Messages

1

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.6.1 "Riquier"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: April 19, 2017, 02:18:14 AM »

So I've won twice more, working on number 4 right now.  I have died lots of times.  I have a little more feedback:

Towns do not repopulate their original citizen type (ogre town doesn't regenerate ogres, for example)

Mage types really get hamstrung without an offensive spell.  Would it be overpowered to guarantee them an offensive spell and then maybe a chance at another couple of spellbooks?  I just started a new character if I happened to not get an offensive spellbook.

On the note of offensive spells, the range of the bolts and beams is rather short.  I get that you don't want someone nuking the entire map from halfway across the screen but maybe the range of the early/lower level spells could be inversely proportionate to their level?  It's hard to get close enough to a mob in the early game and have enough time to nuke it before it one-shots you.  There's almost no chance you can run away and gain ground from it either, in the early game.

Due to the auto-run not stopping at intersections, the sewers are (to me, might not be to everyone) frustrating to navigate and explore.  I was curious though, so I did dive down 20 or so floors to see if there was anything significantly different between sewers and dungeons.  I did not discover anything very different.  Are they just thematically different?

Can you modify your speed?  There are spells, but they don't change the visible speed number.  Is a bigger or smaller number better?

The status lines along the bottom of the screen should have a newline in there somewhere.
The game starts out like so:

Code: [Select]

Kobik            HmAd   Str:11  Dex:11  Agi:12  Hea:12  Int:12  Wil:13  Cha:9   L1,0%  Ev/Sk: 9/4  G  Spd:50  HP:8/8
AP:6/6
But as you gain EXP and gain/lose HP, the HP line can "jump" between the top line and the bottom line.  I would personally prefer to see:

Code: [Select]

Kobik            HmAd   Str:11  Dex:11  Agi:12  Hea:12  Int:12  Wil:13  Cha:9   
HP:8/8   AP:6/6  L1,0%  Ev/Sk: 9/4  G  Spd:50It's important (to me) to have HP in the same spot all the time.

I'm pretty sure in my first winning game I found altars in the infinte dungeon.  This game, however, I get the "holy presence" message but there aren't ever any altars that I can find.

Without the ability to read (which I recognize you can get from Cynwise) I feel like your run is over.  If you can't read scrolls, then you have almost no way to get rid of cursed equipment and no way to enchant items other than smithing them if you happen to be a smith.  That's pretty significant in my opinion.

I have noticed that some of the random shops in random towns do not spawn fully stocked.  Is this by design?

Anyhow, looking forward to the new version and @proxima_b -- I'm really digging the charts you made.

2

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.6.1 "Riquier"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: March 28, 2017, 03:04:46 PM »

Woo!  Beat the wyrm.  I have some more questions/feedback if you're down for that.

• When displacing a friendly creature, you are not notified that there is anything on the ground.  Similarly if you are auto-moving and stop due to hostile creatures, you do not see the item you happen to stop on.
• The game generates a bunch of 0 byte log files, suchly: sotw-20170315-22.log.  I am guessing that this is related to the debug settings in the ini file.  Maybe log files could be dumped into a /log directory?
• Can character dumps include XP totals?
• If I kill the wyrm and choose to keep playing, the dude in the original town should acknowledge that I killed the wyrm and completed his quest.
• Can I see completed quests?
• Can I see special messages after they've cleared my message buffer?  (level messages, quest text, etc)
• The "carry" skill never seems to automagically improve like the rest of the skills do.  Come to think of it, magic skills (arcane, cantrips) don't ever seem to improve automatically either.
• On a similar note, once you get a skill to 100, you can still get "improvement" messages for that skill.
• I'd love the ability to learn skills that I don't start with.  Learning to forge would have been fun, as would learning all the other magic skills, or oceanography!
• Traps can generate on stairs, making it difficult to find them on occasion.
• I feel like "spellbook of aim" generates at a very very high rate.  I find 2-3 per dungeon level most levels.
• Any thoughts on a "glove" or "gauntlet" armour type?
• Base stats do not seem to have a bearing on HP/AP.  Are they just used for calculations (combat, magic, environmental) instead?

After I beat the wyrm, I chose to continue to play.  I spent some time diving in the endless dungeon.  Floor -3000 was worth 1.4M XP.
Hmm, let's keep going.  Floor -4000 was worth 2.67M XP.

Stats after floor -4000:

Code: [Select]

Rhon             OgWz   Str:64  Dex:69  Agi:61  Hea:60  Int:65  Wil:53  Cha:67  L50,100%  Ev/Sk: 170/103  E  Spd:53
HP:227/227  AP:295/295  [-4000']
Level 50, 140665020 experience.  Multipliers: Ogre 1.1, Wizard 1.1.

Then I decided to escape that dungeon, drink all my 'gain ability' potions and figure out what resists I was missing and get equipment enchanted up to try and fill in those resistance gaps. 

Why do this since I already 'beat' the game?  2 reasons. 
1 - I'm a filthy min/maxer
2 - there's still some celestial being floating around out there who has my cosmos stone.

Anyhow, after drinking a bunch of potions and making (and wearing and evaluating) over a hundred wyvern-hide caps and almost 50 other various caps I found one with a bunch of suitable resists.  I know from experience they can increase when I enchant the item.  Enchanting that cap, my dragon boots and a pair of rings (to fill in the missing arcane resistance) I'm left with the following stats and equipment:

Code: [Select]

Rhon             OgWz   Str:99  Dex:99  Agi:99  Hea:99  Int:99  Wil:95  Cha:99  L50,100%  Ev/Sk: 298/156  E  Spd:53
HP:227/227  AP:295/295
------------------------------------------------------- Equipment ------------------------------------------------------
  [a] Head         : uncursed wyvern-hide cap [28, 21]  [0.44 lbs]
      Resists/Flags: {0.15Co 0.11Ac 0.15Ho 0.13Sh 0.04Li}
  [b] Neck         : uncursed ruby amulet "Eunoia" [17, 7]  [0.25 lbs] (glow)
      Resists/Flags: {0.20Ps 0.20Ho 0.20Sh 0.20Ar}
  [c] Right Finger : uncursed ring of sorcery [43, 26]  [0.13 lbs]
      Resists/Flags: {0.15Ho 0.33Ar 0.02Li}
  [d] Left Finger  : uncursed ring of sorcery [66, 22]  [0.13 lbs]
      Resists/Flags: {0.07He 0.11Ac 0.35Ar}
  [e] Wielded      : uncursed divine blade "Heart's Fury" (12d6+12)  [14.00 lbs] (glow)
      Resists/Flags: {0.40Sl 0.40Pi 0.50Ho}
  [f] Off Hand     : uncursed elemental shield (Acid) [40, 32]  [4.00 lbs]
      Resists/Flags: {0.17He 0.16Co 0.15Ac 0.17Li}
  [g] Body         : uncursed Atuan silver chain mail "Silari" [9, 10]  [2.00 lbs]
      Resists/Flags: {0.10Sl 0.10He 0.10Co}
  [h] Around Body  : uncursed Gildi's Cloak [4, 2]  [2.00 lbs] (glow)
      Resists/Flags: {0.15He 0.15Co 0.15Ac 0.15Ps 0.15Ho 0.15Sh 0.15Ar}
  [i] Feet         : uncursed dragon boots (Lightning) [47, 14]  [5.00 lbs]
      Resists/Flags: {0.18He 0.20Li}
  [j] Ranged       : uncursed august longbow "Lora" (6d6)  [4.00 lbs] (glow)
      Resists/Flags: {0.10Pi}
  [k] Ammunition   : uncursed Faerie Shield [20, 5]  [2.00 lbs] (glow)
      Resists/Flags: {0.15He 0.15Sh 0.15Ar}
I'm amused that I can drop whatever I want into the 'ammo' slot.  I don't remember if it helped with resistances.  I'd also point out that since you can't enchant artifacts, my maximum Evade/Soak could be a lot higher if I was wearing 'normal' gear.  Can't beat those resists though!

Last on my list for this char is to find the cosmos stone (and finally find the rest of the whiteflowers for one of the original quests)

What can I do to help with further developement of this game?

3

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.6.1 "Riquier"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: March 27, 2017, 12:30:33 PM »

- First, get the tile's HP/AP multiplier.  This is generally always 1, but can be modified if there are things on the tile like beds or strange stone markers.

OOooohhhhhhh, that's how you use beds?  And I had no idea what the strange stone markers were.

4

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.6.1 "Riquier"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: March 22, 2017, 11:39:57 PM »

holy smokes, a responsive dev!  This guy rocks!

I'll start out and say that I'm playing Shadow of the Wyrm 0.6.1 "Riquier"

So I think I could get to your case by repeating variations on these steps.  Is this roughly how it would've gone for you?  I assume your expectation would be that after identification, any inventory items of the same type and B/U/C status would be grouped together?  This isn't currently done, but probably should be.

I've read a blessed scroll of ID and been through a bunch of iterations of dropping (bulk, just a couple at a time, just a single scroll, just a single stack, etc) and picking them back up all sorts of ways and on occasion a stack and a single will combine but it doesn't seem to be following expected convention (b/u/c in ID and unID'd forms) 

I could post my save game if that would shed any light on what's going on.

I'm really smitten with this game.

I have another wall of text ... feel free to tell me "too much, too much!" and I'll stop whenever it gets to be annoying.  Also feel free to tell me "that's how it's supposed to work"

Additional notes:

• Using a wand changes the charges remaining and moves the wand to the last item in wand inventory.  Is it removing and creating a new object when you discharge a wand?  It's hard(ish) to keep track of items when they change "letters" from turn to turn.
• It would be neat to be able to see the various resists on identified wearables without having to swap them on and off.
• Is there a way to "use" items?  I have found a shovel, a mattock and a sackbut but I do not know how to use them.  What about musical instruments?  I've found a lot of those but I can't figure out how to use them.
• At higher player levels and lower dungeon levels (maybe ... I'm at L26 with EV:57/34 on dungeon level -1100 fighting things like minotaurs and sorcerers -- this might not yet be considered high level) it seems like nothing can touch me until it crits, then I get hit for 30+ HP at one shot.  I've save scummed a couple of times and I'm coming to the conclusion that it only takes 3-4 "bypasses your armour" messages to die in a couple of rounds.
• I find myself playing for a god who doesn't care if I kill friendly units (yes, I found a file with some strings in it ...).  There's a lot of them and oftentimes they're in the way (yes, they'll move out of the way) but it's usually easier just to kill everything in a dungeon.  Any thoughts on making friendly dungeon dwellers fewer and farther between?  Should that ogre bonegrinder really standby as I slaughter 8 of his (presumed) friends/family?
• Any thoughts to a scroll of exit (or something like that) that would allow you to go from dungeon level XX to 1 (maybe to the exit tile)?  I am not seeing a lot of dungeon regeneration happening so the climb back up and out of the dungeon is usually just "oh, there's the stairs, fast travel ("w") until you get close"
• Poison is really debilitating.  I seem to have to save all my healing potions to heal in case I get poisoned and do not have an antidote.  Antidote potions seem very far between and even with a poison number of 0.30 I seem to still get hit for well over 100% of my HP by poison when I get poisoned.
• Is it possible to review or see the level messages 'holy, magic item, zoo, etc' again?
• Is it a design intention to not see the total amount of weight (I realize I could add it up) we're currently carrying and perhaps the threshold for "burdened/etc" on those?  It might also be neat to see the effect of "carrying" in terms of how much we can actually carry.  I recently added 18 points to carry and was still burdened.
• I'm having trouble moving my saved game from my work computer (don't tell!) to my home computer.  I've tried everything -- even copying the entire game directory but my saved game doesn't show up on another computer.  Could it be a userID (logged into the computer) thing?
• I also want to compliment the Forgotten Beast for knowing how to angle his beam against a wall to hit me.  OUCH!

Thanks!

5

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.6.1 "Riquier"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: March 20, 2017, 03:57:12 PM »

Corpses should be differentiated by size, which is influenced by race, but I'll make a note to check on this.  There isn't any variation within race, so a roc will be the same as a kestrel.  I'll make a note to fix this up at some point in the future. 

So as I'm progressing in the game I am finding corpses of different weights.  Thanks for the race explanation!

As for scrolls, I always envision them as being the kind with the wooden handles, which are thus heavier than just a scrap of paper.

This also makes sense, thanks!

Now, what to do next.  You've hit on what I feel is the central weakness of the game: a vast, sprawling wilderness with only the illusion of immense choice.  Now, there are set areas, and most of these can be found around the "edges" of the map.  You can find additional quests in these areas, with good rewards, and these can hopefully supplement your levelling.  I've never won the game legitimately (I play in debug mode and cheat mercilessly), but my general pattern is:

- Do the starting island: the Barrows, do 5-10 levels of the starting dungeon, and Wintersea Keep.
- Once I've got a boat, do Aeschburh (to the north west) and Gnordvar (basically due north a while)
- Go to Atua-Elar and clear out Stonewall
- Clear out the Ogre Camp in the far western part of the world, and return the amulet to the exile, who lives in a hidden cave north-east of the starting island
- Find a dungeon and dive deep
- Around level 30, look at clearing out Cithriel, which can be found by talking to the caravan master in the fae camp in the far north
- Around level 35-40, go to Stoneheim (the fixed dwarf village in the north-west corner of the world) and clear out Wyrmeswraec and the Caldera
- At this point, I'm probably ready to take on Amaurosis. 

Now, I have the immense advantage of knowing where everything is.  But the fixed locations are truly fixed: from game to game, you can always find them in the same location.  This is to provide a sense of continuity from game to game, and because randomizing everything in a 100x100 map would just be aggravating.

Again, this was probably me just getting a couple of characters through like level 10 or so and not really understanding the scope and general layout of the "board" ... things are starting to make more sense.  I do find myself going through an awful lot of food exploring the oceans though ...

As for how to make your deity happier, right now, you can offer at a co-aligned altar.  There are a few altar locations scattered throughout the game (in the keep north-west of where you start, and a few other places), and they can also occur randomly in dungeons.  As for checking your piety, you can use the "P"iety command.

I think I converted the altar in Stonewall to my god and then I sacrificed a ton of corpses in a random dungeon and I think I converted to another god.  I assume there's some sort of baseline "value" of crap the gods will accept.  They didn't like basic equipment, for example, but I'm pretty sure I was able to give them a named weapon.  They also didn't care 2 bits for my pile of 35 ivory pieces but happily accepted my stack of 400.  I imagine this threshold will become more apparent the more I play the game.

Multiple-drop isn't something I'd planned on adding, but I'll add it to my suggestions file.  I also didn't have autopickup on my to-do list, but I've added it.  What kind of autopickup options are you looking for?  By item type?  Something else?

This could be as simple as auto-picking up classes of items (every scroll, every potion, all currency, all wands, etc) or far more granular (every scroll of ID and enchant, never pick up scroll of trap ID, always pick up potion of healing, never pick up dram of gin)  Seems like picking up money at the very least would be a good option.

I have encountered a minor inventory (well, if you're looking to exploit scrolls of blessing, not a minor) quibble.  It doesn't seem as if like items stack.  I cannot for the life of me get my similar scrolls (or potions or food or plants or ... bafflingly enough, currency!?) to stack in a consistent manner.  See my list of scrolls below:

Code: [Select]

---------------------------------------------- Items Available (Filtered) ----------------------------------------------
Scrolls - ?
  [a] uncursed scroll of uncursing [1.00 lbs]
  [b] uncursed scroll of trap detection [1.00 lbs]
  [c] uncursed scroll of identify (2) [2.00 lbs]
  [d] cursed scroll of trap detection (2) [2.00 lbs]
  [e] blessed scroll of trap detection [1.00 lbs]
  [f] uncursed blank scroll (3) [3.00 lbs]
  [g] uncursed scroll of uncursing [1.00 lbs]
  [h] uncursed scroll of cleansing [1.00 lbs]
  [i] uncursed scroll of cleansing [1.00 lbs]
  [j] uncursed scroll of blessing [1.00 lbs]
  [k] uncursed scroll of uncursing [1.00 lbs]
  [l] uncursed scroll of blessing [1.00 lbs]
  [m] uncursed scroll of identify [1.00 lbs]
  [n] uncursed scroll of recharging [1.00 lbs]
  [o] uncursed scroll of identify [1.00 lbs]
  [p] uncursed scroll of recharging [1.00 lbs]
  [q] uncursed scroll of uncursing [1.00 lbs]
  [r] blessed scroll of cleansing [1.00 lbs]
I've been through some iterations of dropping and picking up all my scrolls of identify.  I can't get them to stack up in a manner that I consider appropriate.  It seems like they *should* stack since some of them do, but if there's a trick to that then I don't know what it is.

I'm glad you're enjoying the game.  It still kind of blows my mind that people play it when there are far more polished options (ToME, DCSS, etc) available.  Thank you.  I mean that.

I play a lot of roguelikes.  I've been playing Nethack since 1987 or 88 (damn I'm old...) and I've played many many many of them in between.  I've put a hundred hours into ToME, I've thoroughly beaten DCSS.  Same thing with Angband, the original ADOM, etc.  I hesitate to consider the hours I spent on Baldur's Gate, Dwarf Fortress, Gnomoria, Diablo or any of the early Final Fantasy games. 

Recently in an attempt to get my kid to play roguelikes we've started playing Unexplored.  (check it out on steam, it's kinda fun)

SotW is a return to oldschool ascii games and this one seems like it's got a ton of promise and a lot of replayability.  Thanks!

6

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.6.1 "Riquier"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: March 16, 2017, 06:59:48 PM »

so I'm really digging this game.  Currently playing an ogre pugilist who really can't be touched.  (that character has some issues, like being unable to read and therefore unable to figure out how to uncurse equipment)

I'm wondering if there's a plan to balance weights?  A mole's corpse weighs 100 and so does a dragon's.  I also do not really think scrolls should weigh 1 if a big giant broadsword weighs 5.

I'm finding myself struggling to figure out what to do 'next' ... I will occasionally find a town or castle/keep but they're either empty or they have a random <go place and kill thing and come back> that takes just a couple of minutes.  I have a final quest of "go kill the wyrm guy" but I'm not finding a lot inbetween. 

I also struggle with knowing what or how to make my god happier with me or knowing where I stand.

Are there plans to allow me to drop multiple <different> items at once?  What about auto-pickup options?

All in all I am enjoying this game a great deal.

Thanks!