[Announce] FrogComposband 7.1.salmiak released

[Sideways]

The level 25 quests, and especially the mimic quest, should be very doable by that point. Completing them ought to help a bit.

That said, instant-coffee is by far the least forgiving mode when it comes to bad luck with monsters or items. (It is, of course, also the fastest to try again in.)

[Kodiologist]

Any hints on instant-coffee mode? I tend to hit a wall at Angband 29, around XL 28, because the level guardian is too hard for me at that point (e.g., Implorington III, in my last game), DL 25 quests are too hard for me, and the experience and loot provided by the arena is too small to make a difference. It looks like recalling out of an Angband quest means you never get another shot at that level, so you'll only fall further behind the power curve. I've been playing green dragons with the lore domain.

[wobbly]

I'm trying one now - I liked the idea of Nature because it gives you both utility spells and offensive spells (and of course the High-Mage only gets one realm).

But looking at the spell set, I don't see how I can take down rBase monsters, such as Icky Queen or Gelatinous Cubes. Is this a build that needs to rely on melee - pick a hardier race, try to find a good weapon, maybe put some stat gains in STR instead of just INT?

Or is this just a bad idea? Would a Chaos High-Mage be a better combo (more lacking in utility, but better offense)?

Grav storm, ice bolt isn't till book 4 and while nice they aren't the greatest damage as far as late game nukes. Nature high-mage is still fine it just means you are dependant on melee/shooter/device. I'd aim for shooter early, device later and be on the lookout for sorceror's stone which activates for recharging.

[Pete Mack]

Shouldnt Metatron have a bright (blinding) light aura?

[Sideways]

Tselakus, Ungoliant, Morgoth, Nephthys, Metatron and GWOPs.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I think you're, right, on the former. Any FCPB examples that do the latter?

[Sideways]

Apparently, darkness aura is now a thing in vanilla-PCB. Sideways, do you want to add this enemy mechanic in the future? No need to give this to player Ninjas though

Isn't darkness aura already a thing? (Both in the sense of monsters surrounded by a radius of darkness, and in the sense of monsters who zap you with the element Dark when you melee them.)

[HugoVirtuoso]

Apparently, darkness aura is now a thing in vanilla-PCB. Sideways, do you want to add this enemy mechanic in the future? No need to give this to player Ninjas though

[GrimaTheBold]

How to Play Nature High-Mage

I'm trying one now - I liked the idea of Nature because it gives you both utility spells and offensive spells (and of course the High-Mage only gets one realm).

But looking at the spell set, I don't see how I can take down rBase monsters, such as Icky Queen or Gelatinous Cubes. Is this a build that needs to rely on melee - pick a hardier race, try to find a good weapon, maybe put some stat gains in STR instead of just INT?

Or is this just a bad idea? Would a Chaos High-Mage be a better combo (more lacking in utility, but better offense)?

[Sideways]

To be clear, mpower never goes that high in normal play.

All monsters are born with an mpower of 100%, and most of them will stay that way unless hit with unlife or time attacks. The usual case for high mpower is big unlife monsters like Vlad, Izanami, Kaschei or Osiris, who grow in mpower by leeching life from you; but in practice they're very unlikely to ever reach a really exorbitant mpower. (Mostly because they kill you before it happens.)

[Kodiologist]

Hmm, I guess one just has to get used to the fact that a random monster has a small chance of one-shotting you, then. Another reason to play instant-coffee, I guess.

[Sideways]

Is there a limit to how heavily a monster could get buffed in terms of mpower or max HP? If so, it could make sense to calculate a maximum on that basis, since the idea is to show the player the worst case. No doubt some players would notice that the maxima are rarely achieved in practice, fail to take them seriously, and then eventually actually get hit for that much or close to that much, but them's the breaks.

In terms of random max HP that would make sense; though practically all major breathers, even the non-unique ones, have fixed max HP in any case.

Mpower, though, can go absurdly high. It's limited only by being a signed 16-bit integer, which means the highest value it can take is 3276.7%. That would mean multiplying many of the maxima (everything not otherwise capped) by 32.767 for display...

[Kodiologist]

Is there a limit to how heavily a monster could get buffed in terms of mpower or max HP? If so, it could make sense to calculate a maximum on that basis, since the idea is to show the player the worst case. No doubt some players would notice that the maxima are rarely achieved in practice, fail to take them seriously, and then eventually actually get hit for that much or close to that much, but them's the breaks.

[Sideways]

The spoilers use a slightly different format, outright giving the damage as 1d80+50.

In theory, that would be a nice format for the regular monster recall too; but there are some problems with it. One, an average damage is easier to adjust for resistances. Two, if I started displaying mana bolt damage as a range, say 51-130, I'd have to start displaying almost all spell damages as ranges... since even spells (or breaths) with non-random initial damage effectively develop a (small) range when resistance randomness is accounted for. Three, if I *did* display almost everything as a range, it would give players false assurance and they'd be even more surprised to see a monster hit them for more than the upper limit.
Which would still happen occasionally, when the monster has high mpower or is a non-unique breather with higher than average HP...

[Kodiologist]

Ooh, so it's mean damage. The interpretation of it doesn't seem to be described in the help section about recall, so yeah, I assumed it was like vanilla. I agree with Pete that the maximum is more informative, even though it's less representative, since what you need to know for tactical decision-making is what you can survive. But it would also be quite reasonable to include both the mean and the maximum, if there's room.