It breathes -more- You have died. Let's play Angband!

In v3.10, it seems that ego items are generated earlier and more plentifully, so I can very easily believe that Westernesse weapons can be dropped by Farmer Maggot. And yeah, they're incredibly valuable: They give stat bonuses and slay just about everything, not unlike in ToME. The only more vaulable ego-type (in my estimation) is Defender - a weapon that provides all four basic resistances.

Speaking of resistances, both Angband and Nethack have a depth-resistance style of play (although in Nethack it's much more forgiving, thanks to wishes and corpse-eating) - does ToME have anything similar?

Hm... The precompiled build for Windows I'm playing is 3.0.9, and I thought that was what I was playing on Linux too. I'd have to check, though.

Anyway, to try to resemble staying on topic: Since Westernesse in ToME allows you to detect all sorts of bad things, might it have been a good idea to keep it on hand and occasionally equip it to see some of the monsters around you, or is having such massive amounts of money this early more useful?

EDITING TIME: In fact, I just checked, and I am running 3.0.9b on Linux.

@dtsund: you'll see next update. And yeah, pots of healing are the same.

@Stiv: yes, but it's not such a rule and more of a strong guideline. The resistances per depth are mostly the same along the four main-game dungeons (which can come right after another, i.e. barrow-downs ends at floor 10 and mirkwood starts at 11), but there's a very large amount of side dungeons and some of them you can get through with two or three resistances that are important for that area. These are the ones that don't have hounds or multi-colored dragons. :P So all relatively early-game. You eventually need to get your shit together, of course. With the large proliferation of items I talked about earlier, it's not too hard and I usually don't have to halt my progress altogether because of a lack of a resist.

[edit] a question - does Angband have the egotype "of Nothingness". That is, a Short Sword of Nothingness (1d4) (-70, -89) with the 'can't attack' flag?

No, there is no Nothingness flag. Are they generated cursed? That'd make sense...

*sigh*

I just lost the character I'd been using for more than a month. I had Nether resistance! I shouldn't have taken over 400 damage from Nether breath! I'd meant to heal! I was at speed +40 from equipment alone! NOOOOOO

So I downloaed ToME and I think different versions suck. I've got one which only has the five races and it looks like a whole bunch less classes as well. You know whether I'm more up to date than you, or lagging behind?

Get version 2.3.5.

3.0.x is a bunch of alphas, and I wouldn't use it for serious playing. Last I tried (2 years ago, admittedly), they were horribly unstable. 2.3.5 is the latest stable version.

Bark sets off towards the temple of his battle-god. Along the way, he stops by at one of his forest homes of yore (unfortunately (?), Fangorn Forest is not a dungeon). There's still one necessity he needs to pick up.


Welcome to Lothlorien, home of douchebag elves. This is a fully-equipped town, complete with its own set of quests (the first of which gives you a house here, like Bree). In fact, it's more than comparable to Bree - it's even got a church!


Ok, for crazy elves a 'church' consists of 'pretty waterfall where they sit and contemplate nature amidst orc guts', but it's the thought that counts. Those colored-0 altars over there would let Bark kneel before a deity of his choosing and begin to worship... if he hadn't already been worshipping a god, that is. The other god, Melkor the Evil Bastard, has his altars randomly strewn throughout dungeon levels and is not worshipped here.


And, typical of Elves, they don't have what you actually need on hand. That doesn't stop them from offering their own sage 'advice', however. Tempting as they are, those Cesti of Slaying would replace our only source of free action, and that Potion of Strength would drain our money funds.

Ol'bark, however, is at once a hasty Ent and, yet, still an Ent. He has no use for money. He grabs that Potion of Strength asap, and up it goes, from 24 to 25. The immediate benefit is that he can wear slightly more armor without becoming encumbered and losing massive amounts of AC (barehand combat pretty much requires light armor only -- and Bark isn't even a true Monk, which would have the dodging skill, which functionally requires him to wear nothing but amulets, rings, and maybe gloves and a cloak if he's lucky).

He still needs that other necessity, though. He shakes his head and decides it just can't be helped. On, he heads, to that land of capitalism and commerce, to dirty superstitious humans: he heads to Gondor.






FINALLY some shop in the game has wands of fucking noxious cloud. These are vital, because at this point they pretty much say 'point and kill anything in a radius-2 area'. They're kind of expensive, but they're sooooo worth it. They'll be necessary for this Trial and Tribulation Barky is about to take.

Speaking of which, it's just to the north of Gondor.


The structure of these quests is pretty simple. Once you find the (randomly-placed, within many restrictions) entrance to the temple, in you go, and you search through 5 floors for a ~ that your god finds pleasing for some reason unbeknownst to us poor mortals. The piece has about a one-third chance of being generated each floor, and it's guaranteed to show up on the fifth floor if you make it that far. The kicker is that the relic is only generated once, and if you miss it and move on to the next floor without picking it up, not only do you fail this quest but you fail the rest of the god quests, of which their are five total. Your reward is skill points: your god gives you five points in your Prayer skill for the first four quests, and ten for the final quest, such that if you mess these quests up you lose a very significant portion of your character build.

Now why would Bark put up with this gigantic clusterfuck again? What is Tulkas doing for us? Well, gods have spells of their own, which use the Prayer skill, and this is his first:

Those critical hits are more effective than normal, too. That spell basically reads "at spell level 20 do three times damage". That is what Tulkas does for us.

But that's not all! In addition to a couple other mediocre god spells, he gives us access to the Earth school of magic, using the prayer skill as the magic school skill. Earth gives us Stone Skin, which boosts your AC, Strike, a force ball that slams monsters back, and - vitally important, if Ol'bark ever gets far enough along to fight chain-summoners - Stone fucking Prison and Earthquake. The former drops a wall of stone (it should be wood for an Ent, damnit) around a target, blocking line-of-sight and breaking all sorts of shenanigans, and the latter might as well just say 'dump granite all over'. Great stuff.

That is what Tulkas does for us.

As of yet, Bark has no points in Prayer since his Piety is too low to cast god spells. However, Tulkas will change that himself, and by then he'll probably have enough Piety (from killing evil monsters) to make buying a book of Divine Aim worthwhile. It won't be at spell level 20 anytime soon, but it'll be a great help regardless.

So yeah, all these reasons combined, plus the previously-seen fact that you get god quests randomly as you level up - meaning, you could theoretically be too slow completing them and miss out, since you can only have one at a time and the level cap is 50 - means these quests need to be completed asap. And that's why Bark is scrunching into a small, narrow stone passage even as we speak.

the only reason he waited until level 12 was because I lost like 5 characters to fucking ambushes on the world map before I rolled Bark

And that's why Bark brought along a bunch of scrolls of magic mapping. You need to explore everywhere on every level for these quests, and since missing a passage could prove devastating and since you really, really, really need to know what you have and haven't already explored, Bark will now light the map squares he's already seen with his mind. Psychically. Or maybe he's just setting small fires using accumulated detritus every 10 feet, who knows.


But before he turns that option on, he discovers that the temple is a clearing-house for old, obsoleted uniques! Like this guy here, who doesn't even drop anything. Smeagol usually shows up around here too, if you haven't yet offed him. Moving on.




Bark is actually having a lot more trouble here than I remember appropriate for Tulkas temples. Incessant respawns of slightly-levelled monsters (Snagas aren't usually level 12. Try more like 6) combined with a lack of equipment equals taking a beating. He's not in any imminent danger, but he's getting worn down, and resorting to Noxious Cloud more than he would like.


Also, his remaining stock of gold is getting whittled away by these things. He can't bring himself to waste a noxious cloud charge on something so fragile, but then they wake up and steal from him repeatedly.


All in all, this dungeon feels much more like a traditional Angband dungeon than many other parts of ToME. Solid stone walls, exploring whole levels... it's got the works. That's actually one of the things I don't like about Angband -- the dungeon is so bland. It has no character. I'm sure this changes the further along you get (if there aren't ribbons of lava running around near the end I'll be very disappointed), but all the same, I prefer more than one wall symbol. I'm revealing just how much time I've spent with vanilla angband right here, eh?

This entire place is claustrophobic.


Of course, being a roguelike, there is of course an abundance of insta-death scenarios. That Death Sword looks like a normal piece of equipment, but if you aren't watching your monster list carefully (or if you don't have a separate window with the monster list displayed set up), the thing will murder you as soon as you step in melee. Ol'bark lost that 60% of his health in one turn. Guess iron really is supereffective against wood.


And on we go.


On the fourth floor he spots a purple shiny over yonder. He shuffles over to it, holds it up, and...




Tulkas is quite pleased.

Bark hates this solid, lifeless stone, so he reads a scroll of recall immediately and heads back to Lothlorien. And now it's time for the denoument. Anybody who's played a roguelike before knows how your first really substantial trip into the dungeon ends: lots of sell-IDs for crap you found on the ground. And he found a lot of crap.


Imagine that, except twice as long. I can't see why the shopkeepers put up with him.

NEXT UPDATE: this game is completely broken. And seriously, it'll be very soon, so keep an eye out. I know what I promised last time, but I mean it.

You moron!

Is there just a lot of flavor text when you sell things in ToME, or do things like "So when I die, the first thing I will see in heaven is a score list?" mean something? What was that about killing that representative of the black market? Also also, what are the risks and repercussions of stealing something from a shop? Is it like NetHack, where you run a very serious risk of dying immediately?

...
...
...

Also also also, what was the deal with that 4d5 Long Sword? Are they normally 4d5 in ToME? In Vanilla, if I see a 4d5 Long Sword, I can know instantly that it's one of the game's most powerful and valuable artifacts...

I have curiosity!



I feel like I should point out the shopkeeper "Gary Gygaz". RIP, good sir. Yes, I know it's actually Gygax.

Lots of questions!

That's just random flavor text, yeah. Often the shopkeepers have zany little quotes they say after you do business with them. The best one: "What happens if you wear a Ring of Extra Ring Fingers (-2) {cursed}?" (no, there are no rings of extra fingers)

He's just one of the level-0 town populace. Like beggars and drunks, except he can steal from you. I killed him on the way to a different shop.

Your chance to steal is based on your DEX and the weight of the item. If you steal, you get the item for free, obv (but you can't ever sell it). If you fail, you just get kicked out of the shop for a very large amount of time.

Yeah, it's a reference to an artifact. I think this one is cursed and has the aggravate_monster flag, though. The quote itself was said at the death of some puny low-level unique whose name I've completely forgotten.

Hope this helps.

Oldbark left off back in Lothlorien, having just appeased Tulkas and learning how to pray. That done, he can return to his original pursuit: scourging the bowels of the Barrow-Downs. With that in mind, he travels back to Bree to smear some minor orcs over the walls.


He's also filling in the overworld at a prodigious rate. Maybe he thinks that if he explores every square he'll find an ent-wife? LotR lore: long ago, all of the female ents just up and vanished one day, and the male ents have never been able to find where they went.


He enters BDw 1 in order to reset his Scrolls of Recall, but... a fate? He had one? That's worrying. It means I wasn't paying attention when it popped up, and so I didn't divine it and find out what I was walking into.

This fate seems pretty innocuous, though.


Seems he was fated to meet that aimless-looking merchant (a weak, useless town NPC) on level 1. They don't normally spawn here otherwise. Kinda wish he'd been fated to find something useful (maybe an artifact!), or at least given the opportunity to kill a unique, but oh well. At least it wasn't 'fated to DIE', which spawns you in a giant arena level with monsters from depths of up to like 100 floors. Last time I got one of those, Gothmog, Captain of the Balrogs rained fiery death on my poor low-level sack of meat from across the map.

Anyways, one turn later, Oldbark reads a scroll of recall. This resets his recall location to this dungeon (as opposed to the lost temple). Once he appears back in bree, he reads another one to warp back into the barrow-downs, except this time, he picks up where he left off.


Boy, there sure are a lot of princesses in this world. Tolkien must have left something out. One noxious cloud, however, is sufficient to clear out all of these low-level brown yeeks in a single turn. Out of the rewards, he chooses a crossbow.


Also, I found a manly potion. As terrible an idea as it is, I really really want to drink it. Thankfully, Oldbark isn't as hasty as I am.


What's this? A second type of quest? It's about time.


... to a giant slug? I'm not sure anybody should help him. He'd probably trip and impale you while thanking you.


To clear this quest, we have to kill x amount of monsters. Unlike the princess quests, however, these monsters are scattered throughout the level, instead of being trapped in one room. This means you play the level... just like you would in Angband, except you get a prize at the end. Let's get to it!


Being massively overlevelled means we can just walk through the monsters here without incident. Even if they're giant, and slugs. Or even a slug that has a sword.


Also, at about this point the structure of the barrow-downs starts changing. The mountains (^s) start disappearing, to be replaced with trees. And ents can walk through trees, as shown here. This makes exploration of the levels go even more quickly.


Along the way, we pick up a nice coaligned firebird. Cool. This thing does decent damage for this dungeon level, too. Oftentimes it clears half the room while Oldbark is clearing the other half, since it's so fast. Unfortuantely, since it's not a companion, it only sticks around for this floor, but the thought is greatly appreciated.


Anyways, Bark smears the last of the slugs into a brownish paste, and the adventurer teleports over out of the shadows. He thanks us profusely, and offers to... join us? wtf? He lost his sword to a bunch of slugs, and he thinks he can help us?

hahahah yeah uh NO, shadow-teleport notwithstanding.

He's not done yet, though. He has to do something, he feels. And so he offers us knowledge.


That's more like it. Except... weaponmastery? Necromancy? What is he trying to pull, here?

Bark goes with necro on a lark, just because he can (not archery, because he'll use wands for ranged damage). And so a hypocrisy is born: an ent, guardian of living things, that has learned some of the secrets of perverting death. Or something. I think he was just curious.

'Fumblefingers' quests, as that poor adventurer is affectionately called, aren't mandatory in the same sense that princess quests are (princess quests aren't really mandatory either, but at least she hides the stairs). You can just skip them. Like with these stairs over here, which we'll be using now.


Seriously, someone get this guy a scroll of recall. I mean, at least he lost his sword to something human this time, but still.


Since combat right about now really isn't too interesting, I thought I'd see what these guys could actually do, instead of murdering them out-of-hand. And... well, they're kinda annoying. They hit for nothing, but their spells (which they almost never cast) could make life miserable for someone new to the game, who didn't know any better and went straight into the Downs as his first action in the game.

Bark spent the time composing a new song in Entish.


Much better choices this time. Our best choices are either magic, which mostly governs how many spell points you have (as of now, we have 25, but that will change once we start finding stat-up potions and bring that INT up to something respectable), or spirituality, which governs saving throw. Of course, when I write it out like that, it's obvious. Spirituality it is.


Next quest is another princess quest. If you were curious, these are the only two types in the game. You may find that distressing, just reading about it, but it's really not all that bad. You get awesome loot, and it's not like you had much else to do on the boring initial levels like this anyways.


The lead-filled mace is pretty tempting, so we pick that.


The next level is another princess quest (for Driders, this time), but as our inventory is overflowing it's time to warp back out.


fuck yeah


Also, the mace goes for quite a lot. Defender's a great egotype, and the game seems to agree. With this much gold, our next purpose can be fulfilled.


First, we buy a couple scrolls of *identify*, though.






Then we travel to Gondolin. Up in a corner, in an easy-to-miss spot, is a thunderlord nest. They perform various services, such as recalls and... teleportation. To a specific dungeon-level. And you can write the name of the dungeon in manually.

Orc Cave 21 approaches! Command?


Huh? What kind of a level feeling is that? And why is the level named Deathwatch?

Oldbark emerges from his little corner of the level into a giant, open room, filled with orcs. Instantly his eyes dilate, and he screams, and wakes them all up. It's on.


They are quite overmatched, especially with his ring of invisibility. They know he's there, but they can't see him, so they just wander around erratically. For some odd reason, he can still be targetted by arrows and spells, however. He makes it a priority to finish off the shamans and archers first.


Heading north, there are still more orcs. This seems to be a dead end, though.


Or is it? Tunneling in the right spot (most of the walls are invincible) reveals a piece of equipment lying on the ground.

*Identify* it, and you get...


hot damn. Except he can't wear it now, because one of those shamans cursed his current armor.


Heading west from the large room instead, Oldbark stumbles across a unique and his retinue. You know what this means.


Time to stop them from breathing. Have I mentioned how good Noxious Cloud is yet?


This orc has some swagger to him. Oldbark decides to draw him out, so he can kill him in an empty spot and make it easier to identify whose loot is whose.


He drops nothing of note. A couple weapons with (+3,+5) or something useless like that.


Heading north, he hits the barracks. After rampaging through, he discovers another breakable wall. Behind it is a sword.


Swordmasters have it so easy.




We're not done with the level yet, though. The toughest part is just ahead.


When I said 'toughest', that implied that these enemies would actually damage Oldbark. My apologies. They're too busy dying to do much. There's another unique around here, though. Luckily for him, Oldbark picked up a second type of wand from one of his minions: a wand of Fireflash.

He points it at the unlucky orc unique.


Awwww, lame. It murders a few orcs out-of-hand, though. And not only does it have a pretty big radius, it sometimes leaves behind pools of lava.

Oldbark pastes Golfimbul against the wall as per usual, and then notices a glove all the way out here, by its lonesome. *ID* reveals...


The third, and last, guaranteed artifact on this special level. This replaces his gloves of agility.

We're done here. The stairs down are hidden behind a couple more tunnelable walls, but Bark finds them, and heads down.


This is Orc Cave 22, not coincidentally the last level in this side dungeon. Bark shoots off his wand of noxious cloud at these Ogrillions and prepares to read a scroll of Recall when... wait what?



Let's check that again.


fucking hounds. nexus breath grumble grumble. They did manage to do something useful, quite on accident, however: it turns out 21f is a dungeon town level! It has shops that sell lots of stuff you can't get anywhere else. Bark decides not to recall himself to the surface quite yet. Note that, while the level ID may say deathwatch, that's a bug -- deathwatch only occurs the first time you hit Orc Cave 21, and once you leave, it's gone forever.


the... the variant maintainer? What kind of a name is that? And indeed, it's not a regular enemy. I turned joke enemies on waaaaay back when I started the game, and this is the first one that's popped up.


Along the way, we discover location of the town. We also discover that the Maintainer has confuse breath, and can summon mass-breeding monsters.


Let's take this seriously. Bark quaffs a potion of speed and prepares to bear down on the Maintainer with all his might...


And the maintainer dies in one wave of the fireflash wand. That was anti-climactic.






The shops around here are pretty interesting. You may laugh at the footwear shop, but that'd be your folly - it can generate Boots of Speed. The demongear shop is useless to our character, unfortunately, but the potion shop is a nice source of cure insanity.


Another unique, this time Gon's queen, sits just outside the town. Being overloaded with gear, Bark tries to play nice and not antagonize them, and he finishes his rounds of the town.


That's a pretty nice cloak! It's very worth the 10k it costs, which is conveniently barely within Bark's purse to pay. He grabs it and steps outside to try it out. But not before the Kobolds outside wake up and hear his Ent self haggling with the shopkeep.

They attack en mass, ignoring his protestations that he's Gon's friend, and that he doesn't want to fight. He keeps that up for a long while, until one gets close enough for melee... and nicks his new cloak.

Oh man, all bets are off.

Fireflash one-shots Vort too. Silly queen. She really didn't know what she was getting into. It's a good thing too, because Kobolds, being poisonous, resist noxious cloud a lot. While Oldbark was probably not in any real danger, if he was surrounded it could have been alarming.

Anyways, Oldbark's done here. He warps back up to the surface. At this point, the early game is done, and while he still has to polish off the last levels of the barrow-downs (after buying a ring of resist fire) and maybe clear the Orc Caves level by level, the game is opening up in front of him. It's a good place to end this update.

This is his status right now, after selling all of the stuff he got from his jaunt in the dungeon.









You'll notice the book of divine aim. I was planning on buying that before hitting up deathwatch, but silly me forgot. Also, we never saw a good musical instrument either. It's kind of sad, really.

Unfortunately for his class, the chronicles of Oldbark, the ent bard who never sang, ended here. Stiv will be taking the reigns of this LP back shortly, and this is the last update that will feature Oldbark. I know I haven't quite measured up to Stiv, but if you guys at all enjoyed this then I've done my job, so I'm happy.

also, monks are hard to play once you get past the point where noxious cloud is good (about floor 30), and I'd probably get him killed if I kept going on for much longer, hah

Enjoy!

No more Oldbark?

Wait, you're leaving us?! Nothing against Stiv, of course, but I've really been enjoying your variant LP in the meantime. Any interest in continuing in another thread? Eh? EH?!

Sad to see it end, but it was a good run regardless. Thanks for the insight on the little variant that could, Vorpal.

Also, seconding Strider here; I would totally be up for a full TOME LP. Matter of fact, December's looking pretty empty right now...

Yeah, I think you might need to keep this going (time and other LP permitting). There's no point in quitting right after you got all that awesome loot!

PS: Regular Let's Play Angband resumes tomorrow! Are you guys ready to see something new and exciting? Because I was.

I do! I do!

Thirded. I really enjoyed this look at ToME, and I may have to look into it sometime. Perhaps when my current character bites it (or wins...).

I was also slightly surprised to see that all three of the artifacts you mentioned were artifacts from Vanilla (they even mostly have the same attributes)... for some reason, I thought that would be one of the things they'd have changed, since so much else has.

Oooh, yes.

If you live long enough to safely do so, you should farm greater demons (you see, most of them have the ability to summon more greater demons, so you can sort of kill just enough of them to keep the numbers constant...). I just tried this, and the results were awesome.

Welcome back to Let's Play Angband. This update is brought to you by me being (maybe) (hopefully) forever done with my GREs. If I'm not then I am going to be so sad. Like this: It is also brought to you by this delicious Bridgeport Haymaker. I do not usually like extra pale ales but this is like drinking sweet, succulent candy. Bridgeport, what style of beer will you make palatable to me next?

Maybe you missed me. Maybe you didn't (but I bet you totally did). But major thanks to VorpalEdge for keeping the LP going with some content while I was off studying, drinking, crying while studying, studying while drinking, and drinking while crying. I also played some Angband. Did you know that? You might have guessed, because this update is here. It might be a little short, but it's also a quasi-intermission, to help you all determine (once again) the future of Let's Play Angband.

This time, we're going to be inspecting the terrifying prospect of...Angband 3.11. That's right, I decided that it might be time to try out a little upgrade, and see if the user-friendliness of it will make it more likely to finish a game before this LP's one-year anniversary which is coming up in - believe it or not - four months. We've been playing for a long time. Well, not counting the breaks. There have been some good ones of those!

Let's start off with a character type that I haven't graced the LP with yet before: A ranger. Rangers are warrior/mage hybrids, and shoot things real good with their bows (and slings, and whatever else they can get their hands on). Curiously, this makes playing a ranger a bad idea under most circumstances, since being good at ranged weapons completely obviates the need for magic missile and all but the most powerful elemental bolt spells (which a ranger will never be able to cast reliably anyway). Half-elves make the best rangers, because they get small INT and DEX bonuses and have a very low (+10%) experience modifier to go with the ranger's enormous (+35%) one.



There are some things that are immediately obvious about Dr. Awesome. First, he has a great name. Secondly, his secondary stats are all now explained in an incredibly useful way and thirdly, are much, much lower than they were in the 3.0.x line. In particular it's now easy to understand what Searching and Disarming do; Dr. Awesome has a 1-in-3 chance of disarming a trap or finding a door in a single turn when performing the relevant action, and a 1-in-23 chance of finding a trap or secret door when moving. Saving throw is gravy.

Half elves also appear to have more infravision in the new version. I swear it used to only be one useless tile (10ft).



The town seems unchanged. That's an encouraging sign. If there was an inn or somewhere to get quests or a real estate office or a bookstore or something I would absolutely flip my shit after what happened last time. I would probably flip out so hard that I would make a completely retarded joke about ninjas here. Far eastern assassins are so wacky! Ha ha ha! I apologize and also please kill me.

There are also a plethora of new game options but none of them really matter, except for two because I think I mentioned them earlier; randarts (random artifacts) is no longer an alpha feature and smart monsters is still broken (as it has been since it was introduced in 2.8).



Let's check out our inventory. The obvious first thing is that all torches now automatically come with their maximum light allotment (5000 turns) and there's a scroll of Recall in our possession! That's new for rangers, which typically come with the standard food, light, first spellbook, some arrows, and.. equipment, which is suspiciously missing. Careful viewers will also notice the total burden/carrying % at the top, which is not as useful as you'd think outside of juggling equipment before going into the dungeon, or possibly in the very late game.



Checking equipment, we find that it's already been put on! What is this crazy world we live in, where equipment slots are already full upon creating a character, even the torch? We can just take that off for now, since running around town to build up equipment at the start of the game is just going to burn turns off. That, and I'm a terrible miser.



Because the ranger is a new class, I should explain a little bit about how the 'hybrid' classes (ranger and paladin) work. They function in nearly identical ways to the mage and priest, respectively, but are much better at combat (rangers with ranged weapons, paladins with hitting stuff real good) and learn spells slower and, of course, can't learn the most powerful spells out there. The interesting thing about the ranger is that it's sort of a compromise between the slow-learning support-only rogue and the magic-intensive mage; like I said rangers don't really need attack magic and are better served by learning a bunch of support magic like teleportation, identify, remove poison, and the like. Rangers and rogues are possibly the most balanced classes of the game to play as a result.

Let's head into the dungeon!



This is new too. What do you mean, a level feeling that I can understand in some way? It'll turn out that there are finer gradations of level feelings as well, which give much nicer clues about what you should be looking for, but of course still aren't perfect. I honestly like the new level feelings quite a lot.



Another feature new to 3.11 is that the game is actual proper ASCII now, with correctly sized tiles and everything. # are your standard walls and % indicates something you might want to tunnel through (dark grey is magma, which you can dig through relatively quickly, and white is granite, which is not so smart to go through unless you know there's something good at the other end).



The first levelup comes relatively quickly. I think the experience tables might have been rebalanced a little for the lower floors as well, because I don't ever remember a ranger gaining a level this fast. I do know, from monster recall (which is coming up, promise) that the new version is a little less crazy over fractional amounts of experience.



But perhaps the most welcome change in 3.11 is new dungeon generation code. Long-time readers might be able to determine (by now) that the map seen in the upper right here is unlike anything previously experienced in Angband; it's a little too twisty and folds back on itself in an unexpected way. We'll be seeing more examples of new dungeon generation as time goes on, but suffice to say that I actually enjoy it!



In another encouraging move, Fang is still present and he's just as much of a pushover (or danger, depending) as always. Most curiously there's the new color-coding of relevant information, especially the experience points. In ye olde angband, such a number would be 20.00 or some bizarre fractional number (16.67, etc.) but this version seems to favor rounding to the nearest tenth. I suspect that makes certain computations easier, not to mention more accurate. Getting into why this is the case would require an explanation of the IEEE floating point standard which I am not about to get into right now. I like details, but not that much.

To avoid another inappropriate Gon-style death, here we take potshots at spiders. This allows me to test out the ranger's new shooting capabilities too, and I can tell you straight up: If rangers start out being the class best at bows, I would never dare buy a bow as another class. Arrows connect roughly 60-70% of the time, which I guess is more in line with the new Shooting skill level that new rangers get, but still aggravating compared to the former near-perfect archery skills rangers used to be blessed with from level 1.



Here's something new as well. When I first got this message I immediately checked my inventory to see if the shield had been tagged as {average} as it should have been, and when I noticed that it wasn't, I wrote the inscription myself. What I failed to notice was that now, average pseudo-ID performs an actual ID on an item, meaning that average objects are always recognized for exactly what they are without a scroll of identify! This is very useful for certain tools, like for example, shovels and picks - because their digging modifiers aren't part of what you know intrinsically, and have to be "discovered" by IDing them. One can only hope that 'average' PID takes care of this ugly little issue as well now.

The wicker shield, of course, is also a new item. There's been a smattering of new equipment added to the game, but it was nothing special (to me), so I didn't make much of a note of it. But there are more options for what to buy in town now, especially in the way of armor.



And now, what might be my favorite addition to the new version. Earlier on this floor I got pickpocketed by a novice rogue, who thought that it would be fun to teleport away and only run into me again when I'd almost explored the entire level. But when I killed him, he dropped the money that he had stolen. That's right: Monetary theft is no longer a death sentence for early-game characters, and in particular, Smeagol is now only a serious problem if he steals from you and you then leave the floor.



This, by the way, is what a fully-mapped level looks like now. In particular, note the center-north block; it looks like a big mass of walls because that's a maze of twisty little passages (all alike) that don't connect to any large rooms. This, again, is a feature of the new dungeon generation algorithm.



Here's something interesting. I fully explored the floor before this one, but still got an "uncertain" level feeling; the game may now randomly generate these to discourage scumming. That's both kind of a dick move (any successful game is going to involve scumming, and this interrupts the flow of it) and something I appreciate (angband should not be about scumming).



Another neat new feature is finding stacks of items on the dungeon floor. This, believe it or not, also helps somewhat in casually IDing an item; bad potions (and scrolls) are more likely to show up in a huge stack, while more useful items will show up in smaller stacks. This appears to help with determining what to sell-ID, and, more importantly.. what to use-ID. As we'll see later, use-ID is actually a viable strategy in the lower floors of Angband now, although still dangerous when used casually.



So, two things; first of all, this level feeling is a total lie. An ego item at 50' is not a "little" luck - that's a huge boon. And secondly, you'll notice that the item isn't just tagged as {good} as it would be in previous versions; no, now Angband has several levels of pseudo-ID tagging, with {magical} indicating regular enchantment and.. who knows what signifies curses or artifacts. {magical} indicates items with negative enchantments as well, which may or may not be cursed. I never put one on to check.

The dagger, by the way, turns out to be fire-branded. A low-weight weapon with a 3x damage multiplier for most monsters? Score! This is a great thing to get.



I mentioned, long ago, that they rebalanced 3.11 to give depth to traps - but curiously, trapdoors remain one of those traps which show up early in the game. This is terrible, because they're probably the single most dangerous traps, although you can recover from them; they do massive falling damage and, of course, dump you in the middle of a dungeon level that you might not even be prepared to explore yet. Fortunately, Dr. Awesome is well-prepared for a slog through L3, or 150 feet.

By the way, I think that we're now at a point in the LP where I feel comfortable referring to dungeon levels in feet, instead of as a number. Every dungeon level represents 50' - so floor 6 is 300', 10 is 500', and so on. This will probably help with some of the confusion between dungeon level and player level, which I hate and which occasionally gets even me.



Curative potions also now heal a percentage instead of a fixed number of hit points. Plus, for players who are fucking crazy enough to attempt a no-rations game (yes, they exist) the amount of nourishment a potion provides is listed now as well.



Several types of mushroom have also been rolled into one ubermushroom that is kind of amazing, really. It's even better, because mushrooms (and all food, in fact) are one of those classes of item that tends to come in stacks.

I'll explain the next several screenshots at the bottom of them. This, for my money, is the coolest new feature.



First, Dr. Awesome has cast our old friend detect doors/stairs. This sets off the green DTrap indicator on the bottom of the screen, which at first confused me, and then I realized: That means that this area is safe from traps. That is awesome. But things get even better; as Dr. Awesome approaches the south, the DTrap indicator goes yellow, indicating that he's approaching uncharted territory and better be careful. And finally, when he steps on the other side of those green dots - that indicates that he's out on his own now.

That's right: The game now keeps track of the areas you've cast spells to detect traps and doors. This means that you'll never cast it twice on the same screen. To me, that's both an awesome and useful feature and something of a slick bit of programming. Adding this would have taken a number of nontrivial changes to the Angband source.



It even keeps track of your temporary resistances!



It also appears that you can sell bad, but uncursed, equipment now. That's a significant change.



Alright, time for a lesson in why use-ID is still bad. First of all, in my game, I wasn't as afraid (as usual) to use-ID items; worst that could happen was that my temporary character I was using to explore the wonderful world of 3.11 would bite it. So Dr. Awesome takes aim with an unidentified wand, and it turns out to be clone monster. I know I mentioned in the past that some players will intentionally summon and clone weak monsters to farm experience, but this is a bad situation: Dr. Awesome is not capable of taking on two large kobolds right now, even at full health.



The result is, as ever, predictable. However the death screen looks a little.. new! All the oldschool options are there but presented in a fancy new interface, which makes things easier to handle. Also, there's some (very convenient) spoiler generation, which I believe just dumps the spoiler information for things you've uncovered so far over this character's lifespan. I decided to investigate the un-ID'd equipment that was being carted around, and found this:



That is wicked crazy useful. Rings of Teleport were already items you put on in an emergency, but a speed bonus makes it even better! In fact, I bet that if a ring of teleport were generated with a +5 speed bonus it would never leave the equipment roster (well, okay, maybe it would).

That's all for this update of Let's Play Angband! It's nice to be back.

Question time! (just like they have in Parliament (and/or Funkadelic)) What character should I roll up next? You guys get to decide again, because you've seen, by now, almost all of the early game mechanics. And, although it might take longer between updates, do you guys want me to start skipping all the early-early game stuff so that we can move beyond well-charted territory?

There's also the question of which version of Angband do I play: Oldschool vanilla, or new fancy french vanilla? I'm alright with either one, but you, the audience, get to decide!

French Vanilla. And a Dunedan Ranger, just so we have our obligatory fanwank character in the LP (I don't think there've been any others, anyway).

Named Clive. Pretty please?

Play 3.11. That's god damn french vanilla with real vanilla bean bits in it. I'm a big fan of the upgrades you pointed out.

I'm kind of ambivalent about which version to play, but I'd kind of like to see a Paladin in action. Either Dunadan or Dwarf, depending on whether you'd prefer really high stats but rather slower leveling, or infravision + blindness immunity but no stealth.

Of course, in the long run, the importance of both infravision and the experience modifier tend to zero...

Oh, and I also like seeing the early-game stuff; always fun to see what good stuff you happen to luck into from Farmer Maggot and the other uniques.

Also:

Unless they changed it from 3.0.9b, I'm pretty sure walking around town with a torch equipped during the day doesn't waste turns, only at night. I might be wrong, though...

Wormtongue at 250'? Yikes, cheese it!

The best application of Clone Monster is to use it on Creeping Coins. Otherwise, no thanks; it also hastes the monsters, so I'd not want to use it for EXP farming.

Are you serious? I guess this is because I started playing Angband before there was detailed item recall, and never checked to see what the additional effects of Clone Monster were. I find it somewhat embarrassing that somebody who's played the game just since I started LPing it knows more about it than I do!