Is 0.8 harder?

[Lantier]

Does 0.8 seem harder to you than, say 0.7.1?

I'm not sure yet, but I am definitely seem a lot more mobs in 0.8. Several with some pretty beefy bad guys, early on too. This could just be because the RNGs are messing with me. But I'm curious about other your experiences.

[Curio]

Nope. Everything pretty the same as of 0.7 depending mobs.
It's RNG thing

[Megabass]

Yeah it's all about par for the course as far as I can tell. I mean I've seen some dangerous stuff early on, but nothing that couldn't have happened in older builds.

If anything I'd say the early .8 is easier, what with all the artifacts getting thrown around and the armor un-nerfing.

[danr]

The armour un-nerfing did come at a cost - randarts can no longer have AC or EV bonuses, and robes can only be enchanted to +2, leather to +3, so it is harder to get AC with an EV-oriented character.

[Grimm]

Ranged attack monsters are smarter - they don't close as readily.

[Tiber]

I believe they also got rid of some of the easier uniques, or made it so they appear earlier.

[joellercoaster]

Ranged attack monsters are smarter - they don't close as readily.

Yup.

I like this change very much, but it doesn't change the fact that my EE just got completely pwned by a centaur in the wrong place...

Joel
Back to the drawing board

(BTW I don't think 0.8 is harder particularly - some abusive stuff got taken out, some useless stuff got replaced by useful stuff. It's all just stuff, and stuff is good.)

[TGW]

It's about average for a Soup version in terms of power. Some stuff was nerfed (mostly OP stuff), some things were added.

A good thing about 0.8 is that MarvinPA has been fixing a ton of awful features. Sandblast, Stone Arrow, Static Discharge, and LRD are much improved, while Slow, Ring of Flames, Teleport Other, Warp Weapon, Dispersal, Control Undead, and Death Channel were all reduced in level. (There are also a number of other bad spells removed, and some decent to good ones added.)

There's some stuff I don't like about 0.8 (ench split is currently a mess, for example), but in general there's always a ton of awesome new shit. The best part of Crawl is that the game is always perceptibly improving.

[pratamawirya]

The overpowered new spell, Tornado, gave me my first win ever.

I like the changes to Okawaru (Heroism and Finesse are really cool).

[Moose]

The overpowered new spell, Tornado, gave me my first win ever.

I wish people would stfu and quit calling Tornado overpowered until I manage to abuse it and get a win!! Been trying for a few weeks now. shhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[whelen]

I'd argue that casters got indirectly nerfed in this version. Fully implementing spell noise makes things like mephitic and the storm spells far less attractive (enjoy having half of zot running in your direction!)

And, maybe it's just me, but the spawn rate for monsters seems more harsh as a caster, probably because I'm resting to regain mp. What exactly is the formula for packs spawning on a dungeon level after its been cleared out, anyway?

Melee naturally got help from the AC buff, but they're still not exactly durable. AC doesn't stop smiting, hellfire, LCS, breath attacks, and it only helps so much against stone giants and other hard hitters.

Final point: recently implemented monsters are much more grueling to fight than those in 0.7 and 0.6. Think elephant packs, redone ettins, the abyss' deep dwarves, Mennas, that silence wraith, and just a whole bunch of enemies that aren't necessarily unbalanced, but they're big HP tanks that are a pain in the butt to deal with.

[galehar]

I'd argue that casters got indirectly nerfed in this version. Fully implementing spell noise makes things like mephitic and the storm spells far less attractive (enjoy having half of zot running in your direction!)

The noise of mephitic and firestorm hasn't changed. Casting noise has been fixed, but for those spells most of the noise comes from the explosion, not the casting.

[whelen]

I'd argue that casters got indirectly nerfed in this version. Fully implementing spell noise makes things like mephitic and the storm spells far less attractive (enjoy having half of zot running in your direction!)

The noise of mephitic and firestorm hasn't changed. Casting noise has been fixed, but for those spells most of the noise comes from the explosion, not the casting.

Okay, thanks for the clarification. Is the spell noise display on the spell screen just in the interest of transparency then, or have there actually been changes to the system (ie things have gotten louder or softer)?

[galehar]

Okay, thanks for the clarification. Is the spell noise display on the spell screen just in the interest of transparency then, or have there actually been changes to the system (ie things have gotten louder or softer)?

It's for transparency, but while I implemented it, I realized that some targeted spell (like bolt spells for example) didn't make noise correctly and I fixed it. There's still a page on the dev wiki with all the changes I made.

[lucy_ferre]

0.8 feels slightly easier, but it's significantly more fun than 0.7 imo.

[danr]

I have to say, I've tried a couple heavy armour berserkers now in trunk, and it's still a challenge, esp. if you focus on two-handed weapons (no shield). AC seems to do diddly-squat for a lot of ranged attacks, and without a shield and without magic and without EV, you're just a bigger pincushion for those merfolk and yaktaurs and enemy casters. I guess that's what BIA is for, maybe I need to spam that more.

That's my impression anyway. Combining heavy armour and two-handed weapons seems to be a bad idea, which seems counter-intuitive.