Roguelikes with deep itemization and/or skill customization

[Finnien]

I'm looking for a little advice!  I'm slowly getting drawn deeper into roguelikes, first with Dungeons of Dredmor, then with ToME4, and now I'm looking for something new.  What I'm most interested in is something tilebased (blasphemy, I know, but I got plenty of ASCII my dial-up WWIV BBS days!) with a very deep itemization system that allows for truly exceptional and exciting finds and goes beyond D&D's traditional +5/+5 system.  Also of interest is anything that allows for skill builds/customization, probably the single most addicting aspect of Dredmor for me.  Finally, I'd prefer something without a brutal hunger mechanic - some hunger is fine, but if more than one in five characters or so dies to it, then it becomes too much of a focus.  I want heroes that die in glorious combat, not starve quietly in dark corners whining about how hungry they are.  Or at least are smashed quickly and brutally into pulp, anyways.

Thanks, and please don't make fun of the new guy too much!

[roocey]

I don't know too much about up and coming Roguelikes that have what you want, but Angband and, to a lesser extent, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup are known for producing some very interesting finds. Both have tilesets.

[jim]

DCSS, absolutely. Just don't play as a Centaur or Spriggan to start - they both have hunger issues. Mages also run into hunger issues early on, since casting spells adds to hunger. Roll yourself up a Minotaur Berserker and smash some heads with your Great Mace of Xibathito +5 +10 {rF++, Int -3, Dam +5, noisy}.

The further you get into it, the more exciting the process of character building becomes. High Elf in heavy armour who is also a master enchanter and deadly with the blade? Hell yeah.

EDIT: I should add that DCSS, unlike the *bands, has a lot of urgency and strives for a constant level of challenge. Scumming is more or less a given in most *bands, and DCSS doesn't really allow for it in its design. To me, that makes the discovery of a weird magical item that much more exciting; it may not be the ideal choice for my current build, but will it allow me to survive the next few levels?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

It sounds like Sangband would be perfect for you.

- Nice SDL frontend with tiles as an option.
- Truly exceptional items, and a very interesting system for forging them yourself.
- Character customization choices are endless. For example, there are four BIG realms of magic to choose from.
- Hunger is a non-issue.

[Darren Grey]

Brogue now has tiles: http://brogue.createforumhosting.com/graphical-tiles-test-t579.html

[getter77]

The Infra Arcana graphical style catching on an mutating into other projects can only be a good thing.

[CommieCatGirl]

If you can stand the RPG Maker/Anime/Japanese RPG look, I'd recommend Elona.  You don't have to worry about tightening your belt to prevent hunger pains.  It's actually a bit strange because you'll end up wanting your character to get hungry faster, because consuming the right foods exercises and can eventually increase certain stats, like eating carrots will increase your perception stat, and a concept I really like is if you start eating poisonous critters, like venomous spiders and snakes, your character will eventually develop poison antibodies that increase their overall resistance to poison.

http://homepage3.nifty.com/rfish/index_e.html

The equipment wildly varies, some magical objects that can have up to 30 or so different magical properties to them.  Each object also has a base material, like if you have a weapon or piece of armor made from silk, it'll be much weaker than similar equipment made from a metal, but it will also be much lighter, and if you come across a piece of equipment that has some nice enchantments, but is made from some crap material, like bronze, you can find a kit or certain spells that will let you change it into something more fitting.

The skills are pretty nice too, you've got about 50, you tend to start with 20 or so, and your level of mastery with a skill can go up to 2000.

[guest509]

  Never played it, I'll check it out...hoping it's in English. 

[ekolis]

Dungeons of Dredmor has a ridiculous number of items and skills. It's a commercial game, but it's pretty cheap. Haven't gotten around to playing it much though...