Z+Angband version 0.2.2 beta released; looking forward

[Jude]

Thanks for the tip. I'm about to start playing again this evening...if I have any comments I'll let you know.

Also, in an old release, you posted this, telling me how to edit the walls to appear as solid blocks instead of #'s:

OK, let's try it the hard way.

In the game, go to '%' (interact with visuals), select 'h' ("Change feature attr/chars").

Press 'n' until "Terrain = 48, Name = granite wall" is displayed. (You can use 'N' to go backwards, if you go too far.) Then press 'c' until the number that changes changes to 127. (You can use 'C' to go backwards, if you go too far.)

Do the same for Terrains 50, 51, 52, 53, and 56-63. Then press ESC, to get back to the visuals menu, and press 'd' ("Dump feature attr/chars") to save what you just did in a pref file. Choose the default name, and the next time you play, you'll have to load it by doing '%' then 'a'.

If this doesn't work, please let me know what doesn't work about it.

A high priority for me in the next release would be a way to make this easier - ideally, an option that I can quickly toggle to have solid-block walls. I think a lot of people prefer that same display option that I do and it would be nice to have it easier to set that way.

[Jude]

First thoughts:

I like being able to access tier information via tilde, but I wish that menu were combined somehow with a list of all spells I have access to. I also wish that when I hit P to peruse a spellbook (roguelike command set) it would say next to each spell what tier it's in. Other than that the tier thing seems quite transparent and easy to understand, now. Although I think it's going to bug me not to be able to learn every spell...

Also on that topic, I used up all my tier 1 spots and then tried to study another tier 1 spell. It said "Warning: you have used up all your tier 1 slots. Continue? y/n". I did not choose to continue because I had no idea what was going to happen - I was scared it was going to use one of my tier 2 slots on a tier 1 spell, or something. What DOES happen and what's that prompt all about?

I wish that stores would be more accepting in what they'll buy. It's annoying in a town with five stores that have a "6" entrance to have to run around to every single one to sell off my one ring of slow digestion. I think it would be easier if all 6's accepted all magic items, all 5's accepted all scrolls/potions/etc., all 2's took all armor, etc. - even if the store only sells specialty items. I can see the logic behind why it is how it is but I think it would cut down on annoyance, without losing any gameplay value, to have stores be less picky on what they buy.

Finally, I bought an amulet that gives "Protection from Orcs." And I've seen several similar ones. What exactly does that do? Is it just like Protection from Evil? If so, I don't actually even know what Protection from Evil does, but I imagine something to do with buffing my defense rolls against any evil creatures. If so, I like having that ability on amulets...

Anyway looks great. I'm playing a Chaos Warrior again. I find it near impossible to play any other class since the patrons' gifts on levelling up make the game sooooo much more interesting and it's just boring to me any other way. Plus I love chaos magic; such a great mix of powerful attacks and utility spells.

Which reminds me - my Chaos branded weapon says it "attracts the attention of a chaos deity." And in my Character page listing resistances and buffs and so forth, there's a "Patron" row with a + under the @ sign. I translate that as meaning "You have a chaos patron as an innate characteristic." And by implication, you can get chaos patrons from other items. Does that mean if I'm NOT a Chaos Warrior but wield a Chaos weapon, I'll effectively have a chaos patron the same way a Chaos Warrior would?

[Mangojuice]

First thoughts:

I like being able to access tier information via tilde, but I wish that menu were combined somehow with a list of all spells I have access to. I also wish that when I hit P to peruse a spellbook (roguelike command set) it would say next to each spell what tier it's in. Other than that the tier thing seems quite transparent and easy to understand, now. Although I think it's going to bug me not to be able to learn every spell...

I see what you're aiming at. I'm of mixed opinion about it: on the one hand, more information is always nice. On the other, I worry about these displays taking up too much space. It could always be an option but games can easily get option-overloaded.

Also on that topic, I used up all my tier 1 spots and then tried to study another tier 1 spell. It said "Warning: you have used up all your tier 1 slots. Continue? y/n". I did not choose to continue because I had no idea what was going to happen - I was scared it was going to use one of my tier 2 slots on a tier 1 spell, or something. What DOES happen and what's that prompt all about?

Yeah, if you had said yes, you would use one of your tier 2 slots. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But if you were sort of automatically learning every spell you could access without thinking whether they were useful to you, then you might have restricted yourself somewhat.

Your Chaos-Warrior gets 7 tier 1 slots total, 6 tier 2, 3 and 4, and 5 tier 5 slots. That's fairly restricted, especially for a top-heavy school like Chaos, so I would probably try to avoid downgrading. But I would do it to get really top-notch spells like Mana Burst or Magic Missile. What you should do is try to look at the list of spells in advance and plan on what spells you are going to skip. For a Chaos Warrior I would probably skip Touch of Confusion at Tier 1, and Fist of Force, Polymorph Other, and Wonder at Tier 2. But then, I might also skip Chain Lightning in favor of focusing "Blink" or "Magic Missile".

I wish that stores would be more accepting in what they'll buy. It's annoying in a town with five stores that have a "6" entrance to have to run around to every single one to sell off my one ring of slow digestion. I think it would be easier if all 6's accepted all magic items, all 5's accepted all scrolls/potions/etc., all 2's took all armor, etc. - even if the store only sells specialty items. I can see the logic behind why it is how it is but I think it would cut down on annoyance, without losing any gameplay value, to have stores be less picky on what they buy.

Two things that should offset this annoyance. (1) You always start in a town that has stores that take everything. So if you really want to sell you can always go back there. (2) This is part of the reason I made the "alchemy" ability so much more accessible. If you have a home nearby, stock it with a bunch of scrolls of alchemy, which are pretty cheap and let you "sell" valuable things without travelling a long distance.

And, ultimately, one of the challenges is to find the ideal place for adventuring. If you find a good dungeon but it's not near good shops, it's not ideal. Keep exploring.

Finally, I bought an amulet that gives "Protection from Orcs." And I've seen several similar ones. What exactly does that do? Is it just like Protection from Evil? If so, I don't actually even know what Protection from Evil does, but I imagine something to do with buffing my defense rolls against any evil creatures. If so, I like having that ability on amulets...

What they do is give you a chance, dependent on your level and the level of the monster, to "repel" an attack, which negates it completely. So if you're very low level it's unlikely to help against high level monsters. But if you're fighting swarms of Snagas you may be substantially assisted because most of their attacks that would have hit are simply canceled. Yes, protection from evil works the same way, but of course, a lot more things are evil than are orcs.

Anyway looks great. I'm playing a Chaos Warrior again. I find it near impossible to play any other class since the patrons' gifts on levelling up make the game sooooo much more interesting and it's just boring to me any other way. Plus I love chaos magic; such a great mix of powerful attacks and utility spells.

Which reminds me - my Chaos branded weapon says it "attracts the attention of a chaos deity." And in my Character page listing resistances and buffs and so forth, there's a "Patron" row with a + under the @ sign. I translate that as meaning "You have a chaos patron as an innate characteristic." And by implication, you can get chaos patrons from other items. Does that mean if I'm NOT a Chaos Warrior but wield a Chaos weapon, I'll effectively have a chaos patron the same way a Chaos Warrior would?

Yes, that's right. Chaos weapons give you a Chaos patron, even if you don't have one to begin with. That said, it's a LOT easier to come across a chaos weapon if you already have a chaos patron, because they sometimes give you one as a level reward.

BTW, I am specifically interested in whether you think Immolation is a good spell for Chaos Warriors -- I figured that it would be best for Chaos Warriors and Warrior Mages, who might be more involved in melee than Mages or Rangers.

[Mangojuice]

A high priority for me in the next release would be a way to make this easier - ideally, an option that I can quickly toggle to have solid-block walls. I think a lot of people prefer that same display option that I do and it would be nice to have it easier to set that way.

What I think is a superior solution to the fix I gave you, is to use the limited graphics set, which uses 8x8 tiles for solid terrain features like walls and doors but uses ascii for everything else. I have contemplated making that the default setup. But I really can't make the other setting default: apparently a lot of Windows users can't see the ansi solid blocks, which makes the game pretty unplayable.

One idea might be to have a "setup" program you run after installing, which will help you choose default settings. I'll think about that one.

[Jude]

I see what you're aiming at. I'm of mixed opinion about it: on the one hand, more information is always nice. On the other, I worry about these displays taking up too much space. It could always be an option but games can easily get option-overloaded.

In the case of the peruse-spell menu, it doesn't take up that much space to begin with and it's not displaying while you're playing, so I think there's room.

Yeah, if you had said yes, you would use one of your tier 2 slots. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But if you were sort of automatically learning every spell you could access without thinking whether they were useful to you, then you might have restricted yourself somewhat.

Hm....can't think of any situation where I'd want to do that, but good to know.

Your Chaos-Warrior gets 7 tier 1 slots total, 6 tier 2, 3 and 4, and 5 tier 5 slots. That's fairly restricted, especially for a top-heavy school like Chaos, so I would probably try to avoid downgrading. But I would do it to get really top-notch spells like Mana Burst or Magic Missile. What you should do is try to look at the list of spells in advance and plan on what spells you are going to skip. For a Chaos Warrior I would probably skip Touch of Confusion at Tier 1, and Fist of Force, Polymorph Other, and Wonder at Tier 2. But then, I might also skip Chain Lightning in favor of focusing "Blink" or "Magic Missile".

You'd skip Touch of Confusion and Fist of Force?! Those are bread and butter spells for me. I don't like Ray of Frost, Static Field (unless it ramps up in power or something, or has hidden benefits), and maybe Immolation or maybe Trap/Door Destruction. I was vacillating between Blink and Trap/Door, but Blink has potential to be VERY useful...whereas Trap/Door is very useful in some situations but I would think less often. it's great in a vault, or when a monster summons traps around you, though.

About Immolation - it just does fire damage to anyone who hits you, right, same as the electric aura? How much damage though? The amount makes a huge difference to whether I would pick it as one of my spells or not.

Also, I'd skip Fire bolt instead of Fist of Force, easy. Fist does more damage AND knocks out walls.

Yes, that's right. Chaos weapons give you a Chaos patron, even if you don't have one to begin with. That said, it's a LOT easier to come across a chaos weapon if you already have a chaos patron, because they sometimes give you one as a level reward.

Wait, so basically if you have a chaos weapon, you can just wait till you're about to level up, then equip it and get the gift/curse? Weird. Seems like having a patron should be a more permanent thing - you have to pledge yourself to them or something.

That reminds me of another possible interesting feature, which would be the patrons requiring things from you, like quests or sacrifices or certain styles of play.

BTW, I am specifically interested in whether you think Immolation is a good spell for Chaos Warriors -- I figured that it would be best for Chaos Warriors and Warrior Mages, who might be more involved in melee than Mages or Rangers.

It really depends on how much damage it does, which I'm not sure about.

Edit: more things. Not to overload you but...I was home sick today so I have been playing a good bit and here are more thoughts questions or suggestions I had.

-"Weird luck?" I wore a ring of Fate for a while and nothing really seemed to be happening. What does that do?

-*ID* seems to be hard to come by. I run around between several large cities and none of them have any stores that *ID* things - are there any? As it is I have to just run around between the specialty scroll stores and hope one of them has a scroll.

-On the other hand, a lot of the stores seem to offer overpowered items for not really all that much money. Shields of deflection for 25k?! It seems like that sort of thing should be limited to the black market for hugely inflated prices. Also, things in general seem overpowered on my side. I'm at clvl24 and haven't really encountered any major challenge yet; a few medium challenges in the form of a T-Rex and the odd horde are about all. It's a lot easier than I remember Zangband being. Also, I think the Amulets of Protection from * might be overpowered, especially as they're very cheap in almost every city. Most monsters are evil, and having an amulet of protect evil seems to make me nigh-invincible.

-Some of my abilities do seem nerfed though, like Fist of Force. It barely seems to do more damage than Magic Missile, and I remember it being a lot stronger. Also, you replaced Chaos Bolt with Field of Chaos, which hits a large area but does basically no damage. I miss Chaos Bolt; it did a ton of damage to one target and had the added advantage of possible confusion to uniques, so it was my main unique-busting spell. Chaos Field may have its uses but I think I liked Chaos Bolt more...

-On the other hand, I like the addition of Blink. What a useful spell.

-How exactly does improving spells work? What tier does it use a slot from?

-Finally, under my list of resistances tab, there's a red v (looks like a fire vortex) under the "@" column in the "res acid" row. WTF does that mean?

Oh yeah - and I found an insane randart bow. It gives +4 to like 3 stats, levitates, and has a bunch of other crazy abilities. I don't even use arrows, I just have it equipped for all its passives buffs. I've also gotten really lucky with my chaos patron rewards and been stat boosted a bunch of times so at level 15 my intelligence was like 32 and I have more MP than I ever use.

[shawnosullivan]

i'm also a big z+ fan, and would love to see development start up again! there don't seem to be many other variants filling the sort of highly-randomized wilderness-heavy niche at the moment, and this is one of my favorite recent variants... with some appropriate updates and general bugfixes, i think it could be really great.
i haven't played it much lately, but here are just some rambling comments/suggestions/brainstorms (many of these are more issues with zang to begin with, than your own changes)...
the biggest thing that i think needs fine-tuning is the quests. make fewer quests with a little more flavor, perhaps higher difficulty, and better rewards, or maybe just rewards that scaled with quest difficulty (as opposed to just quest depth level). for instance, i might actually consider dealing with a three floor 'den of strange substances' quest if i thought i might get an artifact, some nice stat gain potions, or even just anything better than a 'take out this novice ranger' quest of similar depth. as it stands, you wind up scumming for easy or quick quests (easy uniques, single-monsters, etc), and being forced to navigate a submenu of 50 quests (removing things like the "take out the troll camp west of town xyz" lines from tne quest menu would help reduce some of that tedious clutter, too). more challenging mid/high level quests would be appreciated as well. after about CL 26/27 quests become pretty irrelevant. i really like the highly randomized nature of the game, but perhaps some mid-level mandatory quests or a class-specific quest of some sort would give the game a little more structure, maybe even something like some of the special levels in ToME.
the wilderness is too large, i think - exploration is fun and an important part of the game, but holding shift for 3.5 minutes while you run between towns is just tedious, and teleportation towers are fairly rare and early on, prohibitively expensive. overall wilderness size could be reduced by 30% or even more (possibly cutting down towns and dungeons accordingly) and gameplay would not suffer. alternately, some late-game means of automatically mapping the whole wilderness would be appreciated (complete some quest or obtain some item that maps the whole wilderness).
encountering strygaldwyr (or maeglin or a greater demon or whatever) can lead to a frustrating and sometimes unavoidable death, as their appearance is often not dependent on the dangerousness of the surrounding wilderness, and they can chase after you from well before you can even see the dungeon on the map. if dungeon depth corrolated better to wilderness dangerousness (ie you couldn't find 9 dungeons in areas where "you feel a bit nervous"), that might help this problem.

for character generation, either being able to assign specific desired stats when rolling (like in ToME), or utillzing a point-based system is far preferable to the imprecise, guesswork-based system that is currently implemented. additionally, opening a save file from a dead character should offer you the option to create a character based on the previous one.

regarding magic: im quite fond of the system in zang, and the changes seem pretty well balanced. i think the tier and specialization systems works great, and give you a lot more strategic choices. however, i've never been able to get particularly far with illusion magic, and i'm not really sure of its worth. perhaps it's more interesting at higher levels. the improved conjuration school is nice, although its been a long time since i played using the old trump magic for reference. i'll start playign z+ again and think more about the magic system...all this thinking about the game has gotten me pumped up to play it, heh..
regarding immolation, i've used it beneficially with my chaos warriors from time to time, yeah, but i don't recall it ever being a staple. i DO use fist of force fairly frequently, though it's nice for bashing out walls in quests quickly to get to the intended target.
and regarding equipping chaos weapons to exploit the patron gifts - if it's the best weapon i have, i'll be wielding it already, and those benefits can be pretty handy (or irritating). otherwise it's just not worth the inventory space or the extra thought to equip every time you're about to level up.

to help answer some questions:
'weird luck' i believe increases the likelihood of both unusually good and bad events (i've never noticed any significant difference with or without it).

i don't think shields of deflection are all that good - they just have a decent boost to AC, they dont' reflect arrows and bolts. amulets of protection can be VERY powerful early on (especially against orcs and trolls), but they also cease being important somewhat quickly. as far as difficulty - if you're finding things too easy, you can always dive deeper or take on more difficult quests. in my experience, z+ tends to be easy for a while after you get your stats in good shape and some ok equipment - it gets hard pretty fast, though. i've never had a character get past CL 40 or so. instant deaths can be pretty common once you start getting a little deeper.

for *ID* - i find it's easiest to utilize the thieves guild. it's worth completing the quests to join in at least a few towns.

the v in the resistance tab means vulnerable. are you playing a ghoul or zombie? be very cautious with fire vulnerability!!

[Jude]

I'm playing a High Elf. Are High Elves vulnerable to acid?

Also, shields of deflection dont' bounce arrows and bolts? You sure about that? I sure remember them doing that...and it says so in the item's description as well.

[shawnosullivan]

hmm, high elves shouldn't be vulnerable to anything...which column is the "v" in on the resistances screen? maybe you're wielding something that is giving you vulnerability to fire? also check your mutations...

i think the shield of deflection description is just for flavor. their main property is just the high AC boost. i think you can get a 'shield of deflection of reflection', even...yeah, here's documentation from http://www.zangband.org/Docs/Defence.aspx
"Apart from these there are some very rare, and well made armors
in the dungeon with not necessarily any special abilities. These
include Adamantite Plate Mail, Mithril Plate Mail, Mithril Chain
Mail, Shields of Deflection, and Shadow Cloaks. The first four
cannot be damaged by acid because of the quality metals they
contain. Shadow Cloaks grant resistance to both light and darkness
attacks."
so its only special propety is that it can't be damaged by acid. still a nice thing, but a shield of resistance is probably almost always preferable...

[konijn_]

I prefer high mages from orydinary ones and I agree that they are hard to play with, especially in medium stadium game. And IMO high mages are to difficult with other magic realms than black and chaos (sorcery are possible also).

Do you know a branding patch to Z 2.7.2?

http://ww2.cs.fsu.edu/~steele/zangband/Z272/BRANDING/Branding.html

It contains a high priest class which is very interesting for me.

Same here, I have always loved high mages. Especially Death High Mages.
Your link is broken, I would love to see what those high priests are all about.

T.

[Jude]

hmm, high elves shouldn't be vulnerable to anything...which column is the "v" in on the resistances screen? maybe you're wielding something that is giving you vulnerability to fire? also check your mutations...

It's in the @ like I said. The only mutations I have are "Brain is a living computer" and "Hypnotic gaze."

i think the shield of deflection description is just for flavor. their main property is just the high AC boost. i think you can get a 'shield of deflection of reflection', even...yeah, here's documentation from http://www.zangband.org/Docs/Defence.aspx
"Apart from these there are some very rare, and well made armors
in the dungeon with not necessarily any special abilities. These
include Adamantite Plate Mail, Mithril Plate Mail, Mithril Chain
Mail, Shields of Deflection, and Shadow Cloaks. The first four
cannot be damaged by acid because of the quality metals they
contain. Shadow Cloaks grant resistance to both light and darkness
attacks."
so its only special propety is that it can't be damaged by acid. still a nice thing, but a shield of resistance is probably almost always preferable...

Dammit! Shields of REflection are what I'm looking for...dammit, that means I sold my shield that gave me all 4 low resists, for no reason. *!&^@^#

[shawnosullivan]

huh! that's bizarre. i can't account for the acid vulnerability, no clue whats up there.

basic resists aren't too hard to cover, and with any luck you'll find a way cooler shield soon enough, anyway...

[konijn_]

Same here, I have always loved high mages. Especially Death High Mages.
Your link is broken, I would love to see what those high priests are all about.

T.

FYI

http://web.archive.org/web/20070628235548/ww2.cs.fsu.edu/~steele/zangband/Z272/Z272Options.html

"Teddy Bears"

T.

[Jude]

huh! that's bizarre. i can't account for the acid vulnerability, no clue whats up there.

basic resists aren't too hard to cover, and with any luck you'll find a way cooler shield soon enough, anyway...

Sorry, it's actually Electric vulnerability. Still...I'm pretty sure High Elves aren't supposed to have that.

[shawnosullivan]

yeahhh, high elves are definitely not supposed to be vulnerable to electricity!
weirdly, on this dump of one of my chaos warriors (a beastman who eventually polymoprhed into a ghoul) he also, inexplicably, has vulnerability to electricity. wonder if this is a bug?

[Jude]

Maybe chaos warriors are, for some reason too grand for our comprehension, supposed to be vulnerable to electricity?

Ugh aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I just died after Word of Recalling to level ~40 and I must have stepped one tile, because the crowd of least 20 Arch-viles (at least 20 because a fireball does 20-30 damage and I had 280 health) EACH threw fireballs at me, one after the other, while I had no chance to respond until I was already dead. AHGHGGHGHHG