[Announce] FrogComposband 7.1.salmiak released
 

Get your copy of FrogComposband 7.1.salmiak here, with the source code, precompiled Windows full game (without the source code) and precompiled Windows executable. (Windows users who download the .exe should also download the source code, but not the full game, which would be superfluous. Windows users who download the full game won't need to download any other files.)

As usual, savefiles are unidirectionally compatible; you can safely use old savefiles in 7.1.salmiak, but you can't use 7.1.salmiak savefiles in older versions.

Many thanks to all players and feedback providers, keep it up! I do hope to have a changelog one day that doesn't have page after page of "fixed such and such bug", but please don't ever stop reporting them :)

Good luck everybody, have fun, and don't die!

The way to achieve this is to make your changelog a summary of changes :D

The next changelog will just say "various minor tweaks and code improvements" :)

What do you mean by "Changed the power of confusion effects, they should now at least resemble the claimed powers?" Did some of the confusion spells not use the displayed power?

Thanks for the new release @Sideways, looking forward to all the changes!

Yes, confusion effects frequently had misleading powers. I mentioned this in our earlier discussion :)

So no option to back to the 87% to 117% systenn?

87-117% meant something intuitively. 0-76 Means NOTHING to those who don't know the code. Like me.

Id much rather have a life rating % because its more intuitive. I don't care if I'm seeing +/- 0.5% of what the true value is.

which is why old players like my are switching it back in options.

displayed by default

it can be changed in the options menu

Edit: Also hurrray for lilac! Graphics of the future. Good work as always.

That the 87-117% scale seems more intuitive is the other reason (besides accuracy) why I made it not be the default, because this is an area where people's intuition tends to lead them completely astray. Every other time I see new players intuitively get the wrong idea or hear established players repeat popular misconceptions, it's something related to life ratings.

Some of the common myths about life ratings I keep hearing again and again include:
- A life rating multiplies the player's HP. [It doesn't multiply anything, though in the special case of a CL 50 player it is reasonable to think of it as multiplying 245 HP, a fraction of the total.]
- Life ratings are affected by the player's race, class and personality, and/or the race/class/personality HP multipliers shown at character creation are connected to life ratings in some other way. [Nope; the multipliers and the life rating are unrelated and don't even operate on similar scales.]
- Items with +Life or -Life on them have at least something to do with life ratings. [Nope; they affect an unrelated CON-based HP multiplier and operate on different scales.]
- The average life rating on the percentage scale is 100%, or it's 102% because that's half-way between 87 and 117. [It's higher than 102%, and would be very close to 103% without rounding effects (such as 117.9% being displayed as 117%) dragging it down.]
- There are 31 possible life ratings, all of them equally likely. [Only in Oposband. Frog/Pos/Compos technically have more than 700 possible life ratings, 77 of which are functionally distinct, and not all are equally likely.]
- Life ratings and life points are somehow connected, and/or life point drain drains the life rating, and/or life ratings can be drained in some other way, and/or life points are sometimes called a life rating. [Nope.]

Not all of these misconceptions are entirely the fault of the percentage scale; the average being off-center is mystifying on any scale, and some of the others also have to do with awkward terminology (which I have tried to improve); but the percentage scale is the leading culprit. The option to switch back to it is there so old players can stick with what they find familiar and are used to estimating "good", "bad" and "meh" with; but please use it responsibly and knowing what it actually means.

(The practical meaning of the 0 to 76 scale shouldn't be that unintuitive: a life rating of 76 will eventually give you 76 more HP than a life rating of 0, before accounting for the various multipliers. At any rate, I don't think that's less intuitive than "a life rating of 117% will eventually give you [30% of 245] more HP than a life rating of 87%, before accounting for the various multipliers"...)

* Fixed bug with standard artifacts disappearing from the floor if they had been carried there from another level (thanks to bostock for reporting)

The main thanks here belongs to MITZE, who believed in this bug when nobody else would!

As far as I can tell, the most notable effect of the wilderness generation fix is that swamps are now actually-swampy. But what are the other major effects?

Compiling and playing with SDL enabled on Ubuntu 20.04 has lots of issues.


First of all, GCC 9.3.0 gives lots of warnings.

Disabling SDL mixer will result in compilation error.

./autogen.sh && ./configure --enable-sdl --disable-sdl-mixer && make
src/main-sdl.c:3165: undefined reference to `play_sound'

Compiles fine with SDL mixer, but...
Tile graphics doesn't seem to work at all and 32x32 refers to David Gervais tiles. (Do sounds work?)

Can't find file lib/xtra/graf/32x32.png - graphics mode '32x32' will be disabled.

Then change the font size with mouse many times in a row.
This should lead to crash with various messages.

Hahaha, I thought the game had locked up, but no, entering a higher level quest zone no longer uses a y/n confirmation, now it is Y/n. Subtle difference. :)

At one point, one of my chaos-warriors was inflicted with the confusion status and bumped into the mountain range and this nearby young bronze dragon got free hits, which is expected (and supposed to happen) yet I see Energy:-100.

I wonder why the cost is still -100 in this case? I was expecting a greater cost.

To anyone else reading, this energy notation is a non-wizard mode option ('=' then '3')

Confused moves do not spend any more energy than regular moves. 1 wasted move is just 1 wasted move.

Just died as my Spectre was confused and wandered into a wall. Kept walking in an effort to escape. Stupid summoners summoning more nameds... lol

The new option to show energy used is cool.

Why is the energy-used display sometimes orange though? I get it after teleporting with my staff of teleportation, for example.

Did anything change on the effectiveness of Identify? It feels like more items than before still have unknown attributes (the "?") after identifying than before. And I'll go broke fast if I have to spend $3,000 for *Identify* on every random piece of Elemental Protection armor for example to see what it resists, or every weapon with a Slay brand to find out what it slays. Another example, I could have sworn before that if I Identified Bolts of Slaying, it would tell me who the Slay applied against, while now it requires me to *Identify* it or sell one to the shop.

Is that a change? I didn't see anything about that in the changelog other than the Dragon Armor change.

I had to recreate all my preferences on angband.live with the new version, so it's possible I missed something in the preferences that's causing this, but I don't see it. And I didn't play with Easy Identify on because that feels like cheating to me.

Oh and unrelated question: the description of Balrog says they need to get nutrition from sacrificing humans, but it looks like they can sacrifice gnomes and elves as well. Is it really just tied to the symbol "p" or "h"? I.e. when it says they need to sacrifice humans, they meant humanoids?

Nothing changed except the dragon armor thing (which is optional), but since you're playing on angband.live it's still fairly clear what's happening. *Identify*ing attributes on artifacts and ego items helps you recognize the same attributes on the same ego more easily the next time you see them. Your old savefile had presumably accumulated a lot of such object lore over time; it is only wiped between characters if you turn the empty_lore option on; but since Gwarl did not copy your old savefile to salmiak, your object memory is now empty again.

Yes, that is what it means. Townspeople ('t') are okay too.

Thanks for reporting, and welcome to oook!

Not sure how well I can fix this stuff without a similar system to test on (and tile-related problems in general are not a top priority unless they also interfere with ASCII play), but I'll try to fix the compile error and the nonexistent reference to David Gervais' tiles at least.

It turns orange if the last action consumed more than 100 energy (or more than 13,200 energy for players on the overworld map).

Thanks for answering. You have disabled issues on GitHub so I thought it's better to disturb you here. sulkasormi gives an impression that you are from Finland. :rolleyes:

I understand the tile issue. Tiles won't exist for everything so why bother displaying only part of them? Same goes with sounds. If there's no sounds, why disabling the mixer should break compilation? Just ditch the unused code. :)

Using SDL interface doesn't necessarily add anything to the gameplay. Someone with debugging skills could check out what causes the crash.

it's pretty easy to spin up a linux virtual install in windows these days. vmware player, virtualbox, windows subsystem for linux, etc.

fixing all the gcc warnings may be a bit more of a pain

Necromancy
 

What is the percentage reduction of EXP gain for pet kills? Is it possible to play using only pets? I seem to be gaining very little to none EXP both from my necromancy rat summons and animated corpses. Thanks.

You get 20% of the XP and the pet gets the remaining 80%, except on Quylthulgs (both you and the pet get the full XP) and Rings (same as Quylthulgs in the special case of the ringbearer). Note that what you get is 20% of the XP that would otherwise go to the pet; that might be higher or lower than 20% of the XP you'd get for scoring the kill yourself, since monster XP calculations are not quite identical with player calculations, and the monster's level likely does not equal your level. There are also some additional tweaks for the faster game speeds.

It might be technically possible to win using only pets - people have done stranger things with the game... - but I would not recommend it except on a Quylthulg.

Ive also noticed that pets cannot kill most uniques.
Its why I think chaos+trump is a good mix for a mage. Pets do all the work, and you can just lob a "Fist of Force" over the top once uniques are down to their last HP.

Thanks for the quick reply. Another question - are rods a straight upgrade to staves because of their weight, even when taking the increased charges into account?

There are not very many rods with effects similar to a staff, so a direct comparison is seldom necessary.

When the comparison does happen (e.g. with Illumination or Enlightenment, or Staff of Speed vs. Rod of Heroic Speed) the rod does usually win, but not because of the weight. The biggest selling points of a rod compared to a staff (or wand) are that it cannot be destroyed, only stolen, and that it recharges much faster. That the rod wins is not a given, though - sometimes a staff is better, either because you anticipate having to use it many times in quick succession or because it has so many more charges as to outweigh the faster recharging on the rod. The staff might also have lower fail rates, since many of the best rod effects are very high-level and difficult to use - characters with so-so device skill often find Rods of Angelic Healing too unreliable for combat and prefer to carry Staves of Healing.

The FAQ has a more detailed comparison which also covers potions, scrolls and wands.

Cannot be destroyed...by chaos? Lightning?

Potions of invulnerability reduce satiation, despite this not being documented anywhere and not making sense.

The action cost for movement affects how far a player can walk on the map before getting hungry. Speed doesn't.

The "decrease mana" flag reduces spell failure rates by 3% although it's not clear why. (OK. Nevermind. You quietly fixed this in Salmiak.)

"Hellfire" is described as doing extra damage to good monsters, but doesn't. (You... fixed this, too. Whatever.)

Jewelry of wizardry with bonus damage has a nominal to-hit bonus, but the bonus is always 0 and spells don't miss.

Cockatrices are still in the game despite being the worst

I recently itroduced an old friend to Frog. He had played Moria/Vanilla/Zang/Heng back many years ago. He asked a few questions about things I had just taken for granted.
This made me think of a few quality of life things;

1. (X, Y) It isn't definitively stated anywhere I've seen how Melee Weapons and Combat items only add to melee to-hit and to-dmg, Archery items only to Ranged combat, Wizardry items only to Magic.

1a. What all counts as Ranged Bows/Slings, sure. Thrown? Does that Spike add +Y damage? That flask of oil?

1b. Is it definitively stated somewhere that when dual-wielding Rings only affect the matching hand's weapon? Or that other items bonuses are split?

2. Armor limitations. Should there be a display indicator somewhere that says 'this char can only wear 14.4 Lbs before suffering detrimental effects'

I am sure that there are more, but damned if I can think of them right now. :)

Messing around with the latest version. One thing that I very much miss from (modern) Angband is that a weapon's damage and blows are shown in the weapon description.

It would be *really nice* if we could have that in Frogcomposband as well. As it is now, I need to equip the weapon and then jump down to the Melee category to see what my blows and damage are. Putting it in the weapon description would save me a bunch of key strokes (w,aCmEscw,a).

Modern Angband also provides how much more strength and dex you need to get the next tier of blows (i.e. with +1 Dex you would get 1.5 blows with this weapon). That would also be really nice to have visible, especially when deciding which stat to increase after clearing a dungeon or on level up.

Unfortunately that is unlikely to happen. The code for supporting it in V is already a massive headache, and V only has a single weapon slot. In Frog it would have to be a massive headache^8 because the number of weapon slots isn't fixed and is usually higher than 1.

Frog blows are considerably less tiered than V's; unless your blows are at the maximum or minimum (or your STR or DEX is at 18/***), you can pretty much take it for granted that adding more STR or DEX will give you more blows per round.

[QUOTE=Sideways;147214]You get 20% of the XP and the pet gets the remaining 80%, except on Quylthulgs (both you and the pet get the full XP) and Rings (same as Quylthulgs in the special case of the ringbearer). Note that what you get is 20% of the XP that would otherwise go to the pet; that might be higher or lower than 20% of the XP you'd get for scoring the kill yourself, since monster XP calculations are not quite identical with player calculations, and the monster's level likely does not equal your level. There are also some additional tweaks for the faster game speeds.

This comment about XP reminds me of a more general question I've been wondering. Is XP per kill reduced the higher the CL is? I'm asking because sometimes I'll skip the quests (after Pest Control) for a while and just keep on diving in Angband, then eventually go back and waltz through a bunch of them (Orc Camp, Old Man Willow, Tengu, Dark Elven Lords, Vapor Quest, etc). By doing this, am I getting fewer total XP than if I did those quests earlier? If I tackle these at CL 30-35 instead of 20-25, is it a major reduction in earned XP or minor? I play in coffee-break mode.

The basic XP formula for a monster in Frog is [monster-dependent XP value] * [monster's native level] / [CL + 2]; it's very similar to V's formula of [XP value] * [monster level] / CL, though Frog has a lot more extra complications, including the partial credit for just damaging a monster.

Because CL+2 is used as a divisor, you do get less XP from any given monster at higher levels; therefore, delaying a quest does mean you get less XP from the monsters in it. But in the meantime, you did other things at a lower CL and got more XP from those :)

In coffee-break specifically, because XP gain is boosted in the dungeon, you could in theory "win" XP by delaying town quests so you can kill dungeon monsters at a lower CL; but in practice this is likely to be counterproductive and any gain would be negligible since most leveling-up happens in the dungeon anyway.

How exactly does a Rage-Mage's "Detect Magical Foes" decide whether or not an enemy is a "magic user?" It doesn't seem to detect all enemies that use spells (i.e. black knights).

Are blows for the dragon monster race being calculated correctly? My dragon, even with 18/70 strength only gets 1.5x blows for claws and bite stays at 1x. Is this normal?

I would expect more claw blows with 18/70 STR, but if your DEX is extremely low (say 10 or 11) then it would be normal. Bite takes some time to get beyond 1 blow/round.

Ok, found the stats.
Str: 18/63
Int: 18/25
Wis: 9
Dex: 18/27
Con: 18/30
Chr: 18/39

Melee: Excellent
Attack: Your Claw (3d4)
Blows: 2.53

Attack: Your Bite (3d9)
Blows:1.00

Does this seem normal?

I'll put the dump up as well.

http://jsbin.com/xaxehelome/edit?html,output

Seems normal-ish, I thought you meant ~1.53 blows with claws and not 2.53 :)

Claw attacks eventually cap at 4.00/round, and as they get more powerful they also get "heavier", making them slightly harder to gain blows with. (Playing as a Chaos Drake actually means you are getting slightly more blows than another dragon would with the same STR and DEX, because chaos dragons are fairly weak at melee compared to other dragons, but that also means their claws are not as heavy.)

This has been a nice update, and overall an amazing variant. To make a long story short I'll just state the things that bug me the most.

-Possessors:
When possessing a form with spells, the spell list does not show the fail rate of the spells you have. I'm not sure this has been brought up before so if there's a reason behind it I'll be up to hear it.

How exactly is the damage for the attacks of your innate possessed form calculated, it doesn't seems to match the damage dice of the regular monster's attacks. Would like to have some proper closure on whether to use the innate attacks for a Lesser titan or an ego sword with a nice slaying property.

-Blue Mage:
Would it be fine if they could just get magic missile at the beginning to give them a bit of an easier time to start. Blue mages essentially have to play the earliest part of the game as warriors since offensive spellcasters only start appearing when you would be nearing the bottom of the Thieve's Hideout.; I don't know if its just my bad luck or I'm not searching the wilderness for novice mages and mindcrafters quick enough, but fighting Mungash as a mage with no spells is very difficult.

-Rings:
One of my favorite races to play aside Liches and Quylthulgs. The idea is so funny but feels so nice to try out. Of course I have some problems, but take these more like asking for guidance rather than suggesting changes. Rings are, as I'd expect, fragile. But their hp seems to be so low that advancing to deeper levels takes a large amount of time. It doesn't really help that your ringbearers can toss you at any moment, especially after they summon a huge horde and have them all turn on you at once in the middle of a quest.
Basically progression is really really slow for rings since a lot of their spells damage doesn't scale well and drain their mana incredibly quickly. Its telling when a Lich's Nether ball spell does around 145 damage at level 30 or so for 15 SP but a Ring's breath spell does 160 damage for 30 SP and doesn't change much. But since they overall have some of the greatest potential to grow and gain extremely powerful abilities and permanent resists, this is somewhat balanced for them. But not everyone wants to farm for good jewelry at Zul :rolleyes:

-Quylthulgs
Oh this one. THIS ONE is the one I've really been bashing my head in for. This race is like nothing I've ever seen, even the Sorceror class in this variant seemed tame compared to this, and they have negative AC and no melee capabilities from dawn till dusk. Quyls are essentially helpless, Quyls are what Yeeks would look like in the face of an Archon. But I forgive them because they get their own personal army and that absolutely rocks. Yet there are always several things that need to be said.
As a Quyl, you are essentially committing yourself to playing a no-hit run. Its sounds like an over exaggeration but when you find yourself getting killed by pretty much anything your pets couldn't kill before they get to you, you failed a phase door, used teleport and landed in a nest of dragons, or just had any enemy with 'Teleport To' exist. Reading " the -foo- commands you to return" is essentially just a prelude to the death screen. The speed penalty they get is too severe in my opinion, I know you have to play the race carefully, but losing a character instantly because you essentially didn't have yourself constantly hasted for the entire game is very disheartening, its been about 3 days with over 25 attempts and not one Quyl I've had has made it to level 30 and every single death had been either failing a spell, not noticing something for one turn or "It commands you to return" seeing the 50% hp warning, clicking <more> and watching my hp plummet below the absolute zero. I'd really suggest that the speed penalty for quyls be reduced or maybe even outright removed once you hit lvl20 and become a nexus, because by then you'll be at a depth where a lot bunch of non-pack enemies are hitting +10 speed and basically become instant kills should you not be in the cover of your army.

These are all the things I remember having to say for now. Of course despite this I love this variant its got so many choices for you to take and the many different ways to play are tremendous fun, I really do hope you keep up the good work on Frog and I can't wait to see the next update (Actually I can, who knows if there would be a huge game changing fix in the next one. Take your time please) :)

I'll look into this, but I suspect you're just right and the failrates can be and should be displayed in the spell menu.

It's based on the damage dice, but the first effect on a hit gets the usual bonuses and additions you also get in regular combat, as well as a small additional bonus if it's a "melee-type" hit (hit, punch, kick, claw, bite etc.).

A proper average-damage display for Possessors is high on my to-do list. Unfortunately it's also a coding nightmare - not unimplementable, but definitely a pain to implement.

I believe Blue Mages do start with a magic missile wand for this reason, but I don't think the suggestion of also letting them start with the spell is unreasonable. Though it feels somewhat unintuitive, they are currently allowed to learn "Shoot" from snagas, which makes it easier for them to get off the ground.

Lich is one of the strongest monster races; so while the argument makes perfect sense in itself, I would consider drawing a different conclusion from it. Liches are too strong and ought to be nerfed :)

This is my experience with them, too! But plenty of other people are doing well with them; barely a week ago, we had a player get his first ever win in the game with a Quylthulg. Bostock even won an instant-coffee thrall quylthulg, a combination that takes craziness to a whole new level.

So I'm inclined to think Quylthulgs do have enough upside even in the early game, and it just takes a different approach and playstyle - one I don't personally seem to have - to fully tap into it. Late-game Quylthulgs are definitely very strong.

Alright, glad to hear your feedback. I can understand how much work it would take forever to get the proper damage dice for innate attacks with hundreds of monster bodies you could possibly possess so that has a lower priority over spell rates that can be critical to a character an any give moment.

Oh so does this mean that blue mages can also learn "Throw Boulder"? Thats amazing, it would work as nice substitute for essentially all the bolt spells since the damage would be really consistent, its unresistible and it stuns too. If only I could ever make it that far with them.

Oh dear not my precious liches. Well if you were to nerf them, maybe it could be by splitting some of their powers into an alternate sub-race for them (I saw some notes about an idea for a Black Reaver line in the source code, maybe they could get the mana storm instead) Archliches are stupendously strong and only have their low hp and lack of good melee holding them back, even then their melee isn't the worst against living enemies since it drains hp very reliably. The Black Reaver line could probably get most of the Archlich's offensive talents with a strong melee and maybe offensive spells that could be castable but not mainly used and it wouldn't get summoning spells or telepathy, it would be like an undead Hru which would bash its way into rooms and pummel everything in its path. Archliches could then be focused more onto the ranged front with summons to back them up/provide distractions, maybe by making them have less hp to give them a need to flee from battle into the cold walls of the dungeon (Removing Passwall for Archliches spoils the immersion so that should 100% stay)

What Bostock did was amazing, considering that I've never even made it back to the surface in thrall mode, so I haven't given up. I've started a few more, currently I have a Clvl26 Quyl, and I can see how they really rise as the game goes on, summoning ancient dragons at DL36 of the Troll caves with a wand/staff of Haste monsters in nothing short of impressive. But as usual I'll have to be careful not to let a single monster evade my view, especially in quests where tons of speedy monsters are packed into a tiny space with no room to teleport to safely (Looking at you Old Man Willow). I'll post a dump if I win (die) maybe I'll realize the error of my ways eventually.

Blue mages can indeed learn throw boulder, which I found to be their best single target spell in terms of damage/mana, damage/turn, in addition to stunning and being resisted by next to no monsters. It counts as a radius 0 ball spell as well, so you can jump it over monsters. I find that whenever I roll up my (usually unsuccessful :rolleyes:) blue mages I head to the thalos arena asap to get boulder throw from the troll you can fight very early. A bit of work, but once you've done it you're good in terms of damage output for another 15ish character levels.

Hope this helps!

Hi guys, sorry if it's a stupid question, but why does frogcomposband (or any other variant that I know of) has no autoexplore? Is it too hard to implement?

Force trainers. Given their Dragon Ballish flavor, maybe they should have Dimension Door as a quasi Instant Transmission.

Because autoexplore will get you killed in a *band. Its not as common in the early game, but there are monsters and groups of monsters you *dont* want to fight, and many of them you dont even want to see you because they could one shot you or be very hard to escape.

Its also very rarely a good idea to fully explore every level. Many levels have enough dangerous monsters and little enough loot to make full exploration not a very good idea.

Every *band Ive ever played, its the exploration where all the richness lay. You fire off magic mapping treasure and monster detection and then you carefully plan out your route through the level, deciding which monsters to avoid, which to fight, and how best to approach them.

Autoexplore in a *band makes as much sense as auto-equip in a Hacklike or auto-consumable use in a crawl.

archolewa is right. It is hard to implement, but it's also just that exploring things yourself is a big part of *bands and that needing to explore every nook and corner of each level isn't a big part of *bands; the infinity of levels in a Normal-speed game means you can completely skip any dungeon level at any time without really missing anything, and even coffee-break has enough levels you can afford to skip a lot of them.

There are also plenty of spells and devices for mapping areas quickly; and as archolewa said, carelessly exploring the wrong place on foot will get you very dead very fast.

--

The game in general revolves around monsters (and loot, but monsters are the main source of loot). Encounters with monsters are how you get stronger and progress in the game, and also how you die - or hopefully win, but dying's more usual. Knowing (and manipulating) the surrounding terrain is very important in that it helps you plan for the monster encounters better; occasionally you even find free loot lying around. But half the time, the only reason you're mapping a level is because you want to skip it and just need to find the next downstairs! *bands are like that; they give you more levels than you need, and while it is possible to fully explore each of them and even to kill every monster on them, there is very little need to do so and sometimes an area is best left well alone.

--

Furthermore, competitions tend to be based on the lowest turncount, and even outside a competitive environment players generally want to win quickly and without wasting much time. Autoexploring levels would be extremely suboptimal from a turncount point of view; you would spend too much time exploring uninteresting areas.

--

All that said, we already have automated traveling to the nearest interesting object and other similar mechanics that are already partway there, so I won't say autoexplore's guaranteed to never happen. Sometimes you get a safe and fairly dull level you still for some reason want to have a good look at, or are mopping up the last loot after killing all the dangerous monsters, or want to go through a big dark room quickly and lack -illumination, and in situations like that it would be nice to just press a key and have things explored automatically. But if autoexplore ever is implemented, use it very carefully; it might kill you.

I see, I haven't really got past the early/mid game with my characters and so I always felt like auto explore would be a huuuge time saver. I found out about ctrl+g to pickup ammo/items of interest which saves a lot of time so I thought it would be a nice option to have autoexplore as an option as well.

I always play with auto-center map ON, otherwise deeper there are things that can all too easily one-shot you from off map.
Using run down a long corridor has led to a ton of near-death encounters and many deadly ones.

An odd and very specific Bug,

I recently started an Archer under salmiak and and went to manage my quiver, only to find I cannot.
On other characters 'i' 'e' 't' give the options Inventory|Equipment|Quiver (except for t).
On the Archer, only Inventory|Equipment show.
I can swap the quiver with another quiver, add arrows to it, fire arrows from it, but cannot take the quiver off, remove or sell arrows from it.

edit: Also, the arrows in the quiver cannot be enchanted by scroll or shop.

I can't reproduce your problem with Archer quivers. There is a known bug with 'floor' sometimes not showing as an option in the object prompt when it ought to, but this sounds unrelated to that. This behavior is what I'd expect from a character with no quiver or no ammo in their quiver, but if you're switching quivers and firing ammo from them I presume that's not the case here. The only other thing I can think of is that either your quiver or the ammo in it have somehow had their locations corrupted so the game thinks they aren't actually equipped, though I have no idea how that could happen (or even if it would produce symptoms like this, rather than, say, a plain crash).

Did the problem only appear some time into the game, or immediately the first time you put ammo in your quiver? Can you drop or unequip the quiver if you shoot away all the ammo in it?

I honestly didn't check until I had the ability to Craft arrows and had reached Clvl12. I made 40some Sheaf arrows and wanted to add them to my then full quiver. Arrows (0, 0) Quiver was a 60 space. When I noticed the issue I tried to change quiver, the only one for sale was size 70. The 70 vanished and the old 60 appeared in my inv. The issue persisted.

edit: Just made a new Archer (Female, Demigod-Artemis, Lucky) This one started with a size 80 Quiver that does not appear, bought a new size 60 quiver and can swap them back and forth. While never showing on the listings.

My base game must be corrupted, I'll DL a fresh copy do a fresh install later today.

edit2: I DL'd the frogcomposband-7.1.salmiak-win.zip package and the problem persists. Try installing an instance of that and see it that shows the issue to you as well?

edit3: I DL'd the Exe and Source code separately. Combined them and the issues still persists. Reinstalled 'chocolate' and the quiver showed. So the compiles seem to have an issue?

Windows 10, right? I am wondering if any other Microsoft Windows users are affected? Be it Windows 10? Windows 8.1? etc.

I cannot reproduce the bug, even in a freshly installed copy of salmiak-win on a lucky female Artemis demigod.

@HugoTheGreat2011 - Yes, Win10.

@Sideways - Okay, thanks for trying. Might be Win10, but so odd that previous versions worked fine. Ah, well, no Archer for me. :p

I created a Win 10 Salmiak Lucky Female Demigod Artermis Archer and played up to CL 25 (at Instant Coffee speed) last night. No problems loading/unloading or changing quivers. Having fun so I think I'll keep going. :D

Damn, so what could possibly be wrong on my end... mutter, mutter, curse, mutter...

Edit: moved to a new thread, as it was in the wrong place.

Well, I found the issue. Win10 had an update yesterday and in the process it reported file corruptions. An hour-long SDD check and repair. And Archer is working fine.
No idea specifically what was corrupted, but it seems my C drive is having issues.

Weird behavior with monster light / dark radius
 

On a new char I started I noticed some unexpected behavior that (probably?) seems like a bug. In the 'Trouble at Home' quest, I attacked a mean mercenary with a ranged attack. Upon waking up, he suddenly had a range 1 light radius. I didn't think this was unusual until I later attacked a silver jelly (I think?), which put a range 1 darkness radius around it only after I had woken it up. Shouldn't at least the jelly always have the dark radius? It could make some sense that the mercs don't light their torch until they wake up, but it is pretty weird to use a ranged attack on a jelly only for it to put up a shield of darkness so you have to move in closer to target it.

Who knows, I could have sworn that previously things like dreadmasters / lords always had their radius even while asleep.

I don't think I've changed anything there lately, will note it and review whether the light/darkness should be active on sleeping monsters.

That behavior has been around on the sleeping Mercenaries and Silver jellies for so long it seems natural to me. The same appears in the Theros Cleaning the Lab.

I have a quick question about item generation. Outside of vaults, is it just very unlikely to find a very out of depth item? Or is it literally impossible? I play coffee-break mode if that makes a difference.

My memory may be faulty, but I feel like in Vanilla, if you played enough hours, you would very (very very) occasionally run into an extreme OOD item, and I get the feeling in Frog this just doesn't happen at all. For example I could have sworn there were times I found one of the later dungeon spellbooks very early. Meanwhile in Frog, I don't think I've ever once had a character find their 4th spellbook, and I've taken a decent # of characters to CL40+, DL60-75 (though never beyond that). But maybe I'm wrong about Vanilla and that's just my memory of Nethack bleeding over, where you could in theory find a wand of wishing on DL1.

I do like to have that feeling that, no matter how ridiculously unlikely, it is theoretically possible to find Boots of Feanor on DL1. The closest I've gotten was getting the One Ring from Smeagol, but I know that's hard coded.

I believe in Frog you can get level-boosted normal items, and (very rarely) extremely level-boosted artifacts and egos, but you can't get extremely level-boosted normal items. So you could (probably?) roll Feanor at DL1 in theory, it's just super-hyper-unlikely, but you can never a find a power dragon scale mail or a potion of experience at DL1.

Extremely out-of-depth items are fairly common in V.

Another quick question - I hate creating separate threads for what is (hopefully) a simple question, hope that's okay.

Is there any resource, either in-game or on the web, explaining Samurai Stance, Form, Posture or Guard Position (which I think are all terms for the same thing and Kata as well).

I'm looking at the source samurai.c and it looks like Koukijin adds +5 to all stats but also adds elemental vulnerabilities. Musou looks like it adds all kinds of intrinsics.

My current CL 26 Samurai only has one option available, Iai, and I have no idea what it does.

Samurai (and Monk) postures are caught in a trap where people don't use them much because they're poorly documented (and the classes are so strong anyway there's little need to complicate play); and because they are so easy to not-use there aren't very many calls to document them better. I do still know I should document them better at some point :)

As far as I can tell from looking at the code:
- Iai: gives a single retaliatory blow (with a +20 to-hit bonus) against monster melee attacks, but any damage you suffer (from any source) is increased by 20%. Any melee attacks from you (including the retaliatory blow) dispel this posture
- Huujin/Fuujin: gives reflection unless blind, at the cost of -1.00 to blows
- Koukijin: gives +5 to all stats and +50 melee to-hit, at the cost of -50 AC, vulnerability to the four base elements and no regen. Using inventory items tends to dispel this posture
- Musou: gives full telepathy and ultimate resistance, halves most types of damage, and gives a full round of retaliatory blows against monster melee attacks; but practically any action other than retaliation dispels this posture

Back a few years ago under PosCheng(?) someone posted an analysis of all the effects, most of which seemed to have larger penalties than benefits. As I, vaguely, recall, all but one of the Monk's were deemed suicidal.

Sadly I didn't save it, but I did save the Human powers breakdown.

That would be mighty helpful to have in-game. I find weird that some skills and spells lack descriptions at all, and would be really thankful if most of the descriptions that are in would just spill the beans already. I detest making non-informed decisions in a perma-death game.

So, as a new player, I have a few questions that I would like to ask that I didn't get answers for in the Discord channel. There are experienced and helpful players there, but the bulk of the developers and code divers seem to be here.

1 - Whenever I see a class that have a Riding skill cap above Beginner (I see either Skilled and above or 0), I kinda feel like it is a big missed opportunity for the character to not make use of it. I found out that some classes that, despite having good Riding caps, don't really make good use of it (Samurai can't Concentrate on the saddle, Daggermasters can't dual wield properly). I don't even have to go too much out of my way to find Riding weapons most of the time, and the only thing that I really feel like I'm giving up is on ranged combat. Is there any article or essay regarding riding, so I can learn more about it? I know it is a play-style among many others, but is it even particularly good to just stand on foot, double handing a weapon or dual wielding or having a shield?

2 - I managed to find some documentation regarding various aspects of the game as the _info.txt files. Neat and all but for the most part it is information I can find in-game in a more readable format. What I actually want to find is documentation about classes, specially monster classes. Is there anything like that among these files, or I need to seach the internet?

3 - While on the subject of monsters, I kinda feel enamored for the Orc Fighter because I have an obsession of playing with underdogs. If Kobolds or Skaven were an option, that would be them, but as they aren't, making a lowly Snaga a Warlord is a goal that really entices me. Specially as they can evolve, unlike a standard-mode Snotling or Kobold. Have people written anything regarding Orc Fighters? A guide, or at least impressions that could be enlightening? As well the best way to make use of the only racial power they have, summoning orcs.

4 - Artifacts. Let us say I got a low value artifact weapon and want to convert to another weapon chassis (non-riding into riding, is what I did the most so far). I understand that non-ego targets are a necessity, but how about enchantments? If I want to turn a Glaive into an artifact, it would be better to be a plain Glaive or the best Glaive +X +Y I can get?

For now it is that. I got over the basics for the most part by playing obsessively (got Angband vanilla a week or two ago, three days later found FCB, it is the only thing I play now) and asking on Discord. These are the only questions I have that come to mind right now.

The in-game help has some notes about riding at ?jh (scroll down a bit) and ?se (nominally just about riding proficiency, but it briefly notes a few potential downsides of riding that might otherwise not be clear). Not aware of a more detailed treatment anywhere.

Not entirely sure what you mean there, monster class could mean a few things.

Player monster races don't really have a class in the normal sense, the race itself is effectively also the class. (They do have a pseudo-class, but it seldom matters much; you won't really miss out on anything if you have no idea what a race's pseudo-class is.) Enemy monster races also have pseudo-classes, and those might matter a bit more if you play a Possessor; so for Possessors only, they should probably be documented better than they currently are.

If you're just looking for information on the player-monster races themselves, the in-game help is at ?fd; but you've probably already found that, and it largely just has the basics.

I don't think so. To my knowledge I'm the only player who's won an orc fighter so far, at least the only win on the oook ladder is mine. It was a while ago, so I have no clear recollection of that particular @; my guess from looking at the dump and comments is that it played much like a regular non-monster warrior and that I used Summon Orcs less for help in battles and more to give me something to vampirise.

Well, first of all, I'd say reforging low-value artifact weapons is seldom very rewarding, though since I seldom ride I'm not sure if there might be some riding-related edge case. The general advice I give is that early/mid-game reforges should generally be cheapish (but okay-by-slot-standards) stuff into lowish-value slots where you otherwise lack a good item, while reforges into the weapon and armor slots only really come into play later; and even then, the weapon slot is one of the slots I'm least likely to reforge into.

If you are reforging onto a glaive, though: it will keep and improve the +X,+Y, so you will in theory get better results out of a glaive with higher to-hit and to-dam. Note, however, that due to the power limits the extra +X,+Y means there's slightly less room for other stuff like resistances or stat bonuses. So a glaive with higher +X,+Y is slightly better if you want high +X,+Y on the result and very slightly better if you want to optimize the score, but a +0,+0 glaive could be slightly better if you want a statstick.

--

More generally, detailed specific tips on how to play a specific class or a monster race are outside the scope of the in-game help, and while such tips might have been posted here and there over time (at least for some classes/races) they will not be easy to find. The ideal place to collect tips for specific classes would, in theory, be Gwarl's angband wiki; unfortunately development on the wiki has pretty much stalled, and the site-wide common.css (editable only by Gwarl himself) is empty and lacks all the bits and pieces that would make a wiki easy to navigate and organize. So there's basically nothing on the wiki.

Well thanks for the advice on artifacts. I was, indeed, looking for special attributes on my artifacts rather than simple enchantment bonuses that I can get elsewhere (specially regarding low level artifacts for a pinch). Still, chances are, my odds of finding a good Ego are much higher than making a good low level artifact, so that's something worth keeping in mind.

I meant what I already found: the .c files in the development version in github. For example, frogcomposband/tree/master/src/archer.c. This is the actual code for the classes and monster races, and there, with some effort and guesswork regarding terms, I can find all elements that constitute the class or monster, visible in-game or not. Now I only need one of these for the weapons to check if they do have hidden attributes.

Which leads me to something I have been meaning to ask, regarding FCB weapon statistics system. Lighter weapons seem to out-DPS heavier weapons by simple virtue of they allowing more strikes per turn. For example, the humble spear, with its 1d8 damage, could outperform broad spears and the like, by being the lightest weapon in the category. The only advantage heavier weapons seem to have over lighter weapons is the (*generally*) better damage rolls and improved crit chance. Details that aren't really explained or elaborated upon in the manual. Anybody wrote anything regarding that?

I need help compiling and running under arch linux, wanted to try again to compile and run but now im getting the following error with the following commands:

$ sh autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make clean
$ make
$ ./src/frogcomposband -ufrog -mgcu -- -n1
./src/frogcomposband: Fatal Error.

Edit: forgot to add my dependencies installed:
The github page states that i need:
$ sudo apt-get install autoconf gcc libc6-dev libncursesw5-dev libx11-dev

and in arch i have this installed:
autoconf 2.69-7
gcc 10.2.0-1
lib32-ncurses 6.2-1
lib32-ncurses5-compat-libs 6.2-1
ncurses 6.2-1
ncurses5-compat-libs 6.2-1
libx11
libstdc++296

I don't think there's any general rule that lighter weapons are better; if you have, say, a spear of Westernesse and a broad spear of Westernesse then either one could be better, depending on your character and the exact specifics of the weapon. In Vanilla the tendency is for light weapons to be better in the early game and for heavy weapons to be better in the late game; but in FrogComposband, weapons of all weights are competitive throughout the game. Lighter weapons giving more blows than heavy weapons is cancelled out by heavier weapons dealing more damage per blow; and the higher dice on heavy weapons also mean slays and brands are more effective on them. (And a fully developed endgame character will likely get close to maximum blows with any weapon.)

I do use light weapons quite a lot, even in the endgame, but that's largely just because there are many great artifact weapons (like Sting) that happen to also be fairly light. Sting is almost always outdone damage-wise by many bigger weapons, it's just an awesome statstick that also gives acceptable damage.

I am not aware of any detailed treatment on critical hits, and if you did find one it might well be outdated. Understanding the exact mechanics behind critical hits is in no way required, though, since the average damage/round shown on your character sheet fully accounts for the extra damage from criticals.

There are a few class-specific mechanics regarding weapon weight; Duelists (and Sneaky characters) prefer light weapons, while Maulers prefer heavy weapons. (Ninjas and Ninja-Lawyers don't prefer lighter weapons per se, but all the weapons that aren't icky for them are pretty light; lighter weapons are also the most suitable for dual-wielding, and the ninja classes almost have to dual-wield.)

I still have no idea what you mean, sorry.

If inspecting a weapon (or some other item) with the 'I' command does not reveal all of its attributes you will need to *identify* it, usually by using the Research Item town service available in most towns.

I meant if there's a file where I can see the actual code for the individual weapons, akin to the files where I can see the code for the individual classes (for example, weaponmaster.c, in the directory I already mentioned). Also thanks for your explanation regarding light weapons, specially how the Sneaky personality treats them.

There's lib/edit/k_info.txt for the weapon kinds, lib/edit/e_info.txt for ego-item types (including ego weapons) and lib/edit/a_info.txt for standard artifacts (including weapons). There's very little code for specific items as opposed to code for treating the attributes of those items, since items are mostly defined entirely by their attributes. Death scythes and rune swords and poison needles have some special code here and there, and a small number of artifacts also have specific code for unusual effects. Such special code isn't organized in any one place, but stuff that affects combat in unusual ways is largely in cmd1.c while stuff that affects stats in unusual ways is in xtra1.c.

You have built the game. Now you need to install it too:

But I'd add a --prefix $HOME/game to configure, so the game installs in $HOME/game and you don't need root to install it.

Ah! so i could do a:

so it didn't use my $HOME/.angband directory right?

thank you!

thank you so much! it now works and is installed in my home directory! ;) thank you!

Found my first ever Wild weapon (never heard of or seen one before). In item description it says:
So the "Wild Weapon" is in there like a special attribute or something.
What does it actually mean?

Use it and see! A bit like chaos branded but more ... wild

I'm failing to find a source to read about the "Score" the weapons has, like, coming from vanilla angband, im confused on not seeing the average damage a weapon does, and the amount of attacks i could give in a giving turn.

Your average damage per round and blows per round with your current weapon(s) are shown on your Character Sheet (press Cm) as well as in the Knowledge Menu (~W). The "score" of a weapon (or any other item) is simply its nominal value; it matters if you sell or buy or reforge or insure or alchemize it, and is a rough indicator of how good the item is, but the highest-scoring item isn't always the best fit for your equipment.

ah thank you so much for that! another thing im not finding, its a way to move the stats to the left instead of the right, i played angband for so long that its so difficult to get used to it being on the right, also i play both games and i would want both having the stats on the left, its there a way to do so?

No; the stats can't be on the left in FrogComposband because there are multiple message lines, and if the stat sidebar were on the left it would get overwritten by messages all the time. (Message lines starting to the side would solve this problem, of course, but they would also look extremely ugly.) Vanilla Angband only has a single message line, which occupies the otherwise empty top row, so it can place the stat sidebar wherever it wants.

ah! thank you for that, i just starting a few days back to play FrogComposBand and im enjoying it so much, that that will not be a problem after a while i think.

im playing a chaos high-mage, and i love the option of coffe-break, with no wilderness, i will try that when my current character die.

I saw that the first dungeon close to the town is called Warrens, its not "Angband" from vanilla angband, right?

No, Warrens is the smallest and easiest dungeon. The dungeon of Angband, where Oberon and the Serpent of Chaos lurk, is northeast of Morivant (you can refer to the map at ?ag, where it's highlighted, if you have trouble locating it on the normal overworld map).

In coffee-break mode Angband is the only dungeon.

So far im loving also the fact that different down stairs, lead to different dungeons branches, in vanilla angband all down stairs lead to the same dungeon and are not permanent if you go back. Its very different and also very nice.

Other question, the latest Frog version is based in which vanilla version?

I believe ZAngband 2.0.0, the direct ancestor of Frog, was forked from Vanilla Angband 2.8.1; so all versions of FrogComposband (and Composband and PosChengband and Chengband and Hengband, and ZAngband from 2.0.0 up) are ultimately based on V 2.8.1. Of course, they have come quite a long way since then...

Wow now i understand so many differences from say current vanilla, so they have splitted a lot now for sure

Offhand, did the monster play come from Posband being merged into Cheng? That was the first variant I knew of that allowed Possessors and monsters. I had always thought Poscheng was a conflation of the two.

Yes, that's correct. Various people (including me) had tried to revive Posband, and then Chris came along and did it a million times better than all previous attempts.

I am guessing modern (4.0 and later) would make for a way cleaner PosBand re-implementation than PCB. That codebase includes some of the worst old-school spaghetti code I have seen in a looong time.

Also, another couple of questions, as i just started to play frogcomposband, having played vanilla angband for a couple of years. I wanted to knos if there's an order to get to the different dungeons in the wilderness map. Cause I just completed the first warrens dungeon and then headed directly to angband, cause it's a place i know from the wilderness, but also don't know if that is supposed to be the next dungeon or if its another "path" to take. Also, if i go to the same warrens dungeons again, do i need to kill the unique again? or he will not be there anymore?

Also it's damn fun to play as a high-mage chaos magic realm, much more initial Mana and spells than vanilla angband mage in the start game. Very different feeling. But other question i have, is that I have two books, one of them I purchased in the initial town, "Sign of Chaos" and "Chaos Mastery" but I assume there are more chaos books, i assume in other towns or dungeons, because I have a "study (5)" in my stats (I'm level cLvl12) and I cannot study any more spells from those two books, it's that right?

Like the help says, there isn't any one right order to do the dungeons in; although in the early game it generally goes something like Warrens->Hideout->Icky Cave (if you like it...)->Tidal Cave->Labyrinth->Orc Cave/Troll Cave->Lonely Mountain etc. Labyrinth and Camelot are frequently tagged on a single wilderness trip, since they both start at dl 20 and are in the same general area west of Outpost. It is very typical for players to have a toe in many uncompleted dungeons simultaneously, and there's a lot of variance in when players get started in the Angband dungeon and how much time they spend there. Some people like to go there early and kill as many of the random level guardians as quickly as they can, but it's also not that rare to basically skip Angband for most of the game.

Note also that town quests are a really big part of the game, and deciding exactly when to do those is probably a more important call than deciding when to enter (or engage the boss of) any particular dungeon. Quests can be very rewarding, but they also have a nasty tendency to kill characters.

Dead uniques stay dead... mostly, anyway :) You can return to Warrens as many times as you wish, but if you already killed Mughash you won't run into him again, nor will there be another bottom guardian.

Each magic realm has two town books and two dungeon books (apart from Arcane, which has four town books and no dungeon books). Note that while you might not be able to study new spells right now, you do have the option of studying a previously learned spell again to gain more proficiency in it. See ?m for more details on how book magic works in FrogComposband.

Wow thank you so much for that information!

Scrolls of Crafting
 

Scrolls of Crafting seem to ignore either an item's level or level restrictions on egos. For example, I was on level 561 of Heaven and found a nice set of dragon wings (which displayed a level of 127 when inspected, like everything else that drops in Heaven). I had a scroll of Crafting on me, so used it on the wings while still on level 561 of Heaven. The result was "of immolation," an ego that's supposed to have a max level of 60. I think this behavior has been around for years. Is it intended?

I hope not :)

Thanks for your time in advance, and congrats on another very fun release!

Crafting is based on the player's level rather than the object's level or the dungeon level; and since player levels can't go higher than 50, that would be within the range for Immolation. (I am not entirely sure whether the object's level, the dungeon's level and/or the object kind's native level figure into things somewhere or not; but the main input is the player's CL.)

Doh... I feel rather ashamed I never knew this... I have always seen players Char names with a numeric number and just thought they had done it manually.

Imagine my surprise when I created a character 'Sam II' and when they died and I reused the save it automatically was 'Sam III' A rather fun feature.

That seems pretty wrong to base Crafting off the player's level when all the levels specified in e_info have nothing to do with the player's level. It explains why virtually every time I've used a scroll of Crafting I was disappointed.

Is it feasible to make Crafting work off the item's level?