VARIANT ANNOUNCE: Sporkhack
Derek Ray
I've alluded to this in some other postings, but now seems a good time
as any to go ahead and publish this since the June tournament's over and
ideally we'll see a bit more mindshare available to explore among people
who are interested in such things.
I've been working on a fork of 3.4.3 that has a number of
balance-oriented changes, largely to try to address the problems I've
outlined in prior posts as well as just provide a platform for
experimental changes. It's been in test among a small group of players
for about a month now; it seems time to open it up and see what others
think.
In short, one of the purposes of this fork is to try to make the game
more interesting for experienced/skilled players, while making it no
harder (or, in a couple cases, slightly easier) for the newbie. It's
also going to be an attempt to try to increase variety in the standard
'ascension kit', since right now it is pretty well defined.
There is a server available for play at telnet://nethack.nineball.org;
the very rough changelog and description can be seen at
http://nethack.nineball.org. A patch to match the server state will
eventually be published on the website as well, once I confirm that the
patches will properly apply to a vanilla 3.4.3 distribution.
There is a channel #sporkhack on irc.freenode.net where discussions take
place relatively frequently; there is a bot there, much like #nethack's
Rodney, who will announce deaths and ascensions as they occur.
Please keep in mind that these changes should be considered to be alpha-
or beta- level; there may well be bugs, and these bugs may affect your
gameplay. I do try to fix bugs found as rapidly as possible, but I
can't always update the server immediately since I have others' games to
consider as well, especially if I have a patch in the queue that will
break savefile compatibility.
This is a live fork! For the near future, I will still be making a
great deal of changes, and if an imbalance is found with existing
changes, they are not set in stone -- if something is too hard, I will
certainly consider toning it down to a more reasonable level. By the
same token, if something I add makes things too easy, I will probably
tone _that_ down too.
I hope you enjoy it.
--
Derek
insert clever quotation here
John H.
though.
- John H.
On Jul 8, 9:28 am, Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
> I've alluded to this in some other postings, but now seems a good time
> as any to go ahead and publish this since the June tournament's over and
> ideally we'll see a bit more mindshare available to explore among people
> who are interested in such things.
>
> I've been working on a fork of 3.4.3 that has a number of
> balance-oriented changes, largely to try to address the problems I've
> outlined in prior posts as well as just provide a platform for
> experimental changes. It's been in test among a small group of players
> for about a month now; it seems time to open it up and see what others
> think.
>
> In short, one of the purposes of this fork is to try to make the game
> more interesting for experienced/skilled players, while making it no
> harder (or, in a couple cases, slightly easier) for the newbie. It's
> also going to be an attempt to try to increase variety in the standard
> 'ascension kit', since right now it is pretty well defined.
>
> There is a server available for play at telnet://nethack.nineball.org;
> the very rough changelog and description can be seen athttp://nethack.nineball.org. A patch to match the server state will
Riina
> This is a live fork! For the near future, I will still be making a
> great deal of changes, and if an imbalance is found with existing
> changes, they are not set in stone -- if something is too hard, I will
> certainly consider toning it down to a more reasonable level. By the
> same token, if something I add makes things too easy, I will probably
> tone _that_ down too.
I almost died at the castle because liches don't respect Elbereth! >:P
Is it intended that castle can't be reliably done anymore without
magic resistance or genociding liches? If so then that favours
wizards. Not all people are that crazy about them. Nothing more (this
time...). :)
--
*R* shocked and slightly annoyed
Derek Ray
> On 8 heinä, 16:28, Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
>
>> This is a live fork! For the near future, I will still be making a
>> great deal of changes, and if an imbalance is found with existing
>> changes, they are not set in stone -- if something is too hard, I will
>> certainly consider toning it down to a more reasonable level. By the
>> same token, if something I add makes things too easy, I will probably
>> tone _that_ down too.
>
> I almost died at the castle because liches don't respect Elbereth! >:P
They do respect Elbereth; just not 100% of the time anymore.
> Is it intended that castle can't be reliably done anymore without
> magic resistance or genociding liches?
That is not the intent of the change, no. However, you may in the
future need to consider alternative methods of dealing with liches than
simply "engrave Elbereth, stand on the engraving, and melee it to death
from near-complete safety" -- ranged weaponry would be a good idea, for
example. Or you can choose to engrave Elbereth and take whatever
protection you can get from it, as it will certainly be better than nothing.
It's worth noting that neither master liches nor arch-liches will
typically be generated at the castle, unless you've spent a great deal
of time gaining XL well past 14 prior to the castle. Those are the
covetous (read: "teleporting to you") liches, against whom ranged
weapons would be less useful.
Kent Paul Dolan
using a server" problem (and yes, there's an
exception, which even its author admits "sort of
works") would be when forking NetHack and also when
bringing up a new server. Oh, my look what's
happening now!
My "back of an envelope" software design for this
would involve decoupling of the screen painting
interface, which now sends (ANSI-mode colorized)
character codes across the toward-player interface,
to instead send tile map indices across that
interface.
Then there would be needed a small display tool,
built mostly from the existing (now decoupled)
NetHack display code, on the user's end that
packages some flavor of telnet, plus an access hook
to a {possibly player supplied favorite) graphical
tiles map, plus an access hook to a text-imitating
tiles map.
The end result would be that players could chose to
play on your server in tiles mode or in text mode, a
frequent request from tiles mode addicts.
To cater to those who play from machines where they
cannot install software, an "old mode" that still
works with character codes would need to remain.
Quantum valeat.
xanthian.
[Not that you'll read this, but maybe someone out of
kindness will take you on their knee and read it to
you.]
Henry J Cobb
> There is a server available for play at telnet://nethack.nineball.org;
I'm attacking with unskilled Sting and I got:
You aren't sure you're doing this the right way...
Is that new?
-HJC
Pasi Kallinen
>
> My "back of an envelope" software design for this
> would involve decoupling of the screen painting
> interface, which now sends (ANSI-mode colorized)
> character codes across the toward-player interface,
> to instead send tile map indices across that
> interface.
>
> Then there would be needed a small display tool,
> built mostly from the existing (now decoupled)
> NetHack display code, on the user's end that
> packages some flavor of telnet, plus an access hook
> to a {possibly player supplied favorite) graphical
> tiles map, plus an access hook to a text-imitating
> tiles map.
>
> The end result would be that players could chose to
> play on your server in tiles mode or in text mode, a
> frequent request from tiles mode addicts.
>
Unfortunately this'll prevent watching that particular game
being played (and the ttyrec of it too, unless you pass it
to the display program).
Also, nethack proxy (http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/nhproxy)
and nethack-el (http://www.nongnu.org/nethack-el/) already do
exactly this sort of thing. (Though I'd argue that emacs isn't
a "small display tool" ;)
--
Pasi Kallinen
pa...@alt.org
http://bilious.homelinux.org/ -- NetHack Patch Database
Henry J Cobb
> I hope you enjoy it.
I don't enjoy this bit.
Attempting to pick up gold:
Your knapsack cannot accommodate any more items.
There's always room for gold.
-HJC
Janis
> In rec.games.roguelike.nethack Kent Paul Dolan <xanth...@well.com> wrote:
>
> > My "back of an envelope" software design for this
> > would involve decoupling of the screen painting
> > interface, which now sends (ANSI-mode colorized)
> > character codes across the toward-player interface,
> > to instead send tile map indices across that
> > interface.
>
> > Then there would be needed a small display tool,
> > built mostly from the existing (now decoupled)
> > NetHack display code, on the user's end that
> > packages some flavor of telnet, plus an access hook
> > to a {possibly player supplied favorite) graphical
> > tiles map, plus an access hook to a text-imitating
> > tiles map.
>
> > The end result would be that players could chose to
> > play on your server in tiles mode or in text mode, a
> > frequent request from tiles mode addicts.
>
> Unfortunately this'll prevent watching that particular game
> being played (and the ttyrec of it too, unless you pass it
> to the display program).
Would it be possible to copy/paste text from such a "small GUI
frontend" without problems? (I suppose this would be possible
to facilitate, but very platform dependent?)
Janis, not very happy about *any* _mandatory_ non-text GUI, not
particularly in Nethack but in general, if it would be bulky or
less flexible, and always prefer a simple coupling
Martin Read
>It's worth noting that neither master liches nor arch-liches will
>typically be generated at the castle, unless you've spent a great deal
>of time gaining XL well past 14 prior to the castle.
It's worth noting that I've more or less never reached the castle later
than XL 16, and I've still had an ML there.
Also, of course, a chameleon or polytrap can produce an arch-lich
*anywhere*.
--
\_\/_/ you take a mortal man and put him in control
\ / and watch him become a god watch people's heads roll
\/ --- Megadeth, "Symphony of Destruction"
Riina
Well, here's what happened. I was (and still am) a level 12 dark
knight. Did sokoban and mines, then headed down to go wish some needed
objects (like magic resistance and a bag of holding). Didn't have
anything to cross Medusa's lake with, so dug past it. Arrived in the
upper part of the maze in front of the castle and immediately an arch-
lich jumped on me. Without magic resistance that was scary and even
scarier it became when I realised that Elbereth isn't going to save
me. The stairs were in the lower part of the maze (the farthest they
could be!). My wand of digging was out of charges.
In Nethack I would have dust-Elberethed my long way to the upstairs
but now that wasn't reliable at the least anymore. I made a boulder
fort to give me time to heal and used my magic lamp to get a gray
dragon scale mail (annoying since humans really need that lamp). When
I left the fort the arch-lich used his touch of death, which luckily
didn't work because of my brand new armour. In the end I levelported
away from the castle because I didn't have see invisible or telepathy
so the lich was kind of hard to track.
Ok, maybe I was extremely unlucky to get that arch-lich but still it
seems that the new castle (with the possible uncontrollable purple
liches) needs much more preparation than the castle in Nethack.
Nethack's castle can be done without magic resistance and reflection.
Isn't the idea of the castle that whatever you didn't find in the
dungeon you can get from the castle wand? Was the castle made harder
because of people digging for victory? I'm not one of those and at
least the first impression is that the new castle cramps my (playing)
style. :) But of course this opinion is just based on one bad
experience so don't take me too seriously...
--
*Riina*
Kent Paul Dolan
"Passing it to the display program" would presumably
satisfy both needs?
> Would it be possible to copy/paste text from such
> a "small GUI frontend" without problems?
No, it wouldn't, because you'd be trying to cut and
paste images, not text.
[In the real world of raster displays,
you're _always_ trying to cut and paste
working against font glyph "images" anyway,
but still, this would break that as it
currently exists, where the cut and paste
tool for any text display program expects
that program's interface to be supporting
treating those glyph images AS IF THEY WERE
the underlying character code bytes. You'd
probably be easily able to guess how
complicated this mapping from screen
location back to text string bytes can get
when the text being displayed is in mixed
sizes and fonts, using proportionally spaced
fonts.]
> (I suppose this would be possible to facilitate,
> but very platform dependent?)
Probably not, and that's a good point. However,
(quick redesign here) a pure text interface at the
user end could still be done with tile map indices
the communication mechanism between user and server,
just by mapping those back in the receiving end to
ncurses commands/ANSI-color strings before
displaying them, now as pure text.
The useful thing about using tile map indices as the
communications interface is that it is lossless,
unlike the current attempt to turn byte value and
character color into a tile index, a lossy
operation.
> Janis, not very happy about *any* _mandatory_
> non-text GUI, not particularly in Nethack but in
> general, if it would be bulky or less flexible,
> and always prefer a simple coupling
Well, leaving "current mode" as an available option
should cater to that desire, and it would be the
case that many, many common cut and paste abuses now
possible in server play text mode wouldn't work for
the tiles mode, at least not without extra effort
(and bulk) in the local display tool.
Quantum valeat.
xanthian.
Derek Ray
That is. That is the "reminder hint" that using unskilled or restricted
weapons have a hard to-hit limit of 75%.
Raisse the Thaumaturge
> Henry J Cobb wrote:
>> Derek Ray wrote:
>>> There is a server available for play at telnet://nethack.nineball.org;
>>
>> I'm attacking with unskilled Sting and I got:
>>
>> You aren't sure you're doing this the right way...
>>
>> Is that new?
>
> That is. That is the "reminder hint" that using unskilled or restricted
> weapons have a hard to-hit limit of 75%.
But if you're discouraged from using weapons when unskilled, how do you
ever pick up the skill? I'd probably come to hate the message if I
couldn't turn it off.
Raisse, killed by a dagger
--
ir...@valdyas.org LegoHack: http://www.valdyas.org/irina/nethack/
Status of Raisse (piously neutral): Level 8 HP 63(67) AC -3, fast.
Janis
> Derek Ray wrote:
> > Henry J Cobb wrote:
> >> Derek Ray wrote:
> >>> There is a server available for play at telnet://nethack.nineball.org;
>
> >> I'm attacking with unskilled Sting and I got:
> >> You aren't sure you're doing this the right way...
>
> >> Is that new?
>
> > That is. That is the "reminder hint" that using unskilled or restricted
> > weapons have a hard to-hit limit of 75%.
>
> But if you're discouraged from using weapons when unskilled, how do you
> ever pick up the skill? I'd probably come to hate the message if I
> couldn't turn it off.
I've got similar feelings already with Nethack's "bulky armor"
message.
Janis
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray wrote:
>
>> Henry J Cobb wrote:
>>> Derek Ray wrote:
>>>> There is a server available for play at telnet://nethack.nineball.org;
>>> I'm attacking with unskilled Sting and I got:
>>>
>>> You aren't sure you're doing this the right way...
>>>
>>> Is that new?
>> That is. That is the "reminder hint" that using unskilled or restricted
>> weapons have a hard to-hit limit of 75%.
>
> But if you're discouraged from using weapons when unskilled, how do you
> ever pick up the skill? I'd probably come to hate the message if I
> couldn't turn it off.
You hit something 20 times, and #enhance to Basic?
I may reduce the frequency of its occurrence (it's only 1/3 swings at
the moment), but it's important to have the message, since a maxed-luck
character can hit 100% of the time with just about _anything_ right now.
(There will be a different message soon for bashing with footrice
corpses, etc, since those don't HAVE a skill; at the moment it's the
same message, but that's inappropriate.)
Jym
<moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
> Raisse the Thaumaturge wrote:
>> Derek Ray wrote:
>>
>>> Henry J Cobb wrote:
>>>> Derek Ray wrote:
>>>>> There is a server available for play at
>>>>> telnet://nethack.nineball.org;
>>>> I'm attacking with unskilled Sting and I got:
>>>>
>>>> You aren't sure you're doing this the right way...
>>>>
>>>> Is that new?
>>> That is. That is the "reminder hint" that using unskilled or
>>> restricted
>>> weapons have a hard to-hit limit of 75%.
>>
>> But if you're discouraged from using weapons when unskilled, how do you
>> ever pick up the skill? I'd probably come to hate the message if I
>> couldn't turn it off.
>
> You hit something 20 times, and #enhance to Basic?
>
> I may reduce the frequency of its occurrence (it's only 1/3 swings at
> the moment), but it's important to have the message, since a maxed-luck
> character can hit 100% of the time with just about _anything_ right now.
Maybe you should only display the message if the limit has been reached.
So, in early game with no luck and low level the to-hit will not be
hampered by the limit and you won't have the message.
In the late game, you'll get the message but only if you try to learn a
new skill at that time, which is far less likely that learning new skill
in the early game.
[and you'll have 75% to hit, so that 20 hit should come in 25-30 try
leading to 8-10 messages if it come 1/3 of the time]
--
Hypocoristiquement,
Jym.
rpresser
Why should there be? Short of a bag (of holding or otherwise), gold
has not only weight but also volume.
sjde...@yahoo.com
> Ok, maybe I was extremely unlucky to get that arch-lich but still it
> seems that the new castle (with the possible uncontrollable purple
> liches) needs much more preparation than the castle in Nethack.
> Nethack's castle can be done without magic resistance and reflection.
> Isn't the idea of the castle that whatever you didn't find in the
> dungeon you can get from the castle wand?
I, too, hit a purple L and was lucky to have GDSM already. I was XL13
at that point. I also concur with the point that the Castle is there
to ensure that all games are winnable--at a minimum you can get, say,
MR, reflection, PR, and 7 candles out of the wand (with wresting, post-
charging scrolls). Putting the only guaranteed source of MR _after_ a
place where MR may be required seems like a major problem to me.
OTOH, the abundance of gnomish armor early on seems to make things a
fair sight easier, especially for gnomes...I might at least limit
those drops to gnome lords/kings (or maybe very rarely regular
gnomes). There'd still be ample sources of smurf gear for gnomish
racial ascensions, but it wouldn't skew the early game quite so
heavily.
Those gray F are _nasty_--I'm trying to interact with everything new
to figure it out, and wasn't expecting that.
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
>> It's worth noting that neither master liches nor arch-liches will
>> typically be generated at the castle, unless you've spent a great deal
>> of time gaining XL well past 14 prior to the castle.
>
> It's worth noting that I've more or less never reached the castle later
> than XL 16, and I've still had an ML there.
>
> Also, of course, a chameleon or polytrap can produce an arch-lich
> *anywhere*.
The chameleon/polytrap issue I'm not so worried about; there should
always be some degree of random element for a little spice, and both of
these are sufficiently rare (with the chameleon circumstance
self-correcting in a few turns anyway).
Getting a teleporty lich in the castle is an odd one. I've seen a
master lich there once when a demilich quaffed a gain level potion;
that's also relatively corner-case, but at least provides for the
possibility of purple L world. An arch-lich would be extremely rare.
I think I'd like to see some more in-game results before making any kind
of firm decision one way or the other. Riina was able to succeed (ie.
Not Die) through using some resources that are typically "save forever"
at that point in the game; to wit, a scroll of earth and a magic lamp
(there's a case to be made that you should burn the lamp immediately for
MR, but that's a separate discussion). The master lich in the castle
should be a rare case, and as long as people have a reasonable amount of
resources to do something when they arrive, ... well, you get the idea.
This is why I'd like to see more games played before changing anything.
The skilled players are used to defaulting to E as their "primary"
defense, rather than spending other resources, because E is extremely
cheap compared to those resources. I'd like to see how those same
players' ingenuity handles unexpected situations like this once they're
used to the concept of a non-100% E. At first it'll be a shocker, but
apparently it wasn't automatically non-survivable, so...
Derek Ray
> On Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:35:39 +0200, Derek Ray
> <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
>> Raisse the Thaumaturge wrote:
>>> But if you're discouraged from using weapons when unskilled, how do you
>>> ever pick up the skill? I'd probably come to hate the message if I
>>> couldn't turn it off.
>>
>> You hit something 20 times, and #enhance to Basic?
>>
>> I may reduce the frequency of its occurrence (it's only 1/3 swings at
>> the moment), but it's important to have the message, since a maxed-luck
>> character can hit 100% of the time with just about _anything_ right now.
>
> Maybe you should only display the message if the limit has been reached.
In other words, if the player's to-hit chance with an unskilled weapon
is such that it needs to be modified downwards? That is probably a good
idea.
> So, in early game with no luck and low level the to-hit will not be
> hampered by the limit and you won't have the message.
Right. (This is also why I wasn't concerned about it bothering
early-game players/characters, by the way -- your chances to hit are
miserable anyway, and you always get "basic" in your starting weapon.
Admittedly, this might annoy archaeologists, but we'll see how it goes.)
Derek Ray
> On Jul 9, 5:10 am, Riina <riina.hurmalai...@helsinki.fi> wrote:
>> Isn't the idea of the castle that whatever you didn't find in the
>> dungeon you can get from the castle wand?
This is a very "silver bullet" approach to design, and as should be
obvious, I don't really like silver bullets. I concede that something
like that guaranteed wand is almost a necessity, given what the player
may encounter in Gehennom, but by the same token, I don't really care
for the way the wand can basically reduce the game to "OK, go win now."
> I, too, hit a purple L and was lucky to have GDSM already. I was XL13
> at that point. I also concur with the point that the Castle is there
> to ensure that all games are winnable--at a minimum you can get, say,
> MR, reflection, PR, and 7 candles out of the wand (with wresting, post-
> charging scrolls). Putting the only guaranteed source of MR _after_ a
> place where MR may be required seems like a major problem to me.
So is it possible here that the problem is that an attack exists in the
game that _requires_ MR, no ifs, ands, or buts? Nothing that you've
said above is specifically relevant to my changes... _except_ that
Elbereth is no longer available as a 100% change.
I'm open to the concept of making the master lich and arch-lich be only
generatable in hell; this solves the problem of purple L at the castle
quite nicely. I'm also open to the concept of examining the master
lich's attacks at close range and seeing if we have a significant
problem with some of them -- or if the problem is the behavior of
covetous monsters in general (jump you so that you have no time to
prepare) combined with the Elbereth change.
> OTOH, the abundance of gnomish armor early on seems to make things a
> fair sight easier, especially for gnomes...I might at least limit
> those drops to gnome lords/kings (or maybe very rarely regular
Well, for a gnome, the armor is +2/+2/+2, giving them AC4 if that's all
they have. This is equivalent to a dwarvish iron helm, iron shoes, and
some token leather armor. (The boots are +3 right now and I'm going to
tone that back slightly to bring it in line with dwarf gear, since the
gnomish armor being leather is nice for a spellcaster).
Sure, there's tons of it; I may need to hook the code and make sure
that, say, +5 gnomish suits don't pop up all over the place or
something, but in general, there's tons of dwarvish armor in the mines
as well, so... ?
> gnomes). There'd still be ample sources of smurf gear for gnomish
> racial ascensions, but it wouldn't skew the early game quite so
> heavily.
Does it actually skew the game that much more than a gnome doing the
same thing with dwarvish armor and mithril? Sure, it wrecks his
casting, but the AC is also noticeably better...
> Those gray F are _nasty_--I'm trying to interact with everything new
> to figure it out, and wasn't expecting that.
They don't move, so it's really more of a monster in the style of the
floating eye -- you die to it once, learn "Those are bad", and then
you're discouraged from casually snowplowing everything you see. It's
generally just going to be some token flavor, though.
I must point out, at least with the fungus you can #pray after making
the mistake, or if you're lucky you have a unihorn/EH potion handy.
Derek Ray
> said above is specifically relevant to my changes... _except_ that
> Elbereth is no longer available as a 100% change.
This should read "100% effective defense."
Jym
<moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
> Jym wrote:
>> On Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:35:39 +0200, Derek Ray
>> <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
>>> Raisse the Thaumaturge wrote:
>>>> But if you're discouraged from using weapons when unskilled, how do
>>>> you
>>>> ever pick up the skill? I'd probably come to hate the message if I
>>>> couldn't turn it off.
>>>
>>> You hit something 20 times, and #enhance to Basic?
>>>
>>> I may reduce the frequency of its occurrence (it's only 1/3 swings at
>>> the moment), but it's important to have the message, since a maxed-luck
>>> character can hit 100% of the time with just about _anything_ right
>>> now.
>>
>> Maybe you should only display the message if the limit has been reached.
>
> In other words, if the player's to-hit chance with an unskilled weapon
> is such that it needs to be modified downwards? That is probably a good
> idea.
Exactly.
>> So, in early game with no luck and low level the to-hit will not be
>> hampered by the limit and you won't have the message.
>
> Right. (This is also why I wasn't concerned about it bothering
> early-game players/characters, by the way -- your chances to hit are
> miserable anyway, and you always get "basic" in your starting weapon.
> Admittedly, this might annoy archaeologists, but we'll see how it goes.)
But the early game is also the time where you can switch from your
starting weapon to a better one you intend to use later on (typically as a
wizard I'll train my dagger skill asap, especially on easy monsters, even
if that mean missing a few times. And keep the staff for harder monsters,
of course).
--
Hypocoristiquement,
Jym.
sjde...@yahoo.com
> sjdevn...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On Jul 9, 5:10 am, Riina <riina.hurmalai...@helsinki.fi> wrote:
> >> Isn't the idea of the castle that whatever you didn't find in the
> >> dungeon you can get from the castle wand?
>
> This is a very "silver bullet" approach to design, and as should be
> obvious, I don't really like silver bullets.
Hmm. This may be a fundamental disagreement in design, then--I prefer
games of skill over games of chance, so randomized solutions (like the
new E) tend to rub me the wrong way when they're the only way of
preventing arbitrary "Bang! You're dead!" situations (e.g. random
purple L from polytrap/chameleon/etc).
> like that guaranteed wand is almost a necessity, given what the player
> may encounter in Gehennom, but by the same token, I don't really care
> for the way the wand can basically reduce the game to "OK, go win now."
Yeah, that I can see. I like having a way to fill in gaps in items
that are pretty much required, but there needs to be more threat from
Gehennom.
> > I, too, hit a purple L and was lucky to have GDSM already. I was XL13
> > at that point. I also concur with the point that the Castle is there
> > to ensure that all games are winnable--at a minimum you can get, say,
> > MR, reflection, PR, and 7 candles out of the wand (with wresting, post-
> > charging scrolls). Putting the only guaranteed source of MR _after_ a
> > place where MR may be required seems like a major problem to me.
>
> So is it possible here that the problem is that an attack exists in the
> game that _requires_ MR, no ifs, ands, or buts? Nothing that you've
> said above is specifically relevant to my changes... _except_ that
> Elbereth is no longer available as a 100% change.
Right, previously the game had a solution for the MR-less. Now you
need MR to assault wishes; the E change has made MR even more of a
requirement than before. There's an instadeath that is randomly
generated that no skill can account for now--you need to have found
some sort of item (I think scare monster might work too) rather than
there being a way to work your way out of the situation.
With regular L (or black dragons, etc) you can at least run away and
otherwise keep them at bay if they happen to show up before you're
prepared. The "teleport to you" combined with the "instadeath" is
really the killer here--it's fine for Rodney, who you've had ample
time to get resources ready for.
> I'm open to the concept of making the master lich and arch-lich be only
> generatable in hell; this solves the problem of purple L at the castle
> quite nicely. I'm also open to the concept of examining the master
> lich's attacks at close range and seeing if we have a significant
> problem with some of them -- or if the problem is the behavior of
> covetous monsters in general (jump you so that you have no time to
> prepare) combined with the Elbereth change.
Basically, touch of death is a binary MR/no MR thing. As long as
creatures can be generated before you have a wish that can ToD (e.g.
regular L + !gain level, chameleon, etc) then they need to be things
that you can outrun, drop E on, whatever--otherwise you're just
introducing more "random unavoidable death" things of the GWTWOD
type. At least searching assiduously and pet-stepping can mitigate
poison spikes.
I'd be okay with nerfing E if combined with "no purple L before
Gehennom, including from polytraps/chameleons/!gain level". Or even
"purple L can't teleport outside Gehennom", though a summoning storm
early on could _suck_.
> > OTOH, the abundance of gnomish armor early on seems to make things a
> > fair sight easier, especially for gnomes...I might at least limit
> > those drops to gnome lords/kings (or maybe very rarely regular
>
> Well, for a gnome, the armor is +2/+2/+2, giving them AC4 if that's all
> they have. This is equivalent to a dwarvish iron helm, iron shoes, and
> some token leather armor. (The boots are +3 right now and I'm going to
> tone that back slightly to bring it in line with dwarf gear, since the
> gnomish armor being leather is nice for a spellcaster).
I guess it's just the sheer amount that does it for me--gnomes are all
over the place. I often have to get a couple levels in before I get
shoes and a helm from dwarves, and leather armor less common. It's
not a huge deal, though.
> Sure, there's tons of it; I may need to hook the code and make sure
> that, say, +5 gnomish suits don't pop up all over the place or
> something
That could be a concern, I guess.
I think overall it makes the early game slightly easier without
affecting the mid-late game at all, which is really a pretty good
tradeoff as far as I'm concerned.
> > Those gray F are _nasty_--I'm trying to interact with everything new
> > to figure it out, and wasn't expecting that.
>
> They don't move, so it's really more of a monster in the style of the
> floating eye -- you die to it once, learn "Those are bad", and then
> you're discouraged from casually snowplowing everything you see. It's
> generally just going to be some token flavor, though.
Yeah, I like them--it was just a surprise. :-)
> I must point out, at least with the fungus you can #pray after making
> the mistake, or if you're lucky you have a unihorn/EH potion handy.
Or, if non-chaotic, !holy water.
sjde...@yahoo.com
> Right, previously the game had a solution for the MR-less. Now you
> need MR to assault wishes
To assault the castle.
Riina
> > at that point. I also concur with the point that the Castle is there
> > to ensure that all games are winnable--at a minimum you can get, say,
> > MR, reflection, PR, and 7 candles out of the wand (with wresting, post-
> > charging scrolls). Putting the only guaranteed source of MR _after_ a
> > place where MR may be required seems like a major problem to me.
>
> So is it possible here that the problem is that an attack exists in the
> game that _requires_ MR, no ifs, ands, or buts? Nothing that you've
> said above is specifically relevant to my changes... _except_ that
> Elbereth is no longer available as a 100% change.
>
> I'm open to the concept of making the master lich and arch-lich be only
> generatable in hell; this solves the problem of purple L at the castle
> quite nicely. I'm also open to the concept of examining the master
> lich's attacks at close range and seeing if we have a significant
> problem with some of them -- or if the problem is the behavior of
> covetous monsters in general (jump you so that you have no time to
> prepare) combined with the Elbereth change.
>
I once played a whole game of Nethack without magic resistance _and_
without genociding the liches (I guess I would have ascended if I
hadn't escaped the dungeon without the amulet by accident, whoopsie).
That was possible with Elbereth and some good luck. In Sporkhack that
would be much harder to do. So if I were to try a MRless character in
Sporkhack I would definitely genocide the liches. Maybe that is a sign
of me not wanting to risk things or a sign that the liches need some
changes too combined with the Elbereth change (as you already
mentioned).
So yes, without safe Elbereth there is an attack which requires magic
resistance. If no changes are made that means that magic resistance
becomes much more important and if there are teleporting liches in the
castle (which isn't all that rare in my experience) people have to
resort to some funny things they wouldn't normally do like go fountain
dipping or genociding. Unless they want their possessions
identified... ;)
--
*Riina*
Janis Papanagnou
> Martin Read wrote:
>>Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
>>
>>>It's worth noting that neither master liches nor arch-liches will
>>>typically be generated at the castle, unless you've spent a great deal
>>>of time gaining XL well past 14 prior to the castle.
>>
>>It's worth noting that I've more or less never reached the castle later
>>than XL 16, and I've still had an ML there.
>
I've had that happen often enough to telepathy/blindfold check the level
as soon as I arrive at the Castle. Without MR, I immediately leave to go
through the boredom of finding some source of MR randomly generated (if
I not yet have anything). And I am not someone who levels up far beyond
XL:14 at that point (not even as a wizard).
> I've seen a
> master lich there once when a demilich quaffed a gain level potion;
> that's also relatively corner-case, but at least provides for the
> possibility of purple L world. An arch-lich would be extremely rare.
I cannot say for sure whether one (or many or all) incidents of that type
may have happened with help of a potion of gain level in the liches hand,
but if there's such a beast I really don't care whether he became violet
or was a native one. It just happens. And it shouldn't be a dead end, nor
boring to continue, in such a case. (I cannot speak for your patch, I've
not yet tried it.)
> The skilled players are used to defaulting to E as their "primary"
> defense, rather than spending other resources,
What would be an appropriate other ressource in that case to prevent the
touch of death? A potion of hallucination? Has a player *any* realistic
chance to survive a liches' summon storm of mind flayers and minotaurs
while hallucinating. The only way to (maybe) survive such an incident
seems to retreat and come back to fight another day (including a boring
search for MR).
> because E is extremely
> cheap compared to those resources. I'd like to see how those same
> players' ingenuity handles unexpected situations like this once they're
> used to the concept of a non-100% E. At first it'll be a shocker, but
> apparently it wasn't automatically non-survivable, so...
The number of choices seem to me to be very very small. But I may not be
proficient enough to play in the upper league and solve that challenge,
granted.
Janis, in veneration for(of?) all the harder conduct players
Martin Read
>I'm open to the concept of making the master lich and arch-lich be only
>generatable in hell; this solves the problem of purple L at the castle
>quite nicely.
They already *are* only generatable in Hell under normal circumstances.
However, typed random monster selection caused by a
MONSTER:'X',random,(x,y) directive in a level file bypasses at least
some of the normal safeguards on monster creation. Additionally, if an
demilich gets generated with a PoGL, the Grow Up effect completley
ignores the generation algorithm.
ran...@pactechdata.com
[...]
> So yes, without safe Elbereth there is an attack which requires magic
> resistance. If no changes are made that means that magic resistance
> becomes much more important and if there are teleporting liches in the
> castle (which isn't all that rare in my experience) people have to
> resort to some funny things they wouldn't normally do like go fountain
> dipping or genociding. Unless they want their possessions
> identified... ;)
If you engrave in advance, then you're doing the sort of
this that nerfing Elbereth seems intended to fix. Or if you
have time to engrave after the monster teleports next to you,
then you also have to time to quaff a potion of hallucination
instead. So claiming that Elbereth is the only way to avoid
touch of death besides magic resistance is a bit of a stretch.
Riina
Well, in that MR-less game I played I encountered 7 master liches and
5 arch-liches. I didn't have 12 potions of hallucination. So without
Elbereth I wouldn't have made it with my two amulets of life saving.
Well, that was a silly conduct game, but that's where you need the
protection of Elbereth the most. In my normal games I don't usually
bother using Elbereth against liches - if I have MR that is.
If you have to rely on potions of hallucination to avoid the touch of
death you can't unihorn dip your potions as liberally as before. Also
engraving works in a single turn, potions are usually bagged away. Of
course tinning some molds and eating them works too but tinning kits
are relatively rare (as are potions of hallucination too). And as
Janis already pointed out I wouldn't want to be hallucinating near
summoners and not knowing what happens around me. That would _suck_.
--
*Riina* the biggest Elbereth-abuser there is!
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
>> I'm open to the concept of making the master lich and arch-lich be only
>> generatable in hell; this solves the problem of purple L at the castle
>> quite nicely.
>
> They already *are* only generatable in Hell under normal circumstances.
> However, typed random monster selection caused by a
> MONSTER:'X',random,(x,y) directive in a level file bypasses at least
> some of the normal safeguards on monster creation. Additionally, if an
> demilich gets generated with a PoGL, the Grow Up effect completley
> ignores the generation algorithm.
The level-file monster generation algorithm can be altered easily to
match the above "normal circumstances", if that's the way I end up going.
As stated before, I'm not too worried about the demilich with the gain
level potion. That is possible, but quite rare, and would only generate
a master lich, not an arch-lich.
(Honestly, I suspect that the attack behavior of covetous monsters may
be the primary offender here, but that's still subject to additional
review since it's not something I really want to modify _too_
thoughtlessly.)
syull...@gmail.com
> On Jul 9, 5:10 am, Riina <riina.hurmalai...@helsinki.fi> wrote:
>
> > Ok, maybe I was extremely unlucky to get that arch-lich but still it
> > seems that the new castle (with the possible uncontrollable purple
> > liches) needs much more preparation than the castle in Nethack.
> > Nethack's castle can be done without magic resistance and reflection.
> > Isn't the idea of the castle that whatever you didn't find in the
> > dungeon you can get from the castle wand?
>
> I, too, hit a purple L and was lucky to have GDSM already. I was XL13
> at that point. I also concur with the point that the Castle is there
> to ensure that all games are winnable--at a minimum you can get, say,
> MR, reflection, PR, and 7 candles out of the wand (with wresting, post-
> charging scrolls). Putting the only guaranteed source of MR _after_ a
> place where MR may be required seems like a major problem to me.
Why is MR required to fight liches? Doesn't hallucination also give
protection from death magic? Yellow mold corpses are common, and I
think only take one turn to eat. Change them to not decay, like lizard
corpses, and it gives you a 100% effective solution to the problem of
monsters using touch of death, without actually taking away their
spiffy attack.
Martin Read
>Why is MR required to fight liches? Doesn't hallucination also give
>protection from death magic?
If you lack MR, a master lich can drain 1d11 points of strength (MR
negates this entirely), stun you for 4d4 turns (MR reduces this to 1,
meaning that you recover immediately before your next action), apply
1d6 randomly distributed item curses to your pack (MR reduces this to
1d3), or 100% reliably destroy a randomly selected piece of worn armour
if you are wearing any (MR negates this entirely).
Additionally, MR halves the damage caused by the lich's psi bolts. Given
that a master lich's psi bolts do 8d6 damage each, this is quite
significant.
Darshan Shaligram
[dealing with boss liches without MR]
> What would be an appropriate other ressource in that case to prevent
> the touch of death?
Potions of paralysis work. I've taken an MR-less priest down to the
Sanctum using potions of paralysis and a wielded unicorn horn to deal
with boss liches (with free action, of course), and I am a lame lame
player compared to most of the citizens of nao.
--
Darshan Shaligram <scin...@gmail.com> Deus vult
Derek Ray
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:06:52 +0200, Derek Ray
> <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
>
>> Jym wrote:
>>>
>>> Maybe you should only display the message if the limit has been reached.
>>
>> In other words, if the player's to-hit chance with an unskilled weapon
>> is such that it needs to be modified downwards? That is probably a good
>> idea.
>
> Exactly.
And as it turns out upon review, the code is currently written that way;
no changes required. (Apparently I've put more thought into this than I
think. ;)
If I have to reduce your to-hit because of unskilled or restricted,
*and* a 1/3 chance comes up, only then will the message be displayed.
So low-level characters shouldn't see this much at all.
David Damerell
>If I have to reduce your to-hit because of unskilled or restricted,
>*and* a 1/3 chance comes up, only then will the message be displayed.
>So low-level characters shouldn't see this much at all.
I've only just seen this and have not had a proper look, but are you
intending to address the massive surplus of to-hit in the middle and late
game?
--
OPTIONS=name:Kirsty,menustyle:C,female,lit_corridor,standout,time,showexp,hilit
e_pet,catname:Akane,dogname:Ryoga,fruit:okonomiyaki,pickup_types:"!$?=/,scores:
5 top/2 around,color,boulder:0,autoquiver,autodig,disclose:yiyayvygyc,pickup_bu
rden:burdened,!cmdassist,msg_window:reversed,!sparkle,horsename:Rumiko,showrace
Jym
<mpr...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> syull...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Why is MR required to fight liches? Doesn't hallucination also give
>> protection from death magic?
>
> If you lack MR, a master lich can drain 1d11 points of strength (MR
> negates this entirely), stun you for 4d4 turns (MR reduces this to 1,
> meaning that you recover immediately before your next action), apply
> 1d6 randomly distributed item curses to your pack (MR reduces this to
> 1d3), or 100% reliably destroy a randomly selected piece of worn armour
> if you are wearing any (MR negates this entirely).
>
> Additionally, MR halves the damage caused by the lich's psi bolts. Given
> that a master lich's psi bolts do 8d6 damage each, this is quite
> significant.
Yet, for the Sporkhack case where the problme is that Elbereth is not 100%
efficace, I dare say that Elbereth is still mostly efficace against these
things that are very very bad is they happen every turn but only a big but
not mortal problem if they happen say, 10% of time (guessingthat Elbereth
works 90% of time).
In that case, the only mortal problem that remains with the L is the touch
of death that can be effectively negated by hallucination.
And again, this happen (in Sporkhack) baiscally only by magic traps or
Castle L (after that the wands gives you MR).
So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep a
few potions of hallucination in case of purple L. I guess that creative
use of items for corner case situations is exactly what Derek was after.
And it only took rgrn a couple of days to find a solution to a problem
that appeared as first as being very very bad (see the original post with
this problem)...
--
Hypocoristiquement,
Jym.
funcrunch
> So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep a
> few potions of hallucination in case of purple L. I guess that creative
> use of items for corner case situations is exactly what Derek was after.
> And it only took rgrn a couple of days to find a solution to a problem
> that appeared as first as being very very bad (see the original post with
> this problem)...
Excuse my ignorance, but is it really that common to get all the way
to the Castle without magic resistance? Of course, if you're not a
wizard and you find no wishes, good bones or scale-dropping gray
dragons before then I guess you really need to get that WoW. But I
don't even like to do my quest without both MR and reflection, and I
rarely do the Castle before the quest unless the quest enemy is really
tough (like the monk's Master Kaen).
As far as Elbereth, I do use it but very sparingly, more to protect
stashes (which I don't use much either) than protect myself. There's
at least one recent case where E would likely have saved me, but I was
distracted and forgot to use it. I think the E-word is too powerful,
and would enjoy seeing an E-less conduct (there I go with my conduct
suggestions again ;-) )
- funcrunch
Janis Papanagnou
>
> So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep
> a few potions of hallucination in case of purple L.
No. You can't tell apart the non-E-respecting minotaur from the other
summonned nasties while hallucinating. You will have to trade one set
of likely deaths by another set which is similarly fatal.
WRT the 10% proposal, which is apparently better than the 25%, that's
introducing a russian roulette factor with 10 bullet chambers instead
of just 4.
Janis
Martin Read
>So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep a
>few potions of hallucination in case of purple L.
And a ring of sustain ability. An arch-lich can drain 1d19 points of
strength rather than 1d11.
Better is for the Sporkhack maintainer to fix lich generation at the
castle so that purple 'L' cannot be selected; it might also be worth
fiddling their inventories.
Idle thought: maybe purple 'L' should not use covetous teleport to
pursue players who do not have an item they desire.
Janis Papanagnou
> On Jul 10, 9:38 am, Jym <Jean-Yves.Moyen+n...@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
>
>>So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep a
>>few potions of hallucination in case of purple L. I guess that creative
>>use of items for corner case situations is exactly what Derek was after.
>>And it only took rgrn a couple of days to find a solution to a problem
>>that appeared as first as being very very bad (see the original post with
>>this problem)...
>
> Excuse my ignorance, but is it really that common to get all the way
> to the Castle without magic resistance?
That's nothing to do with ignorance; though I wonder that you were so
lucky in the past to always have got MR before that point.
> Of course, if you're not a wizard
I am roughly one 13th of my games a different role than a wizard.
> and you find no wishes,
I don't "find" wishes, usually, there are just the rare wands and the
magic lamps. Altars are almost always a dud for me. And fiddling with
fountains I don't want to do if I can avoid that for apparent reasons.
> good bones or scale-dropping gray dragons before then
The castle is indeed one of my three major sources for MR (besides
Ludios, which is not guaranteed, and throne rooms on appropriate deep
dungeon level).
> I guess you really need to get that WoW. But I
> don't even like to do my quest without both MR and reflection,
The same for me. That's the reason why I try to get GDSM from the Castle
if I haven't yet found any other source of MR, in which case I search
more thoroughly for a possible Ludios entry, and if there's no dragons
or if they don't leave scales, I desperately give any magic lamp (if I
happen to have one) the 80% chance to give me MR, or try the fountains.
Things are easier if there are no purple L on the Castle level; then I
continue even without MR.
BTW, my last promising character died without MR due to a golden naga's
PSI bolt! (Golden nagas are less problematic than purple L's, and I had
some choice to survive, but... <sigh>.)
> I think the E-word is too powerful, [...]
The *permanent* E-word is indeed very powerful (once you have a means
to do that); though not so all that scribbling in the dust, which is
both unrealiable to write and it's quite impossible to fight from such
a spot (spells are an exception). (The one-turn athame is a special case
which is not generally available.)
Janis
Rachel Elizabeth Dillon
> Jym <Jean-Yves....@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
>>So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep a
>>few potions of hallucination in case of purple L.
>
> And a ring of sustain ability. An arch-lich can drain 1d19 points of
> strength rather than 1d11.
There are more ways than that. A scroll of scare monster still repels
a lich at 100%, for example.
> Better is for the Sporkhack maintainer to fix lich generation at the
> castle so that purple 'L' cannot be selected; it might also be worth
> fiddling their inventories.
I think best is to make more items that players usually just blank or
leave behind do things that help solve this type of problem. Scare
monster for non-illiterates and hallucination used to be junk items,
and now you might think about carrying them around for a while; I can't
think of a way to make a potion of restore ability protect you from an
arch-lich but if I could that would be awesome. :)
> Idle thought: maybe purple 'L' should not use covetous teleport to
> pursue players who do not have an item they desire.
Certainly the teleport-to-you behavior is harsh and a half if there's
no way to get them off your back. Whether that's the way to go or not
I'd have to think about more than I did before writing this post. :)
-r.
sjde...@yahoo.com
> On Jul 10, 9:38 am, Jym <Jean-Yves.Moyen+n...@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
>
> > So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep a
> > few potions of hallucination in case of purple L. I guess that creative
> > use of items for corner case situations is exactly what Derek was after.
> > And it only took rgrn a couple of days to find a solution to a problem
> > that appeared as first as being very very bad (see the original post with
> > this problem)...
>
> Excuse my ignorance, but is it really that common to get all the way
Barring a magic lamp in minetown or a lucky bones/fountain, the normal
course of action without MR is to find an instrument and head straight
for the Castle.
> Of course, if you're not a
> wizard and you find no wishes, good bones or scale-dropping gray
> dragons before then I guess you really need to get that WoW.
> But I don't even like to do my quest without both MR and reflection
Definitely not.
> And I rarely do the Castle before the quest unless the quest enemy is really
> tough (like the monk's Master Kaen).
I'm practically never XL14 before the castle; normally I'll do the
Castle, Valley, and sometimes most of gehennom until I get to XL14.
If I'm in a hurry and have plenty of wishes I may revgeno wraiths
after the Castle to get there.
> As far as Elbereth, I do use it but very sparingly, more to protect
> stashes (which I don't use much either) than protect myself.
I use it early on (where it's still effective in sporkhack) and if
something comes at me that I don't yet have the resources to deal with
(e.g. a teleporting L with touch of death). And for stash protection.
sjde...@yahoo.com
> funcrunch wrote:
> > On Jul 10, 9:38 am, Jym <Jean-Yves.Moyen+n...@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
>
> > > So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep a
> > > few potions of hallucination in case of purple L. I guess that creative
> > > use of items for corner case situations is exactly what Derek was after.
> > > And it only took rgrn a couple of days to find a solution to a problem
> > > that appeared as first as being very very bad (see the original post with
> > > this problem)...
>
> > Excuse my ignorance, but is it really that common to get all the way
> > to the Castle without magic resistance?\
>
> Barring a magic lamp in minetown or a lucky bones/fountain, the normal
> course of action without MR is to find an instrument and head straight
> for the Castle.
Ugh. I meant "the normal course of action after Minetown/Sokoban and
possibly Mines' End"--I'm not claiming Dive for Victory as the normal
course of action.
Janis Papanagnou
>
> So yes, without safe Elbereth there is an attack which requires magic
> resistance. If no changes are made that means that magic resistance
> becomes much more important and if there are teleporting liches in the
> castle (which isn't all that rare in my experience) people have to
> resort to some funny things they wouldn't normally do like go fountain
> dipping or genociding. Unless they want their possessions
> identified... ;)
Nice said (with the closing statement)!
:-)
Janis
Derek Ray
> Quoting Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com>:
>> If I have to reduce your to-hit because of unskilled or restricted,
>> *and* a 1/3 chance comes up, only then will the message be displayed.
>> So low-level characters shouldn't see this much at all.
>
> I've only just seen this and have not had a proper look, but are you
> intending to address the massive surplus of to-hit in the middle and late
> game?
That is still under consideration, yes. Part of the problem is trying
to determine which particular source of to-hit is the big offender.
Luckstones seem obvious (+13 on a d20 scale is not good), as does the
fact that few monsters start out with comparable AC to the PC... even
the ones that are generated only deep down.
The other part of the problem is that there's also a point where the PC
_should_ be hacking through hordes effortlessly, and trying to decide
exactly which point that is takes some thought... which I haven't
focused on yet. :)
Derek Ray
> Jym <Jean-Yves....@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
>> So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to keep a
>> few potions of hallucination in case of purple L.
>
> And a ring of sustain ability. An arch-lich can drain 1d19 points of
> strength rather than 1d11.
>
> Better is for the Sporkhack maintainer
You mean me? ;)
> to fix lich generation at the
> castle so that purple 'L' cannot be selected; it might also be worth
> fiddling their inventories.
At the moment, I've removed covetousness from master liches; let's see
how that shakes out in test, since arch-liches should be both badass and
quite rare to find at the Castle. It'll go in with the next update.
> Idle thought: maybe purple 'L' should not use covetous teleport to
> pursue players who do not have an item they desire.
Right now I'm looking at the following change as well; make covetous
teleport for everything except Rodney be limited to 4 squares at a time,
similar to Expert jumping. (This includes attempting to retreat to the
stairs; they'd head there 4 steps at a time.)
What this would mean is that you would _not_ be able to run away from
the covetous monsters just by standard movement (which seems to have
been intended in the first place), but you WOULD have some use for the
scrolls of teleport/wand of teleport, and might even have a chance to
see them coming and do something about it.
I haven't implemented this yet as I'm still pondering over it to see if
anything's obviously broken or stupid about it, and hopefully it doesn't
nerf the covetous ones too much (though Asmo and Baal don't typically
wake up until you get within 4 squares of 'em anyway) in the process.
Janis Papanagnou
>
> Right now I'm looking at the following change as well; make covetous
> teleport for everything except Rodney be limited to 4 squares at a time,
> similar to Expert jumping. (This includes attempting to retreat to the
> stairs; they'd head there 4 steps at a time.)
>
> What this would mean is that you would _not_ be able to run away from
> the covetous monsters just by standard movement (which seems to have
> been intended in the first place), but you WOULD have some use for the
> scrolls of teleport/wand of teleport, and might even have a chance to
> see them coming and do something about it.
You mean; I zap a wand of teleport which puts him on average <40 squares
away, so he needs 10 covetous teleports to reach you again. In this time
you've done what? Walking 10 squares within the maze (Castle or Gehennom)?
It will drain your precious teleport charges, but I cannot quite see what
problem this would solve WRT the MR/Elbereth effect. I would still try to
avoid them or just genocide all L's. - No risk, but fun.
> I haven't implemented this yet as I'm still pondering over it to see if
> anything's obviously broken or stupid about it, and hopefully it doesn't
> nerf the covetous ones too much (though Asmo and Baal don't typically
> wake up until you get within 4 squares of 'em anyway) in the process.
Janis
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray wrote:
>> Right now I'm looking at the following change as well; make covetous
>> teleport for everything except Rodney be limited to 4 squares at a time,
>> similar to Expert jumping. (This includes attempting to retreat to the
>> stairs; they'd head there 4 steps at a time.)
>>
>> What this would mean is that you would _not_ be able to run away from
>> the covetous monsters just by standard movement (which seems to have
>> been intended in the first place), but you WOULD have some use for the
>> scrolls of teleport/wand of teleport, and might even have a chance to
>> see them coming and do something about it.
>
> You mean; I zap a wand of teleport which puts him on average <40 squares
> away, so he needs 10 covetous teleports to reach you again. In this time
> you've done what? Walking 10 squares within the maze (Castle or Gehennom)?
That's a good question. What else do you have in your inventory and/or
bag, since you now have a few turns to take things out of the bag if
necessary? What _could_ you possibly do in that time?
Also, Gehennom is irrelevant to the discussion so far, which has been
entirely about it being too hard to reach the Castle wand as a
last-ditch source of MR.
> It will drain your precious teleport charges,
You mean the ones that players are currently saving and using to avoid
any kind of combat in Astral? OK, I'm fine with that.
> but I cannot quite see what
> problem this would solve WRT the MR/Elbereth effect.
It helps solve the one where the player responds to any non-@, non-A
threat by simply engraving Elbereth. Now the player may need to find
other solutions to the problem of a significant non-@, non-A threat.
It was pointed out that arch-liches teleport to you immediately and can
cast 'touch of death', which seems a particularly nasty and 'unfair' way
to die in light of the changes to E. So, having arch-liches not
teleport to you in a single turn would certainly mitigate this problem,
and frankly, by the time the player typically encounters arch-liches, I
expect the player to have more resources available than just a means of
reliably engraving Elbereth.
Derek Ray
> I once played a whole game of Nethack without magic resistance _and_
> without genociding the liches (I guess I would have ascended if I
> hadn't escaped the dungeon without the amulet by accident, whoopsie).
It's hard to say "my hand slipped" on that one.
> That was possible with Elbereth and some good luck. In Sporkhack that
> would be much harder to do. So if I were to try a MRless character in
> Sporkhack I would definitely genocide the liches.
That is, indeed, a valid solution available to the player.
> Maybe that is a sign
> of me not wanting to risk things or a sign that the liches need some
> changes too combined with the Elbereth change (as you already
> mentioned).
That's a good question. I am quite intentionally not considering
conducts in the slightest while making these changes, because I don't
consider conducts to be part of the "core game". They are voluntary
challenges made by the player to him/herself to increase the difficulty
of the game, and as such are _going_ to have difficult problems
involved: take, for example, foodless atheist.
If I were to balance the game around, say, "make genoless conduct no
harder than it is now", I don't think the game would change very much
from standard Nethack, in which case why am I bothering?
Now, mind you, I would not be happy if genocide was the ONLY solution
available for liches in Sporkhack, but I don't think that's the case
right now, and certainly not with the other changes I'm considering
making (see my response elsewhere in this thread for details).
> So yes, without safe Elbereth there is an attack which requires magic
> resistance. If no changes are made that means that magic resistance
> becomes much more important
Well, yes and no. Magic resistance was already almost mandatory in the
game anyway, for many other reasons besides just the L special attacks.
I'm not enthralled with this state of affairs, either, but by the same
token, I don't think the Elbereth change has particularly altered the
way most players approach the game; right now the standard ascension kit
and its many variants still always includes "Two sources of MR just in
case Rodney steals your first one", yes?
And Rodney has always been able to touch-of-death, so...
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray wrote:
>
Experience with other games has shown me that everyone has a different
set of memories regarding what is "usual" in a game; the only source of
truly unbiased opinions are occurrences from actual play.
Just a thought.
>> The skilled players are used to defaulting to E as their "primary"
>> defense, rather than spending other resources,
>
> What would be an appropriate other ressource in that case to prevent the
> touch of death? A potion of hallucination?
That is one such resource, yes.
> Has a player *any* realistic
> chance to survive a liches' summon storm of mind flayers and minotaurs
First: mind flayers and minotaurs are only two of the potential monsters
that might be summoned. Yes, it's "summon nasties", but even "summon
nasties" can be more nasty at times than at others.
Second: no lich is guaranteed to summon, nor is it always a lich's first
attack. (Plus, a lich cannot summon and touch-of-death you at the same
time; which is it that he's going to do, anyway?)
Third: Yes, a player does, in fact, have a quite realistic chance to
survive while hallucinating, simply by killing _everything_ around them.
Most skilled players have a LOT of resources and ingenuity available
for this sort of thing. One of those resources remains Elbereth, which
while no longer 100% effective, will be far more effective than you seem
to think it will. (You had better engrave it before drinking the potion
though, admittedly.)
>> because E is extremely
>> cheap compared to those resources. I'd like to see how those same
>> players' ingenuity handles unexpected situations like this once they're
>> used to the concept of a non-100% E. At first it'll be a shocker, but
>> apparently it wasn't automatically non-survivable, so...
>
> The number of choices seem to me to be very very small. But I may not be
> proficient enough to play in the upper league and solve that challenge,
> granted.
Who knows? I think one thing is certain: none of us _know_ what will
happen until we try playing and see.
I can tell you this, though; in my own testing, I survived a polytrap
arch-lich in the Mines rather forthrightly. Dust Elbereth and beating
on him vigorously was effective enough to get me to the closest stairs
and down, which were about 15 squares away at the time. He did some
damage and did manage a single summon, but never did he actually
touch-of-death me.
On the way back I made it almost the whole way to the upstairs before I
finally got hemmed in by monsters and couldn't escape. Of course, this
was a very low-level character, so I didn't even have something so
simple as a cursed scroll of teleport to rely on... which could've got
me past him and out of the Mines. I didn't find a levelport trap
further down either, sadly. Did this suck? Yeah, a little, but I can
chalk it up to "extreme bad luck" in having the polytrap create an
arch-lich in the first place.
I'm not so sure the changed Elbereth is as ineffective as you all seem
to think it is. Some players are avoiding using it at all; I think this
is a mistake on their part, but we'll see how things go, won't we?
Derek Ray
> On Jul 9, 6:20 pm, Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote:
>> like that guaranteed wand is almost a necessity, given what the player
>> may encounter in Gehennom, but by the same token, I don't really care
>> for the way the wand can basically reduce the game to "OK, go win now."
>
> Yeah, that I can see. I like having a way to fill in gaps in items
> that are pretty much required, but there needs to be more threat from
> Gehennom.
This can (and hopefully will) be arranged.
>> So is it possible here that the problem is that an attack exists in the
>> game that _requires_ MR, no ifs, ands, or buts? Nothing that you've
>> said above is specifically relevant to my changes... _except_ that
>> Elbereth is no longer available as a 100% change.
>
> Right, previously the game had a solution for the MR-less. Now you
> need MR to assault the Castle;
Well... "need" might be a bit strong since purple Ls are all you really
fear at the Castle. I suppose golden nagas, too, but.
> the E change has made MR even more of a
> requirement than before. There's an instadeath that is randomly
> generated that no skill can account for now--you need to have found
> some sort of item (I think scare monster might work too) rather than
> there being a way to work your way out of the situation.
The efficacy of scare monster scrolls has not changed at all; this is
intentional as these are a limited resource, thus you should actually
get some bang for your buck with 'em.
> With regular L (or black dragons, etc) you can at least run away and
I don't recall E ever being effective against black dragons; in fact, I
found it counterproductive because they step back and breathe on you.
> otherwise keep them at bay if they happen to show up before you're
> prepared. The "teleport to you" combined with the "instadeath" is
> really the killer here--it's fine for Rodney, who you've had ample
> time to get resources ready for.
Sure, but is MR any less mandatory just because you need it for Rodney?
(See response to Riina, Martin, etc. Hopefully I can avoid repeating
myself in these threads. :)
>> Well, for a gnome, the armor is +2/+2/+2, giving them AC4 if that's all
>> they have. This is equivalent to a dwarvish iron helm, iron shoes, and
>> some token leather armor. (The boots are +3 right now and I'm going to
>> tone that back slightly to bring it in line with dwarf gear, since the
>> gnomish armor being leather is nice for a spellcaster).
>
> I guess it's just the sheer amount that does it for me--gnomes are all
> over the place. I often have to get a couple levels in before I get
> shoes and a helm from dwarves, and leather armor less common. It's
> not a huge deal, though.
Sure. But how useful is that armor to a non-gnome?
(And if you're a gnome, gnomes are _not_ as all over the place in the
Mines as they are for other races; the generation code changes so that a
lot more 'other monsters' show up.)
>>> Those gray F are _nasty_--I'm trying to interact with everything new
>>> to figure it out, and wasn't expecting that.
>> They don't move, so it's really more of a monster in the style of the
>> floating eye -- you die to it once, learn "Those are bad", and then
>> you're discouraged from casually snowplowing everything you see. It's
>> generally just going to be some token flavor, though.
>
> Yeah, I like them--it was just a surprise. :-)
Well, yes. I can imagine. =)
ran...@pactechdata.com
On Jul 9, 7:56 am, Janis <janis_papanag...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[ about a "reminder" message which gets annoying when overused ]
> I've got similar feelings already with Nethack's "bulky armor"
> message.
FYI, that's been changed. It is now [or will be... :-] only
given when the monk's armor penalty affects the attack outcome.
If you successfully hit despite the penalty, or would have missed
anyway without the penalty, there'll be no message. So the "your
armor is cumbersome" message might still be annoying sometimes but
it will be conveying more useful information.
Janis Papanagnou
> Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>
> Also, Gehennom is irrelevant to the discussion so far, which has been
> entirely about it being too hard to reach the Castle wand as a
> last-ditch source of MR.
Right. The proposal to restrict the purple L's to Gehennom would make
any restricted covetous teleport change obsolete, then? (We wanted to
prevent instant touch of death incidents.)
>>but I cannot quite see what
>>problem this would solve WRT the MR/Elbereth effect.
>
> [...]
> It was pointed out that arch-liches teleport to you immediately and can
> cast 'touch of death', which seems a particularly nasty and 'unfair' way
> to die in light of the changes to E. So, having arch-liches not
> teleport to you in a single turn would certainly mitigate this problem,
> and frankly, by the time the player typically encounters arch-liches, I
> expect the player to have more resources available than just a means of
> reliably engraving Elbereth.
But wasn't all that just a problem WRT lacking MR, which is, as you
pointed out above, not any more a point once you got to the castle and
got your guaranteed wish to obtain MR.
Janis
Janis Papanagnou
> Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>
>>chance to survive a liches' summon storm of mind flayers and minotaurs
>
> First: mind flayers and minotaurs are only two of the potential monsters
> that might be summoned. Yes, it's "summon nasties", but even "summon
> nasties" can be more nasty at times than at others.
Sure they're not the only one, they are just two prominent examples to
illustrate two potentially fatal attacks (in addition to the purple L's
fatal attack).
I try to explain; usually I have not 300 HP's (just to name a number),
rather 80 (or so) at times I reach the castle. Non-hallucinating I try
(i.e. maybe, depending on my options) to get rid of the minotaur first,
because he hits extraordinary hard and can kill me in _very few_ turns
and does not respect Elbereth! So it is no choice, as you suggested
below, to "kill everything around"; you simply wouldn't survive such
an approach - well, you would maybe, but I wouldn't by that proposal -
because you cannot target specifically the minotaur while hallucinating.
> Second: no lich is guaranteed to summon, nor is it always a lich's first
> attack. (Plus, a lich cannot summon and touch-of-death you at the same
> time; which is it that he's going to do, anyway?)
Sure, that's not in question. The point is that you need to, e.g., make
yourself hallucinating to prevent the one fatal L attack, but are faced
with the summoning storm which will most likely be also fatal (because
of the extraordinary attacks from the nasties) while you hallucinate. It
doesn't matter in which order the spells happen; you *need* to protect
yourself from the _fatal_ one, in the first place (and try to survive
the other attack with hopelessly reduced chances).
> Third: Yes, a player does, in fact, have a quite realistic chance to
> survive while hallucinating, simply by killing _everything_ around them.
No, that is not a practical choice, as I think to have made apparent above.
I don't say that a skilled player might not survive a purple lich, a very
skilled one might even survive one at the Castle level without MR; there
may be one or even many, but I just don't see any feasable counteraction,
yet.
> Most skilled players have a LOT of resources and ingenuity available
> for this sort of thing. One of those resources remains Elbereth, which
> while no longer 100% effective, will be far more effective than you seem
> to think it will. (You had better engrave it before drinking the potion
> though, admittedly.)
And you have to perma-engrave it to be able to fight.
IMO, the perma-engraving might be a better suited feature for a change.
Janis
Janis Papanagnou
> On Jul 9, 7:56 am, Janis <janis_papanag...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> [ about a "reminder" message which gets annoying when overused ]
>
>>I've got similar feelings already with Nethack's "bulky armor"
>>message.
>
> FYI, that's been changed.
Thanks :-)
> It is now [or will be... :-]
When? [*]
Janis
[*] Okay, it was just a try ;-) You would likely have given me
an answer like "with the next version", anyway, I suppose.
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray wrote:
>> Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>>
>> Also, Gehennom is irrelevant to the discussion so far, which has been
>> entirely about it being too hard to reach the Castle wand as a
>> last-ditch source of MR.
>
> Right. The proposal to restrict the purple L's to Gehennom would make
> any restricted covetous teleport change obsolete, then? (We wanted to
> prevent instant touch of death incidents.)
Not necessarily. Plus, everyone seems to want me to make sure that
polymorph traps and gain level potions don't result in a purple L, and
_that_ I am not willing to do.
>> It was pointed out that arch-liches teleport to you immediately and can
>> cast 'touch of death', which seems a particularly nasty and 'unfair' way
>> to die in light of the changes to E. So, having arch-liches not
>> teleport to you in a single turn would certainly mitigate this problem,
>> and frankly, by the time the player typically encounters arch-liches, I
>> expect the player to have more resources available than just a means of
>> reliably engraving Elbereth.
>
> But wasn't all that just a problem WRT lacking MR, which is, as you
> pointed out above, not any more a point once you got to the castle and
> got your guaranteed wish to obtain MR.
You may have noticed the post in response to sjdevnull where I mentioned
that I don't like the silver bullet approach either. Making a
guaranteed way to obtain MR before meeting monsters that MR largely
neutralizes strikes me as very silver-bullety; not the way I intend to go.
As I've said elsewhere, it seems to me that one major problem is that
covetous monsters simply appear next to you before you know they're even
on the level. Slowing down the speed of arrival would certainly
improve things.
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray wrote:
>> Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>>
>>> Has a player *any* realistic
>>> chance to survive a liches' summon storm of mind flayers and minotaurs
>>
>> First: mind flayers and minotaurs are only two of the potential monsters
>> that might be summoned. Yes, it's "summon nasties", but even "summon
>> nasties" can be more nasty at times than at others.
>
> Sure they're not the only one, they are just two prominent examples to
> illustrate two potentially fatal attacks (in addition to the purple L's
> fatal attack).
Neither minotaurs nor mind flayers are instantly fatal in the same
manner a "touch of death" attack is. Using them to paint the situation
as more black and white than it actually is doesn't further the
discussion very much at all.
> I try to explain; usually I have not 300 HP's (just to name a number),
> rather 80 (or so) at times I reach the castle.
Then perhaps reaching the castle at 80hp is not the best idea anymore.
> below, to "kill everything around"; you simply wouldn't survive such
> an approach - well, you would maybe, but I wouldn't by that proposal -
How do you know? You haven't tried.
>> Second: no lich is guaranteed to summon, nor is it always a lich's first
>> attack. (Plus, a lich cannot summon and touch-of-death you at the same
>> time; which is it that he's going to do, anyway?)
>
> Sure, that's not in question. The point is that you need to, e.g., make
> yourself hallucinating to prevent the one fatal L attack,
I think you're exaggerating the "need" here just a bit. Some of this is
surely colored by the perspective of a player who's used to having
nearly the entire game under 100% prepared, predicted control, and is
now faced with a variant that has added a certain amount of
unpredictability.
> but are faced
> with the summoning storm which will most likely be also fatal
Which, as mentioned above, is non-guaranteed.
> doesn't matter in which order the spells happen; you *need* to protect
> yourself from the _fatal_ one, in the first place (and try to survive
> the other attack with hopelessly reduced chances).
Again, I think you exaggerate 'need' here slightly.
> I don't say that a skilled player might not survive a purple lich, a very
> skilled one might even survive one at the Castle level without MR; there
> may be one or even many, but I just don't see any feasable counteraction,
> yet.
Well, then perhaps you should apply the resources and ingenuity which I
believe the skilled Nethack players (including you) possess, and see
where we go from there, yes? I think that if there's really a problem,
it will rapidly show itself in test as we see a significant number of
players start dying to one particular thing or another.
>> Most skilled players have a LOT of resources and ingenuity available
>> for this sort of thing. One of those resources remains Elbereth, which
>> while no longer 100% effective, will be far more effective than you seem
>> to think it will. (You had better engrave it before drinking the potion
>> though, admittedly.)
>
> And you have to perma-engrave it to be able to fight.
Well, no, actually, you don't. You can levitate over dust, for one, and
fight all you like without disturbing it at all. Potions of levitation
are not uncommon, and there is a significant chance of getting boots of
levitation at Medusa's.
But then, I've said too much already. It is not my intent to reveal all
the potential solutions, as this really doesn't say very much about how
_players_ deal with my changes... just about how _i_ might deal with my
own changes. I'm obviously in a far better position to do so than
others, given that I made them and all, so I don't think my results
would be very representative of the actual difficulty involved in those
changes. Let's see what happens after a certain amount of play, shall we?
I've removed covetousness from master liches for now. That is, at this
point, the largest change I'm inclined to make until I see what happens
over the course of actual play.
Thomas Mayer
> As I've said elsewhere, it seems to me that one major problem is that
> covetous monsters simply appear next to you before you know they're even
> on the level. Slowing down the speed of arrival would certainly
> improve things.
I like your idea of slowing down covetous monsters, but I think that
approach should be limited to outside of Gehennom, because a) of the
Castle wand and b) it makes sense to restrict L's movements out of
Gehennom from a world perspective: They should have better movement in
Hell than outside of it.
Of course, once you get the Amulet, the whole dungeon should be treated
as Gehennom, both from a) gameplay perspective and b) world perspective:
The player is about to become one of the four horsemen of the
Apokalypse, so the END IS NIGH!
cu Thomas, who hasn't played sporkhack yet.
--
"Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police
are effective. They're a kind of job insurance."
(Leto II. in: Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune)
http://thomas.dergrossebruder.org/
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray wrote:
>> As I've said elsewhere, it seems to me that one major problem is that
>> covetous monsters simply appear next to you before you know they're even
>> on the level. Slowing down the speed of arrival would certainly
>> improve things.
>
> I like your idea of slowing down covetous monsters, but I think that
> approach should be limited to outside of Gehennom, because a) of the
> Castle wand and b) it makes sense to restrict L's movements out of
> Gehennom from a world perspective: They should have better movement in
> Hell than outside of it.
Not restricting their movements, however, still keeps us in the binary
MR/no-MR situation, where with no MR and a non-100% Elbereth, you have a
small chance of being hit by touch-of-death attacks. This is still
somewhat necessary for Rodney under the change I'm discussing, but in
general Rodney only becomes a factor in the Late Game -- and as you said
yourself, the whole dungeon is pretty much up in arms at that point.
(The problem could be simpler, for sure.)
David Damerell
>Not restricting their movements, however, still keeps us in the binary
>MR/no-MR situation, where with no MR and a non-100% Elbereth, you have a
>small chance of being hit by touch-of-death attacks.
Lose the binary resistances (pp Martin Read).
David Damerell
>David Damerell wrote:
>>I've only just seen this and have not had a proper look, but are you
>>intending to address the massive surplus of to-hit in the middle and late
>>game?
>That is still under consideration, yes. Part of the problem is trying
>to determine which particular source of to-hit is the big offender.
I have suggested the following in the past;
Cut back certain bonuses, in particular the luck and weapon enchantment
ones.
Another part of the problem is that monster ACs do not increase with
player power. In general give monsters an AC bonus equal to their hit
dice, fudging some early and middle game monster ACs so they don't become
tougher in the parts of the game where hitting is actually hard.
Give monsters with negative AC player-style damage reduction, _but_ with
the player's surplus to-hit negating damage reduction.
What's the motivation here? The vast to-hit bonuses don't have to be
trimmed completely - you don't have to manage the (in my view impossible)
task of ensuring the player's chance to hit late-game will fall into that
narrow range of 20 points. Eventually, the player will never miss anything
- but more to-hit is always worth accumulating.
This couples in with the twoweapon proposal; roll to-hit for both weapons,
attack only with the one that scores best; attack with both if the primary
weapon rolls a 20 [1] at Basic #2w skill, 18+ at Skilled, 17+ at Expert.
This makes twoweaponing useful for hitting more, not for doing cruel
brutal damage. Exercise the weapon skills as well as twoweaponing -
because the skill is now most valuable early on. Once you have a godlike
artifact, you don't want to two-weapon because tickling people with your
crysknife is distracting you from belting them with Grayswandir.
Conversely, a Samurai should use the two swords right out the gate. This
is good because they are movie samurai not real ones. Enormously reduce
the to-hit and damage penalties that apply now per-weapon; at Skilled
two-weapon, each single attack should be just as good as a one-handed
attack.
All artifact weapons get a flat +1d4 damage when they don't get any other
bonus. Bingo, no more junk artifacts.
Shields; add a "shield" skill practiced by being hit with a shield worn.
At unskilled shield, all shields are AC 1; at skilled, the value is
doubled; at expert, tripled. Add a 3 AC "tower shield" with no special
properties.
Two-handed weapons increase skill and strength bonuses to damage by 50% at
Basic skill and 100% at Skilled or Expert. Why? Makes them worthwhile.
Cap player hitpoints at some rough multiple of experience level.
Late-game monsters that just hit should hit hard, like minotaurs.
Recognise the way that player damage reduction makes one big attack better
than several small ones.
This gives a situation where two-weaponing is great for hitting, and is a
great boon to someone who can't get a decent artifact but can double what
they do get with a crysknife or similar - and unlike the current
situation, the incentive to use it is much higher if you can get a decent
skill. For an Expert, the damage output is still quite respectable.
Shields create a very powerful defensive option for people with the skill,
at the cost of spellcasting ease - and any special shield ability if a
tower shield is in use. This becomes more valuable with capped hitpoints
and hard-hitting monsters.
Two-handed weapons do cruel brutal damage - not as much as #twoweapon does
now, but still pretty hefty. This is not unbalanced given the lack of a
shield's defense boost and the cursed two-hander problem, and it restores
the Tsurugi to its rightful place as the best weapon in the game (c'mon,
it's a two-hander that Rodney can steal and cut you in half with).
This proposal tends to mean that your available skills will inform whether
you use twoweapon, a shield, or a twohander - at the moment from a pure
efficiency POV anyone who can twoweapon should.
I am open to suggestions for a bonus for characters (presumably
spellcasters) who fight with one open hand.
[1] IIRC NetHack TH rolls might be backwards, but never mind.
I missed that out of my grand unified proposal; cap the weight of the
offhand weapon based on skill (so an expert Samurai can just manage two
katana) and the onhand weapon full stop (so you can't twoweapon with a
lance or polearm).
And throw away 9/10 of the polearms. Sheesh.
David Damerell
>I've alluded to this in some other postings, but now seems a good time
>as any to go ahead and publish this since the June tournament's over and
>ideally we'll see a bit more mindshare available to explore among people
>who are interested in such things.
Another thought; cut down the supply of wishes.
Pasi Kallinen
[modified to-hit and other weapon suggestions]
>
> Cap player hitpoints at some rough multiple of experience level.
>
Also Pw, and both modified by player race and (slightly) by class.
And it should probably be a soft cap, so that you don't suddenly
arrive at the limit, instead HP and Pw gains would give diminishing
results.
--
Pasi Kallinen
pa...@alt.org
http://bilious.homelinux.org/ -- NetHack Patch Database
David Damerell
>David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>[modified to-hit and other weapon suggestions]
>>Cap player hitpoints at some rough multiple of experience level.
>Also Pw, and both modified by player race and (slightly) by class.
And "level plus n" - 20hp at XL 1 is not remarkable, but 600 at XL 30
would be.
David Damerell
>There is a server available for play at telnet://nethack.nineball.org;
>the very rough changelog and description can be seen at
>http://nethack.nineball.org.
It says:
Gehennom fill levels switched over to "mines" style maze as opposed to
"boring" style maze, and made no-teleport and dark; opinions requested
since this could be a major change
May I suggest, instead / as well, mazes with 2-wide corridors? I believe a
patch exists; such a maze takes less time to explore but strongly rewards
light sources.
Pasi Kallinen
>
> It says:
> Gehennom fill levels switched over to "mines" style maze as opposed to
> "boring" style maze, and made no-teleport and dark; opinions requested
> since this could be a major change
>
> May I suggest, instead / as well, mazes with 2-wide corridors? I believe a
> patch exists; such a maze takes less time to explore but strongly rewards
> light sources.
I don't recall seeing such a patch.
Martin Read
>it restores
>the Tsurugi to its rightful place as the best weapon in the game (c'mon,
>it's a two-hander that Rodney can steal and cut you in half with).
Praise DevTeam, Rodney has no AT_WEAP attack; only a quest nemesis
can AD_SAMU the Tsurugi and use it against you :)
--
\_\/_/ you take a mortal man and put him in control
\ / and watch him become a god watch people's heads roll
\/ --- Megadeth, "Symphony of Destruction"
tg
> David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
<snip>
> > May I suggest, instead / as well, mazes with 2-wide corridors? I believe a
> > patch exists; such a maze takes less time to explore but strongly rewards
> > light sources.
>
> I don't recall seeing such a patch.
>
> --
> Pasi Kallinen
I remember seeing a few YANI's with this topic, but never a patch for
it. See:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/msg/103dbaedd993a9ca
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/msg/e03e586be195e3e2
It sounds like a decent idea in theory at least.
Jym
Which is not a problem in Hell (or with the Amulet) because typically at
this time you should have seen the Castle wand and get MR...
(and players who don't want MR can only complain to themselves if their
game is hard).
I like also this "slow teleport" idea. Indeed if you sudently met a purple
L you can teleport it or you away (even with the marginal risk of
polytrap, you should be able to find and identify a wand or scroll of
teleport before DL8...) and this will buy you some time to either dig your
way down (polytrap in the main dugeon) or escape the Castle and come back
when some solution is found (eg, perma-E on the stairs plus some kind of
hallucination or boulder fort and lots of missile/ray, ...)
--
Hypocoristiquement,
Jym.
Jym
<Janis_Pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Jym wrote:
>> So, basically, the way to pass the Castle in Sporkhack might be to
>> keep a few potions of hallucination in case of purple L.
>
> No. You can't tell apart the non-E-respecting minotaur from the other
> summonned nasties while hallucinating. You will have to trade one set
> of likely deaths by another set which is similarly fatal.
But if this happen in the Castle (which seems to be the main problem,
everyone agrees that an arch-lich at DL8 is bad news anyway), then you
should be in the maze at this time (going down + L teleports) and that
means only a couple ennemies to fight at a time. Yes, it's still harder
than perma-E and kill the L but I guess it's not completely hopeless.
> WRT the 10% proposal, which is apparently better than the 25%, that's
> introducing a russian roulette factor with 10 bullet chambers instead
> of just 4.
I said 10% at random, I just had no idea of what the chances that Elbereth
doesn't work are.
--
Hypocoristiquement,
Jym.
Derek Ray
> Quoting Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com>:
>> David Damerell wrote:
>>> I've only just seen this and have not had a proper look, but are you
>>> intending to address the massive surplus of to-hit in the middle and late
>>> game?
>> That is still under consideration, yes. Part of the problem is trying
>> to determine which particular source of to-hit is the big offender.
>
> I have suggested the following in the past;
>
> Cut back certain bonuses, in particular the luck and weapon enchantment
Already mentioned (luck, at least). Weapon enchantment is an odd one
since it's intuitive for +7 to be both +7hit/+7dam. Angband split the
two, but I don't think that was an improvement. I'm sure there were
other solutions approached, but it'll take more thought.
> Another part of the problem is that monster ACs do not increase with
> player power. In general give monsters an AC bonus equal to their hit
> dice, fudging some early and middle game monster ACs so they don't become
> tougher in the parts of the game where hitting is actually hard.
Already on the list. Badass monsters should match the player, and the
number of things that can show up in Hell with AC > 0 is silly; no
wonder they're considered popcorn, yes?
> All artifact weapons get a flat +1d4 damage when they don't get any other
> bonus. Bingo, no more junk artifacts.
Already addressed in the artifact fixes. (Though I realize this is a
repaste of an old post. :)
> Shields; add a "shield" skill practiced by being hit with a shield worn.
> At unskilled shield, all shields are AC 1; at skilled, the value is
> doubled; at expert, tripled. Add a 3 AC "tower shield" with no special
> properties.
I think the "Dwarvish roundshield" may already be AC3 base.
Beyond that, I'm looking into making more shields with properties (like
reflection); this should tempt people into forswearing the
#twoweapon-at-all-cost mentality to some degree.
> Two-handed weapons increase skill and strength bonuses to damage by 50% at
> Basic skill and 100% at Skilled or Expert. Why? Makes them worthwhile.
Already on the list, along with "remove the hideous penalty for cursed
two-handedness". There should be an easier way to get that fixed,
really, since it's obvious that using non-artifact two-handers right now
just scares the hell out of people (for relatively good reason!)
> Cap player hitpoints at some rough multiple of experience level.
Problem: Big-ass player hitpoints are a symptom of another problem,
usually. Also, big hitpoints aren't one of the primary tools behind
ascension, since a lot of the serial ascenders are doing it with well
under 200hp each time.
> Late-game monsters that just hit should hit hard, like minotaurs.
> Recognise the way that player damage reduction makes one big attack better
> than several small ones.
Yep.
> I am open to suggestions for a bonus for characters (presumably
> spellcasters) who fight with one open hand.
Not so sure the bonus is needed, as it's sort of pre-defined: You get
no penalty to spellcasting. (#twoweaponers should probably get a small
spellcasting penalty as well, though significantly less than a shield.)
> I missed that out of my grand unified proposal; cap the weight of the
> offhand weapon based on skill (so an expert Samurai can just manage two
> katana) and the onhand weapon full stop (so you can't twoweapon with a
> lance or polearm).
Right. Obviously, already in. :) I've seen people frantically
searching for worm teeth and enchant weapon scrolls already on the
server, so that's already one positive sign for the change; I don't know
any non-Healer who's bothered to make a crysknife in quite some time.
Derek Ray
> Quoting Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com>:
>> I've alluded to this in some other postings, but now seems a good time
>> as any to go ahead and publish this since the June tournament's over and
>> ideally we'll see a bit more mindshare available to explore among people
>> who are interested in such things.
>
> Another thought; cut down the supply of wishes.
If I can successfully balance the game such that there is a wide variety
of choices, rather than just SDSM + CoMR + #twoweapon + AoLS +
gloves/hat/boots of your choice... then the supply of wishes becomes a
little bit less critical, as each wish then turns into a decision that
may or may not be useful in the long run. *shrug* We'll see what
shakes out over the next month or so as people play.
Henry J Cobb
> David Damerell wrote:
> Beyond that, I'm looking into making more shields with properties (like
> reflection); this should tempt people into forswearing the
> #twoweapon-at-all-cost mentality to some degree.
Plenty of artifact shields with neat powers in the myths.
The big problem is that shields hammer spellcasting so very very hard,
and spellcasting is so very broken.
>>I am open to suggestions for a bonus for characters (presumably
>>spellcasters) who fight with one open hand.
>
> Not so sure the bonus is needed, as it's sort of pre-defined: You get
> no penalty to spellcasting. (#twoweaponers should probably get a small
> spellcasting penalty as well, though significantly less than a shield.)
How are you aiming all of those wands with no free hands? There ought
to be an off-hand tool/wand use function that is only slightly hampered
by a shield but offlimits when twoweaponing.
Also make sure that even a Dex 20 Rogue takes at least one action to
slip in and out of twoweapon.
> Right. Obviously, already in. :) I've seen people frantically
> searching for worm teeth and enchant weapon scrolls already on the
> server, so that's already one positive sign for the change; I don't know
> any non-Healer who's bothered to make a crysknife in quite some time.
For me it's the silver saber, because I don't have to have ANY skill
points in the offhand weapon. If silver daggers actually existed I
might be tempted to use one of those instead.
-HJC
Martin Read
>If silver daggers actually existed I
>might be tempted to use one of those instead.
They do. I've seen one :)
paul...@yahoo.com
> generatable in hell; this solves the problem of purple L at the >castle
Wouldn't a more logical solution just be to disable mob teleport on No
Teleport Levels? It never made much sense to me that mobs could
teleport me to them but I can't teleport. If teleport is disabled on
a level, it should be for the mobs too.
sjde...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> Quoting Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com>:
>
> >Not restricting their movements, however, still keeps us in the binary
> >MR/no-MR situation, where with no MR and a non-100% Elbereth, you have a
> >small chance of being hit by touch-of-death attacks.
>
> Lose the binary resistances (pp Martin Read).
It seems to be going that way, and I fear that'll skew it away from
being a game of skill where almost every game is winnable to a random
pot-luck, and barring that will require copious inventory management
and tedium to deal with the same problems over and over again. Silver
bullets and binary resistances are a very good thing to the extent
that they prevent pointless repetition and inventory management (e.g.
if the character really has to worry about inventory damage from fire
traps, winter wolf cubs, etc that's a bit over the top). They're bad
when they make new and interesting challenges unchallenging (e.g.
Asmodeus + cold resistance).
I guess making characters tote around countless carrots, worry about
absolutely bagging up everything, etc seems to be a big decrease in
the fun factor for me. Nerfing unihorns really would fall into this
category. At the same time, big nasty enemies should stay big and
nasty. Make Vlad ignore MC (effectively done through his ownership of
Lifestealer in sporkhack, barring someone getting it as a sac gift
ahead of time). Make arch-liches and other rare, nasty beasts more
dangerous.
There's no bright line, but I fear the idea of just eliminating binary
resistances wholesale.
That said, some of the proposals to be less binary are pretty
interesting, especially where they affect uncommon supposed-to-be-
deadly monsters--e.g. making "destroy armor" work independently of MR,
but simply remove "fixed" or do 1-3 levels of corrosion/rust/fire
damage to unfixed items, destroying them if they go below "thoroughly
corroded" (and presumably allowing otherwise un-damageable items like
DSM to be "thoroughly damaged" or whatever).
I think the majority of changes are welcome (though I'd cut out detect
foot except on 1 Apr) and it's been a fun change so far, so I'm not
particularly railing against anything but rather urging caution.
Martin Read
Normal monster teleportation is prohibited on no-teleport level.
Teleportation by covetous monsters is a very special case.
(Mobs are what happen when a master lich casts his summoning spell or
demagogues get up on their soapboxes.)
Henry J Cobb
> Normal monster teleportation is prohibited on no-teleport level.
> Teleportation by covetous monsters is a very special case.
I have no problem with restricting this too, if wands of teleport don't
work on those levels either.
-HJC
David Damerell
>David Damerell wrote:
>>Cut back certain bonuses, in particular the luck and weapon enchantment
>Already mentioned (luck, at least). Weapon enchantment is an odd one
>since it's intuitive for +7 to be both +7hit/+7dam.
It may be intuitive, but if you aren't source diving you'll never tell if
a "+7" weapon is really only getting +4 to hit. The to-hit roll could
equally be on a d40...
>Angband split the two, but I don't think that was an improvement.
Goodness me, no.
>>Shields; add a "shield" skill practiced by being hit with a shield worn.
>>At unskilled shield, all shields are AC 1; at skilled, the value is
>>doubled; at expert, tripled. Add a 3 AC "tower shield" with no special
>>properties.
>I think the "Dwarvish roundshield" may already be AC3 base.
Not in vanilla, but it's a possibility.
>>Two-handed weapons increase skill and strength bonuses to damage by 50% at
>>Basic skill and 100% at Skilled or Expert. Why? Makes them worthwhile.
>Already on the list, along with "remove the hideous penalty for cursed
>two-handedness".
Well, now, I think part of the answer there is to make it possible to get
the offhand twoweapon weapon cursed (which may create a state where you
are single-wielding a weapon in your off hand) and implement a like
penalty for "both weapons cursed" and "weapon and shield cursed".
Maybe you _can_ use bags when you've got both hands stuck but it takes
forever, so it's not practical in a fight.
>>Cap player hitpoints at some rough multiple of experience level.
>Problem: Big-ass player hitpoints are a symptom of another problem,
>usually. Also, big hitpoints aren't one of the primary tools behind
>ascension, since a lot of the serial ascenders are doing it with well
>under 200hp each time.
But, for all that, there's no way to make HP damage meaningful if there
are unlimited supplies of HP available. A lot of the serial ascenders
aren't using the massive-HP techniques because they're in a hurry and the
massive-AC techniques work just as well - but peel away massive-AC and
you'll still find massive-HP waiting to step into the gap.
Also; change level XP requirements so you might actually pick up a level
past 14th by killing stuff (Slash'em does this); cap the effect of PoGL,
wraith corpses, (level drain?) so it's not worth a complete level at very
high XL.
What do you think of "twoweapon for hitting early on"? That's a more
radical change.
More cans of worms from IRC;
Reducing the effect of machine-gun daggers at +7 (you will remember the
discussion).
Disconnect movement and action speed. Fixes the air elemental oddities,
the various super-slow no-threat monsters, etc. Especially with...
... attacks of opportunity against hit/retreating players. Specifically, I
would keep these weak, so players who are just retreating aren't punished;
I would allow an attack of opportunity only when the player is moving away
from a monster that the player has taken an action next to, but that
monster took no actions, and give it a chance of happening based on what
proportion of a move's energy the monster has.
Noise is just completely mad.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
Today is Leicesterday, Presuary.
David Damerell
>If I can successfully balance the game such that there is a wide variety
>of choices, rather than just SDSM + CoMR + #twoweapon + AoLS +
>gloves/hat/boots of your choice... then the supply of wishes becomes a
>little bit less critical, as each wish then turns into a decision that
>may or may not be useful in the long run.
But it's the short run that matters; most characters die early, and even
with the challenge stiffened in the midgame, most characters will still
die early. Right now an early WoW is like a ticket to the Castle. If an
early WoW had 1-3 wishes you'd still be delighted to find one - if an
early WoW had _one wish_ you'd be delighted to find it.
The usual proposal is 1-3 wishes, unrechargeable, Castle wand has 3. I
propose that. :-)
sjde...@yahoo.com
[SNIP a bunch of good ideas]
> Disconnect movement and action speed. Fixes the air elemental oddities,
> the various super-slow no-threat monsters, etc. Especially with...
>
> ... attacks of opportunity against hit/retreating players. Specifically, I
> would keep these weak, so players who are just retreating aren't punished;
> I would allow an attack of opportunity only when the player is moving away
> from a monster that the player has taken an action next to, but that
> monster took no actions, and give it a chance of happening based on what
> proportion of a move's energy the monster has.
This massively changes what I consider to be an intentional (on the
Dev team's part) and interesting (as in, stop playing everything as
Valk Smash and be aware of your terrain, consider the tradeoffs of
leaving doors open vs. kicking them down, etc) strategy--the hit and
run. It could potentially make early archs very difficult and would
certainly change them dramatically. In Vanilla this is the sort of
change that makes the early game harder without affecting the late
game much at all, which is exactly the opposite of what I'd want to
fix.
If it's implemented, do you allow attacks of opportunity vs. players
jumping away? Teleporting?
David Damerell
>David Damerell wrote:
>>... attacks of opportunity against hit/retreating players.
>Dev team's part) and interesting (as in, stop playing everything as
>Valk Smash and be aware of your terrain, consider the tradeoffs of
>leaving doors open vs. kicking them down, etc) strategy--the hit and
>run.
The trouble is, the hit and run - let the monster come to me, definitely
get an attack, take a small chance of counterattack - is all very well,
but the hit and run - let the monster come to me, never suffer a
counterattack - is a bit Silly and exposes the details of the speed system
very nastily.
>It could potentially make early archs very difficult
Well, you can still use ranged attacks with impunity.
>certainly change them dramatically. In Vanilla this is the sort of
>change that makes the early game harder without affecting the late
>game much at all, which is exactly the opposite of what I'd want to
>fix.
Hm. That's certainly a good point, although (as mentioned above) I hope
the chance based on remaining energy would not come up all that often.
Although then you have to ask what good it does.
>If it's implemented, do you allow attacks of opportunity vs. players
>jumping away? Teleporting?
Jumping yes, teleport no, I would say.
Janis Papanagnou
> Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>>Derek Ray wrote:
>>>Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>>>
>>>>Has a player *any* realistic
>>>>chance to survive a liches' summon storm of mind flayers and minotaurs
>>>
>>>First: mind flayers and minotaurs are only two of the potential monsters
>>>that might be summoned. Yes, it's "summon nasties", but even "summon
>>>nasties" can be more nasty at times than at others.
>>
>>Sure they're not the only one, they are just two prominent examples to
>>illustrate two potentially fatal attacks (in addition to the purple L's
>>fatal attack).
>
> Neither minotaurs nor mind flayers are instantly fatal in the same
> manner a "touch of death" attack is. Using them to paint the situation
> as more black and white than it actually is doesn't further the
> discussion very much at all.
It *might* be your glasses that give you the illusion of a black/white
picture. :-) So to further the discussion we should be more attentive.
(And both hopefully conclude arguments on the plain rhetorical level).
No, they're indeed not instant deaths; I haven't said so. What I said
was "potentially fatal". The scenery you proposed was "kill everything
around", and that approach needs more time than any instant death.
>>I try to explain; usually I have not 300 HP's (just to name a number),
>>rather 80 (or so) at times I reach the castle.
>
> Then perhaps reaching the castle at 80hp is not the best idea anymore.
Apparently. You'd need to stay longer in the upper levels to obtain a
much larger buffer, HP's and AC. Do you think that it's worth the change
for that price? I don't, but YMMV.
>>below, to "kill everything around"; you simply wouldn't survive such
>>an approach - well, you would maybe, but I wouldn't by that proposal -
>
> How do you know? You haven't tried.
I *have* tried to kill every nasty around while _not_ hallucinating. And
I also have tried to kill a horde of non-nasties _while_ hallucinating.
I've added 2 and 2; and you might admit that the experience is sufficient
to extrapolate (not interpolate, the effects add!).
>>>Second: no lich is guaranteed to summon, nor is it always a lich's first
>>>attack. (Plus, a lich cannot summon and touch-of-death you at the same
>>>time; which is it that he's going to do, anyway?)
>>
>>Sure, that's not in question. The point is that you need to, e.g., make
>>yourself hallucinating to prevent the one fatal L attack,
>
> I think you're exaggerating the "need" here just a bit. Some of this is
> surely colored by the perspective of a player who's used to having
> nearly the entire game under 100% prepared, predicted control, and is
> now faced with a variant that has added a certain amount of
> unpredictability.
I may be misremembering, but wasn't it you who said in another thread
that... - wait a moment...
"a random broken thing that only happens 1 in 1000 times
is still broken"
I've very much agreed with that.
>>but are faced
>>with the summoning storm which will most likely be also fatal
>
> Which, as mentioned above, is non-guaranteed.
>
>>doesn't matter in which order the spells happen; you *need* to protect
>>yourself from the _fatal_ one, in the first place (and try to survive
>>the other attack with hopelessly reduced chances).
>
> Again, I think you exaggerate 'need' here slightly.
Well, we disagree, then.
> [...] Let's see what happens after a certain amount of play, shall we?
Sure. :-)
Janis
Rast
Pasi Kallinen (pa...@alt.org) wrote:
> David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> > Cap player hitpoints at some rough multiple of experience level.
> >
> And it should probably be a soft cap, so that you don't suddenly
> arrive at the limit, instead HP and Pw gains would give diminishing
> results.
This is already implemented for nurse dancing. It need only be
extended to all other sources of MaxHP gain.
--
"Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness. Then I
am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a precious
commodity is so much misery." -- Jack Vance
Derek Ray
> It seems to be going that way, and I fear that'll skew it away from
> being a game of skill where almost every game is winnable to a random
> pot-luck, and barring that will require copious inventory management
> and tedium to deal with the same problems over and over again.
THAT is an explicit design decision on my part to not allow... and it
was made back in late April when I originally decided to go down the
"full fork" idea instead of random patches. I have little interest in
turning the game into a crapshoot, and if I find that any of my changes
have done so excessively, I'll draw them back a little bit.
> Nerfing unihorns really would fall into this category.
Well, if it's done _wrong_.
> At the same time, big nasty enemies should stay big and
> nasty. Make Vlad ignore MC (effectively done through his ownership of
> Lifestealer in sporkhack, barring someone getting it as a sac gift
> ahead of time). Make arch-liches and other rare, nasty beasts more
> dangerous.
The next update will have Lifestealer be NOGEN -- while I don't mind the
idea of someone wishing it out of Vlad's hands (clever++ and
resource++), it turns out that there just aren't enough chaotic weapons
to make it rare enough from sacrificing.
> There's no bright line, but I fear the idea of just eliminating binary
> resistances wholesale.
Simply doing that without making other changes would be silly. However,
if you check the page you can see what's coming in the queue, and it is
likely to shake things up to some degree... just not to a "too bad"
degree, hopefully.
Derek Ray
> Derek Ray wrote:
>> David Damerell wrote:
>> Beyond that, I'm looking into making more shields with properties (like
>> reflection); this should tempt people into forswearing the
>> #twoweapon-at-all-cost mentality to some degree.
>
> Plenty of artifact shields with neat powers in the myths.
I don't know that we necessarily need more _artifact_ shields as much as
we need shields to not be significantly worthless compared to #twoweapon
and two-handed swords. Which, right now, they are -- because -20AC is
more than enough to ascend, and you can hit that trivially without even
involving a shield. Let's not even go into T-shirts.
> The big problem is that shields hammer spellcasting so very very hard,
> and spellcasting is so very broken.
Not for long. Spellcasting should come at more of a price. Right now,
wizards can wear just as much armor as any other basher class and get
exactly 0% penalty to their spellcasting -- because basher classes use
#twoweapon and not a shield.
This is obviously a major balance problem. I am considering several
fixes for it right now, and I have already implemented a couple fixes
for the obviously broken spells (Charm Monster swapping places with
Create Familiar, for example, should slow things down a bit on _that_
front.)
>> Not so sure the bonus is needed, as it's sort of pre-defined: You get
>> no penalty to spellcasting. (#twoweaponers should probably get a small
>> spellcasting penalty as well, though significantly less than a shield.)
>
> How are you aiming all of those wands with no free hands?
NHINRL.
> There ought
> to be an off-hand tool/wand use function that is only slightly hampered
> by a shield but offlimits when twoweaponing.
Renders #twoweapon nearly worthless if the emergency tools aren't there.
This is currently the problem with two-handed swords; if it gets
cursed, suddenly you can do _almost nothing_. That is not a direction
I'm going to take in an effort to make shields usable.
> Also make sure that even a Dex 20 Rogue takes at least one action to
> slip in and out of twoweapon.
With regards to backstabbing, I'd suggest that #twoweapon isn't the
problem, and perhaps something else is.
>> Right. Obviously, already in. :) I've seen people frantically
>> searching for worm teeth and enchant weapon scrolls already on the
>> server, so that's already one positive sign for the change; I don't know
>> any non-Healer who's bothered to make a crysknife in quite some time.
>
> For me it's the silver saber, because I don't have to have ANY skill
> points in the offhand weapon. If silver daggers actually existed I
> might be tempted to use one of those instead.
Silver daggers exist in vanilla. Other silver weapons now exist in
spork as well.
Derek Ray
> Quoting Derek Ray <moot@just_a_spamtrap_anyway.com>:
>> David Damerell wrote:
>>> Cut back certain bonuses, in particular the luck and weapon enchantment
>> Already mentioned (luck, at least). Weapon enchantment is an odd one
>> since it's intuitive for +7 to be both +7hit/+7dam.
>
> It may be intuitive, but if you aren't source diving you'll never tell if
> a "+7" weapon is really only getting +4 to hit. The to-hit roll could
> equally be on a d40...
Sure, but the spoilers are written from source diving, and thus I cannot
assume that a player is actually ignorant of how the exact mechanics work.
>>> Two-handed weapons increase skill and strength bonuses to damage by 50% at
>>> Basic skill and 100% at Skilled or Expert. Why? Makes them worthwhile.
>> Already on the list, along with "remove the hideous penalty for cursed
>> two-handedness".
>
> Well, now, I think part of the answer there is to make it possible to get
> the offhand twoweapon weapon cursed (which may create a state where you
> are single-wielding a weapon in your off hand) and implement a like
> penalty for "both weapons cursed" and "weapon and shield cursed".
>
> Maybe you _can_ use bags when you've got both hands stuck but it takes
> forever, so it's not practical in a fight.
That's at least one direction I'm considering right now, because the
whole "ha, ha, you're skrood" penalty for two-handed weaponry is Just
Wrong(tm) -- and leads to what we see now, where only people who are
sufficiently experienced/knowledgeable to know the exact probabilities
of a two-handed artifact becoming cursed are willing to use two-handed
weaponry... and then only the Tsurugi and Staff.
> But, for all that, there's no way to make HP damage meaningful if there
> are unlimited supplies of HP available. A lot of the serial ascenders
> aren't using the massive-HP techniques because they're in a hurry and the
> massive-AC techniques work just as well - but peel away massive-AC and
> you'll still find massive-HP waiting to step into the gap.
A lot of the serial ascenders are doing it with -15AC and 175HP. I
don't think of -15 as being "massive AC", so what I take from this is
that there's something else fundamentally wrong.
Some of the changes I just did over the past couple days address this;
one big problem is that late-game monsters (Angels on Astral) do Not Hit
Hard Enough, and so you simply ignore them as you walk past. Fixing
that makes both HP damage _and_ AC meaningful again.
> Also; change level XP requirements so you might actually pick up a level
> past 14th by killing stuff (Slash'em does this); cap the effect of PoGL,
> wraith corpses, (level drain?) so it's not worth a complete level at very
> high XL.
There's been some discussion about that on #sporkhack, but simply
converting wraiths and gain-level potions to XP doesn't seem to appeal
all that much. I haven't dug into it very far, so I'll come back to it;
right now there are some other things I'm focusing on.
> Reducing the effect of machine-gun daggers at +7 (you will remember the
> discussion).
Yep. Still pondering that one.
> Disconnect movement and action speed. Fixes the air elemental oddities,
> the various super-slow no-threat monsters, etc. Especially with...
This one can be a _real_ bear. I'll come back to it.
> Noise is just completely mad.
Long ago noted. :) Kicking the air is louder than a sonic boom...
Derek Ray
> But it's the short run that matters; most characters die early, and even
> with the challenge stiffened in the midgame, most characters will still
> die early. Right now an early WoW is like a ticket to the Castle. If an
> early WoW had 1-3 wishes you'd still be delighted to find one - if an
> early WoW had _one wish_ you'd be delighted to find it.
An early WoW, however, is one of those things that keeps people coming
back... the temptation of "I might find a wand this time!!!111"
Much like the roulette player's mentality, though that is probably more
applicable to fountain wishing.
> The usual proposal is 1-3 wishes, unrechargeable, Castle wand has 3. I
> propose that. :-)
I'm trying an alternate route first -- give the character so many wish
targets that it becomes nearly impossible to decide, and guarantee that
no character can "have it all". :)
Rast
Jukka Lahtinen (jtfj...@hotmail.com.invalid) wrote:
> Rast <ra...@hotmail.com> writes:
> > Pasi Kallinen (pa...@alt.org) wrote:
> > > David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > > > Cap player hitpoints at some rough multiple of experience level.
> > > And it should probably be a soft cap, so that you don't suddenly
> > > arrive at the limit, instead HP and Pw gains would give diminishing
>
> > extended to all other sources of MaxHP gain.
>
> relative to your explevel.
There are diminishing returns such that is essentially impossible to
reach the hard cap of (IIRC) 25*XL. The formula is non-linear (bell
curve distribution IIRC), but at 50% of the cap, nurse hits are only
effective half as often.
Janis Papanagnou
>
> ..and that's probably why I have never reached the hard cap.
A dwarven hard cap? You'll find one in the mines.
Janis :-)
Rast
> (Mobs are what happen when a master lich casts his summoning spell or
> demagogues get up on their soapboxes.)
The term also refers to NPCs in MUDs.
Martin Read
>On 12 Jul 2007 01:18:31 +0100 (BST),
>Martin Read (mpr...@chiark.greenend.org.uk) wrote:
>> (Mobs are what happen when a master lich casts his summoning spell or
>> demagogues get up on their soapboxes.)
>
>The term also refers to NPCs in MUDs.
Yes. Ghastly usage.
Henry J Cobb
The magical eye should use mostly passive attacks with the active
attacks being used not every single turn.
Even monster spellcasters don't cast spells every single turn.
-HJC
syull...@gmail.com
If they did, they might live longer. Perhaps this is a move towards
smarter monsters?
Derek Ray
> The new monsters seem poorly thought out.
>
> The magical eye should use mostly passive attacks with the active
> attacks being used not every single turn.
That wouldn't be very dangerous to players, now would it?
> Even monster spellcasters don't cast spells every single turn.
Have you died to an eye yet? They're very slow; speed 6, in fact.
I freely admit that I'm experimenting with both the eyes and locusts,
but what you've described so far is "working as designed". The magical
eye/beholder is _supposed_ to be nasty; it's purple. That means it is
going to zap the hell out of you if it can see you, not just sit there
and wait for you to hit it. There are ways to handle it.
The restriction on casting spells every turn was intentionally removed
for some of the magical eye's gaze attacks for the same reason;
spellcasters that cast one spell and melee you for d4 for the next 3
turns while they're "recharging" turn into popcorn monsters, to be
completely ignored.
If the eye ends up being too tough for most players at the depth it's
generated, then I'll certainly hear about it; I've heard enough about
locusts by now, for example, that I'm fairly aware that they're a hair
too tough. That's OK, they're supposed to be nasty (and give some real
teeth to the "summon insects" spell, where right now it just clogs
things up and protects the player) -- but obviously they also still need
some more tweaking so that in the main dungeon they're not too much to
handle.
For now, I'm going to wait and see how it plays out... literally. The
best data I can use at this point is people playing and encountering
things, and the more people who run into stuff, the better. Everyone
plays differently.
--
Derek
Changelog: http://nethack.nineball.org
Beta Server: telnet://sporkhack.nineball.org
IRC: irc.freenode.net, #sporkhack
sjde...@yahoo.com
> Henry J Cobb wrote:
> > The new monsters seem poorly thought out.
> >
> > The magical eye should use mostly passive attacks with the active
> > attacks being used not every single turn.
>
> That wouldn't be very dangerous to players, now would it?
>
> > Even monster spellcasters don't cast spells every single turn.
>
> Have you died to an eye yet? They're very slow; speed 6, in fact.
>
> I freely admit that I'm experimenting with both the eyes and locusts,
> but what you've described so far is "working as designed". The magical
> eye/beholder is _supposed_ to be nasty; it's purple. That means it is
> going to zap the hell out of you if it can see you, not just sit there
> and wait for you to hit it. There are ways to handle it.
I've not had any problems just walking up and smashing them to death.
But if you're really paranoid, they are an "eye". A blindfold/towel
is a perfectly fine defense for the paranoid.