The Tavern

General thread for comments about trunk and new features and feedback.

Let the devs know here what you're noticing in Trunk and how awesome (or terrible it is). Post your version you're playing.

Post what you're seeing that you like or don't like!

There's Reaching on polearms discussion.

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Me? I currently love that when you go to a level that used to be a dozen rooms in a rectangular formation separated by 1-width corridors, the ends of the corridors are now capped by doors. (crawl_tiles-0.10-a0-763)

LOVE IT.

Small change, but it adds atmosphere and works well for me.

As noted in this thread, I find gaining random skills bewildering. I guess I can accept it if that's the new design, but I don't understand it yet.

I generally find all of the skill changes to be drastic improvements... I just wish the (!) toggle were back, as it helps me know how close I am to getting the next level so I can pay more attention, and shut off the gain at the right time. Not sure why the decision was made to hide this information.

Since this morning, you get to see a decimal to the skill level. Shutting down a skill at the right time is less crucial now that you get benefit from partial skill levels.

So the experience screen is now set to focus by default, and to turn focus mode off we have to change the option "skill_focus", right? I don't see that option in the options file, and just adding "skill_focus = false" doesn't change anything. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

Edit: this is on CAO, by the way. Trying to edit the options file through telnet.

ElectricAlbatross wrote:So the experience screen is now set to focus by default, and to turn focus mode off we have to change the option "skill_focus", right? I don't see that option in the options file, and just adding "skill_focus = false" doesn't change anything. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

Edit: this is on CAO, by the way. Trying to edit the options file through telnet.

Right, I forgot to add it to the default option file (fixing it). I don't know why it doesn't work for you. I've tested again and it works perfectly fine. You can try setting it to "toggle" too.

What is the option for printing your spellcasting statistics to the character dump?

Stormfox wrote:What is the option for printing your spellcasting statistics to the character dump?

UNCOMMENT in init.txt

Code:: dump_order += spell_usage

Or just add "spell_usage" to any uncommented part of the dump order lines. I love this addition and it should be retroactively put into prior versions in the next patch, and activated as default.

"You hit the ooze. The ooze is stunned!"

Is this the M&F stunning effect that people were talking about recently? I had no idea that it went in.

That's exciting. So is the goal for each weapon category to have it's own quirk/feature? So far we have:

Polearms - reaching
Maces/Flails - stunning
Short blades - stabby superiority/quickness
Long Blades - ?
Axes - ?
Staves - just the presence of magic staves, or something more?
Ranged - well, rangedness...

Sorry hope I'm not getting too OT

I'm playing a new Octopode named Cthulhu in the new trunk its pretty fun so far.
However it seems like they are pretty much built to be mages and Melee isn't a good idea for them, so would bumping their Conj apt up to +1 be a good idea?

I mean how else do these guys plan on killing things early on? B-Slapping a Hydra with 8 rings sounds like it could be "fun"

I think this feature is new to trunk - the new "invisibility outline" where you can kind of see where maybe the target it if he's invisible.

You know, the white "person" (in tiles) that appears in a space near where an invisible creature is.

Anyway, I may have discovered a bug with it: I have noticed it many times, but it always appears next to the invisible target; it never seems to appear ON the invisible target, which is what you'd think SHOULD happen at least once in a while, considering the point of this effect is to give you an idea that an invisible creature is in a particular area.

That's been around since .7 or .8 in console. It shows a place you sensed the enemy. If the enemy is moving towards you, of course it is wrong by now. And it may have been wrong when it first appeared. You still need projectiles (in a corridor, hopefully) or explosions or something to have a good shot of hitting the invisible enemy, but it helps to know which way to run.

The skill screen display is getting much nicer. There is less toggling involved to get all the same information.

minmay wrote:
omndra wrote:I'm playing a new Octopode named Cthulhu in the new trunk its pretty fun so far.
However it seems like they are pretty much built to be mages and Melee isn't a good idea for them, so would bumping their Conj apt up to +1 be a good idea?

This hasn't been my experience. They get pretty substantial bonuses to unarmed melee, so while their defenses are likely to be worse than humans' for a while, they can do more damage. Besides, it's directly counter to balance to increase an aptitude for something a species is already skewed towards. For example, increasing merfolks' Polearms aptitude to +5 or their ice magic aptitude to +3 would not be a step forward; it only decreases the amount of choice involved in playing one.

Didn't think of that, you make a very good point.

jejorda2 wrote:That's been around since .7 or .8 in console. It shows a place you sensed the enemy. If the enemy is moving towards you, of course it is wrong by now. And it may have been wrong when it first appeared. You still need projectiles (in a corridor, hopefully) or explosions or something to have a good shot of hitting the invisible enemy, but it helps to know which way to run.

I'm talking about creatures right next to me that I am in melee with (orc wizards) who definitely are not moving around. I never seem to see the sensor on the actual square the invisible creature is on; if it ever appears, it is only ever next to the square. It should at least be sometimes accurate. I could be wrong, but I've just never seen it happen.

The sensor seems to be your best guess of where the invisible monster last was, as if you see where it disturbed the dust hanging in the air. Doesn't help you too much with where it is now, although I do get it every once in a while with a monster next to me who isn't moving and is definitely fighting with me.

I think XuaXua's concern is that the disturbance is ALWAYS adjacent to the invisible monster and NEVER on the same square.

ElectricAlbatross wrote:I think XuaXua's concern is that the disturbance is ALWAYS adjacent to the invisible monster and NEVER on the same square.

Possibly. I coded the tiles version in a hurry and when I tested, I had the feeling it didn't behave exactly like console. It needs more thorough testing, but I don't have the time for it now.

FYI, I noticed the same thing in windows tiles.

Saw a gnoll pack and they were all wielding clubs, which is a first (or maybe the first time I noticed). Do they not spawn with polearms anymore?

They don't always use polearms, just often.

The polearms with reaching change is great - it differentiates weapons for the player and makes monster packs much more interesting and dangerous. Terrain matters more to melee combat, because you care about the number of open squares 2 tiles away, not just the number of open squares right next to you. It's also neat that you can stab from 2 squares away, which is useful if you want to confuse and stab monsters but not have to chase them down.

Cheibriados no longer requiring the ponderous brand on your armor is an excellent change - it ensures that Chei's conduct is strictly movement speed, rather than movement speed and no randart armor. It also prevents you from cheating on the conduct by removing easily-disrobed equipment in a pinch. Plus, you don't get stuck having to search for a particular auxiliary armor type just so you can ponderousify it and fill your armor quota... or having to search for another one later so you can enchant it to the maximum before making it ponderous.

The change to draconian armor restrictions is not a good one, in my opinion; although it's interesting in a way to have a character who doesn't care about most armor yet has high AC, in practice choosing your body armor is the most important and difficult equipment choice, where you have the most options. Hunting down auxiliary items can be quite annoying (see above), and they are so extremely rare that typically there is one very obvious best item for each slot. Arguably the right solution is to make auxiliary armor items more common and interesting so that the body armor slot doesn't have to carry so much of the weight of your equipment decisions, but currently any character who is meant to make important armor decisions at all should probably have a body armor slot.

Letting draconians wear boots is slightly interesting, because they have intrinsic controlled flight already and just need boots of levitation to get permanent flight. It's also mildly amusing, in Tiles, to watch your draconian smite through the dungeon bare-chested =). But those probably aren't good enough reasons to make the trunk changes to draconians official.

Letting draconians wear bucklers is a good change; I don't think there was any especially good reason to exclude bucklers to begin with. Other races that can't use bucklers work that way because the regular shield becomes their buckler as the easy-to-use option, but draconians still had the normal skill requirement to negate the penalty of a shield or large shield. I would recommend reverting the other changes but letting draconians use bucklers.

Thasero wrote:The change to draconian armor restrictions is not a good one, in my opinion; although it's interesting in a way to have a character who doesn't care about most armor yet has high AC, in practice choosing your body armor is the most important and difficult equipment choice, where you have the most options. Hunting down auxiliary items can be quite annoying (see above), and they are so extremely rare that typically there is one very obvious best item for each slot. Arguably the right solution is to make auxiliary armor items more common and interesting so that the body armor slot doesn't have to carry so much of the weight of your equipment decisions, but currently any character who is meant to make important armor decisions at all should probably have a body armor slot.

Seconded. Also, being unable to don the virtually guaranteed troll armor (and later dragon armor if the resist gods are unkind) would be a prodigious pain in the posterior.

Thirded, more common aux armour is something I've wanted for a while. One way to counter the boost is to have them as all quite heavy (maybe not hats) and as a more radical change not have boots and gloves come in pairs, taking up more slots.

Reaching is awesome.

Bim wrote:Thirded, more common aux armour is something I've wanted for a while. One way to counter the boost is to have them as all quite heavy (maybe not hats) and as a more radical change not have boots and gloves come in pairs, taking up more slots.

Reaching is awesome.

That would add 2 extra slots overall though... Making resists and valuable evokes much easier to stack.

I like the idea of a race with no body slot that isn't squishy at the start a-la felids & octopodes. Curious about the specifics though. How high does the natural AC mutation go now? Do they gain additional resists beyond the rF+/rC+/etc?

Also this may be a dumb question, but is there a place to find these and other trunk changes listed and described? I'm looking at the changelog and the development planning page but don't see the draconian changes on either.

minstrel: The completely-accurate list of changes is the commit log on trunk: http://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commits/master

When a developer makes a change, they typically tag it with a short explanation of the change... although the short explanation is not necessarily enough if you aren't able to read the code; commit logs are meant as notes for other programmers. Also, there are a lot of changes per day, so you will have to do a lot of scrolling and reading if you want to keep up. Non-coders should only try to read the commit logs if they're desperately curious.

Sometimes trunk gets altered with some changes that are just being tested out, which I believe is the case for the draconian changes. Draconians were bumped with 1 extra point of AC from scales, which meant they had about the same total amount of AC. No other changes were made. I tried it out as a Cheibriados worshipper, so my draconian had bonus resistances, EV, and SH when I played.

i do like the new draconians. you get slightly higher AC at the cost of resists (at least for a long time, and unless you get lucky with artifacts). it's flavourful: they were always supposed to have strong natural armour, and wearing heavy armour on top of that was a bit silly and a pain with a -4 apt, so there was a choice but it didn't amount to much (as long as you want to use magic at all). it's strange not being able to don a simple robe, but it's better than a drac wearing dragon armour.

Does this mean my mottled draconian can't murder, skin, enchant, and wear his brethren?

Eji1700 wrote:Does this mean my mottled draconian can't murder, skin, enchant, and wear his brethren?

Yes. Although, if you're into this kind of things, you can always play as a Troll

In theory I like this change, as previously draconians had identical armour restrictions to ogres and trolls, but this makes them unique. It also makes sense from a flavour point of view (draconians have wings so robes etc won't fit over them.)

I guess it's probably a slight nerf as it is easier to get useful resistances from a robe or dragon armour than from boots or gloves, and this may affect the relative strength of the draconian colours (those that get an innate useful resist are probably nerfed slightly less, though this is just a guess...)

It might be nice to see them get a second strong mutation at level 21 or so if this turns out to be an overall nerf.

Without getting too far into the demonspawn random mutation theme, you could have a couple color-dependent random mutations, or maybe player choices. Red could either get a second pip of fR or molten scales that do fire damage when an enemy hits, green could either upgrade breath weapon to have a chance of miasma in each clouded square (pure miasma would probably be overpowered) or dark shadowy scales with stealth++, purple gets a knockback component to their breath or MR scales, etc.

It would certainly be nice to see them all have a breath weapon that continues to get frequent use into the late game, since it's so thematic of the race.

After I wrote this, I just noticed on the wiki that it looks like they did get some upgrades recently. Haven't played them in a while so maybe that's already true.

some get slight upgrades too, but it's rare (yellow and green, off the top of my mind).
draconians are fine now, with good AC and mostly useful properties (breath, apts, resists). some are better than others, but the differences are slight. red, white, green, black get good resistances, mottled and pale are immune to their breath (both of which are useful), and purple gets MR. grey doesn't feel much like a draconian but it's strong.

their breath weapon (and sometimes resists) are upgraded in dragon form, but i'm not sure if it's just bumping numbers or, say, mephitic turns into poisonous cloud. there's some room for improvement there.

Just playing around with a drac monk right now and one thing that's occurred to me is that Okawaru's gifts suddenly get much nicer when you take away body slots as an option for gift giving.

I don't know who adjusted the x command to always mention the terrain type (eg "A Floor" vs. "Some Shallow Water") but it really helps a lot in console.

Thanks!

Naga are way overpowered with Constriction. My Naga is simply ruining this game.

The constriction formulas in the game right now aren't supposed to be permanent, and the overpoweredness is an acknowledged problem.

The formula for monster damage isn't terrible, but the one for players damage to scale with XL (at the very least), and the one for escaping needs redoing. Someone just needs to come up with better formulas.

Regarding changes to various vaults to make them either HAVE or NOT HAVE potions/rings of levitation, or the appropriate access necessities lying around nearby (I know I saw something about this recently):

I am playing latest trunk as of the time of this post.

The last 3 different Sewer vault variations I've been in with hidden areas (including the one where there is a small corner of stone across the lake that opens to a treasure room and the one with all the circular areas and the entrance to one is surrounded by deep water), I've found zero potions of levitation. These portals show up early enough that those potions should exist in these vaults. I can forgive a bailey or spider nest for screwing me, but The Sewers needs potions of levitation (alongside potions of poison, etc.)

I can chalk these three instances up to chance, but if I keep seeing it, I'm calling foul.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but sometimes the character I start immediately after the death of the previous one gets his skills! E.g. I start a Conjurer, but he already has Evocations, Armor and Staves, which, I recall, my previous char had.

XuaXua wrote:I can chalk these three instances up to chance, but if I keep seeing it, I'm calling foul.

I'm not sure what's the problem here. Portal vaults aren't supposed to guarantee access to the loot. Sometimes you can't access the loot because monsters are too tough, sometimes you can't because you can't levitate nor cling nor swim. Potions of levitation in portal vaults are there to avoid the player accidentally locking himself. Sometimes you can find some to help you get the loot, but they are not mandatory.

PerverseSuffering wrote:Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but sometimes the character I start immediately after the death of the previous one gets his skills! E.g. I start a Conjurer, but he already has Evocations, Armor and Staves, which, I recall, my previous char had.

This thread is to comment on new features. To report bugs, please use mantis.

galehar wrote:
XuaXua wrote:I can chalk these three instances up to chance, but if I keep seeing it, I'm calling foul.

I'm not sure what's the problem here. Portal vaults aren't supposed to guarantee access to the loot.

Historically, it has seemed that sewers generate with potions of levitation. If there isn't any loot to gain in the portal beyond the "secret room" and there is no way to access it, then that's foul.

Sewers generate early enough that it is unlikely for the player to have levitation access, and that's what is needed for any of these.

Can't use blink as there is nowhere to land - entrance is over water.
Non-Potion Levitation only works if you have the spell or ring, the first of which is likely for FEW characters, the latter of which is unlikely.
Swimming? Sure, if you're a merfolk. I wouldn't expect a reliable ice form this early.
Can't use teleport and don't expect control to be accessible this early in the game.
Passwall? Maybe, I think. I am not sure access to a wall is given. MUCH too early for LRD power.

Giving a single potion of levitation **in the sewers** (remember, I'm not referring to deeper portals here) makes sense as long as you also toss down some "trap" potions like poison, mutation, or even strong poison (that'll teach 'em!). Sewers can force the potion-tasting minigame; they always do with me, but as noted, lately I have seen zero reward for my risk.

I think the potions of levitation are only guaranteed in the merfolk sewer because otherwise the sickly siren at the end will mesmerize you in deep water, out of melee range. She won't approach close enough to actually attack you, and you can't hit back because she's too far out, but you can't maneuver away either. So you get to slowly starve to death, one tick per button press. Or if you're a mummy, you literally get to mash . for years and years of real-time before the farming clock gives you the alternate ending where the world outside the dungeon ends. That's a different issue than missing a bit of consumable loot, and a much more dire one.

I love being able to see the percentage of spell success, but with the shroud removed, I think I have noticed something.

Naga Gladiator. Starts with buckler and armor, but no skill.
Finds a spellbook of Summonings.

Memorizes abjuration. Spellcasting is 1.7, Summonigs is 0, Armor is 0, Shields is 0.7
Int is 11
Unarmored, no shield:
Abjuration failure is 91%
Unarmored, wielding Buckler,
Abjuration failure is 91% (unchanged)
Armored (troll leather), no buckler
Abjuration failure is 99%
Armored (troll leather), wielding Buckler
Abjuration failure is 99%

Quaff potion of intelligence.
Int 16
Unarmored, no shield:
Abjuration failure is 13%
Unarmored, wielding Buckler,
Abjuration failure is 13% (unchanged)
Armored (troll leather), no buckler
Abjuration failure is 17%
Armored (troll leather), wielding Buckler
Abjuration failure is 34%

So... Do buckler spellcasting penalties only apply if you're wearing armor, or did I find a bug?

KoboldLord wrote:I think the potions of levitation are only guaranteed in the merfolk sewer [...]Or if you're a mummy, you literally get to mash . for years and years of real-time before the farming clock gives you the alternate ending...

The potions don't help mummies...

XuaXua wrote:Do buckler spellcasting penalties only apply if you're wearing armor, or did I find a bug?

You would have seen this quirk with the old display. 13% fail and 17% fail would have both been "Very Good". 34% fail would have been "Fair".

evilmike wrote:
XuaXua wrote:Do buckler spellcasting penalties only apply if you're wearing armor, or did I find a bug?

You would have seen this quirk with the old display. 13% fail and 17% fail would have both been "Very Good". 34% fail would have been "Fair".

Right, it would have been glossed over, which is expected with a text display that handles ranges.
What I didn't understand was that you are not penalized for having a shield and no shield skill when not wearing armor.
In the text, if the text didn't change, I'd just assume it was within the same range, but with more of a chance of failure.
With the percentages, I see an exact number and see proof of zero change. That's what got me.

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