[Announce] FrogComposband 7.1.toffee released

[CyclopsSlayer]

That is a hell of a weapon, with 24 base damage. Wow.

I think one of the Meng's dropped it, but not sure. Bottom of the hideout is all I recall.

Off hand, how many grades of Sharp are there? I've seen 'Sharp' '*Sharp*' "*Sharp*" and "*Sharp*"

[Sideways]

There's only two kinds of Sharp an item can be: Sharp (aka Vorpal, |S, Sharpness) and *Sharp* (aka *Vorpal*, Vorpal2, |SS, *Sharpness*). There's a third grade of Sharpness (between those two) that can be attained by combining a Sharp weapon with the permanent sharpness bonus of high-level Sword-speciality Weaponmasters. (*Sharp* weapons are already so sharp that the swordmaster bonus doesn't make them any sharper.)

[CyclopsSlayer]

Ah, thank you. Could have sworn I had seen a Red with stars, oh well. Still fun weapons nonetheless.

[Bostock]

Encountered a minor death-message bug with mirror-masters: blew myself up with an explosion of my own mirror, and the death message said I was "killed by ."

[Sideways]

Thanks, will fix.

[Rudiment]

1) Found a Potion of New Life. Description says:"It changes your life rating and max of all your stats and cures all mutations when you quaff it.". Can changes in life rating and max of all stats be bad?
2) Does mastery of weapon increase number of attacks per turn?

[TauzentBlitz]

1. Yes. You can end up with a lower max HP and you max stats can be shifted from the stats you care about to ones you don't. You can use a potion of self knowledge to check what they are - If they were bad to begin with a potion of new life will most likely be a buff and vise versa.

2. Weapon master just seems to increase to_hit by a bit as far as I know. (+20 at master)

[Rudiment]

1. Are max stat and life rating fixed during selection race and class? If so there is no point for example to increase life rating in exchange for max int for mage class.

[Sideways]

You are born with a random life rating between 87 and 117 inclusive (what the game actually generates is a random HP increase for every character level, and then calculates what life rating those HP increases correspond to, and discards the result if it's lower than 87 or higher than 117), and six random stat maxes (which are between 18/70 and 18/130 inclusive, and always average 18/100). Self Knowledge reveals what your life rating and stat maxes are.

(You can make a good guess at the stat maxes without Self Knowledge by looking at how much a stat-up improves a stat once it's past 18; if it improves more than you'd expect, you probably have a high max in that stat, and vice versa. You can also guess at your life rating from your HP, but that's much less reliable unless you're level 50.)

New Life generates a new life rating (it will still be between 87 and 117), and also generates new stat maxes. (There are a couple effects, notably one of the possible results of the Trump spell 'Shuffle', that only regenerate your life rating while leaving the old stat maxes.) This new life rating and the new maxes are just as unpredictable as the originals, and follow the same rules. It's possible for a new max to be lower than what you already had in that stat (e.g. you have a DEX base of 18/129 and then generate a new max of 18/70), in which case you simply lose the extra DEX.

Your race, class and personality have no effect whatsoever on this life rating (or on the maxes). They all have their own, separate life ratings that affect your overall HP and that you cannot modify during the game, except by being polymorphed into a different race.

You cannot control the life rating or the maxes you are born with, only change them later through !NewLife (or other similar effects) if you are unhappy with them, and hope for a better result.

[Narsil]

Hello, is there any chance for "always generate vault rooms" birth option being reintroduced?

[Sideways]

Hello, is there any chance for "always generate vault rooms" birth option being reintroduced?

I will need to look at both the old code and whether it can be easily re-integrated, and what the readdition of that option would do to game balance. It's not on my immediate to-do list but it might (no promises) happen later.

I am interested in hearing what it is that you liked about that option - was it the monsters, or the items, or the change of pace, or something else entirely? Knowing that would help me assess what else I could fill that niche with if the old option can't be re-added as it was.

[Derakon]

I remember liking it when it was introduced to ZAngband, mostly because it made the dungeon much denser and just ramped the risk/reward calculations into the stratosphere. You could find Ancient Dragons on level 1, and consequently would tend to die an awful lot, but those runs where you didn't die early you'd power up so much faster.

That said, in the few cases where I actually achieved some level of stability (read: made it to a character level in the 30s-40s, with gear to match) I found the later game to be an incredible slog just due to the sheer density of content. Trying to take on a greater vault when you're level 1 is a neat occasional challenge, but I don't think it scales well.

The consequences on game balance are not something worth considering outside of a competitive context, IMO. It imbalances the game like mad, that's why it's an option.

[wobbly]

The hill giant polymorphed into a swordsman. The Swordsman dies. Victorious! You're on your way to becoming Champion.

Chaos bolt. Should this be happening? I just assumed arena opponents were immune like uniques.

[Mocht]

Hello, is there any chance for "always generate vault rooms" birth option being reintroduced?

You could also ask for the small levels option to be restored
Back in the day, if you had both small levels and special rooms turned on, you would see extraordinary things on dungeon level 1

[Bostock]

One thing seems certain to me: both of these options were fanatically loved options whose removal drove a certain subset of players away from post-removal versions of PCB and its forks to this day.

Removing removals that have driven certain players away seems good.

The most recent player that I saw complaining about the removal of always small levels on angband.live felt that without this option, levels were full of boring empty space and he had to spend too much time getting to the action (all my paraphrase, I don't keep chat logs ).