FrogComposband 7.0.strawberry

[Sideways]

I think I've solved the maul bug: as far as I can tell, that's exactly what maul is supposed to do.

[Sideways]

Found a bug with Mangy looking lepers:
If you use '5' repeatedly for long periods of time against the Mangy looking leper, it crashes the game.

Confirmed and fixed.

[Sideways]

Are you saying that enemies (sometimes) being pushed back multiple squares and the mauler following is intended behaviour

Yes, there's 70 lines of code in cmd1.c that have the sole purpose of making that happen. PosChengband (and by extension, FrogComposband) has a lot of obscure mechanics that are not very well documented, or not documented at all.

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Re: the Angband quests, there's a few things that might make a difference.

Firstly: Chris changed the way those rewards work recently. That change was in PosChengband, but if you're thinking of old PosChengband before that change, you might think of it as a difference between PosChengband and FrogComposband. What Chris's change did was improve the quality of those drops but decrease their number; in particular, the second Angband quest is now likely to generate only 1 tailored reward drop instead of 2, and the same is true to a lesser extent of the third Angband quest. Overall the effect of that should be pretty close to a wash - in a trial run I did, the improvement in quality and the decrease in quantity cancelled each other out - but it might give a different feel that you're noticing, and it likely has a negative impact in the specific case of the second Angband quest.

Secondly: GREAT_OBJ, a constant that affects several things about item generation, is more favorable to the player in FrogComposband; but this probably only has a very small effect.

Thirdly: Gwarl added a bunch of early orc uniques in ComPosband that are also in FrogComposband. That might have a negative effect on early quest "rewards", for the following reason: in FrogCompos there's a high chance those early quests will be for some unexciting orc unique that doesn't have guaranteed excellent drops of its own, but in PosChengband you have a higher chance of getting someone like the Variant Maintainer, or Hagen (66% chance of dropping his spear), or even It. In other words, the ancillary drops native to the unique would be slightly more exciting in Pos, and it would be hard for the player to tell those apart from the actual quest reward.

Fourthly: it really is super-easy to underestimate how much randomness there is. In the trial run I mentioned, when I played old Pos before Chris's change, essentially nothing useful dropped on the first ten attempts - and then the next ten times completely turned it around, with artifacts and valuables dropping left and right.

[Sideways]

You've played maulers more than me; but I don't see any problem with it. Maulers get other attacks (Knockback and Scatter) that knock enemies back; it doesn't seem unthematic that they'd have an attack that knocks the enemy back but also allows the player to follow, and the visual image of a mauler charging the enemy and driving it further back with every blow works. It also seems interesting from a gameplay point of view, requiring care but potentially allowing the player to either drive the enemy into more favorable terrain or escape being surrounded by melee-ers in an alternative way to Scatter. That it only works in 8 directions is a bit unfortunate maybe.

[HugoVirtuoso]

As of right now, Gwarl says he has incorporated all of the post-7.0.strawberry fixes, up to the March 20 2018 commit with mentioning a dungeon relocation [spoiler] (as noted on Sideway's GitHub page), into the FrogComposband on Angband.Live.

Mocht:
Hengband is actually still maintained to this day. The latest English version is 2.1.5. The very latest version is 2.2.1 (as noted here), but is in Japanese.

[Sideways]

Thanks. There's probably plenty of rewards like that, not just in Frog; e.g. Royal Crypt gives Bilbo to everybody in both FrogComposband and PosChengband. And there will probably always be some rewards like that because the standard reward is so thematic for the quest and can - if all else fails - be sold for decent $$$. (Yes, the development version now has the no_selling option, where that argument doesn't apply.)

But there's absolutely no reason why Trouble at Home should give a hard studded leather to everybody, including characters with no use for it; and I will put alternative rewards there and some other quests (at least anti-paladin).

[Sideways]

Cop Quest doesn't have any random monsters, but does have one summoner (the priest); I'd assume he summoned the Variant Maintainer, which is pretty unlucky and not something you should expect to happen regularly. Even summons apart, the priest is the most dangerous enemy in that quest, and killing him should be a top priority.

[Bostock]

This interests me, I wonder how many interesting/powerful things are in the game that everyone ignores
An example is duelists
No-one played them, then a few people won with them, and said that duelists are wrecking machines at high level

Duelists would probably bring more enjoyment to more people if they started stronger, even at the cost of ending weaker.

[Rudiment]

I have a question about weapon proficiency. My high-elf ranger of level 15 has only beginner (+0 to hit) in short bow and this is very weird because i am shooting everyone out since beginning of the game. Is there some hidden mechanics and my weapon prof is actually rise?

[Sideways]

I have a question about weapon proficiency. My high-elf ranger of level 15 has only beginner (+0 to hit) in short bow and this is very weird because i am shooting everyone out since beginning of the game. Is there some hidden mechanics and my weapon prof is actually rise?

The proficiency mechanics are highly obscure, they're explained in various help files but unfortunately not very well anywhere. Basically, you will gain proficiency by shooting monsters, but only if the monsters are of sufficiently high level compared to your proficiency.

Beginner (+0 to-hit) sounds not so great, but it's a lot better than Unskilled (-20), and sufficiently good that you must shoot monsters of native level 15 (or deeper) to gain any proficiency. My guess would be that you haven't shot enough level 15 monsters yet, and that's why you haven't gained any proficiency.

(Also, the more proficient you are, the slower you gain proficiency.)

[Pete Mack]

Also: this makes carrying buffs significantly more useful.

[Rudiment]

The proficiency mechanics are highly obscure, they're explained in various help files but unfortunately not very well anywhere. Basically, you will gain proficiency by shooting monsters, but only if the monsters are of sufficiently high level compared to your proficiency.

Beginner (+0 to-hit) sounds not so great, but it's a lot better than Unskilled (-20), and sufficiently good that you must shoot monsters of native level 15 (or deeper) to gain any proficiency. My guess would be that you haven't shot enough level 15 monsters yet, and that's why you haven't gained any proficiency.

(Also, the more proficient you are, the slower you gain proficiency.)

But my ranger began with beginner (+0 to hit) in short bow from level 1. I cleaned warrens and now cleaning hideout (lvl 12). So i met plenty of monsters with equal of even higher lvl, but i didn't manage to get even silly beginner (+1 to hit).

[Sideways]

But my ranger began with beginner (+0 to hit) in short bow from level 1. I cleaned warrens and now cleaning hideout (lvl 12). So i met plenty of monsters with equal of even higher lvl, but i didn't manage to get even silly beginner (+1 to hit).

With +0 proficiency, you need to shoot monsters of native level 15 or deeper. That limit isn't set by your clvl - it's purely coincidental that your clvl happened to also be 15. The limit is set by your +0 proficiency, and was already dl 15 when you were clvl 1; apologies if my previous post didn't explain this clearly enough. As you go a bit deeper your proficiency should start rising.

(Technically, you can get some proficiency from shooting dl 14 monsters; just not enough to reach the lofty heights of +1 to-hit.)

[Sideways]

Four dungeons - the anti-magic cave, the anti-melee cave, Heaven and Mine - don't have bottom guardians in the official release of 7.0.strawberry. (Heaven and Mine will have guardians in 7.0.peppermint, and already have guardians in the development version.)

[Rudiment]

Question about Virtues system. My ranger have +3% to fail rate in Nature realm. I think it is because "You have sinned against Nature". On my way many hostile animals and my spiders from Trump realm not always help to avoid killing animals. Maybe it is worth adding spells like calm animal or something.