aesmael

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Angband V4
Was going to skip this one the first time around, but changed my mind.

V4 is a fork of Angband by the devteam of Angband themselves. Over the years they've copped a lot of flack from the player community for various changes they've introduced to Angband - many seem to believe that Angband is and ought to be an essentially complete game, which should be receiving maintenance and bugfixing, rather than development. Or disagreements about the pace or style of changes introduced.

The idea behind V4 is that in this branch the devs can trial more radical changes which, once they are polished and perhaps come to be well-regarded, might get ported to the main game, 'vanilla' Angband (also known as V (this terminology greatly pre-dates V4 itself)).

One change from Angband that I was playing previously (but which is in the latest official releases also), is the inclusion of a high quality tileset provided by Shockbolt as the default presentation, rather than ASCII. Wanting to surprise people with that is one reason I intended to skip V4 for the time being, before coming to what passes for my senses.

There is a handy text file available from the new game menu which explains the main changes in V4 from Vanilla Angband, most of which boil down to object generation: As best I can tell, objects have been streamlined so that there are now the basic object types and then variations magical or otherwise are applied to these as modifiers. E.g. there are no longer the objects 'fur cloak, mithril plate, blade of chaos'. Instead there are cloaks, plate armours and swords which might be generated with the corresponding affixes and thus possess the appropriately modified properties. This applies all the way from the very mundane items to the very powerful, but not to artifacts, which are the same as ever. More or less.

Item identification has been adjusted so that player characters, once they learn about properties on a particular item, will recognise those same properties on other items without having to go through the identification rigamarole again. Referred to as 'rune based' ID.

Combat revisions have been made in an attempt to force decisions to be more interesting - players now have 'finesse' and 'prowess' skills, and weapons have 'balance' and 'heft' qualities, which work best with particular combinations of these skills. Monsters now have an 'evasion' rating which affects how well they evade attacks, and instead of its former role in evasion, monster armour now affects how much damage a monster will absorb from hits.

Nope, can't describe those any better. Haven't played it yet. Let's find out!

Looks like our first victim will be a female hobbit mage, named Ezelin. All details randomly selected.

In the town, Ezelin buys a cloak from the general store before heading down into Angband. It may be foolhardy, but it seems easier to learn item changes by exploring instead of shopping. Apart from her new cloak, Ezelin carries only a book of basic magic spells, three rations of food, a scroll of Word of Recall, three wooden torches, and a dagger.

Level 1: This seems a quiet, peaceful place.

Here we learn that as an incentive to exploration, level feelings have been split. Rather than appearing all at once when you enter a new level, we first get a sense of how dangerous the level is, and only after exploring for a bit do you get the part of the feeling for how valuable the treasure is.

The first life Ezelin encounters in Angband is a white icky thing. It sleeps in the corner of a room and, seeing no need to disturb it, Ezelin leaves it be. The second is a grey mushroom patch. Unsure in the dim torchlight exactly how close her path comes by, Ezelin accidentally steps beside it.

The grey mushrooms release spores reflexively, confusing Ezelin. She attempts to retrace her steps, but in her confusion walks into a wall instead. The grey mushroom patch continues releasing its spores. Ezelin almost immediately dies from the toxic effect they have on her body.

Hobbit mages. They're vastly more fragile than Half-Troll Priests. Although there has been a concerted effort to make the game harder since version 3.2.0, I don't think that had anything to do with Ezelin's untimely end. Possibly that the radius of torchlight has been reduced, leading to her fatal misstep.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

On recommendation from various sources I purchased a copy of Guild Wars 2, a recently released MMORPG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_...). One of my partners had been playing and speaking enthusiastically of it for a few weeks, and I came across a rather glowing review from a source I tend to trust (local game review television show, with roots in a magazine I subscribed to when younger). Plus, it had the advantage of not requiring an ongoing subscription fee to play.

Previously I had only played World of Warcraft for a while, eventually quitting when the size of the update and installation downloads exceeded the size of the household's monthly data limit. So, I don't have much to compare Guild Wars 2 against, but the developers seem to have gone out of their way to fix all the interface annoyances and inconveniences that plagued World of Warcraft. The kind of thing which, by not having, causes one to realise how burdensome its existence had been.

Apart from interface stuff like being able to autosell junk and automating depositing useful items in the player's various storage locations without having to trek all the way to those physical locations every time - apart from that, it is also a lot of fun to run around in the game world and play.

Also like that one does not have to formally accept quests (although one can in dialogue agree to them), but for the most part it is structured that events are going on in the surrounding game world, and one can participate or not, and be awarded automatically for participation based on one's actions, without having to formally claim completion (or attempting, if it failed).

Well, I've only been playing intermittently, and I haven't developed my so far single character very well or far, but it has been plenty of fun. And not having a subscription fee means I don't have to fret about wasting money if I don't pick it up especially often (it is not uncommon for me not to let myself have much gaming time at all for months at a stretch - the last few months have been unusually game-heavy for me).

Like World of Warcraft, I do find Guild Wars 2 wearingly intense if playing with someone else. My normal pace in games is quite leisurely, with many pauses, but when I am with another player I feel obligated to push a bit harder, to keep up with em and to keep things interesting.

Probably have more to say on this after I have played more. But so far it is nifty getting to run around helping people out. Especially since that was the core of my character concept (a useful one for a game like this). I didn't actually expect it to be so fantasy; for some reason I thought the game would be more science fiction. No disappointment tho.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Level 36: This place looks uninteresting

Marash's first action is, of course, to detect evil in her new surroundings. She finds a werewolf, a mature white dragon, and a cloud giant (all asleep), as well as a giant white ant and a crow (not evil, but near enough to be visible).

The ant and the bat are from so near the surface, and Marash has grown so powerful herself, she can almost ignore them for now. Praying for trap detection and a map of the area reveal something troubling, however - that cloud giant is near by to the only door out of here. If she is to walk, Marash will have to pass close by it to leave.

Perhaps now is a good time to discover exactly how dangerous cloud giants are. One quick slash of her main gauche disposes of the pesky crow.

Unwisely, maybe, she calls upon the Phial of Galadriel to illuminate, and determine at once if there is anything she desires from this room.

Nothing, except some stairs leading deeper which she wishes not to take just yet. She creeps along to the door, harried by the ant, and the giant does not stir.

Another crow greets her in the doorway and though she misses her first strike it goes down quickly. She destroys the ant, also, in order to clear the doorway so she can close it behind her.

As she heads south down the corridor, she finds herself growing hungry again. A quick prayer takes care of that.

Just a couple more steps down and she hears the door opening behind her. The cloud giant has woken and now is in pursuit. There is no clear shot for her from where she stands, with her rods, and taking a step back puts it out of sight, so Marash continues along until the giant begins to catch up with her.

First fire, which hits fine, then lightning, which it resists. Perhaps to be expected, in retrospect. She fumbles her rod of drain life, and the giant hurls a boulder at her.

On her second attempt, the giant is visibly weakened, but now has caught up entirely with her. Marash activates her gauntlets, projecting acid at the giant. Its fists arc with electricity each time they strike her.

Marash prays for an orb of draining, hitting the giant hard, but it continues to pummel her. A few strikes with her main gauche, and finally it falls. The giant hit hard.

At the end of the corridor, a door. Marash detects no evil on the other side, but in the distance, something called a 'shadow drake'.

The room behind the door is dark. Marash illuminates it with the Phial, revealing the room to be empty save for a mistletoe staff of teleportation.

More corridors, more rooms of nothing. A growing sense of foreboding. The only path onward lies through the white dragon and the werewolf she sensed earlier, or by descending into more perilous depths of Angband.

Rubble blocks her path. On clearing it, Marash discovers some elvish waybread buried beneath the stone, still fresh after however long it has been trapped here.

Marash pauses around the corner from the dragon, praying for protections: from evil, from heat and cold, and to be blessed.

So-protected, the dragon falls to a barrage of rods and gauntlet and prayer without managing a single attack on Marash. The werewolf behind, with the aid of arrows brought from home, falls quickly also.

Marash ends up replacing her corroded wicker shield of fire resistance for a shiny new metal shield of acid resistance. She is already protected from both elements by other sources, but at least this shield won't be damaged so easily as the old one.

There is a potion that would restore any of Marash's life that may be drained, also dropped by the white dragon. To make room for it, she foolishly eats the elvish waybread she just found. It is so filling that Marash feels quite gorged, and she cannot move as freely as she is accustomed to.

Fortunately, a second prayer for her hunger to be satisfied cures her.

More roaming through uncomfortably empty corridors, until at opening of another large, dark chamber, Marash detects fresh evil. Snagas, which she no longer fears, werebears, which make her nervous, and a grave wight, which definitely does. Further to the east, a kobold and a guardian naga, which also do not concern her.

Greed, greed is bad, right? But here is a concentration of evil creatures known to carry useful items. Very tempting to pursue and slay them.

A moment of pause. Between Marash and her blood treasure lies another cluster of fire ants. She no longer fears them so much as before she fought them, but approaching closer and realising there are not merely six ants, but at least fourteen.

Marash experiences a moment of selfish worry - those ants are clustered around the snagas. If they trample the snagas to death trying to get at her, she won't be able to loot the snagas' corpses.

First protection from fire; second blessing herself. Third, centring an orb of draining on the nearest snaga. Snagas: dead. Various ants enraged, and a couple of grizzly bears in pursuit.

A fire bolt from her rod sends the first bear fleeing, her main gauche strikes down the second, and a blow from it sends a cave bear running too. Then at last she sees the reason for all these bears - Beorn, the Shape-Changer is here.

He shrugs off lightning and acid. Drain life hurts him a little. Fortunately he is mostly missing her with his many attacks, or she would be in dire straits already.

Though it is attuned to evil creatures, and Beorn is not evil, an orb of draining does help... but not as much as she'd hoped. In desperation she turns her wand of teleport other on him, disappearing Beorn, a werebear, and a giant fire ant.

Other ants soon arrive to trample the remaining bears to death. A lengthy battle of attrition ensues, with Marash low on health and mana after facing Beorn, and giant fire ants swarming in to attack her, trampling to death all the bears that were Beorn's escort.

Whenever her rods recharge, except the here-useless rod of fire bolts, Marash blasts the nearest ant with them (or the nearest healthy one if that might be overkill).

Eventually she runs out of mana entirely, and her protection from fire fades. The ants have been destroying her staves and scrolls and prayer books throughout the battle, though Marash has not lost her entire stock of anything. The ants crush underfoot any snagas or werebears foolish enough to try and involve themselves in the fight.

As she nears death, Marash drinks a potion of Cure Serious Wounds, restoring herself to her strength at the beginning of this drawn-out ant battle, and fights on.

One last burst of protection from heat and cold as her mana recovers enough. One last bolt of lightning from her rod, and one last ant left the slay before she can scour the wreckage of this room for anything of use.

But, she neglects to consider herself, and as the ant's jaws close upon her, flames erupting from its bite, Marash is finally burned to death.

So ends her lengthy, heroic quest to brave the depths of Angband and slay the dark lord, Morgoth.

Everything Marash has learned about Giant Fire Ants so far:

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Level 36: "You are unsure about this place"

First, detecting evil. A mature green dragon sleeps just out of sight in the very room where Marash has descended. To the south, a dark elven druid. North, at least ten stone trolls and further north a mummified human.

All of these she has faced before. The greatest threat is clearly the nearest, the green dragon, the only of the nearby evil Marash has disengaged from rather than fight to the death. Could it be the same dragon? Marash is suddenly acutely aware she has no resistance to poison.

Protection from evil, blessing herself. One step forward, the dragon in sight. Still asleep. Immediately Marash turns and leaves the room. She passes one of those weird electric blue ants on the way. The druid confronts her as she makes her escape.

Marash takes one step toward him, letting him get a single hit on her. The other of the druid's strikes is turned aside by her protection from evil. This time the druid is much tougher to take down, healing himself, confusing Marash, but fortunately forgetting to do much of either.

She takes care of a sudden air elemental, then walks a wide arc north around the green dragon. Preparing to head back west, Marash caasts detect evil just as a non-evil basilisk comes into view (meanwhile there is a non-sleeping mature gold dragon out there).

Marash blesses herself. She learns the basilisk is faster than her and breathes poison. Enough to hurt her badly. She takes it on with her whip and soon realises this fight is not going in her favour.

Marash turns her rod of drain life against the basilisk, persuading it to flee. She launches a bolt of acid from her gauntlets at its back. The basilisk turns and fills the air with poison, advancing on her again. Marash is unsure if she can survive another close encounter with the beast. Lightning and fire and finally down it goes.

The basilisk was carrying a book of magic spells, useless to her, but the true prize is her survival. Marash's first action is to pray the poison out of her system, her second to call upon the Phial of Galadriel to illuminate the room and hopefully any remaining threats. There are none she can recognise in the immediate vicinity. So her next action is to rest.

Healed up, Marash crosses the lit room to inspect an aquamarine ring laying on the floor. At first she puts it on, before remembering she has staves of identification to use more wisely. As she puts it away she finds herself suddenly terribly afraid.

Must be the dragon, casting a spell on her. Marash flees for the corridor by which she entered, hoping to narrow her exposure.

Protection from evil, bless. An ill-advised ducking back out and finding the dragon almost atop her.

The first round is uninspiring, each taking a minor chunk off the other. Bad bargain for Marash, so she brings out the rod of drain life. That puts things much more in her favour. Lightning, fire and acid to round it out and... meanwhile the dragon's carved her up into a similar state of damage.

Will she have to flee? Marash experiments with an orb of draining and finally sets the gold dragon on the run. Now the dragon is near-dead and fleeing, Marash finishes it off with a second orb. This is not an environment for showing mercy to one's foes. Particularly those so fearsome as a dragon.

Nothing the gold dragon left behind is useful to her. But she does realise that aquamarine ring grants resistance to poison. This is a dilemma. Protection against poisonous attacks could easily save her life, but what to give up for it? The ring which grants her strength or the ring which enhances her constitution? Tempting to keep both and swap one for poison resistance as needed, but what if she needs it before she realises or can act?

Well. If the goal is to stay alive as long as possible, then strength can go... except now she lacks the strength to carry her kit unburdened, and her ability to damage her foes is drastically reduced. So back on goes the ring. Perhaps if she stowed that useless heavy crossbow she's been carrying around, it would work. But Angband is not a safe place to be slowed by one's burden.

On the floor she finds an awl-pike which her staff identifies as enchanted to slay undead. Not useful to her. A mummified human attacks her, giving no trouble, and when destroyed leaves behind an axe. This turns out to be an Axe of Westernesse.

At first, it looks tempting, until she compares more closely. Sure, she could hurt orcs, giants and trolls more with it, but everything else would suffer less. She'd lose her stealth, and her resistance to cold and electricity. No deal; Marash leaves it on the floor.

In her wandering, Marash confusedly completes the loop she had been travelling in and nearly stumbles back to the green dragon she has been avoiding since she arrived here. Hastily, she backs away and puts a closed door between them again. It appears to still be sleeping, which is to her benefit.

Wandering west instead, detect evil reveals a gang of trolls just to the south, right on the other side of the corridor wall. Further west, in her direction of travel, is a baby multi-hued dragon. Something she feels more comfortable tackling. Farther along lurks a master vampire and another gang of cave trolls.

Two strangely moving puddles in the room ahead of her, black oozes. None have have touched her yet and she means to keep it that way. Marash activates one of her staves and for a moment thinks these puddle-creatures look drowsy, but it does not work. She sighs and boils one away with a bolt of fire from her rod.

On the second, she turns her rod of lightning, but fails to activate it properly. The ooze approaches. A second attempt sends electricity crackling across its surface. Not quite enough; the viscous fluid rears up beside her, but Marash shatters its cohesion with her whip before it can strike.

They leave behind some silver and a useless teleportation amulet. Marash continues on, pauses at a door, detects evil. Sure enough, the baby multi-hued dragon lies directly on the other side of the door. Beyond it, she senses not only the vampire and cave trolls from earlier, but also a banshee, a werewolf, a dark elven mage and a batch of gnomish mages. Fortunately all asleep, these creatures of greater or lesser danger.

After some thought Marash decides to head back and confront the nearby stone trolls. Those are, if memory serves, not so tough. More importantly, she believes they have an unimpeded path to her. She would rather not be attacked from behind by nearly a dozen trolls.

An unwise decision. Heading back east, Marash hears the door behind her open. Soon after a cloud of poison washes over her, seeping into her system. The baby dragon, it must be. Quickly she scoots around the nearest corner, praying her defences into place.

The poison fades before the dragon arrives. The battle is not long, Marash hardly touched thanks to her wards against evil. She collects her prize in garnets from the dragon's corpse, then learns her surmise about trollish accessibility was incorrect. No path that way from here to there, she should have girded herself and gone directly after the baby dragon.

What's done is done. Marash continues west.

At the very moment her protection from evil fades, the banshee appears beside Marash. Immediately she prays for its restoration, and not a moment too soon, as the banshee is repelled from attacking her. Marash blesses herself and... the banshee teleports away.

Marash continues exploring the chamber she is in, watchful for the banshee's return. But what she finds is a nest of black oozes just to the north. Their density worries her. Are they multiplying while she isn't looking?

The last, the fifth, leaves behind a main gauche when dissipated. Expending an identification charge over it reveals the blade to be a defender too. Almost just like her whip, but slightly better at striking back. When she hefts the main gauche she feels uncomfortable with it in her hand; there is no difference in her capabilities she can discern however, so she resolves to keep and use it.

Her trusty whip, Marash would rather not leave to rot on the floors of Angband. She abandons her staves of monster-slowing instead, with regret. Probably she never would have used up their charges anyway.

Marash finishes her rounds of this large, oddly-shaped chamber, and settles beside a rubble pile blocking one exit to check again the local disposition of evil.

It seems the Enemy has sent reinforcements. There was no sign of Bolg, son of Azog before. He is escorted by nine black orcs, with a further nineteen uruks backing him up. And just nearby, a full dozen forest trolls. Perhaps it is recklessness, but she feels she can take them. More importantly, she feels she can escape if the confrontation turns nasty.

Another closed door, another pause to check for evil. At least one gnome approaches, awake. The flood of orcs is held back by an unwitting troll skeleton. And the region is being visited by Mîm, Betrayer of Turin. Many unknowns in the region. Perhaps she will be best off waiting here, letting them come to her. At least her path of retreat looks relatively clear.

Marash protects herself from evil. She waits. And waits. And eventually tries the door, discovering it to have been locked until she picked it open. One gnome mage was waiting for her there; she fells it easily.

Another quick check for evil shows nearly all the nearby creatures still at their positions. So perhaps she will indeed have to go after them.

Marash girds herself, steps out into the corrider where the gnomish magi have been sleeping. The banshee appears before her; she strikes it down. Its dissipating form leaves behind a potion of intelligence restoration, valuable for one such as Marash whose intelligence has been drained to almost nothing. Her rod of fire bolts does in another gnome, just as one of the others summons reinforcements.

Khîm, Son of Mîm. Father and son here to hunt her down.

Marash takes a deep breath. She prays that the evil around her be dispelled. The Gnome mage she can see is dissolved before her eyes; she hears the sound of others meeting a similar fate in the darkness of the corridor before her. Khîm, as she realises too late, is not evil and strides toward her unaffected.

She sends an orb of draining his way but he shrugs it off. So she follows up by reading a scroll of Phase Door. That gets her trapped between Khîm and the skeletal troll that in its sleep holds back a horde of orcs from assailing her.

A second scroll lands her in the corridor from which she approached, so she scurries back behind her resting door, closes it behind her and attempts to rest. No good. Khîm opens the door soon after. Marash speaks the prayer of Portal.

Relief. She has landed in an unexplored, apparently quiet part of the area. Nearby evil: an invisible stalker, also a single Gnome mage and Uruk at the far range of her awareness. The stalker could be dangerous. She knows it is normally found about this deep, which means it is probably very dangerous.

The room she is in turns out to be large, but safe for her to recover in. As she leaves north, the uruk approaches. Although she no longer regards those dangerous, she girds herself against surprise that may be lurking behind it.

The uruk is struck down easily. Another, behind it, is sent fleeing when Marash's bolt of fire takes it to near death. Finally, the remaining gnome mage shows itself, leaving a useless merely magical lead-filled mace with its corpse.

Denizens of the depths begin to filter in from the north. A black orc, then the skeletal troll. It must have woken and now, not blocking the flow of orcs hunting Marash, they come for her. Worse, Khîm has found her again.

She heads south, pursued by the skeletal troll and Khîm behind. Her path leads her to the invisible stalker, so fast it can pursue and fight her as she runs. A single orb of draining takes care of it, and hurts the skeletal troll so badly her next blow destroys it. Leaving her now with Khîm again.

Another scroll of phase door takes her to the far corner of the chamber in which they are now fighting. A prayer illuminates it. Khîm meanwhile attempts to slow her with his magic. Behind him she can see a black orc, harbinger of the potential flood to come.

From her rod of fire bolts Marash learns Khîm is fire-resistant. He shrugs off a lightning bolt, doesn't seem to notice a dose of life drain, and although damaged by acid from her gauntlets, is not hurt enough. Nor can her staff put him to sleep, although the two orcs at the back of the room drop off immediately.

She tries her wands of wonder. A few doses hurt him, one heals him, and when one of his strikes disenchants her boots that is the final straw.

Marash prays for an earthquake, only to find that though his former location is now a column of solid rock, Khîm himself is barely scratched and continuing his attack. In hope that he may be trapped, Marash reads another scroll of phase door and attacks the sleeping orcs.

But Khîm is not trapped, attempting again to slow her from the darkness behind. Marash runs, attempting to cut herself a path through orcs to safety. They are too many, and not frail enough. Khîm catches up with her, disenchanting her further. She portals away...

...landing beside his father, Mîm, Betrayer of Turin, who gets a flurry of blows upon her and disenchants her cloak. Another portal, this time landing her in what looks to be a safe north-east corner.

Time, perhaps, to head back to the surface.

Marash reads one of her scrolls of recall, then waits patiently for her return to the surface. There she drops off the useless and weighty heavy crossbow she has been lugging around, along with the whip she is no longer using as her weapon. This lightens her burden enough that it becomes practical to cease wearing her ring of strength and to wear the ring of poison resistance instead.

But, she will keep the strength ring handy in case she needs that.

While in town, Marash also buys a pair of recall scrolls to replace the one she just used and the one she is about to use, and a cloak to replace the uselessly tattered one she still wears. But, having forgotten how she has conditioned herself to react to such things, she instead immediately tosses aside the cloak she has purchased as useless.

Finally, she buys both scrolls at the alchemy shop that promise to enchant her weapon for accuracy, reads both of them to no effect, then reads another recall scroll to take herself back down.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Level 34: "This place seems reasonably safe"

Nothing, indeed, worrying in the immediate area. Marash decides to hang around for a while.

A young multi-hued dragon donates some treasure, not very interesting without a shop around. A bit further south, a squad of novice rangers foolishly throw themselves at Marash.

With them was an ogre mage which, despite her not having enough energy to put up her defensive prayers, goes down easily enough. Not quickly enough to prevent it from creating traps.

Marash waits in place until she can pray for trap detection, but still ends up setting off a pre-existing trap door and falling another level deeper into Angband before she could collect anything interesting.