[Announce] FrogComposband 7.1.salmiak released

[Thraalbee]

[Random] Quest completed (unrewarded)

I an running normal speed for once and diving the Angband dungeon. When I kill random quest monsters I get the kill but the quest remains in the Current Quests list. Also, no nice drops but not enough kills to confirm that is an issue. Right now I have Random 3 and Random 4 in the Current Quest list. E.g.

Random 3 (Lvl 28)
Quest Completed (Unrewarded)

[EDIT: It seems to concide with "software bug" crash which I got multiple times when killing e.g. Shelob. I got that on an ?artifact creation too]

[Sideways]

Minor bug. Ring 'identify jewelry' power can ID morgul weapons.

That is very strange, there should be absolutely no way that could happen. Are you sure it wasn't a staff of identify or an absorbed Identify spell?

[fred]

Minor bug. Ring 'identify jewelry' power can ID morgul weapons.

[budswell]

Awesome, thanks

[Sideways]

So my first charcter has got the summon demon spell (Blue Mage).
Sometimes my demons (or demons summonned by my demons) "feel neglected" and then "get angry". Is there a reason this happens? (and so a way I can minimise/prevent it?)

I have never seen it with other summons, is it specifiec to Demons? Or just because chain summoning is much more common with demons?

It can happen if your pet upkeep is extremely high (which frequently happens as the result of chain summoning). Once your upkeep exceeds 484%, you'll get a red upkeep warning; and if your upkeep remains high after that your pets can start feeling neglected. The exact details of what happens are quite complicated; but basically the more your upkeep exceeds 484% by, the more likely monsters are to feel neglected; and the lower your actual mana is, the more likely such monsters will get angry.

You can avoid this by reacting to the upkeep warning and dismissing enough pets to get your upkeep back in line.

[budswell]

So my first charcter has got the summon demon spell (Blue Mage).
Sometimes my demons (or demons summonned by my demons) "feel neglected" and then "get angry". Is there a reason this happens? (and so a way I can minimise/prevent it?)

I have never seen it with other summons, is it specifiec to Demons? Or just because chain summoning is much more common with demons?

[Seraphimus]

Some players enjoy the legacy Engrish (and other bad English), and complain when I fix typos or rewrite descriptions in actual English; so I'm treating Hex as a kind of bad English sanctuary to make sure it doesn't go entirely extinct.

You are right that Hex high-mages are a melee hybrid, which is a bit odd for a high-mage; and Gwarl did do what you suggested in Composband and replaced Hex high-mages with a dedicated class, the Hexblade. The main reason I haven't followed that route is that I don't approve of Gwarl's implementation; Gwarl's hexblades are way too powerful. But it's entirely possible that one day I will accept the hexblade and just leave out Gwarl's massive buffs.

I guess I can understand players enjoying stuff like that, just... makes it really hard to know what some of those spells do. That said, I have not played composbands Hexblade so I can't really make a comparison, but my short experience with the class made it seem less like it would be challenging, and more like it would be awkward and unintuitive. and that's considering it's a melee high mage so it would also be challenging.

so Even if you don't make the Hex-mage it's own class, maybe it's be worth giving the school a once over at some point. Heck, maybe i'll do a more significant playtest at some point and see how feels on a larger scale.

[Sideways]

Some players enjoy the legacy Engrish (and other bad English), and complain when I fix typos or rewrite descriptions in actual English; so I'm treating Hex as a kind of bad English sanctuary to make sure it doesn't go entirely extinct.

You are right that Hex high-mages are a melee hybrid, which is a bit odd for a high-mage; and Gwarl did do what you suggested in Composband and replaced Hex high-mages with a dedicated class, the Hexblade. The main reason I haven't followed that route is that I don't approve of Gwarl's implementation; Gwarl's hexblades are way too powerful. But it's entirely possible that one day I will accept the hexblade and just leave out Gwarl's massive buffs.

[Seraphimus]

Hex Magic

Also I was poking about on my test file exploring spell domains and...

When is the last time you went over The high-Mages Hex domain?

Because first of all, some of the spell names and descriptions are kind of a hot mess. I've attached a couple screenshots to show what I mean. on top of not really telling you what the spells do, The language used is just really confusing.

Secondly, a handful of the spells are single cast, not sustained like the rest of the domain, but nothing really indicates this except using the spell and trial and error, which isn't world ending but is also really unintuitive


Third, the order they get some things in is... Really confusing. Like they get curse weapon at level 8, but don't get Swords to Runeswords til level 25 and a book later, just leaving someone who's new to the class wondering why they would want to curse their weapon, especially when they learn it's not temporary but permanent.

As well, they get Curse armor, in the third book which allows them to curse their armor or cloak, but they only get a spell that gives them a benefit for cursing their cloak not their armor. Only to find out in the fourth book they get a spell to remove curses to restore mana (so I guess you could store extra curses on your Armor to drain for mana in fights?) They also a level 5 spell in their fourth book which is... Really weird to me?

And finally the more I dig into their spellbook the more it feels like they're trying to be a Pseudo-melee caster but as a high mage only domain They'll never really have the HP (even with their stat buff spell up) to manage more than a couple rounds up close with late game threats. It really feels like the Hex-Mage should be it's own hybrid class Especially because the whole self-cursing mechanic, while neat is really dangerous and niche and feels like it would better serve as its own thing. (also could maybe use a line in the description of the domain to explain what's going on with it)

[Sideways]

Hey I spent like an hour in the help the other day trying to find out, What "exactly" anti-magic does. I'm playing an armor Dragon in my most recent playthrough and Whilst I've noticed it increases my saves I wondered if there was anything else it has an impact on and could not find the answer.

Anti-magic in the sense of [M gives @ a very high saving throw, but also blocks @'s own magic. The latter basically means you cannot use the m command at all unless you belong to one of a handful of classes who use m for things that aren't really magic. (It's not always entirely obvious who qualifies; ninjutsu, for instance, does get blocked by anti-magic.) In addition, [M has some niche effects like blocking certain mutations from processing randomly.

Bucephalus used anti-magic in a different sense; the monster spell conferring the No Spells status is also called anti-magic. (No Spells blocks any use of m whatsoever; it does not prevent draconians and the like from using their Breathe power, since that's used through U rather than m; but it does prevent dragon possessors from breathing, which is likely undesirable behavior.)

I should probably write a full index of object attributes with explanations some day.

[Seraphimus]

Hey I spent like an hour in the help the other day trying to find out, What "exactly" anti-magic does. I'm playing an armor Dragon in my most recent playthrough and Whilst I've noticed it increases my saves I wondered if there was anything else it has an impact on and could not find the answer.

[Bucephalus]

Are you sure you were not also temporarily polymorphed to a different race too?

Yes, budswell. I am sure. Thank you for checking.

I'll give you a tip, my friend: You can enter Frog's "wizard mode" by entering a short list of commands: "equals sign", numeral "4", "up", "right", "escape", "escape".

Control+"a".

[Bucephalus]

Attempting either of those would automatically release the unique inside. (Selling a capture ball with a unique inside is also out, the shop will not accept it at all.)

Not true. Attempting to destroy a unique'd capture ball will, indeed, release the unique. Dropping it on the ground won't. No chance of selling it (with anything in it).

[budswell]

No. Thank you for clarifying. What I meant was, in the vanishingly rare circumstance that a Magic Mushroom or something anti-magics you so that you cannot cast spells, neither can you cast spells, nor breathe.

Arguably something should preclude you from breathing, but not that.

Are you sure you were not also temporarily polymorphed to a different race too? Seems to always happen with magic mushroom patches.
When that happens you lose the racial 'U' skills, but still keep the class 'U' skills. Actually they are replaced by the polymorph race ones, e.g. Snotling eat corpse (just happenned to my current Draconian so fresh in my mind)

[Sideways]

To be sure, I've never had an occupied capture ball stolen.

But, yeah: Dropping an occupied capture ball. Destroying (for whatever daft reason) an occupied capture ball.

Attempting either of those would automatically release the unique inside. (Selling a capture ball with a unique inside is also out, the shop will not accept it at all.)