is entered, a die is rolled and depending on your search skill, some (or all) of the map and objects of it are shown.



Please let me know if you like my ideas because theres alot more from where that came from :P

I think the unknown glyphs should be 'x'

[Gwarl]

I actually like the FA/SI changes in 7. Getting hit with paralysis with no FA really is less lethal then in 6 and that seems to be enough to trade off against occassionally missing a turn. I'd rather look at energy randomisation to avert late game RNG instadeath, although I might look at sources of FA reducing paralysis timers. And as for see invisible, I like that the changes make the invis flag matter more - although I may give everyone a perception based check by default, and have SI stack over that, or adjust how SI interacts with perception. A semi-detected monster would be a white glyph as with telepathy.

I have no plans for a detection overhaul. My main aim with this variant will be to cram more things in but quality of life fixes are in there too.

So these are not bad ideas but they are not my priorities now.

[CyclopsSlayer]

I have to admit to feeling a pulse of Rage when I got paralyzed recently in 7.0.2 while having 4 sources of FA. Even if I recovered immediately, the perceived penalty was far worse than the actual deficit.

The SI changes IMO devalues the racial See Invis that they pay dearly for, and ups the value of Infravision. Infravision has no check so frex Smeagol is seen 100% of the time, while SI isn't usually found until WAY deeper then invis mobs are found and a single source barely can find something a third of the time.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Gwarl, any plan to bring back the Lazy personality and its respective Lazy artifacts?