Your variant of choice?

[Pete Mack]

Since I am mostly playing on my phone, I am generally limited to FCP, V, and NPP 0.41. I really do like the latter, except it has bad old ID, and less good UI than V.
Edit: I mean wow. Angband UI has improved a ton since V 3.0.5.

[gglibertine]

I still just love Vanilla, but today it occurred to me that there ought to be a Wagnerian variant called Wangband. THAT would get my husband to play!

[Pete Mack]

So I am playing NPP 0.41 (Android), for a change of pace. Wow, do ID and the UI suck. (Like: to look at an item in your pack or equipment, use 'I'. To look at the content, use 'i' or 'e'. Also, the only way to determine (say) Narthanc's property is *ID*, even the ones immediately obvious through use.
On the other hand.... the dungeon is a lot scarier.

There are tons more dangerous sources of confusion--bronze and golden dragons both hit to confuse, and bronze dragons breathe it. RConf (not pConf) is a necessity, not optional as in modern V.

Lesser healing potions are much weaker.

Early-game shopkeepers are much stingier, since CHA is present. You need to be much more selective in purchases.

There is a lot more junk, but concomitantly a lot less useful stuff. You need to search far and wide for good jewelry, especially. I remembered this enough to make sure to buy the ring of damage in the BM, because it'd otherwise be a long time to find something near as good.

On the plus side, Rogue class is back! With original HP, better stats, CLW spell useful for resting up fast. NPP rogue in particular is lethal with a sling. And other classes get detect objects from magic devices. But boy do they need them: just to avoid all the rubbish, as well as because the dungeon is just too dangerous to explore easily.

[Archenoth]

I have kind of a soft spot for Poschengband.

There are variants that were forked from it, but I find that it has made some of the most interesting design decisions since then, like how it was designed with Recall items not being a central concept, but instead had that replaced with special teleport rooms that let you travel between the town and the dungeon every few floors. (Kinda like Etrian Odyssey in a way!)

Also, while it took a bit for me to get used to the lack of an overworld map, the way that was designed around was also pretty compelling in a kinda-FAAngband sort of way; the world feels very large and dangerous, and the autowalk does a pretty decent job letting you travel without knowing exactly where you'll eventually need to go. I think that gives it a pretty unique feel.

I also dig the new world. The new starting town feels very cozy, and it looks really quite pretty compared to the other band towns I'm used to.

I just really appreciate it, and how bold it's gotten as of late!

[swim]

I have kind of a soft spot for Poschengband.

There are variants that were forked from it, but I find that it has made some of the most interesting design decisions since then, like how it was designed with Recall items not being a central concept, but instead had that replaced with special teleport rooms that let you travel between the town and the dungeon every few floors. (Kinda like Etrian Odyssey in a way!)

Also, while it took a bit for me to get used to the lack of an overworld map, the way that was designed around was also pretty compelling in a kinda-FAAngband sort of way; the world feels very large and dangerous, and the autowalk does a pretty decent job letting you travel without knowing exactly where you'll eventually need to go. I think that gives it a pretty unique feel.

I also dig the new world. The new starting town feels very cozy, and it looks really quite pretty compared to the other band towns I'm used to.

I just really appreciate it, and how bold it's gotten as of late!

That recall concept does sound appealing. It does seem a bit cheat-y to just be able to stock up as many Scrolls of Recall as I want whenever I want.
Are there any other variants that have a similar feature?

[Mondkalb]

Ive tried FirstAgeAngband, but I dont like its wilderness, and playing without wilderness feels so close to vanilla, it doesn't really scratch that "like Angband but not Angband" itch.

What aspect of FAangband's wilderness did you dislike?
I find it rather appealing with its various environments.

[swim]

I would really like to try FAangband... but I feel like I should wait for the new version to launch
Plus I heard it’s much harder than V

[Eric]

I'm a fan of First Age Angband (as opposed to the older FAangband? Not sure a proper shortening is) now, but I do find that the wilderness areas in particular require a lot more keypresses for movement (I'm lookin' at you, Mountains), which isn't great in my current moment of having recently over-stressed something in my forearm. The current version pretty much just works for me so far. Digging through the old wiki on github (https://github.com/NickMcConnell/FAangband/wiki) has been helpful to get a feel for how things are supposed to be different. Not sure if it's harder than V or just different; I die a lot in both, as intended. FAA has a really nice immersive (to me) atmosphere after having re-read the Silmarillion recently.

I'll also second (third, fifth?) the recommendations for Sil!

[archolewa]

What aspect of FAangband's wilderness did you dislike?
I find it rather appealing with its various environments.

The same problem I have with all wildernesses in every roguelike that has them: the maps are both brutally hard, and boring. From what I saw the wilderness came in two modes: giant wide open fields with no cover, and long straight mountain passes. No twisting corridors leading into various flavors of rooms of different shapes and sizes.

Hard, because you have no cover so its in incredibly easy to get swarmed or trapped, and theres nothing you can do about it. Boring because you dont have much if any means of controlling LOS, or repositioning ( because all positions are bad or too far away to be useful)

Also, Angbands run mechanism of move until the terrain changes breaks down *hard* in giant open fields, making moving through them a giant PITA.

[archolewa]

And thats before even getting into how some of the races like Edain and Noldor start in stupidly deep danger level, making classes that dont have good stealth (like oh Blackguards) at best waaaay to frustrating to play, at worst completely unviable.

[Pete Mack]

Back to the original question, I would say NPP 0.5.4
That was the last release that didn't go over the top into wall to wall monsters. Hydra pits with 12 headed hydras are bad enough.

[Mondkalb]

The same problem I have with all wildernesses in every roguelike that has them: the maps are both brutally hard, and boring. From what I saw the wilderness came in two modes: giant wide open fields with no cover, and long straight mountain passes. No twisting corridors leading into various flavors of rooms of different shapes and sizes.

Hard, because you have no cover so its in incredibly easy to get swarmed or trapped, and theres nothing you can do about it. Boring because you dont have much if any means of controlling LOS, or repositioning ( because all positions are bad or too far away to be useful)

Also, Angbands run mechanism of move until the terrain changes breaks down *hard* in giant open fields, making moving through them a giant PITA.

There is way more variety to the wilderness than those.
Some of the starting towns are in a more dangerous environment and are supposed to be harder.

E. g., if you start in Gondolin, the level of the wilderness is 28, which is really tough.

Thist map shows the (d)level of the wilderness and also the type of wilderness:

[FONT=courier new]   Anfauglith -------------------------Lothlann
    (Angband) \                              \
        |      \_____Dorthonion               \
    Fen of Serech  (Nan Dungortheb)            \
        |                   \                   |
Sirion Vale-----Gondolin  Dor Dinen             |
(Tol-in-Gaurhoth)           |    \              |         Hithaeglir--Gladden
          \                 |    Himlad         |             /       Fields
          Brethil        Doriath     \        Ered Luin   Khazad Dum
             \              |         East        \         /
          ___ Ephel      Menegroth   Beleriand     \    Hithaeglir
        /    Brandir             \       |          |     /
Talath /         \           Doriath     Thargelion |   Eriador
Dirnen       West Beleriand       |     *    \      |  /    \
(Nargothrond)     \                \   *       Belegost      \
              Amon Rudh      East Beleriand        |          Eriador
              (Amon Rudh)     *           \     Ered Luin      town
                    \        *             \        |            |
                West Beleriand              \       |            |
                     \                       \    Ossiriand      |
                   Andram                     \      |           |
                      \                        \     |           |
                    East Beleriand              Ossiriand        |
                        \                        /town           |
                      Taur-Im-Duinath   _Ent Path   |            |
                          \            /           Ossiriand     |
                        Taur-Im-Duinath             |            |
                            town                Ered Luin South  |
                                                        |       /
                                                    Ered Luin South
                                                        town[/FONT]

[tangar]

The same problem I have with all wildernesses in every roguelike that has them: the maps are both brutally hard, and boring.

Yes. Thats why in my variant I made full custom hand-builded world-wilderness. The map is on the web-site https://tangaria.com/map/ (click on image at the website to show directions-guidance)

[archolewa]

There is way more variety to the wilderness than those.
Some of the starting towns are in a more dangerous environment and are supposed to be harder.

E. g., if you start in Gondolin, the level of the wilderness is 28, which is realliy tough.

None of that invalidates what I said? Even if there are other wilderness maps than the plains and mountains, the plains and mountain environments are still hard, boring and tedious to navigate, leading to frustration. Even if Gondolin's wilderness is supposed to be really tough, it still effectively bans High Elves from being Blackguards, unless you have way more patience than I think is reasonable to expect from most players.

Frankly, I'd rather if the game let you pick the town you started in. So for those of us who want to play the race-class combination we want without having to restart over and over again we can, and for those who dive aggressively and want to skip the super early game, they can do that too.

Don't really have any ideas to make the wilderness more palatable for me, especially since it seems to be a common problem with wilderness in the roguelike genre, leading me to think that's just the nature of the beast.

[Mondkalb]

Well, "boring" also applies to early levels in most Rogue-like games and even to deeper ones, if they don't happen to have something exciting on them.
That is just the nature of these games with randomly generated levels.