3.1.0 thoughts

[TJS]

Hey up,

Been playing the new version all over the weekend and I have to say I'm very impressed. It's more interesting and fun and there's a lot less boring levels and junk items lying about than before. Congratulations to everyone involved.

Some of my rambling thoughts on the game at the moment:

Love the new ring types. I used the ring of escaping repeatedly at the start. Would having resist fear mean that these are free speed? Some of the rings seem a bit useless though, like the ring of the mouse and the dog. Perhaps improve them slightly?

Too many hounds - I know they have always been in there, but I really find them boring after a while. Tone them down perhaps?

Having % failure rates for magic devices visible to the player would be good so I know what to keep and what is essentially useless when playing a warrior.

There seem to be less stat potions. My first game I got to level 62 having found only 2 stat potions despite killing loads of troll/orc pits and dragons on the higher levels (and I'm by no means a fast player). Are there less of them now?

A lot of wand/rods seem underpowered by the time you find them. By the time you get a rod of fire bolts you've already got a launcher that does far more damage without taking up a space in your inventory.

Not many amulets or mushrooms lying about. I only found charisma +4 and Wisdom +1 amulets and only found one type of mushroom. Bad luck probably.

I prefer the fact that the shops don't have loads of each item. Stops you buying 100s of enchant weapon rather than seeking out the good weaponry in the dungeons.
I would personally make enchanting scrolls much rarer, but also more likely to work on already enchanted equipment. That way looking after your equipment and deciding which weapon to enchant would be more strategic. Also I'd combine enchant weapon to-hit/to-damage and enchant armour into one scroll and have them possibly enhant the item more than +1 when used.

Also a change I'd like is have the shops only always have one word of recall scroll guaranteed and then have more of them in the dungeon. It's too tempting to teleport back to the town after each dungeon level at the moment and a bit of risk trying to get a word of recall would be fun I think.

[takkaria]

Again, just a quick post to say yuor concerns have been taken into consideration and I've scheduled some of them to be looked at for 3.1.1, others for for later releases. And yes, stat potions do seem somewhat rarer, and item generation isn't quite right in terms of balance of item kinds found yet. I happen to agree with you about enchantment, too.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by TJS

Also I'd combine enchant weapon to-hit/to-damage and enchant armour into one scroll and have them possibly enhant the item more than +1 when used.

It is currently [3.0.9] seriously annoying to try to combine ammo stacks with spells that do multiple enchants. Any proposal in this direction needs to address that.

[Donald Jonker]

RE: stat pots -

Have the circumstances of their generation been changed, i.e., native depth, monsters that drop them, &c, or have they just become more rare with the decrease in drops overall? Is there any change in player behavior between 3.0.9 and 3.1 that might help?

My usual tactic is to check the floors as I fight my way down and kill anything that has a chance to drop, but in 3.1 the only pots I've run into have been the new pots of "toughness," &c, from shallow uniques.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Donald Jonker

RE: stat pots -

Have the circumstances of their generation been changed, i.e., native depth, monsters that drop them, &c, or have they just become more rare with the decrease in drops overall? Is there any change in player behavior between 3.0.9 and 3.1 that might help?

My usual tactic is to check the floors as I fight my way down and kill anything that has a chance to drop, but in 3.1 the only pots I've run into have been the new pots of "toughness," &c, from shallow uniques.

Stat potions are somewhat rarer, yes, but given that a few people have mentioned this now, it'll be tweaked up again for 3.1.1.

[TJS]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

It is currently [3.0.9] seriously annoying to try to combine ammo stacks with spells that do multiple enchants. Any proposal in this direction needs to address that.

Isn't that a good thing though? You could use the ammo you find lying about more, rather than relying on enchanting ammo up to +9 +9 every time using hundreds of scrolls bought in the stores (which is really boring and I can never be bothered to do).

Enchanted ammo should be rare since it is so powerful, so having inventory troubles seems to be a good balance to me.

[TJS]

Actually having thought about it, why have enchanted ammo at all? It just adds an extra layer of complexity and hassle without really adding that much (the enchantment of stacks and the inventory juggling for example).

You could just put all the enchantment on the launcher and then have different ammo types to determine damage.

eg. Normal bolts 2d4
Mithril bolts 3d4
Seeker bolts 5d4
Holy bolts 3d4 slay evil/undead

[Big Al]

Adding quivers would eliminate the need to make identical stacked ammo piles. (ie. any combination of 99 ammo counts as one inventory slot.)

Or, instead of making a single ?enchant enchant something by several points, make it so that it it increases it by one, but has a chance of not being consumed upon reading. Same resulting number of increases, but allows the user to chose how many to use.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by Big Al

Adding quivers would eliminate the need to make identical stacked ammo piles. (ie. any combination of 99 ammo counts as one inventory slot.).

Only if you implement quivers in the home. I don't remember seeing that in any variants, but I haven't played many the last couple years so maybe that has changed.

Maybe I should be pushing to double the size of the home instead. Limiting home slots changes some items into junk. OTOH, the choices are occasionally interesting, so it's not 100% clear that a larger home would be an improvement.

[Donald Jonker]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

Only if you implement quivers in the home.

Maybe I should be pushing to double the size of the home instead.

Another option might be a store service that tends to normalize ammo enchantment by evening out the +hit and +dam. Heng does this but only up to a certain amount based on level... I haven't got any fantastic ideas on this, but it seems some kind of store service would be an elegant solution here.