Quiconque

I want your monkeys I want your cobras I want your small melons As long as they're ripe I want your gold Gold gold gold I want your gold I want your first aid The touch of your poles I want your anaesthetic darts in the dark I want your gold Gold gold gold I want your gold You know that I want you And you know that I need you I want it good Your good roguelike I want your gold and I want your curses You and me could write a good roguelike I want your gold and All your scarab’s curses You and me could write a good roguelike Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Caught in a good roguelike Ra ra-ah-ah-ah Pyra Pyra-mid Exit Oh la-la Want your good roguelike I want your lunch box I want all your nets ‘Cuz you’re Anonymous As long as you’re Bosch I want your gold Gold gold gold I want your gold I want your prestige Your professorship Want you in my Bank of Ra Be my bullwhip I want your gold Gold gold gold I want your gold Map map charcoal baby write it Make that note c-razy Map map charcoal baby write it Make that note c-razy Map map charcoal baby write it I’m an archaeologist baby I want your gold And I want your curses I want your gold I don’t wanna be dead Caught in a good roguelike

No, ME absolutely sucked in A4. A5 was the game in which somebody else -- I thought it was your previous incarnation, but I may be wrong -- tested it and found similar data as to my test of A6, so I assume it's the same or at least similar in both games. Edit: Yes, it was UBS. Cough, cough. The topic is here, although I suspect that the line of best fit is off and it actually works the way I suggested for A6: A flat 5% reduction (calculated the same with damage reduction is) per point in the skill, with the 10-cap applied.

FYI, Blademaster is exactly equivalent to an extra Fatigue Removal item with FR equal to 5% per point of Blademaster, up to a maximum of 100%.

Somebody does, although they use text templates for all the emails involved.

Fair warning: although the wait is usually pretty short, the wait is sometimes longer on weekends and holidays, and in the middle of the night, because the orders are processed by human beings and are not automated.

The games' PCs are exceptions to all the rules about adventurers, though. It is very clear from all the suspicion and derision directed at adventurers in X1 and X2 that before those two bands, adventurers never accomplished much of anything in Avernum, despite being disproportionately represented there.

Right, and then the corresponding issue is that Magical Efficiency is good starting in A5, so for 98% of fights in the game you're better off just pumping priest skills more and spamming Smite rather than bothering with archery at all.

Hm. I'm still skeptical. Did anyone else have this experience?

Yeah, but is that because you encountered one or two enemies and got used to it, and are running a Nephil with the Heartstriker, etc., or because you actually checked methodically and have encountered enemy after enemy with 50%+ resistance to every castable element?

The issue is "magic, fire, and/or ice" -- there are almost no enemies that resist all three, and mages have access to all three. A mage with 40 spellcasting skill and no investment in archery should never ever have to resort to archery, except maybe against pylons and the like.

The lack of saving / permadeath of roguelikes is a critical element to those games. It is definitely contradictory to what we would typically consider pleasant in gaming, but you have to embrace it to really understand why people enjoy roguelikes. I would compare it to music, where we usually expect to hear organized, pleasant, concordant music. If you listen to full of discordance, or say to Aphex Twin's "Ventolin" with its deliberately ear-piercing tones, you have to throw that expectation out the window in order to appreciate the music. But both pieces of music are deeply appreciated and even revered by musicians and listeners within their genres. [Let's not forget that Bartok seems to have provided the central inspiration behind Jeff's upcoming new series!] Permadeath, when taken seriously, completely changes how you play the game. After your first few deaths, you learn to be more cautious than you think is necessary. Consumable items, which compulsive optimizers go through Spiderweb games without ever using, become essential to carry AND use from the start of the game. Skills and tactics that don't seem important in save-and-reload games become a matter of life and death.

What Thuryl may be forgetting -- because I just realized I had forgotten it -- is that melee and archery were balanced very different in A5 than in A6. In A6, melee is stronger due to several mechanics changes (mainly Dual Wielding and better Quick Action value). In A5, melee sucks horribly, while the Heartstriker bow is available early enough to not be irrelevant. Back in the day, I did some theoretical calculations and got similar results to Mordea. Archery's heyday was in A4, really the one game where dedicated archers were viable (if still not optimal) and pumping everyone's archery stats was helpful. In A5, magic damage is clearly the way to go. And in A6, melee damage is king, at least for single targets.

Not just an understatement, a totally false statement. It isn't a version of C in any way, shape, or form. It shares basic syntax with innumerable scripting and programming languages. Heck, the way some of it is structured, and given Jeff's preferences, I wouldn't be surprised if hypertalk was an influence.

Angband FTW

The other issue is that archery damage ramps up less quickly than any other kind of damage. Its multipliers (x2 and x3) and puny compared to magic multipliers (x3 through x6) and melee/pole multipliers (x2 through x4) benefit hugely from skills like Quick Action. The skills for magic and melee also provide side benefits aside from damage (utility magic, fatigue reduction, encumbrance, etc) which cannot be said for archery skills.

Can you imagine any SW game with a Shadowrun-like karma system? No. I can't. As the PC says to Khyryk in G4...

Yes, your friendly item definitions file does.

Did you get the quest to kill him? I think you need that first, from the mayor IIRC.

Chidar, please remember that this forum is read by people of all ages -- the code of conduct has more details on what that means.

How about a meta-game where instead of having roles like Gladwell and Vahkohs you have roles like Marlenny and Thuryl? Obviously, the playing field and powers would have to be adjusted too.

"You must vote before you can view the results of this poll" is a bad option to select when you only want votes from a minority of people reading the topic -- in this case, the people who actually played the game.

Actually, Exile and Exile II didn't measure carried encumbrance at all; you had 12 or 16 pack slots and that was that. They did, however, measure worn encumbrance, albeit via an encumbrance number rather than weight. It was Exile III that began measuring object weight and limiting carrying capacity by weight, although encumbrance remained as in the earlier games.

Making the AI react to player choices will inevitably open up a thousand ways to exploit the AI. In this case, the cure is worse than the problem.

Well, my memory is off. You said you were fixing it in A4, and then it seemed to reappear in A5, so this was ambiguous at least. Dbugkill is the unauthorized cheat that you deprecated (and then removed).

No, the point is that since you don't need to use Battle Frenzy to reach 10 AP, you will do less damage with Battle Frenzy than with another 10 AP method plus other battle disciplines. That said, my math above is actually wrong. What it really looks like, assuming 20 Blademaster (reasonable) and no FR equips (since they are quite inconsistent esp compared to A5) is this. I'm doing the damage over 4 turns, since that's how long it takes to recharge Adrenaline Rush with 20 Blademaster. 04.00 = Nothing 05.33 = Haste 06.00 = Adrenaline Rush 06.00 = Mighty Blow* 07.00 = Haste + Adrenaline Rush 07.33 = Haste + Mighty Blow* 08.00 = Battle Frenzy 08.00 = 2 AP Items 09.00 = 2 AP Items + Adrenaline Rush 10.00 = 2 AP Items + Mighty Blow* *Mighty Blow is asterisked because I'm not entirely sure it doubles damage, and also because it is not fully effective with dual wielding or multi-target spells. This was an instructive exercise to go through, actually. It points out that if you are using 2 AP Items (or 20 QS), battle disciplines aren't really going to increase your damage output over time all that much... although Adrenaline Rush is obviously always useful for short term damage spamming. If Bladeshield has a useful effect, it might well be the best option for singletons, then...